Or in this case, perhaps, unskew one. Take a look at this poll that asks, Does Islam Oppress or Liberate Women? The leading answer so far is “Islam is generally liberating to women, freeing them from sexual pressures that exist elsewhere. “
Yeah, if by “liberating” you mean “compelling them to wear a bag over their head, not allowing them to drive or hold various public positions, and in some cases, gouging out chunks of their genitalia with a piece of broken glass.”
This is a little creepy. The Sexy Secularist can do a pitch perfect imitation of Alister McGrath on any subject, whether it’s ordering from a menu or engaging in phone sex. This has got to make him a hit at parties.
Prehistoric Pulp, my source for all pop culture with dinosaurs, reveals that there will be a new direct-to-video (not promising) animated (could be bad) movie of Turok, Son of Stone (awesome!) And it’s not the stupid bastardized version that was corrupted for video games to include cyborg dinosaurs!
Yeah, yeah, it looks a bit cheesy and cheap and it’s got cultural stereotypes run amuck, but it’s personal. Back when I was a tiny young fella and my father was a blue-collar wage slave working long hours, when he got home he’d sometimes ask me to read to him, and there were two things we both got into: Edgar Rice Burrough’s Mars stories, and Turok comic books. Both of those have faded considerably from the Great American Memory Collective, you have to be of a certain age to actually appreciate them, and they just seem a little quaint and peculiar and dated if you read them now, but hey, they were part of my childhood landscape, so I like ’em.
I’d also like to see A Princess of Mars made into a movie, but I think it’s impossible. The special effects are doable, but the tone couldn’t survive: they were all about old-fashioned gallant heroism, naked people with swords and radium pistols, and exotic, unbelievable Martian landscapes, and nowadays the casual chauvinism would get in the way, and nobody could write it straight as Burroughs did. The titular Princess is a voluptuous Martian mammal … who interbreeds with a human and lays eggs. It couldn’t be done now without cracking a joke.
This is a little late for any Londoners out there, but Edge had a collaboration with the Serpentine Gallery that debuted last weekend. It’s a collection of scientists’ and technologists’ and artists’ answers to the question, “What is your formula? Your equation? Your algorithm?” All of the answers are on display at the site now, so have a browse. There’s a little bit of everything, from obvious truisms (like mine) to detailed, specific formulae, to weird guesses, to stuff that is outright crazy, but nobody said exactly the same thing (which is probably a reasonable outcome from Pinker’s equation, if nothing else).
So…what’s your formula, equation, algorithm?
It seems like retribution is in order: Richard Roberts wants a leave of absence, as his wife claims to live in “a morally upright manner” even while rumors of associations with a 16-year-old boy swirl about.
James Watson’s sold-out lecture in London has been cancelled. I guess making bogus accusations about the congenital stupidity of a whole continent has consequence.
Greg knows a bit about the anthropology of race, and he also knows how to make fools suffer. Now he has weighed in on Watson.
I’m pretty sure he left boot marks on the old man.
Greg has followed through now with more criticisms of ‘scientific’ racism.
I’ve read a lot of wacky reviews of Dawkins’ book, but this is so absurd I nearly choked on my coke. How about a Freudian psychoanalysis of Dawkins?
The analysis? Dawkins’ atheism is grounded in a psychological murder of the God/Father…For Dawkins, the Oedipal counter-current manifests itself not in hearing divine voices but in an unquestioning commitment to a new paternal figure/institution, namely modern science (note the element of trust in science that is necessary to make this commitment, since science alone does not disprove God/murder the Father, only makes God’s existence/Father’s survival improbable). Science is Dawkin’s adoptive Father figure now that he has done away with the old one.
Dawkins needs to write more about squid to give these fellows more fun.
I must protest. Now we’ve got LOLCnidarians. What’s next? LOLChoanaflagellates? LOLPriapulids? LOLLichens? This is MADNESS.
People often complain that I’m too mild-mannered in my personal appearances — that they want a real fire-breather. Well, my solution arrived as a gift in the mail today: a selection of fine fire-breathing aids from
Chilestuff.com, including a spectacularly vivid t-shirt with that appropriate logo on it. Next talk I give, you should sit in the back row.
Alas, this might make Skatje cry. She likes her food bland, but I’m going to have to sneak a little of the chile relish or the hot sauce into pale, tasteless, limp food — and then she’ll look like the picture!
