Comments

  3. Ichthyic says

    Is a rousing chorus of “Blame Canada” in the works?

    all those flapping heads and beady eyes.

    *shudder*

    :P

  11. Matt the heathen says

    I saw my old QM prof in the screen cap and my heart skipped a beat…

    Pretty good job with the video guys…

  13. says

    Seriously, my university is the best!

    I think I TA’d in the classroom that the camera pans across as he says, “Anyone? Anyone?”

    Okay, that classroom kinda sucked. The desks were uncomfortable.

  14. says

    This is an incredible piece of craziness. These guys are hysterical. I found out about Pastafarianism through the letter that they wrote to the Kansas school board over the ID in schools debate, and these guys are awesome.

  16. says

    They didn’t show your interview, PZ! Maybe they realized that your testimony would be so convincing, no one would ever believe in the FSM again.

  17. says

    I wonder if Mike Caldwell would like to collaborate with me on the question of what the FSM’s role was in the origin of snakes. There have definitely been numerous parallel instances of increased noodliness among squamate reptiles, which can hardly be a coincidence. This is an important area for testing the FSM design theory.

  19. says

    There’s a bit more regarding the Roger Moore invite/disinvite/accusation story, plus some transparent lies (“not polished enough”) for why critics are carefully kept from seeing their dishonest production. NYT:

    The film, which takes a position on intelligent design shared by President Bush, has also been shown at California Baptist University and the Dallas Theological Seminary. Glowing reviews have popped up on AnswersInGenesis.org, whose co-chief executive, Ken Ham, founded the Creation Museum, and in The American Spectator, whose senior editor, Tom Bethell, said that the movie evoked “tears of joy.”

    Mr. Lauer said the marketing strategy was “about finding and serving people with deep-seated motivations” and then hoping those people would talk up the movie to their friends. The general media will be invited to screenings in early April, he said.

    Logan Craft, executive producer of “Expelled” and chief of Premise Media, said he thought Mr. Moore had been wrong to attend the screening after being disinvited, but both he and Mr. Lauer denied any involvement in an online “media alert” that purported to be from a backer of the film. The alert accused Mr. Moore of posing as a minister to gain admission, calling his actions a “security breach.” Mr. Moore said he never represented himself as other than a reporter.

    After Mr. Moore’s review, Mr. Stein commented, “Oh well. This will probably happen a lot more times.”

    http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/10/business/media/10stein.html?_r=1&ref=business&oref=slogin

    Moore’s take:

    My position on this is that I am not going to let Lauer and company sneak another movie out with lots of like-minded preachers and lay-people “reviewing” it before I do, aka The Passion of the Christ. A whole lot of conservative Christians endorsed that movie prior to its release and apparently didn’t recognize its anti-Semitism. They praised Mel Gibson to the high heavens (sorry) until he was outed as the raving anti-Semite that he actually is. Real critics, even non-Jews (like myself) spotted the film’s hateful caricatures of Jews right off.

    On another note, it is odd that, by strange coincidence, much of the anti-Golden Compass mass-emailing that I wrote about back last fall, some of it very nasty, with return-email addresses from Nashville churches, comes from the same town as Lauer’s company. Is Motive behind these nasty astro-turf “grass-roots” chain letters? If so, who paid them? Bill Donohue and the Catholic League? Just wondering.

    http://blogs.orlandosentinel.com/entertainment_movies_blog/2008/03/expelledben-ste.html

    Glen D
    http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7

  20. Tim Tesar says

    I just viewed the real “Expelled” trailer for the first time. How disgusting! But, in response to Stein’s questions at the end, I suggest that biology departments at all universities organize showings of “Expelled” for their faculty, and then keep track of all the faculty who attended the showings to determine how many were were subsequently fired for viewing the film.

  21. says

    LIES, LIES, LIES!

    Using made up data, like other Fairy believers & neo-cons, doesn’t help your case.

    Piracy has increased worldwide in the past decade while global mean temperatures have continued to increase. This data debunks your so-called FSM theory.

    Now, if Pastafarianism is a real religion then true believers will deny the data in favor of their Faith. Wait, that’s already the case! They know that the data doesn’t support their theory. Yet they continue to believe. Just like the Sub-Geniuses who continue to make excuses for the failure of their religion to correctly predict the end of the world.

    The good thing about both of these religions is that they make predictions about reality that can be tested, like the Monotheists’ predictions that the world has corners, whales are fish and that the relationship between the circumference & diameter of a circle is 3/1.

    The bad thing about all these religions is their unwillingness to admit their errors & disappear.

    Bob, the flying spaghetti monster & god have all been proven to be wrong by their own predictions.

