Best. Movie. EVAR.

The plot careered around like a drunken sailor, and made very little sense. The macguffin was ridiculous. Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley were bland mannequins who didn’t do much. Many of the situations were absurd—the sword fight on the water wheel, the cannibals and the pirates dashing back and forth around the island, heck, just about every time someone pulled a sword, it was for a silly reason. The primary villain, Lord Cutler Beckett, was a conniving bureaucrat who didn’t leave his office, and who was working to get a monopoly for the East India Company—did they get their plot driver from George Lucas? Also, it just sort of stops at the end, and we’re going to have to wait until next summer to find out what happens.

Still…Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest was terrific fun. It’s got pirates, a squid-man, a giant squid, a crew of undead human-sea creature hybrids, random sword fights, a giant squid crushing ships, the cutest little animated barnacles, a giant squid eating people, very poor dental hygiene, and it just never stops. I’d been warned that it was over-long, but seriously, I got to the end and thought, “It’s done? Already?”

I will warn the kiddies it does have scenes of graphic violence. People take axes and swords to the giant cephalopod’s arms, they shoot it, they fire cannons into it, and they blow things up and set fire to his arms. But don’t worry, <SPOILER ALERT!!!> the Kraken bounces right back and he’s OK, and he even gets to eat a major character. I was relieved. I still have hopes that in the sequel, the Kraken will complete its quest, achieve freedom from its servitude, eat all the wicked people, and retire to some nice abyssal current where it will lurk quietly and eat many surprised deep-diving whales.

The other hero of the movie, Davy Jones, was splendid, a magnificently handsome leading man. There were hints that he has a sad romantic history. The character of Elizabeth is showing signs of dissatisfaction with that piece of damp cardboard, Will Turner. I think you can all see where this is going: I predict that in the final movie, Elizabeth will finally meet Davy, she’ll fall in love at first sight, she’ll win his heart, and they’ll sail off into the sunset, where they’ll spawn many squidlets together. Yeah, it’s predictable, but this is the kind of movie that just has to have a happy ending.

Oh, and just to tie up all the loose ends, I think Will and Jack have to end up in a happy pirate life together, too.

Arrr, me hearties, it’s that time at last

Tonight is the Morris premiere of that fabulous documentary on exotic marine invertebrates and nautical history, Pirates of the Caribbean. I will be there. I will be leaving early so I can get a good seat, front and center. I shall be singing sea shanties as I walk downtown to the theater. I will be rooting for the handsome fellow with the tentacular beard. I’m certain I will have a good time.

I’ll probably also gripe heartily about the movie afterwards. We curmudgeons just aren’t truly happy unless we’ve got things to grumble about.

Mysterious Anonymous Wise Man supports ID!

Oh, great. Nelson is at it again. You know the DI is sweating bullets when Paul Nelson emerges to state his lugubrious ‘truths’, make his unfulfilled promises, and start citing mysterious, unnamed ‘senior scientists’ with profound insights into Intelligent Design’s promising destiny. He’s kind of the Thomas Friedman of the Discovery Institute, and just as trustworthy.

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Obscenity!

Hang on, people, don’t look below the fold if you are easily offended. I’m including a horrific photo that was shown on a magazine cover, one that elicited the following reactions from readers:

“I was SHOCKED”

“I was offended and it made my husband very uncomfortable when I left the magazine on the coffee table”

“Gross, I am sick”

“I had to rip off the cover since I didn’t want it laying around the house”

Are you ready for this?

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Weird items I’ve forgotten to put on my CV

This Neonbubble site is strange and baffling, and now they’ve gone and blown my cover with this biography of a former student.

Her high intelligence and keen insight caught the eye of her Biology professor, PZ Myers, who informed the U.S. Military as the terms of his continued freedom dictated. Gia was abducted and experimented upon for a number of years in an attempt to delve into the secrets within her mind.

I suppose I could be turning over my promising students to top secret government agencies, but I don’t remember this Gia Milinovich. They must be erasing my memories! The bastards!

I must be some kind of purist

Lots of sources are telling me about Pat Robertson’s sudden acceptance of the fact of global warming. I’m sorry, but it’s no cause for rejoicing. He accepts it for the wrong reasons.

This week the heat index, the perceived temperature based on both air temperatures and humidity, reached 115 Fahrenheit in some regions of the U.S. East Coast. The 76-year-old Robertson told viewers that was “the most convincing evidence I’ve seen on global warming in a long time.”

If there’s one broad, overall message I wish everyone would get from this blog and from my teaching, it’s that science isn’t about getting the right answers—it’s about how you arrive at your answers, by verifiable, testable, repeatable methods and logic and good evidence. Deciding that global warming occurs because you’re having a hot, sticky, uncomfortable summer: bad and unscientific. Deciding that global warming occurs because the climate research community has evaluated multiple lines of evidence and documented an anomalous pattern: smart.

I’m sorry, Jake, but while getting the religious right on the side of conservation is a good thing, doing so on the say-so of an incompetent authority like Pat Robertson who uses an anecdote about the weather to justify it is a bad thing. What are we going to do if Colorado has a blizzard in January, and James Dobson uses that to argue that an Ice Age is on the way? Or if Jerry Falwell has a bout of incontinence, so he prophesies great floods?