Joe's Random Ramblings

I just came across this blog entry about how a university professor in Vermont answered a request by the creationists who run the "Discovery Institute" to discuss creationism.
It is obvious that there is nothing to discuss, since creationism, or "Intelligent Design," as they nowadays try to re-label it to confuse people, is religious BS and has absolutely nothing to do with science.
The answer the professor gave is just brilliant.
Some excerpts:

Instead of spending time on public debates, why aren't members of your institute publishing their ideas in prominent peer-reviewed journals such as Science, Nature, or the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences? If you want to be taken seriously by scientists and scholars, this is where you need to publish. Academic publishing is an intellectual free market, where ideas that have credible empirical support are carefully and thoroughly explored. Nothing could possibly be more exciting and electrifying to biology than scientific disproof of evolutionary theory or scientific proof of the existence of a god. That would be Nobel Prize winning work, and it would be eagerly published by any of the prominent mainstream journals.

"Conspiracy" is the predictable response by Ben Stein and the frustrated creationists. But conspiracy theories are a joke, because science places a high premium on intellectual honesty and on new empirical studies that overturn previously established principles. Creationism doesn't live up to these standards, so its proponents are relegated to the sidelines, publishing in books, blogs, websites, and obscure journals that don't maintain scientific standards.

And

So, I hope you understand why I am declining your offer. I will wait patiently to read about the work of creationists in the pages of Nature and Science. But until it appears there, it isn't science and doesn't merit an invitation.

Just as an aside, I also like the satirical "Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster", which was created in response to the Kansas State Board of Education considering to introduce the teaching of creationism in the schools in Kansas.
It is always funny to read the hate mail there, from people who obviously lack all intelligence (if that's what "Intelligent Design" means, the deity they refer to surely failed )

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Thomas Friedman has an excellent Op-Ed piece in the New York Times, about the idiotic anti-H1 provisions in the stimulus bill.
When will these stupid stupid politicians learn that we need more immigrants, not less?
The whole computer industry, the whole Internet industry, etc. etc. would not exist if it weren't for immigrants.
Protectionism doesn't work, has never worked, and will never work.
The key to our economic recovery is to get more educated immigrants into this country. This stupid anti-H1 provision will only prolong the recession. Congress needs to get rid of it now!

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The SCO Group, a bankrupt Unix vendor which rose to infamy by claiming that Linux infringes on their Intellectual Property (which a court has decided belongs to Linux-vendor Novell in the first place...) became the laughing stock of the computer world earlier this week when they published their latest quarterly newsletter on their website.
The content is so unbelievable that I nearly fell off my chair. I still have laugh attacks every time I see the image
After a day and a half of them being ridiculed for this, they finally removed the newsletter from their website. But of course, the Internet never forgets. Everybody has screenshots
So, without further ado, here it is, SCO's middle finger to their remaining customers:

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