I don’t understand this. The LA Times reports on a Pew Survey that reports that 92% of Americans have been deluded into believing in a god or universal spirit, and what do they do? They tag a poll onto it!
It looks like a bunch of Aberrant Americans have already found the poll, because it is returning results that don’t line up well with the Pew poll … so let’s go make it a little worse.
So, what do you think? Do you agree with the Genocide Awareness Project’s stance that abortion is genocide?
That smart guy, Carl Zimmer, has written an article on those smart molluscs, the octopus. I like that his conclusion is that we can’t really judge their intelligence, because it is different than our own.
That’s the same answer I give to questions about the existence of intelligent life in the universe. I suspect that it’s there (but rarer than most astronomers seem to think — intelligence is an extremely uncommon adaptive strategy here on Earth, as is probably likewise elsewhere), but that it will be radically different in intent and action than our own, as different as we are from a squid, or a dolphin, or an elephant, to name a few forms that have evolved large brains. Often, the question of alien intelligence is more like, “Are there people like us out there?”, and I think the answer to that one is clearly no, almost certainly not. There are too many alternative pathways.
Sad news in the war against reverence: one of our heroes, George Carlin, has died of heart failure at the age of 71. This was a man to whom nothing was sacred, and that was how he inspired us.
I’m at the Evolution 2008 conference, but I’m too tired to appreciate it — the only sleep I got was a few fitful hours on the redeye from Las Vegas, so I’m seriously concerned that I may fall asleep in my session this afternoon. Greg Laden has been instructed to use a cattle prod on me if I slow down and start sounding like Ben Stein in my talk. It could happen. I’m having trouble remembering what my talk is supposed to be about right now. The slides will go up and the talk will flow out of my mouth, I hope.
Speaking of Greg, at least he seems to be paying attention. He’s got summaries up right now of talks by Scott Lanyon, Mark Borrello, and Jillian Smith, so I can get clued in by the blogs later, even if my brain isn’t working very well here at the actual meeting.
I also got the t-shirt … that’s what counts, right?
By the way, for anyone else at the meeting, Lynn Fellman has a booth here. You should stop by and look at the intersection of art and evolution!
Café Philos has a very good summary of the John Freshwater affair — he’s the bad science teacher who thought the captive audience in his classroom was a fine target for proselytization for his cult. He’s also the lunatic who burned a cross into a student’s arm.
…there was What the Bleep Do We Know?, another crackpot movie made with interviews obtained under false pretenses and pushing a bogus ideological twist on science. Sean Carroll and David Albert talk about it on Bloggingheads.tv.
Man, that was a bad movie.
Don’t forget to tune in to Atheists Talk radio at 9am Central. This week, it’s a celebration of Juneteenth and a discussion of African American freethinkers and civil rights.
Sastra, OM is organizing a meetup for all the Pharynguloids here at TAM6, or just in the general area. We’re meeting at 6:00 in the buffet restaurant here at the Flamingo — come on by, talk with us all, watch me shuffle out the door to catch a late-night flight to Minneapolis.
