An Origin virgin reads the book

This could be cool: an evolutionary biologist is going to read Darwin’s Origin of Species for the first time and post chapter-by-chapter discussions of the book right here on Scienceblogs between now and Darwin Day. Get your own copy and follow along with John Whitfield!

Another reading suggestion: Wilkins writes about Darwin worship. It’s going to be a tricky balancing act this year — Darwin was a great scientist and his contributions were immense, but he is not an object of veneration. The difficult job will be to maintain a balance between hero worship and reactionary criticism, and to show the real man and the real work.

The woo is strong in Glastonbury

Glastonbury is the legendary burial place of King Arthur, so as you might imagine, if you’re a fey English wackaloon with a fondness for magic crystals and pagan rituals, it’s a magnetic attraction. How bad can it be? Well, the wicked government of Great Britain, always trying to suppress the Old Ways and encourage this horrible practice of “modernization”, has flipped the switch and turned on free wireless networking for the whole town. Evil!

“I don’t want my son exposed to risk 24 hours a day, including at his primary school, which is within the Wi-Fi zone,” yoga teacher Natalie Fee tells London’s Telegraph. “I would be failing in my duty as a parent if I did.”

Hey, Natalie, what about those darned dangerous radio waves that you’re soaking in right now? AM, FM, there are all these fluctuating vibrations permeating everything, everywhere you go. Let’s shut them all down! And are you going to tell your son that he isn’t allowed to own a cell phone, ever?

One man has even begun making orgone generators, which use crystals, semi-precious stones and gold to purportedly put out positive energy to combat the negative vibes flooding the town from the Wi-Fi base stations.

“I have given a number of generators to shops in the High Street and hidden others in bushes in the immediate vicinity of the antennae. That way you can bring back the balance,” Matt Todd told the Telegraph. “The science hasn’t really got into the mainstream because the government won’t make decisions which will affect big business, even if it concerns everyone’s health.”

I’d like to see the evidence that 2.4 and 5 GHz frequencies are “negative”, and that a bunch of cheap gee-gaws some space cowboy slaps together with a hot glue gun emit any energies, let alone “positive” ones.

And hang on, orgone generators? Devices that pump out magical sex energies? Isn’t that going to be even more confusing to Natalie’s little boy?

They do have a special problem out there in the UK that we don’t here in America — ley lines haven’t been a big deal in this country.

Todd says the Wi-Fi network is weakening the ley lines, supposed invisible webs of energy running through the landscape that the Druids and other ancient Britons are said to have been well aware of.

We also get fake biology. This is nonsense: melatonin really doesn’t do everything, the pineal is not going to be particularly responsive to random radio frequencies, and these kooks don’t even have a way to assess melatonin levels.

Others Glastonburians say their levels of melatonin, a hormone that regulates sleep and is seen as a wonder drug by natural-health types, have been all out of whack since the Wi-Fi network went on.

“The pulsed microwaves feed the pineal gland with false information,” local Jacqui Roberts tells the Western Daily Press. “Melatonin fights the free radicals and cancer-producing cells.”

Let’s be fair to Glastonbury, though. I get the impression that whoever put this article together made a special effort to dig up a few New Age nuts who are having hysterics over a non-problem, and probably ignored the sensible majority that are quite pleased to have freely accessible wireless networking everywhere they go.

The stupid, it burns

The letters to the editor section of our local newspapers is where you find the proud regalia of the American boob in prominent display. Here’s a fine example of creationist inanity from Dothan, Alabama. Try to count the misconceptions about evolution here.

Grade school textbooks teach evolution as fact. It is a monstrous lie that harms our children.

The evolution theory says we evolved from the original Big Bang and later crawled out of a green slime from the ocean.

Here is one example of its ludicrous hypothesis.

Of all the mysteries surrounding evolution, the one that is most baffling to the evolutionists, is “water.” Where did all the oceans come from?

As explained on the National Geographic program, it came from a massive collision in space. As the Earth was cooling from the Big Bang, it was approached by a stray planet that was teeming with water. It collided with Earth, spilled its water onto the Earth, then careened off into space.

Talk about fairy tales. By the way, where did the stray planet get its water?

