Comments

  1. Nerd of Redhead, OM says

    Ah, something that doesn’t feel of terminal cuteness, but rather deadly.

  7. Rey Fox says

    Well, of course. What other explanation can there be for the blue-ringed octopus than a loving, benevolent god?

  10. Sven DiMilo says

    givesgood:
    Of course that’s where CreationWiki got it from, but the photo posted here, on Pharyngula‘s weekly Friday Cephalopod feature, links directly to the “Encyclopedia of Creation Science” and I don’t get the feeling they’re kidding.

    Perhaps teh CO can be implored to switch the link over to ‘kipedia.

  11. enochthered says

    I was reading some really interesting stuff recently from a pharmaceutical company that is developing tetrodotoxin into a commercial pharmaceutical for the treatment of severe, intractable neurological pain that doesn’t respond to other treatments. Fascinating stuff.

  12. Free Lunch says

    You don’t think PZ did this intentionally to mock the Creation wiki blockheads?

  16. Ewan R says

    #13 – I particularly enjoy the little map of europe showing where people believe in god – makes me almost proud to be British, however I can’t help but notice that Austria appears to be some sort of epicenter of irreligiousity, and we all know who came from Austria right? Therefore god.

  17. Dae says

    Rather appropriate, given its habitat range! I’d love to know why so many of the most poisonous organisms in the world are native to Australia. (Or if, in fact, there aren’t significantly more, and we just hear about it because so many of the Aussie versions look really neat…)

  18. Dae says

    Also, CreationWiki pages look WAY too much like Wikipedia. -.-

    I didn’t actually notice until I was reading through a few articles (meandering through links as I always end up doing) and thought that the writing sounded a bit… off. Guess I didn’t have enough coffee this morning.

  20. KOPD says

    Ugh. I just read some of a CreationWiki article on the blue-ring octopus. Whoever wrote it thinks octopus’ is the plural of octopus.

  21. https://me.yahoo.com/hairychris444#96384 says

    Hahaha, I like the linking to creationwiki. Stealing their bandwidth!

    I wonder whether they’ll see a traffic spike? :-)

  22. Poggy says

    Andyo – wow, that made my brain hurt. If you read the abstract for the study they are referencing for suicide and atheism, it’s actually among depressed inpatients at a psychiatric ward. Quite represenative of the common population, don’t ya think?

    Ewan R – got a link to that map?

    Marmite.

  23. Brownian, OM says

    Also, CreationWiki pages look WAY too much like Wikipedia.

    Yeah, but did you read it? I kept rechecking the article title, expecting to see “A Яeport by Jonuathan, Miss Mackenzies’ ClaSs Grade Three” in crayon underneath “Blue Ringed Octopus”.

    A sample:

    Octopus’ have a radial symmetry which means it can be divided into equal halves more than two times. The word Cephalopod means “head-footed” which means that the body is just a head and a foot. An octopus’ body has no bones and no out side shell to protect it causing them to hide and use different methods of protection such as camouflage. Having no bones can be good enabling the octopus to squeeze into tight spaces and hunt for food or hide.(Prentice Hall,706-707) The eyes of this octopus are highly developed. Octopus’ have excellent eyesight in fact their eye is like ours but they have and inverted retina meaning that the lens shape stays the same as the retina moves to gain focus.[1] Octopus’ are very intelligent and have a very well developed brain that takes the shape of a donut.

    (In case you’re as undecided as I initially was as to which part of this quotation is the stupidest, the citation “(Prentice Hall,706-707)” leads by a small margin.)

    The more I read about these strange, unintelligent beasts–creationists, not octopodes–the more I’m convinced they were the inspiration for ST:TNG‘s stupid, technology-stealing species, the Pakleds.

  24. Summer Seale says

    Look how God has blessed us with this beautiful, gorgeous, peaceful creature whose touch brings smiling radiance and blissful afterlife to all those sinners who touch it. Look how he designed it to entice us to caress the soft skin and bring release from this world….

    (By the way, if Heaven is so certain and great, why are religious people still afraid to die?)

  27. Die Anyway says

    I think it’s funny that PZ used the Creation Wiki link. But now having read that attrocious write-up I have to ask: Is an octopus really considered to be radially symetric? If you split them between the eyes, you’ll have an eye on each side…symetrical, but if you split them in the other direction you’ll have two eyes on one half and no eyes on the other. That doesn’t seem symetrical. I know that starfish and sea urchins are considered to be radially symetrical but octopuses?

