Hasn’t he gone away yet?

I was startled to see that John McCain hasn’t been retired to the WaxWorks Museum of Irrelevant Political Figures yet — he’s still making speeches. Could somebody tell him that he’ll never, ever have a shot at the presidency again?

Anyway the subject of his speech was to sneer at fruit fly research again, and mock lobster research. What’s with the hatin’ on invertebrates, Mr McCain?

At least we don’t have to care what he says anymore: he is officially nobody, a washed-up politician who let himself get upstaged by his airhead running mate.

Booooorn freeeeee!

Everyone start singing now, this is a heartwarming story. Sid is an octopus in the Portobello Aquarium. Sid has the clever octopus habit of escaping — he disappeared for days, and was later discovered hiding in a seawater drain. So what is the aquarium to do with the sneaky fellow?

Set him free!

Isn’t that nice?

(Just because I’m cynical that way, though, I will point out two less happy reasons. They’re going to capture another octopus before they release him, which means Sid is going to have to change his name to Barabbas. The really cynical side of me notes that the aquarium managers also know that cephalopods tend to be short-lived, and they may be thinking that they’ll need to replace him soon anyway, so they’re getting some good PR out of his retirement.)

Downtime

Pharyngula will be going silent this afternoon. Do not panic, do not call 911, do not convert to Catholicism in a desperate search for succor. The Seed overlords are implementing a much-needed upgrade to the software that drives this place, so some of the functions will be turned off this afternoon, like posting and commenting, while a team of code dwarves move in and bang up the joint. It’s a big upgrade, so you’re likely to be locked out until sometime on Saturday. Be strong.

What will you get out of this? At first, not much. Everything will look and act exactly the same to the reader after the upgrade. However, I’m hoping for some performance improvements in some of the database functions, which means better troll control. There will probably be some other changes as I get a grip on the new functionality; I know there will be an option for threaded comments which I’ll give a trial run, and I’ll also be looking into requiring some minimal site registration requirements. Any changes that will affect you will be rolled out gradually, have no fear, and if they are disliked, I won’t hesitate to roll them back.

Anyway, this afternoon and tomorrow will be your chance to step away from the computer, take a shower, bake cookies, shovel your driveway, whatever…but I expect you all back on the job filling up comment threads by Saturday evening, and definitely back at it by Sunday.

Don’t you dare tell me that “Jesus saves!”

Some days, it’s a little depressing to see all the ignorance running rampant in this country, so it’s a bit of a relief to see people in other countries say something brain-bogglingly stupid. In this case, it’s a reaction to the atheist bus advertising campaign in the United Kingdom — the signs that say, “There is probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.” Now someone is making a legal claim, trying to suppress the signs, and his rationale is hilarious. Stephen Green, a known religious kook, is challenging the statement on its accuracy.

Mr Green has challenged the adverts on grounds of “truthfulness” and “substantiation”, suggesting that there is not “a shred of supporting evidence” that there is probably no God.

Seriously. Stephen Green thinks “there is probably no god” is a misleading advertising claim, and he’s trying to get it eliminated in the same way one would pursue the claim that “chocolate cures cancer”. He cites parts of the marketing code that say, “No marketing communication should mislead, or be likely to mislead, by inaccuracy, ambiguity, exaggeration, omission or otherwise.”

This could get interesting.

So, if even general and mild statements about the nature of the deity are disallowed, what shall be done with the stronger statements of the Christian clique? Should something like this also be banned?

i-0971215382c1540d64110fd880ab2466-churchsign.jpeg

After all, there is absolutely no evidence that god will make traffic move more slowly if someone shouts “Jesus!” when they stub their toe. This sign is in violation of the truth in advertising guidelines!

(via Muse in Vivo)

This one campaign still keeps me smiling

Our efforts in squelching the Cincinnati Zoo/Creation “Museum” connection have yielded extra dividends. Ken Ham is weeping over the after-effects.

As a result of all this flak and the ending of the joint promotion after only two days, a prominent national travel group ended its conversations with our museum staff last month about a possible arrangement where our Creation Museum would be given a higher profile in one of its travel guides, along with a museum discount if a visitor presents their membership card. Here is what we heard from this particular travel organization:

From: KXXXXX
To: John Eytchison, Creation Museum
Subject: RE: Creation Museum

Hi John,

Unfortunately, I think [official’s name deleted] is just too leery after the incident with the Cincinnati Zoo to bring in the consignment tickets. [Name of travel org. withheld] used to sponsor a NASCAR race car and believe it or not, there were a couple members who actually dropped their memberships because of that affiliation-one which is a perfect fit for [name of travel org]. I think she’s afraid of putting something out there that has the possibility of causing a stir among some members at this time. . . .

I’m sorry things have not worked out, but I do wish your museum success and I hope that you have a Merry Christmas.

Thanks,

R—

Well, gosh, what can I say?

QQ MOAR, KEN HAM!

i-bc25846c2e52b76b81592359e8073396-punch.jpeg

And of course, to everyone here — Happy Monkey!

At least now you’ll know what you are worth

Burger King is running a strange promotion on Facebook: for every 10 friends you drop from your list, they’ll send you a coupon for a free hamburger, because you love the Whopper more than your friends.

