It's damn hot in Texas

It is damn hot today. Hot enough to break a record in the temperature books for Dallas/Fort Worth, as well as many other places in Texas. Yesterday too. One hundred degress farenheight in mid-April. Already, just 3 1/2 months into 2006, we have experienced at least 6 record high temperature days.
If wonder if anyone is bothering to ask the simple question, why? Why is it so damn hot? What if it gets hotter this summer?
Unless you're a shill for the oil industry or a blind follower of our messianic president or enamored of Michael Crichton's Cartesian doubt on global warming, you might consider the topic of increased CO2 and other greenhouse gases in our atmosphere contributing to temperature extremes.
It's too bad our society has no concept of science to understand how greenhouses work, and the principles of global warming that are inevitable when we raise concentrations of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere.
Will it take more and more human deaths as a consequence of extreme weather for us to wake up to this reality?

Woe of taxes under GW Bush's America

I just finished my tax returns last week. Like millions of Americans, I am forced to watch thousands of my hard earned dollars go to war profiteers, Halliburton, and to pay the salary for political hacks such as Michael Browning, Tom DeLay, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, etc.
During the 2004 presidential debates, I recall a wining pro-lifer ask John Kerry about concerns of spending her taxpayer dollars towards abortions. I wonder if this "culture of life" member and others of her ilk bother to think of the billions taxpayer dollars going towards a war, waged by a "culture of life" president, who doesn't mild slaughtering and maiming thousands of living, human soldiers in vain, not to mention thousands of innocent Iraqi men, women, and children?
Perhaps we should just make our government tax checks to Halliburton and other war profiteering companies, as well as the tons of other corporate interests that seem to be ruling our government these days.
Regardless of wars waged and the sale of our government policies to the highest bidder, at least we can rest assured that the interests of fetuses across America are under loving guardianship with the Republican leadership.

More evidence for evolution

Those following the science stories of the day would have noticed the announcement of a new fossil discovery representing a possible "missing link" between aquatic fish and a mobile land animal.
I wonder what the response from intelligent design circles will be to such a discovery. Sure, as any scientific discovery, one must be critical enough to confirm the discovery is not some forgery or hoax, and confirm the dating of the fossil to 375 million years ago. Assuming this discovery passes scientific muster, we have yet another example supporting evolutionary theory and another nail in the coffin of intelligent design.
The beauty of science is that it is always producing new discoveries and adding to our knowledge. Contrast this with the Bible or Koran or other so-called holy texts, which are "dead" books, never able to be revised based on new knowledge or information.

Our sports fan society

Last night was the culmination of March Madness(TM) with the NCAA division I men's basketball championship game between the Florida Gators and the UCLA Bruins. While I know most of America wasn't glued to the television set watching this match, this event made me wonder about the priorities of our society. Take the average American and ask him or her to name several sports stars. I'll bet most people, Excluding the most reclusive members of our society, will be able to name quite a few - Michael Jordan, Shaquille O'neil, Kobe Bryant, Alan Iverson, OJ Simpson, Terrell Owens, Barry Bonds, etc. Now ask these same people to name any American who's won the Nobel Prize in Medicine.
What - drawing a blank? I live in Texas, the land of football. The large metropolitan area where I live is home to at least 5 Nobel Prize winners - 3 in medicine, 1 in chemistry, 1 in physics. None of these people are probably known to most residents in the area. If any of these Nobel laureates visited an elementary school, would they be greeted with cheers and high fives, or just polite, forced applause? Is there a single street named after these Nobel prize winners, or any hope of a street named after them when they die? Not likely, but I'm sure Dirk Nowitzki or Troy Aikman would have no problems getting a street named in their honor in the future.
Why is this? Why do we value the clutch game winning play of a sports star over the scientific discovery in the lab? Why does our society seem to turn a blind eye towards science until we need it in the form of medical care or a scientific invention?
I marvel to think what kind of a world we would have if it was the sports stars who lived in relative obscurity while the scientists were celebrated for their discoveries and efforts. Sure, some would argue that the ego feeding environment of modern day sports would not be conducive towards good science, but shining a few lumens of light on them might make our society more aware of what is happening in the scientific arena. Also, the modern day sports enterprise could probably do with more humility that goes with working in obscurity.