Comments

  3. Caine says

    Oh, I like the Hominidae Creche. I’d love to see that actually set up somewhere. Right next to a traditional nativity scene for preference. The howls of outrage would be heard across the land.

  4. Pope Bologna XIII - The Glorious High Sauceror of Pastafarianism and Grand Poobah of His Holy Meatba says

    And much red wine and spaghetti with meatballs was eaten. With a nice basil pesto.

  5. llewelly says

    Oh, by the way, in case anyone is wondering, the shape of the Atheistmas wreath represents the Element Carbon.
    You can tell because it depicts 3 elliptical curves, each representing 2 electrons. And we live in the age of Carbon.

  7. https://www.google.com/accounts/o8/id?id=AItOawncr0FDc8gdl7yJBz0SJ15D0etcTIOtL0s says

    We’re trimming the tree tonight, with mostly birds, a few each of food effigies, mammals, and fish, and a bead octopus and ditto jellyfish made by somebody or other at the California Academy of Sciences a few years ago. Eggnog and Cajun music and, well, the rest happens offstage, ‘scuse us.

    Today we bought our Big Present for each other. Happened across a shrinkwrapped (!) copy of that lovely new Buell-enhanced Zimmer book and we both had the same impulse to pounce. The thing didn’t even have a price on it but the store’s selling new books at 20% off this week.

    Happy monkey!

    Ron Sullivan
    http://toad.faultline.org

  8. Stellar Ash says

    My wife and I celebrate the Solstice. A wonderfully secular, astronomical event and it is the real reason for the season.

    Also, we support the new seasonal, secular holiday (I know, it’s an oxynoron) Agnostica! http://www.agnostica.com/ Invented by Nuclear Engr. Dr. Darren Bleuel

  9. llewelly says

    Hm, Atheistmas, Winter Solstice, Human Light, Agnostica … we have quite the plethora of godless December holidays.

  10. heironymous says

    Call it what you want. My family celebrates Christmas. When my little girl asks why I explain to her about the winter solstice and that tomorrow is the shortest day of the year. “And every day from tomorrow on, the day will get a little longer.”

    We sing all of the Christmas Carols, not just the secular ones. When she starts asking questions, I’ll just explain that they’re stories – just like Santa and Rudolph and Frosty.

    When her school performed the Nativity, I let her go ahead an perform (she loved being “angel number one”) It’s just another fictional play. We won’t hold her (or her little brother) out of Romeo and Juliet or Annie when the time comes either.

    Now, tomorrow, I’ve got to figure out where the son rises so I can build a scaled down version of Stonehenge on the front lawn for next year. Unfortunately the almost 2 feet of snow in the yard is gonna cause problems :)

    Anyone know where I can find pre-made kit for a lit up Stonehenge for Christmas time?

  12. Ibis3 says

    Just in case you didn’t go to the link, the caption at the bottom says

    Instead of elves, Professor Claus has grad students.

    I’ve been a Solstice celebrant for almost 20 years, but mostly call it Christmas when with my (almost) entirely secular family. It makes me happy to think that our society has nearly wrested the holiday back from its Christian prison.

  14. monado says

    You forgot the traditional recitation of all the elements of Christmas that came from other religious traditions and holidays.

    I saw the “Dead Sea scrolls” on Saturday, that is, a few fragments of about eight scrolls. The scrolls themselves have all been unravelled. One of the signs at the exhibit mentioned that Hercules was a re-purposed god. I didn’t remember the name but I just checked and the Akkadian Fox Star (deceit) had a god Erra-Nergal (drought, fire, fever, war, plague and death) was the Babylonian Nerigal or Erakal, from which the name Heracles was derived. (Gavin White, Babylonian Star Lore, p. 114.

  15. Sastra says

    heironymous #10 wrote:

    Call it what you want. My family celebrates Christmas.

    So does mine!

    The “call it what you want” view is probably the most subversive tactic in the whole so-called “War on Christmas.” Every secular Christmas helps make the “Christ” in Christmas as significant as the Saint in Valentine’s day, the Estre in Easter, and the hollow wienie in Halloween. Christmas, Christmas, Christmas. Jesus who?

    We’re not just “taking back” the midwinter holiday. We’re taking back the whole damn thing — love, peace, charity, family, presents, Santa, the tree, the carols, the food … and even the word Christmas. It’s a traditional word which need have nothing to do with actually believing the silly story.

