Daily Blend: Friday, May 21, 2010

So I go to bed at 7:30 AM only to get up again at 10:50 for an appointment at the bank … Is this what it’s like to be a grown-up? </child’s questions>

• Witch hunt under fire: Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli’s unfounded and politically-driven attacks against climatologist Dr. Michael Mann are drawing the rightful anger of the Washington Post, other scientists, and groups such as the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and the National Academy of Sciences. Note that Dr. Mann has undergone two investigations (one parliamentary and one by other scientists) and has been cleared of any ethical or scientific wrongdoing each time. (But, of course, that’s just further evidence of whitewash …!)

• Scientastic: scientist Craig Venter has reportedly created the first ever fully artificial organism with a synthesized genome. People who claim “scientists can’t create life!” last seen crying hysterically and running for the hills.
  (via Pharyngula)

• Or, alternatively, they start cranking up the “playing God is dangerous!” paranoid fear machine.

• Last year at about this time, Danny Hauser, a 13-year-old boy stricken with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma (a relatively easy-to-cure cancer in children), and his parents did their damnedest to avoid actual cancer treatments in favor of quackery. They eventually submitted to a court order demanding the kid be treated with conventional medicine, and as a result, he’s now recovering along nicely. Not so much for his father, who’s now got a rare type of leukemia. Apparently, the fact that he’s eschewing conventional treatment for yet more pseudo-medical bullshit is testament to the fact that kooks and cranks just never learn.

• For all those (primarily conservatives) who claim that increased immigration leads to heightened crime: as usual, you’re on the opposite side of reality.
  (via The Agitator)

• Pennsylvania Attorney General Tom Corbett taking critics to court. Over comments criticizing him on Twitter. What is it with idiotic AGs?
  (via The Agitator)

• Interesting marriage and divorce statistics.
  (via The Agitator)

• Evolutionary psychologist Nigel Barber posits that atheism will ultimately replace religion. Or, how developed countries lead to godlessness and how sports arenas are better than churches.
  (via The Daily Grail)

• I can’t say this isn’t a little exaggerated as I cannot verify those numbers. But I’d imagine they aren’t too far from reality.
  (via @todayspolitics)

As always, if you have any story suggestions, feel free to send them in.