Should I go or should I stay?

I have a MySpace page. It’s not much, just a token entry on one of the big social networking sites.

Now here’s a problem: MySpace is run by religious bigots. They selectively censor atheist groups wholesale; this makes me rather dislike the place. Yesterday was International Delete Your MySpace Account Day as a protest — I didn’t participate because I didn’t find out about it until this morning, and now I face a dilemma. Should I remove even my nominal participation in MySpace, or should I keep my page up? If it stays up, it will definitely have something protesting the managerial abuses that are going on.

There’s something to be said for either alternative, but I’m lazy (and also crazy busy today), so I’ll put it to the readers of Pharyngula: shall we say no to MySpace and torch the Pharyngula webpage thereon, or shall I leave it up? Scorn them by participating in the mass shunning, or leave a one-fingered salute waving at them?

The New Humanist is running a poll on this very same issue — how should atheists respond to organizations that discriminate against us?

It stands for so much

At last, we have the perfect symbol for America under Bush. Nothing testifies to your pride in a country that is impossible to satirized anymore than fake plastic testicles painted in camouflage colors with a yellow “support the troops” ribbon that you can hang on your gas-guzzling SUV.

I swear, if I ever saw one of these on the freeway, it would be a traffic hazard because I’d be laughing and crying too hard to maintain proper control of my vehicle.

(via Jeffrey Rowland)

Richard Dawkins, tune in on Friday!

I’m sure he will be looking forward to this: his funeral is going to be held tomorrow.

Since the teaser calls him “one of the most wicked and vile human beings ever to walk the face of this earth”, and since they’ve already done a hack job on Heath Ledger (in which they build a crude dummy of the actor and set it on fire), I have a sneaking suspicion that this won’t consist of a reading of
Dawkins’ suggestion for his funeral. In fact, I don’t think these hateful yahoos are capable of reading that; the examples on their website are less than eloquent. These are not your Southern gentlemen with the lilting accents smooth as honey, but rather, a couple of dumb crackers, shrill and nasal, who can barely read their own scripts.

It’s coming from a small group of ignorant haters called the King of Terrors Ministry. I find that appropriate and amusing. Some people got seriously bent out of shape that Dawkins dared to call the Christian god “a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully,” but here’s a group of cultists who revel in that kind of description, who worship a being because he inspires terror. Oh, and like the god of Fred Phelps, their god is intensely obsessed with homosexuality.

Get the popcorn!

Floridians are meeting to discuss evolution! You just have to read one account, complete with quotes, of a creationist mob trying to articulate their opposition to science. There are plenty of amusing examples of dumbitude, but this one is my favorite:

Referring to the discovery that Pluto no longer is considered a planet by scientists today, Kendall said scientific opinions can change as scientists explore new information.

You have to understand…this fellow Kendall was using that as an argument against evolution.

Look around you

British educational programs are astounding. I caught my daughter self-educating herself with this remarkable series of videos. The one below is on the brain — I learned stuff I’d never known before, and I have a Ph.D. from an Institute of Neuroscience!

Finally!

I’m fed up. There have been 5.5 Amaz!ng Meetings with James Randi, and I haven’t gone to a single one…yet. That’s finally going to change, though, as I’ve been invited to speak at TAM6, in Las Vegas, on 19-22 June. Who else is going? Maybe a few of you will think about marking your calendars and making the pilgrimage for the first time this summer, so that I’m not the only TAM virgin there?

I haven’t quite settled on what I’ll be talking about, just yet, although I have a few ideas. Maybe Phil and I should have a joint session in which we publicly play the dozens? He did just get back from TAM 5.5, so there is a little seething jealousy that needs an outlet.

Guillermo Gonzalez does two smart things

That silly Iowa State physics fellow who was denied tenure has finally admitted to something sensible. First:

Gonzalez said in an e-mail Monday that he is applying for tenure-track positions in case the Regents do not act in his favor.

Good for him! Tenure denials happen all the time, and smart academics pick themselves up off the floor, brush off the debris, and move on. Turning it into a major trial in which your self-esteem and reputation are shackled to false notions that one must retain this one job is a recipe for further self-destruction. Move on, Guillermo! Liberty University and a host of other bible colleges need you!

The second thing needs a little work, but it’s getting close, and it is accurate.

“I’m convinced that I was denied tenure because of my [credulous, unproductive, failed] research,” he wrote in the e-mail.

OK, he actually wrote, “I’m convinced that I was denied tenure because of my intelligent design research,” but it means exactly the same thing.

Now, if he really wants to move on into a new position, one thing he has to realize is that he has to stop doing the same old stupid things that cost him his first one … like wasting time with a flop of a research plan designed by theocratic ideologues.

Do we really care what the Pope says anymore?

Many people have been sending me links to the latest comments by our charming Catholic pontiff, and I don’t know, I’m just finding the old boy increasingly irrelevant as he continues his reactionary slide into medieval thinking. More and more it’s like hearing reports of what some random homeless man in a Philadelphia subway station ranted about — it’s amusing and appalling, but it’s hard to work up the outrage to care any more. Yes, you can argue that the Pope is influential, but even there, how many self-identified Catholics pay any attention at all to what he says about contraception, for instance? But alright, once more unto the breach, etc.

So here’s what the pope babbled recently.

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