Life behind the customer service counter at Wal-Mart

Behind the Counter is a blog of entertaining horror stories from an experienced customer service rep at Wal-Mart. If you've enjoyed similar IT or ISP tech support stories of bad customers, you'll enjoy this blog as well.

AiG Museum asks for special police powers

The Answers in Genesis Museum is asking the governor of Kentucky to grant it special police powers so that "their 10- to 20-person security team can gain access to better training and equipment to ensure they can handle the crowds and traffic anticipated when the facility
opens May 28" according to the Cincinatti Post.

"The goal is not to become an armed encampment or anything like that," says AiG Museum Security Director Jeffrey Hawkins.

James Cameron backing documentary that claims remains of Jesus found

On Time magazine's Middle East blog, it's reported that James Cameron is producing a documentary directed by Simcha Jacobovici which "make[s] the start[l]ing claim that Jesus wasn't resurrected --the cornerstone of Christian faith-- and that his burial cave was discovered near Jerusalem. And, get this, Jesus sired a son with Mary Magdelene."

The blog claims that 27 years ago, while a new industrial park was being built in Jerusalem, a 2,000-year-old cave with ten caskets was discovered, and the names on the ten tombs included "Jesua, son of Joseph, Mary, Mary, Mathew, Jofa and Judah, son of Jesua" and that "film-makers Cameron and Jacobovici claim to have amassed evidence through DNA tests, archeological evidence and Biblical studies, that the 10 coffins belong to Jesus and his family."

It's not clear how DNA evidence could show anything about remains belonging to Jesus (as opposed to relationship between the individual remains), but the comments on the Time blog entry make it clear that we are in for some entertainment in the form of hysterical reactions to the documentary.

UPDATE (February 25, 2007): There's a bit more information at YNetNews.

UPDATE (February 27, 2007): And better coverage at CNN, where experts point out these claims were previously made back in 1996.

UPDATE (March 6, 2007): The Jacobovici/Cameron documentary claims that the James ossuary with the faked "brother of Jesus" inscription was the missing 10th ossuary from the site they claim to be the Jesus tomb. This, however, is definitely not the case, since the person who catalogued the ossuaries at the time of the original find says that the 10th ossuary was a plain, blank ossuary with no inscription at all.

Also, P.Z. Myers watched the documentary so that you don't have to...

UPDATE (April 12, 2007): The Jerusalem Post reports that scholars in the documentary are backing away from their statements made therein...

Recording proves Paszkiewicz denied making comments

When Matt LaClair spoke before the Kearny board of education earlier this week, he gave the board a CD recording of his initial meeting with David Paszkiewicz and Kearny High School principal Al Somma, in which Paszkiewicz denied making the statements that LaClair attributed to him. LaClair had also recorded those, and proved to Somma that Paszkiewicz had lied when he denied making the statements.

This recording now proves to everyone other than LaClair, Somma, and Paszkiewicz that Paszkiewicz actually made the denials.

The recording of the meeting is available via the website of The Observer editor Kevin Canessa.

Canessa also has photos of the board meeting, where Paszkiewicz supporters in the audience held up signs to prevent camera crews from recording the statement made by Paul LaClair, Matthew's father.

Return of the Phoenix Lights

The Phoenix Lights have returned, appearing on February 6 and 22. Oddly enough, both times happened to coincide with Air Force training with flares.

UPDATE (February 25, 2007):
The Arizona Republic continues to present the Phoenix lights as something mysterious, with extraterrestrial visitors being given equal weight to the flare explanation. Commenters on this news story are touting "image expert" Jim Dilettoso in an attempt to discount flares.

The Phoenix New Times, by contrast, has been more skeptical, and exposed Dilettoso's lack of qualifications.

2006 AAAS Award for Scientific Freedom and Responsibility

Congratulations to Eugenie Scott, executive director of the National Center for Science Education, and to eight teachers from Dover, Pennsylvania who refused to read the anti-evolution disclaimer mandated by the Dover Area School Board that was the subject of last year's Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School Board trial: Brian Bahn, Vickie Davis, Robert Eshbach, Bertha Spahr, Robert Linker, Jennifer Miller, Leslie Prall, and David Taylor.

They are the 2006 recipients of the Scientific Freedom and Responsibility Award from the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Conservapedia

The blogosphere has been making fun of absurdities at Conservapedia, Andrew Schlafly's attempt to create a conservative-oriented version of Wikipedia. Orac points out that Conservapeia promotes the anti-vaccination Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (Schlafly is their legal counsel). Mark Chu-Carroll points out that even math has a liberal bias, according to Conservapedia. P.Z. Myers looks at some of Conservapedia's coverage of evolution.

Perhaps most entertaining is Jon Swift's coverage of Conservapedia, which contains links to many of the Science Bloggers' commentaries.

Matthew LaClair on Anderson Cooper tonight

Matthew LaClair will appear tonight on Anderson Cooper's show on CNN, 10 p.m. EST.

UPDATE: Unfortunately, Matthew was bumped from the show.

The Jesselyn Radack Case

Ed Brayton points out Jesselyn Radack's account of the Bush administration's dishonest and sleazy retaliation against her whistleblowing about the Justice Department's deception in the so-called "American Taliban" case of John Walker Lindh. Radack was an ethics advisor for the Department of Justice who was called about whether Lindh could be interrogated without an attorney present. She pointed out that Lindh's father had already retained counsel, and that counsel needed to be present. The FBI interrogated him without counsel anyway, so she advised that that interview would need to be sealed and used only for national security purposes, not for criminal prosecution. She was ignored, Attorney General John Ashcroft lied about Lindh's rights being respected, and the DOJ tried to destroy evidence of Radack's correspondence. She recovered her emails and submitted them in a memo with her resignation. As the DOJ continued to lie, Radack went public.

The DOJ responded by applying pressure on Radack's law firm to fire her; they put her on an unpaid leave which turned into a constructive discharge, which the DOJ assisted her law firm in contesting. The government placed her under a bogus criminal investigation (later dropped with no charges), brought multiple state bar complaints against her (one of which she's still fighting), and put her on the no-fly list (she's still on it). She finally managed to find a law firm willing to hire her, after three years.

Her story is a horrifying tale of an out-of-control government. Now that the Democratic Party runs Congress, will they take some action with respect to this case?

TSA continues to demonstrate incompetence

A web page on the TSA's website for travelers "who were told you are on a Federal Government Watch List" displays evidence of being a phishing site--it's probably not, it's just so badly done that it looks like a hacked web site that's submitting its details to an unrelated third party.

TSA responded that "We are aware there was an issue and replaced the site. The issue has been fully addressed. We take IT responsibilities seriously. There never a vulnerability; just a small glitch."

The full story may be found at Wired Blogs, which points out fifteen features that make the TSA form submission site look dangerous.

Also check out this comment at Christopher Soghoian's blog:

This may be surprising to hear: I am an employee at a major airline and I just recieved an e-mail that said we now have access to the TSA no-fly list, selectee list, and cleared list. I just accessed it and found it to contain thousands of names, DOB, SSN#s, drivers licesense #'s, military ID #'s, addresses, and even home phone #'s. The TSA just made this list and all of this information readily available to thousands of employees at my airline (and probably others). I think that previously this list was only available to ticket agents, but now it is available to every employee.
I find it quite disturbing that any airline employee has access to this information, and that many of the ppl on the cleared list have to give up there SSN# and other information.

Nice.

(Hat tip to Bruce Schneier's blog.)