I saw an alert from the National Center for Science Education that another bill has been introduced in the Missouri legislature to damage science education by attacking Evolution.
Here is the response I emailed to my Representative and posted on the Facebook wall of the sponsor, Rick Brattin (R-District 124).
In a couple of weeks, Jenny and I will have been married for ten years. It’s been a good decade, full of children, a new house, mostly-full employment, travel, and lots of love.
To celebrate the occasion, we took a week-long trip to Europe, our first return to the Continent since we lived there in 2005, and our first extended trip alone since the kids were born (thanks for watching the boys, Grandma and Grandpa!).
Map of our route on our 10th Anniversary Trip
Watching Rick Perry’s incoherent response to a question about Global Warming in this evening’s Republican Presidential debate, I was struck once again by the confusion often shown in what the debate is about.
Essentially, he said that he doubts the consensus conclusions of scientific inquiry on Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) because he doesn’t like the idea of making changes to the American economy that he sees as damaging. This isn’t an uncommon stance.
Perhaps he’s right that a Carbon Tax or Cap and Trade would be too damaging to the economy to be worth it; I don’t know. However, he that’s a different issue than the scientific questions of whether the atmosphere is warming and what role humanity plays.
He’s objecting to a scientific conclusion because he disagrees with a potential resulting political reaction.
It’s a non sequitur.
As part of my employer’s Software Engineering Tech Trends series (previously known as the Java News Brief), I have written an article on Design by Contract in Java with Google. In the article, I discuss a new library from Google that enables Design by Contract semantics in Java.
Previously, I have written articles in the series on an Intro to JGoodies Forms, Units and Measures with JScience, an Intro to JGoodies Validation, Writing Music in Java: Two Approaches, A Better Date and Time API: Joda Time, Highlights of Apache Commons Lang, Part 1, Highlights of Apache Commons Lang, Part 2, and Project Coin: Small Changes in JDK 7.
Check it out!
A: Why do we have to give them any money?
B: Because they’ll break our legs if we don’t.
A: Why? That’s never been true before.
B: You’re right, but I called them and refused the option of neither paying money nor having our legs broken.
A: What?? That’s ridiculous. You didn’t do that when you were in charge.
B: Too bad.
A: Fine, if you insist that we have to give them money, let’s split the cost 50-50.
B: No, you pay all of it.
A: But the only reason we have to pay at all is because you chose to make this difficult. But to save my legs, I’ll pay 60%.
B: No, you pay all of it.
A: Let’s be reasonable. How about 80%?
B: No, you pay all of it.
A: They’re coming with baseball bats right now! OK, fine, I’ll pay 100%!
B: That’s not enough anymore. Now, you have to pay all of the bribe and give me an additional $100, or they’re going to break both of our legs.
A: You’re crazy!
B: Why aren’t you willing to compromise?
So goes the state of American political debate today.
I’ve been watching and following the revolution in Egypt with rapt attention for the past couple weeks. I followed the battle of Tahrir Square with dread in my stomach and watched yesterday in awe as the people of Egypt celebrated their overthrow of Mubarak.
It’s been amazing.
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We’ve been lucky in some of the baseball games we’ve been to:
After the ceremony for Stan, I said to Douglas “You’ve been really lucky – you’ve gotten to see Hank Aaron, Reggie Jackson, Yogi Berra, and Stan Musial, and you don’t even know who they are.”
And his response?
“And Fredbird!!”
Gee. How could I have forgotten Fredbird?
We’re starting Douglas on an allowance. Jenny looked at a lot of advice online before we decided what to do, and I think we’re happy with this approach.
We’re hoping that he’ll learn about saving, the value of delayed gratification, and charity from this, but maybe that’s too much to expect of a four-year-old.
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After we saw Toy Story 3, Douglas was so excited about it that he decided he was Buzz Lightyear. I wasn’t too surprised; such association seems normal, and I assumed it would pass.
It’s now been months, and not only is he still Buzz, but he thinks that Matthew is Woody, Jenny is Jessie, and I’m Rex. I thought it was manageable, but now he has Matthew getting mad if we refer to him as “Matthew”.
The four-year-old has convinced the nearly-two-year-old to call himself a cartoon character.
Great.
