Uh, guys? You know that trip to Ken Ham’s creation science “museum”? I think he got wind of our plans.
He’s training guard dogs now.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
Uh, guys? You know that trip to Ken Ham’s creation science “museum”? I think he got wind of our plans.
He’s training guard dogs now.
Okay, who’s got the loose lips? (tapping foot impatiently) Come on now, fess up!!
I know I’m crediting Ham with thinking, but doesn’t the thought of attack dogs being attached to a ministry strike him as being incongruent at all?
If he heard we were coming wouldn’t he be preparing buckets of ice water in stead of dogs? :P
Listen, Bryn, when every relgion except your own is based on Satanism, you need every tool of self-defense that you can get to protect yourselves.
So, it is not merely the EAC that Ham must defend the museum against; there is also the Catholic Church, the Lutheran Church, the Episcopal Chuurch, the Masons, the Discovery Institute, the National Council of Churches and a whole list of Satan’s minions that will keep the guard dogs busy.
Attack Dogs For Jesus!!
They also go after people who don’t buy souvenirs.
I’m not surprised, ministers/priests probably make ideal dog trainers. From what I recall of my (unfortunate) church experiences, half of what they say is “please be seated”… “please stand”…..”please be seated”…..”please stand”…
if you’re good you also got a cookie at the end…although the cookies are always very, VERY dry.
Not only are the cookies dry, but the blood of Jesus tastes watered down and vaguely fruity.
Ken Ham = Napoleon (a la 1984)?
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
So the stakes are raised! Regardless, myself and my fellow CASH (Campus Atheists and Secular Humanists) members at UMN Twin Cities would love a field trip!
Frickin frackin late night posting. I’ve been up for too long. Meant to post:
Ken Ham = Napoleon (a la Animal Farm)
Off topic, Professor Myers, but I was wondering what you might think about this.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6146292.stm
Personally I didn’t find the “alien rain” hypothesis very convincing.
Did they get the dogs to sign that young-earth statement of faith required of the employees?
Besides, wouldn’t the dogs be too smart to agree?
Andy, dogs will say anything for food. You could have fed them a few minutes before and they will still give you the “I’m starving, I haven’t eaten in a week” look to try to get more. Sure they look innocent but they are sneaky!
Cats, on the other hand, will of course regard everyone as beneath them. If they were attack cats they would look at it as “Whatever you say you stupid monkey thing, now move over so I can warm up in the sunbeam. If you want me to attack someone, I may or may not- that all depends.”
Your dog wants Darwinists.
Sweet, dogs being trained to bite creationists!
Oh, I’d like to know more about that red rain. I searched and found this CNN article saying:
“Specifically, Louis has isolated strange, thick-walled, red-tinted cell-like structures about 10 microns in size. Stranger still, dozens of his experiments suggest that the particles may lack DNA yet still reproduce plentifully, even in water superheated to nearly 600 degrees Fahrenheit . (The known upper limit for life in water is about 250 degrees Fahrenheit .)”
http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/science/06/02/red.rain/index.html
the other “down to earth” hypotheses sound ridiculous if what they said above is true… blood from bats? WTF!
Anyone with any updates? PZ?
As for that Indian ‘Alien Red Rain’ phenomenon it was pretty much accepted at the time that it was an easily explainable biological phenomenon, involving a spore forming lichen (theres an official report here – http://www.geocities.com/iamgoddard/Sampath2001.pdf ). Its getting some recent publicity as an alien invasion due to a combination of a few left field scientists making panspermia claims and the usual really bad science reporting that we have come to expect from the bbc, cnn etc. Why on earth do these science reporters not try to find the scientific explanation for these things rather than simply report the headline grabbing pseudoscientific claims and leave it at that ?
But Mike, surely the Ham-ster would like me. I’m not one of those “Satan-huggin’, no-true-Christian” folks…I’m an atheist! ;)
What if we all bring Milk-Bones? I’m imagining one of the dogs going for Animatronic Adam’s…ummmm…”sensitive spot” when he squats and startles the pooch.
Bryn
Lichens spores don’t make sense if there really is no DNA in there, if they really can survive such high temps (and it seems they’re extremophiles, Louis’ article says they grow best at high temps), and it doesn’t explain how it only rained in that small area, the winds would have blown the cloud away. IF the reports of the flash and sonic boom are right, it doesn’t really make sense either, Oh, and another thing is that Louis’ papers say the spores are CHEMOSYNTHETIC. As far as I know there are no chemosynthetic lichen algae.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_rain_in_Kerala
You can find Louis’ papers at the bottom.
You are correct, lichen spores would not make sense as an explanation if there was no DNA present. If they simply didnt detect it due to inefficient detection techniques or through analysing degraded samples then that is another matter. I noticed that when samples were sent to the University of Cardiff DNA WAS detected – although they didnt give too much details of the results of their analysis.
All caryy packets of doggy-food in your pockets, and throw the contents to the starving woofs.
Alternatively, aniseed essesnce?
Or, if you can stand it, well-rotted garlic -apparently it completely scres up a dog’s sense of smell, and the poor things don’t even know which way is up!
