Quote-mining PZ Myers

That’s P-Zee — or P-Zed, as I like to call him.

The quotation, read by an Intelligent Design debater, was cobbled together from two different discussions about two different subjects, on two different websites, months apart. The Questionable Authority explains,

When two statements appear on two separate websites two months apart, you really aren’t supposed to link them with three little dots and pretend that it’s all one quote.

Further…

Support for PZ’s “screw the polite words and careful rhetoric” policy does display a type of intolerance toward the strategies and tactics used by the ID movement. That is a bad thing if and only if those strategies and tactics are something that people should tolerate.

Sea dragons

The waters around Tasmania and southern Australia are home to the leafy sea dragon and weedy sea dragon, two camouflaged species of seahorse. Individual leafy sea dragons can be disgtinguished by their facial patterns. Divers are asked to report, and to photograph if possible, their encounters with sea dragons and send them to the Dragonsearch web site.

Humans are the greatest threat to these fish: effluent and pollution kills the sea grass on which the depend. Hundreds of hectares of sea grass have been killed.

Photos Courtesy of Jeff Jeffords and www.divegallery.com

Collaborative Hypertext of Radiology

“CHORUS” is an online database of radiograms, photographs, and definitions for human diseases.

It is maintained by the Medical College of Wisconsin.

Its catergories are
* Nervous system
* Cardiovascular system
* Respiratory system
* Gastrointestinal system
* Genitourinary system
* Musculoskeletal system
* Multisystem entities
* Technical stuff / Miscellany

Books: "The Human Factor" by Kim Vicente

What we really need, argues Kim Vicente, is technology that works for people. Technological innovation is progressing so quickly that we have fallen behind in our ability to manage it. Our world is filled with objects that invite human error —from VCRs and stoves to hospitals, airplane cockpits and nuclear power plant control rooms. Problems —some potentially catastrophic —continuously arise when designs are developed without human nature in mind. Our reaction to this dilemma has been to create more sophisticated technology —perpetuating a vicious cycle as we struggle to keep up.