Now I understand why the BBC pulled it

The BBC recently broadcast a program for the charity Comic Relief, but yanked one sketch deemed too offensive from their online iPlayer. They’d apparently received thousands of complaints about it, and it was the only sketch on the program found so horribly offensive.

Apparently, regulators are now investigating the BBC, and the ever-charming Daily Mail is blustering that “BBC faces Ofcom probe into Rowan Atkinson’s foul-mouthed Comic Relief archbishop impression”. Rowan Atkinson? Foul-mouthed comic? Did they confuse him with Gilbert Gottfried or something?

So I finally got a look at the ghastly wicked sketch, and now I see why it got people upset. Here it is:

Oh, yeah, that’s some primo religion bashing. “Foul-mouthed” is the wrong word, though: Rowan Atkinson’s sin was being deadly accurate, perfectly portraying the cheerfully vapid fluttery chumminess of a thoroughly liberal Christian. That’s what got people angry: he didn’t just start roaring at religious leaders, he showed the viewers what they looked like through our eyes…and it was also so damned close to how the believers see them, too, that it wasn’t easily dismissed and was a palpable smack in the face.

Excellent work, Rowan Atkinson!

François Jacob has died

Jacob and Jacques Monod, who won the Nobel Prize in 1965 for their work on the lac operon, were the fellows who really put gene regulation on the map, working out the mechanisms behind switching genes off and on in response to environmental cues. I always talk about their work on day one of my developmental biology courses; everything else in molecular genetics and development are built on the foundation they laid down.

And now Le prix Nobel et résistant François Jacob est mort (Monod died in 1976).

By the way, in addition to being a great scientist, Jacob was also a great atheist. This is a loss to all of us.

Carl Zimmer has written a lovely tribute to Jacob’s work.

Argumentum ad Batman

I experienced a brief moment of doubt about my atheism this morning as I was browsing the webcomics. Thanks, Zach Weinersmith!*

argumentumadbatman

I’ve seen this argument before — there are theodicies that claim that evil allows for “adversarial growth”, that the human moral senses are exercised and sharpened by confrontation with evil. But I don’t know…throwing in Batman made it strangely persuasive.

Fortunately, I clicked on the red button at SMBC and was immediately whipsawed back into line.

*By the way, I got to meet Zach this past weekend. He gave a provocative and interesting and intelligent talk — maybe more skeptic/atheist groups ought to consider branching out and inviting him and other people outside the sphere of the usual movement atheists to their meetings.

Another crummy leak

We’re really going to have to fire our tech guy — there has been another leak of sensitive information from the FtB backchannel.

Don’t read it. We’re already beginning the process of sterilizing Vancouver to limit the flow of information, and if any of you try to scurry off with our secrets, well, you won’t ever be able to use a toilet again without fear of a tentacle rising up and dragging you into the sewers.

Jewish women master retroactive invisibility!

It’s too bad it came too late to help them. Here’s a famous photo of Jewish civilians being herded out of the Warsaw ghetto by Nazis. Awful, horrifying stuff, right?

original

Yet when a conservative Haredi newspaper in Israel published this photo, they edited it in interesting ways.

edited

Isn’t it ironic that the Jewish women who were victims get their faces erased, but the Nazi men with guns are left untouched? Of all people, you’d think Jews would be most sensitive to the importance of preserving the horrors of recent history…but I guess it only matters if it happened to men.