  16. heironymous says

    @Caine – Hahaha – Absolutely :)

    I know where the son rises, my three-year-old is in our bed every morning before 7am …

  18. Romeo Vitelli says

    For the record, Professor Claus doesn’t depend on any stinkin’ magic reindeer to get around. He collects frequent flyer points instead.

  23. Caine says

    From Stardrake’s link @ 19:

    Garrison Keillor:

    it is wrong, wrong, wrong to rewrite “Silent Night.” If you don’t believe Jesus was God, OK, go write your own damn “Silent Night” and leave ours alone. This is spiritual piracy and cultural elitism and we Christians have stood for it long enough. And all those lousy holiday songs by Jewish guys that trash up the malls every year, Rudolph and the chestnuts and the rest of that dreck.

    This is humorous? Reads like sour grape wine to me. Silent Night isn’t part of your big book of myths, bub. If you didn’t like what Unitarians did to it, I guess you wouldn’t like Bob Rivers’ take. Spiritual piracy? Not me, my pirate gear’s at the cleaners.

    Christmas is a Christian holiday — if you’re not in the club, then buzz off. Celebrate Yule instead or dance around in druid robes for the solstice. Go light a big log, go wassailing and falalaing until you fall down, eat figgy pudding until you puke, but don’t mess with the Messiah.

    Touchy, touchy. Christmas is not christian, and most importantly, it’s whatever you make it.

  24. mrsubjunctive says

    Sastra @ #15: and the hollow wienie in Halloween

    Some day needs to be designated Solidween, then. If it caught on, “hallowed” and “hollowed” would be conflated in the minds of countless schoolchildren for generations.

    Maybe something in early or mid-August? We don’t really have any good August holidays.

  25. Owlmirror says

    Is it just me imagining things, or is the very top of the phylogenetic tree in fact a crocoduck?

    If so, <*snerk*>

    Maybe something in early or mid-August? We don’t really have any good August holidays.

    We could reinstate the Celtic holiday of Lúnasa.

  26. Ibis3 says

    #14 said

    One of the signs at the exhibit mentioned that Hercules was a re-purposed god. I didn’t remember the name but I just checked and the Akkadian Fox Star (deceit) had a god Erra-Nergal (drought, fire, fever, war, plague and death) was the Babylonian Nerigal or Erakal, from which the name Heracles was derived. (Gavin White, Babylonian Star Lore, p. 114.

    This is not true. Hera-kles has a clear Greek etymology: “Glory through Hera”. His elaborate mythology and cult are firmly centred in Greece (Boeotia/Thebes/Mt. Oeota), without hint of importation from the East (unlike, say, the tradition surrounding Dionysus).

  29. Numad says

    Where the hell did Garrison Keillor get “cultural elitism” from, anyway? The only thing that seems vaguely like it is Keillor’s own attitude:

    “Christmas is a Christian holiday — if you’re not in the club, then buzz off.”

    More directly On Topic I saw a good bit of a particular Charlie Brown christmas special this year and I think it was the one referenced there.

    It really was terrible in that sense.

  31. https://www.google.com/accounts/o8/id?id=AItOawncr0FDc8gdl7yJBz0SJ15D0etcTIOtL0s says

    Keillor has to be (broad-sense) Poeing. Has to. Please? (whimper) I mean, he must know “Silent Night” is a fucking translation. I could sing it in the original German at him, and that would be punishment enough.

    I know I live a sheltered life. I live in Berkeley, frfucksake. But come on. Has anyone examined Keillor for early Alzheimer’s? He’s making rather less sense than PTerry, never mind the nice red wine.

    Is cream of mushroom soup a dangerous drug? Or is it maybe something about getting ~famous~? I mean look what it did to Whoopi Goldberg.

    Ron Sullivan
    http://toad.faultline.org

  32. sugarbeth says

    We have a phylogenetic tree!

    We celebrate the Solstice, and I am waiting for the kiddos to fall asleep as I write. I’ve been collecting animal ornaments for the past 10 years or so, and have a huge collection of them now. I still need to get some molluscs, though!

    I love our tree. We put a sun on the top, too.

  33. SaintStephen says

    “…but don’t MESS with the MESSiah.”

