Advertise gods away

As an exercise, a couple of Australian advertising agencies were asked to make some ads advocating the banning of religion.

The bad news: Most didn’t even want to do it as an exercise. The show apparently did some previous ad games, for instance advocating euthanizing everyone over 80, and that was acceptable…but getting caught suggesting that religion was a bad thing? Uh-oh.

The good news: The judges. They didn’t bat an eye and all seemed to think it was a fine idea (well, except for the last guy, maybe).

I liked the first video better than the second, myself. I’m not a fan of this idea that religions cause the majority of warfare. I don’t think it’s true, and I don’t think you could even argue that religion has been the pretext for a majority of war. Wars have had too many causes.

Oh, man, Orson Scott Card is such a warped little man

In his benighted quest to make everyone on the planet incapable of reading anything he’s ever written without muttering “what an asshole…” under their breath, Orson Scott Card has taken a great leap upward in arrogance and obsession. He is rewriting Shakespeare. Not only that, he’s rewriting him into a cranky Mormon bigot who hates the gays. This is from a review of Hamlet’s Father; I warn you, it completely gives away the conclusion of Card’s retelling, but that doesn’t matter, because it’s frikkin’ Shakespeare and you ought to just read the original, and it’s frakkin’ Card, who has become such a parody of himself that you shouldn’t waste your time reading him anyway.

Here’s the punch line: Old King Hamlet was an inadequate king because he was gay, an evil person because he was gay, and, ultimately, a demonic and ghostly father of lies who convinces young Hamlet to exact imaginary revenge on innocent people. The old king was actually murdered by Horatio, in revenge for molesting him as a young boy—along with Laertes, and Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern, thereby turning all of them gay. We learn that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are now “as fusty and peculiar as an old married couple. I pity the woman who tries to wed her way into that house.”

He really needs to get himself a rent-boy and get these obsessions out of his head.

Neuro student articles

I’m teaching an upper-level course in neurobiology this term, and as I usually do, I made all the poor suffering students go out and create blogs, and I also told them they had to write one post a week about neuroscience. Today I was asked if I was going to pharyngulate their blogs, and of course I said I would. So go forth and harrass them! A word of warning, though: as many people learned last time I did this, these are not passive, cowed students, but feisty upperclassmen who are comfortable with biting back; the worst thing you can do is be condescending or patronizing.

(Also on FtB)

Neuro student articles

I’m teaching an upper-level course in neurobiology this term, and as I usually do, I made all the poor suffering students go out and create blogs, and I also told them they had to write one post a week about neuroscience. Today I was asked if I was going to pharyngulate their blogs, and of course I said I would. So go forth and harrass them! A word of warning, though: as many people learned last time I did this, these are not passive, cowed students, but feisty upperclassmen who are comfortable with biting back; the worst thing you can do is be condescending or patronizing.

(Also on Sb)

Ricky Gervais in the New Humanist

You’ve probably heard already that Gervais was interviewed by the New Humanist — he does give a great interview, stuffed full of juicy quotes. I like this one:

I always expect some people to be offended. I know I ruffle feathers but some people’s feathers need a little ruffling. And remember: just because someone is offended doesn’t mean they’re in the right. Some people are offended by multiculturalism, homosexuality, abortion, atheism – what should we do? Ban all those things? You have the right to be offended, and I have the right to offend you. But no one has the right to never be offended.

I don’t know about this, though. This is just showing off.

Prayer is only part of Rick Perry’s strategy

He’s not just a do-nothing governor who sits around with his hands in his lap begging an invisible man to save Texas. He does stuff, too. Like cut fire department funding by 75 percent. You know, reducing funding to the volunteer fire departments that have to battle the catastrophic wildfires breaking out in the state.

But then, how could he possibly know that if God didn’t bring rain, the plains might dry out and become more flammable? That’s like science, or cause-and-effect, or somethin’.