Steven Austin, the creationist geologist, gave a presentation at the Geological Society of America this November. I’m not a geologist, so I’m not competent to judge the geological details, but you can download a pdf of the presentation, and it definitely is a weird thing. Most of it is about an examination of features in the geology around Jerusalem that are indicative of an earthquake; I’ll accept that as a given, and assume that sure, there were a few earthquakes in the Middle East in the first century AD, and that they left traces that a geologist can read.

But then I ask, “And so…?”

And that’s where it gets strange. This is a scientific talk presented at the GSA (I presume — it’s 40 slides long, which is at least an hour talk, and most of the slides are light on information — it looks more like a popular talk than the data-dense kind of stuff I usually see at scientific meetings), and a substantial subset of the slides are Bible quotes. Like this one:

I’d get up and walk out of a talk that was that shallow and irrelevant. And then there are a few suspicious remarks. Throughout the talk, the slides are very specific about the earthquake traces being from 33AD, and they even mention April of 33AD. Yet in the abstract, note the highlighted bit: the accuracy of the date is ±5 years, and the official measurement is 31AD…which Austin blithely revises upwards by two years by citing “history”, by which he means the untrustworthy religious account found in his bible.

Two thousand years ago the Dead Sea Basin was shaken by two earthquakes that left two widespread seismites within laminated Dead Sea sediment. The first earthquake (spring 31 B.C., Jericho fault, M~7.2) transformed adjacent Dead Sea laminated mud and aragonite into a persistent and distinctive intraclast breccia seismite in places greater than 1 m thick. The 1st- century Jewish historian Josephus described the 31 B.C. earthquake as a significant social and economic event during King Herod’s reign. A second seismite occurs within laminated mud and aragonite at 10 to 85 cm above the 31 B.C. seismite. Varve counting above the 31 B.C. datum indicates the second seismite can be assigned to 31 A.D. (+/- 5 years), but history specifies as 33 A.D. Superb mud laminae exposures are provided in two gullies at the southwest corner of the Dead Sea at Wadi Ze’elim fan delta where the 33 A.D. seismite outcrops 55 to 85 cm above the 31 B.C. intraclast breccia. The 33 A.D. seismite at Ze’elim is intraformationally folded, 8-cm-thick, sometimes brecciated, silicate mud and aragonite/gypsum laminae. Seismite facies progress from “linear waves” to “asymmetric billows” to “breccia” expressing transition to Kelvin-Helmholtz turbulence within the uppermost shearing laminae during shaking. Recumbent folds and imbricate faults are consistent with gravity collapse upon a broad arch structure during shaking. Folded seismite transitions northward within fan deltas to thicker intraclast breccia, suggesting an epicenter nearer Jerusalem. Matthew, the 1st-century synoptic Gospel author, reported two earthquakes in Jerusalem in 33 A.D. These are the Jerusalem earthquakes of April 3 at the crucifixion of Christ (Matt. 27:51), and April 5 at the resurrection of Christ (Matt. 28:2). Luke, a first century physician and historian, reported a smaller earthquake in the summer at the gathered assembly (Acts 4:31). The persistent 33 A.D. seismite indicates the biggest 33 A.D. earthquake was M~6.0. This biggest earthquake was likely April 3, 33 A.D. that startled city residents and caused moderate damage, especially to the western side of Temple Mount. Pivots of two, 20-m- high, metal doors of the Temple appear to have been damaged, and the 20-m-high curtain in front of the doors was torn, likely by displacement of the lintel of the Temple during the earthquake.

So, I’m just curious and throw a few questions out to the geologically informed audience here.

• Were any of you at the GSA meeting, and did you attend? I’m just wondering what the audience reaction was. Also, whether this lengthy pdf represents an actual talk at the meeting.

• Does the fudging of the dates look as dodgy to you as it does to me?

• Is there any reason to think this correlation is at all important or even interesting? If you picked any random decade a few thousand years ago, how many earthquakes would a trained geologist be able to identify?

