Episode CCXXVI: Aliens on the brain

I’m supposed to talk about aliens, skeptically, tomorrow — the constraints of fitting some science into a mere half hour talk, though, mean that it’s actually going to be fairly narrow talk about why functional constraints don’t dictate the pattern of evolutionary solutions. But if I had a few hours, the nonsense in this video would make for an amusing subject:

(Last edition of TET; Current totals: 12,727 entries with 1,435,920 comments.)

Ha, Evilutionists, you can’t explain this!

Don’t you just love those gotcha moments from creationists? They think they’ve got you stumped with some hard question, and then it turns out to be something crazy/stupid.

Did you know that all planets in our universe are on the exact same plane with the exception on Pluto. If one single planet’s orbit were to across another planet’s orbit, the entire planetary system would collapse due to the collisions. How by chance did all the planets end up on the same plane and rotating in their own orbit without crossing another planet’s orbit? Pluto is the only exception. Pluto is at a 14 degree angle from the plane. Why? Because Pluto crosses 2 other orbits. If it had been on the same plane it would be on a collision course. Pluto is the signature of the Creator to prove the impossibility of chance.

That’s so goofy it’s almost adorable. Consider the origin of the planets from an accretion disc. Consider that there were particle collisions (and still are!), and that the results were consolidation of masses. The arrangement of the planets is easily explained by chance and physics, with no need for intent.

As for Pluto, how does the fact that its orbit is one of multitudes of potential orbits that make it unlikely to smack into another big ball of rock make chance and physics an unacceptable explanation?

And that’s just the first paragraph. He’s got a whole page of doozies.

Raising consciousness, one colander at a time

Austria has a reasonable requirement that driving license photos show the person’s face without cluttering adornment — which seems fair enough, given that it will be used as ID. Unfortunately, they have an exemption for “confessional reasons”, whatever that means, which is apparently that having a superstition allows you to wear whatever the heck you want in your ID photo.

So Niko Alm tested that by donning special headgear — a colander — and insisting that it was a symbol of his religion, Pastafarianism. They conceded it, and now he’s driving around with a wacky photo on his license.

The only thing that wasn’t fairly done here is that the authorities required that he submit to a psychological evaluation to determine if he was sane enough to drive. Do they do that to every person who insists on wearing a yamulke or turban or hijab or pope hat or squid on their head? I think they should.

Well, except for the squid. That’s perfectly normal.

More crime!

I don’t know whether to be pleased or dismayed at this story of an obsessed Minnesotan who turned to crime for petty revenge. Barry Ardolf got mad at his neighbors, the Kostolniks, because they reported him to the police for kissing their 4-year-old child on the mouth, which is already a bit creepy, and then he got really creepy.

The man, a Medtronic computer technician, downloaded a Wi-Fi hacking program to tear into his neighbors WEP encryption. Ardolf created a fake Myspace page as well as several fake emails for Matt Kostolnik. The hacker then posted child porn on the Myspace page and emailed the same child porn to co-workers at Kostolnik’s law office.

To top it all off, the Blaine hacker sent death threats to Vice President Joe Biden and other politicians from Kostolnik’s Yahoo account. This granted Kostolnik a visit from the secret service who had traced the emails back to his IP address. One of the emails told Biden, “I swear to God I’m going to kill you!”

The good news: Ardolf was caught, tried, and convicted. That’s one lunatic punished and off the streets.

The worrisome news: he got sentenced to 18 years in prison with a further 20 years of supervision and restriction from computer access. That seems excessive for a non-violent crime, and for an individual who seems to need psychological help. But then, read this story of another grudge-bearing, angry, vindictive man…do we wait until the guy crosses the line into physical violence?

(Hi, Dennis Markuze! For some reason, these stories made me think of you.)

It’s the petty stuff, going on and on

If you work for the Florida Museum of Natural History, someone doesn’t like you. For years, someone has been vandalizing the vehicles of workers at the museum.

It started small. Darwin Fish emblems would be ripped off cars a few times a year. Undeterred, the victims would simply replace them. Then bumper stickers were scraped off. Then notes containing prayers were left on cars. And now the vandal has apparently taken the next step: driving nails into tires. One researcher said she discovered a long nail had been deliberately forced into the side rim of her new tire, destroying it. Another researcher had both front tires ruined by long nails. These incidents all happened in a parking lot behind Bartram-Carr Hall.

Why hasn’t the local law enforcement installed a security camera or two to catch this cowardly miscreant in the act? This would be big news and the subject of public outrage if it happened, for instance, in a church parking lot.

Rachel Maddow will give me nightmares tonight

This is wicked. Maddow compiled crazy deranged comments from a collection of ministers who will be speaking at Rick Perry’s big prayer event in Texas, where he purportedly will work out economic policies with these wackos. Near as I can tell, that policy will involve sending Oprah to Gitmo, herding the Jews off to Israel, and avoiding sex with demons.

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