Really…I was only joking about the war on Easter. The wingnuts didn’t have to take it seriously.
What’s worse is that Minnesota may be Ground Zero: this is a real fake sign, so I’m a little concerned that someone is going to find a reason to blame me. While a little plagiarism gets one fired, I’m not sure what the penalty is for starting a culture war.
In related news, property values in St. Paul have just shot upwards.
Echidne has a great suggestion: a War on Easter! After all, our godless War on Christmas almost gave Bill O’Reilly a stroke, so maybe if we take a shot at him twice a year we’ll finally see his head explode on television. Echidne is taking a hard line against little yellow chicks, which is a fine start, but I can think of a few others.
Although, come to think of it, I’ll probably be about as fervent about any War on Easter as I was in the War Against Christmas. I think we’ll have to hope that some quasi-Christian poseur takes it up as a theme, because I fear we godless are just going to say “eh” again.
Pharyngula has been nominated for a Cobb Award. No, actually, that’s not quite right: you, the readers of Pharyngula, have been nominated for an award for Worst Community.
It sounds awful, but don’t panic (they almost instituted a ‘Most Super-extra Worst Professor EVAR-INFINITY’ award, and then I might have been in trouble). Here’s the description of the Worst Community award:
As an exercise in futility, The Daily Transcript tries to categorize disciplines of the life sciences. Although there is a general air of truth to what he’s saying, the problem is that, unlike the members of the Tree of Life, academic disciplines are free to hybridize and accumulate and change, so instead of blurry but recognizable terminal branches, you end up with an anastomosing rete, and no one can sort out precisely who is what.
For instance, I’ve got training as a neurophysiologist (electrodes everywhere!), a cell biologist (painting organelles different colors and watching the glowing cells move), and a developmental biologist (which, contrary to Palazzo’s description, is actually the Most Important Discipline in Biology; he’s also wrong about killing fetuses, sometimes we just like to muck ’em up so they’re horribly deformed.) Oh, and I’ve had a smattering of genetics, but it was all developmental—real geneticists are kind of the mathematicians of biology, all very abstract and peculiar and mostly incomprehensible.
I also notice the bench biologist’s bias in his classification scheme. No ecologists? An article on taxonomy with no taxonomists?
Alas, my mandate for today also includes traveling to St. Cloud State University to give two talks, one to the biology department in the afternoon and another to the philosophy department this evening. It looks like I get to be driving through the tail end of a snowstorm today, too.
It may be a little quiet here today. I haven’t forgotten everyone, I’m just going to be excessively busy.
Through the miracle of animation, Charles Darwin tells the creationists to “kiss my ass”.
It doesn’t seem very true-to-life, but he has had over a century to work up a bit of crankiness.
We’re going to have to rethink all monotheistic religions, actually, since a study now proves the universe was created by a committee.
The most extensive analysis yet undertaken of the structure and contents of the universe conclusively proves the universe was created not by a single entity, as has been widely suggested, but by “a fractious and disorganized committee or committees given to groupthink and petty infighting”, according to Drs. Karl Pootle and Yumble Frick, co-authors of the study. The analysis is expected to have profound implications on the theoretical underpinnings of many popular religions.
All I can say is…OOOOODDIIIIIIIIIIN!!!
Never mind me, I’m running around with classes and meetings today…here are a few quick links.
In my talk on Tuesday, I suggested that if we really want to teach the controversy, we ought to put the Norse creation myth in our classes. I had no idea the plan would be so popular.
