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As we set off to take our dogs for a walk down the Highline Canal this morning, we ran into this hound dog coming towards us in the opposite direction. He has a collar, but no tags. He’s friendly and well-fed, and (surprisingly for this neighborhood) a neutered male. We’ve put him in our front yard and given him water, and put his photo up on Pets911.com. With any luck, his owners are somewhere nearby. (If they’re close enough, they should be hearing his distinctive hound bark…) UPDATE (1:30 p.m.): His owner put a “lost dog” ad on azcentral.com that we just found, and came and got him. He normally has tags, but they came off when he got out about a week ago. ...

The Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office last night arrested Michael Lacey and Jim Larkin, owners of the Phoenix alternative newspaper New Times, for publishing a story under their bylines which revealed the contents of a grand jury subpoena received by the paper. Revealing the contents of a subpoena is a misdemeanor. Lacey and Larkin, who have long battled with Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio and County Attorney Andrew Thomas, wrote a story about the subpoena because they considered it an attack on the freedom of the press. The subpoena demanded records relating to all visitors to the New Times website over the last four years, including information about what websites they visited prior to the New Times website (i.e., referral URLs)–essentially, the request is for the complete website logs for the newspaper’s website for the last three years. It also demanded reporters’ notes and any other documents pertaining to stories about Arpaio for the last three years. Lacey and Larkin wrote that they believed their article to violate the law, but they published it as a form of civil disobedience in order to challenge the unconstitutional abuses of Arpaio, Thomas, and prosecutor Dennis Wilenchik. The trigger for the events which led to the subpoena (and the apparent event of interest given the dates in the subpoena) appears to be a New Times article from July 8, 2004 which commented on Arpaio’s commercial real estate investments and ended with Arpaio’s home address, but the paper’s criticism of Arpaio for mismanagement, inmate deaths, and grandstanding in front of TV cameras goes back many years more. Sheriff Joe used to have a dialup Internet account with Primenet, my former employer. At one point one of his assistants, Lisa Allen, contacted Primenet to attempt to get information about a subscriber who had left a critical comment on his website, without a subpoena. We declined to provide such information without a subpoena. UPDATE (October 19, 2007): County Attorney Andrew Thomas has announced that he has dropped the charges against New Times and dismissed special prosecutor Dennis Wilenchik. UPDATE (November 13, 2007): New Times ran an October 25 followup story. UPDATE (October 28, 2008): It has come out that the order for Lacey and Larkin’s arrest was given by Arpaio’s chief deputy David Hendershott, whom Arpaio allowed to retire so he could receive a $43,000/year pension, and hired him back as a civilian at his same $120,000/year salary. Hendershott now makes $177,486/year working for Arpaio. ...

Altria Group’s moving its headquarters from New York City means that it will cease supporting the arts in New York, to the tune of $7 million a year. Altria funded over 200 groups in the city and was “the most reliable source of corporate funds for the city’s dance companies, art museums, and theaters for over 40 years, consistently ranking as the top giver each year,” according to Trent Stamp of Charity Navigator, in a blog post titled “Arts Groups Addicted to Smoking."

I’d like to know what happened after this clip ends. Bambi-Scruffy - The funniest videos clips are here

Pirate attacks are up 14%! (Explanation.)

At Salon, Steve Paulson interviews Steven Pinker and Rebecca Goldstein about their relationship, their work, and their atheism. (Hat tip to Wade Smith on the SKEPTIC list.) Historical Comments Einzige (2007-10-16): Jim,I find much to disagree with in your assessment of Pinker in this post.:-) olvlzl (2007-10-16): I used Steven Pinker's voice for Professor Lockheart when I read my niece the second Harry Potter book. Other than that he's pretty useless. There, does that satisfy you, Einzige? ...

