From the upcoming Cuttlefish Xmas Songbook (in my dreams):

And so this is Christmas
So back to the war–
It’s time to remember
What Christmas is for
An so this is Christmas
Let’s make a big fuss
Cos Christmas is only
For people like us.

A very merry Christmas
And a happy New Year
Unless you are godless
Unless you are queer.

And so this is Christmas
For people like me
For Christian believers
Good people, you see
And so Happy Christmas
It’s so black and white
Don’t say “Season’s Greetings”
‘less you’re ready to fight

A very merry Christmas
And a happy New Year
Unless you are godless
Unless you are queer.

And so this is Christmas
So back to the war–
It’s time to remember
What Christmas is for
An so this is Christmas
Let’s make a big fuss
Cos Christmas is only
For people like us.

A very merry Christmas
And a happy New Year
Unless you are godless
Unless you are queer.

War is over when we win it
War is over then

And another nice Cephalopodmas-themed song, but for PZ’s Molly nomination thread:

Oh by gosh, by golly
It’s time to nominate for Molly
Make it easy, for poor old PZ
To put up an active post

Oh by gosh by jingle
Go nom a bunch, or just a single
Find some writing that’s real exciting
The one who moved you the most

Then comes doc Myers
Crowning the one who wins
Who among us desires
To be the person he pins?

Oh by gosh by golly
It’s time to nominate for Molly
C’mon, you masses, get off your asses
And nominate a name or two
So that they can… feel better… than you!

[musical interlude, as Cuttlefish runs to avoid inevitable pelting with rotten fruit]

Then comes doc Myers
Crowning the one who wins
Who among us desires
To be the person he pins?

Oh by gosh by golly
It’s time to nominate for Molly
C’mon, you masses, get off your asses
And nominate a name or two
So that they can… feel better… than you!

A verse I’d rather not have written, for reasons explained here:

I dunno who Donohue thinks he is fooling
His Haggard expression is easily read
He feigns apoplectic, all red-faced and drooling
But clearly he’s curious–you know, in bed.

He’s sorta like Eric, a textbook example
Of passion displaced from its natural goal
He huffs and he puffs, but the data are ample–
He wonders what loving is like, on the (w)hole

The “emergence of consciousness” (note that the phrase presupposes an ontological stance different from the stuff from which it emerges, and thus begs the monism/dualism question, muddies the waters we are peering into, and makes investigation more difficult) is the new creationism. If we can somehow prove dualism true (oh, I dunno, maybe by asking extraordinarily poorly phrased questions, then demanding exhaustively specific answers to those questions, and in the absence of such answers claim that this particular bit of ignorance must prove dualism true), perhaps that leaves a little wiggle-room for god himself to “emerge” from the gaps. This was my scribbling on the matter:

At the center of this issue is a three-pound mass of tissue
That can contemplate infinity, or love, or space and time!
In addition to these features, this mass sits in social creatures
That communicate these contemplations (sometimes, yes, in rhyme).
Just how consciousness emerges from sensations, acts, and urges
Is a complicated question, yes, but hopeless? Not a bit!
But what doesn’t help the matter is this silly dualist chatter–
See, it doesn’t count as science if you merely make up shit.

A leftover from the end of the campaign trail, as each side strove to be more godly than the other:

Just how do these people get loose?
Their attendants can have no excuse!
So, for this year’s election
I’ve got my protection–
Burnt offerings given to Zeus!

They’ve got Jesus, but I’ve got Apollo,
And a Pantheon ready to follow!
(could they be so delirious
To think that I’m serious?
There’s nothing, it seems, they won’t swallow!)

They’ve got Jesus Himself as their backer
To protect against any attacker–
But so weak is their Lord
They consider Him gored
By a rusty nail stuck through a cracker!

I guess I was in a bit of a mood-even more cynical than usual–when the post on NASA showed up:

Those scientist types, with their heads in the stars
With their dreams of the moon or a mission to mars–
Don’t they realize what government spending is for?
Not science, or progress… but going to war!

Those scientist types, with their frets about cost,
With their dreams shot to hell if a robot is lost–
Don’t they realize that people are cheap as tin foil?
We spend them by thousands while fighting for oil!

My take on the extraordinarily high level of intellectual rigor defending various people’s reasons for believing in a god…

I didn’t know what I believed
I thought perhaps I was deceived
By Satan, but I felt relieved
To see through the façade.

I opened up the Holy Book
At random, to a page and took
A skeptical and doubting look
But there, of course, was God!

That’s all there was; I took a chance
And gave the Holy Book a glance
Then saw the Truth and took my stance
Because I’m not naïve:

You think perhaps I misconstrue?
You think my thoughts have gone askew?
They couldn’t print it if not true–
And that’s why I believe!

First, the contest (not mine), then the limericks, then a silly story.

The contest is here–and here, I suppose, if you want to see the competition. A limerick contest! Better than that–a Darwin Limerick Contest! With prizes and everything! (see links for details, but it is pretty simple–Darwin-themed limericks.)

I have seen what my readers can do; I will be sorely disappointed if we do not capture 1st, 2nd, and 3rd! Well, not disappointed, but frankly, surprised. And that’s not saying anything about the competition–I just know you folks are that good.

