Who knew that water droplets suspended in the air could could refract light and produce a rainbow? It can’t be. Why, it must be…a government conspiracy! This never happened before!
You might also enjoy this collection of real church signs. My favorite is “A 4 inch tongue can bring a 6 foot man to his knees.” Sometimes, there is truth in these aphorisms.
The gang at Bakersfield that ran one of the polls we contributed to has noticed, and they feel violated. Mildly. And with a little good humor. I guess we’ll have to do it again sometime!
You may remember Edmondson as the creator of the Beware the Believers viral video — he took a little time to immortalize a recent event.
Richard Dawkins gets lucky in this one.
Something Awful has put together a collection of photoshopped Reverse Magazines — this one tickled my fancy.
Nick Matzke, one of the world’s leading experts in detecting absurdities in creationist texts, has discovered a real howler from Casey Luskin. Luskin is complaining that he, Junior Woodchuck lawyer for an intellectually bankrupt propaganda mill, can’t find the wrist bones in Tiktaalik when Neil Shubin, world-class paleontologist, is directly describing them. This is, admittedly, a fairly high-level discussion by Shubin, but it’s amusing that Luskin isn’t tripped up by the science — it’s his command of the English language that lets him down.
When discussing Tiktaalik’s “wrist,” Shubin says he “invites direct
comparisons” between Tiktaalik’s fin and a true tetrapod limb. Surely
this paper must have a diagram comparing the “wrist”-bones of
Tiktaalik to a true tetrapod wrist, showing which bones correspond. So
again I searched the paper. And again he provides no such diagram
comparing the two. So we are left to decipher his jargon-filled
written comparison in the following sentence by sentence analysis:1. Shubin et al.: “The intermedium and ulnare of Tiktaalik have
homologues to eponymous wrist bones of tetrapods with which they share
similar positions and articular relations.” (Note: I have labeled the
intermedium and ulnare of Tiktaalik in the diagram below.)Translation: OK, then exactly which “wrist bones of tetrapods” are
Tiktaalik’s bones homologous to? Shubin doesn’t say. This is a
technical scientific paper, so a few corresponding “wrist bone”-names
from tetrapods would seem appropriate. But Shubin never gives any.
“Waaaaah,” whines Luskin, “Shubin didn’t tell us the names of the corresponding tetrapod wrist bones!”
Only he did. I guess “eponymous” is too difficult a word for a Junior Woodchuck.
Shubin is saying that there are bones with the same positions and articulations with neighboring bones in tetrapods and Tiktaalik, and that they have the same names. They have a small wrist bone that articulates with the ulna called the ulnare, and they have another bone called the intermedium. They have the same names.
Here’s a nice diagram, color-coded and everything, just for Casey. Here are some fish:
And some tetrapods:
These clowns at the DI would be much funnier if more people would realize that they are performance artists with little talent and no expertise, except in lying and tripping over their own shoes.
Carl Zimmer has also noted Luskin’s absurd error.
Some days, my mailbox overflows with hilarity…like today. I got the new Roy Zimmerman CD! You should, too! It’ll cheer any liberal to realize that you aren’t alone, and you’ve got a theme song.
But I also get other mail that’s almost as funny, although not intentionally so. For some perverse reason, there are some of you readers out there who think you are making a statement and causing me grief by signing me up for conservative magazines and newsletters. You really shouldn’t. You know what happens? It comes in the mail, I flip through it, I laugh, and I toss it in the trash. Then when the phone call comes later, dunning me to pay for their magazine, I tell them that I don’t read it and I didn’t order it, and they get to eat the cost…and I laugh again. All you’re doing is contributing to the local landfill and hurting my mailman’s back, and that isn’t nice.
But you’re a conservative, so what the hell do you care.
Anyway, so far today I’ve received:
Assurances from a wattled, snake-eyed Newt Gingrich that Governor Bobby Jindal of Louisiana is the great future hope of American Conservatism.
An advertisement from Human Events telling me that my lungs are dying and I have to stop exercising (it’s bad for you!) and buy their supplements.
Ann Coulter tries to sell me stock tips better than the Marxist tripe the Wall Street executives are peddling.
The Zimmerman CD had some real competition on the humor side, but wins in the talent department.
Not bad, but really, the guy in the glasses ought to be redrawn with a beard.
(via Atheist Media Blog)
We seem to be having a light incursion of evangelical Christians. Here’s some advice for them, on how to convert an atheist. It’s a very silly article, I’m afraid, because while it says all these sensible things about being polite and getting to know them and leading them gently to church, it never addresses the key stumbling point for atheists: that their religion is wacky, nutty, insane, internally inconsistent, and illogical. The very elements that Christians think makes their faith unique and special and powerful are the pieces that make us wonder what damaged Christian brains.
For instance, here’s what we’re told is going to happen to us when we die:
I don’t know. I don’t see how any response, no matter how polite and friendly, is going to overcome the inherent goofiness of the religion.
