Victory is in our grasp!

As you know by now, we’re in a fierce competition between myself, the mega-behemoth of godless blogging, against a ragtag flock of motley pee-wee bloggers, all to raise money for Camp Quest.

I am privy to certain emails that have been flying, I should mention, and they reveal that my opposition are scoundrels and rapscallions. They see defeat staring them in the face, and they have a desperate plan: they hope to recruit more atheists to their team, to try and outnumber me even further…not that it will help.

In the face of this threat, I have no choice: I sought out allies of my own. And once again, I have accomplished my plan with rapidity, stealing a march on the confused forces that think they can defeat me.

Yes. Team PZ has received the Official Endorsement of…Richard Dawkins. Contribute now. Or a pair of 900-pound godless gorillas will crush you.

Why I am not interested in watching The Game of Thrones

HBO has this show now — you’ve heard about it? — recreating a most excellent fantasy series by George R.R. Martin. I enjoy a good fantasy story, and I think Martin is a fabulous writer…but man, I read the books, and I felt burned.

Here’s the basic premise established at the start of the first novel:

The kingdom descends into the chaos of civil war, while a mysterious supernatural threat arises far to the north, and an exiled princess across the sea plots to invade with the power of dragons. Many tangled plot lines are established with a horde of memorable characters.

Now here’s the situation at the end of the fourth novel: <SPOILERS!!!>

The kingdom is wracked with the chaos of civil war, while a mysterious supernatural threat stirs far to the north, and an exiled princess across the sea gathers her army to invade with the power of dragons. Many tangled plot lines are tangled even more deeply, a horde of memorable characters have died, and there is a new horde of memorable characters.

Martin really knows how to set a pot to boiling. He doesn’t know how to bring a delicious stew to the table. If you want to watch something churn and bubble entertainingly, you’re welcome to it, but if you’re hoping for a meal, go somewhere else.

Hey! This contest isn’t fair!

I’ve been asked to compete in a fundraising contest for Camp Quest. But look what they did to me!

Five awesome atheist bloggers are competing to see who can raise the most money to support Camp Quest!

Since one of those bloggers is the indomitable PZ Myers of Pharyngula, we have made two teams in order to make this competition more fair.

Team 1: Greta Christina of Greta Christina’s Blog, Hemant Mehta of Friendly Atheist, Jen McCreight of Blag Hag, and JT Eberhard of Zerowing21.

Team 2: PZ Myers of Pharyngula.

The first team to raise $5,000 for Camp Quest, or the team that has raised the most by June 1, 2011 will win!

What will the winning team receive? Bragging rights. Pure and simple.

All contestants and contributors receive: the knowledge that they have supported a fantastic program for freethinking families and their children.

Camp Quest is a fabulous program to give kids a fun and educational experience without the taint of religion. They should be encouraged and supported, but you know what this means…I must also crush the competition. Donate to help the kids, but also do it via my little widget. If you don’t, you’re probably also one of those wimps who roots for the faces rather than the heels in pro wrestling.

I have already goaded my feeble opponents into responding. Do they even realize that if they were to win (which is inconceivable), they’d have to split the bragging rights four ways? My question is, who would get the “buh?”, who gets the “err…”, who gets the “Aaaaa!”, and who gets the “gah?”

No lie too low

Coral Ridge Ministries, that awful fundagelical organization founded by D. James Kennedy, has “discovered” a couple of former workers willing to testify about the evil practices of Planned Parenthood.

“They have an abortion budget and they have a certain number of patients that you have to perform abortions on every month, and there’s a dollar amount attached to each woman.”

Everett’s business plan included outreach in schools with talks given to break down children’s natural modesty and promote Everett and her clinic associates as trusted authorities for all things sexual.

Everett wanted students to “come to us with their sexual questions so we could put them on a low dose birth control pill we knew they’d get pregnant on. Of course we passed out condoms but we never passed out high quality condoms; we always used seconds or defective condoms. Our goal was to get the kids pregnant.”

The target, Everett says, was “three to five abortions between the ages of 13 and 18 from every girl we could find.”

I know, when you’re dealing with this brand of Christian, no lie is too low. But you’d think they’d at least care about plausibility.

Oh, wait…they believe that Jesus nonsense. I take it back, neither sleazy lies nor unbelievable absurdities are barriers to these guys.

Ellen Lewin tells it like it is

Ellen Lewin is a professor in the anthropology department at the University of Iowa. Like all of us, she is constantly dunned with email announcing this, that, and the other thing at our universities, and sometimes we get email that makes our blood boil. In this case, she got mail from the College Republicans, announcing a “coming out” party (like Republicans in the midwest are a closeted and oppressed minority…) that featured some hagiographic movie about George W. Bush (that ignorant ass), an “animal rights barbecue” and other such joyful shenanigans to celebrate the party of morons and thugs and self-destructive ideologues.

Ellen Lewin had enough. Ellen Lewin got angry. Ellen Lewin fired off a one-sentence reply.

FUCK YOU, REPUBLICANS.

I think I’m in love with Ellen Lewin.

She later apologized for losing her temper — and I can sympathize with that, too — but I hope she never backs down in her righteous contemptuous opinion of the Republican party. I share it. I think her response was relatively mild.

Now, of course, the right-wingers are outraged. How dare she disagree loudly with an entire party of mouth-breathing, sanctimonious idiots? Read the Free Republic for examples of their response; the first comment sarcastically complains that “Liberals are SO CLASSY!!”, and then the rest, with no sense of irony, posts a picture of her and proceeds to call her a “pervert”, a “lesbian”, a “cow”, a “demonic lesbian demon”, a “bitter, old, ugly, lesbian with a hairy lip”, and suggests that she has sex with dogs.

