Why was a substitute teacher fired for witchcraft? Because:

source

This ought to make every 8th grade science teacher weep.

 Our democracy is in the hands of these ignorant people!  They elect senators and congressmen who are expected to make policy on global warming, healthcare, and nuclear power.  What can people who know nothing about the issues contribute with their vote besides choosing whichever candidate is the most beautiful / the most propagandized by media?  We are in deep shit unless the education system improves.  Economic effects of education are insignificant next to education's role in democracy.

I was reading This

(c.f. "don't taze me bro", where the original offense was only trespassing)

And my friend sent me this great essay on a similar topic.

Proof of what we've suspected all along:

"Internal Pentagon documents repeatedly refer to the military analysts as “message force multipliers” or “surrogates” who could be counted on to deliver administration “themes and messages” to millions of Americans “in the form of their own opinions." -- New York Times

"Bear in mind, ladies and gentlemen, that every time you violate or propose to violate the free speech of someone else you, in potensia, you are are making a rod for your own back...who is going to decide? To whom do you award the right to decide which speech is harmful or who is the harmful speaker or to determine in advance what are the harmful consequences going to be that we know enough in advance to prevent? To whom would you give this job? To whom are you going to award the task of being the censor? Isn't it a famous old story that the man who has to read all of the pornography in order to see what is fit to be passed and what is fit not to be, is the man most likely to become debauched? Did you hear any speaker in opposition to this motion eloquent enough to whom you would delegate the task of deciding for you what you could read? To whom you would give the job of deciding for you -- relieve you of the responsibility of hearing what you might have to hear? Do you know anyone? Hands up! Do you know of anyone to whom you'd give this job? Does anyone have a nominee? You mean there's no one in Canada good enough to decide what I can read? Or hear? I had no idea...but there's a law that says there must be such a person...or there's some subsection of some piddling law that says it. Well, to hell with that law then! It's inviting you to be liars and hypocrites and to deny what you evidently know already..." -- Christopher Hitchens 

The federal government of the united states inserted "in god we trust" on the currency and inserted "under god" to the pledge in the same year, during the red scare, with congress' stated intent being to acknowledge "the creator". Every supreme court session must begin with the prayer "God save the United States and this honorable court". These, taken together, amount to an official declaration that there is a singular god. This is tantamount to an establishment of monotheism. The language excludes polytheists, atheists, agnostics, nonreligious people, and nontheistic religions like Buddhism, which taken together account for almost half of the world's population.

In Elk Grove Unified School District v. Newdow SCOTUS chickened out of considering the merits this case, unanimously overturning the ninth circuit ruling that Newdow had standing to sue on behalf of his child despite lack of custody. However if you listen to the oral arguments, they are far from unanimous. Some seemed like they might be receptive to Newdow's case if the standing issue were resolved.

Newdow is trying again to have "under god" removed from the pledge of allegiance, representing a group of parents who have definite custody of their children. Simultaneously he is targeting the equally unconstitutional "in god we trust" motto on the currency. These cases were heard in December of 2007 at the ninth circuit.

Some have argued that the pledge and the motto have "no religious content" which is a bit like saying that a declaration that we are on land has no geographical content. It is false, and if taken seriously reeks of provincialism and ignorance of alternative beliefs. I would like to see them use the same argument to defend the pledge and the motto if they instead said "under no god" and "in no god we trust", and SCOTUS had to start every session with "No god can intervene in the United States or this honorable court". Those would be declared unconstitutional in a jiffy. The double standard is indefensible.

Most republicans are already under the impression that the United States is a Christian Nation. It's time to give them a history lesson and make the government neutral on matters of religion as the Establishment Clause of the first amendment requires.

Some insurance forms are really stupid.  For example:

 Q:  Provide the complete names and addresses of all physicians that have treated you for this condition from x/x/xxxx to y/y/yyyy.

(one little line provided for answer)

Comment: Why the fuck is the answer blank that small?

Q: Please list all medications which you have taken since 1/1/2007-2/21/2008...

Comment: Applying "since" to an interval is redundant, because "since" would only consider the last day of the interval as its argument!   Which do you mean: during the interval, or anytime after it?

 .Q: ...and the conditions for which they have been prescribed.

Comment:  The form of the question presupposes that every medication requires a prescription.

And what bothers me the most is that they only sent this form to fish for a reason to deny me coverage of a 15-minute operation that cost over $1000, because they don't cover pre-existing conditions.   This is why private health insurance should die and be replaced by nationalized control of hospitals.  Privatizing healthcare is as stupid as privatizing the fire department.   Lots of people do not have time to shop around for an emergency room, or time to travel to a cheaper one.  Hospitals are local monopolies, and must be either wholly public or price-regulated like utility monopolies.

