Happy Friday the 13th

I hope you like Friday the 13th.  Apparently, we have 3 of them coming at us this year.  If you're into superstitious nonsense, here's a list of 13 tidbits about the date.  We can also apparently expect another Friday the 13th movie, as in another Jason Voorhees craptacular slashfest.  I really thought we played that one out.  In the 80's, they threatened to do 13 of them, but they seemed to get tired of it after about nine of them years ago.  However, I guess somebody needs to pay the bills, so here they go again.

I missed Charles Darwin's 200th birthday yesterday.  It's also the 150th anniversary of "On the Origin of Species..."  I'm not trying to a start a war, but his natural selection and evolution theories definitely influenced my view of the natural world, so I'm just putting out a thank you.  Apparently, England went a little loony yesterday, with Darwin events all over the place, including a reenactment of a debate between a Darwin supporter and a Church of England bishop.  Richard Dawkins (Darwin's rottweiler) was to play the part of Darwin's guy, and someone from the Church was going to be the bishop.  However, the Church guy was going to skip the part about which side of his opponents family was descended from monkeys.  Apparently, the Church of England is somewhat more scientifically enlightened than it was 150 years ago.  In the U.S., however, we apparently still want to fight about it.  Louisiana has taken the lead by adopting guidelines allowing teachers to bring in outside, unapproved material to add additional "facts" and debate about controversial topics, a plan aimed squarely at bringing anti-evolution material into science classes.  Say whatever you want about creationism, but it isn't remotely scientific (which is kind of the point) and has no place in science classes.  Happy now Chuck?  See what you started?