I believe I’ve shown this video here before, but it’s pretty, so look at it again.
However, Our Descent into Madness asks whether this is “magical or gross”. You all know the correct answer.
Neither!
It’s beautiful and entirely, gloriously, perfectly NATURAL.
Apparently, they also frequent the professoriate.
I got some email today with lots of constructive suggestions (See? Not all my email is evil!) for how we ought to change the education of biology students — such as by giving them a foundation in the history and philosophy of our science, using creationist arguments as bad examples so the students can see the errors for themselves, etc. — and it was absolutely brilliant, even the parts where he disagreed with some things I’d written before. Best email ever!
Of course, what helped is that I spent my summer “vacation” putting together a new freshman first semester course for biology majors that I’m teaching for the first time right now, and it’s exactly the course he described. It was eerie, like one of my future students had invented a time machine and come back into the past to tell me what to do. A lot of the course content is locked up behind a password-protected firewall, I’m afraid, but just to show you what I’m talking about, I’ll put the course schedule below the fold.
Daniel Cooper knows how to properly evaluate what’s important. He’s George W. Bush’s undersecretary for benefits at the Department of Veterans Affairs. We’re in the middle of a bloody, wasteful war, and we’ve got lots of veterans who deserve support and, you know, benefits, so I think Mr Cooper’s job is fairly important.
What does Mr Cooper think is important? He’s made a video for Campus Crusade for Christ in which he plainly spells out where his priorities lie.
Poor Pastor Ted had been fired from the New Life Church, and was trying to get his life together. He put out a plea claiming poverty and soliciting donations to support his new calling, ministering to the poor at a halfway house. Your humble narrator was righteously suspicious.
In the latest turn of events, his former church tut-tuts reprovingly at his unseemly begging for handouts, and tells everyone about his $138,000 severance pay. The halfway house, aghast, says Mr Haggard sure isn’t moving in with them, and there’s no way he’s going to be counseling the needy. What will happen to the wayward minister?
Haggard will not be doing any ministry and instead will be seeking secular employment…
Surely, hijinks will ensue!
Do you know any cell biology? Any biology at all? Then you might want to stop reading now. Here’s something to make any competent biology instructor weep.
Friends for a Non-Violent World (FNVW)
Presents:
Leaving Iraq Now
Why it’s the best chance for peace & security and why September is our best
chance to make it happen.
Phil Steger
In Morris on
Saturday, September 8
11 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.
Morris Public Library
America needs an “end the war” push in
the last months of 2007 to equal the “no
to war” push of 2003. Bring friends, neigh-
bors, family members. Learn why leaving
is the best, most just, most secure choice
for Iraqis and Americans. Learn why Sep-
tember is a must-act month for ending the
war and what YOU can do.
Phil Steger is a three-time traveler to Iraq and has
been one of Minnesota’s most prominent, widely
seen and best received voices explaining, opposing,
and proposing solutions to the U.S. war in Iraq. He
was executive director of FNVW from 2002 to 2007.
It’s been a regular gay social whirl here at Chez Myers; we’re having a party tonight, and last night, we had visitors from the Great White North, or “Ottawa” as they quaintly called it: Eamon Knight and Theo Bromine, familiar names to old hands at talk.origins. And they brought Canadian beer! I encourage all Canadians to feel free to swing south and stop by, as long as they follow suit. (It’s a beer called Maudite, appropriately enough, and I just got a close look at the label: 8% alcohol! Hide the lampshades, I’m going to be dancing tonight!)
Unfortunately, while they were gawking at the Big City of Morris — impressed, I’m sure, by the absence of large trees, polar bears, and glaciers — Canada got a little crazier. Or revealed some long-hidden lunacy.
John Vanasselt, with the Ontario Alliance of Christian Schools, said there is no reason why Ontario shouldn’t join other provinces that make room for religious beliefs within the public education system.
The alliance’s 78 schools already teach evolution in science class, but it is taught on par with creationism, he said.
It sounds to me like Mr Vanasselt has just made a case for removing state support from Canadian religious schools.
Don’t let this stop you all from visiting me, though: really, there’s no causal relationship between saying hello to that evil atheist in Minnesota and having your home transported back into the Middle Ages!
Our president has been away in Australia. Who knew? Who cares? I only care because Australia has some of the most venomous wildlife around, and because anything that sends the asshole-in-chief to the other side of the planet is a good thing.
Anyway, the Australians waste $A165 million on security, rather than giving Bush a few hundred dollars and telling him to go play with the stingrays up around the Great Barrier Reef, and look what happens: a comedy troupe gussies up a few cars to look officially Canadian, and drove an Osama bin Laden imitator right up to the president’s hotel. They simultaneously showed that all this anti-terrorist security nonsense is pure performance art made to inflate the egos of the government and instill fear in our citizens, and made a sharp jab at our president’s priorities and accomplishments.
Bravo. Brilliant.
Now, please, can we impeach the incompetent boob? He’s an evil joke. We really need to end the long national embarrassment.
It’s Friday! I have no classes today, so this is the day where I desperately struggle to catch up with the backlog; it also happens to be the day we’re hosting a party at our house (you’re invited: 5:30, my place, across the street from the university; everyone who is anyone will be there). If you can’t make it, I expect you to make small talk and chat sociably in this open thread.
Here are a few ice-breakers to help you get started.
The next edition of the Tangled Bank will be at the Behavioral Ecology blog — send those links in to me or host@tangledbank.net before Wednesday, 12 September.
