After all the recent controversy in Florida Floriduuh over updating their K-12 science education standards to start teaching kids actual science (and the strident minority who were offended by that), and the even more recent attempt to completely undermine the new standards and grant teachers the "Academic Freedom" to ignore standards completely and teach whatever the hell they wanted (a battle still going on in several other states), now comes... Wizardy!

Substitute teacher Jim Piculas does a 30-second magic trick where a toothpick disappears then reappears. But after performing it in front of a classroom at Rushe Middle School in Land 'O Lakes, Piculas said his job did a disappearing act of its own. The charge from the school district — Wizardry!

So, on that note, I'd like to propose the state name be officially changed to "Floriduuh", and a new State Motto, "Floriduuh, The Most Retarded Place on Earth" and while we're at it, let's just declare that citizens of Floriduuh, especially anyone educated there, are now officially known as Floridiots. So, go ahead and call your favorite Floridiot and congratulate them... just be sure to speak slowly and use small words.

Update: May 9th 2008

http://www2.tbo.com/content/2008/may/08/me-evolution-darwin-day-big-problem/

Could only happen in Floriduuh! (Well, honestly, it could happen elsewhere (probably has), but it didn't this time, and I've got a great theme going here.) Come on Floridiots, keep the great material comming.

Hello Readers, and Happy National Day of Prayer to you.

I'd like to dedicate this post to Madeline 'Kara' Neumann, an 11 year old girl from Weston Wisconsin, who tragically died of untreated diabetes on March 23, 2008, due to her parents insufficient faith and unwillingness to pray harder. President Bush states in his 2008 National Day of Prayer Proclamation, that...

"As we observe this National Day of Prayer, we recognize our dependence on the Almighty, we thank Him for the many blessings He has bestowed upon us, and we put our country's future in His hands."

Clearly, Kara's parents, Leilani and Dale Neumann, failed to recognize their own "dependence on the Almighty," and for this their daughter deserved to die, ... slowly. If they had only prayed harder, called on more friends to help them pray, and sent more emails asking fellow christians around the world to help them pray, maybe this tragedy could have been avoided. Thankfully, these faithless parents are now being charged with second degree reckless homicide and are facing sentences of up to 25 years in prison.

Naturally, there are terrible people in this world trying to undermine the power of prayer, such as the malicious scientists behind this 2006 study showing prayer has no effect, and recklessly subjecting innocent people to crises of faith. Who cares if there's no evidence to support a belief in prayer? There's no harm in believing (except deaths of innocent children), right? And what about those heathens who support a National Day of Reason instead of prayer. How dare they challenge the establishment of a Christian Theocracy to replace the U.S. Government for the purpose of instructing all Americans which god to follow, and how, if they intend to testify on how taxpayer dollars should (or not) be spent. Really, of all the nerve.....

That horrific piece of propagandist trash by Ben Stein disguised as a hard hitting documentary that makes Michael Moore look like Jacque Cousteau came out today, and the official reviews are finally coming in...

• Beliefnet.com
• TV Guide
• Seattle Times
• Salt Lake Tribune
• Rotten Tomatoes

You know that flatulence like sound that balloons make when you let the air out and the last bit finally escapes before it goes completely limp? That's the sound that Ben Stein's career is making right now. But if you still feel compelled to go see this garbage, here's one more site about --> Expelled <-- that you should read first (created by the National Center for Science Education), and be sure that you offset your price of admission with a truth ticket or two... or three... dozen.

The Obama Rally in Missoula this morning was fun and memorable. It was definitely worthwhile to be able to participate in such a historic event. I got there a little after 8 this morning and was amazed to see how long the line was already. I could see it stretching from the front door all the way back past the Montana Theater and to the end of the next building at the end of the block. I called some friends to see if they were already in line in hopes of being able to cut in line with them. They answered and replied that they were in line in front of the University Theater. "Dummy," I thought to myself, "that's not the University Theater.. that's the Montana Theater. The University Theater way down around the corner a couple blocks." But, no... he was right, they were in front of the University Theater... and they weren't even close to the end of the line. The line wound around from there and back on itself up and down several blocks. My unscientific guess is that the line maxed out at about 12 blocks long when it finally started moving.

Anyway, we managed to get some really good seats, and I managed to get almost the entire speech on video, which I'm now trying to get uploaded to youtube in 5 parts. The links to each are below (or will be once I get them all uploaded.) My camera's memory card decided that it had had enough politics for one day just seconds before the end of the speech, so that's where my footage ends. He was just wrapping up at that point though, so nothing of substance was missed.

• Obama in Missoula - Part 1
• Obama in Missoula - Part 2
• Obama in Missoula - Part 3
• Obama in Missoula - Part 4
• Obama in Missoula - Part 5

Thanks to my new Missoulian RSS Feed (what? huh? move along, nothing to see here... next post on that subject) I just found out that Presidential Candidate Barack Obama is having a free rally at the Adams Center Saturday morning. I'd be there even if it was Bush III, I mean John McCain. This is history in the making folks!

And on a completely unrelated note, Missoula is having it's own BarCamp on April 26th (also a Saturday). What's a BarCamp? According to Wikipedia....

The official site for Missoula's contribution is at http://missoulabarcamp.org. Registration is required. Early registration recommended. I hope to see a great turnout of Missoula's Tech Professionals.

Somehow I just recently managed to stumble on OpenCongress.org. It seems to have more info and better organized than VoteSmart.org (which is still a good site, don't get me wrong).

OC appears to have tons of RSS/Atom feeds available (which is how it should be), and I mean TONS!!!

For instance, there are 4178 'issue areas' defined by the 'Congressional Research Service' that get assigned to bills. Basically, they're 'tags'. Yes, that's right, the US Government is using tags. Who says politicians aren't hip? You can subscribe to the feed for any one of the tags, errr, issue areas. So, if "Gerrymandering" is a particularly important political issue to you, then it's absurdly easy to keep track of what congress is doing about it.

There are even feeds to alert you when a particular bill or congress person you're interested in gets mentioned in the news, or somebody's blog.

So, keep track of your representativs, and don't forget to let them know how they're doing.