In which I trade Kos for Foo

I’m a traitor. Remember how I was going to lead the Science Caucus at YearlyKos? I was really looking forward to that and we had some great ideas for a productive session. I hope who ever takes over for me can use some of that.

That’s right — I’m not going to be able to make it to YearlyKos this time around. I’m bad. I’m selfish.

What came up is an invitation to something called a Science Foo camp, sponsored by Google, O’Reilly, and Nature … and it sounds titillating enough that I just can’t turn it down. So I’m abandoning the Kossacks this time around, but I’m sure there’s enough science talent going there that I’ll be easily replaced.

Come on, it sounds like Foo camp will be nerdvana. How could I possibly miss it?

Wild Kingdom, right there in the yard

Here’s something you don’t see everyday: a bear kills a moose in someone’s driveway, and then rips its heart out and eats it. Even better, Skemono has links to the video. It makes me glad I don’t live in Alaska.

People should ask Skatje about the time she met a moose on a camping trip. She did not show up at our tent gnawing on a bloody heart, I guarantee you — but I haven’t seen her move that fast since.

I’m sure we can think of better TV to convince people there is no god

While I might wish that this satire were true, it has a few problems.

SEATTLE–Members of The Discovery Institute, a Seattle based think tank, publicly rescinded their demands that intelligent design be taught in public schools after watching an Ultimate Fighting “best knockouts” compilation video Monday night. The video, which depicted wild men viciously attacking one another before a crowd of bloodthirsty spectators, provided “the smoking gun ” that man is descended from apes.

“It is with great regret that we abandon our quest to have the theory of intelligent design taught in public schools,” said Bruce Chapman, president of the Discovery Institute. “We are now convinced that Charles Darwin was right and we are just a bunch of hairless apes. We came to this conclusion after watching some Ultimate Fighting. Those men are subhuman brutes. The violence was unremitting. What’s worse, we thought it was extremely entertaining, which doesn’t bode well for us, either.”

Verisimilitude is lost because:

  • There’s no way the members of the Discovery Institute would be sufficiently self-aware or cognizant of the evidence that they would back off. If one of those fighters had smacked them hard in the nose, they wouldn’t have noticed.

  • Brutish thugs pounding on one another for an audience is more a human trait than an ape trait, I’m afraid. It sets us apart, which nominally fits with DI biases — the DI might just concede that it tells them the designer is a vicious bastard, but that’s about it.

  • Most of those DI guys are Christians. They’re familiar with the Old Testament. Evidence that the Designer is a vicious bastard would just confirm his identity with the Christian god.

Personally, the few times I’ve seen a couple of minutes of American Idol, I’ve almost been convinced that there is a Satan.

Haven’t you tired of this yet, Pennsylvania?

A reader sent along an
an article from the Lancaster Sunday News, announcing a lecture on 17 May by John Morris, an infamously silly Young Earth Creationist. It’s a little peculiar; it’s written by Helen Colwell Adams, bylined as a staff writer for the paper, but it is completely credulous — she seems to have interviewed Morris and blindly written down everything he claimed, without so much as cocking an eyebrow and wondering if there were anything to these absurd claims. It’s a wonderful example of very bad journalism.

Morris also panders to his audience with talk about how the Pennsylvania coal fields were all laid down in one great flood. I don’t know what it is, but some people from that part of the state have the wackiest ideas about coal—witness Ed Conrad.

[Read more…]

Bathing as intent to commit date-rape

No, date rape isn’t funny, but neither is the drug war. Here’s an odd little story about a fellow busted for possession of a the date rape drug, GHB. It was in a bottle of soap. The police tested the soap with a portable kit, and it tested positive for GHB — as the video shows, a whole class of soaps test positive for GHB with this particular kit.

Amusingly, the company that made the soap turned it into a commercial for their brand. The drug kit isn’t a test for GHB, it’s a test for good soap!

Persecution in the schools

i-9dae2c79d625386c387b3e8fa0e65c62-terwilliger_persecutes_chri.jpg

You can’t trust that tyrant Terwilliger. He’s an awful, awful man, and once he made school principal, he used his vast autocratic powers to make every Christian suffer. He threw them to the lions. He crucified them upside down. He beheaded them and shot them with arrows. He tied them to stakes and set them afire. He lashed them and flayed them. He burned their bibles and slapped them when they dared to pray in the lunchroom. He made them stop wearing offensive t-shirts that said other members of the student body were going to hell.

Oh, wait. He didn’t do any of those things, except the last one. What kind of pathetic despot is he if he doesn’t even try to oppress people? And what kind of crybaby Christians are these picketers? Their only hardship is that they aren’t allowed to pretend to be the Reverend Phelps in the school.

[Read more…]

Ray Comfort won the debate

At least, that’s what he says. He’s a good Christian, so he wouldn’t lie to us, would he?

You know those parts in the debate where they sat there looking poleaxed, not knowing how to reply? They were praying. That’s the ticket; when the Rational Response Squad said something rude about god, they had to stop for a moment to beg god to forgive them. That’s how good a Christian Ray Comfort is. It was an unfair edge to the skeptics, because they could blaspheme without having to pause to have a chat with The Lord.

There are new ads

There might be trouble. I’ve already seen a lump of coal with legs go running across the Pharyngula logo, and a frog (it is a nice frog) go hopping across the page. We have not had good luck with ads that try to escape from their cage in a box on the page — send me a note if you’re experiencing annoying obstacles in reading the site.

As long as I’m mentioning site weirdness—we’re also experiencing some slowdowns and annoyances in posting. If you get a “500 Internal Server Error”, don’t assume your comment failed — it was probably accepted, and then something in the server choked. You aren’t alone, either, I also get that error when I post articles, and we’ve got our Wizard Tim working on fixing the problem.