Early Morning

Workout notes: my long walks sometimes screw up my sleep patterns; hence I am up super early.

Science and public science

This video attacks the producer of a creationist film. Note the part that shows that science has greatly improved people’s lives (longevity, sanitation, etc.)

Colliding galaxies 3-quarks daily.

Social Soldier sues because of discrimination against atheists in the military.

When Specialist Jeremy Hall held a meeting last July for atheists and freethinkers at Camp Speicher in Iraq, he was excited, he said, to see an officer attending.[...]

Note: it has been my experience that the military does NOT encourage freethinking, though the people that I served with were not unusually religious.

But minutes into the talk, the officer, Maj. Freddy J. Welborn, began to berate Specialist Hall and another soldier about atheism, Specialist Hall wrote in a sworn statement. “People like you are not holding up the Constitution and are going against what the founding fathers, who were Christians, wanted for America!” Major Welborn said, according to the statement.

Major Welborn told the soldiers he might bar them from re-enlistment and bring charges against them, according to the statement.

Last month, Specialist Hall and the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, an advocacy group, filed suit in federal court in Kansas, alleging that Specialist Hall’s right to be free from state endorsement of religion under the First Amendment had been violated and that he had faced retaliation for his views. In November, he was sent home early from Iraq because of threats from fellow soldiers.

One one hand, I am glad that he was sent home, but yes, someone’s religious choice shouldn’t be held against them, even if they are crazy enough to want to stay in Iraq.

Elections Who is out of touch? John “more of the same” McCain says that Obama is. Yet he claims that we are better off after having had Bush for 8 years: (about 5:30 into this 10 minute video)

Speaking of McCain: note that many Republicans voted in the Pennsylvania primary, and:

The Republicans had a primary in Pennsylvania on Tuesday. And nobody noticed. But a lot of people came. In fact 807,000 registered Republicans went to the polls and of these, 215,000 came to vote against John McCain. They voted for Ron Paul and Mike Huckabee. All these people went to the trouble of voting in an election that didn’t matter at all. Maybe they were trying to send a message to the Republican Party. The Paul voters could easily defect to the likely Libertarian Party candidate, Bob Barr, and the Huckabee voters might decide to skip voting and go to church on election day and pray that their man is the nominee in 2012. Frank Rich has a column about McCain’s Pennsylvania problem today.

From the Rich column in the New York Times:

Those antiwar Paul voters are all potential defectors to the Democrats in November. Mr. Huckabee’s religious conservatives, who rejected Mr. McCain throughout the primary season, might also bolt or stay home. Given that the Democratic ticket beat Bush-Cheney in Pennsylvania by 205,000 votes in 2000 and 144,000 votes in 2004, these are 220,000 voters the G.O.P. can ill-afford to lose. Especially since there are now a million more registered Democrats than Republicans in Pennsylvania. (These figures don’t even include independents, who couldn’t vote in either primary on Tuesday and have been migrating toward the Democrats since 2006.)

For such a bitterly divided party, the Democrats hardly show signs of clinical depression. The last debate, however dumb, had the most viewers of any so far. The rise in turnout and new voters is all on the Democratic side. Even before its deathbed transfusion of new donations, the Clinton campaign trounced the McCain campaign in fund-raising by 2.5 to 1. (The Obama-McCain ratio is 3 to 1.)

On Tuesday, a Democrat won the first round of a special Congressional election in Mississippi, even though the national G.O.P. outspent the Democrats by more than double and President Bush carried this previously safe Republican district by 25 percentage points in 2004. A Gallup poll last week found Mr. Bush’s national disapproval rating the worst (69 percent) for any president in Gallup’s entire 70-year history. For all his (and Mr. McCain’s) persistent sightings of “victory” in Iraq, the percentage of Americans calling the war a mistake (63) also set a new record.

Obama’s Primary Battle:

Hat tip: Friendly Atheist.

Local Notes I got our new property tax bill: they jacked up our taxes by $500.00 over last year. Yes, a FIVE HUNDRED DOLLAR tax increase.

Why? They jacked up our house assessment by almost 20,000 dollars from last year; so much for house values declining. Here is what is going on:
1. The city badgered us into doing repairs on our garage. We probably should have had it torn down instead.
2. The local university has expanded a bit and, though they deny this in public, they may well decide to eat our property as well.

So, this summer we’ll have our house professionally appraised to see if the city is out of line. If they aren’t, we’ll either eat the taxes or move (to a neighboring village that is almost across the street). If they are out of line, we’ll contest.

The cynic in me thinks that they are just out to raise revenue while claiming that they are not raising taxes, but the cynic in me has been wrong before.