Congratulations, Canada!

Canadians always make such a fuss about being distinct from their southern neighbor, but you know it’s all a pretense. They want to be just like the US, they admire and respect us so much. And here’s the evidence: they’re getting rid of the position of science advisor to their government. Just like the United States of America … who needs reality-based advising on some of the most important issues of the age? Oh, sure, the Canadian scientists are unhappy about it, but the wailing and lamentations of American scientists are everywhere, too, and who cares? And it seems Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper is an evangelical Christian himself … just like all of our national leaders.

Look on the bright side: it means unity. We are forming one great northern continent, unified in our ignorance, led by uninformed dumbasses. Brothers and sisters to the north, welcome!

Books that make you dumber?

I don’t think so. Virgil Griffith pulled out the top ten books read by students at various universities (it turns out Facebook collects that data for you), and then tried to correlate that with the average SAT/ACT score of each university. The result is a mess. You might be able to say that schools with low admission standards are more likely to have students who read the Bible and Fahrenheight 451, while the universities with the higher academic reputation are more likely to have students reading Lolita and Ayn Rand, but the overall distribution is more suggestive of chance — there is large, diverse pool of books read by university students, and facebook is plucking out a nearly random subset.

The display leaves a lot to be desired, too. What does the size of the lozenges mean? Standard deviation? I’d need to see something about the actual numbers for each book, too — how many universities have The Grapes of Wrath in their top ten, and how many students is the sample based on? A small college with only a few students on Facebook is a situation that is readily skewed.

I’m only mentioning this to torment you all, so you can stare at this chart trying to make sense of it as long as I did.

Talk radio for the godless

Remember: listen to the Minnesota Atheists radio program on Air America, tomorrow morning at 9am central time.

Topics tomorrow include Huckabee, an interview with Robert M. Price, and yours truly (with Kristine Harley) in a Moment of Science. We’re going to be discussing useful references for evolution; the segment has been lengthened, so there may actually be time for you to call in.

Please, though, call in with sincere questions — time is limited, and comments, no matter how complimentary, eat up minutes, and whiny creationists who think it’s clever to eat up time with tedious, self-important fussing will be cut off.

Carnivalia and an open thread

Hey! Carnivals!

  • Accretionary Wedge #5. Rocks? How can they possibly find enough to write about rocks?

  • Carnival of Space #38. Space? Even worse. It’s mostly nothing!

  • I and the Bird #67. Birds? They’ve been at this for 67 weeks and there’s still more to be said about beaks, wings, and feathers?

  • Friday Ark #175. It’s almost all cats, so obviously this is the B-Ark, and they’re being loaded up along with all the hairdressers, insurance salesemen, and telephone sanitizers.

An exemplary Christian science fair project

It’s getting to be about that time: science fair season. I’ll remind you all that we have an infamous local event, the Twin Cities Creation Science Fair, in which real live homeschooled creationist kids will present their experiments at the Har Mar Mall, on 16-17 February. I’m hoping to make it this year, but I’ve got a lot of other traveling to do that week, so I’m not sure that I’ll be able to make it…if I do, though, I’ll let you know.

Because I have to deal with this all the time, I’ll also remind everyone that the Objective: Ministries Creation Sciende Fair page is a satire, OK?

This, however, is real: Possummomma finds a lovely example of Christian “science”. A sixth-grader in her area decided to test the hypothesis that “unchristians” are less moral than Christians with a questionnaire — a badly done questionnaire. Some amusing bits: the student had his subjects report on their amoral behaviors, and didn’t keep their answers anonymous. Cool. That could add some fun to a community event.

The other amusing thing is the conclusion: everyone failed the morality test. The answer, then is that we are all sinners, so we’d better become Christians.

The kid ought to come on up to Minnesota — he’d fit right in.

Typical.

This is a painting Our President loves; it’s called “A Charge to Keep,” and GW Bush even used that as the title for his autobiography.

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Here’s what Bush himself says about the picture.

I thought I would share with you a recent bit of Texas history which epitomizes our mission. When you come into my office, please take a look at the beautiful painting of a horseman determinedly charging up what appears to be a steep and rough trail. This is us. What adds complete life to the painting for me is the message of Charles Wesley that we serve One greater than ourselves.

Bush got it wrong. The painting has been traced back to its source, and it turns out it doesn’t portray a Methodist missionary spreading the word on the Texas frontier…it’s something far more appropriate.

Only that is not the title, message, or meaning of the painting. The artist, W.H.D. Koerner, executed it to illustrate a Western short story entitled “The Slipper Tongue,” published in The Saturday Evening Post in 1916. The story is about a smooth-talking horse thief who is caught, and then escapes a lynch mob in the Sand Hills of Nebraska. The illustration depicts the thief fleeing his captors. In the magazine, the illustration bears the caption: “Had His Start Been Fifteen Minutes Longer He Would Not Have Been Caught.”

I laughed and laughed. It epitomizes their mission, alright.