The lovely stalk-eyed fly

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Sphyrocephala beccarii

Here is a spectacularly pretty and weird animal: stalk-eyed flies of the family Diopsidae. There are about 160 species in this group that exhibit this extreme morphology, with the eyes and the antennae displaced laterally on stalks. They often (but not always) are sexually dimorphic, with males having more exaggerated stalks—the longer stalks also make them clumsy in flight, so this is a pattern with considerable cost, and is thought to be the product of sexual selection. The Sphyrocephala to the right is not even an extreme example. Read on to see some genuinely bizarre flies and a little bit about the development of this structure.

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I hear Pete Stark eats babies, too

Wow. Pete Stark has been raked over the coals by the Christian Seniors organization—what a wicked man he must be.

“It is sad but not surprising that the current Congress has produced this historic first—one of its members has denied God,” said CSA Executive Director James Lafferty. “The liberals in Congress want to throttle any school child who bows his or her head in prayer, but they want to establish a right for liberals to bash Christians and berate God around the clock.

Well, you know there is a real shortage of schoolchildren to throttle. If we liberals went at it at the pace we wanted, we’d be knee deep in dead children. We’ve been exercising restraint in our child-throttling initiatives for years in order to preserve the supply.

It’s the real reason we’re pissed off at the Republicans. Here we’ve got this new resource of pious children to throttle in Iraq, and they just squander it by throwing bombs at the place. It’s a damned waste, the kind of impersonal mass destruction that only benefits the greedy child-killers at the top of the corporate food chain; we liberals believe everyone should get the therapeutic benefit of killing good godly babies. That’s really the difference between us, isn’t it?

“It is time for religious members of Congress to push back. A simple declaration of a belief in God by members of Congress on the House floor will be greatly informative for the American people. Members who wish to expand could use the ‘special orders’ portion of the House calendar to elaborate but a simple “I believe in God” will suffice.

I predict a stampede for the steps of the legislature and Fox News cameras. An invitation to a public display of piety? Oh, boy!

“Congressman Stark’s statement is a very sad benchmark for America. It could be the moment which defines the decline of our country or it could be the spark which marks an important day. That would be the day that religious Americans stood-up to the liberal bullies who are so determined to use the power of government to silence prayer and every other religious expression of free speech.

You know, Pete Stark only admitted to being a Unitarian and not believing in a deity. He is not a fire-breathing atheist, but here he is being accused of wanting to throttle children, suppress free speech, and destroy America — things which neither he nor a truly evil godless fellow like myself has any desire to do. Keep this in mind next time you quiver in trepidation at the rhetoric of those angry New Atheists. We’re not going to bring down the wrath of the Religious Right on you, all it takes is any freethought of any kind.

Bruce Sterling writes an obituary for blogs

Write faster, everyone, you don’t have much time. Bruce Sterling gives blogs only ten more years.

“There are 55 million blogs and some of them have got to be good,” Sterling said, during a speech here at the SXSW conference in reference to the slogan on blog search site technorati.com. “Well, no, actually. They don’t.”

“I don’t think there will be that many of them around in 10 years. I think they are a passing thing.”

I think he’s right, and he’s wrong. This idea of self-publishing and babbling on the net isn’t going to go away—I expect it’ll be going on in some form or another as long as we’ve got a network to play on.

Otherwise, though, sure, something is going to change, it always does. I wouldn’t mind some radical new change that would allow us to jettison the ugly term “blog”, but I think Sterling is being a poor judge of human nature if he thinks us primates will stop chattering at each other, even if the quality of our communications never rise to his standards of “good”.

“Spirituality”? Another word for lies and empty noise

If you go to the main ScienceBlogs page, you’ll discover that the Buzz for the day is this little gem, triggered by one of our newbie bloggers:

Spirituality and Science

Over the last few hundred years, science has provided a mind-boggling richness of answers about the workings of the universe. For many people the importance of religion, at least as an explainer of the natural world, has shifted. Is it possible to believe what science teaches us about nature, and also be a person of faith? A Galactic Interactions post about being a Christian and a scientist has ignited an explosive debate.

Appropriately enough, the latest Templeton Prize has just been awarded. $1.5 million for this rubbish:

Professor Taylor has written extensively on the sense of self and how it is defined by morals and what one considers good. People operate in the register of spiritual issues, he said, and to separate those from the humanities and social sciences leads to flawed conclusions.

“The deafness of many philosophers, social scientists and historians to the spiritual dimension can be remarkable,” Professor Taylor said in remarks prepared for delivery at the announcement of the prize at the Church Center for the United Nations in New York this morning. This is damaging because it “affects the culture of the media and educated public opinion in general.”

There’s also much more at the Templeton Prize site. He blathers on and on about “spiritual thinking” and a “spiritual domain” without ever telling us what the heck it is, although it does seem to be all tied up in believing in a religion, any religion. So, someone tell me, how am I supposed to hear this “spiritual dimension”? What is it supposed to mean?

Near as I can tell, it means making up vague nonsense about special values only religious people can have, and getting a cool million five for insisting on it. What a sweet scam, and what a useless lot of hot air.

(via Butterflies and Wheels)

Comedy and Science in Melbourne

Australian comedy may be a risky business — didn’t they give us both Yahoo Serious and Barry Humphries?1 — but in case you want to chance it, I’ve been informed by Ben McKenzie, The Man in the Lab Coat, that he’ll be doing a comedy lecture show about science this April.

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Here’s a cool thing: he has offered me comp tickets for the opening week. Since nobody is standing up to offer me comp flight tickets to Australia, or comp teaching stand-in to cover my classes while I’m away, he has said I can pass them on to any interested readers who might be willing to travel to Melbourne (surely there can’t be any readers who actually live anywhere near Melbourne, can there?). I’ll give them away2 to anyone willing to take them who will also send me a summary of the event — just sing out in the comments.

If you want to know more first, here’s the description and listing for the show.

1I know, an American has no right to mock, since we gave the world both Carrot-Top and Pauly Shore.

2The first Pharyngula Give-Away with Prizes! I should have invented a better contest.

Brian Flemming interview

Here’s a good interview with Brian Flemming, the documentarian behind The God Who Wasn’t There, who also irritated a lot of prissy reactionaries who have too-tight pants with his blasphemy challenge on youtube.

Simon Owens: Do you think the “blasphemy project” is an effective way for atheists to come out of the closet?

Brian Flemming: The Blasphemy Challenge has certainly encouraged quite a few godless folks to unequivocally state that they aren’t afraid of Satan. I think it’s hilarious that this is actually a controversial statement to make — as if Satan were not a purely mythological character. The Blasphemy Challenge is radical compared to how we normally talk about superstitions such as Christianity, but it shouldn’t be. It should always be acceptable to declare one’s independence from Bronze Age myths. In fact, it shouldn’t really be news at all.

I must say I’ve laughed and laughed at all the shrill indignation those little videos stirred up. He’s exactly right — the whole rationale behind the challenge was to highlight the misplaced reverence even liberal, self-professed non-Christians have for the paraphernalia of religion, and it accomplished that goal wonderfully.