    Did Garrison Keillor really say this? Clever! Sounds like he was drunk on rum-spiked eggnog:

    How MESS-I-ahm,
    how MESS-I-ahm
    Nobody knows
    how MESS-I-ah…m.

  34. Mr T says

    Prairie Home Companion has for a long time provoked me to recite Shakespeare. That is not often a good thing.

    Garrison Keillor is:

    … but a walking shadow, a poor player
    That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
    And then is heard no more: it is a tale
    Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
    Signifying nothing.

  35. toomanytribbles says

    i liked the charlie brown atheistmas best. linus always seemed to be smarter than those lines they used to give him.

  36. bad Jim says

    Lay off Keillor. His sense of humor is very, very dry. He talked about Rome and seeing the place where Martin Luther stayed when he visited and wondered why there wasn’t a plaque to commemorate the event. He plays a character in his own commentary, a rather dull Norwegian Lutheran. You don’t think Steven Colbert is actually a right-wing Catholic, do you?

    I don’t think atheists should have to explain why they celebrate Christmas. If the Chinese and Japanese can celebrate it despite its relative novelty, or if Iranians can celebrate the Zoroastrian festival of Yalda despite its antiquity, and since the Puritans strove to prohibit it as idolatry, we have as much right to every bit of it as anyone else.

  37. Sclerophanax says

    I love the phylogenetic tree and the Hominidae creche (I’d be tempted to make one myself if I could find enough good toy apes somewhere), but shouldn’t Professor Claus be asking “Have you been a rational little humanist?”

    It must be really annoying having to live in a culture where the winter solstice festival is commonly known by a christian name. Here in Finland we still call it by the pagan name “joulu” which has change relatively little from the Germanic root “jehwla”. It’s really funny to point this out to Finnish christians foaming about the “true meaning” of christmas.

  38. bad Jim says

    In any event, Christmas is a syncretic festival borrowing from a variety of traditions, many of modern origin, so we can embrace it as something we create ourselves.

    As an American I can take some pride in thinking that if it wasn’t Clement Moore it was probably another countryman who wrote “Tweeze denied beef worker isthmus”.

  39. Caine says

    bad Jim @ 36:

    You don’t think Steven Colbert is
    actually a right-wing Catholic, do you?

    Colbert is catholic. And while he plays a right wing character, it’s obvious – because he’s actually funny. Saying Keillor’s humor is dry doesn’t alter the fact that he’s not funny. What does come through is offensive bigotry.

  40. zhu-wuneng says

    I’ve never really gotten Keillor’s appeal; I hope they don’t revoke my psuedo-intellectual npr-pledger card, but there it is.

    As for the Nietzsche sweater, is there any knitter on board who could take a commission to knit one and mail it to me in China? Because I will seriously rock that shit!

  41. bad Jim says

    Concerning Keillor, is there anything particular sincere in something like

    And the second most wonderful was one in the Norwegian Arctic, where it rained every day and the sun came up around 11 and set around 1, not that you ever actually saw the sun, and the food was abominable, boiled cod and watery potatoes, and the people were cold and resentful, and there was no brilliance whatsoever. And I had the flu.

    Sure, you might not find it funny, but it’s hard to miss that the writer is signalling that he doesn’t mean exactly what he’s saying.

    FWIW, I attended a UU service yesterday, we sang carols, and one of them had indeed been slightly altered to avoid offending us godless. Bah. My disbelief is robust enough to let me belt out “Sing, choirs of angels”, &c, but I generally don’t because my voice is pretty lousy and few tunes actually need a drone accompaniment.

  42. davem says

    It makes me happy to think that our society has nearly wrested the holiday back from its Christian prison.

    All we need now, is to move it to the correct date, the 21st/22nd, to celebrate the actual solstice, and we’re done.

  43. zhu-wuneng says

    I swear, “it’s satire” is the new Nuremberg defense. Whenever anyone says something stupid or indefensible anymore it’s like “you just didn’t get the joke”. If Keillor was joking, he failed pretty badly. If not, he was being about as ridiculous a crank as can be imagined.

  44. Mr T says

    [Keillor] speaks an infinite deal of nothing, more than any man in all Venice. His reasons are as two grains of wheat hid in two bushels of chaff: you shall seek all day ere you find them, and when you have them, they are not worth the search.

