a simple prop

If only because I know it will annoy some folks …

And for completeness sake, here is the original trailer from Grindhouse.

I usually get ~300 pageviews a day here, particularly if I’m not posting much. About ten days ago, I started getting 2000+ hits per day. Two days ago this rose to 15,000 and yesterday to 30,000+. The reason? This post got Stumbled upon ten days ago and clearly went viral in the past 48 hours.

Update (5/4): In the past week, i.e. since the original post, there have been a further 51,817 hits on the post. Back in my Scienceblogs days, I’d have been making a relative fortune on this

Velociraptor Awareness Day

If you follow hockey, you’ll know that Matt Cooke (Penguins) dealt Marc Savard (Bruins) a season-ending cheap shot last month, the latest in a series of dirty hits that have marked Cooke’s otherwise meaningless career in the NHL. As Don Cherry pointed out, Cooke is a “gutless, backstabbing little fu[cker]“. Last night, Cooke attempted to pick a fight with the wrong guy – Evander Kane of the Thrashers. The 18 year old shows him karma in action.

Read more here.

You decide. No matter what, it’s better that “faitheist” … I hate that term.

Wilkins has a good post with much to agree with:

Look, I don’t care if atheists are aggressive or not. Certainly being excluded themselves, they have the right to be loud and proud. I think they should speak out at every turn. But does that require that they must denigrate and belittle those who don’t entirely agree with them? Must they turn into what they themselves despise? It seems, sadly, this is the human condition. But don’t pretend to be the vanguard of rationality when you are just as irrational and tribal as everyone else. The term for that is not “rational”, but “hypocritical”.

Read on.

Things are likely to be a little quiet here for a while for a number of reasons. The ASU portion of the Tyndall Project is finally getting off the ground, our search is moving onwards, and grading starts this week. Be back soon(ish)!

From the Arizona Central website. Apparently nearly 20% either believe (or are unsure) that Andrew Stack was a “patriot”.

Today’s class is the first of three dealing with the history of American creationism in the 20th Century. This first episode deals with how modern Young Earth Creationism arose out of fundamentalist concerns over modernism. After briefly presenting that history, we look at some of the claims of groups such as the ICR and AiG. A more substantive presentation of YEC claims will be provided by a viewing of the ICR video A Walk Through Earth History (1998) in two weeks along with critical examination of claims in the second half of the semester.

In a startling comeback, the American people have climbed back from last year’s #43 to reach #26 on the Beast’s “Most Loathsome Americans” list. In previous years, Discovery Institute flunkies such as Bruce Chapman and Ben Stein made the list but no ID supporter makes the list this year. I’m sure the DI is devastated.

Having said that, their take on Joe Wilson is on the money:

A former member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, Wilson was one of only seven legislators who fought to keep ol’ Dixie flying in South Carolina. When his former employer, legendary segregationist Strom Thurmond, was revealed to be the father of his black maid’s daughter, Wilson said that she should have kept her trap shut. He’s pals with the Federation for American Immigration Reform, founded by a white nationalist and classified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Every president lies, of course, but we have a feeling there’s only one kind of president this cracker would disrespect enough to shout it at him in the middle of an address to both houses of congress—for the same reason he became a fundraising star for the GOP overnight.

Indeed.

And they get Obama right as well:

Obama campaigned for a “robust public option” and importing cheaper drugs, closing Gitmo, ending no-bid contracts and backroom deals with corporate lobbyists—and he was going to do it on CSPAN. But he’s done none of those things, and his policies on extraordinary rendition, illegal wiretapping and state secrets are pure Bush. Socialist? We should be so lucky.

You get these even before my class does. My slides for tomorrow’s class outlining what science is (and is not). No podcast will be coming … the software is acting up. Ah well.

If you are looking to avoid being invaded both by the British and the Germans, this is probably a good depiction to throw out there. More details here but you can also click for bigger version. Dissuasive it may be, but as anyone who has been to Ireland knows, it isn’t exactly too much of an exaggeration.