The latest edition of the Tangled Bank is at About Archaeology. Read!
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
The most important battle in the history of mankind!
A bit more than a week ago, I mentioned this interview I did for a site called One Blog A Day. The comment thread on the interview has grown in a peculiar way — John A. Davison and his pet sycophantic monkey, VMartin, are babbling away in a most painfully lunatic fashion, cruelly egged on by wÒÓ†. It’s hard to beat this comment for delusions of grandeur:
Phil Plait has the stats: it’s 1.5 earth diameters, 5 times the mass, 2¼ Gs, and probably has a surface temperature between 0°C and 40°C. It’s big, it could be wet, and it’s only 20 light years away. You know what I’m thinking? It could be the Planet of the Squid.
Somebody get cracking on that transluminal drive.
Did you also attend this Intelligent Design quackery talk by John Marshall? Report in, please, and let us know how stupid it was (there is no doubt that it was stupid, we’re just interested in measuring the degree.)
Marshall is yet another M.D. who became a creationist because he looked objectively at the evid… oh, wait, no. None of them do that. It’s because:
But Marshall began to look into what he said were holes in the theory. And after becoming a Christian, Marshall found it hard to reconcile evolutionary theory with Genesis, the biblical account of how God created the earth and everything on it in six days. Marshall has since become a proponent of the view that there are some natural systems that cannot be adequately explained by natural forces, and therefore must be the result of intelligent design, or ID.
Isn’t it curious how religion is such a powerful force for inoculating people with appalling inanity?
Bwahahahaha! At least … we have a source for Kryptonite!
Researchers from mining group Rio Tinto discovered the unusual mineral and enlisted the help of Dr Stanley when they could not match it with anything known previously to science.
Once the London expert had unravelled the mineral’s chemical make-up, he was shocked to discover this formula was already referenced in literature – albeit fictional literature.
“Towards the end of my research I searched the web using the mineral’s chemical formula – sodium lithium boron silicate hydroxide – and was amazed to discover that same scientific name, written on a case of rock containing kryptonite stolen by Lex Luther from a museum in the film Superman Returns.
“The new mineral does not contain fluorine (which it does in the film) and is white rather than green but, in all other respects, the chemistry matches that for the rock containing kryptonite.”
Wait … it’s white? Phooey. We need the green stuff. As everyone knows, white kryptonite only affects plants. Boring!
Atrios has links and videos of the Tillman hearings on misinformation from the battlefield; Tillman, you may recall, was the soldier who was killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan a few years ago. Jessica Lynch also gives an accurate account of her story. The common theme is that our government lied to us, intentionally distorting the facts to achieve propaganda goals. These are ugly stories of a government with no regard for the truth, except in how it can be twisted to support failed policies.
Why is this administration still in office again?
Did you know that if you left Minneapolis right now, you could be in Morris in time for the last Café Scientifique Morris of the 2006-2007 academic year? Tracey Anderson will be telling us all about aquatic insects, as well as just about anything you might want to ask about arthropods. If you can’t make it to this one, you’ll have to wait until September for your next opportunity.
Even if you personally feel that you could never support abortion, here’s a powerful personal argument for abortion rights — it’s pretty much today’s essential read.
(via Majikthise)
The core value of creation science is dishonesty. I was reminded of this yet again by an account by Todd Feeley of a RATE conference. RATE means “Radioisotopes and the Age of The Earth”, and they are an excuse for creationist frauds to get together and spout off misleading pseudoscientific babble to a gullible audience. There’s always trouble when someone who is not gullible and actually knows something about a subject attends, as in this case. Feeley asks the organizer a question:
Their engagement is on youtube, if you prefer your video streaming.
It’s more like one round of a ping-pong match than the full bare-knuckle fist fight we’d like to see, but it’s not bad. Keep your expectations reasonable, and Dawkins did very well.
