These campus freethought groups are growing fast, and the SSA is a national umbrella organization that advises many students — it’s a great cause. They are trying to raise money to contribute towards more student support — help ’em out!
Aaargh, you keep filling up threads! I’m closing this one, you can continue the discussion here, if necessary.
While everyone here is distracted by the debate over whether a cracker is tasteless bread dough or a sacred slice of man/god meat, the right-wing source of outrage du jour is a widely published photograph of an Iranian missile test in which one of the missiles was clearly photoshopped into the picture. Gary Farber cuts through the crap and points out that yes, government propaganda agencies will lie to you. So?
If the right wing wants to fuel more hysteria to incite war with Iran, though, it seems like a mistake on their part to emphasize that one quarter of their weaponry are digital confabulations.
One of the best things about following the antics of creationists is that it gives you a better appreciation of the creative power of the human mind…which isn’t anywhere near as powerful as reality. Here’s another example of creationist rationalization that doesn’t hold up well under even casual inspection.
With the notable exception of the American Bison most mammals have two separate pleural or lung cavities. As we all know, one side of our chest can be penetrated collapsing that lung, but the other side remains intact and the remaining lung can support life. The bison has what is called an incomplete mediastinum, that is there is but one pleural cavity containing both lungs. Thus the problem for the Native bow hunter with or without a horse is solved. An arrow must only penetrate the chest at any point and both lungs collapse. The fatally wounded animal would only continue a few yards providing unlimited food, clothing and tools. Before the availability of horses bison could be shot by stealth from a blind or other hiding place. One problem is solved yet another serious comes to mind…a problem seldom mentioned, yet demanding an answer.
The problem is for the evolutionist. Other than providing food for hungry people, of what selective advantage is an incompletely divided mediastinum? From an evolutionary sense this makes absolutely no sense. Indeed conventional wisdom would argue for its elimination from the gene pool. Yet it did remain and fed a continent of Native American for centuries. It must indeed require faith and dedication to remain an evolutionist. I am glad I know the Creator of Bison and Native Americans. You can know Him too.
So, wait…God hates bison? Doesn’t this create a logical problem for the creationist, in that God has made the primary large game animal targeted by the Native Americans exceptionally fragile?
And let’s question that assumption: bison aren’t particularly weak, and there’s no reason to assume that selection would work to promote the evolution of dual compartments in the chest cavity — that’s almost certainly an embryological accident in the first place. How many wild animals are running around with only one lung? Not many. If you’re attacked in such a way that your chest cavity is perforated, the only difference between a separated and unseparated mediastinum is whether your death will be slow or quick.
And of course, I thought the Hebrews were the chosen people. How come God didn’t give the Middle East a population of big game animals they could knock over with a good sharp poke?
Canadian Cynic has a nice sharp rebuttal: “…if God had really cared about native Americans, he might have given them immunity to smallpox.”
I was interviewed on The Inner Side last night — if you live in Houston, you may have already heard it. If not, you can get the mp3 at that link.
In a great big ugly oops, the A/V geeks at TAM6 were not true geeks in that they screwed up and lost all the audio of an entire day’s worth of recordings at the meeting. This is bad, because it means all the clever slams and insults given to Phil Plait will not be passed down to posterity. If you’ve got recordings of the event, contact the skeptics and help them out.
(I suppose we could all just call in and make fresh new jokes at Phil’s expense, but they wouldn’t sync with our lip movements as well.)
So far today, I have received 39 pieces of personal hate mail of varying degrees of literacy, all because I was rude to a cracker. Four of them have included death threats, a personal one day record. Thirty-four of them have demanded that I be fired. Twenty-five of them have told me to desecrate a copy of the Koran, instead, or in some similar way offend Muslims, because — in a multiplicity of ironic cluelessness — apparently only some religious icons must be protected, and I would only offend Catholics because they are all so nice that none of them would wish me harm. I even have one email that says I should be fired, that the author would like to kill me, and that I only criticize because Catholics are so gentle and kind.
Oh, and of course, the university president’s office has also received lots of mail demanding my immediate ouster (keep in mind, though…Catholics are no threat to anyone at all.) I don’t know how much, but since Donohue published the president’s email address and not mine, I imagine it’s much greater than what I’ve seen. Those lovely Dark Age fanatics at the Catholic League have started a write-in campaign to start up an inquisition.
So no poll-crashing today. Instead, I would appreciate it if you would write a short note to President Robert Bruininks in support (he’s going to hate me for this). I have to ask for a few constraints, though: only do so if you are willing to sign a real name to it — most of the complaint mail I’m getting uses fake names, making it much less persuasive — and that, unlike the religious screeds I’m seeing, you take the time to proofread and send him something that at least looks like a high school graduate wrote it, which will put you way above the level of the hate mail. Be polite and rational, too!
If you really want to impress, send him regular mail at this address:
President Robert H. Bruininks
202 Morrill Hall
100 Church Street S.E.
University of Minnesota
Minneapolis, MN 55455
Bill Donohue has a loud, braying voice, and he’s already trying to stir up a witch hunt. We need a counter-campaign from the secular community.
Whoa, this one is getting heavy traffic and we need to close it down and reroute. Continue the discussion here, if you must.
Because performance all over scienceblogs starts to suffer when a comment thread gets too long, I’m closing the thread in which I grievously insult a cracker…but if you must, you can continue here.
Greg Laden has created a festival of LOLcats for the latest edition of the Tangled Bank. Should I be appalled or amused? Science is serious business! We never laugh, we’re all supposed to be like Mr Spock!