 These insurance companies like to play a game of hot potatoes with each other, trying to get rid of or deny coverage to anyone who really needs it.  Public health systems don't do that.

Call your senators and ask them to introduce a senate resolution officially apologizing for the CIA's 1953 overthrow of Mossadeq.

That's probably the easiest thing they can do right now to prevent terrorism. 

 That operation was wrong and indefensible.

What a useless statement.   What matters is the ratio of the nutrients, not the absolute quantities, because the serving size can always be adjusted.   I frequently see product packaging bragging about low fat content or low caloric content even though fat and refined sugar constitute 100% of the nutritional content of the product.  The fact that something contains little or no nutriment does NOT make it healthy, contrary to the ideas that all this marketing seems to promote.   The marketers can dilute the product with air or water and downsize the labeled serving size to whatever they want to meet whatever caloric claim they want to make.

You should get about 50% of your calories from carbs, 30% from protein, and 20% from fat.   Since fat has 9 calories per gram and protein has 4, that implies that you should get about 3.5 grams of protein for every gram of fat you consume.    The difficult thing about that is to get enough protein without getting too much fat.

Baked chicken breasts only contain about 2.5 grams of protein per gram of fat.  Almost all beef contains more fat than protein.

However, grain, soy, skim milk, and tuna can compensate for that.  All four have protein:fat ratios in excess of 10:1.   Also, salmon is good at around 5:1.   Salmon contains some useful kinds of fats that are not found in significant quantities in land-based meat (such as ALA).   ALA is used in the brain as a component of myelin.

So I would like to see products advertising their protein:fat:carbohydrate ratio and their nutrient content instead of useless statements like "only 100 calories" that are solely determined by the marketer's arbitrarily small choice of a serving size.

Single pane windows are terrible insulators.   So much so, that covering up my windows with clear plastic wrap cut my electric bill from $50 in january to $25 in february.   The plastic wrap blocks convection.   The windows are the weakest link by far -- there's no point in improving wall insulation when you lose 90% of the heat through the windows anyway.   You can approximate the relative amount of energy loss through a surface by measuring its interior surface temperature.  For example, the wall surface is only 1 degree below room temperature, while the window surface is 40-50 degrees below room temperature, which basically proves that the windows are hemorrhaging energy.   The relationship between convective heat transfer and temperature difference is probably between linear and quadratic in this case, because larger temperature differences cause faster flows of air over the surface.  (bouyancy would be linear but drag would be roughly quadratic so I'd expect the speed of the air flow to increase as the square root of delta T)   Black body radiation is neglegible compared to convection at these temperatures.  So in this example the windows must have *at least* 50 times the conductivity of the walls, but the figure is probably more like 300 times.

 100% of my electricity consumption goes to heat the apartment, because all electricity consumed by electrical appliances or the heater is converted into heat, by the law of conservation of energy (ignoring the negligible amount of EM that might be produced by these devices and escape the apartment).    So as long as it's really cold outside, my electric consumption is determined by only two things:

1. The conductivity of the apartment.

2. The temperature difference that I want to maintain between the apartment and the outside. 

Asking which of these is more important is like asking whether the length or the width contributes more to the area of a rectangle.      Improving the wall insulation without doing something about the windows would be like putting a fifth lock on the front door while leaving the back door wide open.

The difference between R and L is mainly the position of your tongue.  If the tip of the tongue touches the roof of the mouth it's an L.  It is impossible to pronounce the "R" sound with the tip of your tongue touching the roof of your mouth.

You have voluntary control over your actions, however your subjective experience of voluntary control over your actions is only an abstraction of the operation of all the atoms of your body according to the laws of physics. There is no need to choose between physicalism and responsibility for actions.

This is about a useless commercial gimmick that ought to die.

 For the purpose of preserving any solid food, freezing is superior to refrigeration.   The food that is frozen at the source, and transported while frozen, and sold while frozen, is actually more fresh than the so-called "fresh" food that is merely refrigerated throughout that production and distribution process.   Using an inferior preservation method does not make it any fresher.   The meat departments in groceries need to be replaced by frozen food aisles.

 In addition, frozen food is much more convenient because you can get a month's supply at once.

 Freezing doesn't destroy any nutrients.  It may cause some cells in the food to rupture from the expansion of the water, but that's a good thing because it may increase the bioavailability of the nutrients in the food.

WESTON, Wis. — An 11-year-old girl died after her parents prayed for healing rather than seek medical help for a treatable form of diabetes, police said Tuesday.

The girl's parents, Dale and Leilani Neumann, attributed the death to "apparently they didn't have enough faith," the police chief said.

They believed the key to healing "was it was better to keep praying. Call more people to help pray," he said.

The mother believes the girl could still be resurrected, the police chief said.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,341574,00.html

definitely *eia