How do you know when Republicans feel they are in danger in the coming election? When they provide most of the funds to get a Green Party candidate on the ballot in the hopes it will siphon votes from their Democrat competitor. “Green Party candidate Carl Romanelli, making his first bid for statewide elective office [in Pennsylvania], acknowledged Monday that Republican contributors probably supplied most of the $100,000 that he said he spent gathering signatures to qualify for the Nov. 7 ballot.” Underhanded? You decide.
You’ve got to check out this video of a massive meteorite collision. It’s a Japanese computer animation. There are plenty of scientific problems with the video, such as lava on the meteor’s surface, an apparent lack of seismic devastation preceding the ejecta cloud, and lack of significant rebound material thrown into space. Despite that, the video is equally fascinating and disturbing. Oh, and the music is very cool. [via Phil Plait]
Tangled Bank #59 is online with the best of the week’s science blogging.
Gosh, we’re setting such a fine example. “Evidence collected on the deaths of 24 Iraqis in Haditha supports accusations that U.S. Marines deliberately shot the civilians, including unarmed women and children, a Pentagon official said Wednesday.” It’s unfortunate that this is only one of several such cases from Iraq where evidence against U.S. soldiers is damning. What has Bush done to our military…
The avian influenza news coming from Thailand is very bad indeed. The entire nation has been declared an epidemic control area, 300,000 chickens at 78 farms have already been culled with a lot more looking suspicious, there are between 45 and 113 people currently suspected as being infected, 765 people are being monitored due to likely exposure and possible infection, at least six people are hospitalized with high fevers and related symptoms, and “[j]ust over the border, in Laos [a country lacking ‘the awareness or infrastructure’ to handle related problems], there is a new confirmed outbreak in poultry.”
Remember the whack creationists received in Dover, PA? (I also mentioned this here as well.) They tried slithering their superstitious nonsense into the school curriculum in Kansas, a battle between science and religion that has just ended. No more metaphysical drivel masqueraded as science is what voters just made clear. “Conservative Republicans who pushed anti-evolution standards back into Kansas schools last year have lost control of the state Board of Education once again.” Describing evolution as “an age-old fairy tale” and “a nice bedtime story” that lacked any scientific support, anti-science theocrats were dealt a 4-seat loss on the board, a move which perfectly reversed their majority and handed education back to those who believe it should be factual instead of fictional.