Better still – a pet Lynx ……
On the “Red Rain”, the following sounds very plausible:
This would seem to explain many of the observations referenced above, though even so they strike me as quite remarkable…
Incidentally, while I’m not a scientist, I find the extraterrestrial origin of the spores unlikely. The article states that Louis and Kumar estimate a total of 50,000kg of the red particles falling over Kerala. It seems logical to conclude that, if they were of extraterrestrial origin, the total mass of the object carrying them was much higher–even in the rather unlikely event that it was composed entirely of these particles, much of its mass would have been vaporized by the entry into earth’s atmosphere, leaving no recognizable cell-like structures. More realistically, the particles would likely be suspended in primarily water ice, with, perhaps, an unknown mass of rock above and beyond that. I do not, unfortunately, have a meaningful idea of how large a proportion of the mass of the object the particles that fell with the rain could be meaningfully expected to account for; five percent sounds very, very high to me but I’ll go with it for the sake of argument. With that assumption, we’re looking at about a million kilograms minimum for the meteor/comet (equal to a weight of 227 tons in earth-normal gravity, for the metric-impaired).
One question, though, before I painstakingly calculate it. Does anyone have an estimate of the MASS of the Tunguska object?
Gah, posted too soon. “Mass” is in caps because I’m getting a bit tired of finding nothing but estimates of the diameter.
Anyway, I’ll do the math on this tomorrow and maybe do a write-up of some sort in the relatively near future.
Alright! All we need is a few brave … um … souls to rub themselves down with … um … HAMburger and get attacked by the dogs. Then we can then sue the place out of existence or take it over and run it as a museum about how silly creationism is, installing actual science displays to show how kooky the YECs are.
If you play dead the dogs (probably) won’t hurt you … much.
but doesn’t the thought of attack dogs being attached to a ministry strike him as being incongruent at all?
Erm, just to be a bit pedantic, those aren’t attack dogs (which aren’t the same thing as a guard dog), and Malinois aren’t good attack dogs… too easy to drive off. I think Ken just likes the idea of having dogs, but is afraid of Rottweilers.
If you want to get past her bring a sleeve (she thinks it’s a toy and you are playing tug-o-war – check the pictures) and some dog treats.
LOL, creationist schutzhund. Too funny.
Of course, if they want the dogs to bite anything other than a sleeve, they’ll need to invest in a hidden sleeve and a bite suit, which is what is generally used for training K-9s. My favorite real attack dog training picture is from the Czech Border Patrol kennel, showing an unfortunate individual being bitten in the groin by a large German Shepherd. Now *that* will stop an intruder.
I will speculate that there is no way in hell that you guys will get anywhere near that place as an announced group.
I have a personal hypothesis that a case can be made to show that dogs are the most successful species on earth.
I think they have conciousley exploited humans by merely retaining their juvenile traits.
Dale,
I would argue that cats are more successful. They have exploited humans to a far greater degree than dogs, and with less adaptation required on their part. A domestic cat is almost the same as a wildcat, with just a few minor tweaks (like sweeter voices), and all they’ve been required to do is catch vermin, which they like to do anyway. A domestic dog is far from the ancestral wolf, and for the privilege of living with us we’ve made them learn to do all sorts of useful tricks, and most of them (toy poodles, bichon frise, etc. excepted) get pampered less than the typical housecat.
MJ,
Anyone that will stand there in defense of cats for anything other than a food source should be euthanized immediately. ;)
Do Creationist dogs working at the museum have to sign a statment denying their origins from wolves?
Dale,
Food source for dogs or humans? You don’t run a Chinese restuarant, by any chance, do you?
MJ,
No, I don’t run a chinese restaurant.
I am, however working on becoming a haruspex and cats make a perfect specimen.
From the Ham site:
Vicious attack dogs (the “partners” in question) are part of their ministry.
Think about that for a minute.
Azkyroth said:
Errrmmm; 10^6 kilos is about 10^3 tonnes (c 1,000 tons), since 10^3 kilos = 1 tonne.
Estimate of 4.2 x 10^7 tonnes from this link, assuming it was rock: http://www.psi.edu/projects/siberia/siberia.html
I said (wrongly):
Oops – that should be 4.2×10^7 kilos – or 4.2×10^4 tonnes.
Good Christians don’t mess with no dogs.
Leviticus 11:27
BTW, PZ, I added a little comment on this story to my latest anti-fanatic spew. Thanks for the pointer. Ham’s glee regarding his dogs is disturbing — and in the worst case, it might herald a trend.
“Whatever goes on its paws, among all animals that go on all fours, they are unclean to you. Whoever touches their carcass shall be unclean until the evening.”
Well, that sounds about right, given the exuberance many dogs have for rolling around in dead and/or stinky things.
A blog without the option to comment as featured by the Creationists BS site usually means an extreme stance towards commercial interests.
They are not interested in controversy (as they proclaim), but rather THEY (at least the view masterminds behind this new movements) are merely interested in stupid people`s pockets.
Yeah, but 1 ton = 2000 lbs = ~4400 kg. Hence the “for the metric-impaired.”
Hmm. Thanks, I’ll run the math, but it’s abundantly clear from your figures, unless I’m misreading them, that there is NO WAY IN HELL the airburst of an incoming object that size would plausibly fail to be noticed.
Vicious attack dogs (the “partners” in question) are part of their ministry.
Think about that for a minute.
I dunno, I’ve got a Rottie that makes me say “Jesus Christ” on a regular basis.
Usually closely followed by “Get off the bed”/”put that down”/”stop licking the cat”
Ummmmm…”licking the cat” or “tasting the cat”?
“Needs a little salt….maybe some salsa….”