Link round-up for 9 April 2011

To make up for the repulsive eurypterid photo I posted recently, here are some more appealing critters.

Murr Brewster has some noisy new neighbors.

Prash posts a round-up of funny laws.

Chimney Sweep, a new corporation, is now open for business and hopefully free of regulation.

At last, a truthful headline!

If the nutters really think the world will end on May 21, they won't be needing their money, right?

Toronto women launched "SlutWalk" this week to rebuke backward attitudes about female dress; more here (found via Cheap Signals).

Louie Gohmert thinks Obama is bombing Libya so he can use his health-care reform army to stage a coup. Murr Brewster takes a look at Gohmert too. Remember, this guy is a Congressman.

Here's a cool tale of human imperfection and revenge.

Jack Jodell is fed up with TV commercials. Luckily, there is an alternative.

Blogger Octopus explains the proper stance toward trolls.

46% of Republicans in Mississippi still think inter-racial marriage should be illegal.

Frank Hebert is paraplegic, but he wasn't going to sit still for his granddaughter being molested.

Here's a good response to that silly Obama anti-abortion billboard.

PZ Myers takes on the "no atheists in foxholes" lie.

Joé McKen explains his "labels" -- these mostly apply to me too, though I'd never heard of the "ignostic" one before.

Conservative defenses of the First Amendment in the Pastor Jones case are welcome, but consistency would be nice.

It would also be nice if this judge understood the Constitution.

For John Thompson, the Supreme Court offers no justice.

Here's something Jones and the Islamists could agree on.

Christian and Muslim theocrats are more alike than different.

Richard Dawkins looks at practical problems posed by religious beliefs, and at the idiocy which results when blind rule-following replaces rational judgment.

Proposition 8 plaintiffs receive religious hate messages (found via Republic of Gilead).

Violence is unevenly, but predictably, distributed in the US (found via Green Eagle).

Boycotting can work. We should do more of it.

A much-hyped alarmist "study" on under-age sex trafficking turns out to be bogus (found via Preliator pro Causa).

Like most compromises, the deal that averted a government shut- down yesterday isn't pretty -- but at least the Republicans didn't get their Planned Parenthood defunding rider. Politics Plus looks at what the media got wrong.

The increasingly-teabaggish Republican base is pulling the party ever further from the political center. James Joyner assesses the problem. Progressives, too, need to realize where the center is.

Don't repeat the stupid mistakes of 2010.

How much will alienating minorities hurt the Republicans in 2012?

The Ryan plan would cut taxes on the richest (from levels already the lowest in decades) while hurting everyone else. And there's worse.

Your taxes are too high, but there's a reason.

Waking up: belief in "free-market capitalism" as the best system has plummeted among Americans, especially among lower-income people (sent by Robert the Skeptic).

Wisconsin voters in two jurisdictions have overwhelmingly passed referenda rejecting corporate personhood (found via Plutocrap).

This is a welcome move, but I'd like to see similar scrutiny of the Vatican's money.

Those who anticipate an increasingly-Hispanic US are overlooking an important factor (I made a similar point here).

Brazil has grasped the point that reducing inequality is essential to democracy and stability -- when will we?

Portugal has finally had to go to the EU for a bail-out, and the EU is demanding austerity measures even stricter than what its own parliament rejected in the face of mass public protests. Here's a clear and concise explanation of the European economic crisis.

Austerity policies cut investment in the future for short-term gain -- this is what the Republicans want to do here.

Is al-Qâ'idah obsolete?

The Syrian regime is wrong to think its hatred for Israel makes it legitimate in its people's eyes.

The West is wrong to think the Bahrain uprising is oriented toward the Iranian regime.

Global-warming denialists suffer embarrassment as real science manages to intrude.

The 2011 Pigasus awards for "scientific" crackpottery have been announced.

One expert claims "cyber-warfare" is an exaggerated threat.

I don't think this tells us that this cave man was gay, but it does suggest that gender roles in ancient times may have been more flexible than we thought.

This quasi-dream sheds a bit of light on near-death hallucinations.

Janet Stemwedel looks at the ugly terrorist tactics of anti-animal- research extremists, which hurt their own cause.

Are you a risk-taker? Do you hear voices? It may be toxoplasma gondii.

Work will soon begin on America's biggest-ever factory to produce solar-power panels.

Tests will soon begin on using lasers to eliminate lipofuscin from cells (lipofuscin accumulation is one of the seven categories of damage that make up the aging process).

Japanese researchers have grown a complete retina -- a highly complex structure -- in the laboratory from embryonic stem cells.

Added link: That asinine "study" claiming that there's a genetic / brain-structure basis for conservatism seems to be getting a new surge of attention on liberal blogs (or it may be a different study at the same college, though it sounds very similar). Please read what I said about this in December. This kind of thing should be beneath us; leave the fake science to the global-warming denialists.