It’s got bats, it’s got clever giant albino centipedes, it’s got sudden death: it’s the perfect lunch hour movie for Pharynguloids.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
It’s got bats, it’s got clever giant albino centipedes, it’s got sudden death: it’s the perfect lunch hour movie for Pharynguloids.
I suppose this is a kind of threat—an archaic and quaint threat, but I’m sure some people take it seriously—but the Catholic church has made a strong statement against embryonic stem cell research.
The Vatican stepped up its fight against embryonic stem cell research on Wednesday, saying that scientists involved in such work would be excommunicated.
Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, head of the Vatican department dealing with family affairs, said in a magazine interview that “destroying human embryos is equivalent to an abortion… it’s the same thing”.
“Excommunication applies to all women, doctors and researchers who eliminate embryos,” the cardinal told Catholic publication Famiglia Cristiana.
To which I can only weakly reply, “no, no, don’t drive scientists away from your religion, Catholics!” Bwahahahaha!
Anyway, do read the article. I thought that, while short, it was very informative about the political debate on stem cells in Italy, and actually summarized the situation fairly accurately and pithily.
Embryonic stem-cell research techniques involve destroying human embryos to extract their stem cells. Stem cells are ‘blank’ cells which have the ability to grow into any tissue of the body. Scientists think they could eventually be used to treat a host of ailments including Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s and diabetes.
The stem cells of very early embryos are preferred because they can become any kind of cell whereas adult stem cells are less flexible. Despite popular support, embryonic stem cell research is opposed by pro-life groups and many conservative lawmakers because the human embryo must be destroyed before its stem cells can be removed.
I’ve gotten so used to the way American journalists so readily fall for the false claim of the anti-choicers that adult stem cells are better than embryonic stem cells in all ways that I was surprised to see that more accurate short description in there.
Josh Rosenau is being proactive and is looking for help defeating the creationists on the Kansas Board of Education. He has a list of contested seats and recommendations of science-friendly candidates—Kansans can vote, the rest of us can send donations to their campaigns.
I mentioned that cringe-inducing hemipenectomy that some spiders do…well, Stan Schwarz had to one-up me and sent a link to an image of an example of full genital splitting (if you click that link, you’re probably safe; it’s a very tiny thumbnail image. Click on that, though, and all bets are off). I have no idea why any human being would want to do that—it looks like a very creepy meat butterfly in the guy’s crotch. If that description alone grosses you out, you definitely don’t want to click on that link. Move along, move along.
I would have taken Bérubé’s Transhumanist test seriously, but when I hit the last option my brain locked up and crashed hard. It took hours to download and restore the backup. Thanks heaps, Michael!
Maybe half of my audience here will be familiar with this problem. You’re a man, and you’re hauling this massive, ummm, package around in your pants everywhere you go. Other men fear you, while the women worship you…yet at the same time, your e-mail is stuffed to bursting with strange people making friendly offers to help you make it even bigger. It’s a dilemma; you think you would be even more godlike if only it were larger, but could there possibly be any downside to it? (There is a bit of folk wisdom that inflating it drains all the blood from the brain, but this is clearly false. Men who are stupid when erect are also just as stupid when limp.)
A couple of recent studies in fish and spiders have shown that penis size is a matter of competing tradeoffs, and that these compromises have evolutionary consequences. Guys, trash that e-mail for penis enlargement services—they can make you less nimble in pursuit of the ladies, or worse, can get you killed.
This is becoming a regular occurrence: someone is trying to bomb my email address again, with 5-10,000 junk emails pouring in each hour. Look, fool, this is a waste of effort: the effect is that the activity monitor on my sidebar shows a lot of red and green bars, and my email software gets really sluggish as it sucks up all the garbage and automatically throws it away. If you’re trying to inconvenience me, this is a rather silly, pointless way of doing it.
If you’re trying to get through to me by email, the one real problem this causes is that I’m not going to be checking it for a while, until the dumb twit with the automatic mailer gets tired of it. If you need to tell me something, the contact information up there has some suggestions.
He was training to scale Mt Everest!
What else can I think, when reading Echidne of the Snakes, I run across this astonishing gem of self-loathing femininity.
If you could change one thing about the world, regardless of guilt and politics, what would you do? Hoo-boy, this is where I get in trouble, and that starts with “T” and that rhymes with “P” and that stands for “pool.” I’d like to jump in a pool right now. Some may tell me to jump in a river for this one: I would remove women’s suffrage, and I might even consider making voting rights tied to property ownership.
Well, actually, she doesn’t get in trouble: read the comments and everyone is quite supportive, and think that disenfranchising the majority of Americans is simply a wonderful idea. It would clear the roles of all those worthless welfare queens who always vote for Democrats, dontcha know. Women aren’t supposed to vote or run for office or do anything other than serve their families.
And they’re very, very happy about it all.
As you might guess, when you’ve got a popular idea this stupid, that makes people content to lobotomize themselves and throw away the basic privileges of a democratic society, there’s one thing behind it all: religion. The site cites the The Tenets of Biblical Patriarchy, a lovely short document that will fit in well in the Republic of Gilead. And of course, coupled with this, we find as usual crazy ideas about the history of the world.
You know, this kind of thing just reinforces my belief that religion is a deep-seated evil in the world. And before all you moderate, liberal sensible Christians start yelling at me for tarring you with a broad brush, tell me: how many of you criticize the insane wings of your belief systems? Have you gotten off your butts to police this broad institution you call sacred, that you believe has a holy duty?
Time’s former “Blog of the Year,” the execrable PowerLine blog with which I share a state, has done it again: said something so stupid and so palpably false that I’m feeling a bit embarrassed about ragging on Oklahoma in my previous post—I should feel ashamed by association at being a Minnesotan. Check out Deltoid: down is up in the world of the Hindrocket.
