I may have to give up calamari

Just the title was enough to make me squeamish: Penetration of the Oral Mucosa by Parasite-Like Sperm Bags of Squid: A Case Report in a Korean Woman. It seems the woman thought she was getting dinner; the squid saw a last chance to reproduce. As is common with these kinds of misunderstandings, neither got what they wanted.

We report a case of oral stings by spermatophores of the squid Todarodes pacificus. A 63-yr-old Korean woman experienced severe pain in her oral cavity immediately after eating a portion of parboiled squid along with its internal organs. She did not swallow the portion, but spat it out immediately. She complained of a pricking and foreign-body sensation in the oral cavity. Twelve small, white spindle-shaped, bug-like organisms stuck in the mucous membrane of the tongue, cheek, and gingiva were completely removed, along with the affected mucosa. On the basis of their morphology and the presence of the sperm bag, the foreign bodies were identified as squid spermatophores.

Has this story been optioned for a horror movie yet?

By the way, Todarodes pacificus is the Japanese Flying Squid — now with the reputation of being vicious airborne inseminators.

Park GM, Kim JY, Kim JH, Huh JK (2012) Penetration of the oral mucosa by parasite-like sperm bags of squid: a case report in a Korean woman. J Parasitol.98(1):222-3.

Sounds familiar

Damned social networking sites! They’ve been destroying people’s lives since the 17th century, when the hot app was called “Coffeehouse” rather than “Facebook”.

Enthusiasm for coffeehouses was not universal, however, and some observers regarded them as a worrying development. They grumbled that Christians had taken to a Muslim drink instead of traditional English beer, and fretted that the livelihoods of tavern-keepers might be threatened. But most of all they lamented that coffeehouses were distracting people who ought to be doing useful work, rather than networking and sharing trivia with their acquaintances.

When coffee became popular in Oxford and the coffeehouses selling it began to multiply, the university authorities objected, fearing that coffeehouses were promoting idleness and diverting students from their studies. Anthony Wood, an Oxford antiquarian, was among those who denounced the enthusiasm for the new drink. “Why doth solid and serious learning decline, and few or none follow it now in the university?” he asked. “Answer: Because of coffee-houses, where they spend all their time.”

And look! Muslims were wrecking Christiandom even then! And don’t get me started on those students, screwing around in idle chitchat all the time…

The Dawkins Challenge…doesn’t even get out of the starting gate

Are there any good Christian writers who write about Christianity? I’m always astounded at what a confusing mess they generate when they try to explain their faith.

Case in point: some theologian named William Carroll has issued something he calls The Dawkins Challenge. I read halfway through it before I could puzzle out what it was about. He’s annoyed that Richard Dawkins (along with many other atheists I could name) has knocked the doctrine of transubstantiation.

Dawkins opined both in Australia and previously at the Reason Rally in Washington, D.C. that people should be encouraged to confront Roman Catholics about transubstantiation. Do they really hold the “utterly nutty belief that a wafer turns into the body of a first-century Jew just because a priest blessed it?” Such a view is “barking mad.”

He goes on and on about Dawkins and Lawrence Krauss, and I thought he was going to get around to issuing some challenge to them…but no, it’s completely different. He’s challenging Catholics to defend themselves against charges that their beliefs are silly. Fair enough, and a good idea; please do. I’d love to hear your sensible, rational defense of transubstantiation. Go ahead, be bold and open in your beliefs and explain them!

So this is what we get from William Carroll.

The body of Christ, present in the sacrament of the Eucharist, although real (neither symbolic nor metaphorical), is vastly different from the ordinary bodies subject to empirical analysis. It is sacramental presence and theology, aided by philosophy, that help to make intelligible what is believed.

Oh.

Well, I guess you showed Richard Dawkins…that he’s completely right and that your beliefs are “utterly nutty” and “barking mad”.

I think Carroll recognizes that his explanation is pretty damned stupid, because he wraps it up in excuses, claiming that the conclusions of physics are also hard to comprehend and often defy common sense. But what he really doesn’t understand is that those conclusions are a consequence of mathematical reasoning and actual experimental observations — they aren’t just made up, but are derived from the real, natural world, and can be evaluated objectively no matter what your religious upbringing. The accreted natterings of Catholic apologists have no such virtues.

