O Minnesota!

Scarcely do I mention that Texas goes recruiting in Minnesota for kooks, but I learn that John Charles Wilson is running for governor of Minnesota.

Wilson’s Edgertonite National Party is based on the Lauraist religion, a movement he created that believes Laura Ingalls Wilder is God and that the Lauraist homeland will occupy an area within a 240-mile radius of Minneapolis.

“A new nation, to be called Edgerton, with its capital at Minneapolis, should be created on the land from approximately Hibbing to Des Moines, and from Fargo to Madison,” says Wilson’s campaign Web site.

Communism is the mode of government of said nation, with an abolition of all laws except those necessary for public safety.

Wilson has written two books, “The Principles of Lauraism” and “The Conscience of a Communist.”

Wilson says he was institutionalized in the early 1980s because of his political and religious beliefs.

I should have also remembered that time that we had a vampire running for governor. Oh, yeah, and the professional wrestler.

Billboard wars!

The atheists put up billboards, the Christians put up billboards. What’s the difference? One small difference can be found in this story about new pro-theocracy ads going up in Florida.

The billboards showcase quotes from early American leaders like John Adams, James Madison and Benjamin Franklin. Most of the quotes portray a national need for Christian governance.

I don’t believe the founding fathers were infallible, so just digging up quotes from old dead white guys who liked Jesus doesn’t impress me much. But wait! That’s not the difference yet. This is the difference:

Others carry the same message but with fictional attribution, as with one billboard citing George Washington for the quote, “It is impossible to rightly govern the world without God and the Bible.”

“I don’t believe there’s a document in Washington’s handwriting that has those words in that specific form,” Kemple said. “However, if you look at Washington’s quotes, including his farewell address, about the place of religion in the political sphere, there’s no question he could have said those exact words.”

This opens up whole new realms of Biblical scholarship, you know. Maybe their god didn’t say in these particular words in this specific form, “The fool says, ‘There is a God'”, but there’s no question that those words could have been there, and it’s certainly in line with the biblical gestalt.

Or, just maybe, atheists shouldn’t make stuff up.

My inner Bennett Cerf

These will
keep you groaning all day.

A fellow accidentally ingested some alpha-L-glucose and discovered that he had no ill effects. Apparently he was ambidextrose.

A bloke walks into a pub, and asks for a pint of Adenosinetriphosphate. The barman says “That’ll be 80p (ATP) please!”
(note 100p = £1, and ATP is short for Adenosinetriphosphate, but you already knew that.)

Some genetic researchers were studying Acinonyx jubatus to find out why he had a high abnormal sperm count. They gave a group of these animals a histocompatibility (tissue-type) test.

“This is singular,” observed one to the other. “Every one of these cats gave the same answers.”

“Aw,” drawled the other, “they’re all a bunch of cheetahs.

Did you hear about the biologist who had twins? She baptized one and kept the other as a control.

Q: What tool is used to measure a hole in the head?

A: A Phineas gage.

Q: Why didn’t the dendrochronologist get married?

A: All he ever dated was trees!

Q: What is the only thing worse than a mecium?
A: A Paramecium

Q: What does the H. in Jesus H. Christ stand for?

A: In order of increasing groans:

1: Hallowed.

2: Harold. (As in, “Harold be thy name.)

3: Haploid. (Best of all.)

Q: As what did the antibody go to the Halloween costume party?

A: As an “immunogobulin”.

Q: What’s a biologists definition of a graph?

A: An animal with a long neck

Adenine proposing to guanine:”You know dear, mismatches are made in heaven”.

What did one thermophilic bacteriologist say online to another?

“I think you are really hot. Your PCR mine?”

There are some happy sciences, but others are not so happy. A case in point concerns embryologists who tend to be a morose and saddened group than most. No wonder. One of the first things they learn is that our lives are ova before they’ve begun.

A red blood cell walked into a busy restaurant. The hostess asked, “Would you like to sit at the bar?”

The red cell answered, “No thanks, I’ll just circulate.

How do you recognize a native American cell biologist?

He lives in ATP!

They were the first to attempt to colonize Mars. They knew it would be difficult , but they were determined to succeed.

They had landed with grass seeds to plant and embryos of horse, sheep and cattle. But the grass wouldn’t grow, and none of the calves survived. The horses and sheep were doing well, but there not enough animals to meet their needs.

So they sent a message to earth asking for more sheep and horses and a replacement for the cattle and grass. They particularly wanted an animal that could be used as meat in place of beef.

Earth radioed back asking if venison would be satisfactory and the colonists replied it was.

Finally a space shuttle arrived with the needed supplies. The bill of lading was rushed to the leader of the colony who then spoke to his consul, “we got everything we asked for,” he shouted. . . . “They sent mare zygotes and doe zygotes and little lambs and ivy.”

SERVER UPGRADE AT 7PM EST

We just got the very abrupt word that Seed will be doing an upgrade of our servers tonight, like real soon now, and that during this process you won’t be able to make comments. Apparently, the little text box will still be there, and you’ll be able to type away madly, but nothing will happen. Don’t get frustrated, just be patient, and maybe tomorrow we’ll see some improvement in performance.

