Merry Mollydays!

It’s that time again … time to nominate your favorite commenters for the Order of the Molly. Leave a comment saying whose name you like to see popping up in the comments threads, a few words about why you think they’re molly-worthy would be nice, too, and on Sunday I’ll tally them up and bestow the honorable OM on someone. You can find links to previous nomination threads on the commenters page, if you want to see what deserving people were passed over last time.

And the winner is…

It was a tough decision in the contest to design a fabulous new Darwin Fish. I admit that I was partial to the designs that included cephalopods, but the other judges (who I was tempted to call Paula and Randy) kept coming back to those chordate-derived designs. We did finally achieve consensus, however, on an excellent fishy logo that I would be proud to slap on my car. And the winner is…

You’ll just have to go look to find out.

Fraggin’ … frickin’ … frackin’ … oh, that f-word again

I’ve tried a different tack now — I’ve left several comments on Matt Nisbet’s very own blog, in the fading hope that he’ll actually pay attention to what I’m saying, rather than what he imagines I’m saying, or what other people tell him that they imagine I’m saying. Comments there are held up for moderation, so in case you really want fast feedback, I’ve tossed my comments below the fold here where you can savage them instantly … or you can head on over to Framing Science and state your piece there.

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What the F…?

Let’s support the troops! I always thought those stupid yellow ribbon magnets that people stuck on their cars were insulting in their triviality, but I did not know how low we could sink in the insipidity of token nods to those who are making sacrifices in the services. Mike Dunford received some helpful email from the military:

Effective immediately, the word “Families” will be capitalized in all Army correspondence. Please ensure wide dissemination of this change. Thanks for your continued efforts to do all you can to provide steadfast support to our Army Families.

There’s an “F” word on the tip of my tongue that would be appropriate here…

The death of Darwin

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Today is the anniversary of Darwin’s death in 1882, and I am prompted to post this in response to a peculiar question. “Just read Carl Zimmers Evolution, a triumph of an idea. In it he states that Darwin, on his death bed cried out to god? How could this be if he had denounced religion and god?”

It’s quite true that Zimmer does briefly mention the death of Darwin:

…Emma caught him in her arms when he collapsed at Down House. For the next six weeks she cared for him as he cried out to God and coughed up blood and slipped into unconsciousness. On April 19, 1882, he was dead.

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The latest contemptible ghoul

It’s Rush Limbaugh. What took him so long?

It’s all secularism’s fault, and what he wants is more god, more prayer, and more religion at the university. He doesn’t comment on the fact that the killer wanted to “die like Jesus Christ”.

(Who knew Jesus murdered 32 innocents on the way to the cross, and nailed himself up there?)

Maybe we are guilty of neglecting our obligations

Could D’Souza be right? Does our lack of religious beliefs really impair our ability to offer help to people?

I suppose that if we actually cared, we could have
sent teams to Virginia to do useful things like
stroke sad people’s thetans and
point to chairs and trees for them (a technique that will also sober up drunks in minutes, which sounds very handy). Even if the VT students aren’t in shock or drunk, I’m sure they’ll appreciate the important study tips. Did you know that the most important thing you can do is look up words in a dictionary — the bigger the dictionary the better — and that students get stupider because they don’t know words like “chimney” and “a” and “the”?

Man, I wish I weren’t an atheist so that I could also make up stuff to help people.

Maybe I also need to wish for profound brain damage so that I wouldn’t think those “assists” were such a reeking pile of putrid inanity.