What a shock—that awesome “Left Behind” video game in which you get to convert the infidel and slaughter the heathen has tanked, big time. They sunk $27 million into it, the stock had a peak of $18.70 $7.44, and now it’s worth 18 cents.
I guess they didn’t pray hard enough.
When we had last seen our basic embryo, it had gone through gastrulation — a process in which cells of a two-layered sheet had moved inward, setting up the three germ layers (endoderm, mesoderm, and ectoderm) of the early embryo. In particular, cells at the organizer, a tissue that induces or organizes migrating cells, had rolled inwards to set up specific axial mesoderm structures: the prechordal plate, which will underlie cranial structures, and the notochord, which resides under the future hindbrain and spinal cord. At this point, the embryo has an outer layer of ectoderm, and lying under part of it, a band of prechordal mesoderm and notochord. In addition, the ectoderm is loaded with a molecule called BMP-4, a member of the TGF-β family of signaling molecules, and under its influence will go on to make skin, not nervous system. So what next?
It’ll make it all rubbery!
I hadn’t realized that there were microwave ovens around capable of handling a half-ton of meat.
OK, I can understand copying Wikipedia and setting up your own special interest wikis all over the place—it’s an admission that your goals are too dorky or too stupid to survive outside your own special little incubator—but if you’re going to set up your own social networking site, why would you copy MySpace, the ugliest, most awkward, most annoying such site on the planet? It’s like declaring that not only do you lack any creativity or imagination, but that you are totally tasteless, too.
Behold: His Holy Space. It’s like an online ghetto for Christians. Take the cluttered, disorganized look of MySpace and drape it with Kincade paintings and animated doves and angels, and you’ve got His Holy Space. Why, I don’t know. Some things are just mysteries.
(via The Friendly Atheist)
…and you were thinking of stopping by the U to see the moon rocks at 7, you could also drop by Old No. 1 on Atlantic Avenue at 6 to join us for Drinking Liberally. Morris is a happenin’ town tonight, isn’t it?
Since Ed Darrell made such a comprehensive comment on the question of whether Darwin was as wicked a racist as the illiterate ideologues of Uncommon Descent would like you to believe, I’m just copying his list here.
Remember the famous quarrel between Capt. FitzRoy and Darwin aboard the Beagle? After leaving Brazil, in their mess discussions (remember: Darwin was along to talk to FitzRoy at meals, to keep FitzRoy from going insane as his predecessor had), Darwin noted the inherent injustice of slavery. Darwin argued it was racist and unjust, and therefore unholy. FitzRoy loudly argued slavery was justified, and racism was justified, by the scriptures. It was a nasty argument, and Darwin was banned to mess with the crew with instructions to get off the boat at the next convenient stop. FitzRoy came to his senses after a few days of dining alone. Two things about this episode: First, it shows Darwin as a committed anti-racist; second, it contrasts Darwin’s views with the common, scripture-inspired view of the day, which was racist.
Darwin’s remarks about people of color were remarkably unracist for his day. We should always note his great friend from college days, the African man who taught him taxidermy. We must make note of Darwin’s befriending the Fuegan, Jeremy Button, whom the expedition was returning to his home. Non-racist descriptions abound in context, but this is a favorite area for anti-Darwinists to quote mine. Also, point to Voyage of the Beagle, which is available on line. In it Darwin compares the intellect of the Brazilian slaves with Europeans, and notes that the slaves are mentally and tactically as capable as the greatest of the Roman generals. Hard evidence of fairness on Darwin’s part.
Darwin’s correspondence, especially from the voyage, indicates his strong support for ending slavery, because slavery was unjust and racist. He is unequivocal on the point. Moreover, many in Darwin’s family agreed, and the Wedgewood family fortune was put behind the movement to end slavery. Money talks louder than creationists in this case, I think. Ironic, Darwin supports the Wilberforce family’s work against slavery, and Samuel Wilberforce betrays the support. It reminds me of Pasteur, who said nasty things about Darwin; but when the chips were down and Pasteur’s position and reputation were on the line, Darwin defended Pasteur. Darwin was a great man in many ways.
Watch for the notorious quote mining of Emma’s remark that Charles was “a bigot.” It’s true, she said it. Emma said Charles was a bigot, but in respect to Darwin’s hatred of spiritualists and seances. Darwin’s brother, Erasmus, was suckered in by spiritualists. Darwin was, indeed, a bigot against such hoaxes. It’s recounted in Desmond and Moore’s biography, but shameless quote miners hope their audience hasn’t read the book and won’t. Down here in Texas, a lot of the quote miners are Baptists. I enjoy asking them if they do not share Darwin’s bigotry against fortune tellers. Smart ones smile, and drop the argument.
