There’s usually no point to complaining when some odious business announces that they are “sponsoring” soft drinks or whatever — it’s meaningless. My university has Coca-Cola machines downstairs, which doesn’t imply sponsorship either way. It means we have a contract with the local distributor to service and supply the machines. So when I heard that Pepsi and the Creation “Museum” were teaming up, I shrugged. So what? They’ve got an overpriced cafe, they need to supply it with food and beverage, they’ve got a deal with a local company. Just as gay people have a right to demand equal service from their local bakery, creationists can’t be prohibited from accessing necessary services.

(Sorry, gay readers, if that sounds like I’m comparing you to creationists. I’m not, you’re much better than that.)

However, this image crosses the line.

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Today we celebrate the collapse of a stupid idea: Paul Nelson’s “ontogenetic depth”, which was supposed to be a concrete metric that would disprove evolution. Nelson was so confident that he had a solid angle on questioning evolution that he presented it on a poster at the Society for Developmental Biology meetings in 2004 — a poster that was so empty of substance that I asked him for his protocols, and he then waffled for years before finally admitting he had nothin’ in 2010.

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You know, I hear a lot of noise about the internet’s “outrage culture” and how everyone needs to be more polite and stop making people, especially white male people, so uncomfortable. The latest was a disappointing rant by Patton Oswalt who wants everyone to stop criticizing comics (dealt with well by Joe Garden, another comedian).

They never seem to factor in the fact that there is also a lot to be outraged about, and that complacency isn’t a solution, it’s a potentiator of problems. It can be racism, it can be the growing divide between classes, it can be the abuse of women…it doesn’t matter how big the problem is, someone will be whining that you aren’t allowed to complain.

At least we can find unity in one thing: The “Food Babe” Blogger Is Full of Shit. This is the latest expose of her bad science, and it’s damning. It’s written by someone who knows what they’re talking about.

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My criticisms of Ayaan Hirsi Ali seem to have annoyed a lot of people. I have been told that I am completely demonizing her and that I’ve been assailling her, and of course any criticism of a right-wing anti-muslim person produces frequent accusations that I’m a “dhimmi”. It’s kind of amazing.

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Greta Christina has followed up on EbonMuse’s challenge to theists, listing the kinds of evidence that would convince them that their beliefs were true.

If I’m such an open-minded atheist — if I really am an atheist because I think the God hypothesis is unsupported by the evidence — what evidence for God would I accept? What would it take to change my mind?

I’m going to take a rather different approach: I’m going to tell theists to not bother.

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Jon Ronson has written a book about public shaming (confession: I have not read it yet, but I have read Ronson’s other books and enjoyed them greatly), So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed. I’m not sure I want to read it now, after this critique by Daniel Engber. Ronson tries to redeem Jonah Lehrer? Really? I think Engber does a very good job of showing that no, Lehrer really is rather shameless, and has been trying to minimize his sins and has gotten Ronson to obligingly assist in his rehabilitation.

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