Many of you have already seen the gorgeous video below: it’s a spectacularly beautiful animation of the activity in a cell.
I like it, and it’s a useful illustration, but … there’s something fundamental that it gets completely wrong. So today I’m not going to praise it, I’m going to criticize it. It’s a substantial criticism, too, one that means I wouldn’t show this video in my classes without spending more time explaining the error than it takes to show it.
Both Jon Swift and Skippy are spearheading a regular event, Blogroll Amnesty Day, in which we recognize and acknowledge the breadth and depth of blogtopia (yes, we all know who coined that term!). It’s today! You are encouraged to scout out new blogs, get out of old ruts, and explore new or otherwise unfamiliar blogs, add them to your bookmarks, or if you have a blog yourself, add them to your blogroll.
It feels strange to admit this, but Pharyngula seems to have somehow become a moderately big fish in the blogosphere — it was, once upon a time, just a little frivolous exercise I was running on my personal computer, and now it has become a big frivolous exercise running on a professional network. And how did it get there? Nobody succeeds in the blogosphere without making connections, lots of connections, and joining in the spirit of profligately linking to sources everywhere … and getting linked to in return. All the big dogs get that way by growing from small beginnings with the help of a community of readers — and once you’ve grown large, that does not mean your obligations to that community end.
So in that spirit, I make it easy to join the Pharyngula blogroll. Just leave a comment on this post with a link to your page, and I’ll toss your syndication link into my newsreader. There is no requirement that you link back to me.
There are a few restrictions.
A blog must have syndication — RSS or atom. Almost all blogs do nowadays, so it’s not much of a limitation. I do all of my blogreading with a newsreader rather than a web browser, so this is essential.
I actually read the blogs on my blogroll, so if you’re some right-wing creationist nutcase, I may look once or twice for the amusement value, but I won’t keep you on the list for long. Really, my blogroll may be open, but I do have some standards.
I am ruthless about pruning the blogroll, too. It doesn’t matter how good you are, if you don’t update more than once a month, you get culled. If you turn into a right-wing creationist nutcase, a kiddie porn purveyor, or just get really, really boring, you will get removed.
I get a lot of requests, so I’m going to be picky and insist that you enroll by leaving a comment on threads that announce an open enrollment. Requests get lost in my mail flood, otherwise, and it helps if I’ve got them all in one place.
Blogs will get added immediately to my newsreader and enter my reading lists right away. However, the public blogroll that you can see on the web only gets updated intermittently. It’s actually a bit out of date right now; the scripts I use to convert my newsreader file to html broke when I updated my laptop to Mac OS X Leopard. Have no fear, though, I’ve got curl sucking away in the background as I type this, bringing in a php upgrade.
Be interesting to me.
See, that’s not hard! Go ahead, leave me a link in the comments.
I forgot to remind you all to tune in to the Minnesota Atheists radio show…but you all know by now to turn on your radios/streaming connection on Sunday mornings, right?
If you forgot, you’ll have to do penance by reading the Sunday Sermonette.
Every once in a while, someone from Sweden notices American politics. The state of the nation may make us residents weep, but at least we can be entertained by the startled expressions of horror from the foreigners.
A review in the New Orlando Sentinel asks the question, “Is Ben Stein the new face of Creationism?”
In the cruelest slam of creationism yet, it is accompanied by this photo:
That’s just mean.
Anyway, read the whole thing. It’s a review of Expelled, and … no, sir, he didn’t like it.
He uses "straw man" tactics to attack, mainly The Origin of the Species, as Darwin wrote it in 1859. He sets up false theses that "the other side" must hold (classic Limbaugh) and knocks those straw men down. Citing scientific research as recent as 1953, he can’t understand why no peer-reviewed scientist thinks this "fairytale" version of the emergence of life is worth his or her time.
Most despicably, Stein, a Jew, invokes the Holocaust, making the Hitler-was-a-Darwinist argument, this AFTER he’s used the Holocaust denier’s favorite trick, "math," to show how remote the chances are that life was created by natural, not supernatural processes. It reminded me of the phony slump Michael Moore showed walking away from ambushing crusty old Charlton Heston in Bowling for Columbine.
Animation, similar to that used in Columbine, makes its mock points about how science comes to conclusions and how the culture is structured to accept them. Snippets of The Wizard of Oz, Inherit the Wind and other films (if this film is indeed "unfinished," it may be from unresolved rights-clearance issues) to make his points funny. Not really. The Stalin and Soviet and Nazi clips are used in a not-quite-subliminal seduction way to demonize the people who might hold a contrary view.
I have heard a rumor that tomorrow there will be some strange game called the “superbowl” going on … I don’t know who is playing, I won’t be watching, and I really don’t care who wins, so I think I’ll just root for the Toronto Maple Leafs, if that’s all right. But I did discover another fun game that could be played.
The NFL doesn’t like it when churches show the Superbowl on big screen TVs for their congregations (which is actually kind of a strange thing for churches to promote, anyway.) Maybe atheists should cruise their neighborhoods and rat out any churches that violate the rules.
Not to be nasty about it, though. I don’t care about the Superbowl, but a matchup between the forces of American Foo’bawl and American Evangelical Christianity … that would be an exceptionally interesting contest, especially since it would probably lead to open warfare in places like Texas.
(hat tip to RPM
This is not going to be an “all debate, all the time” blog, but readers have sent me a few accounts of recent skirmishes, so I’ll toss ’em up here. This one is a description of a debate between the ferocious Mr Hitchens and that smooshy gooey feel-good rabbi, Shmuley Boteach. It’s like pitting a knife against jello, I’m afraid.
I mentioned the other day that this low-class, low-rent, low-IQ fanatical fundie church was going to broadcast their version of Richard Dawkins’ funeral service. Well, it’s up.
Rarely will you find such a sterling example of the cretinous minds that fester like rotting mushrooms in the sickly, benevolent glow of Christianity. The preacher is awful: he is visibly reading from his script, and he can’t even do that competently. This is no St John Chrysostom; it’s a stumbling oaf who reads and writes like a pissed-off sixth-grader. The content is predictable, beginning with a few utterly insincere compliments, and descending quickly into gloating over the fact that the ‘deceased’ is now burning horribly in hell. And it ends with Dawkins in effigy, soaked in gasoline, and lit on fire while horrible screams play in the background.
Skip it. These are awful, evil, wretched people living a life of fear and anger.
Everyone should go say hello to our new scibling, Green Gabbro. What is this? Rocks? Next you’ll tell me there are scientists who study clouds, or oceans, or flaming balls of gas.
For those of you looking for audio of that debate with Simmons, you can download an MP3 now. I’m actually a little bit impressed that the radio station has enough integrity to retain the file and make it available to their listeners.
I can’t say as much about Uncommon Descent. They briefly put up a thread to discuss the debate as it was happening, the comments accumulated, and many conceded the debate to me (while, of course, disagreeing with me). It wasn’t a troll thread, no vituperation was going on, it was just a fairly ordinary set of comments with nothing objectionable, I though…but then, poof, today it is gone. It is preserved at After the Bar Closes.
I don’t like to do this; even when discussing the work of the anti-scientists in the creationist movement, we should link to their work. But I’m not going to link to Uncommon Descent ever again. It’s not that they’re wrong or that I disagree with them, but that the site is profoundly dishonest and unreliable, and can’t be trusted. I’m not going to link to a site which will freely shift and modify their content to polish their image, since who knows where any link will end up.
