I make no claim to have accurate gaydar, but did anybody see the video of Sam Alito walking down the street in D.C. (shown as the “moment of zen” on the Daily Show, Thursday, January 12) and not think he appeared to be a gay man (of the closeted, married variety)? Apparently he does have a gay-friendly past. Of course, he defended privacy rights back then, too. Unfortunately, closeted gay conservatives of the Roy Cohn and Terry Dolan variety are not generally good for the country…

Casey Luskin offered a commentary (on the Discovery Institute’s “Evolution News & Views” blog) on Kenneth Miller’s testimony in the Dover case in which he expounded on chromosomal fusion and evidence for common ancestry between apes and humans. Mike Dunford and P. Z. Myers responded, pointing out numerous errors and misunderstandings in Luskin’s argument. Luskin’s commentary has been enshrined as a paper at the IDEA Center website called “And the Miller Told His Tale." If Luskin or the Discovery Institute were serious about “teaching the controversy,” they’d at least acknowledge the existence of these responses. But even the trackbacks for the blog entry remains empty…

Eugenie Scott, executive director of the National Center for Science Education, will be giving the Robert S. Dietz memorial lecture at 7 p.m. on Thursday, February 2, 2006, at ASU’s main campus (Physical Sciences building, room F 166). Genie will be speaking on “Creationism and Evolution: Historical, Scientific, Political, Legal and Educational Perspectives.” I plan to be there. Bob Dietz was an early advocate of plate tectonics and one of the primary developers of the concept of seafloor spreading, a major factor in its scientific acceptance. He was the faculty advisor for the Phoenix Skeptics, which I originally started as an ASU student group with Mike Norton and Jamie Busch. Dietz was also on the board of the Phoenix Skeptics after it became a non-campus group, and gave a few talks to the group. He had a great sense of humor, which showed in his book, co-authored with illustrator John C. Holden, Creation/Evolution Satiricon: Creationism Bashed (1987), which included some quotations from a pamphlet I wrote a year earlier, Fundamentalism is Nonsense. He died in 1995. UPDATE: I described Genie Scott’s ASU talk here.

A Pharyngula reader sent in a photograph asking the above question. I vote for the second answer given… Historical Comments Einzige (2006-12-09): I'd kinda lean to the 4th answer, only because how else are you going to answer the second part of the question?

Turns out the mouse thrown into the fire was dead, and wind blew the fire into the house. Correction here. UPDATE January 12: Now Mares is sticking by the original story!

The DVD screeners for Steven Spielberg’s new film, “Munich,” which were sent to members of the British Academy of Film and Television Awards (Bafta) were inadvertently encoded for region one (U.S. and Canada) rather than region two (most of Europe). The DVDs, which had already arrived late due to a mess up at UK Customs, are unplayable in the DVD players of most of the Bafta members who received them. The region encoding scheme is designed to prevent DVDs sold in one part of the world from being resold in other parts of the world. The encoding is actually fairly trivial to bypass, and many inexpensive DVD players made in China (such as those by Apex) have hidden menu options or easily modifiable firmware which allows DVD encoding protection to be disabled. Premier PR, the company running the “Munich” PR campaign for Bafta, set up several preview screenings of the film in London, but many members of the organization live elsewhere in the UK.

Grass Collective makes “moving art” which includes a DVD of Los Angeles traffic at nighttime. It’s pretty hypnotic. (Hat tip to BLDGBLOG.) Historical Comments Einzige (2006-12-09): Would that Google Earth looked that cool!:)

Bob Evans, the public defender who has taken on the Cory Maye case, has been fired by the town of Prentiss. All appearances are that the mayor and aldermen took this action solely because of his defense of Maye. More at the Agitator.

If you’re not already familiar with “rx,” George W. Bush’s alter-ego, or if you haven’t checked www.thepartyparty.com lately, there are now covers of “White Lines” and “Whole Lotta Love” in addition to “Imagine/Walk on the Wild Side,” “My Generation,” and “Sunday Bloody Sunday.” Check it out. Historical Comments Einzige (2006-12-09): There's something strangely compelling about Bush saying "Rang dang diggity dangidang"...

On January 8, 2006, U.S. troops broke into the home of Iraqi journalist Dr. Ali Fadhil, firing bullets into the bedroom where he was sleeping with his wife and children. Fadhil, who is working for UK’s Guardian and Channel 4 on a story about misappropriation of tens of millions of dollars of Iraqi funds held by Americans and British, was hooded and taken for questioning, and released a few hours later. Video tapes made for his investigation were seized and have not been returned. The troops told Fadhil they were looking for an Iraqi insurgent. More at The Guardian.