Freethoughtblogs.com has now been announced. PZ Myers’ “Pharyngula” and Ed Brayton’s “Dispatches from the Culture Wars” together with three other blogs start a new network.

I have always liked dolphins but I can't pinpoint why - maybe it was "Flipper" when I was a kid, it can't be "Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home" because a whale was saving the Earth in that one.  

 It could certainly be Manfred Mann's Earth Band.  If you aren't familiar with Manfred Mann, he was a keyboard player from South Africa who made it big in England in the 1960s and then quit to simultaneously be more cynical than the pop hit factory his band had become and more pure at the same time; by doing jingles to pay the bills while he made the music he wanted on the side.

Large amounts of research and money have been invested in the development of transgenic, or GM (genetically modified) crops. These crops are genetically engineered to withstand drought, excessive rain or other weather conditions, or to improve their yield or increase their rate of development, or to express certain toxins that would limit the amount of insects feeding on them.

Before embarking on this discussion it is important to try and resolve some language and definition issues that will likely occur in this post.

One of the main difficulties in addressing this problem stems from the limitations of language.  Language exists for humans, so by default, many of our words convey a meaning that is primarily interpreted within a human context.  As a result, when it comes to describing other living things we often find ourselves faced with terms that carry a significance that is misplaced when addressing other organisms.  I want to be clear that there is nothing in the following discussion that is intended to be anthropomorphic.

Thomas Edison did a lot right but there is one thing he got very, very wrong.

Namely, a talking doll that was sure to be an inspiration for generations of future horror movie fans.   It was a bold idea, of course, Edison had a lot of those, but sometimes even a marketing juggernaut can't make something work for the public given technological limitations - we are also talking to you, 3-D movie makers.   

Is This A Fishing Expedition ?

In legal circles, a 'fishing expedition' is an illegal attempt to discover unspecified information which may, perhaps, be prejudicial to one party in a legal case.  It is illegal because just about everybody has things in their possession which might be evidence of breach of some law or other - however trivial, archaic or obscure.

Currently in the news¹ is the fact that wildlife biologist Charles Monnett is under investigation by the office of the inspector general at the US department of the interior.  News stories have reported that the investigation concerns a study² of polar bear deaths.

The Sacramento Bee now reports as follows:

One fundamental myth of gifted education is "you can't put all the smart kids together, because the less-smart need the smarties around to challenge the others".  You can reword that as "it's okay to drag down the smarter kids for the sake of the group", but let's tackle the basic premise first.  Does the presence of smarter kids help the middle of the Bell Curve do better?

The most prestigious journal in the field of microscopy published an article by us this year and the work also already spawned a book chapter. Apart from the work not being critical of anything and having many cute pictures, the reason for it making it into a respectable journal may be partially due to it actually being interesting:

I oppose any and all forms of censorship. At least so I thought.

   

(www.web-censorship.org)

   

Now, I’m not so sure anymore. Don’t get me wrong, I still honestly think I do, but I am beginning to question whether my actions corroborate this, or, in fact, disprove my words and thoughts.

But...but...you have to love journalists, according to journalists.  Only we hold government accountable and gotcha videos and bloggers rehashing what we come up with or they see in press releases can't be the same thing, they insist.

Well, it can, actually.  Journalists stopped being trusted guides long ago and the public caught on.   Journalists can complain about how much more vitriolic the discourse has gotten, but that's really only because the Internet has made it possible for both sides to get coverage.