  23. says

    According to a Discovery Institute senior fellow, the persecution being suffered by the cdesign proponentists has got so bad that they’re having to dress up in disguise to protect themselves. No, really:

    A biologist I know recently bleached his hair and changed his appearance in other ways so as to be almost unrecognizable. I’m being deliberately vague about his looks and identity because he was going undercover. When I last saw him, he was ready for a stint of researching and lab work on intelligent design at a university that he declined to name. On returning to the lab after winter break, he said he would adopt a different disguise. … The purpose is to avoid being spotted by scientists hostile to intelligent design (ID). If Darwinists realized that this stealthy biologist was working in their midst, as the guest of a professor at the same university, they could make that host professor pay a heavy career price.

    One can only speculate about the details of Dr Secret’s disguise. Some spectacles, perhaps? Or a cheap tuxedo?

  24. Chris says

    I laughed at the narrator’s reference to an “amateur, unregistered physicist.” That’s about the level of credibility of ID’s supporters. (What’s an unregistered physicist? Is there a physicist registry?)

  25. LisaJ says

    That was great! We Canadians are one clever bunch ;) I also really appreciated the ‘amateur physicist’ statement. Perfect.

  26. Chris says

    Damn, eh? Word got out and about about our plan! Quick, grab a Timmy’s and your sticks and go lay them out in the corners, eh!

  27. says

    According to a Discovery Institute senior fellow, the persecution being suffered by the cdesign proponentists has got so bad that they’re having to dress up in disguise to protect themselves.

    Has anyone ever been physically attacked for being a cdesign proponentsist? I do not recall any, while evolutionists have rarely been attacked physically (often verbally).

    On the other side of the coin, we have often seen IDists/creationists hide or disguise their beliefs and intentions, for the obvious fact that they hang onto a disreputable belief. Indeed they hide, for their claims cannot withstand scrutiny.

    The most senseless claim of all is that there are many IDists who are afraid to reveal their IDist leanings due to “persecution.” One might argue so prior to their getting tenure (the counterargument is that junk science should not be respected–I’m just giving the devil his “argument” outside of the parentheses), but if they’re good enough to get tenure, they have no reason to fear, unless they think that ID really does not have the goods to stand up to scrutiny.

    And sure, if they’re spouting a bunch of mindless nonsense, they will not be pleased with the reception they receive. That’s true of countless physics cranks as well, for archeologists who believe in Atlantis, and for psychologists who accept alien abductions largely at face value (and yet we have one who publicly espouses this junk–and although I don’t believe in aliens flying around in saucers, I do think aliens (more likely, alien machines) in UFOs are far closer to being a live (if small) possibility than are the abductions, which, though common, somehow always escape being recorded by anybody).

    It all goes back to the fact that ID isn’t science, and even the believers (at least those in academia) know it under their conscious selves, and probably sometimes within their conscious selves. Sure they hide, since they must hide from the scrutiny of their threadbare web.

    Glen D
    http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7

  28. Don Smith, FCD says

    He’s not a true Pastafarian. He said “His Noodleness”! And not once did RAmen cross his lips!

  29. Alexander says

    just remember:

    Canada is to the USA as Macedonia is to Greece.

    Yes take heart Americans! Your greatest days are yet to be.

  30. JCE says

    Quaecumque Vera, indeed, and now I feel a need to cook noodles for dinner. Yarrrr!

    Another proud UofEh science alumnus delurking here. I wonder what my old Mechanisms of Evolution prof, since retired, would have said about the FSM? He had a (very)dry and subtle wit and his statement on the first day of class regarding those who could not put scientific thinking ahead of religious doctrine was… pithy (cannot remember the wording but it was a colourful version of “leave now, there is a waiting list for this course”). OTOH I saw him once with my own eyes eating a plate of CAB fettucini!

    Thank you to the makers of the video (who have to know about this site, right? Doesn’t everyone?) for an entertaining and nostalgic seven minutes and for doing their part to dispell the “Albertan = Xian rw nutjob” stereotype.

  31. says

    I am impressed (and honoured) at the number of UofA alumni who read Pharyngula. I plan to keep up the good work here.

  32. says

    He’s not a true Pastafarian. He said “His Noodleness”! And not once did RAmen cross his lips!

    Do Canadians generally have trouble keeping noodles in their mouths?

    I admit, my brief time in Vancouver was spent in a sushi joint and some basic restaurant for my aunts’ wedding reception, so I didn’t get to experience Canadian noodle slurping and dribbling. But, that sounds kind of sad.

  33. Don Smith, FCD says

    Aw MAJeff, you collapsed it into its particulate form. It was supposed to remain a duality.

  38. says

    lose weight feel great. Lose those extra pounds to look the perfect bikini shape this summer. got no day time? Adjust it in your beauty sleep time. try the all new line of weight loss products to give u the shape u always wanted.