Chris Hallquist takes a look at the different versions of Josh McDowell’s testimony about being a former atheist who set out to disprove Christianity only to become a Christian, a finds some reasons to doubt its accuracy, as well as the quality of McDowell’s research. UPDATE (January 2, 2009): Vinny at You Call This Culture? notes that McDowell doesn’t appear to have actually been converted to Christianity on the basis of evidence: Commenting on the Hallquist post, self-identified Christian apologist Kevin H said that he had spoken with McDowell about the matter:He’s the kind of guy who is amused at all that is said about him. I noticed he was quick to correct falsehoods. For example, he told me that the evidence for Christianity was a “foot in the door” that kept him from immediately closing it. But it was the love of God that drew him. It seems he knows, whether his fault or the fault of the swirling influence of his books and speaking tours, that people have the conception that he was forced into faith by irresistable arguments. ...

When Kat got home from work and let the dogs out, she heard an additional dog barking in the backyard. It turned out to be this puppy, perhaps two months old, which somehow got into our fenced yard. Einzige (2007-10-16): That's odd! Do you suppose that whoever left it had some idea that you were associated with RESCUE?Is the puppy healthy, at least?He's definitely cute. ...

On Saturday, December 1, the Internet Infidels will be holding their annual face-to-face board meeting in Phoenix. After the board meeting attendees have dinner, there will be a social event at our home. If you’re a Phoenix-area supporter of the Internet Infidels or otherwise identify yourself as an atheist, agnostic, freethinker, skeptic, humanist, rationalist, or bright, you’re welcome to attend. Please RSVP in order to obtain details and directions, by contacting ii-event at discord.org. ...

A friend who took his family to the Arizona State Fair noticed a booth from the Arizona Origins Science Association last night, and so pointed me to their website. A featured link on the front page says: Have you been taught or indoctrinated? - Take a test - View the answers The test answers show that this group uncritically accepts bad arguments, such as bogus arguments for a young earth (including making up the nonexistent isotope Po 234), claiming that the extinct pig’s tooth of “Nebraska man” was ever accepted scientific evidence for human evolution, claiming that because Peking Man and Java Man are now classified as Homo erectus that it’s purely “human” and thus not evidence for evolution, claiming that Australopithecus afarensis is no different from a chimpanzee or bonobo, claiming that all radiometric dating methods are based on untestable assumptions while ignoring the internal checks provided by isochron dating and comparisons of multiple methods where their view has no explanation for agreement, claiming that there are no known beneficial mutations, claiming that index fossils and the ages of geologic strata are the only things used to mutually validate each other, and so on. It’s as if they’ve never seen the talk.origins website or the index of creationist claims. The president of the group, Dr. Joseph M. Kezele, Jr., was previously mentioned on this blog as one of the five Darwin-denying doctors in Arizona who has signed on as a supporter of the anti-evolution “Physicians and Surgeons for Scientific Integrity." UPDATE: Of special interest on the Arizona Origins Science Association website are responses to surveys about creationism that they sent to various Arizona churches. I was quite pleased to see that many local churches have given responses that challenge AZOSA’s young-earth creationism. For example, the response from Dale Hallberg, Lead Pastor at Esperanza Lutheran Church, writes a comment on the statement “The Earth is relatively young (ten thousand or less years old)" (PDF) after marking it “D” for disagree: “Get serious!" Fr. William K. Young of St. Christopher’s Episcopal Church, in response to the statement “A person must accept Jesus Christ as their personal savior to be saved from eternal separation from God,” marks it “D” and comments (PDF) “If so, God help us all!" Dr. Roger Miller, interim pastor at the First Congregational United Church of Christ, added an entire page of comments (PDF) on the survey after he had viewed AZOSA’s website, and writes (in part) that “Sadly, fundamentalism is, per solid research, a demonstration of limited cognitive complexity capacity. Your work, though spirited and apologetically well intentioned, shows both limited understanding of scripture and archaeology. As an M.D., I would hope you’d spend time working for universal healthcare and lower prescription drug costs and leave the theological work to those so trained and the science to those trained in their fields.”