Errm, what?

So these media people are making a movie about some tombs discovered in Jerusalem—bearing the names Jesua, son of Joseph, Mary, Mary, Mathew, Jofa and Judah, son of Jesua—and getting all this hype about discovering the final resting place of the family of the spiritual founder of Christianity. I’m more than a little dubious; they prattle unconvincingly about their evidence.

But film-makers Cameron and Jacobovici claim to have amassed evidence through DNA tests, archeological evidence and Biblical studies, that the 10 coffins belong to Jesus and his family.

Wait, DNA tests? What did they do, knock on god’s door with a court order in hand and demand a blood sample? Since the only thing unique about that Jesus dude was his paternity claim, I don’t see how else they could verify the identity of whatever remains they have. And from the description, it doesn’t sound like they have any scraps of human tissue anyway—they’ve got some stone caskets, that’s it.

I say it’s BS all the way down.

Besides, I’m out of the closet on the cephalopodophilia thing

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Tsk, tsk, Zeno…you’ve got a lot to learn about blackmail. First of all, you threaten to release the photos to the press and family and then ask for the money to prevent that from happening; you don’t get the pictures published everywhere first.

Secondly, the photos have to look something like me. OK, there is a dim resemblance in the one on the left, but I have an alibi—I was nowhere near New Zealand at the time. The one on the right is clearly very old from the costume, which is from my days in our band* back in the 1970s, before I married my wife. And she knows about the relationship. And it was just a fling. And I was hopped up on molluscan pheromones anyway, and didn’t know what I was doing. Besides, as you can see, that squid was something of a tramp.

Anyway, if anyone ought to be blackmailed, it’s that guy Steve O’Shea. Here’s a photo from the Tongarewa Massage Parlor in Wellington—look how relaxed that squid is!

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*I have no musical talent; the band was called Evo Devo, and we specialized in highly complex music that was built up from randomly generated and contingent processes, shaped by constraints on their interactions and functions. Well, actually, we were more interested in the interconnections between the instruments than any sound that might come out—our concerts consisted of several hours of finding objects on the stage and stringing and tracing cables between them, culminating in the sound check. We were never very popular with the audiences, but the roadies loved us.

Who’d have thought geology and paleontology and cooking would go together so well?

My wife is going to be upset at this—we’re going to have to have a couple more kids, just so I have an excuse to take advantage of the Geologic and Paleontologic Cook Book. It’s got recipes for Ammonites in a Blanket, Cephalopod Celery, a Cheese and Bugles Coral Reer, an Edible Devonian Marine Ecosystem (I’ve always wanted to eat a whole ecosystem), Trilobite Cookies, and much more. This is wonderfully kid-oriented…too bad my kiddies are all turning into serious-minded old adults.

But wait! I’m immature enough for a whole family of kids all on my own! I also do the cooking…I think we’re having Cephalopods in a Blanket for dinner tonight.

Conservapedia has a friend

I’ve been following that thread on Conservapedia, and I’ve seen what you scalliwags have been up to, littering the poor site with humorous edits and then coming over here and tittering about it. You do realize that Conservapedia‘s entries required the indentured labor of 58 homeschooled children who were forced to give up their educations in order to slavishly transcribe paragraphs of their textbooks into wiki articles, don’t you? What you so casually deface is the sweat-stained, blood-spotted outpourings of tiny, stunted hands and tiny, stunted brains. You should be ashamed!

Besides, it turns out there is one person who finds Conservapedia useful: that nice, reasonable conservative, Jon Swift. They’re also going to have an article in New Scientist* soon, so they must be a serious site.

*I know because the reporter called me up this afternoon, and I told her all about it. It could be juicy.

Hey, now! I just looked at the “Recent Changes” page, and it looks like someone tried to add a “PZ Myers” entry to the site. But look what they did to me:

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“Silly and unsupported”? Moi?

Maybe the appendix does have a function after all

We have to follow where the evidence leads us, and we finally find an important function for the adult appendix: as a reserve ammunition pouch.

Though it may look vaguely like a hand grenade, the solid white structure in the X-ray is actually someone’s appendix, visible only because it is full of shotgun pellets — so full, in fact, that it is stretched to about three times its normal size.

The patient, a 73-year-old Inuit woman at Norton Sound Regional Hospital in Nome, had probably been swallowing the pellets inadvertently for decades, in the meat of ducks and geese shot by local hunters.

So if you’re ever stranded in the Great White North, short of ammo for your shotgun, find an Inuit with bad teeth and do an emergency appendectomy. I expect to see this turn up as a plot point in a Michael Crichton novel any day now.

What’s your SQ?

I’m sure some of you will soon be bragging about how your Squid Quotient is higher than mine.

Your Squid Quotient = 158.25
Interpreting your results: An average Squid Quotient is around 100. A SQ of 100 means you have a normal affinity for squid. A SQ above 100 means you have an attraction or fondness for squid. Below 100 means that you should probably stay away from the deep ocean.

Ducks with 6 limbs are not caused by genetic changes!

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Cool: here’s a duck with four hindlimbs.

I have to gripe about the description, though:

A rare mutation has left eight-day-old Stumpy with two extra legs behind the two he moves around on. … The mutation is rare but cases have been recorded across the world.

No, no, no. This is almost certainly not the result of a mutation, and it’s one of my pet peeves when the media makes this wrong assumption, that every change in a newborn is the product of a genetic change. This is the result of a developmental error, not a genetic one, most likely caused by a fusion of two embryos in a single egg.

(via Apostropher)