It's WTF Monday!

A headline to remember... Pubic Shaving Trend Baffles Experts or maybe this one: Man Stole More Than 1,000 Used Men's Underpants

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Remember that winning the lotto will not make you happy, you will be hounded by piles of relatives, and often you will be bankrupt in a few years:

But that initial rush does not translate into long-term pleasure for most people. Surveys have found virtually the same level of happiness between the very rich individuals on the Forbes 400 and the Maasai herdsman of East Africa. Lottery winners return to their previous level of happiness after five years. Increases in income just don't seem to make people happier -- and most negative life experiences likewise have only a small impact on long-term satisfaction.

Take note these articles were written by people who have not won the lotto.

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Good idea:

Washington, D.C. (AHN) - Interior Sec. Ken Salazar on Monday temporarily stopped mining in nearly 1 million acres of public lands surrounding the Grand Canyon. The move coincides with efforts in Congress to protect the park from increasing mining claims.

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I beg your pardon?

A panel ordered by Barack Obama to develop new US policy on the detention of so-called terrorism suspects as part of his effort to shut the Guantanamo prison, has delayed its report to the president by six months.

Aides to Obama said the task force would miss the administration's own Tuesday deadline for offering the president a full list of recommendations amid divisions between congress and the White House over the fate of Guantanamo detainees.

It's just a big hole in the ground

So what's the fuss?

Pygalgia rises up to protect the Grand Canyon:

With minimal public notice and no formal environmental review, the Forest Service has approved a permit allowing a British mining company to explore for uranium just outside Grand Canyon National Park, less than three miles from a popular lookout over the canyon’s southern rim.

How just like Bush...



Remember, this administration is the one who thought of selling off the national parks, and trying to drill for oil (we won't make a mess, promise!) in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and opening the forests up to logging companies...(there's too many trees!). If it can be exploited so one of Bush's cronies can make money, then the government needs to hand it over!

Both sides dig in deeply

Over the origins of the Grand Canyon.

How appropriate, then, that the Grand Canyon — its age, to be precise — has become a big issue in the ongoing argument about creationism and the role it will play in our understanding of the world.

Frustrated by the National Park Service's insistence that the visitors center continue to sell a book with a creationist account of the canyon's formation, a public employees group is accusing the service of invalidating science and promoting fundamentalist religion.

It's not as though the two sides are splitting hairs: Most scientists estimate the canyon's age at about 6 million years. Young-Earth creationists, who believe in the literal account of the world's creation laid out in the Bible's book of Genesis, contend it's closer to 4,500 years.

The protesting group, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, an alliance of scientists, land managers, environmental advocates and others, calls it distressing that the park service is not sticking to pure, mainstream geology in the information it dispenses at the Grand Canyon.

The stakes seem even higher to some on the creationist side. If their rhetoric is any indication, nothing short of the existence of God hinges on their "proving" that the canyon was not the result of gradual geologic processes, but of Noah's flood.

Which ties back to these posts discussing the book being sold that supports the religious version.

Update: Ooo! Thinking Christians fight back and support Evolution Sunday!

Flocks of the Christian faithful in the US will this Sunday hold special services celebrating Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. The idea is to stand up to creationism, which claims the biblical account of creation is literally true, and which is increasingly being promoted under the guise of "intelligent design". Proponents of ID say the universe is so complex it must have been created by some unnamed designer.

Support for "Evolution Sunday" has grown 13 per cent to 530 congregations this year, from the 467 that celebrated the inaugural event last year. Organisers see it as increasing proof that Christians are comfortable with evolution.

Update: Tengrain over at Mock Paper Scissors has a note about the Creationist Museum where Adam and Eve's amazingly buttoned up children cavort with raptor dinosaurs.

Update 2/14: Letters to the New York Times about the mixing of science and religion.

Grand Canyon is apparently only 6010 years old

Dragging this post up from below because of this wonderful response.

It's a deep hole and it took a long time to get that way....

"Grand Canyon National Park is not permitted to give an official estimate of the geologic age of its principal feature, due to pressure from Bush administration appointees. Despite promising a prompt review of its approval for a book claiming the Grand Canyon was created by Noah’s flood rather than by geologic forces, more than three years later no review has ever been done and the book remains on sale at the park.” "