My next office chair

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Now this is the pinnacle of office domination furnishings. Imagine, a student comes in to complain about his grade, and I push a button: my chair rises up to tower above the trembling supplicant, and stalks across the room bearing the professor, who in a booming voice declares, “You dare? You dare to question my decisions?“

It’s much more intimidating than the trap door to the spiky room in the basement or the discreet ceiling-mounted lasers I’m using now. We tyrant kings all know that spectacle is an important component of effective oppression.

First they came for the pirates…

Morgan Smith is six years old and is going to have a birthday party with a pirate theme. His parents hoisted a Jolly Roger up the flagpole, and…boom, some officious titzypritzel goes bustling off to the city council to complain. Down goes the flag. Now there is what a deranged bureaucrat might call a “happy ending”:

A Stafford Borough Council spokesman said: “A planning application has been made for a Jolly Roger flag to be flown at a property in Stone.

“The application is currently under review and will include planning officers looking at the impact the flag has on the area, with the decision expected by the end of this month.

“Legislation requires planning approval before it can be flown from the flagpole.”

Erk. That’s the antithesis of pirate. I say, hoist the flag, run out the cannon, and give the pretentious stuffed shirts at the Stafford Borough Council a broadside. Give that mob of six year olds cake, ice cream, and good sugary soft drinks, hand ’em each a cutlass, and turn ’em loose on the neighborhood. Yarrr, that’s the pirate solution.

“Explore Evolution”—displacing good science with ‘dumbed-down’ creationism

The various ID blogs are all atwitter over the new textbook the Discovery Institute is going to be peddling, Explore Evolution. I’ve seen a copy, but I’m not going to give an extensive review just yet. I will say that it’s taking a slightly different tack to avoid the court challenges. It does not mention gods anywhere, of course, but it goes further: it doesn’t mention Intelligent Design, either. The book is entirely about finding fault with evolution, under the pretext of presenting the position of evolutionary biology (sort of) together with a critique. The biology part is shallow, useless, and often wrong, and the critiques are basically just warmed over creationist arguments.

What it actually is is Jonathan Wells’ Icons of Evolution rewritten and reworked as a textbook.

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Keeping up with Behe

While we’re waiting for the Panda’s Thumb server to come back up, with some new material on Behe’s new book, I’ll recommend Blake Stacey’s dissection of the malaria mutants. This little fable that Behe summarized about the frequency of chloroquine-resistant mutations in the malaria parasite is the centerpiece of his book, and the important odds of 1 in 1020 was the yardstick by which he measured evolution — it was the magic number, the limit to evolution, the likelihood that a fairly simple set of mutations could occur … and the whole story is bogus. The book has been out for only about a week and the whole thing is just crumbling to pieces already.

Not that it will matter in the slightest, of course. The Edge of Evolution isn’t a science book, it’s a propaganda piece — and the big lies are just fine for that purpose.

That’s a sight to make a fellow toss his cookies

It’s an article titled “I love teaching evolution”…on the Chalcedon foundation page, in column on homeschooling, beneath a quote and a picture of crazy ol’ R.J. Rushdooney.

Evolution is a topic that repeatedly enters into our curriculum the same way that sin is a topic that gets covered in depth. How am I adequately educating my child if I fail to cover in detail the lies and deceptions that are prevalent in our humanistic culture? The Christian homeschooling parent must be prepared to understand, articulate, and refute the preposterous claims that currently serve as explanations for the origins of life and the presence of all creatures great and small. Fortunately, there are many good books and publishers that have taken the time to make this task much easier.

I think this one belongs to Greg Laden. I’m going to stagger off and rest my bedazzled, overloaded brains.

(thanks to Jesse for that horrible vision.)

If only banality disqualified one from running for president…

I passed on listening to the Democratic debates, so you can sure as heck bet I skipped the recent Republican debate. Just as well, too; the candidates got pressed on that evolution question again, and wouldn’t you know it, it simply triggered an avalanche of idiocy, with Mike Huckabee leading the way. Just look at these quotes.

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Tangled Bank #81

The Tangled Bank

The very freshest, sweetest, neatest Tangled Bank is now online. It’s got links! To science!

P.S. A few people are worried that the Panda’s Thumb seems to be down right now. They’re having some server problems, it’s nothing to be too concerned about (it is not an external attack), and they’re in the midst of migrating to a new server anyway, so all should be well again soon without too much fuss.