One might hope that the “Darwin-was-racist” crap comes around to the old canard that Darwin’s work was the basis of the campaign to kill the natives of Tasmania. That was truly a terrible, racist campaign, and largely successful. Of course, historians note that the war against Tasmanians was begun in 1805, and essentially completed by 1831, when just a handful of Tasmanians remained alive. These dates are significant, of course, because they show the war started four years prior to Darwin’s birth, and it was over when Darwin first encountered Tasmania on his voyage, leaving England in 1831. In fact, Darwin laments the battle. I have often found Darwin critics quoting Darwin’s words exactly, but claiming they were the words of others against Darwin’s stand.
Also, one should be familiar with Darwin’s writing about “civilized” Europeans wiping out “savages.” In the first place, “savage” in that day and in Darwin’s context simply means ‘not living in European-style cities, with tea and the occasional Mozart.’ In the second, and more critical place, Darwin advances the argument noting that (in the case of the Tasmanians, especially), the “savages” are the group that is better fit to the natural environment, and hence superior to the Europeans, evolutionarily. Darwin does not urge these conflicts, but rather, laments them. How ironic that creationist quote miners do not recognize that.
Isn’t it odd how the creationists are so divorced from reality that they can’t even concede that Darwin was an abolitionist, and are so reduced in their arguments against evolution that they’ve had to resort to the desperate “Darwin beats puppies!” attack?
Sometimes we’re a little bit mean to engineers here — there’s the Salem hypothesis, for instance, that notes that creationist apologists who claim to be scientists often turn out to be engineers. In compensation, though, watch this video of a Michigan man with simple, clever strategies for moving massive objects. I was impressed. I guess the ancients didn’t need the assistance of high-tech alien astronauts to build impressive stone structures, all they needed was a Wally Wallington.
Neural Gourmet has put out a call for everyone to blog against theocracy:
I’d like invite you all to Blog Against Theocracy. This is a little blog swarm being put together by everybody’s favorite panties blogger Blue Gal for Easter weekend, April 6th through the 8th. The idea is simple. Just post something related to, and in support of, the separation of church and state each of those three days. Something big, something small, artistic, musical, textual or otherwise. The topic is your choosing. Whether your thing is stem cell research, intelligent design/Creationism, abortion rights, etc., it’s all good. Separation of church and state impacts so many issues and is essential.
This is hardly a challenge for me—I have to consciously restrain myself from turning this blog into one long sustained growl against religion anyway, so all I have to do is take the muzzle off for three days. And as it is, you people will probably tell me that you don’t notice that the 6th is any different than the 5th of April.
Here’s a story of a strange large squid carcass hauled up from the Atlantic deep—researchers expect it was between 16 and 24 feet long when alive and intact, but the specimen was a bit gelatinous and damaged and nibbled upon. It’s been tentatively identified as Asperoteuthis acanthoderma, which has previously only been found in the Pacific.
Although muscular squid zip around to catch food, squid with gelatinous bodies typically float in deep, dark waters and let prey find them, Young says. Pacific A. acanthoderma have glowing, prey-alluring pads at the end of their tentacles. Sucker-laden tips on the pads’ ends grab curious prey and hold on until the squid moves in to swallow the food.
At least “that’s what we think happens,” Young says. “No one has yet seen one of these animals alive.”
Speaking of satire that’s hard to tell from religion, one of the cycles of the Mayan calendar ends in 2012, which is prompting some end-of-the-world hysteria, and even a movie:
Apparently, the whole world is going to change suddenly on 21 December, five years from now.
Armageddon is not what it used to be
I think there is going to be more outbreaks of telepathy
This is my favorite quote:
Whether or not time ends in 2012, we should be assuming it will so that we take care of business. Secondly and most important, don’t cancel your appointments for 2013.
The movie seems to be taking this nonsense seriously—they got a whole mob of astrologers and shamans and New Age kooks twittering away. I’m afraid I don’t believe it.
Besides, everyone knows the real catastrophe strikes 100 years later, in 2112. (I actually own that album, on vinyl, buried in a box somewhere. That’s a more apocalyptic omen than anything in this movie, I suspect.)
