{idate}29aug07

{cdate}29aug07

{#startdate}26aug07

{tags}stripies,

{#indextags}Tags,Indexes,Subindexes,

{#indexof}Make,This,An,Index,

{thumb}GlassBeads/2007orange_green5142crop.jpg

{summary}Stripies of check glass made in 1st quarter 2007, more or
less.  Originally posted 26aug07

{crop}GlassBeads/2007orange_green5142crop.jpg

{crop_title}green stripies, some with orange

{#crop_target}

{iprc}Today's post is kinda boring, as it's mostly a setup for a point
I want to make in a future post.  But that's ok, cuz I can more than
make up for it with assorting ramblin' & rantin'...

{ip}Some kook is suing PZ Myers and Seed Magazine for 15 million
dollars, cuz he didn't that PZ, after reading about his toroidal
theory of evolution, called him a crackpot.

{ip}Firstly, to be perfectly fair here, this guy is not a
fundamentalist christian anti-evolution type; but he's a nut, no doubt
about it.  (He's also an art collector who assoicated with Andy
Warhol, not exactly a ringing endorsement for my field of endeavor.)
But, you know, you really have to wonder what's going with these
jokers, because unfavorable book reviews are a fact of life.  I mean,
the cruel and merciless book reviewer who tears your precious little
tome (or film, or play---whatever) to shreds is a common stereotype.

{ip}PZ can be pretty merciless, but he also cites facts and details to
back up his assertions, and in this guy's case, made an effort to say
something nice about the parts of the book he felt were nicely done
(the art/illustrations, as it happens).  But the guy's ideas are
totally out of the scientific mainstream, and the available evidence
doesn't support them.  At all.

{ip}But the part that galls me, besides the fact bad book reviews are
a fact of life, not an excuse for multi-million dollar lawsuits, is
that PZ is prominent---that is, his review matters---because he's a
science blogger, something he does out of the desire to educate, out
of the goodness of his heart.  I yammer on about beads for much the
same reason (and also because I do like blather on), so it's kind of
daunting to see him, and Seed Magazine, which provides PZ with the
bandwidth to do so, slapped with a lawsuit for basically providing a
public service.

{ip}Especially when regular channels of science education are being
gutted.  I live in a relatively liberal area in the midwest (no, not
an oxymoron) but our school board has been infiltrated, and my kids'
science class is some sort of glopped together travesty with social
sciences that fails utterly to mention the dreaded word, evolution.
By middle school, kids should have a basic idea of not only that, but
also the Big Bang, and the scientific method.  If mine do, it's not
because they learned it in school.

{ip}This burns me.  My kids are growing up in a world in which the
Iraq wars are the opening shots of a long struggle to nail down the
shrinking petroleum resources by people who, so far, have not done
much about alternatives.  (It frustrates me terribly that we could've
been going for energy efficient cars, solar power, and the like since
the 70s, but no.  All that was pretty thrown away.  I also remember
when everyone was talking about the asian tiger, how the Far East's
economic might was going to blow us away, before their markets
collapsed, and we more or less forgotten about them too.  Yet China is
indeed growing by leaps and bounds [that is, they want the oil too].
Yet these twin realities, which need to be addressed are more or less
being ignored for screeching over middle eastern ``terrorists''.)

{ip}Energy makes the world go round, as anyone who's ever watched the
sun come up in the morning and rejoiced at the rising temperatures it
brings knows.  Yet our future demands we navigate between shrinking
energy sources and increasing costs (global climate change, and all
the problems it brings in its wake.)  These are serious difficulties,
and 


{ip}

{#b}

{h1}Check Green Stripies

{h2}now, with orange!

{public}

{icap}../GlassBeads/2007orange_green5142.jpg

{cap}Since these beads were photographed at the end of march, they
were probably made during winter of 07.  Check soda lime, hollow.

{p}file created 26aug07