The Burke Museum did good with their opening day festivities for their new squid exhibit. Geoff Arnold visited the public squid dissection in Seattle, and returned with photos. We should all do more of this: not just talk about science, but get out there and get our hands dirty with our fellow citizens and show them really cool stuff. It sounds like they got a large crowd, too, with enthusiastic kids.
Poor William Dembski has many thorns in his side. There’s that spunky grad student and that guy who knows more math than he does, and there’s also been a certain professor of constitutional law who has been quietly plaguing him behind the scenes. I’m on Peter Irons’ cc list for these emails, and there have been quite a few occasions when I’ve been laughing from my easy chair at the well-aimed slingstones winging their way from California to Texas.
Dembski has had enough, and has posted his own reply. Irons has been chatting with Baylor President John Lilley, urging him in particular to not bother to respond to the Expelled film crew that was going to be on campus, ‘documenting’ (as if such a manipulative and dishonest crew could put together anything credible) the way poor Billy has been oppressed. Lilley replied politely and briefly:
Peter, thanks for your email. It is greatly appreciated.
I shall not take the bait on the movie. I greatly regret
the difficulty that Dembski has created. John
Aha! Another non-scientific online poll that we can mob. This one asks: Are Dawkins and Hitchens good for humanism? Let’s make the wheels on their poll-o-meter spin for a little while. Wheee!
As many of the readers here know, one of the most common criticisms of us uppity atheists is the idea that the religion we critize doesn’t exist: that the true power of faith is thoughtful, intelligent, and deep, and plucking out random weird beliefs isn’t really representative. When I hear that (and I have, often), I just have to roll my eyes and give the apologist a scathing look — if they believe naive god-wallopers weren’t the dominant form of religious belief on the planet, then I can at least castigate the self-declared ‘sophisticated’ theology for being an exercise in willful blindness.
But here’s another case. This is a presidential candidate. He has an audience eating out of his hand with his speech on how much he looooooooooves his guns, how the UN should float away, and other fodder for wingnuts. And of course, with gun love comes the love of Christ.
“watching ducks land on a lake in Arkansas in the winter is about the closest to Heaven as you can find on this earth… and as someone who believes, according to my faith, I will go to Heaven when I die, I am pretty sure that there is duck hunting in Heaven!”
Pretty deep thinking there from Mike Huckabee. Shallow, stupid git. But that is what American religion is: wish-fulfillment for the gullible.
Besides, as everyone knows, there is duck hunting in heaven. Every day is opening day, and when the Great Mallard opens his bill and quacks the signal, all of the ducks start hunting … hunting the souls of expired ‘sportsmen’.
Take a look at the winners of The 49th International Conference on Electron, Ion and Photon Beam Technology and Nanofabrication Bizarre/Beautiful Micrograph Contest. It’s itty-bitty art and weirdness!
Since I’ll be using PZMyer’s lab, I’ll have access to plenty of zebra fish. As per being in his Neurobiology course, I get to design my own experiment.
Zebra fish are schooling fish. If they are isolated, I wonder if finding another fish would be their top priority. Would it be high enough that they would navigate a few turns to find? Would it be higher priority than food? It looks like I may be testing the power of a social reward.
Some other random thoughts:
In class, we bounced the idea that deer are the perfect example of depression and suicidal tendencies in the wild. Who else would stand in the middle of the road and just stare at the oncoming car?
Edit: don’t take the above comment literally. It’s more of a joke than it is a valid scientific statement. I hope the Grinch didn’t steal everyone’s sense of humor last Christmas!
Anyways, I look forward to learning more about neurobiology. Interestingly enough, I’m taking Intro to Psychology for one of my gen-eds. It will be fun to look at thought and nerves from two different ends.
You really must listen to Bill Maher.
I mentioned before that Mark Mathis is prowling Baylor, looking for new footage for his paean to creationist paranoia, Expelled. I have a suggestion for Mark.
Go north.
Tantalizing news: somewhere out there in the wide, wide world is a video of a pilot whale eating a large squid.
“We looked hard and saw a tentacle of a squid hanging from its mouth and there were other pieces of squid stuck to the whale’s body. It made a number of brusque movements on its side in the water to free the tentacle to eat it — and there we were filming and photographing it all.”
If you follow TONMO you already know it’s probably not a giant squid, as the article breathlessly reports, but it’s still going to be interesting because whales that feed on squid do have a problem: the tentacles are clingy and in many of the large species are equipped with sharp hooks — and they writhe and grip even when the animal is dead. How whales manage a struggling meal is going to be something of interest.
Arrr, I nail a virtual doubloon to the mast of the good ship Pharyngula—first matey to spot the whale and his prey gets it.
Oh, no. Another one. Yet another kook is inspired by Ken Ham’s example and plans to open a “museum” … in the Wisconsin Dells. The Dells, if you don’t know it, is a family resort area, rather cheesy (ha! In Wisconsin! I made a funny), and crammed with waterparks and waterskiing shows and carnival rides and bowling alleys and little stage shows—a creationist “museum” will fit right in.
The guy who has collected a hodge-podge of creationist exhibits, Bill Mielke, exhibits the typical rhetorical coherence of his breed.
“What we’re doing is those that say it’s scientific, is to say it’s not religion against science, but religion against ‘junk science,'” he said. “There is no transitional life forms and there’s no evidence.”
Um, OK. Whatever he just said.
Anyway, this joker has already rented out space in the Waupaca High School (to which we all have to say, “wtf??!?”), and has been exhibiting his trash for some time. Now he wants to put it on display in a dedicated space at a resort, not far from the lovely university town of Madison, Wisconsin. Bleh. All I can say is that, if he does this … ROAD TRIP! Let’s catch the lunacy before it folds into bankruptcy.
(Hat tip to Beautiful Biology)
