Soon to appear on a thousand herpetologist’s doors

xkcd digs into cladistics.

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Unfortunately, his cladogram is wrong. Mammals should also be a subset of the reptiles, so the herpetologists should be demanding that all other amniotes be absorbed into their more inclusive field of tetrapod biology.

At least, until the ichthyologists show up and point out that we’re all just weird dry land-walking fish.

Just to clear this up, I hope, here’s a modified version of a cladistic diagram to show what herps are:

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So if you want to avoid the sins of polyphyly or paraphyly, you must include birds and mammals in the herps. Of course, the alternative is to not care about the abstractions, and recognize that there are plenty of people already specializing in mammals and birds, so someone has to pay attention to all the otherwise neglected classes.

Blasphemy’s easy: everyone must get naked!

Have you ever actually read Leviticus? It’s madness. It’s full of instructions on how to slaughter a goat, what to do if someone spits on you, how to tell baldness from leprosy, and of course, lots and lots of instructions on what you must never ever do. There was something deeply wrong with the people who thought Leviticus 18 was a reasonable set of guidelines — they dwell rather obsessively on nakedness before they get to the one part that all the right-wingers quote.

Lev 18:6 No man shall draw nigh to any of his near kindred to uncover their nakedness; I am the Lord. Lev 18:7 Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy father, or the nakedness of thy mother, for she is thy mother; thou shalt not uncover her nakedness. Lev 18:8 Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy father’s wife; it is thy father’s nakedness. Lev 18:9 The nakedness of thy sister by thy father or by thy mother, born at home or abroad, their nakedness thou shalt not uncover. Lev 18:10 The nakedness of thy son’s daughter, or thy daughter’s daughter, their nakedness thou shalt not uncover; because it is thy nakedness. Lev 18:11 Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of the daughter of thy father’s wife; she is thy sister by the same father: thou shalt not uncover her nakedness. Lev 18:12 Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy father’s sister, for she is near skin to thy father. Lev 18:13 Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy mother’s sister, for she is near akin to thy mother. Lev 18:14 Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy father’s brother, and thou shalt not go in to his wife; for she is thy relation. Lev 18:15 Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy daughter-in-law, for she is thy son’s wife, thou shalt not uncover her nakedness. Lev 18:16 Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy brother’s wife; it is thy brother’s nakedness. Lev 18:17 The nakedness of a woman and her daughter shalt thou not uncover; her son’s daughter, and her daughter’s daughter, shalt thou not take, to uncover their nakedness, for they are thy kinswomen: it is impiety. Lev 18:18 Thou shalt not take a wife in addition to her sister, as a rival, to uncover her nakedness in opposition to her, while she is yet living. Lev 18:19 And thou shalt not go in to a woman under separation for her uncleanness, to uncover her nakedness. Lev 18:20 And thou shalt not lie with thy neighbour’s wife, to defile thyself with her. Lev 18:21 And thou shalt not give of thy seed to serve a ruler; and thou shalt not profane my holy name; I am the Lord. Lev 18:22 And thou shalt not lie with a man as with a woman, for it is an abomination. Lev 18:23 Neither shalt thou lie with any quadruped for copulation, to be polluted with it; neither shall a woman present herself before any quadruped to have connexion with it; for it is an abomination.

Does anyone else imagine some horny, dirty old goatherder sitting in a tent imagining all the things that inflame him, from his hot sister-in-law to the cute and willing goat in the fold (and…oh, god…his hot sister-in-law with the cute goat!), and furiously scribbling down condemnations of every lustful thought that is getting him steamy and bothered? There’s a kind of growing, frantic sexual tension there as he goes from just imagining his dad naked to the real kinky wild stuff.

You have to see the anti-gay verse in context to appreciate the tattoo this wrestler got.

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So, does he also have a tattoo that reads, “Neither shalt thou lie with any quadruped for copulation, to be polluted with it”? It’s just odd and revealing that he singles out this one verse to sweat over so much that he has to get it permanently inked into his arm.

I have a recommendation for his left arm, though—something from Leviticus 19.

Lev 19:26 Eat not on the mountains, nor shall ye employ auguries, nor divine by inspection of birds. Lev 19:27 Ye shall not make a round cutting of the hair of your head, nor disfigure your beard. Lev 19:28 And ye shall not make cuttings in your body for a dead body, and ye shall not inscribe on yourselves any marks. I am the Lord your God. Lev 19:29 Thou shalt not profane thy daughter to prostitute her; so the land shall not go a whoring, and the land be filled with iniquity.

Uh-oh. So even if this wrestler avoids the temptation to lie with a man, he’s damned by Leviticus 19:28. Heck, at this point he might as well go get funky and wild with a quadruped.

Eye of the beholder

The other day, this comic was posted on Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal. Would you believe those crazy conservatives at the National Organization for Marriage — those blinkered bozos who think letting gays marry will destroy the fabric of society — posted it on their forums?

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It’s rather strange — the comic shows a bunch of kids who are aghast at the weird old fashioned way babies used to be made. The humor in it is that you have to realize that they aren’t at all horrified by their technology, but find the old ways incomprehensible. It’s actually mocking the rigid antiques, but NOM just thought it was saying something awful about future developments. Today’s comic is on the same theme.

Zach Weiner handled it beautifully. It turns out the NOMers were hot-linking the image, making it easy for the SMBC crew to swap in a new image promoting equality, so the NOMers discovered a liberal message from Thomas Jefferson and a rainbow tainting their blog.

I’m smarter than that. I am not hot-linking the image at all, so Weiner won’t be able to change it on me when he discovers that I have a very different interpretation of his cartoon.

It’s obvious. The cartoon is telling us that in the future, scientists will resurrect, or build robot duplicates of, Isaac Asimov to teach our children about sex ed. I, for one, welcome our Asimovian sex instructors, and am pleased that Zach Weiner won’t be able to modify the illustration above to praise Arthur C. Clarke, instead. Neener neener.

How homeopathy works

Follow this link to the amusingly bizarre webcomic about homeopathy behind it. I’ll just share with you the story behind the artwork:

So this might seem to make very little sense at all. Fair enough, it’s sort of supposed to. But this did actually happen to me at work — A guy came in to buy some homeopathic tablets, and was quite insistent that I not let them touch the large tub of ice-cream that he was also purchasing. Assuming that it had something to do with astronomically minute quantities of poison that such remedies are reputed to contain (they don’t, by the by — it is entirely water,) I assured him that there was no threat of contamination.

He then proceeded to explain to me, as a primary school teacher would an infant, that homeopathy works due to molecular vibration. Being a mere layman, I will try to explain this process to the best of my limited ability. The water molecules vibrate with the same resonance as the poisons that give them their efficacy. This in turn causes human molecules to vibrate upon ingestion, curing one’s ills. Close contact with the tub of ice-cream will cause the vibrations to shift to the new medium, resulting in an ineffective medicine.

The comic does not explain the specific details of homeopathy — it’s more like an artistic rendering of the spirit of homeopathy. And like all great art, it reveals the deeper truth. In this case, that homeopathy is gullet-gibbering, brain-blitzing insanity that has gone beyond evidence into the realm of childish delusions.