ProckNation

This is what I found on my Jeep this morning when leaving work.  So what, it’s bird crap you say.  But what made me have to share it with the rest of the world is that I think this by far the biggest bird crap I have ever seen on any of my vehicles my whole life.  The second picture is closer up with a quarter to give some perspective.  What is strange is that I was not parked under a tree or any power lines.  So this most likely had to come out of bird in mid-flight.  Must have been a bald eagle or something.

I first heard about this on The Skeptics Guide podcast a week or so ago.  I find this pretty amuzing.  Jenny McCarthy spewing more nonsense showing more evidence on why not to listen to her heart string pulling facts on Autism.

Skepticblog » I think the Botox went in too deep.

Here is a good example of how people will not come to grips of truth.  I once also believed in ghosts and spirits, psychic powers, bigfoot being a trans-dimensional thing, etc.  That was until I started listening to skeptic podcasts and being introduced to the real power and awe of science.  Paraphrasing a quote from Carl Sagan, I stepped out of the demon haunted world into a world of true mysteries created and explained by real science.

The double blinded test or study is one of the best tools in researching a mystery.  It reduces the errors or bias that can influence the outcome of the study.  After reading up on the scientific method and blinded studies I could for once see that the truth could be found on the previously listed paranormal phenomena.  Unlike the dowsers shown in the video below, I was able to admit I was wrong on my of certain things and embrace the truth that was proven with real science.

Here is one of the crazy things I see while working deep nights.

Last night when I went to Whataburger for lunch (around 2:00 am) I couldn’t go through the drive thru because someone passed out in their car.  While inside getting my food the police, fire, and ambulance showed up.  By the time I went back out to my vehicle the police woke the guy up and arrested him for intox I guess.  Here is a picture from my iPhone.  Click it to embiggen.

Now that I have a phone with a decent camera I am going to try to get more pictures of the crazy stuff I see while driving around late at night.

Since my son will be starting school soon I have been looking up some info about getting him started.  I looked at the Texas Department of Health requirements for immunizations of school children and found out that my son doesn’t even need to immunized.  If I wanted I could file for an exclusion based solely on religious beliefs.  This scares me a little to think that my son could be going to school with kids that are unprotected from small pox and such.  It is known that immunization injections do not fully take hold or immunize 100% and there still is a risk of catching something.

I do very strongly believe in freedom of religious beliefs (or non beliefs).  But I also believe that the safety and well being of my family should not be infringed upon by someone else’s beliefs.  I just think that hiding behind religion is when it comes to kids safety is just to easy.  I admit I have no idea how to make this situation better by not allowing un-vaccinated children in public schools or not.  I guess I will just have to chaulk it up on the list of fears you have when raising a kid.

: Texas Administrative Code Immunization requirements.

Here is a cool sound board for Daft Punk’s Harder better faster.  The sound clips are clean and crisp.  Doesn’t sound like it was clipped from the song with music in the background.  Try it out.

THE DAFT PUNk’S CONSOLE by NAJLE.com.

This flash clock located at http://www.poqbum.com/Files/FlashClock/myclockguts7na.swf

I was reading a new press release from Texas Freedom Network about Texas lawmakers introducing bills to change the education code to allow teachers and such to possible introduce Intelligent Design into the classroom.  In the example of how this new bill could disrupt the teaching of fact based science they referenced a website that advocates Earth centrism, the belief that everything in the universe revolves around the Earth.  When I first went to the website it looks an old site that reminded me of the web site I had back in the mid 1990′s hosted in my AOL account.  But then I noticed the links had been updated very recently.

Just take a look around in the site and read some of the absurd “facts” given to prove that everything revolves around the Earth.  Here is one quote that I picked out stating facts that have to be “assumed” and that are not proven in order for the Earth to rotate.

5) The Earth’s atmosphere must be assumed to be just an airy, fixed extension of the alleged rotating Earth. It is assumed and must be assumed that this atmosphere must have the remarkable ability to synchronize speeds of objects in it at all altitudes–birds, clouds, jets, low orbit satellites, alleged geo-synchronous satellites over 22,000 miles out–and to be unaffected by alleged Earth movements of speeds ranging from 1000 MPH to 67,000 MPH to 500,000 MPH to 660,000,000 MPH. This assumption is mandatory once the rotating Earth assumption is made and can not be ignored in the helio model of the eclipse phenomena.

This statement just tweaked me a little when I read it.  I am not the smartest guy around, but even I know some easy to point out flaws in this statement.  They say this has to be true in order for the earth to be rotating in the heliocentric model.  But this statement is not true even for a rotating earth.  Geo-synchronous satellites could care less if the earth was rotating or not.  They are put into orbit above the equator at a certain altitude so that they orbit the earth at the same speed the earth spins.  If the earth were to spin faster then they would be at higher orbits or if the earth spin slower they would be at lower orbits.  If the earth were not to spin at all then there would not be such a thing as geo-synchronous orbits.  Also, the atmosphere is not synchronized with the rotation of the earth, hence the reason we have hurricanes and typhoons and trade winds in general.

I could go on and on all day debunking this site with just commonly observable facts.  Just my quick 10 minute browse of this site makes me wonder (but grateful)  how we were able to get out of the dark ages of burning witches at the stake and talking to burning bushes.  Oh ya, science is the reason why.  Fact based, falsifiable science.

On the early note, if you do live in Texas make sure you keep up with the Texas Freedom Network blog and see how you can help stave off the anti-science antics of the Texas lawmakers.  This much more of a threat to our future generations.

Oops.

Landmark Fail « FAIL Blog: Pictures and Videos of Owned, Pwnd and Fail Moments.

T-ball practice has begun.  Ethan’s first game will be in a few weeks.  As usual I forgot to bring the camera so I had to use my iPhone.  Ethan is on the far left.