The Alliance Defense Fund successfully defended a Wilmington, NC high school student who was suspended for handing out “Day of Truth” material which spoke out against homosexuality and for wearing a religiously themed t-shirt while at school. I don’t agree with the purpose of the material he was distributing, but I do think that the ADF was on the right side of this case – the student, Benjamin Arthurs, should have been allowed to hand out the literature and wear the t-shirt, providing it wasn’t disrupting class.
This is especially true considering the reason that the principal gave for taking action against Arthurs, which allegedly was because “religion is not allowed in school”. Hogwash. Of course, this is probably another example of what I’ve spoken of before, where a school administrator may be skittish on the issue of religious expression simply due to the rantings of anti-ACLU folks who would have us (incorrectly) believe that the ACLU is always hauling people into court for allowing religious expression.
I think its unfortunate that Arthurs felt that his religion compelled him to distribute an anti-homosexual message, but I believe he still has the right to do so.
Republicans often claim that our government is bad at solving problems. So, we probably shouldn’t be surprised when they take it upon themselves to prove it. A recent post at Balloon Juice takes a look down this road, tying it in to the recent problems at Walter Reed:
The lesson here is fairly simple. People who use our present circumstances to argue that government can’t manage its way out of a paper bag are either fooling you or fooling themselves. Of course government breaks down when it’s run by people who don’t care to do the job right. Contrary to the bill of goods that ideological partisans want to sell you, that is far from an argument that government shouldn’t take the lead in fixing problems. Rather it is a rock-solid case for putting people in charge who care about doing the job right and have a decent sense of how to go about it.
If the Goverment is a car setting out to give every one a ride to work, then for 40 years the Republicans have been puncturing the tires, pouring sand in the gas tank, stealing the distributer cap, and, whenever they can get their hands on the wheel, driving it straight into the nearest ditch and then, pointing to the wreckage as the tow truck backs up to it, saying, See, this proves that people were meant to walk.
This fits in with the personal experience of a friend of mine who works for an agency of the Federal government. He’s told me that since the Democrats took over Congress this year, his job has gotten more difficult and intense. Unlike the situation under a Republican-controlled Congress, the Democrat-led committees are actually interested in what’s going on in his agency, and are requiring more reports and information to use in their decision making.
We shouldn’t expect government to be made efficient and effective by people who don’t believe it can be done.
A collaboration between the universities of Sheffield and Michigan has produced Worldmapper, a series of world maps where the countries are sized not according to land mass, but according to other measures, such as alcohol consumption or military spending.
It’s very striking to see at a glance how countries compare to the rest of the world. Some maps are paired up, such as Military Spending (the US is the heavyweight) and War Deaths (where the US is a lightweight), or Toy Imports and Toy Exports.
Several of the maps are in the article linked above, or you can visit the Worldmapper site directly.
Councilwoman Florence Gatten held court last week and suggested that fellow Councilwoman T. Dianne Bellamy-Small should step down. Predictably, she refused.
Perhaps just as predictably, many local black leaders labeled Gatten a racist. As pointless as Gatten’s gesture may have been, it’s absurd to call her a racist. I for one would like to hear under what circumstances the Pulpit Forum would deem it acceptable for a local white leader to criticize a local black leader.
At any rate, Bellamy-Small seems to have garnered some support in the aftermath, but it will be interesting to see if voters in her district will look past the rhetoric and send her stepping down whether she likes it or not.
Last year, I was putting out a new cartoon pretty much every week. With all the other demands on my time, this became something of a grind. Think, stare into space, think more, sketch, ink, Photoshop, twitch a bit, then repeat – non-stop, whether a topic had caught my interest or not.
So I spoke with Allen Johnson at the beginning of the year about reducing the frequency of my cartoons for the News and Record, and fortunately, he was very understanding. We agreed that I’d aim for submitting a cartoon roughly every other week. This has worked out great for me so far, allowing me some breathing room and making it more enjoyable again.
