UM Flickr Award Badge

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Game-Changing Incentive To Revolutionize Photography

POSH & SCENIC WEST HUNTSVILLE, Alabama (July 30, 2010)- The wait is over. The Official C. L. Smith’s Unclaimed Mysteries Award Badge is now available to a select few photographers on the leading photo-sharing website Flickr. This representation of an elegant golden trophy embossed with the letters “UM” pulled majestically into the aether by a tractor beam emanating from a flying saucer covered in bacon is sure to be coveted and cherished by the discerning Flickr photographer.

According to Chief Designer and Maximum Director C. L. Smith, the award was inspired by the photo-sharing community’s “insatiable compulsion to punish high-achieving  Flickr photographers by inserting garish graphic images on their comments stream. ”

Not everyone will earn this award, but you can be certain that its mere existence will motivate even the casual snapshooter to greater achievement in photography.

Contact: C. L. Smith, Media Relations
clsmith@unclaimedmysteries.net
# # #

I had lost touch with the larger world of music but I still punched around the dial just to hear what was going on. I landed on the main rock station expecting to hear more Phil Collins and Paula Abdul. Instead I heard the first chords of this song. I sat dumbstruck in the car for the next 3 minutes feeling like I had just witnessed someone tunneling under the prison walls and escaping into the airwaves. How did they do that? How did they do that?

The new name is catchy and shorter. But you never know, I might go back.

It's a colorful store.

Well, show me the way
To the next gizzard bar
Oh, don’t ask why
Oh, don’t ask why

For if we don’t find
The next gizzard bar
I tell you we must die
I tell you we must die
I tell you, I tell you
I tell you we must die

Oh, moon of Alabama
We now must say goodbye
We’ve lost our good old mama
And must have livers & gizzards, oh, you know why

Ken Cuccinelli is the Attorney General of Virginia. Since being elected, he has pursued an aggressive social conservative agenda in his advisories. For instance, he has endeavored to modify the state seal to obscure a woman’s breast from view. He has also supported the governor in eliminating sexual orientation as a category for non-discrimination policies at the state’s colleges and universities.

Now he is using the power of his office to bear upon a controversial climate scientist, Michael Mann, co-author of the famous (or notorious) “hockey stick” graph, indicating a drastic rise in global temperatures in recent times. Mann’s work has been cited in support of human-caused global warming. Most conservatives deny the existence of or at least the importance of human-caused global warming effects.

Mann worked at the University of Virginia from 1999-2005 and Cuccinelli has ordered the university to turn over all documents concerning state funds he received for his research. Presumably, if Ken Cuccinelli were to find any whiff of impropriety, he could take Mann to the cleaners for legal fees, return of the research money (approx. $500k), and damages. The larger body of scientific work on the subject would still be strongly in favor of global warming, but it would be a PR coup for the deniers. And PR is is the gold standard for politicians.

The recent hacking of emails at the University of East Anglia was supposed to yield a mother lode of evidence proving that scientists in the field of climate research were engaged in a worldwide conspiracy to perpetuate the fraud of global warming in order to … to .. well, the opponents didn’t really say what exactly, but I guess it had something to do with promoting communism, socialism, and attacks on defenseless multinational energy companies. Instead, the emails revealed only that in private conversation scientists can be just as catty and assaholic as say, the average Facebook poster. ALL OF MY FINE FB FRIENDS EXCEPTED, OF COURSE.

AG Cuccinelli has taken the game to a new level. Today, the far Right is using political intimidation to skew scientific findings to fit their agenda. Of course at other times, the far Left has done the same thing. See Lysenkoism in the USSR.

There are a few climate scientists who are true, honest skeptics. Being in the minority now does not mean one turns out to be wrong (cough)plate tectonics(cough). But it does mean they’ve got a harder row to hoe.

Science is far more self-correcting than politics will ever be. Yet politicians continue to believe that they can bend reality to their will. Ken Cuccinelli’s transparent intimidation tactics do nothing but make us more ignorant. And endear him to his political base.

Today, political bullies are ascendant. Still wanna be a scientist? In the words of TV’s Dr. Gregory House: “Wear a cup.”

Dustin channels Tim James.  Tim James is a businessman. If you forget, he’ll remind you. And remind you.

Dead Children's Playground

]]> http://unclaimedmysteries.net/blog/?feed=rss2&p=232 0 http://unclaimedmysteries.net/blog/?p=221 http://unclaimedmysteries.net/blog/?p=221#comments Tue, 23 Mar 2010 02:11:48 +0000 Unclaimed Mysteries http://unclaimedmysteries.net/blog/?p=221 Unfortunate glass reflection at the Dora exhibit.

Recovered V-2 engine parts from Dora.

The criminologist - an expert.

Well, thank “Bob” our intellectual betters in Boston have finally chimed in on the UAH faculty slaying. And this Northeastern U. criminologist comes uncomfortably close to justifying the alleged killer’s rampage. After all, Amy Bishop has a Harvard Ph.D., and the prospect of not being offered tenure by a buncha hicks in th’ sticks was just too horrible to contemplate:

“‘You have to talk about Amy Bishop’s mental health in this situation as one of the variables, but being denied tenure when you’re in your mid-40s at an out-of-the-way obscure rural campus in the deep South is a catastrophic loss, and people don’t understand that,’ says Jack Levin, a criminologist at Northeastern University in Boston. ‘If you’re denied tenure, you’re fired. And in this economy chances are you’ll have to change your career, which is pretty hard for a woman who’s spent a decade in graduate school on a prestigious campus, Harvard, and had a good reputation for scholarship. Where is she going to go?’”- Christian Science Monitor, February 18, 2010.

I’ll decline to ruminate on my own personal love/hate relationship with Huntsville here, but in my obscure rural opinion Prof. Levin needs to, you know, like, broaden his horizons a little bit and stuff.