Lippard-related crime update

Tredell County deputies have confiscated 175 marijuana plants from a barn on Lippard Farm Road in Statesville, NC. No arrests have been made in that case, but "charges are pending."

Come on, North Carolina. If you can grow tobacco, why not marijuana?

Ed Brayton on David Kupelian's latest foolishness

Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars has a nice takedown of David Kupelian's article at the WorldNutDaily bemoaning how atheists are being allowed to publish books in these Christian United States. Ed shows that Kupelian has no idea what he's talking about when he writes about Christianity in American history.

Obama the Lightworker

Mark Morford at the San Francisco Chronicle wrote, back on June 6:

Barack Obama isn't really one of us. Not in the normal way, anyway.
...
Many spiritually advanced people I know (not coweringly religious, mind you, but deeply spiritual) identify Obama as a Lightworker, that rare kind of attuned being who has the ability to lead us not merely to new foreign policies or health care plans or whatnot, but who can actually help usher in a new way of being on the planet, of relating and connecting and engaging with this bizarre earthly experiment. These kinds of people actually help us evolve. They are philosophers and peacemakers of a very high order, and they speak not just to reason or emotion, but to the soul.

Sorry, but this is crazy talk--and crazy talk of the sort that the religious right will grab a hold of, translate "Lightworker" into "Light bearer" into "Lucifer," and decide that Obama's the Antichrist.

Morford writes that he doesn't literally believe this, and warns up front that:

Warning: If you are a rigid pragmatist/literalist, itchingly evangelical, a scowler, a doubter, a burned-out former '60s radical with no hope left, or are otherwise unable or unwilling to parse alternative New Age speak, click away right now, because you ain't gonna like this one little bit.

But even on a non-literal level, I don't like it. The job of the president is to lead the executive branch of the government, not to be national daddy, mommy, or Messiah. Obama clearly has a lot of charisma and speaks very well, which is something that can be used positively or negatively--and more often than not it's the latter.

Network World covers biscuit cult death threat and firing

Network World has a good summary of the story of the firing of Melanie Kroll's firing by 1-800-Flowers. Kroll was fired after her husband Chuck sent a death threat to P.Z. Myers using her corporate email account, saying that if he didn't quit his job by the first of the month, he would "get [his] brains beat in." Chuck Kroll, presumably a conservative Catholic, issued this threat because Myers blogged in support of University of Central Florida student Webster Cook, who took a consecrated host from a Catholic church in Orlando, Florida. Cook was accused of a hate crime equivalent to kidnapping by Bill Donohue of the Catholic League. After receiving threats, Cook returned the magic cracker. Cult members believe the wafer has been literally transformed into the body of Jesus, while also retaining the properties of a cracker. This is not to be confused with Scientology, which believes that we are infested with the bodies of murdered space aliens, though both views seem to be on a par with respect to their reasonableness and quality of supporting evidence.

UPDATE (July 16, 2008): Melanie Kroll has been active in the comments at Greg Laden's blog, where she claims she was not connected to her company VPN when the email was sent. This is patently false, since otherwise her computer would not have been able to send the email through the company mail server from an RFC 1918 private IP address, which it did. It seems that she, like her husband, is incapable of taking responsibility for her own errors. She also writes this, by way of explanation for husband's behavior:

My husband went on to the drudge report site that he reads and clicked on a link and came across that man pz's notice and responded as he always does when he is upset. Was his text extreme yes it was, would he follow through, never.

So he always sends email to the authors of people who write things that make him upset, threatening to beat their brains in if they don't quit their jobs by the end of the month? That sounds like a very serious personal problem.

Analysts say 150 U.S. banks will fail in next 18 months

The New York Times says that some banking analysts (two of which are mentioned by name) predict that "as many as 150 out of the 7,500 banks nationwide could fail over the next 12 to 18 months." If that were to happen, that would likely exhaust the Deposit Insurance Fund of the FDIC, which will be spending $4 to $8 billion to cover the insured deposits of failed IndyMac bank. The Deposit Insurance Fund had about $52.4 billion at the end of 2007.

The worst case scenarios I've seen frequently discussed are hyperinflation and a Greater Depression. The way to survive the former would be to keep funds in more-stable foreign currencies and gold; for the latter it would be better to stay in cash and bonds (so long as none of the bonds default). A diversified set of investments is still your best bet, in my opinion.

UPDATE (September 12, 2008): The Economist (August 30, 2008) reports that the FDIC has 117 banks on its watch list, compared to 90 at the end of March, and reports that the drawdown on the Deposit Insurance Fund for IndyMac is sufficient to trigger a required funds "restoration" plan within the next 90 days.

