Hey, Stevens County and all the residents thereabout: you can catch a performance of Inherit the Wind tonight at 7, or tomorrow in a matinee at 2, in lovely Barrett, Minnesota. I’ll be there. My colleague in the biology department, Van Gooch, will be acting in the show, so UMM people should definitely go.
Now, see, this is why you shouldn’t read a gadgets & fashion magazine for information on science. Wired has run an awful little article that breathlessly claims that junk DNA ain’t junk—it’s all got a purpose, because opossum junk DNA is different from human junk DNA (I know, that makes no sense at all, but there it is in the article).
Then, just to make it even worse, that non sequitur is followed up by bunch of “we knew it all along” quotes from creationists. And then they’ve got Francis Collins chiming in and saying that he doesn’t use the term “junk” because he thinks it’s all lying around in case there’s a future use for it. Gah. He’s supposed to know what he’s talking about; it sure doesn’t show whenever he opens his mouth.
Fortunately, Larry Moran shreds this one. In addition, one scientist who was quoted as saying something sensible in the article, T. Ryan Gregory, expands and clarifies his sole comment. It’s really too bad the writer didn’t spend more time with him than with Michael Behe.
Chris Clarke claims I’m doing a cameo in this video. Was I the jogger? The policeman? The nun? The construction worker? Oh, hey…there I am. Nice outfit.
Chris also wants me to introduce him to Julieta. Sorry, Chris, I think she’d find your appendages…inadequate.
Salon has just published their report on Ken Ham’s creation “museum”, by author Gordy Slack, who has just released a book on the Dover trial. I haven’t read the book, although it was on my list to pick up this summer. No more. This was an awful bit of dreck, and I don’t think I could stomach reading a whole book written this way.
It’s dead, credulous reporting. Slack simply blandly reports the contents of the “museum,” and doesn’t offer a single word of criticism, and doesn’t even try to evaluate the accuracy of the claims. The protesters outside the gates are briefly mentioned, but otherwise the article just calls the place “beautiful”, and the words of Ken Ham and Mark Looy and various gullible visitors are unquestioningly quoted to praise it all. Sure, dinosaurs and people lived together; all the predators lived on fruit and vegetables; all the geology on the planet was carved by a single great worldwide flood 4000 years ago. Read it, and you get the impression that having an edifice dedicated to the proposition that all of physics, chemistry, geology, astronomy, and biology are wrong is perfectly reasonable, and the weirdos are the geeks standing in the rain outside complaining.
I thought the New York Times article was bad…but Salon has sunk to new depths of insipidity. I’ve been a subscriber to Salon since they first started, but this settles it for me—I won’t be resubscribing. This article wasn’t even expressing the usual phony “balance”—it’s biased in favor of creationism all the way through.
For shame, Salon.
Arrrr, curse ye, jpf. How dare you reveal this abomination to me? What’s this crazy born-again doing reviewing a pirate movie as a justification for his dogma?
But back to Jack for a second — sorry, Captain Jack. I was thinking about one of the central themes of this movie which involves the principal characters, one that you’ve most likely picked up on it as well:
Resurrection from the dead
As it turns out, getting swallowed by a nasty beastie called the Kraken is a bad thing, so one of the key story lines in this film is a desperate need for Captain Jack to come back from the dead so the forces of evil can be defeated.
And also as it turns out, we all have a Kraken of sorts on our tail as well … and unfortunately being on shore doesn’t keep us safe. Our nasty beastie is called death, and one day it will find us. We need someone to rescue us when that happens — to resurrect us so we can live out our eternity that way God intended it — which is in heaven with Him.
Jesus Christ defeated the Kraken called death. Like Jack Sparrow, he willingly jumped into its jaws to save others. But here’s the most amazing part … Jesus didn’t stay there. He came back so that we too could come back from the dead as well!
Look, Pirates of the Caribbean is fiction. That characters in a cartoon-quality story pop back and forth from the living to the dead and back again does not say anything to support your quaint superstitions about Jesus. Quite the contrary, it says that resurrection is a familiar (and lazy!) trope in fantasy stories, and if there’s any conclusion to be drawn, it ought to be that, gee, this bible story sure does sound as silly and improbable as a tale about a pirate getting eaten by giant cephalopods and getting rescued from Davy Jones’ locker by people with a magic compass. In fact, it ought to tell you that the bible is inferior. No pirates. No cephalopods. No swashbuckling. No undead monkeys. No men with tentacles.
Go ahead. Compare the bible to a fairy tale. I’m one up on you—I can recognize a fairy tale when I see one.
When ever I try to read about “framing” anymore, I start to twitch and suffer from hysterical blindness, which makes it really hard to blog. Fortunately, Greg Laden has a stronger constitution than I do (either that, or anthropologists have access to exotic drugs that help them overcome), so I’ll just send everyone over there to read that. Don’t tell me what it says, though: ir’ll jost teigger the husertical twrches agian ind I’ll hve to fo lie diwn for aquile. Eck. soasr neb vwiffffleop. Gorsnck.
Here’s a cute cartoon: Moral Orel learns about the book of Geniusis. I hadn’t seen this series before, but it’s much, much better than the preachy Davey and Goliath shows I remember seeing all the time as a kid (which I have just learned was of Lutheran origin. Figures. It was so darned bland.)
That was a sigh of contentment. I went off to see the latest Pirates of the Caribbean movie with very low expectations—like the last one, I expected an extremely muddled plot, lots of random noise that didn’t carry the story forward, and many places where the movie could have been edited down a bit. I was right! But it also had wonderful naval battles, glorious swashbuckling, and finally, the lady lead acquired a bit of ferocity. I just sank down in my seat and savored the unabashed piratey goodness and didn’t worry about the details, and all was well.
Except for one thing: finding my favorite character washed up dead on a beach in an early scene in the movie was very disappointing. I wiped away a tear and just imagined that she’d left behind a swarm of progeny that were flourishing off-screen.
Dr Joan Bushwell makes a find: Mitch Benn’s rock anthem to Richard Dawkins. It is most excellent party music.
Sheril Kirshenbaum is guest-blogging at The Intersection while Chris Mooney is away, and she is bravely planning on discussing…dare I say it…framing. It’s a subject that gives me the heebie-jeebies, the flibbertigibbits, and a bad case of the surly snarls, but let’s see if maybe Sheril can give it a new perspective—maybe she can do a better job of framing framing.