  46. Caine says

    bad Jim @ 41:

    Sure, you might not find it funny, but it’s hard to miss that the writer is signalling that he doesn’t mean exactly what he’s saying.

    I didn’t care for Keillor way back, even when he was attempting a character. If this latest screed was supposed to character based, it missed by miles. It was humorless, unnecessarily nasty and definitely offensive. There’s nothing more to it. You might like the guy, but what he wrote is indefensible.

  47. Legion says

    Lake Wobegon has always struck us as a Mayberry kind of place, only populated with intolerant religious nutjobs who would view the Civil Rights Movement as wrong, wrong, wrong.

    So while Keillor certainly sounds like a grumpy old bigot in the essay, we think he’s Poeing. The cracks about Norwegians and the “Jewish guys that trash up the malls every year…” are the give-away. His “humor” doesn’t translate as well in writing as it does on stage.

    We think the comparison to Colbert is reasonably fair, with the only difference being that Colbert is, well, actually funny.

  48. Q.E.D says

    @11

    “nativity creche . . and she’s going to make a little cthulhu head for the modified manger-baby!”

    genius.

    Re. Garison Keillor

    I am outraged by these christians taking the Saturn out of Saturnalia. You just can’t walk into the forum these days without christians saying “Merry christmas”. Saturnalia is a Roman holiday for Roman citizens praising Saturn. I say that if the christians won’t worship our Roman Gods they can just exile themselves to the provinces from where they came from.

  49. Caine says

    Q.E.D @48:

    I am outraged by these christians taking the Saturn out of Saturnalia. You just can’t walk into the forum these days without christians saying “Merry christmas”. Saturnalia is a Roman holiday for Roman citizens praising Saturn. I say that if the christians won’t worship our Roman Gods they can just exile themselves to the provinces from where they came from.

    You left out whining over song lyrics, elitists, piracy and trashing Jews. ;)

  50. tsg says

    Keillor seems to have missed the point behind satire: adopting the position in order to ridicule it. I’m not familiar with Garrison Keillor, so I have no trouble at all reading that piece and coming away with the idea that he believes it. If it was meant to decry the position, I fail to see how. There are actually quite a few people who could write the same thing and mean every word.

    If understanding the satire requires a familiarity with his previous work then he has to be aware that many are going to read that and take it seriously. Those who agree with it (whether or not Keillor actually does) are going to see it as saying it’s okay to feel this way.

    There’s a reason for Poe’s Law.

  51. David Marjanović says

    Phylogenetic tree? WANT!!!

    What happened to Newtonmas? After all, we know that one was born on December 25th.

    Maybe something in early or mid-August? We don’t really have any good August holidays

    The Assumption of Mary, August 15th <duck & cover>

  52. Legion says

    TSG:

    If understanding the satire requires a familiarity with his previous work then he has to be aware that many are going to read that and take it seriously.

    As evidenced by some of the supportive comments at the site. It’s quite likely that his ‘satire’ is really just a shield that allows him to air his bigoted views in public, while maintaining plausible deniability if he’s ever called on it.

    “Clever girl”, that Keillor.

    Heathen’s Greetings and a Rational New Year

  53. tsg says

    As evidenced by some of the supportive comments at the site. It’s quite likely that his ‘satire’ is really just a shield that allows him to air his bigoted views in public, while maintaining plausible deniability if he’s ever called on it.

    It reminds me of Roger Ebert’s piece espousing creationism not too long ago. When called on it, part of his defense was “those who know me know I don’t really believe it.” Whether they mean it or not isn’t the issue. Both Keillor’s piece and Ebert’s utterly failed to point out why the respective positions are wrong. In that way it serves to solidify the idea rather than denounce it. Whether they believe it or not, the end result is the same. In Keillor’s case it’s going to encourage Christians into thinking they are the final authority on the “true” meaning of Christmas, as if there were such a thing, and I have enough “Keep Christ in Christmas” signs in my neighborhood already.

  54. bcoppola says

    I, with my lapsed-or-Catholic-in-name-only family and our Brahmin Hindu friends celebrate Christmas. The Hindus put up a tree for the kids in their home & hang lights on the house like everyone else. A couple of years ago as they were making cookies I took some leftover dough & icing and made a “Ganesha Claus” cookie (Ganesha with a red vest w/white trim). They thought it was a hoot & sent a pic of it to family back in India, who also got a good laugh out of it.

