Since I brought up the hype for this Diesel fashion show, Phil has revealed that you can now watch it on the web.
It’s some kind of holographic light show on a fashion runway. I don’t know what the point of all the skinny people wandering around in clothes might have been, though. It didn’t make me want to buy any clothes, but a battery of lasers is looking more and more attractive.
Eamon Knight finds an irritating debate (you can listen to the podcast) between a real evolutionary biologist, Jerry Coyne, and a theologian and a philosopher, and … Paul Nelson of the Discovery Institute. The first three are all pro-evolution (although I found the theologian to be annoyingly apologetic for religion, naturally enough; Denis Lamoureux is a weird and obnoxious kind of Christian who seems to use science as a tool to proselytize) and Nelson fulfills the stereotype: he opens the debate with a quotemine and gross misrepresentation. He claims that W. Ford Doolittle rejects common descent. He claims that this notion that “all living things share a common ancestor” is being challenged; unfortunately and misleadingly, he puts the emphasis in the wrong place. Doolittle would say that “all living things share a common ancestor”. Doolittle argues that there was a large pool of organisms down near the root of the tree of life that liberally swapped genes among one another, so that you can’t trace life back to a single common ancestor — you can trace it back to a large population where species distinctions were greatly blurred.
Misrepresentation of legitimate scientists it’s about all Nelson brings to the debate. It’s an excellent example of why it’s a waste of time to treat these kooks as fair and equal and trustworthy.
For another example, Nelson claims that one justification for pushing ID is that our past understanding of biology was flawed (not that he says anything that ID contributes to our current understanding). He claims that when he was in school he was taught that “cells are just bags of enzymes”, and that ID has revealed all these amazing, unexplainable “molecular machines.” Nelson is about my age or younger; when I was taught cell biology back in those same dark ages, I certainly was not taught any such nonsense. Compartments and transport, for instance, were major parts of the curriculum.
It’s not just that these creationists don’t understand biology — it’s that they actively lie about biology. Don’t trust them.
Mike Dunford has another recent example of Nelson mangling a scientific conclusion.
Hey, if you’ve been wondering what the sex symbols of science blogging look like, here’s your chance: a video of some bloggin’ microbiologists hanging out in Toronto.
Although, that title … it’s hard to imagine an uglier word than “blog,” but they managed to coin one.
Whoa…there were a lot of people at Drinking Liberally last night, and I was rather overwhelmed with all of the introductions. How about if attendees use this thread to tell everyone and remind me of who you are—pass along links to your Seattle blog, too, or give us links to pictures.
It was a great evening, and the only blemish is that there are now about 50 more people who know that I’m not ten feet tall and that I don’t breathe fire.
You’re all going to be jealous as you learn who I met last night — the accounts (and photos) are trickling in. Other people at DL were:
A high school student loans a friend, another high school student, his copy of The God Delusion. Two things happen: the friend’s father loses his cool and complains to their school, and a school administrator suggests that this was an establishment clause violation. And this was at a school that allowed the Gideons to distribute bibles in the parking lot!
At least the lunatic father finally returned the book.
It’s ironic. I get accused of being some kind of deranged militant atheist, yet when my kids got handed tracts and evangelical comic books and were asked to attend church and sunday school with their friends (and all of those were reasonably common events), I just gave ’em the thumbs up, read the comics myself (they were uniformly terrible), and shooed ’em out the door on Sunday morning. Yet scrubbing the information their kids are allowed to see is common practice among the religious — it’s the primary reason for Christian home schooling, for instance.
I’ve always figured I was just boosting their intellectual immune system.
(via the Friendly Atheist)
TR Gregory is wondering whether a blog post can do anything worthwhile … and so he’s trying to encourage donations and contributions to his parents’ new charitable project, The Livingstone Performing Arts Foundation. This is an effort to set up a self-sustaining institution that will benefit the people of Zambia economically, and also preserve the tradition of the arts in that country. Visit the site, and support the cause!
We made a visit to my boyhood home, the small town of Kent, Washington. It’s changed — it’s been commercialized and yuppified and embiggened beyond all recognition — but I thought everyone would appreciate seeing the shrines erected in my hometown to me.
Here’s your next chance to intercept me: I’ll be at the Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally, at the Montlake Ale House tonight at 8:00. Last chance until Friday!
By the way, if you’re wondering which one is me, I’ll be wearing this t-shirt.
One of the early blogs that I very much enjoyed was The Rittenhouse Review, a Philly blog which I discovered shortly after leaving Philadelphia. It had gone quiet a while ago, rather mysteriously — it’s another of those odd things about this medium that there can be so few signs of what’s going on in real life from what we see online — but sadly, we now learn that the author, Jim Capozzola has died after a long illness.
There’s a rather unsurprising study that shows babies can “lie” at a very early age, deceiving their parents with fake cries as early as six months (any parents out there? You know this is trivial—kids pop out of the birth canal as greedy, selfish little beasts who will do anything to cajole their way into your heart.) Now look at how a fundie blog spins the story: it’s sin! It confirms what the Bible tells us, that we are born into sin! And then the author asks, “What stories (humorous, preferably) can you share about how your children demonstrate they, too, are sinful from birth?”
It will make you groan with boredom. There follows a discussion of whether Jesus would have faked a cry to get Mommy’s attention (no, apparently not) and the most boring anecdotes about kids ever. It’s pathetic and tedious and clueless all at once.
I recommend you read these stories instead. The heathen are much, much more entertaining.