Come on evolutionists, surely you can develop a more plausible explanation that can be easier to swallow. Until then, I accept the Bible’s answer. After all, the 4,000-year-old book has a perfect track record.

The evolution theory is only 140 years old.

Bill DeJournett
Dothan

Where to even begin? Evolution only starts once you have chemical and biological replicators; the Big Bang preceded it by a few billion years. We didn’t crawl out of a green slime, other organisms evolved in the oceans that preceded us.

I have never heard of the “ludicrous hypothesis” he’s talking about, and I rather doubt that NatGeo advocated anything of the kind.

His 4,000 year old book actually has a miserable track record — it’s just that gullible fools keep making excuses for it. It also doesn’t describe how earth got its water, other than to claim a god poofed it into existence.

It’s an interesting strategy, though, to invent unbelievable claims for the other side of the argument and then laugh snarkily at how crazy they are. For another example of such disinformation, take a look at what Wesley dug up.

A little light of reason shines in Indiana

The Indianapolis Star has been running a pointless little prayer on page A2 of the newspaper for years. Not any more; the editor has decided to discontinue it. It isn’t because it has suddenly become a mouthpiece for militant atheism, though:

We appreciate that this has been a long tradition in The Star. But we are re-evaluating our mission and all that we do. I believe that prayer is a very personal thing and that offering prayers is something for individuals and their churches. We are a newspaper, not a church.

Also, we do live in a society in which there are many, many different beliefs. We respect all religions, and the prayer was written only from the Christian perspective.

Because of those issues, we have decided to drop the prayer. I’m confident that people will continue to offer their own prayers reflecting their own lives and faith needs.

Good for the Star! As you might guess, this decision has triggered lots of complaints. Here’s one that I thought was very funny.

Very disappointing decision. If you are able to print the horoscopes, then you should print a prayer …please reconsider.

They are on a par with horoscopes, aren’t they? Just as ineffective, and just as ridiculous…but that’s not an argument for keeping either of them.

Excuses, excuses

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There are also reasons D, E, F…etc., that I’m sure any sufficiently apologetic Christian will trot out for us, but they’re all of ever-increasing absurdity. Most seem to subscribe to a less comical version of A, blaming his reluctance to manifest on a Divine Snit over the Fall.

Personally, I favor answer answer Ω: there never was any god to blame. Simple, clear, reasonable, and it fits all the facts.

First out of the starting gates: Oklahoma!

The state of erv now has an embarrassing distinction: Oklahoma has put up the first anti-evolution bill for 2009. The year isn’t even a week old and they’re already pushing this nonsense.

Senate Bill 320 (document), prefiled in the Oklahoma Senate and scheduled for a first reading on February 2, 2009, is apparently the first antievolution bill of 2009. Entitled the “Scientific Education and Academic Freedom Act,” SB 320 would, if enacted, require state and local educational authorities to “assist teachers to find more effective ways to present the science curriculum where it addresses scientific controversies” and permit teachers to “help students understand, analyze, critique, and review in an objective manner the scientific strengths and scientific weaknesses of existing scientific theories pertinent to the course being taught.” The only topics specifically mentioned as controversial are “biological evolution, the chemical origins of life, global warming, and human cloning.”

Expect these so-called “academic freedom” bills that are really stealth creationism bills to pop up like crusty pimples all over the country all year long.

The ways of the Bush administration are inscrutable and stupid

Thankfully, these are the waning days of the awful, incompetent, no-good Bush/Cheney presidency, years we will try to forget in the decades to come. What will help is that we don’t have a good name for this decade — The Oughties? Bleh — and we’re just going to have to refer to them as the years with a couple of zeroes in the middle.

This odious administration is not going out gracefully, however, but is instead leaving with a flurry of last-minute knifings of our country. Some are exploitive efforts to pay back interests to whom the conservatives are beholden, such as the stripping of environmental protection laws (which the next administration may be disinclined to roll back). Others just seem inexplicably arbitrary and petty, the work of small-minded tyrants who want to get in one last poke while they can.

Here’s one such example: the Department of Justice is redefining “service animal”. They’ve redefined “animal” to mean “dog”! I’ve got nothing against dogs, but there are people who use non-canine animals as service animals, and suddenly they are going to be stripped of the legal rights associated with service animal use.

Don’t ask me why. I think it’s just because they can.