And a totally flippant question: it seems like every year after the GSA meetings I get email about crackpot talks. How much of this weird stuff is actually going on? I suspect it’s buried in an avalanche of good science, but you never know…maybe someday it’ll be as entertaining as a meeting of ghost hunters and UFO fanatics. (No, not really, I’m joking, geologists! Don’t hit me with those wicked pointy hammers you all carry around!)

…I’ll be staying away from the roads.

You know, maybe they’d be smashing up their cars less often if they weren’t all fiddling with the video cameras on their dashboards.

(via Kottke)

Wait, what? Over on that Reddit thread about the benefits of douching, petzl20 has made this announcement:

Myers has a staff of assistants that research and do a large part of the writing for his blogs and tweets.

Gawdamn, I wish I’d known about this before. I’m going to put them to work grading papers and putting together my final exams for me instead — the writing is the fun stuff.

I’m not suddenly going to get a bill for hours worked, am I?

Congratulations, Arthur L. and Ina Jean Strobel! They’ve been married for 65 years, a commendable accomplishment. I’m going to recommend, given Arthur’s interests, that for his 66th anniversary, they reward themselves with a real genetics class.

Here’s their anniversary announcement, published at, I presume, their own expense. He rambles on about his service in WWII, and then, strangely, talks about the actions of a German major who was charged with defending a bridge, and who might be a distant relative. Which leads him to talk about the inheritance of the Y chromosome, something about Romans and Celts, salt mines, and National Science Foundation Institutes. Also,

Arthur and Ina Jean consider attendance with and participation in a scripturally based church to to be of high importance for a long, happy, useful and satisfying life. They consider fiscal responsibility to be very important for family stability. They never pay extra for an extended warranty on a television, refrigerator, washing machine, automobile or anything else. They prefer to pay the complete price at the time of purchase for these items as extra pay for financial charges would be unwise. Arthur and Ina Jean consider spiritual and fiscal development and maturity to be worthy goals.

Then we’re back on the chromosome business, where we learn that having a Y chromosome makes you strong, good at chess, and able to solve Rubik’s Cubes quickly, while having two X chromosomes allows you to touch the back of your head with your foot. Also, one trick is to tell stories that don’t go anywhere. Like the time I caught the ferry to Shelbyville. I needed a new heel for m’shoe. So I decided to go to Morganville, which is what they called Shelbyville in those days. So I tied an onion to my belt. Which was the style at the time. Now, to take the ferry cost a nickel, and in those days, nickels had pictures of bumblebees on ’em. Gimme five bees for a quarter, you’d say. Now where was I… oh yeah. The important thing was that I had an onion tied to my belt, which was the style at the time. You couldn’t get white onions, because of the war. The only thing you could get was those big yellow ones… . Oh, wait, no — I got that last bit somewhere else.

The most recent iteration of The Oatmeal is a lovely, lengthy treatise on creativity, inspiration, and public response. Complete with bonus beaver slap fight and hipster goats.

I don’t know about you, but the “inspiration is like food poisoning” line is going to stay with me for a long, long time.

People are always sending me pictures of their terrifying tentacled creatures, so I thought it only proper today to exhibit one that will send chills down your spine. Behold! A nightmare from Tupelo, Mississippi!

Note the cool regard of all she sees, the superior attitude, the tentacles, the stylish purple outfit with googly eyes on her head — she’s clearly an atheist. You will bow down before her.

So now aliens are bigger than Jesus.

According to a recent survey carried out by the makers of the new alien-shoot ’em up video game ‘XCOM: Enemy Unknown’, an estimated 33.1 million inhabitants in the UK believe that life exists on other planets, while only 27.5 million – less than half the country – believe there is a God.

52 percent of the population believe evidence of UFOs has or would be covered up, because the fact of their existence would threaten the stability of the government.

10 percent of the country claim to have seen a UFO, with almost a quarter more men claiming to have done so than women.

Although the source of the survey might have skewed the results a bit, I can believe it. I’ve met a few UFOnuts, and they’re pretty dotty…and worse.

By the way, I may have a brief appearance on the UK Conspiracy Road Trip series soon — Jerry Coyne was on the episode with creationists last week. I’m not the draw in the show, though. It’s the deranged theories. One guy tried to tell me that Jews were reptiles from another planet.