The evolution of Hedgehog

i-e88a953e59c2ce6c5e2ac4568c7f0c36-rb.png

PLoS has recently published a highly speculative but very interesting paper on how a particular signaling pathway, the Hedgehog pathway, might have evolved. It’s at a fairly early stage in hypothesis testing, which is one of the things that makes it interesting — usually all you see published is the product of a great deal of data collection and experiment and testing, which means the scientific literature gives a somewhat skewed view of the process of science, letting the outsider mainly see work that has been hammered and polished, while hiding the rougher drafts that would better allow us to see how the story started and was built. It’s informative in particular for those who follow the creationist “literature”, which often crudely apes the products of actual working science, but lacks the sound methodological underpinnings. In particular, creationism completely misses the process of poking at the real world to develop ideas, since they begin with their conclusion.

So take this description as a work in progress — we’re seeing the dynamic of building up a good working model. As usual, it starts on a sound foundation of confirmed, known evidence, makes a reasonably hypothesis on the basis of the facts, and then proposes a series of research avenues with predicted results that would confirm the idea.

[Read more…]

Oh, no! I’ll never be able to mock Texas again!

I confess. One of the staple sources of creationist lunacy I document here has always been Texas (with Florida as a close runner-up), which seems to be thickly infested with ignoramuses who get elected to high office. It’s the kind of place that inspires the Molly Ivins of the world. Lately, we’ve been appalled at the idiots the Texas government wants to put in charge of science education, but there’s another victim in the gunsights, too: history and social studies. The same abysmal talents that can muck up biology also want to turn social studies into patriotic mulch.

Alas, they can’t get crazy enough in Texas, apparently, so the local ideologues had to go looking for greater loons, a national search for loons when the homegrown flavor just isn’t piquant enough. And where does he go shopping?

Minnesota. Oh, the shame.

Don McLeroy wanted to bring in Alan Quist to join their social studies team. Quist is a former wanna-be governor of Minnesota (who got clobbered in a landslide defeat) with minimal education qualifications. He has a bachelor’s in psychology and a masters in speech; he teaches (minimally) at a local bible college, and most damningly, his wife runs EdWatch, one of those awful anti-education advocacy sites that promotes the destruction of public schools so everyone can go off and be homeschooled. His pet obsessions are the usual, gays and abortions. He’s ag’in ’em both. He will rant for food.

For an idea of the quality of his mind, you should read his disproof of global warming. He builds on an old map, the Oronteus Finaeus map of 1532, which shows the outlines of a southern continent, Antarctica (with many of the details wrong). From this, he draws the conclusion that Antarctica had been thoroughly explored in the 16th century, that it had been free of ice with flowing rivers, and therefore, the world had been much, much warmer than it is now 500 years ago, and therefore, global warming is a myth. The ice sheet in Antarctica is only half a millennium old, which discovery would rather radically mess up our understanding of climatology, geology, and physics…pretty impressive for a know-nothing wingnut.

‘Siegel’ sort of rhymes with ‘Evil’, too

Ethan Siegel wants you to compel him to go bald. He claims he is going to shear off all of his hair to raise money for charity, but I’ve seen this act before. It’s so familiar.

First, he goes completely bald.

Then, he gets a monocle.

A dueling scar would be a nice touch.

Then, to complete his transformation to the dark side, he gets a cat. Persian. A cat whose cold, expressionless stare reflects the imperious, implacable privilege of his nature.

Next thing you know, he’s posing in front of death rays and sending ultimata to world leaders. I hope he’s been working on his evil laugh; if he’s got a girlish giggle or some kind of nasal snicker this just isn’t going to work, and he’ll have to settle for a position as an Igor somewhere. It’s still a good gig, of course, so I encourage you all to go over there and help him on his way down this career path.

P.S. As long as he’s shaving, that carpet on his chest has to go, too. Hirsute is for henchmen; masterminds have to be fully depilated. Unless he’s going for the 19th century Captain Nemo look, which you don’t get by going completely bald.

The problem with writing by committee

Mr Deity is wrestling with the various versions of his story. Much is explained by his choice of a script doctor.

By the way, if you’ve ever wanted to actually meet Mr Deity, you’ve got a shot: he’ll be speaking at the Atheist Alliance International 2009 Convention in LA this October. And it’s not just him, look at this phenomenal lineup of speakers.

I’m going to be in there somewhere, too — I’m a late addition. It will be a wonderful assemblage of the godless. Plus one deity.

101 atheists!

The current total of registered attendees for our Invasion of the Creationist “Museum” is now at 101 — and you’ve only got a few more days to pre-register. You’re also welcome to just show up, of course.

This is an official Outing — not only are we going on a trip, but you should be a loud and proud atheist, too. I suggested armbands before; if you don’t like that, pick up one of these snazzy t-shirts, or wear something from the Out Campaign. Anything that looks respectable, but still makes clear that you are one of those atheists.