Apparently still smarting from the trouncing Catholics received from Hitchens and Fry, a site called Catholic Truth Scotland is trying to recoup some dignity…by running an online poll? We could tell them that that won’t work.
The Catholic Church is a force for good in the world
True [70.6%]
False [29.4%]
I fear those numbers are about to change in a way that will make them very unhappy.
It can’t be that bad a job, can it?
I had my doubts about this; I got an offer from ASPEX corporation to let people get free scanning electron micrographs of just about anything. They make a desktop SEM, and all you have to do is fill out a form and mail it in with your sample of a dead bug or a microchip or bacon, and presto, within a few weeks they’ll have it scanned in and the image available on their website.
I asked them if they knew how many readers I have, and they said no problem, they can handle it.
Huh.
Well, you heard them. Scavenge your trash cans, dig into your local sources of vermin and oddments, and send them in. I’m thinking this could be really fun for any school teachers out there — you could have the whole class looking for interesting specimens to zoom in on. You can see their current galleries for ideas.
That’s my recipe for dealing with crackpots; feel free to use it, it’s easy.
You all may remember Vincent Fleury, the French fellow who ascribes developmental processes to swirls of cellular movement in development, who wrote a peculiar paper in a European journal of applied physics (which I mocked mercilessly), and who then went crying to fringe journalist Suzan Mazur, and then demanded withdrawal of my review and an apology. He’s done it again. I just received a copy of a letter from France, which was also sent to the vice chancellor of academic affairs of my university, demanding that I be gently chastised. He claims he is the “victim of a fierce attack”. If you really must know all the details, here are some scans of the letter.
Just a gentle hint for future complaints: the vice chancellor’s name is Cheryl Contant, not “Content”, and she should be addressed as Dr Contant, not Mrs Content. You’re welcome.
Otherwise, there’s nothing in his letters that I think needs to be answered.
Larry Moran reminds us that today is an infamous day in the upper midwest.
The sentencing of a convicted murder, Khristian Oliver, should be an embarrassment to the state of Texas; the jurors consulted the Old Testament to see what should be done with him, found a bible verse they liked — “And if he smite him with an instrument of iron, so that he die, he is a murderer: the murderer shall surely be put to death” — and sentenced him to be executed.
Well, that was just fine with Governor Rick Perry. Oliver has been killed. Isn’t it nice to have the importance of biblical morality affirmed for us once again?
The mild nausea I mentioned earlier? Gone now, it seems to have vanished as soon as I disposed of the wretched rag Answers in Genesis sent me. It’s a good thing, too, because I have a frantic weekend ahead of me.
Today and tomorrow, I’m pounding the keyboard to prepare a couple of talks. At least one I can borrow liberally from the book-in-progress (yeah, I’m still working on that, too).
On Thursday, I’ll be giving a public lecture at Purdue University. I’m cutting it close on this one; my plane gets into Indianapolis a mere 2 hours before the talk, so if I’m late, feel free to leave scurrilous slanders on the blackboard for me. The talk is at 6:00 in the Class of 1950 Lecture Hall Room 224. It should be fun. My trip in is tricky in timing, but afterwards, my time is unrestrained, and I think we’re getting together to shoot the breeze that evening. If you’re somewhere near West Lafayette, Indiana, stop on by.
On Friday, I’ll be at this evo-devo meeting:
This is not a public event, but a serious science conference with registration fees and all that. It should be fabulous, even if it does have some nattering nobody for a keynote speaker. Expect heavy real-time science blogging all day Saturday and Sunday morning. I might get out for a wild night in Bloomington on Saturday, though, we’ll see.
Finally, on Monday, I’m lowering myself from the glories of real science to a debate with a flaming creationist on the St Paul campus at 7:30pm. Show up! I’m sure the creationists will be trundling in their bible-clutching faithful to boo, even though the subject is nothing about god or religion — it’s simply “Should intelligent design creationism be taught in the schools?” The answer is “no,” if you’re at all confused.
Tuesday I’m sleeping in late. Don’t bother me.
Atheists are putting up a billboard in Lakeland, Florida that says, “Don’t believe in god? You aren’t alone.” This is, apparently, controversial, and the newspaper article has an accompanying poll.
Does an atheist group have a right to display their own billboard?
Yes  77.7%
No  22.3%
I’d say that’s a really stupid poll question, except that it reveals that 22% of the respondents don’t think a number of their fellow citizens don’t have the same privileges they do.
Wake up, everyone: Iran is about to execute three men for the crime of atheism…well, specifically, apostasy, rejecting the Islamic faith. The news is not good.
Habibollah Latifi, Ehsan (Esma’il) Fattahian and Sherko Moarefi have all been sentenced to death for “enmity against God” in unconnected cases over the last two years. They are believed to be on death row in a prison in Sanandaj, the provincial capital of Kordestan.
They are also Kurds, so this is also all tangled up in regional politics. One thing you can do right now is fill in a petition to the Iranian government.
To get this, you may want to look at the last episode of Mr Deity, in which Jesse and the Deity struggled with the implications of the trinity — it was hopelessly confusing. This is the blooper reel from the making of that episode.
That was hard. It makes me feel good, though, because these guys are pros…and my little incursion into their world left me impressed with how difficult it is to put together even these shorts.
If they ever put out the bloopers from my episode, though, I’m going to have to cry.
