Barking Treefrog – Hyla gratiosa

Hyla gratiosa

Made of specially blessed plastic, no doubt.

Everybody knows that Jesus cast a legion of demons into a herd of swine, which then rushed down to the water and drowned. (If you want chapter and verse, look it up yourself!) In a weird reverberation of mystic fate, many churches have had to stop supplying the little bowls of holy water at the entrance of the church, because that unholy swine flu was being rapidly spread among the churchgoers.

I know, I know… you’re shocked that demons of swiney illness could live in holy water!!

As ever, though, the churches are willing to adopt a bit of science-based technology if it will help keep people kowtowing to the superstition.

Churches are now putting in holy-water dispensers based on the automatic faucets you get in public restrooms – wave your hand beneath, and a squirt of magic water comes out! It’s as if there were a tiny angel in there waiting to splash the prayerful hands.

The Hunger Site is one of those great ideas that can’t be publicized enough; you click a banner, a company gets a moment of your attention, a hungry person in the world gets a meal. They’ve been around for ten years now; I remember when they started, and I would visit them daily, but sometime during the last decade I forgot about them.

Hunger – Breast Cancer – Child Health – Literacy – Rainforest – Animal Rescue

They’ve expanded the scope of their activities since then, and you can now not only feed the hungry, but also fight breast cancer, treat sick children, promote literacy, save rainforests and rescue animals. I’ve put the link on my personal homepage and intend to once again start my day donating a minute of my time and a few clicks of my mouse. I would encourage everyone to do the same; it’s a cheap way to make a real difference, and you can start the day feeling you helped.

(All the sites have tab-like links to the others, so start at any of them!)

In a sudden outbreak of common sense, a District Court judge has ruled that the law authorizing a proposed “I Believe” license plate, which South Carolina’s moron Lieutenant Governor Andre has been pushing, is indeed an unconstitutional state endorsement of a religion.

I Don't Believe So!

As the judge in the case noted,

“Despite such clearly established law, this state’s limited resources have been used to promote, pass, and defend a state law, the ‘I Believe’ Act, which authorizes the Department of Motor Vehicles to issue a license plate which must contain ‘the words “I Believe” and a cross superimposed on a stained glass window,’ ” Currie wrote in her summary judgment. 

 What makes the whole thing even stupider is that the identical plate could have been introduced as a private organization’s specialty plate, without having to bring in special legislation exposing the state to a very expensive lawsuit.

In fact, South Carolina already has a very popular specialty plate on a similar theme (“In God We Trust”) which is available to anyone who wants it for an extra 24 dollars every two years:

But We Still Have To Buy Insurance

If you care to join the Secular Humanists Of The Low Country you can get the “In Reason We Trust” plate, though that costs $30 more:

A More Reasonable Belief

It’s perfectly okay to express a philosophic viewpoint on a license plate; it’s just not okay to have the additional costs paid for by the state government, because that’s an endorsement of a specific religion. That of course is what the real motive of SC’s backward legislature was. They’ve never liked that whole separation  of church and state notion; they want a Christian theocracy.

On physorg.com I came across this article about a new image-searching system. It’s not hard to see applications for this, especially in automated surveillance systems. I wonder if it could also be used to scan astronomical photo-surveys for significant objects? Can’t see why not.

Peyman Milanfar, a professor of electrical engineering in the Baskin School of Engineering at UCSC, and graduate student Hae Jong Seo were able to overcome a major drawback of existing methods for computer recognition of objects in images–the need for an extensive “training” phase using a large number of examples. With a single photograph or video clip as a template, their software can sift through thousands of images or videos to pull out the ones that look like the template.

  @..@
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( >__< )
^^ ~~ ^^

This is one of the finest examples of pareidolia I’ve seen yet.

Just a little good news: scientists have figured out how the chytrid fungus kills frogs (well, green tree frogs like Litoria wilcoxii but I think we can presume the same mechanism operates on all frogs.)

A measure sponsored by a California assemblyman named Tom Ammiano, who recently got a Joe Wilson-ish moment in the spotlight by loudly inviting the Governator to “Kiss [his] gay ass”, has been vetoed. Ho-hum. The interesting part is in the very careful wording:

Hat tip to  SF Gate, via bOINGbOING.