Anyway, here are the ones I am about to submit, just to prime the pump:

While still a young man, Darwin went
On a trip—and the curious gent,
From the fractions of inches
Twixt beaks of his finches
Inferred there was common descent!

It’s a fact that I cannot escape;
I share habits, genetics, and shape
Though the fact makes me blush
Darwin showed it’s not mush—
I’m convinced that my cousin’s an ape!

The gorillas are angry with me
And the chimps are as steamed as can be
No ifs, ands or buts,
The apes don’t want nuts
On their branch of the family tree

My lackeys, my staff and my minions
Are all of them proudly Darwinians
You see, they compete
For their pay (and to eat!),
Sharing only their fittest opinions!

Yes, I know that the key’s reproduction
And I know of the body’s construction
But as Darwin’s my witness
I’ll give up some fitness
Because I so dearly love suction!

The object of all my affection
Just told me I failed her inspection!
So I guess that this means
It’s the end for my genes—
There’s a downside to natural selection!

Oh, yes, the story… the last two limerick contests I entered. Second to last, I won’t tell you what it was, but I will admit, shamefacedly, that it was my goal to win the top three places. So I entered a bunch of limericks, under three different names. Yes, I was first, second, and third. My prize (a mug), though, when it arrived, had a sticker on it warning me that the glaze contained heavy metals, and that it was recognized as toxic by the State of California. Most recently, though, I entered Greta Christina’s contest, just under one identity. I won that, too, but just (just!) first place. But the prize…. !!! Much better than a toxic mug–Greta Christina’s wonderful erotic comic anthology (I’d give it a fabulous review here, but you’d be surprised how difficult it is to write that sort of thing in verse!–just go buy one!)! So, I could be all superstitious and say it works better not to enter as several people… or I could just be lazy and say it is easier to be one… or I could just say it is much more fun to have all of my readers join in!

I am Charles Darwin—ninety-nine point nine percent
There’s a little variation that I don’t share with the gent
But we share a common blueprint, which is kinda what he meant
When he came to the conclusion that we’re all of shared descent

I am Charles Darwin—what I mean is, I am Man
I’m a billion trillion accidents instead of One Big Plan
Just a step or two from chimpanzee or from orangutan
Maybe more than distant cousins, but you recognize the clan

I am Charles Darwin—I can’t help it; it’s my genes
We’re mutation and selection, see, when no one intervenes
Like a god with claimed omnipotence, or alien machines
None better and none worse than us, is really what it means

I am Charles Darwin—I was never Eden-cursed
I am just another animal, I’m neither best nor worst
From primordial beginnings, look how widely I’ve dispersed
Such a beautiful idea…Charles Darwin saw it first.

cuttlecap tip to PZ

It’s the latest in technology, delivered to your door
Like the internet, but portable—why, who could ask for more?
All that Cuttlefishy goodness, but in one convenient book
What a marvelous invention; don’t you want to take a look?

You can take it to the mountains; you can take it to the park;
With a flashlight or a candle, you can read it in the dark!
It’s much lighter than a laptop, so transporting it’s a breeze
There’s no silicon or plastic—nope, it’s all recycled trees!

You could buy one for your Mother; you could buy one for your Pop
You could buy one for your Pastor just to hear him holler “stop!”
You could buy a bunch, and swap out all the hymnals in a church
So they never find “Amazing Grace” no matter where they search!

You could pull one on the Gideons, and place them in hotels
You could slip one to a Wiccan while she’s murmuring her spells
It’s the perfect gift for enemies—the perfect gift for friends!
It’s the gift that keeps on giving—oh, the messages it sends!

Be the first one on your block to place your order—click today,
And the elf and fairy printers will get on it right away!

That’s right; with heart in throat, I am announcing the dead-trees version of The Digital Cuttlefish, Vol. 1, available for purchase at Lulu.com. Over a hundred verses, representing (more or less) the first year of… whatever it is that I do. Just in time for Cephalopodmas, Squidmas, Christma-Hanu-Rama-Ka-Dona-Kwaanza, or maybe somebody’s birthday.

Long, long ago, before “god” was invented
We’d gather together, for friendship and strength
We’d sit singing songs, telling stories and fables
In the gaze of the children, we’d go on at length

The stories might sometimes have heroes or villains,
The tale of a hunt, or a great person’s death,
Practical, sometimes, or just entertainment,
With listeners gathered, all holding their breath

In weaving their stories, creating their legends,
These tellers of tales brought a culture to life
As much as the clothing, or tools, or utensils,
The crudely made bowl, the obsidian knife.

When field archeologists, sifting through artifacts
Pick out some pottery, arrowheads, beads,
Or anything else—it’s a piece of a puzzle—
The job is to see where, exactly, it leads.

If only we could, as we search for the answers,
Uncover the echoes of stories of old
The dusty remains of a song or a story
The remnants of legends so long ago told.

I guess, in a way, we have done this already
But often we don’t know that that’s what we’ve done;
We do see the remnants, the fossils, the echoes
Of tales when our culture was only begun

See, just as the bowls and the knives in your kitchen
Descended from those used so long, long ago
So too, our mythology, current religion
Evolved to the state that we currently know.

