Leave Brain at Door Please

DAL

Things like this make my brain hurt. What kind of parent would take their children to a place like this?

…Bolted to the wall in both the boys and girls rooms are chains with tracts by the cartoonist/evangelist Jack Chick hanging from them. The pages are laminated and set on rings for ease of reading while using the toilet.

Well at least they are in the right location. But this isn’t about the Chick Tracks, its about the ploy that the regious nuts are using to push their point.

Lets look at something for a moment. A theory is defined as “a model or idea that has undergone testing or validation from careful observations and can be used to make a variety of predictions of what will happen under different circumstances”. Evolution meets that pretty well.
Hovind’s dino land distorts the scientific observations of evolution so badly that it passes the point of absurdity and becomes somthing that is just sad. This write up sheds quite a bit of light on Dino Adventure Land and the man behind the scenes of it all. And before you call it a baseless personal attack on Hovind look at the information put forward by the authors investigation. County and IRS records should speak volumes about the guy.

This can be found in a display case next to a sandpit in the childrens ‘fossil dig’ area:

One dramatizes a scene from the Old English epic poem Beowulf (an inexpensive Dover Books edition of the poem is for sale in the bookstore.) The plaque explains that this is one of many examples of dinosaurs living contemporaneously with humans; apparently, Beowulf is a historical documentary and not just a legend.

Your kidding right? This is wrong on sooo many levels.
You have got to read this article and see just how crazy this place is.

Stupid Dino Tricks

Here is the ‘parks’ web page if you want to see this for yourself. I can not in good conscience reccoment that you go there except to see what kind of dreck people are exposed to there.

Dinosaur Adventure Land

If you go remember to shut your mouth, nod your head a lot, and don’t even think of mentioning critical thinking!
god, evolution, idiots, creation, nuts, wacko

Trebuchet Reloaded

Popsicle trebuchet

Today I received a comment about the Paper Trebuchet I blogged a while ago:

>Hi, John.
>Im about to build a cardboard trebuchet 4 my assignment but the site is currently unavailiable.
>can u please send me the plan if u still have it,thx.
>geniusjeff2002@xxxx.xxx

Well heck, I checked the site I mentioned in my original post and discovered that sure enough the plans are no longer there. The site looks pretty broken to me.
So I sent this to Geniusjeff2002 in hopes that I can still be of some help.

I just sent him an e-mail asking if there is another location to download it from, if I get a message from him I’ll post it here. I can’t find the one I downloaded from his site anymore, its lost on my hard drive. 🙁
In the mean time here is a more complex plan, it looks very cool. Ripcords Tennis Ball Trebuchet
If that is too complex then go with the Popsicle Stick Trebuchet (main page). This would be amazingly strong for its size and still be quite easy to build.
If you have any LEGOs about the house, I bet you could use them in place of the Popsicle sticks.
I hope this helps a bit and best of luck on the assignment.

Both the plans I found are quite good. The Popsicle one looks easy enough you could build them in a class room (if your insane enough to do somthing like that). So if anyone is looking for the paper trebuchet plans and can’t find them either give this one a try.

****UPDATE****
I submitted this to the MAKE blog and it was accecpted. Some less forgetfull reader than I noted that the Wayback Machine had an archive of the original Paper Trebuchet page! Very cool!
Build a paper trebuchet

paper, trebuchet, DIY, seige, popsicle, MAKE, cool, toy

Shuttle Flight Scrubbed

STS-114

Todays flight of STS-114 has be postponed due to one of the four low level fuel cut-off sensors in the main tank giving a faulty reading. These sensors monitor the level of hydrogen in the tanks so the motors will not run dry and be damaged if the burn is longer than expected. The crew is being unloaded and taken via the crew van to astronauts crew quarters and the ground crews are beginning the de-tanking process of the onboard cryogenics. The flight ops team will be assessing the problem and resetting the schedule accordingly. They will be having a press conference at apx. 4pm EST to discuss the events of the day. The chance for a flight tomorrow is very low as weather is going to be a major issue, todays launch had a 60% chance of being scrubbed due to low visibility due to clouds. Maximum visibility is needed to ensure that all 107 ground and air born cameras can get a good view of the vehicle during the assent to verify that the tiles have not sustained any damage during launch. The launch window for docking with the ISS to preform the scheduled re-supply mission is approximately two weeks.

UPDATE: The launch has been pushed back until Saturday, July 16 at 2:40 p.m. EDT

Watch NASA TV live
NASA Return to Flight main page
CNN coverage of the STS-114 launch
SPACE.com coverage of the Return to Space

space, shuttle, STS-114, NASA

Metro Roll Lighting

Metro light

The site for this new light renders kind of weird on my browser (Firefox, thank you very much) Anyway, the light system looks pretty neat.

Rolled lighting system.
Metro starts out as a roll of foil and film. Simply unroll it, add some LEDs(?), plug it in and presto, you’ve got a lamp you can hang on the wall. Per the designer, Francisco Gomez Paz, “Metro is not only a lamp but a system, a way to structure bidimensional elements creating a strong an efficient self-structured object.”.

The lights do looks pretty cool. I hope they end up being sold at Ikea.

Metro

design, lights, metro

The Best Cardboard Sign Man Ever!

Give him money

I decided to see how much money I could make on the freeway off-ramps of my town. Then I got competitive. I was gonna be the best card board sign guy ever.

Why yes, yes he is the best cardboard sign man ever. His exploits will inspire countless of others to do the exact same thing in their own communities. Men, women, even children will follow his lead and will aspire to be the best darn cardboard men in their neighborhoods!
Ya know, if it wasn’t so stinking hot here in Phoenix I’d give that a try. Maybe I can do it before work… Humm.. Now that’s an idea! I could start out at 4 AM when its still pretty cool and knock off at say 7 AM. That would give me three hours of serious panhandling before a quick shower a going to work. I have a robot costume from Halloween that is just taking up space.
He has some tips if you want to give this a try:

Walk up the off-ramps so that your right next to each car. Make eye contact. Say hello to folks. ALWAYS have a “God Bless” on your sign, but never specify which god. And, most important of all, WEAR SUNSCREEN.

Badmouth ? ? why lie? i need a drink
(Thank your Kevin for this bit of news)

funny, free money, panhandle, clever