Ken Cope sent me this link to Pirate Baby’s Cabana Battle Street Fight 2006.
He did not tell me to drop acid before watching it, and he could have at least warned me about the epileptic seizures I’d be having near the end (the ending itself, though, is beautiful).
And what’s with all the hostility towards cephalopods?
The new weekly question is:
“If you could shake the public and make them understand one scientific idea, what would it be?”
I’m going to get all fundamentalist on this one. The one thing I wish everyone understood is…
It’s easy: less scientific rigor, and get rid of pesky controls.
Four of my favorite things are development, evolution, and breasts, and now I have an article that ties them all together in one pretty package. It’s a speculative story at this point, but the weight of the evidence marshaled in support of the premise is impressive: the mammalian breast first evolved as an immunoprotective gland that produced bacteriocidal secretions to protect the skin and secondarily eggs and infants, and that lactation is a highly derived kind of inflammation response. That mammary glands may have had their origin as inflamed glands suppurating mucus may not be the most romantic image to arise in a scientific study, but really—they got better and better over the years.
Human milk is potent stuff. The Greek for milk was gala, and as you might be able to see if I hadn’t had to reduce this Tintoretto so much, the galaxies were created from the spray of milk from Hera’s breasts. Modern astronomers might quibble with that explanation of the origins of the extrasolar universe, but what do I know…I’m a biologist. I’ll stick to biology now, and with that, here’s a short summary of the biology behind mother’s milk.
Looks like I’m going to be sitting on a panel with Wesley Clark—he’s on the climate change bandwagon.
The hype machine for that drecky novel and movie, The DaVinci Code, is rather appalling: I simply don’t see what the appeal is in a poorly written and unbelievable conspiracy theory about Jesus, and the protestations from Catholics are accomplishing nothing other than to fuel further interest in a very silly story. All I can imagine is that it’s feeding the same hunger for religious fables that drove the sales of those ghastly Left Behind books. Anyway, the only good thing I’ve seen emerge from the schlockfest yet is Ian McKellen and his comments on the Today show, written up in US magazine.
“I’ve often thought the Bible should have a disclaimer at the front saying ‘This is fiction.'” McKellen responded. “I mean walking on water? I mean, it takes an act of faith.”
That’s cutting to the heart of the issue. The Catholic church has no grounds for complaining about a badly written, ridiculously improbable, mass-market driven work of popular fiction…unless it’s because they see it as in competition with their similarly atrocious foundation document.
The comments over there are rather interesting, too. US magazine is a bit closer to the popular zeitgeist than something like Pharyngula, so the comments are a better peep into what the general public is thinking than comment threads here, and while there are a few people there who express dismay and act as if they’ve never imagined anyone could say something so shocking, they’re very much in the minority. Most of them are cheering Ian on!
I may have to change my mind about seeing this movie, as dreadful as the reviews are. Michael Medved thinks poor box office for this movie will demonstrate the depth of Christian sympathy in the US.
One of the things you see with this movie, Tucker, as I have been writing about this for 20 years literally, that Hollywood keeps attacking religion again and again and again. Films that have anti-religious themes and particularly anti-Catholic themes and they never make a dime. They tend to do very, very badly at the box office.
Now this film has a guaranteed box office return because of the tremendous success of the novel. But the idea that, by refusing to soften some of the anti-Christian, some of the–what people would consider to be heretical themes in the movie, that they could have, by softening it, I think ensured a much greater financial indication.
Rather, people who have no interest in the religious issues judge the book and movie on its merits, and aren’t inclined to waste time on it.
We have a few carnivals up today:
Note also that the Tangled Bank will be appearing at Science and Politics next Wednesday. It’s time to start sending in links to Coturnix, me, or host@tangledbank.net.
