The divine right of penis

I thought this was pretty funny.

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But then I realized that this was the answer to the whole problem of the political assault on women by Republicans. If they don’t give a damn about women’s rights in the first place, we just have to reframe the whole question: Rick Perry and the whole lot of abortion-hatin’, planned-parenthood-defundin’, make-life-more-difficult-for-women patriarchal party-poopers are interfering with men’s ability to get laid.

Put it in those terms, and I expect the party of plutocrats will turn right around. Nothing may be allowed to get in the way of a man and his sacred penis.

Creationism evolves!

The existence of Ken Ham proves that creationism changes, therefore proving that it is not absolute, inerrant truth as he claims, therefore Ken Ham disproves creationism. QED. We can all go home now.

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By the way, that’s not a bad diagram for illustrating the relationships of the various versions of creationism, except that the pedigree breaks down for Intelligent Design creationism, which is kind of a weird syncretic hodge-podge that accommodates both of the major branches of the creationist tree. It really ought to be shown as the warped, evil offspring of an unnatural act, an orgy of all of the critters in the bestiary. And then it also lies about its parentage (as would we all, if we sprang from such mindless chaos).

Soon to appear on a thousand herpetologist’s doors

xkcd digs into cladistics.

Unfortunately, his cladogram is wrong. Mammals should also be a subset of the reptiles, so the herpetologists should be demanding that all other amniotes be absorbed into their more inclusive field of tetrapod biology.

At least, until the ichthyologists show up and point out that we’re all just weird dry land-walking fish.


Just to clear this up, I hope, here’s a modified version of a cladistic diagram to show what herps are:

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So if you want to avoid the sins of polyphyly or paraphyly, you must include birds and mammals in the herps. Of course, the alternative is to not care about the abstractions, and recognize that there are plenty of people already specializing in mammals and birds, so someone has to pay attention to all the otherwise neglected classes.