I just got back from the new Star Wars movie, and it was…
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
NPR is giving lessons in how to do the Minnesota accent
. I should probably practice so I can blend in better.
One nice thing about it is that they’re emphasizing the subtleties–it’s inspired by the television series, Fargo, but all the people in that show have the extreme version of the local accent — they all sound like they’re straight out of the Iron Range, way up north. Around where I live, the accent is recognizable but much, much softer.
We should all work on our accents while I struggle with a few other things: it’s a heavy grading day for me, and my computer is still mostly dead and unreliable (I’m pecking this out on my iPad, which is totally unsuitable for writing of any length). My goal is to get all the exams graded today, and reward myself wit the local showing of the new Star Wars movie.
Don’t worry, my keyboardless state means I won’t be able to dump spoilers on you. I’ll be reduced to short texting style one-liners by then. “WORST STAR WARS EVER.”
Here’s a whole album of traditional Christmas carols…sung by goats. If you were already sick of the noise droning on the radio, this will finally make you snap.
This is perfect: someone has taken Scott Adams’ own words, as he tends to dump them on his blog, and pasted them onto his money-makin’ comic strip as MRA Dilbert. They sync beautifully. Somehow, the words of a pedantic jackhole with an ego problem fit into a dystopian comic strip about a workplace detached from reality as if they somehow emerged from the very same rather stupid brain. Who would have thought it?
Any guesses on how long it will be before Adams commands a winged army of screeching lawyers to descend upon it?
Although, to be honest, there have been a few answers that make me feel this, instead.
I do have a terrible confession to make: there was a time when I would reflexively shut off any music source that played Cash at me. It’s country western, don’t you know…it’s bad. And then I made the mistake of listening to the guy, and I had to admit — he was an artist.
A music festival called the Bay Area Deathfest does not appeal to me at all — I suspect there will be a lot of croaking and howling and thrashing guitars, and everyone will be dressed in black. But I could be wrong. My sons both listen to music like that, and while most of it makes me want to back away slowly, at least some of it is…interesting.
But I have to say that I get an impression of uniformity from the festival poster. It seems that almost every band in this genre has to have a completely illegible logo. The top two bands are “Cattle Decapitation” and “Psycroptic”, which I only know because I read the text of the web site. I’m not going to try to decipher the rest.
Except “Party Cannon”. Way to go against the expectations of the masses, Party Cannon!
Someone please collapse the waveform! Marek Sullivan explains how Sam Harris gets away with it: he simply says many contradictory things that can’t possibly all be true, so that when he’s accused of being a right-wing neo-con he can just point to some paragraph or disclaimer that makes no sense relative to the sense of his essay, and presto! He’s shown that you’ve misinterpreted him!
It’s a good trick. Too bad so many atheists have been gulled by it.
The title of this post is extremely rude.
There! I did it again.
I can’t help myself.
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Man, I’m really potty-mouthed today.
This comic is not funny.
It’s totally wrong. It’s from the Ernest Rutherford school of science stereotypes. Biology involves “less knowledge”, however that is defined, than physics? Nonsense. Ask my students. There’s constant tension in my classes between understanding the general principles and mastering all the details, and both are hard. Biology needs to be moved upward, above physics, on this graph.
As for the potential for evil…I’m sorry, there’s no comparison. Physics specializes in the spectacularly abrupt termination: bullets, bombs, lasers, “Mr Bond, I want you to die!” sorts of things. Biology is all about the slow, lingering, agonizing death that is simultaneously a mechanism for transmission to others; biology turns people into walking engines of death. And cancer! What’s more evil than cancer? Nothing, I tell you. So the cartoonist really needs to move biology way, way out to the right.
It vexes me that physicists are always brainwashing their students into thinking biology is less evil than they are.
Is everyone mad? Do you not see the obvious concerns?
Back in October, Republican presidential candidates were contemplating using a time machine to go back and kill Baby Hitler, to prevent the rise of fascist tyranny.
Donald Trump is clearly promoting fascist and eliminationist policies.
I’m a scientist! I can put two and two together and get the obvious answer: Baby Donald Trump is in great peril if grown-up Donald Trump should get the nomination and be elected president. After a few years of a Trump presidency, swarms of physicists (who are mostly Democrat, I should note) will be rushing to develop a time machine with the specific purpose of killing a baby.
That’s why we need to develop a time machine immediately, to protect innocent Baby Trump. I expect pro-life groups all across America to immediately drop whatever else they are doing, and instead funnel all of their money into physics research. Not only will it protect one baby, not only will it defend trillions of past potential future human lives, but I suspect that most of them are Trump voters who want him to be president, anyway.
I anticipate a few concerns about this program.
Why do we need a crash program? It’s a freakin’ time machine. Because, obviously, if the baby-killers get it first, they will erase Donald Trump and all memories of Trump. Our researchers would be working away at our time machine, and then suddenly they’d be wondering why they’re doing this — they’d know nothing of the horrors of Trump, and would be baffled at why they’re developing a machine to kill Baby President Kardashian. We must be first.
What are your specific plans on how to use your time machine? Clearly, we must invest in a long-term defense: defending only Baby Trump could be defeated by murdering Toddler Trump, or Obnoxious Adolescent Trump, or Spoiled Twenty Year Old Asshole Trump. What we’re going to have to do is send back a robot to protect Trump from pre-birth to presidential candidacy. This has the advantage that sending back an emotionless cybernetic automaton to guide him through his youth might also enhance his empathy.
Wait. Why do you want to protect Donald Trump? Well, I don’t actually. I think he’s a nasty polyp on the colon of the body politic, and nipping him in the bud might be a good idea. But I’m also an SJW, and you know how we defend the right of the most odious people to exist, and he’s pretty dang odious.
But really, I just want a time machine. Once we send the robot back to the mid-1940s, I’m setting the dial to the Cambrian and going on an ancient metazoan collecting trip. (Where I will meet an army of robots tasked with defending primeval chordates? Only time will tell.)
