And Dorid is working on a coloring book.
I have no idea how atheism is getting all tangled up with squid.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
And Dorid is working on a coloring book.
I have no idea how atheism is getting all tangled up with squid.
Paul Davies has written a curious op-ed that has been blithely published by the New York Times. I’m not sure why the NYT saw fit to publish it, except that Davies does have a reputation as a popularizer of physics, and as something of an apologist for deism; they certainly couldn’t have chosen to print it on its merits. His argument is the tired and familiar claim that science has to be taken on faith, so it’s just like religion. I recall hearing variants on this back in the schoolyard, usually punctuated with “nyaa nyaas” and assertions about each others’ mothers, and while we may not have said much about science, the principle was the same. Citing a false equivalency is a cheap argument, but not very credible.
This is quite possibly the most depressing story of the year, because it says so much about the amoral nature of some people: A 48 year old woman named Lori Drew poses as a cute 16 year old boy on myspace, leads Megan Meier, a 13 year old neighbor, on, then turns on her and drives her to suicide. Then afterwards she pretends to be a good friend to the family for several weeks, until the charade is exposed. The LA Times has an editorial, and The Smoking Gun has the police documents.
What kind of psychopath would elect to hound children into suicide? And show no remorse at all afterwards?
I’m not cynical enough to be able to cope with this kind of evil.
They discriminate against people with sharp pointy spears!
Today is the 148th anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. Enjoy those Thanksgiving leftovers!
The NY Times sent a reporter to the First Conference on Creation Geology, and came back with a discouraging tale of creationist blindness. The two stars are Kurt Wise, old school, and Marcus Ross, new school. Ross recently recieved a Ph.D. for his paleontological work on mosasaurs — marine reptiles from 65 million years ago — yet he also goes to creationist conferences and touts his belief that the earth is less than ten thousand years old. The dissonance does not disturb him at all.
Michael Hanscom gets a very amusing advertisement:
THE PROBLEM IS NOT TESTOSTERONE – The Problem Is That You Are Being Deluged with Female Hormones. You Are Being Feminized and You Don’t Even Know It.
It’s for one of those fake ‘natural male enhancement’ products, but it has an interesting premise: that your impotency problems are not your fault, but a consequence of the flood of estrogen entering our drinking water. You need Estro-Blaster to blast the estrogen out of your system. This product looks like total bunkum, but I had to admire the ad copy — if I were a completely unethical, greedy slime-weasel, I’d want to invest in this company. It does a beautiful job of tapping right into certain male fears.
You’ve managed to remove your li’l Bush clone.
Conservative Prime Minister John Howard suffered a humiliating defeat Saturday at the hands of the left-leaning opposition, whose leader has promised to immediately sign the Kyoto Protocol on global warming and withdraw Australia’s combat troops from Iraq.
Labor Party head Kevin Rudd’s pledges on global warming and Iraq move Australia sharply away from policies that had made Howard one of President Bush’s staunchest allies.
All the articles I read on the Australian elections used the lovely phrase “humiliating defeat.” I like it. Now we just need to humiliate our wanking Republican politicians here at home.
Here’s a fun little toy from the Science Museum — use a little physics and logic to bounce a ball into a target. Don’t show it to the kids or they’ll take the computer away from you!
(via Unhindered by Talent)
