I’ve already mentioned I’m off to England tomorrow (shall I say it some more? I am so looking forward to this…), so it’s amazingly useful that Kottke puts up an exercise in England-speak. I shall have to listen to it a few more times to practice comprehending them furriners.
Carl Zimmer presents a timeline of the Homo floresiensis story, with a summary of the latest paper that casts doubt on its status as a legitimate species. Bottom line: it’s still unsettled! As usual, the answer is only going to come from more digging and more data on the populations that lived on Ling Bua.
Sometimes a plan just comes together beautifully. I’m flying off to London tomorrow, and on the day I get back to Morris, I’m supposed to lead a class discussion on the final chapters of this book we’ve been reading, Endless Forms Most Beautiful. I will at that point have a skull full of jet-lagged, exhausted mush, and I just know it’s going to be a painful struggle. Now into my lap falls a wonderful gift.
There was a review in the NY Review of Books that said wonderful things about Carroll’s work, and in particular about the revolutionary nature of evo-devo. This prompted Jason Hodin, an evo-devo researcher himself (whose work I’ve mentioned before) to write a rebuttal and send it off to NYRB…which they chose not to publish. So he sent it to me, with permission to post it.
(If Pharyngula is going to be second choice to the NY Review of Books, I’m not going to complain.)
Anyway, I’m almost as guilty as Carroll of hawking the wares of the evo-devo bandwagon and traveling roadshow, so this is a welcome balancing corrective. The complete text is below the fold.
The NY Times has a long article that is basically a litany of the exemptions and privileges granted to religious organizations. A church-based daycare, for instance, has none of the licensing requirements of a private daycare, and doesn’t have to meet any of the standards of a non-religious establishment, nor does it have to worry about civil rights requirements…and it’s protected from lawsuits.
The practice of granting churches ever more special rights is accelerating, too, since legislators are always willing to hand over more to the pious frauds. Wouldn’t want to be thought disrespectful of religion, you know—so what if they’re greedily sucking up more and more money. That’s what Christianity is all about!
I say we should revoke the tax-exempt status of all religious organizations. They can ask for exemption for their charitable efforts (and only that part of their work; I don’t consider evanglism or missionary work to be charity) just like any secular organization, but simply having “Christ” in their name and mission statement and having a few guys running around with clerical collars is not sufficient justification. It’s time to end the sacred scam.
The usual suspects of Intelligent Design creationism came out with a book a while ago honoring the patriarch of the movement, that sneaky rascal Phillip Johnson. They had to shop around for someone to puke up some happy blurbs about the book; Duke Cunningham demanded too much money, Charles Manson had some standards, and Roy Cohn was both gay and dead, so they had to scrape the bottom of the barrel of sleazy criminals and came up with Chuck Colson. I have no idea how much he was paid, but they didn’t get their money’s worth.
…until cheap-ass animation was replaced by machinima.
This morning, I’m off to the Unitarian Church of Willmar to talk about creationism. I’ll be back later, but ’til then, you kiddies can watch some TV. Flea has David Rakoff, if you want to laugh at the inanity of the right wing, while Crooks and Liars hosts the latest Olbermann, if you’re more in the mood for tragedy, in this case the unraveling of the Constitution.
Uh-oh. Apparently, there was some TV premiere that I missed last night that I’m seeing discussed all over the Intarwubs. I’d let it slide, but Scott McLemee said this:
Looking back, it was probably Tim Burke’s recommendation that made me give the remake a try. He called himself “probably the last geek out there to discover Battlestar Galactica” but actually, no, a few of us were left to follow in his wake.
Yep, that’s me, one of the last geeks to see this thing. I saw one episode a year or so ago…and I wasn’t impressed (it would take a fair amount of dazzle to overcome the hurdle put up by the ghastly original incarnation of the program), and I’ve just never made the effort to follow through on it.
So convince me.