  28. nothingbutchappy says

    the rule of thumb about these buggers in Australia is if you get to treatment within 1 hour you probably survive. You have to be on an iron lung for 24 hours and need the occasional heart jump-start but that’s easy with modern medicine.
    You should see our spiders and snakes :) you have to be faster :) We have a snake that can bite you multiple times before you feel it: called the death adder :)

  30. windy says

    Austria appears to be some sort of epicenter of irreligiousity

    You’re probably looking at the Czech Republic, Austria is the tadpole-shaped one below it.

  31. Brownian, OM says

    By the way, if Heaven is so certain and great, why are religious people still afraid to die?

    I’m actually baffled by the evangelical certainty about getting into heaven just because one has said the magic words “I take Jesus into my heart” or whatever.

    As a young Catholic, I was much impressed* by Jesus’ many comments along the lines of “the path to heaven is narrow and few travel it”, likening it to graduating summa cum laude or something similarly difficult, where the smallest error could mean failure. I’m pretty sure I believed the only way to be guaranteed entrance heaven was to die immediately after confessing and repenting, before one had the chance to sin again. Of course, this lead to some interesting theological issues**: I imagined a scenario in which I would give every human on earth the chance to confess and repent immediately before I killed them, ensuring they’d get into heaven at the expense of my own soul as the world’s greatest mass murderer. Would I be judged a sinner or a saint by God for my sacrifice? Also, if it were so hard to get into heaven, then what was the point of trying? Could you imagine anything worse than spending your life as a religious ascetic, only to find out at the end of it all you’d missed the cut-off by three too many white lies and were sent to bunk with Hitler anyway? (You can probably guess I wasn’t into busting my ass for a few extra percent in school either.) I also had a big issue with the supposed ‘sacrifice’ of Jesus’ death. Since the possibility of being sent to hell was the only thing about death to truly fear, then Jesus could not have died a death that was in any way comparable to any human death, since he and he alone out of all humanity (save a select few like Mary and the second thief at Golgotha, as in Luke 23:40-43) had no hell to fear.

    *”Impressed” in the sense of “terrified out of my wits”
    **Just to preclude any theists taking issue with my interpretation of scripture: if I’m wrong, take it up with God, not me. If he really cared about my eternal soul, he would have sent me better teachers and priests to make sure his message, whatever it is, got through unjumbled.

  32. Ewan R says

    #30 – how utterly embarassing… can I claim in my defence that I was looking at the small map… I guess not….

    Oh well, newfound respect for the Czech republic!

  33. llewelly says

    Free Lunch | March 19, 2010 10:17 AM:

    You don’t think PZ did this intentionally to mock the Creation wiki blockheads?

    I think his brains have been addled. I blame Australia. Either their climate or their beer would do the trick …

    (I suppose it’s possible he’s making a joke – if the child in the previous picture picks up creation wiki, they can potentially be poisoned – just as if they pick up a blue ring on the beach.)

  34. Brownian, OM says

    I know that starfish and sea urchins are considered to be radially symetrical but octopuses?

    You’re right; they’re not. They’re bilaterally symmetric.

    I’m sure you can trust creationists to display the same rigour and attention to detail when constructing their ‘baramins’.

  35. rob says

    i think the creotard definition of radial symmetry is a little goofy.

    how can you divide something into more than two equal halves?

    if i divide a pizza into two equal halves, then again in two equal halves, does this give me four halves? seems to break the conservation of pizza law, since you end up with 2 pizzas.

  36. Die Anyway says

    Thanks Brownian. Thus the creation wiki article is even stupider than the poor grammar would indicate.
    And I should have been a bit more confident in myself but my biology degree is from 1969 and there has been a lot of water under the bridge since then. Washed out a few memories so to speak.

  37. llewelly says

    Brownian, OM | March 19, 2010 1:23 PM:

    I imagined a scenario in which I would give every human on earth the chance to confess and repent immediately before I killed them, ensuring they’d get into heaven at the expense of my own soul as the world’s greatest mass murderer. Would I be judged a sinner or a saint by God for my sacrifice?

    You would go to Hell for depriving people of their “free agency”.

  38. woodsong says

    Yeah, I also had to look twice at the Creation Wiki page. It does look like the real Wiki at first glance…especially if you’re not expecting it!

    I read that first paragraph and came up blinking at the colossal wrong.