And more! Those delicate little flowers, the College Republicans, are so hurt by her unkind words that they are filing an official complaint.

Ginty, 21, a junior, filed her complaint with the provost and the Office of Equal Opportunity and Diversity. In the complaint, she states that the April 18 email from professor Ellen Lewin and Lewin’s followup “halfhearted apology” violate general standards of decency, respect for civility in public discourse and the university’s antiharassment policy.

Ginty’s complaint says “there is little doubt that the university would not tolerate a similar string of emails by a member of the faculty targeted at a number of other student groups.”

She has a point. It wasn’t civil or respectful (although turning a brief outburst into a case of harassment and a “string of emails” is a bit much). But you know what? I approve of incivility and disrespect towards organizations that deserve it, and the Republican party is currently the party of know-nothings, hypocrites, liars, and greed — it’s the stagnant, festering slime towards which all the worst elements of society now gravitate. The problem isn’t college professors snarling at them, it’s that the party itself encourages short-sightedness, idiocy, and hatefulness. So, until the grown-ups wake up and clean out the bigotry and ignorance from their own house, I think it’s only fair for us to air our vigorous disgust with them.

I stand in solidarity with Ellen Lewin.

FUCK YOU, REPUBLICANS.

Squid in space

The last mission of the space shuttle will contain a student-initiated experiment: a collection of bobtail squid embryos will be launched into space. Which is cool, I suppose. I like squid, I like space, I like science, I like student research, let’s just throw them all into one big tossed salad of extravagantly expensive tinkering.

So why am I so disappointed?

Because the experiment is so trivial and uninteresting. The squid Euprymna has a commensal relationship with the luminescent bacterium, Vibrio. Early in their development, special organs in the squid are colonized by the bacteria; the squid provides a privileged environment for Vibrio growth, the bacteria give Euprymna a glowing organ that is thought to camouflage itself when viewed from below against a moonlit sky. This is a really cool phenomenon that has engaged the interest of many researchers, and there is serious work being done on the genetics and development of the symbiosis.

But, you know, I’ve never seen any speculation that gravity is a significant factor in the interaction. There’s cilia, and there are secreted amino acids, there is a mucus trap, and there’s a venting process, but gravity? Why would that matter?

I suspect the experiment was chosen because it’s easy for the shuttle engineers and technicians. Load up some chambers with embryos, launch it into space where it will require minimal attention from the crew, assay the results, that is, the development of the light organ, when it returns to earth. The results don’t matter. NASA will check off an item on a list, and say, yep, we did experimental embryology on the shuttle, and we gave a little bit of space to a student research project.

And what will the results be? Most likely, the light organ will be colonized and develop perfectly normally, because there’s no reason to think that microgravity will affect it. Or there will be abnormalities, which could either be because delicate embryos do not take well to the abuse of a shuttle launch, so we’re seeing the effect of stress, or there will be some surprising peculiarity in development that suggests maybe microgravity does make a difference, but repeating and expanding the experiment to puzzle out what’s going on will be out of the question.

I get the impression that NASA is simply filling a quota of interdisciplinary research for PR purposes, with only a nominal investment in the project. I wish I could be more of a cheerleader for the combination of space and developmental biology, but I haven’t yet seen an engaging project that would actually help me understand anything. There’s good science that we do because we really want to find an answer, and there’s lazy science that we do just because we can. This is an example of the latter, I’m sorry to say.

This is not a poll

Well, it is, but I don’t recommend voting on it. It’s on WingNutDaily, and the only way to vote is to register with them…which is not recommended. Them folks is craaaaazy! They were asked their opinion of Obama’s birth certificate.

Sound off on Obama’s release of his purported long-form birth certificate

The most compelling eligibility arguments deal with parental citizenship, and this document shows Obama’s father was not a U.S. citizen, making Obama ineligible 40% (93)

Now that Obama is so willing to be open, let’s hear him explain why he has a Connecticut-based Social Security Number when he and his parents never lived there 12% (28)

I’m with Trump in calling for the rest of Obama’s vital documents that he’s been concealing for years 9% (21)

I suspect the image released by Obama is a forgery 8% (19)

I know the image of the document is a fake, just like Obama 8% (18)

If the document is so innocuous, why did Obama take so long and spend a fortune on attorneys preventing its release? 8% (18)

The release is opening up a can of worms and is creating more questions than answers 3% (8)

Obama blinked. I can’t wait to see what happens next 3% (6)

The birthers will never be satisfied no matter what documents are released 3% (6)

All I can think about is Lt. Col. Terry Lakin rotting in prison because Obama refused to release this document before now 2% (5)

Let’s hope this signals an end to this nutty birther nonsense once and for all 1% (3)

Thanks to WND and Trump, Obama was forced kicking and screaming to release his document 1% (3)

Face it, Obama has outsmarted the birthers and completely destroyed their issue now 0% (1)

Good, let’s move on, there are far more important issues for the country to deal with 0% (1)

If it had been a poll I could have voted on, I would have picked the very last entry above. Trust WND readers to favor the nuttiest of the choices!

TSA Poll: I’ve come to really hate these guys’ bosses

No more, no more, please. We’re already taking off our shoes, getting our junk scanned, waiting in line, dangling our goo in plastic bags, and basically suffering through ludicrous post hoc measures that do nothing to improve our security. And now the TSA is dispatching ‘behavioral experts’ to watch you as you stand in line. Don’t look nervous, don’t act annoyed, don’t do anything that these arbitrary arbiters of the appropriate might notice!

Do you think behavioral specialists are a good idea?

Yes, it’s an extra layer of security. 49.5%
No, it’s completely ludicrous. 50.5%