Events

Kooky Christianist and Delaware U.S. Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell failed her constitutional law exam yesterday: The exchange came in a debate before an audience of legal scholars and law students at Widener University Law School, as O'Donnell criticized Democratic nominee Chris Coons' position that teaching creationism in public school would violate the First Amendment by promoting religious doctrine. Coons said private and parochial schools are free to teach creationism but that "religious...

Via Sullivan, a really cool science project: Homemade Spacecraft from Luke Geissbuhler on Vimeo.

(Apologies to Bill Cosby.) The Chicago Tribune reported today that Chicago needs more software engineers: With a national unemployment rate of 9.6 percent, many people assume employers have their pick of applicants for any job, McCombs said. Not so. Within every down job market exist bright spots, which in Chicago means tech jobs, particularly for software engineers. The continued growth of the Internet and mobile technology is fueling the increased demand for IT professionals, McCombs said. Computer...

Bought 2010-07-27; Started in Mason, Ohio

Via Sullivan, Kenneth Davis at the Smithsonian sets the record straight on our history: From the earliest arrival of Europeans on America’s shores, religion has often been a cudgel, used to discriminate, suppress and even kill the foreign, the “heretic” and the “unbeliever”—including the “heathen” natives already here. Moreover, while it is true that the vast majority of early-generation Americans were Christian, the pitched battles between various Protestant sects and, more explosively, between...

This is one of my favorites, from a road trip through Wisconsin in October 2003:

Sometimes you can't make these things up: Chicago election officials say crews will work overtime to reprogram thousands of electronic voting machines that mistakenly list a gubernatorial candidate's name as "Rich Whitey" instead of Rich Whitney. Chicago elections board chairman Langdon Neal said 530 machines being used for early voting and an additional 4,200 destined for the Nov. 2 election will be reprogrammed and retested. The mistake in the Green Party candidate's name appears on a review screen...