    Octopus’ have a radial symmetry

    What kind of moron wrote that tripe? All molluscs are Bilateria! And that’s ignoring the rest of the paragraph…

    Further down:

    Though the octopus has bitten people it has only resulted in three known deaths. The octopus usually only bites if it is provoked in some way or another. The people bitten almost always fully recover.

    Granted, I haven’t read enough about blue-rings to positively correct that, but it certainly contradicts all the warnings I have heard! My fingers were itching to edit…then I came back here for some sanity, started reading comments, and saw what the real error was. Thanks, givesgoodemail, for linking to a sensible page on blue-rings!

    On a related topic, I’m really wishing I had brought my camera in to work today. It’s Dragon Day here at Cornell, with a parade including all manner of strange creatures and things running around. I saw a pair of Egyptian gods walk past, a couple of palm trees with a hammock between them carrying a student, several large, pink fish, a stack of pizza boxes….and a giant squid! Its head was about 8 feet tall, and it had a couple pairs of moving legs sticking out of its mouth, and maybe half a dozen students tangled up in its tentacles…a third cephalopod for this Friday!

    Are giant squid usually bright pink with yellow eyes?

  39. scooterKPFT says

    I found this sentence in the Neurotoxin segment

    This neurotoxin is very lethal and can kill even a human if they do receive proper treatment.

    Creationists, a constant source of unintended humor

  40. scooterKPFT says

    Here is the ‘How Do You Know if you are a Creatard?’ Test:

    1. Are science, logic, observable data, and rationality completely and utterly incorrect?
    2. Is God correct?
    3. Do I have a Doctorate from an unaccredited, Christian diploma-mill?
    4. Am I from the South?
    5. Am i rite?

    If you answered ‘Yes’ to any of the above, you are a Creatard. Well done! Buy shares in tinfoil hats.

    From: http://encyclopediadramatica.com/Creationist

  41. Brownian, OM says

    You would go to Hell for depriving people of their “free agency”.

    Ah, so in doing so I’d be messing up YHWH’s grand experiment in who’s worthy to get into heaven?

    Totally worth it. I’d be up for any theology that casts me as Mr. Shoop against YHWH’s Vice Principal Gills.

    Thanks Brownian. Thus the creation wiki article is even stupider than the poor grammar would indicate.
    And I should have been a bit more confident in myself but my biology degree is from 1969 and there has been a lot of water under the bridge since then. Washed out a few memories so to speak.

    I’m no expert, either, though I’m pretty sure the type of symmetry one’s body displays has more to do with your phylogeny than whether or not some part superficially resembles a starfish.

    I find it more than disingenuous that a group of people who claim think the natural world is so miraculous its very existence is proof of their god sure aren’t very interested in knowing much about it at all. Then again, what real purpose does blue-ringed octopus have to a creationist other than to assure them that the maker of the scala naturae exists and thus does their place at its penultimate rung?

  43. blf says

    I think [poopyhead’s] brains have been addled. I blame Australia. Either their climate or their beer would do the trick …

    Not to mention the creatures there (specifically including the bipedal chordates).

  45. redmjoel says

    Followed the link, now I have to wash my keyboard and screen due to projectile vomiting. Thanks, PZ.

  46. ppb says

    nothingbutchappy@28 wrote:

    the rule of thumb about these buggers in Australia is if you get to treatment within 1 hour you probably survive. You have to be on an iron lung for 24 hours and need the occasional heart jump-start but that’s easy with modern medicine.
    You should see our spiders and snakes :) you have to be faster :) We have a snake that can bite you multiple times before you feel it: called the death adder :)

    I see we have a member of the Australian Tourist Board posting today. :-)

  47. AnneH says

    Alverant @42 -Bill Donahue is saying the RCC is the VICTIM in the scandal. Just infuriating. He’s also lying about teacher’s sexual abuse of children getting no publicity:
    http://www.detentionslip.org/search/label/sex

    The RCC sex scandal cannot be compared to employers keeping sex harassment cases within their companies, since those were adults at work.

    blf @43, are you blaming the kangaroos for PZ being addled? (or are kangaroos tripedal, if their tails are included?) /mischief

  48. Alverant says

    AnneH @47 Exactly. He’s playing the “poor persecuted catholic church” card and against how the abuse is being reported. He claimed that if the RCC did the right thing in the beginning and kicked the abusive priests out, they’d be accused of being cold hearted.

    The comments are even more condemning of what he’s doing.

