This week in science: jokers are wild

When last we heard from the Heartland Insitute, they were reeling from a leaked document revealing their duplicity and hypocrisy. The same jokers are back with a PR campaign comparing climate scientists to murderers and madmen, like bin Laden and the Unibomber:

Of course, not all global warming alarmists are murderers or tyrants. ... The people who still believe in man-made global warming are mostly on the radical fringe of society. This is why the most prominent advocates of global warming aren't scientists. They are murderers, tyrants, and madmen.

Heartland got their ass kicked over it and said late Friday they're going to take it down. But still, I really have to wonder why companies like State Farm, Microsoft, Eli Lilly & Co., GlaxoSmithKline, Nucor, Pfizer, and Time Warner Cable are supporting these clowns. I guess they think it's good for a company's image ...?

• Be sure and look up tonight to catch a glimpse of the huge, beautiful Super Moon:

  Everyone on earth has dreamed of going to the moon and no wonder, it's been hanging up there, big and beautiful, ruling the night sky since our remote forefathers first stumbled out of an Pliocene forest on two legs.

• I think I'd rather wave down a Martian tripod brandishing its heat ray in full afterburner than try this: Sticking your hand in the Big Bang machine
• This could drive the usual suspects nuts, if there are any left who can comprehend it:

  Interestingly, the incomplete copy of the gene seems to have showed up just as the extinct hominin Australopithecus made room for the genus Homo, which led to modern humans.

• A wingnut amendement that would have defined a blastocyst smaller than the period at the end of this sentence as a human being -- as long as the little tykes don't try to vote while black or join a union or anything subversive -- was struck down in Oklahoma this week. The forced birther brigades have vowed to fight on for the rights of rapists across the nation.
• Why do conservatives deny so much science? Chris Mooney was on Up with Chris Hayes at MSNBC this morning discussing his new best-seller on that very topic. Daily Kos book review and Q & A with Chris posted here!