So if anyone was wondering about the increased length of time between cartoons, that’s the reason. I’d like to thank Allen for being willing to work out a new arrangement, and everyone else for your kind words and support over the past year.
Today at the Iconfactory we’ve just released an all-new game for Mac OS X – Frenzic. Brought to you by The Iconfactory and ARTIS Software, Frenzic is a fast-paced puzzle game in the spirit of classics such as Tetris and Bejeweled.
Players can compete against their own personal best scores, or use the Frenzic website to compete against friends, view stats, and refine strategies.
Swing on by the Frenzic website and take a look around. You can see screenshots, current high scores, player stats, and if you’re on a Mac you can download the game to try it out for free. Enjoy!
“I am extremely proud of the many accomplishments of the House during the last eight years while I served as Speaker,” Black wrote, adding later in the letter, “Now it is time for me to move forward with my life and attend to the health and welfare of my family.”
On Thursday in federal court, Black subsequently pleaded guilty to accepting cash in return for legislative favors benefitting chiropractors. And so, for North Carolina the Black era comes to an end (one hopes) as he begins a new chapter of his life, and I lose a reliable bit of fodder for cartoons:
We finally made it to Minj Grille in downtown Greensboro, after having heard great things about it for the past year and a half. Steph and I went for dinner tonight, and it was incredible.
The chicken wings were perfect. Pleasantly spicy and sweet, the full-sized wings were light and crisp and delicious. We split a single order and each got a half salad to go with it, but we enjoyed the wings so much we had to order more (they sell individual wings if you ask).
The restaurant was nice as well – very clean and charming, despite the renovations that seemed to be going on in a corner of the back room. There were families with children there, and it had a friendly atmosphere and waitstaff as well. We even got to meet Niki, the owner, to tell her how much we enjoyed it.
Minj Grille has been pretty well known since they opened, and so I thought it was ridiculous that the News and Record neglected to include Minj in their review of local wing joints two years in a row. But now I have an even greater appreciation of how absurd that omission is. I’m definitely looking forward to eating there again.
One of the principle factors in evolution is the random mutation of genetic code. This often leads to the misconception that evolution as a whole is totally random, but that isn’t the case. Selective pressures, such as natural selection, are a non-random “guiding force” in the process of evolution. Natural selection is what turns those random changes into increasingly useful traits that help a species to survive.
Here are a couple of simulations that illustrate the effects of selective pressures. The first simulation (via Pharyngula) is in the form of a game that runs automatically in your browser. Organisms take the form of strings of code that represent positions on a game board. As the game plays itself out, various positions are evaluated for fitness based on how well they score, and are kept or discarded accordingly – natural selection in action. The successful positions are then recombined with mutations based on real-world genetic mutations, and this new generation is then tested. As the game continues, you can see the population becoming more “fit” as the scores increase.
This particular simulation also provides an interesting rebuttal to the ID notion of Irredcuible Complexity – the idea that certain biological structures could not have evolved because the removal of any one part renders the structure useless. As the “organisms” in the game evolve and are tested for fitness, they are also tested for Irreducible Complexity. Any board position that has five or more components and is rendered “unfit” by removing one component is flagged as Irreducibly Complex – undercutting the claim that evolutionary processes can’t produce such structures.
I found the second simulation while surfing through links and comments from the original Pharyngula post. This one is a youtube video that uses a couple of clever demonstrations to show the power of reproduction under selective pressure:
The new independent movie “Hounddog” has some North Carolina legislators rethinking the way we handle incentives for films produced in North Carolina:
State Sen. Phil Berger of Rockingham County plans to introduce a bill to tighten the state’s film incentives law because of the movie, which could be in line for incentives up to 15 percent of the estimated $4 million in production costs …
Berger said his proposal also would require projects seeking incentives to apply before shooting in the state and to submit scripts to state officials as part of that review.
I find it hard to believe that it will be good for our film industry to put script approval into the hands of risk-averse politicians whose primary concerns are getting reelected.
Today at the Iconfactory we’ve just released an all-new game for Mac OS X – 
