Carnivalia, and an open thread

It’s late, I’m going to be unconscious in my bed, those of you with insomnia or living in distant time zones need something to chat about — so here, just for you, it’s a Pharyngula Late Night open thread, primed with a few fun carnivals.

What’s that? It’s not enough? Late night chats need something really weird to keep them lively? OK, here, how about Creation Ministries International. Be sure to read their “What we believe” page — this is the Christianity everybody assures me doesn’t really exist.

Still not enough? How about the Hovindite efforts to suppress free speech on the web? Yeah, I know, just annoying and creepy.

Hindus riot over blasphemy! Bridge built by army of monkeys saved!

Hmmm. Tough crowd. How about “Priest defrauds congregation! Lives in luxury on proceeds from promises never kept!” Dang. But they all do that.

Sorry, gang. I’ve got nothing. You’ll have to entertain yourselves for a while.

Hallelujah! The GOP presidential train wreck has been SAVED!!

By the addition of a new candidate who actually believes in God. Yes, everyone, Alan Keyes has entered the race.

Dear jebus, why is the race for the election of the president of the most militarily powerful country on earth such a ludicrous joke? Shouldn’t this be an office for serious people with serious plans and serious expertise, and shouldn’t certifiable lunatics like Keyes be given the cold shoulder? (Oh, right: they can’t do that, because if sanity were a prerequisite, the entire Republican slate would evaporate.)

R. Josiah Magnuson

Take note of that name, just in case. This ambitious young zealot might just be a future president of the Christian States of America (in which case, look for me at my new home in Australia).

More likely, though, he’ll be one of those desperate men in shabby suits handing out bizarre political pamphlets at the mall, wondering why his life is such a sad sack of futility. But you never know! Maybe he’ll be incredibly successful, and instead end up cowering in a bunker with a pistol, wondering why his life is such a sad sack of futility.

Marine invertebrate temptations

People, don’t do this to me. I’ve got all this work I’ve got to get done so that I’m free to go on a date this evening, and you keep sending me these distractions. Like, for instance, this link to a collection of Marine Invertebrate Video and Film Stock Footage. Cephalopods and nudibranchs and crustaceans and salps, all categorized (there’s even an invertebrate mating category! With 421 clips! It’s free porn!) and with thousands of high resolution videos. The previews are all free, but you can also license HD video of these beautiful action shots.

I will be disciplined, though. I’m closing the web page. I will get my writing done. I will put these links here though, so I can later return to “Brain coral spawning” and “Moray tears arms from octopus” and “Flamboyant cuttlefish feeding” and “Siphonophore With Extending Tenacles”.

Back to work.

Maybe there’s time for “Pelagic Tunicate In The Twilight Zone”?

No. Work. Get things done.

Oh, but I want…!

If you’ve ever been tempted to visit the Big Valley Creation Science Museum…

…don’t bother.

i-efb25d25b855d1584009ff6643ce1bab-big_valley.jpg

A reader sent me a link to his photo set from the BVCSM, and I’m afraid all you’ll find there is the Wall O’ Text approach to instruction. You know what that is: print out a page from Answers in Genesis, blow it up real big, and slap it on a wall … instant museum!

There is one amusing revelation — creationists sometimes have the wackiest ideas — and it made me laugh.

Did you know that ALL dinosaur footprint fossils found are pointing in the same direction?! This is IRREFUTABLE PROOF of the dinosaurs running from a global flood!

Creation Logic 101: you don’t need any! And now that you know everything that’s entertaining about the place, you won’t need to pay out $5 to some nut in a small town in Alberta, Canada to see it. Go to the Royal Tyrrell instead.

Actually, the funniest comment I’ve seen in a while is a testimonial proudly displayed at the top of the BVCSM website:

“I spent more time in this museum than I did in the Smithsonian”

The picture at the top of this article is the Big Valley Creation Science Museum: a small remodeled ranch house. This is the Smithsonian Institution: 19 museums and 9 research institutions, and over 100 million objects in their collections. That statement above is a testimonial to the delusions of the creationists, nothing more.

Ladders and cranes everywhere!

There is a painful assumption of progress in many interpretations of evolution — and sometimes it’s by people who ought to know better. T. Ryan Gregory finds a ghastly example of a figure that, by cherry-picking the data and doing a little suggestive ordering of the presentation, makes it look like there’s a correlation between the amount of non-coding DNA and organismal complexity. Fortunately, he counters it with a much more useful chart (that I’m definitely stealing for the next time I teach genetics) with no such bias.

And then Larry Moran tops Gregory with an even worse figure. I don’t quite understand it; maybe this distortion of the evidence to support progress, increasing molecular complexity, and the superiority of humans has roots in misunderstandings before my time, because my genetics and cell biology instructors in the 1970s sure didn’t promote this nonsense then. We were told even in those ancient days that the C-value paradox wasn’t a problem if you didn’t try to shoehorn mammals into a position at the pinnacle of evolution.

Maybe I just had really good professors. Thanks, Arthur Whiteley and Larry Sandler!

A conduit for good works, untainted by foolish faith

Atheists don’t get credit if we give to religious charities. We don’t get credit if we give to simply secular causes. Now, though, we’ve got a new explicitly godless charity that works to improve education and knowledge of science: the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science. It’s my kind of place — and best of all, money going there isn’t going to be mistaken for support for ignorance and superstition.

Read the announcement. It’s cleared all the legal hurdles in both the US and Great Britain and has been granted charitable, tax-exempt status, and is going to be my favored choice of a charity from now on.

Here I go…

… like a lamb to the slaughter.

I guess I’m one of the last of PZ’s sacrificial students. As you may have gathered from my clever alias my name is Katie and I’m a senior biology major. I’ve actually known PZ for a number of years–I’m a Morris native and went to high school with his son, Connlann. When I was thirteen I met Connlann in an upper level math class (something esoteric called “algebra”) and learned that Connlann’s dad was a biologist (cool!) and an atheist (he puts people to sleep before surgery??) I soon adopted him as my personal biological encyclopedia and would pester PZ with questions of science any chance I got. When I decided to stay in Morris for college, PZ became my academic advisor and I’ve been harassing him for knowledge ever since.

This year I am applying to medical school and busy preparing my senior seminar on hypothermic treatments in preserving brain cells in cardiac arrest patients. This new treatment is already in use in some hospitals across the country and completely revolutionizing the way we manage cardiac arrest victims. If you’ve come across studies on this in the literature, I’d appreciate your input. I’m especially interested in research on the way brain cells die. Apparently cells that have been oxygen deprived commit apoptosis even after re-oxygenation. For some reason, induced hypothermia after or during resuscitation increases brain cell viability.

Well that’s all I’ve got. Now go ahead. Eviscerate me (bleat!).