D.J. Grothe and I tussled again in this week’s Point of Inquiry podcast, in a continuation of last week’s episode.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
D.J. Grothe and I tussled again in this week’s Point of Inquiry podcast, in a continuation of last week’s episode.
One of our least favorite institutions, Focus on the Family, has been trying to corrupt the educational system of New Zealand by sending creationist garbage to the high schools. It doesn’t seem to be a serious threat — so far, they’re pretty sensible down there — but there is one internet poll asking whether schools should teach ID.
Go express your opinion!
Here is an important suggestion, if ever you should find yourself living in rural Minnesota.
Always roll up your car windows at night.
Wait, you say — that seems unnecessary. This is a trusting part of the world, where petty crime is rare, and people leave houses and cars unlocked all the time. Why not leave the windows down so that the interior is cooled by soft breezes in the summer months?
There are two reasons. Remember them.
You never know when a rainstorm might flare up, soaking your car seats. This is a fairly minor concern, however.
Open cars are giant insect traps. You have not experienced Minnesota until you’ve entered your car to discover it is full of enraged, starving, confused, and frantic mosquitos. This is particularly disastrous if it has rained and your cupholders are pools of water, because now they are also horny and want a blood meal so they can lay eggs in your car interior.
That is all.
A certain Brown University biology graduate has taken an unfortunate step, one that we asked him to avoid. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana has signed a pro-creationism bill into law, all to pander to evangelical protestant hicks. We know this is a guy with national aspirations, so he’s taking a big gamble that we aren’t going to swing back towards a more sensible secularism, since the only people who could vote for him now are fundagelical god-wallopers who don’t understand science. That may be a fairly big voting base, but I’m hoping that it’s shrinking. Either Bobby Jindal is toast… or we all are.
One bizarre item in that story is that the reporter contacted the Discovery Institute, who quickly disavowed any association with the bill, saying that they did not “directly” support it and that they certainly wouldn’t support any attempt to insert religion into the schools. Like everything that comes out of the DI, they are lying reflexively. Barbara Forrest has an excellent overview of the context and history of the bill — the bill has the DI’s frantic, fervid paws all over it.
I do think we need to call this the Bogalusa Bill, after the district that the sponsor, Ben Nevers (a creationist and a democrat, for shame!), comes from. It’s a name that just trips off the tongue, like a happy fusion of “bogus” and “loser”, said with a lovely New Orleans drawl.
I need to get a cool hat like Neil deGrasse Tyson and Margaret Downey if I want to be one of the Cool Kids.
You have an opportunity to participate in an Atheist Coming Out Party. You should! It’ll be fun! Atheists always throw the best parties and have the best and smartest conversations!
The paleontologists are going too far. This is getting ridiculous. They keep digging up these collections of bones that illuminate tetrapod origins, and they keep making finer and finer distinctions. On one earlier side we have a bunch of tetrapod-like fish — Tiktaalik and Panderichthys, for instance — and on the later side we have fish-like tetrapods, such as Acanthostega and Ichthyostega. Now they’re talking about shades of fishiness or tetrapodiness within those groups! You’d almost think they were documenting a pattern of gradual evolutionary change.
The latest addition is a description of Ventastega curonica, a creature that falls within the domain of the fish-like tetrapods, but is a bit fishier than other forms, so it actually bridges the gap between something like Tiktaalik and Acanthostega. We look forward to the imminent discovery of yet more fossils that bridge the gap between Ventastega and Tiktaalik, and between Ventastega and Acanthostega, and all the intermediates between them.
You may have heard that Expelled opened in Canada this week…but it’s not off to a soaring start. The first reviews are coming in, and I am encouraged by the opening line of this one: “I found this film so distasteful I hestitate to dignify it with even a thumbnail review.”
Also noteworthy: the reviewer interviewed the awful Ben Stein about it.
I interviewed Ben Stein for a Newsmaker item in this week’s Maclean’s, and he did acknowledge the debt his film owes to Michael Moore. “We were greatly influenced by him,” he said. “He showed you can make a documentary on a political subject and make money.” But Stein couldn’t really elaborate on how Moore’s influence was applied. After all, he reminded me, unlike Moore he was just the host, not the filmmaker. Besides, he’s never seen more than two minutes of a MIchael Moore film. “It makes me sick just to look at him,” he said. “He’s physically revolting. He so angry. I like to look at people who have sweet, nice faces.” Stein–whose face is familiar from his roles as a teacher in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and The Wonder Years–immodestly included himself in that sweet, nice camp.
He did, however, concede with a sigh that Expelled is a whole lot less successful than Moore’s films, “so whatever secret he has, we haven’t learned it.”
No kidding.
Wait—Ben Stein, a guy with the face of a mackerel and the emotional range of a dead one, finds Moore physically revolting? He isn’t one of the beautiful people (and neither am I), so judging his work by how he looks…well, Stein should not go there.
Nice admission at the end, though.
(via Canadian Cynic)
There’s more at Straight.com and The Coast. It’s getting panned all over. Again.