You can’t say something is “real”, and then claim it exhibits none of the properties of any other real objects, and can’t ever be examined or analyzed empirically. That’s pretty much a good definition of “not real”.

Don’t diss gods in Indonesia

Atheist Alliance International is condemning the jail sentence for Alexander Aan. Aan is the Indonesian man who wrote “god does not exist” on a facebook page, and has now been sentenced to 2½ years in prison for blasphemy. I’m mentally adding up the number of years I’d get for Pharyngula…I’m just relieved I’m not posting from Indonesia.

The whole ruling is confused and inconsistent, but that’s what religion does to you. Here’s an interview with a newspaper editor that’s also confusing: he can’t come out and say that there’s a problem with this decision, and I can’t tell whether it’s because he agrees with it or he’s afraid to say. The comment about the problem being that they are extending tolerance to intolerant groups (the Muslims) suggests that maybe he is seeing the problem, but is being cautious in expressing it.

The Indonesian constitution mandates freedom of religion, but requires everyone to have a religion. Right. They have a little discussion about Indonesia’s reputation as a tolerant place…I’m sorry, I don’t see it. If they ever had such a reputation, it’s gone now.

Why I am an atheist – Natasha Yar-Routh

I’m an atheist because I noticed that what little evidence there is for gods and goddesses, more hearsay really, is equally valid for the lot of them. The problem is the claims made for the nearly 1,000 gods and goddesses are contradictory. Quite simply they can’t all be true, but they can quiet easily all be false. Factor in that we have well tested scientific explanations for much of existence and there is no need for any supernatural beings running around causing trouble.

Natasha Yar-Routh
United States

No! Not Harter!

I am doubly sad: Richard Harter has died, and most of the readers here now probably never heard of him. He was a dry wit who frequented talk.origins on usenet with brilliant comments; he ought to have been recognized as one of the early bloggers for his idiosyncratic and engrossing web page, Richard Harter’s World, which has been regularly and frequently updated since 1996.

It’s an eclectic page — Harter just seems to have manually linked in lots and lots of web pages of arbitrary stuff; humor, history, science, correspondence, computer science, science fiction, whatever struck his fancy. Go ahead and get sucked into it — it’s about as dangerous as TVTropes that way.

Perhaps even more appropriately, you can read about Harter on talk.origins.

Chiroquackery in Morris, Minnesota

Well, that caught my eye, all bright pink with a bold title touting “The Cancer Cure”, and posted on the bulletin board of the local coffee shop. I read it aghast: it’s a chiropractor trading on tragedy.

Do you see a cancer cure anywhere in there? Chiropractic is not only incapable of curing cancer, it doesn’t even treat cancer. This quack Hamling isn’t even offering to use chiropractic for this person afflicted with cancer — he’s cunningly using her disease to drum up new patients for his clinic, nothing more. I don’t even know why it says “The Cancer Cure” on his sign.

It’s coming from a horrible little clinic in Morris called Accelerated Chiropractic. Now some chiropractors are simply physical therapists (although if I needed physical therapy, I think I’d rather see a certified physical therapist), and I can sympathize with some people finding benefits with them, but others are outright quacks, and there’s an easy way to find out: look for the magic word “subluxation” in their PR.

Subluxations are imaginary. They are the excuse chiropractors use to claim that “traffic jams” in the nervous system cause a host of diseases, from mild pain to cancer, and that their manipulations actually relieve pressure on nerves. Seriously, if chiropractic manipulations of the vertebrae were sufficient to shift the relationship of the bones around in any significant way, they’d be able to shear off nerves all over the place — it’s total nonsense invented by 19th century quacks. And yeah, if you search the Accelerated Chiropractic site, it’s got subluxations everywhere.

It’s the modern equivalent of blaming your ills on leprechauns.

And there’s our local chiroquack, shilling for new patients with a sign advertising a cancer cure, and promising to chase all the little leprechauns out of your body to make you feel better.

I’ve registered a complaint with the local better business bureau. This bozo is disgraceful.

(By the way, whatever you do, never let a chiropractor get anywhere near your neck.)