  49. Ichthyic says

    Donowhore was the only voice defending the CC on CNN.

    If the best defense supporters of the CC can muster is adult sexual harrasment in the workplace = child rape, then more power to him. He’s doing more harm than good to the CC!

  50. Cowcakes says

    Glad to see that PZ is feeling the love of all things OZ during his visit to our fair shores. That litle blue ringed bugger along with our plethora of sharks, crocs, spiders and extremes of weather, how many other places in the world can you drown in a flood in the middle of a multi decade drought, goes a long way to explaining why we have such good bear and wine.

    With so many beasties waiting in line to confirm that humans are jsut another part of the food chain alcohol helps to relieve the constant stress that one wold otherwise feel from living in natures very own gladitorial arena.

  51. Cowcakes says

    Ooops, opened my keyboard before following the link. That of course is the Indonesian model, rest of previous post still holds true though ;-)

  52. nothingbutchappy says

    @ pbb

    yeah well in Aussie land (Australia to the locals
    ) we may have the most venomous animals in the world, however, we don’t have bears/wolfs/tigers/lions and other large predators. So an air horn and a big stick is the most effective weapons against feral dogs or aggressive snakes you come across. We don’t have the need to carry hand cannons or rifles kill most of the things that can kill us; a size 9 shoe can get most of them, you just have to know where to look :) With one exception the rare pissed off kangaroo…. they get on their tails and kick you in the guts with a sweeping downward motion and disembowel you or try and drown you with a similar actions in bodies of water.
    Thank you for listing to presentation of the wonderful fauna of Australia that tries to kill you.

  53. Brian English says

    We don’t have the need to carry hand cannons or rifles kill most of the things that can kill us; a size 9 shoe can get most of them, you just have to know where to look

    Erm, you’re overlooking that rather large reptile that will make a meal of you in a northern billabong. Perhaps it’s scared of an airhorn? Then there’s the sharks and introduced animals like pigs, and possibly airhorn resistant camels, buffalo, brumbies, et. al.

    Tell me, why are bears/wolfs/tigers/lions airhorn resistant? I thought that until they were worked up enough to attack, a loud noise would like an airhorn would do the trick. If that is the case, then dingos/feral dogs and the angry camel/buffalo/brumby too. Imagine a bull buffalo or feral bull 10 meters from you in full charge stopping because you sounded an airhorn. Seems as likely as with a Amur Tiger. Equally, neither would approach if all day you sounded your airhorn me thinks.

    Of course, excepting the crocodiles, dingos/dogs, pissed off bunyips, drop bears and sharks, you may be classifying the introduced species as not Australian (not autocthonous yet here) and thus doing our intrepid visitors a diservice when they say ‘it’s OK were in Australia, that charging razorback presents no danger, sound the airhorn.’.

  54. hobbitjeff22369 says

    @Rob #35:

    how can you divide something into more than two equal halves?

    if i divide a pizza into two equal halves, then again in two equal halves, does this give me four halves? seems to break the conservation of pizza law, since you end up with 2 pizzas.

    Awesome. You just explained the miracle of the loaves and fishes.

  56. Bride of Shrek OM says

    Erm, you’re overlooking that rather large reptile that will make a meal of you in a northern billabong

    ..as someone who was brought up amongst salties I can attest to this. I’ve lost a few dogs to the things and once when I was living in Pomporrow (Edward River )mission I had to be involved in an inquest as I was witness to a fatal attack. Nasty stuff.

    Needless to say an airhorn the size of a Commodore wouldn’t have any effect.

  57. TheCalmOne says

    Hey – what about the giant flying foxes that carry the deadly Hendra virus?

  59. shonny says

    Posted by: rob Author Profile Page | March 19, 2010 1:46 PM

    i think the creotard definition of radial symmetry is a little goofy.

    how can you divide something into more than two equal halves?

    if i divide a pizza into two equal halves, then again in two equal halves, does this give me four halves? seems to break the conservation of pizza law, since you end up with 2 pizzas.

    Would make good business sense though, if you are selling the warmed-up road kills.

  60. Lars says

    I’m sure that the photographer Jens Petersen is happy with Wikimedia respecting the photo’s licence and mentioning his name on the picture page … Cretin Wiki? Oh, they don’t have to worry about earthly details like licences; they’ve got Gawd on their side.

  61. Poggy says

    Thanks Ewan, I must have had a mild attack of retardation and didn’t see it.

    I wish they had a map of the rest of the world!