I really need the raptor suit. People would stop calling me a mild-mannered professor if I showed up at speaking engagements wearing one of those.
There is no need to speculate about exactly what they would call me…
Carl Zimmer tells us that there are going to be showings of Randy Olson’s Flock of Dodos all across the country next week—do you know where your nearest exhibition will be going on? Here it is for us Minnesota people, along with a little rebuttal of a Discovery Institute hissy fit:
So Scott Adams shouldn’t be too irritated at this amusing depiction of his mental state.
Here’s a peek at a work in progress: it’s got two kinds of cephalopods, Stethacanthus, and crinoids front and center. Delicious.
Take a look at this promising poll at Daily Kos. This informal and unscientific survey of the netroots seems to be showing that a third of the readers are utterly godless, and that if you toss in the agnostics, freethinkers have got a clear majority. I anxiously await the hysterics from the wingnuts, who will be horrified at all the heretics and apostates and damned infidels lurking on the Left, with their forked tails twitching and their horns filed to sharp, pointy tips.
Maybe we need to start agitating for a godless caucus at Yearly Kos—or even a panel on standing up for secularism, and how this is a good result.
Smarmy Sal Cordova, the Eddie Haskell of the Intelligent Design movement, is at it again, with a post in which he pretends to be competent at information theory. It is with great delight that I watch Tyler DiPietro and Mark Chu-Carroll hand his ass back to him. I know full well the creationist clowns are utterly ignorant of biology; it’s interestingly consistent to see that they also know nothing about astronomy and mathematics, and as the Dover trial showed, they’re complete boobs about the law. What exactly are they supposed to be good at again?
Man, this Keith Henson character is a fearsome dude. He was convicted of a crime, fled the state, has been on the lam for 6 years, and was finally caught and thrown in jail, with bail initially set at half a million dollars. What heinous act won him such a nefarious reputation?
He posted a joke on usenet. A joke that made fun of a religion.
Henson was convicted in 2001 under a California law (Sec. 422.6) that criminalizes any threat to interfere with someone else’s “free exercise” of religion. One Usenet post that was introduced at his trial included jokes about sending a “Tom Cruise” missile against a Scientology compound (the actor is a prominent Scientologist). Picketing Scientology buildings and other “odd behavior” were also part of the charges, Deputy District Attorney Robert Schwarz said at the time.
We’re in a sad state when making a joke about a religion is regarded as interference with free exercise of that religion. Especially when the religion itself is a colossal joke.
Although one could also argue that it is no joke that Scientology is populated with such scumbag losers, and has successfully convinced the apparatus of the state to do their dirty work for them.
…that someday Michelle Malkin does a dramatic reading of some of my blog articles. Amanda Marcotte has really pushed their buttons, hasn’t she?
Since I was wondering whether WingNutDaily was a satire site, Kevin Beck graces me with an explanation. No, it’s not—the unhinged are merely going through a phase of very public meltdown.
What’s happening his that huge groups of ignorant or just plain stupid “conservatives” who were already clanking aong at around a 30 on the Global Assessment of Functioning scale before the November elections have decompensated completely in the wake of the voting results, and are now in feces-as-crayons territory.
Yeah, I can believe that.