    We just have to make sure the Brahmins have some veg dishes to enjoy besides my Polish wife’s ham & kielbasa. The mom usually contributes a spicy biryani to the potluck.

    (I’ve said it before: If I had to choose a deity, I think I’d go with Ganesha ;) )

    I don’t get hung up on what to call the winter festivals; some people just overthink things, y’know? Fundies aside, it’s already a secular holiday & has been one for a long time.

    So Merry Christmas & Happy New Year, everyone!

  55. Carlie says

    As far as I’ve ever thought of Keillor, he’s always been soft/kindly towards religion, particularly Christianity. Satire also doesn’t work if you’re known to have something akin to the views you’re supposedly satirizing.

  56. PZ Myers says

    Keillor is NOT a Lutheran. He was brought up in the Plymouth Brethren church, a weird fundamentalist sect. And he still leans that way!

    Keillor: I still believe what I was brought up to believe. I don’t go to a Brethren assembly anymore, but I think that’s more my fault than theirs. I doubt I’ll ever go back, but you never know. People make some unusual turns in their forties, and so could I.

    I’m certainly very uncomfortable with churches that I consider a great deal more liberal than the one I was brought up in. I have a very hard time sitting still when a preacher’s talking about the value of being a good listener or something like that. When I hear that sort of sermon, I really feel like I ought to get up and walk out.

  57. RamblinDude says

    I was brought up in the Church of the Brethren. Yes, very stodgy, fundamentalist, deeply conservative Christianity.

  58. aratina cage says

    Alex Solis #20,

    “They left out roasting creationist chestnuts over an open fire”
    Huh?

    See the dictionary, definitions 6 and 12, and The Christmas Song. Creationists love to tell chestnuts that have been refuted over and over again, which we are happy to do.

  60. RamblinDude says

    I don’t know what the ties are between “Church of the Brehtren” and “Plymouth Brethren church.” I just assumed there was some connection.

  61. mas528 says

    Does anybody still give a fuck about Garrison Keillor?

    He’s never been a good humorist, his humor is not very informed, and I suspect that is because Keillor is not very smart.

    He is only known for Lake Woebegon a dopey fictional communiy in which he describes a small town, which was recognizable to the Amernikan citizens.

    So he had one of the the “rules of comedy -recognizability. He lacks the others like exaggeration, empathy, and shock.

    Jonathan Swift could write satire, Keillor can not, and never could.

    As Abrose Bierce said of Oscar Wilde:

    [He…] has ensued with his opulence of twaddle and his penury of sense. He has mounted his hind legs and blown crass vapidities through the bowel of his neck, to the capital edification of circumjacent fools and foolesses, fooling with their foolers. He has tossed off the top of his head and uttered himself in copious overflows of ghastly bosh. The ineffable dunce has nothing to say and says it—says it with a liberal embellishment of bad delivery, embroidering it with reasonless vulgarities of attitude, gesture and attire.

  62. Andreas Johansson says

    Judging from the WP entries, there’s no particular connection between the Church of the Brethren and the Plymouth Brethren beyond them both being Protestant offshoots.

  63. realinterrobang says

    I dunno, I think he’s right, to a certain extent. I am so fucking sick of Christmas and I loathe it so much, I’d be delighted if Christians would reappropriate Christmas and celebrate it amongst themselves, the same way Jews do with Purim or Hindus do with Diwali — such that nobody who actually makes an effort to find out ever knows it’s going on. I’d really like to just once have December 25th come and go without ever noticing it’s actually Christmas. I despise the fact that Christmas stuff starts showing up in stores the day after Hallowe’en, and that you can’t go out in public after November 15th at the latest without being bombarded by the same damn ten noxious Christmas songs over and over again (and wouldn’t Henry VIII be pissed off at what some asshole did to “Greensleeves”!). Boring! Stupid! Shitty! And definitely not worth the fuss.

    I’ll make Mr. Keillor a deal: The nasty atheists will keep our nasty atheist paws off his nasty Christmas if the asshole Christians will just keep Christmas to themselves — that is not celebrate it in public with a two-month-long orgy of moving taste violations and gross conspicuous overconsumption. I’d be perfectly delighted to do that for him, but he has to keep up the other half of the bargain too. If you want to celebrate Christmas, celebrate Christmas at home and in your fucking church, where I will never, ever set foot, not in the shopping mall, on the street, in every single store, in the park, and everything.

