Cactus Flowers Are Blooming

The Hedgehog Cactus are blooming

In the next week or so I’ll be out in the desert around here with camera in hand

In the next few days I think the Prickly Pears cacti will be blooming
The ones in my front yard have about a thousand  pods ready to bloom

The neighbors did already
Sony A300 with Minolta 50mm f2.8 Macro

Orwell Was/Is Right Of Course

Tax Time is Here

Efile Online with TurboTax

Remember you have until April 16th. this year due to the 15th. falling on Sunday

Homo-sapiens and God

Christopher Hitchens– ”Hitch”– Thankfully his words live on…

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Of course the ‘Creationists’ get around this by swearing that our ability to age-date artifact, rocks, and other items is faulty and the earth has only been around for 6,000 years, but we know they are mislead and very very wrong.

ALL Non-Africans Are Part Neanderthals

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The Neanderthal genome is not the same as Homo-sapiens…they were non-humans.

Mankind was able to mate and produce viable fertile off-spring with them.

This very strongly implies that we humans could most likely mate with as least one, or more, of the older Homo/hominid species we know have existed on earth.

This pretty much eliminates the need to search any further for the ‘missing link’.

This also completely and totally backs up the truth of evolution.

Christians  0
Atheists  1,000,000

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Don’t Like Liberals??

Catholic Pedophiles On The Lose Again

BBC news Europe is reporting on another Catholic scandal.  I think we can now safely assume that the Catholic Church employees are molesting young children all over the world.  And probably ever since the church was formed well over a thousand years ago

If you’re Catholic don’t let your children out of your sight while in your church. You might want to consider leaving the Catholic Church altogether.  They are definitely not the Holy Place you thought they were.

From the BBC website here:

“The report estimates that 10,000-20,000 minors were abused in the care of Catholic institutions between 1945 and 1981, when the number of Church-run homes dropped. In the years between 1981 and 2011, several more thousands suffered at the hands of priests and others working for the Church.”

That’s an amazing number of children abused.  I guess up there near the Arctic Circle they don’t have much else to do.

And, once again it was not the church revealing the culprits…it was an independent commission investigating complaints against the church.

Shame Shame

My emphasis on the BBC clip.
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see more Lolcats and funny pictures, and check out our Socially Awkward Penguin lolz!

Republicans Screw Over America Again

The Republicans and those people they hold sway over just really don’t get it.  They are determined to kill as many people and mess up as much pristine real estate as they can to advance the fortunes of greedy corporate rats.

“The House Republican assault on the environment has been reckless and relentless,” said Rep. Waxman.  “In bill after bill, for one industry after another, the House has been voting to roll back environmental laws and endanger public health.  The Republican anti-environment agenda is completely out-of-touch with what the American public wants.”

“House Republicans didn’t wait until Christmas to hand out gifts to polluting industries.  They’ve been doing it all year long, amassing the worst environmental record of any Congress in history,” said Rep. Markey. “These votes are just a preview of coming attractions if the fossil fuel industries get their way and place more Republicans in Congress and the White House.  With that kind of cast, anti-environmental blockbusters will be the norm, sending more mercury into our kids, more air pollution into our lungs, and more carbon pollution into our atmosphere.”  Here

A comprehensive list of all anti-environment votes in the 112th Congress is available Here. 

Christopher Hitchens…

He was a hero of mine…I tried to emulate his wit, his intelligence, his brilliant writing, and his composure under fire.  Of course I failed, I doubt that anyone can come close to the multiple talents the man possessed.

The man could see over the horizon and visualize the past and future as one long line of human triumphs and follies.  He fought his personal battle with his immanent death with courage and unfailing determination, and in my eyes died a hero.

I mourn his passing.

Evolution…150 Years And Still Going Strong

“Any theory that can stand up to 150 years of continuous testing is a pretty darn good theory. We use evolution to develop drugs. We use evolution to develop vaccines. We use evolution to manage wildlife. We use evolution to interpret our own genome. Every one of these uses of evolution is a test, because if the use turns out to be inadequate, we would then go back and question the very idea of evolution itself. But evolution has turned out to be such a powerful, productive, and hardworking theory that it’s survived that test of time.”  “Dr. Kenneth Miller for Nova on PBS.  He is a professor of biology at Brown University and coauthor (with Joe Levine) of the standard high-school textbook ‘Biology’, Miller testified at the Dover trial as an expert witness for the plaintiffs…”
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/evolution/defense-evolution.html

Further:
http://ncse.com/evolution/science/evolution-primers
http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/home.php

Personally I think it ought to be called the ‘Fact of Evolution’ now