Equine Fun

This is one of the most darling videos I've seen in a while (aside from my initial fear that the poor horse might break one of its fragile legs). The clip is well worth watching all the way through.



Who knew that horses played like that? It really does look an awful lot like our cat repeatedly pouncing on one of her ball toys.

Monday Morning Quotations

"At eighteen our convictions are hills from which we look; at forty-five they are caves in which we hide." - F. Scott Fitzgerald, American novelist, 1896-1940

"The sense of being well-dressed gives a feeling of inward tranquillity which religion is powerless to bestow." - Miss C. F. Forbes, English writer, 1817-1911

"What we call evil is simply ignorance bumping its head in the dark." - Henry Ford, American car manufacturer, 1863-1947

"The extension of women's rights is the basic principle of all social progress." - Charles Fourier, French social theorist, 1772-1837

Scientific Literacy

Alice Bell has written an interesting piece entitled The Myth of Scientific Literacy. I think it is quite interesting, and touches on some of the issues brought up in Advice and Dissent, the main difference being that Advice and Dissent concentrated solely on the relationship between science and politics while Bell concentrates on the relationship between science and the population as a whole. The two are, of course, coupled in a representational democracy. I would like to expound more on the topic, but I actually have a fair bit of work to get done at the moment. Therefore, I thought I would bring up Bell's post for now, and hopefully get some further analysis of it done in the next few days.

Conservapedia Does It Again

It seems like it has simply been too long on this site since I last poked fun at Conservapedia, so here is the latest bit of their crazy that is making the rounds on the internet: how general relativity is liberal nonsense. My friend Mitch has an excellent take-down over at Skeptic North (with screen shots in case Conservapedia fails to load for you... it has been giving me trouble all morning). I don't have a whole lot to add, since Mitch nicely highlighted the the main chunks of hilarity, but I just thought it worth repeating: reality does not have a liberal bias no matter how many times Conservapedia might (inadvertently) make that claim.

Monday Morning Quotations

I have skipped the quotation instalment from the last two weeks, so this is more than overdue.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled." - Richard P. Feynman, American theoretical physicist, 1918-88

"It hath been often said, that it is not death, but dying, which is terrible." - Henry Fielding, English novelist and dramatist, 1707-54

"Never cry over spilt milk, because it may have been poisoned." - W. C. Fields, American humorist, 1880-1946

"The best causes tend to attract to their support the worst arguments." - R. A. Fisher, English statistician and geneticist, 1890-1962

I like to think that the last quotation is referring to most environmental and animal rights groups.

Dirty Energy Money

The website Dirty Energy Money was recently brought to my attention. It attempts to track the flow of fossil fuel money through the United States Congress, a lofty goal in my books. The site is highly interactive, and they have gathered an impressive amount of campaign contribution information. Without a good deal of marketing or getting picked up by a major news outlet, however, I'm not sure the website will have the impact it is trying for.