Luskin's latest howler

Casey Luskin of the Discovery Institute, writing at the Evolution News & Views blog (which accurately describes itself with its motto that begins "The misreporting of the evolution issue is one key reason for this site"), has outdone himself again.

Regarding a paper by Neil Shubin about Tiktaalik, Luskin complains that Shubin makes a comparison to the wrist bones of tetrapods, but never identifies any by name:

When discussing Tiktaalik's "wrist," Shubin says he "invites direct comparisons" between Tiktaalik's fin and a true tetrapod limb. Surely this paper must have a diagram comparing the "wrist"-bones of Tiktaalik to a true tetrapod wrist, showing which bones correspond. So again I searched the paper. And again he provides no such diagram comparing the two. So we are left to decipher his jargon-filled written comparison in the following sentence by sentence analysis:

1. Shubin et al.: "The intermedium and ulnare of Tiktaalik have homologues to eponymous wrist bones of tetrapods with which they share similar positions and articular relations." (Note: I have labeled the intermedium and ulnare of Tiktaalik in the diagram below.)

Translation: OK, then exactly which "wrist bones of tetrapods" are Tiktaalik's bones homologous to? Shubin doesn't say. This is a technical scientific paper, so a few corresponding "wrist bone"-names from tetrapods would seem appropriate. But Shubin never gives any.

As P.Z. Myers points out, Luskin apparently doesn't realize what the word "eponymous" means. The wrist bones that the intermedium and ulnare bones of Tiktaalik are homologous to in tetrapods? The bones that are "eponymous," that have been given the same names: the intermedium and the ulnare.

Carl Zimmer points out the same Luskin faux pas.

Cops and DUI

If you're the wife of a criminal defense attorney, you can get arrested for DUI even if you've not had a single drink. (This one was right here in Mesa, Arizona.)

If you're a cop, the expectation is that you won't get arrested for DUI even if you crash your car because you're so drunk you can't remember what year it is. Because if a cop arrests a cop for DUI, things get ugly.

Guillermo Gonzalez' new school

Guillermo Gonzalez, one of the proclaimed victims of oppression and infringement of his academic freedom in the film "Expelled," has taken a job at Grove City College, a Christian liberal arts college in Pennsylvania. The school has been under censure by the American Association of University Professors since 1963 for its failure to respect academic freedom. A report by the AAUP Investigative Committee concluded "the absence of due process [in the dismissal of professors at Grove City] raises...doubts regarding the academic security of any persons who may hold appointment at Grove City College under existing administrative practice. These doubts are of an order of magnitude which obliges us to report them to the academic profession at large."

More at Dispatches from the Culture Wars.

Bowl-A-Rama!!

There’s a saying in the non-profit world that people don’t donate to organizations, they donate to the individuals that represent them. Let me introduce you to two wonderful representatives of RESCUE:

Otto was saved from the euthanasia list in December 2001.

Fred was saved in August 2002.

Otto and Fred were both found on the streets of Phoenix and wound up on the kill list. They would not be with us if not for RESCUE. Otto and Fred are just two examples of the over 9,000 lives that RESCUE has saved thanks to donations. All of RESCUE’s cats and dogs are taken directly from the kill list at Maricopa County Animal Care and Control. If you have not donated to our largest fundraiser of the year – Bowl-A-Rama, PLEASE do so today! No donation is too large or too small.

If you are outside of Arizona and can spare $5, please make a donation, there is an informal competition to see who can get donations from the farthest place. Be sure to put Jim or Kat Lippard as the referrer.

Please help us help them!

Bush July 4 speech censors Jefferson

President George W. Bush gave a speech at Monticello on July 4 that said, quoting Jefferson:

On the 50th anniversary of Americas independence, Thomas Jefferson passed away. But before leaving this world, he explained that the principles of the Declaration of Independence were universal. In one of the final letters of his life, he wrote, May it be to the world, what I believe it will be to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all the Signal of arousing men to burst the chains, and to assume the blessings and security of self-government.

Here's what Jefferson actually wrote:

May it be to the world, what I believe it will be, (to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all,) the signal of arousing men to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings and security of self-government.

As Wonkette aptly notes, "Yeah dude, looks like you forgot the good part." (Though Wonkette incorrectly attributes the Constitution to Jefferson along with the Declaration of Independence.)

(Thanks to Scott Peterson on the SKEPTIC list.)

UPDATE (July 16, 2008): Roger Kimball has responded to this issue, and Ed Brayton points out what he's gotten right and what he's gotten wrong about Jefferson's views on religion. (Contrary to Dawkins and Hitchens, Jefferson was no atheist, nor even a deist. He referred to himself as a Unitarian, and Brayton calls him a "theistic rationalist.")