    Holy freaking squid, I loathe Christmas. I basically have to celebrate it, because of family obligations, but I’d cheerfully disappear between October 31 and December 27 if I could…

  64. bcoppola says

    @PZ:

    Keillor is NOT a Lutheran. He was brought up in the Plymouth Brethren church, a weird fundamentalist sect. And he still leans that way!

    (Emphasis added)

    The intro to the article on the site notes that the interview was first published in 1985 and the link therein takes you to an article archived from the May/June 1985 Mother Jones mag. I would not want my current beliefs to be represented by something I said or wrote almost 25 years ago.

  66. tsg says

    I’ll make Mr. Keillor a deal: The nasty atheists will keep our nasty atheist paws off his nasty Christmas if the asshole Christians will just keep Christmas to themselves — that is not celebrate it in public with a two-month-long orgy of moving taste violations and gross conspicuous overconsumption. I’d be perfectly delighted to do that for him, but he has to keep up the other half of the bargain too. If you want to celebrate Christmas, celebrate Christmas at home and in your fucking church, where I will never, ever set foot, not in the shopping mall, on the street, in every single store, in the park, and everything.

    Yes, but there’s the rub. They never keep their end of the bargain. Not with NOMA, not with freedom of religion, not with anything. They will not be happy until everyone is celebrating Christmas, and celebrating it their way.

    Christmas only ever got started to try to integrate more pagans into Christianity by co-opting the winter solstice festival. Much to their chagrin, we heathens took the parts we liked and dispensed with the oogy-boogy bullshit. I’ve got a tree. With a star on top (no, that’s not what it means). We give presents to each other. My five-year-old is utterly convinced of Santa’s existence while my nine-year-old is having doubts (but proclaiming belief “just in case”). We have Christmas dinner with turkey. It’s about family, love and giving. We just don’t sing “Happy Birthday” to baby Jesus. That’s my Christmas and no amount of posturing is going to make it mean anything else to me, and no amount of bullying is going to make me abandon it because some morons think I’m not doing it right.

    “But it’s a Christian holiday!” Not in my house it ain’t.

  67. bcoppola says

    And now for my “on the other hand”…

    I read the Keillor article under discussion and I agree: massive satire fail if it was satire. I doubt it. More like your crazy uncle after a few too many beers. And no, I don’t think he was playing a “crazy uncle” character.

    I used to enjoy reading Keillor now and then, and listened to PHC a lot in the ’80s. Something has curdled inside him lately.

  68. https://www.google.com/accounts/o8/id?id=AItOawncr0FDc8gdl7yJBz0SJ15D0etcTIOtL0s says

    Aw, come on. Remember Randy Newman back in the day? “Political Science”? “Let’s Burn Down the Cornfield”? “Wedding in Cherokee County,” which Joe and I still consider Our Song?

    I don’t much like Keillor because his schtick gets old fast for me, and I sure haven’t been tracking him over the last couple decades, but I find it hard to believe that anyone would say that shit in public and mean it.

    BTW, we do Christmas too. Sometimes it’s on a Thursday but we’re not worshiping Thor, or a Wednesday but we’re not worshiping Wotan, et cetera. Then comes January but come to think of it I rather like the old two-faced god idea. Not so much a matter of worship as an acknowledgment of archetypes.

    David, I celebrate the Feast of the Assumption in August when I remember to, and include the Feast of the Foregone Conclusion too. I think we all should. Speaking of roasting old chestnuts.

  69. shatfat says

    Keillor: I still believe what I was brought up to believe. I don’t go to a Brethren assembly anymore, but I think that’s more my fault than theirs. I doubt I’ll ever go back, but you never know.

    Yeah, I’m sure his well-documented women troubles have nothing to do with it. According to Wikipedia, apparently you can get kicked out of the Brethren for sexual immorality. Live by the sword, die by the sword.

  70. shatfat says

    As Ambrose Bierce said of Oscar Wilde [here follows a half-score of hyperbolic insults]

    Bierce, who produced witty sayings for the newspapers, was just launching a preemptive strike at the competition.

  71. Canman says

    For those not familiar with Big Fat Whale, it often contains funny science related gags and they look really great with its retro comic book style.