Aww, it’s so sweet

A reader sent me a link to this myspace page (don’t quail in horror just yet!) called Bark, Hide and Horn—it’s by some folkies, and includes some songs. Love songs about mating molluscs and ants and various invertebrates! It’s very romantic. Listen if you’ve long had a lingering suspicion that you were born into the wrong phylum, or if just appreciate love no matter what the species involved are.

Consider it some theme music for the Circus of the Spineless, which will be appearing right here later today.

Lost Tomb of Jesus

Last week, I promised I’d watch this documentary about the “lost tomb of Jesus” because it was being advertised here on Pharyngula. Promise fulfilled, but the ghastly program was two hours long—two hours of nothing but fluff. I’ve put a bit of a summary of the whole show below the fold, but I’m afraid there’s nothing very persuasive about any of it, and it was stretched out to a hopelessly tedious length.

[Read more…]

A good protest should draw a crowd

Some of you may recall that I got rather cranky with some sensitive Catholics who wanted to cancel a play — “The Pope and the Witch”, currently playing on the Twin Cities campus. Unfortunately, although we’d hope to go, we had this succession of snowstorms that made traveling impractical this past week (I may still go at the end of this coming week, since the last day of the play coincides with the last day of classes before spring break and my birthday). Anyway, the Twin Cities Pioneer Press picked up on it. I put the article below the fold to preserve the fact that they quoted me, and to let you read the tale of some very whiny Catholics.

[Read more…]

I’ll go see it

A new movie about Darwin is in the works—

Jeremy Thomas is set to produce Annie’s Box about Charles Darwin, and hiring John Collee to write and directed by Jon Amiel.

The film will be based on a biography of Darwin by Randall Keynes, the great-great grandson of the Victorian scientist. Variety notes it focuses on the period when Darwin was writing The Origin of the Species, his ground-breaking treatise on evolution, while living a family life at Down House in Kent, near London.

The ‘Annie’ of the title is Darwin’s first daughter, whose death aged 10 left him grief-stricken. With his scientific discoveries leading him toward agnosticism, he was unable to find consolation in belief in an afterlife, but coped with his loss by plunging into his work.

Thomas plans to start production on Annie’s Box next year in Down House; he’s hoping for a release in 2009, the bicentennial of Darwin’s birth.

The book it is based on is Darwin, His Daughter, and Human Evolution (amzn/b&n/abe/pwll) by Randal Keynes, and it’s an excellent choice. There’s a great deal of potential for family-centered drama in the story—it’s all about his family life, and in particular the effect of the death of a daughter at the age of 10—but there’s also some difficult material on Darwin’s tussle with religion that’s going to be hard to capture. (It’s also not easily summarized; Darwin left Christianity behind, but his ideas about a deity were conflicted).

The Crucifixion of St PZ

Many people have noticed the ad for the ghastly Jesus documentary at the top of the pages here. I’m not thrilled, as you might guess—I think this is almost certainly a load of pseudoscientific fluff. Since it is so prominently promenaded across the pages, I’m now feeling obligated to watch the silly thing, so the ad has won them one viewer, at the cost of personal pain to me.

Since I am taking on the sins of our advertiser, however, I will suggest to you readers that you can consider yourselves redeemed and should feel no compulsion to watch it yourselves. If you want to, you may, of course…or you can just wait for my summary on the day after.

Also, since our family TV is in the basement which gets awfully cold this time of year, I’ll probably watch it on Skatje‘s TV, so she’ll probably see it, too. Maybe I’ll have her pass judgement as well. (Maybe the metaphor would be more apt if Skatje is Jesus, and I can be her father who forces her to experience torment to relieve the rest of the world of sin? Ah, it doesn’t matter, the whole story makes no sense anyway.)

Cafe Scientifique, or Lewis Wolpert

You are going to have to make a choice about tonight’s educational experience. You could come out to the Common Cup Coffeehouse in Morris, Minnesota at 6:00 to attend our Cafe Scientifique, in which Arne Kildegaard will make the electricity industry and current renewable energy policy fascinating, OR if you happen to be in London at 7:30, you could listen to Lewis Wolpert debate William Lane Craig on “Is God a delusion?” There is a six hour time difference between London and Morris, but I don’t think it’s possible to both attend the debate and fly across the Atlantic in 4½ hours, so you should just face the fact that you’re going to have to pick one or the other.

Sorry about that. We should have consulted each other before scheduling these events.

As long as we’re confessing…

In response to this crazy attempt to smear Mitt Romney with the sins of his fathers literally, a few people are disqualifying themselves from future runs for the presidency with similar confessions. I have to admit there’s a skeleton in my family tree, too: apparently, one of my ancestors was hanged as a witch in 17th century Massachusetts.

No one will be surprised at that, I suppose. Especially since if your family can trace its roots in this country back almost 400 years, you might well be related to her, too.

Hey, this Joachim Bublath guy is good!

A reader pointed me to this German documentary (with English subtitles) on evolution and creationism—it has a nice 10 minute primer on mechanisms and evidence for evolution (with evo-devo, especially of fruit flies and zebrafish, prominently mentioned, appropriately enough for the country of Christiane Nusslein-Volhard).

There’s also a segment on creationism that is a bit lacking in nuance—they are all lumped together as young earth creationists—which is the kind of opening creationists use to disavow association with those other kooks, while glossing over the foolishness they do believe. Never mind the theological hairsplitting, though, YECs and IDist are fundamentally identical in their rejection of science for dogma.

Aside from that, it’s a simple introduction to evolution that emphasizes the molecular evidence (yay!), has eye-catching graphics and animations, and scathingly dismisses creationism and the general descent into mystical thinking. Do any of my German readers know of this fellow? Was this broadcast on German television?