Once upon a time, I made some unfortunate remarks about knitting, and I felt like I’d prodded Madame Defarge, which is never a good idea.
But really, I love you guys, and here’s a whole page of cephalopod craft patterns to show it.
The pope has condemned this silly sculpture as blasphemous, and German Catholics are trying to get it removed from display.
They can’t be serious, can they? It’s kitschy and funny. But really, they’re unhappy about this.
The Vatican wrote a letter of support in the pope’s name to Franz Pahl, president of the regional government who opposed the sculpture.
“Surely this is not a work of art but a blashphemy and a disgusting piece of trash that upsets many people,” Pahl told Reuters by telephone as the museum board was meeting.
The Vatican letter said that the work “wounds the religious sentiments of so many people who see in the cross the symbol of God’s love”.
Pahl, whose province is heavily Catholic, was so outraged by the sculpture of the pop-eyed amphibian that he went on a hunger strike to demand its removal and had to be taken to hospital during the summer.
So wait…now doing anything with two sticks stuck together at right angles is going to be an affront to “God’s love”? I have been told over and over again by pompous wackaloons that I’m on the shock-jock trajectory, compelled to try and top my outrages against religion in an ever-upward spiral of offense, and that it’s going to be really hard to top cracker abuse. However, it looks like you can piss off the pope just by playing around with a couple of popsicle sticks.
Jennifer Oullette has put together a pop-sci book meme (and John Lynch has joined in). It’s the usual thing, a long list of books and you’re supposed to highlight the ones you’ve read, this time with the theme being that they’re all about science somehow. I detect a physics bias in Ms. Oullette’s choices, however, despite the excellent beginning — and it’s to that I ascribe my poor performance. That and some weird choices: since when is Neuromancer pop-sci? Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle or Cryptonomicon or Snowcrash would be better choices if we’re going to throw fiction in the mix, or Sterling’s Schismatrix. If we open the door to SF, though, the howling hordes will pour in and we’ll never get anything done.
Anyway, here’s my copy of the list:
Jennifer did suggest that we make additions, so let’s beef up the biology a bit with a few more off the top of my head (OK, McPhee and Rudwick are geology…but that needs bolstering, too!).
Every time I see the disregard the Democratic party shows for secular values — which is painfully frequent — I wonder why the heck I’m even voting for these addled con artists. But then the Republicans remind me by showing up and being even worse. The latest is from the Elizabeth Dole campaign in North Carolina, which has decided to vilify her opponent, Kay Hagan, because she dares to actually meet with atheists. How horrid! Hagan has probably got godless cooties now. Here’s what a Dole press release says, expressing disgust that Hagan is actually going to meet with the Secular Coalition for America.
“Kay Hagan does not represent the values of this state; she is a Trojan Horse for a long list of wacky left-wing outside groups bent on policies that would horrify most North Carolinians if they knew about it,” [Communications Director Dan] McLagan said. “This latest revelation of support from anti-religion activists will not sit well with the 90% of state residents who identify with a specific religious faith.”
Fair enough, actually. It does represent a difference in values: that Hagan may not be an atheist but is willing to speak with them says one thing about her values, and that Elizabeth Dole thinks atheists are un-American says something else about her values. It also says a lot about Dole that she is willingly affiliated with the party of bigotry and incompetence, the Republicans. These are choices made by candidates that are legitimate issues to help voters decide who they should elect.
It says to me that people should vote for Hagan, or almost any other Democrat, over almost any other Republican.
Two things I find absurd are people who see Jesus in random patterns, and internet polls that try to impose patterns in noise. Here’s something that does both: a moth was found with speckles that are supposed to look like Jesus.
“His hair right here and you can see the mustache and the beard and there’s a little slit right there that looks like His mouth and when he would move the mouth would open so it looked like he was trying to talk to you.”
Kirk Harper spotted the moth on an RV trailer Monday, and right away could tell it was unique.
“I immediately thought it looked like Jesus and that was what was so cool cause you’ve seen His face in grilled cheese sandwiches and windows and things but on a moth’s back…we thought that was pretty neat.”
Just to top off the silliness, the story comes with a poll to ask if you see a face. Yeah, I do — it’s Charles Manson.
I was interviewed by a rather baffled radio announcer about the destruction of crackers (I know! Who would have thought such a silly event would be the focus of so much attention?) on BBC Radio Ulster. Reader DaleP tells me that it will be available online only until Saturday, so if you want to hear another flat-voiced nasal American talking to the lovely lilting voice of an Irishman, here’s your chance.
The latest edition, Tangled Bank #112, is now available at Science Notes.
This issue was delayed because I neglected to ride herd on it while I was off in the Galápagos, but the next edition, at En Tequila Es Verdad, will be on schedule next week, on 3 September. So get inspired by the latest and send in links to your science writing pronto!
It’s a very nice letter to Nature. I especially like the last line.
We were perplexed by your Editorial on the work of the Templeton Foundation (‘Templeton’s legacy’ Nature 454, 253-254; 2008). Surely science is about finding material explanations of the world — explanations that can inspire those spooky feelings of awe, wonder and reverence in the hyper-evolved human brain.
Religion, on the other hand, is about humans thinking that awe, wonder and reverence are the clue to understanding a God-built Universe. (The same is true of religion’s poor cousin, ‘spirituality’, which you slip into your Editorial rather as a creationist uses ‘intelligent design’.) There is a fundamental conflict here, one that can never be reconciled until all religions cease making claims about the nature of reality.
The scientific study of religion is indeed full of big questions that need to be addressed, such as why belief in religion is negatively correlated with an acceptance of evolution. One could consider psychological studies of why humans are superstitious and believe impossible things, and comparative sociological studies of religion using materialist explanations of the rise and fall of the world’s belief systems.
Perhaps the Templeton Foundation is thinking of funding such research. The outcome of such work, we predict, will not bring science and religion (or ‘spirituality’) any closer to one another. You suggest that science may bring about “advances in theological thinking”. In reality, the only contribution that science can make to the ideas of religion is atheism.
