Oh, yeah, I’m doing Darwin Day, too!

Hello, Southern Illinois University Carbondale! I’ll be heading south next week for SIU’s annual Darwin Day lecture.

Thursday, February 10: A public lecture entitled “The Evolution of Cooperation” will be presented by Dr. Paul (PZ) Myers, associate professor of biology at the University of Minnesota, Morris. Dr. Myers is the author of Pharyngula, one of the most widely read science blogs. The lecture will take place at 7 pm in Ballroom B in the SIUC Student Center; refreshments will be provided after the lecture.

It’s free, too…I am so cheap. Show up and I’ll talk science at you for an hour.

Peter Goodgold is a scam artist

I had no idea that ions combined to produce fungi and bacteria in water — I guess spontaneous generation isn’t dead after all. That’s one of the claims of a con artist named Peter Goodgold who sells magic water ionizers that cure all illnesses…because, as he says, there is actually only one disease, acidosis. It’s complete nonsense as the video below explains.

His gadget can’t work, and has to be doing a lot of things to the water that he isn’t telling anyone about. How does he respond to the demonstration of his incompetence and dishonesty? Why, he threatens to sue and files complaints to get any rebuttal videos taken down. The creator of the expose explain his situation here:

So yes, if you can, mirror the video. I’ll just do what I can to promote it and make sure that Goodgold’s bluster just means many more people will see him exposed.

The Not-So-Evil Atheist Conspiracy spreads its tentacles deeper into the fabric of American life

Good news! The Secular Student Alliance is now working to promote godless organizations in high schools. They’re going to be everywhere! There is resistance, of course, but the law is on our side, and the schools have to allow students to organize for meetings with a secular purpose.

Are you a high school student? Are you interested in gathering your fellow atheists together to promote critical thinking? Then you need to email JT Eberhard right now and ask for his help. He’ll get you started, and you, of course, will make him work very hard to earn the massive salary he probably receives in his new job as the Campus Organizer and High School Specialist at SSA. In fact, it’s perfectly OK if you try to get in touch with him any hour of the day or night — tell him I said you had permission.

Now that’s misogyny

I’ve often wondered what it would be like to have a conversation with an insect — a creature that shares no moral or rational assumptions with me. Now I’ve seen something close, at least, a fellow named Seth, discussing his obligations to his partners in sex. Basically, he feels none. It’s a long ranty comment, and much of it is more explicit than I’d rather post here, but it amounts to insisting that pregnancy and abortion are all the woman’s responsibility, because it is her fault that she demanded a penis enter her vagina.

You want a man inside you, it’s up to you to deal with the mess left behind. I won’t bitch at you if you have an abortion, but you don’t get to demand ANYTHING from me, certainly not child support. If you don’t like the mess, don’t invite me to the party.

How’s that for fair?

It’s a marvel of twisted logic, and really had me wondering if Seth was a virgin.

I have to agree, though, that his demands are fair, as long as it’s not his fault that he’s having vaginal intercourse, and as long as he was honest and specific in his expectations with his partner before hand. Who would then, of course, refuse to have sex with him, ever.

It’s in the Daily Mail, so I’m confident it got everything wrong

Actually, I know they got a lot wrong. The Mail reports that a study “proves” students believe everything they read on the internet. They cite some work done with the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus site, which they claim was created as part of a study to test student gullibility. This is wrong; that site has been available for years, and it’s a satire and humor site; look at the rest of zapatopi.net to see what I mean.

Also, I actually use the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus every semester, in the first lecture of our introductory biology course! After giving an overview of the scientific method and how to ask good scientific questions, I use it as an example: I show them the page, read a few excerpts, and ask them what they think…and always the majority of students are skeptical. The few who will grant it tentative plausibility always follow up with specific questions about the site and about where they can get additional information to confirm it.

Then we discuss how to validate scientific information, what we look for to trust a source, and further, I ask them to think more deeply about how, if the website passed a routine sniff test, we’d also go on to test unusual claims in nature. My experience has been that students are much more rational and practical about evaluating material on the web than we’d give them credit for (of course, there are also always a few students who still turn in papers with wacky web sites cited as sources — but they’re a minority).

And speaking of sources that rely on the gullibility of readers for credibility…the Daily Mail should not be casting aspersions. If you want to know everything you need to know about the Daily Mail, read this horrifying story.

The bar is set very, very low

Creationist Steven L. Anderson is having an art contest. He is shocked and surprised that chickens and dinosaurs are related and wants some cartoons mocking the concept.

He’s got a few examples at his site; they aren’t very good, and they all miss the point. Chickens are not descended from T. rex. Chickens and T. rex share a common ancestor, and there are good reasons to argue from their morphology that chickens and T. rex shared a common ancestor more recently than chickens and people, or chickens and bananas.

Watching his idiotic performance, though, (and he’s no slouch at the stupid: I’ve mentioned his sermon on pissing) got me wondering. Who is the dumbest creationist in the country? There’s some stiff competition for the title, with Ray Comfort, Kent Hovind, Ken Ham, Carl Baugh, and every podunk preacher with a bug up his butt about Genesis making asses of themselves, but Anderson certainly should be in the running. Maybe we should have a contest to name the craziest, dumbest, most venal, etc. creationist … leave your suggestions in the comments.

Cyclone Yasi

Queensland, Australia is currently threatened by a major cyclone, and everyone is bracing for the impact. There isn’t much we can do right now but watch and wait, and be prepared to help however we can. But there are things that are pointless to do.

I thought this was the silliest, most useless web source I’d find for this problem: it’s a set of specific instructions on how to pray during a natural disaster. Yeah, everybody in Cairns right now — all you need to do is get on the internet, read a few hundred words telling you what to pray for, and then get on your knees and start begging God based on an 8-point checklist.

But wait! There’s an even more stupid way to waste your time! You could do like Catch the Fire Ministries (Aussies are not surprised that that organization comes up when the word “stupid” is mentioned) and even before the cyclone makes landfall, you can start pointing fingers and blaming the atheist prime minister and the gay Green party leader who have caused the catastrophe. Prime Minister Gillard has failed to pray for God to turn the cyclone away.

Maybe someone should send those prayer instructions to the PM. Or better yet, send them to Daniel Nalliah! He seems to have a special in with god … maybe he should be using his persuasive powers to get his god to send his cyclone away. If he doesn’t, I think we should blame Nalliah for the cyclone, since he’s not using his prayerful powers to help the people of Australia.