Let’s see…I’ve got 3,747 friends on Facebook. That would mean I could get 374 free pieces of meat between slabs of bread, and each of you is worth what, about 30¢?

By the way, I have discovered that when you have that many facebook friends, it has some very rough spots. There are a few places where you click on something, and it asks if you want to send something to any of your friends, and it has to sit there loading all 3,747 names with pictures and links, and it takes something shy of forever. Maybe I should drop a few thousand of you…

(Nah, I wouldn’t do that.)

Here we go again — Mississippi’s turn!

The fine state of Mississippi is about to be led astray by the cretins they’ve elected to congress. They have introduced yet another textbook disclaimer bill, which will require that all school books that mention “evolution” be slapped with this sticker:

The word ‘theory’ has many meanings, including: systematically organized knowledge; abstract reasoning; a speculative idea or plan; or a systematic statement of principles. Scientific theories are based on both observations of the natural world and assumptions about the natural world. They are always subject to change in view of new and confirmed observations.

This textbook discusses evolution, a controversial theory some scientists present as a scientific explanation for the origin of living things. No one was present when life first appeared on earth. Therefore, any statement about life’s origins should be considered a theory.

Evolution refers to the unproven belief that random, undirected forces produced living things. There are many topics with unanswered questions about the origin of life which are not mentioned in your textbook, including: the sudden appearance of the major groups of animals in the fossil record (known as the Cambrian Explosion); the lack of new major groups of other living things appearing in the fossil record; the lack of transitional forms of major groups of plants and animals in the fossil record; and the complete and complex set of instructions for building a living body possessed by all living things.

Study hard and keep an open mind.

Sound familiar? They all kind of run together into one blur of noise, don’t they.

This is nothing new. Here’s the textbook disclaimer they tried to push in Cobb County, Georgia.

This textbook contains material on evolution. Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully, and critically considered.

Here’s the disclaimer that was read to classes in Dover, Pennsylvania.

The Pennsylvania Academic Standards require students to learn about Darwin’s Theory of Evolution and eventually to take a standardized test of which evolution is a part.

Because Darwin’s Theory is a theory, it continues to be tested as new evidence is discovered. The Theory is not a fact. Gaps in the Theory exist for which there is no evidence. A theory is defined as a well-tested explanation that unifies a broad range of observations.

Intelligent Design is an explanation of the origin of life that differs from Darwin’s view. The reference book, Of Pandas and People, is available for students who might be interested in gaining an understanding of what Intelligent Design actually involves.

With respect to any theory, students are encouraged to keep an open mind. The school leaves the discussion of the Origins of Life to individual students and their families. As a Standards-driven district, class instruction focuses upon preparing students to achieve proficiency on Standards-based assessments.

They all have some things in common: in particular, the pettifogging and incorrect attempt to hide behind the word “theory”, as if that somehow discredited the idea; the pretense of open-mindedness, when these are actually attempts to slander good science; the setting aside of evolution as a special case, when all scientific ideas are supposed to be regarded critically; and just the general notion that the fact that evolution is discussed means the whole subject must be treated gingerly.

The Cobb County and Dover disclaimers have something else in common: they were slapped down hard by the courts. The Mississippi disclaimer should join them soon, and it’s a little surprising that the backers of this bill didn’t bother to consider legal precedent.

The differences are also interesting. Mississippi tries to get specific, and offers a list of topics that are not discussed in the textbook. This is very peculiar, because all of those items are topics that are discussed in some detail in the college-level textbooks with which I am familiar. The creationists have been campaigning for decades to strip out the evolutionary content of our public school science texts, and now they are using the absence of substantive discussion of select issues as an argument for further damning them? The lesson to authors and publishers should be clear: you don’t gain anything by caving in to these troglodytes.

Maybe the message to the Mississippi school board now is that they should pick out science texts that carefully discuss the evolutionary context of the Cambrian, describing the pre-Cambrian antecedents that led to the tens-of-millions-of-years “explosion”. Then they can describe how the majority of animal phyla (but not all forms!) diversified over the next 500 million years into the different patterns we see now, and how there are many transitional forms on record illustrating portions of this process, and how we are now discovering the details of molecular complexity that further reinforce the idea of common ancestry. These are the conclusions of modern science, and we shouldn’t allow the history of censorship by public school boards stand in the way of letting these stories be told in the science classroom.

The message should be to broaden and deepen the coverage of evolution in our schools, so that we stop seeing ignorant clowns like Representative Gary Chism foisting their inanity on our children.

Another shooting

Everyone’s telling me about this ugly incident in Colorado, where a lunatic charged into a ski resort with a lot of guns, killed one person, then committed suicide. The relevant part of the story here is that the attack was partly religiously motivated: he shouted, “If you’re not Christian, you’re going to die”.

He was either operating under the instructions of the Lord, or the burden of festering insanity, and the truth of the matter is that there isn’t much difference between either condition. It obviously isn’t typical religious behavior, but next time someone tries to tell you that but for a belief in a god, we’d be robbing and raping and murdering…remember Derik Bonestroo. He seems to have gone on a murderous rampage while believing fervently in that Christian deity.