The truth is that “gods” were at first just a story
That people repeated like so many more
The heroes and villains are long since forgotten
As well as the purpose the story was for.

A story to tell to the people who gathered;
A tale to enlighten, to lift, to enthrall,
A legend, an epic, a myth, an adventure
But… what is religion? A story. That’s all.

From a Friday Cephalopod post (sepiateuthis australis):

Off the coast of Australia, and not the Bahamas,
Swims a squid in a pair of striped pajamas.
This may seem odd to folks like you
But he thinks your shirt looks funny, too.

From “Purple America”, where I thought this image:

… looks like a Rorschach ink blot. Reading the comments, I was right–people saw all sorts of things in that picture, including contradictory analyses of the election. Pretty much what we expect from Rorschach.

Is one explanation the best?
Can we tell it from all of the rest?
We project all our thoughts
On these maps, just like blots–
A political Rorschach test!

From “What is an ‘atheist community’?”, in which it was reported that Paul Bloom looks to the advantage that religion gives in building communities. Atheists, lacking communities, do not get to benefit from this. Apparently, he looks only at the good coming from community. When we do that, it really does look like atheists miss out.

It’s true that the atheist birds of a feather
Don’t gather in churches–the more is their loss;
The warmth of community, gathered together
For singing, and praying, and burning a cross.

(oops. wrong example.)

The monks in their abbeys, preserving the writing
Of ancients, when everyone’s future was black;
They strove for salvation, while kindly inviting
The godless among them to stretch on the rack.

(dang. wrong example again.)

The New World and Africa, ignorant, dismal,
Called for new Missions, converting each brother;
Heathens were called–they could choose their baptismal–
Christ’s blood or their own; it’s one or the other.

(crap. I suck at this.)

When people are gathered, they still remain people,
They’re good and they’re bad, both alone and in unity
You can meet in a bar, just as under a steeple
Good and bad don’t depend on religious community.

Lastly… Pat Buchanan uses more decibels to deliver less content than perhaps anybody out there.

My Buchanan doll (I couldn’t be prouder!)
Has two voice settings: Loud! and LOUDER!!!
Just wind him up and pull his string;
He’ll shout and shout just anything–
When Caribou Barbie invites him for tea
He’s happy as a doll can be
They sit and talk and say dumb stuff
Until I think they’ve had enough.
They really are a funny pair;
When you open their heads, there’s nothing there!
As dolls, these two have some appeal–
They’d be scary as hell if they were real.

As announced a couple of weeks ago, the Friday Limerick Post is now a Week-In-Review limerick post. Get used to it.

Now, what happened this week? Seems to me something must have been newsworthy…

This week saw us vote for Obama,
And an end to the months of high drama;
Thus I say: About time
I can finish this rhyme
With a full stop, and not just a comma.

I may come back and add some more, but for now I need to do seventeen dozen things I put aside while I had the cable tv political news IV drip in my arm the last few weeks.

In one of the more horrific stories recently in the news (and frankly, that is never an easy competition),

A young woman recently stoned to death in Somalia first pleaded for her life, a witness has told the BBC.

“Don’t kill me, don’t kill me,” she said, according to the man who wanted to remain anonymous. A few minutes later, more than 50 men threw stones.

Human rights group Amnesty International says the victim was a 13-year-old girl who had been raped.

There is much more at the link, but frankly, this time my worst imagination and the story as reported were virtually identical.

One of the burdens of knowing a bit about the experimental study of human social behavior is that I can no longer adequately distance myself from stories like this. Why didn’t people intervene? Darley and Latane explored that question decades ago after the murder of Kitty Genovese. Diffusion of responsibility, the effects of deindividuation, and other well-researched phenomena tell us that we cannot rely on human nature to do the right thing. The men stoning this poor girl to death? Milgram’s research shows us that perfectly normal people can be led by authority to inflict pain, injury, or (potentially) death on an innocent other, with far less coercion than these religious zealots had experienced. (See this review of Milgram’s experiment for an example of both the denial that this is our potential–in the opening post–and many corrections in the commentsl)

Yes, people can be killed in soccer riots–sometimes deliberately. Kent State did not need religion as a motivation to get four students killed. But damn… again and again, religion just seems so good at it.

Those who do not recognize the humanity in monsters are perhaps at risk for not recognizing the potential for monstrosity in themselves. This is us–the batshit-insane human race.

It should, one hopes, be very easy
To look on this and to condemn,
But look at Kitty Genovese–
In some ways, we are much like them.

When crowds make people nearly faceless
It is a certain kind of Hell,
Promoting hate, however baseless–
Religions do this awfully well.

To recognize that this potential
Is human, is my fervent wish;
It can be fought–it’s not essential
(You need not be a cuttlefish)

These people show the worst of us
But us they are, we need to learn;
We share one planet-home, and thus
It’s to ourselves we have to turn:

Belief can spread, just like a cancer
Harmful ones have got to go;
While some believe that God’s the answer
For these beliefs… the answer’s NO.

Hat-tip, of course, to PZ.