Hammer has risen from the grave

Rumor has it that Hammer Films might be coming back—I don’t know if this is good news or not. I love the old movies and have a stack of their DVDs right next to me, but all the money in horror movies seems to be in ghastly 1½ hour extended torture scenes, like the hideous Hostel and unwatchable Saw series. Let’s hope they don’t taint the brand by putting some hack like Rob Zombie to churn out seedy, misogynistic squish-and-splatter flicks.

Flex your muscles a little, infidels

I’m seeing some mixed signals on the series “A Brief History of Disbelief” — it’s appearing in very few station’s schedules right now, and it’s tempting to suspect that it’s being buried by the media, especially since right wing groups detest it:

That "A Brief History of Disbelief" might be controversial is unsurprising. Right-wing groups, such as the Concerned Women of America, are already ramping up opposition to Miller’s program, which originally aired on the BBC in 2005. Peter Sprigg of the Family Research Council deemed the work of the actor-director-author Miller to be "an evangelistic piece for atheism."

On the other hand, I’ve heard from the author of the article above that stations are also reporting that it’s a problem with the source — it’s being handled by an independent distributor, and the stations haven’t had an opportunity to review it — so the problems may be less nefarious than procedural. Either way, this is probably a good time to contact your local public broadcasting station and tell them you’d like to see them pick up this program, and pretty please, don’t show it at 3am. Let’s let the godless demographic make itself known, politely but firmly.

It’s not like we’re lobbying Fox News. Don’t you all suspect that public broadcasting’s viewership is skewed our way? All it takes is a phone call, so let’s make our existence known in this simple and unthreatening matter.

Only marine biologists get to be real rock stars

I’m passing along a request for all you glamorous, photogenic marine biologists:

Are you a marine biologist? Do you want to be in a rock video?
Hello all, this is Toren Atkinson, science lover and lead singer for the Lovecraftian rock band, The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets. You may, at http://www.thickets.net/toren/darkestofthehillsidethickets.mp3 or http://www.myspace.com/darkestofthehillsidethickets listen to/download the mp3 for “A Marine Biologist,” a fun little number about bathyscaphes, benthic trawlers, giant squid, etc.

I would like to create a music video for this track that essentially features marine biologists from across the globe. The idea would simply be a series of video clips of marine biologists doing what they (you?) do, with text at the bottom of the screen detailing who it is we’re looking at, their location and specialty. So, for example, if we got a clip of Dr O’Shea, it would something to the effect of:

DR. STEVE O’SHEA
AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND (and/or specific institution)
SPECIALTY: THE GIANT SQUID

The footage doesn’t need to be created from scratch just for the video – I’m perfectly happy with any video of any quality where it’s clear who the marine biologist is, and that he/she/you are in their element doing marine biology stuff – whether that be in the lab, on site recording courtship sounds…whatever.

So the entire video would be like a profile of worldwide marine biologists set to our song. Hopefully the video would appear on various music/TV shows–MTV, Muchmusic, and their equivalents, but at the very least it would go out throughout the internet, youtube, on our site, and into your hands as well to do with as you wish.

To make this happen – I need your cooperation!

If you are a marine biologist and want to help out would you:

a) contact me at [email protected] or via contact info below and we can work out how to get video footage from you.
b) provide a statement that you give permission for The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets to use the footage and your likeness strictly for the purpose of this music video
c) see also (d) below!

If you are not a marine biologist, can you please

d) spread this around to any marine biologists you know, or anyone you think might know a marine biologist!

THANKS SO MUCH – if we can get this done I think it would be really fun!

Toren Atkinson
302-1015 West 13th Ave
Vancouver BC Canada
V6H 1N1
604-737-4283

Psssht. Nobody ever wants us mild-mannered lab denizens specializing in developmental biology for their videos.

If you meet the requirements, though, you’re obligated to get out there and represent for all of us more nerdy scientists!

Bye-bye, Lileks

As a small tremor in a bit of a staff shakeup at the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, James Lileks got the axe — he’s been demoted from a guy with a regular column to a beat reporter. It’s about time.

He’s not a bad writer, in the sense that he does have his own recognizable voice, but yeesh, he’s such a banal writer, the epitome of Minnesota mediocrity. Some of his online writings are cranky-grandpa interesting, the rantings of a deranged 9/11 wingnut, but his newspaper column … dull, dull, dull. You only need to read one column in your life about a guy who goes shopping at Target and watches TV before he goes to bed, anything more is superfluous.

If you’re unfamiliar with our local columnist, here’s an analogy to help you understand: Lileks is the Garfield of the Star-Tribune. He’s technically competent, entirely predictable, and so boring he’s not even mildly amusing any more. They also don’t even need him to provide right-wing balance to the paper now, since they hired Katherine Kersten (she’s the Mallard Fillmore of the paper: screechy, inane, and incompetent). I haven’t read a Lileks column for years, not because I resent him or am somehow boycotting him or am even angered by him — I’ve tuned him out for the same reason I don’t read the recipes for yet-another casserole. He puts me to sleep.

(via Norwegianity)

Hard to disbelieve

Tomorrow is 5 May, and I mentioned in my
review of A Brief History of Disbelief that this excellent documentary on atheism/agnosticism was supposed to be aired on PBS stations all across the country around this time. It’s been hard to track down, though; I’ve looked in my local TV listings, and there’s no mention. Readers have contacted their stations directly, and some have reported back that they will be seeing it, while others have found that their stations are not carrying it. It’s very confusing.

Well, a reader found a grid listing all of the airdates and stations that will be showing A Brief History of Disbelief. If you’re in San Diego or Philadelphia, it’s well covered; otherwise, it’s scattered very sparsely on the map. It is not being shown in Minnesota.

WTF?

The incompetence is stunning. Richard Dawkins makes the Time 100 list, and who do they commission to write up his profile?

Michael Fucking Behe.

That’s not just stupid, it’s a slap in the face. It would have been no problem to find a smart biologist, even one who might be critical of Dawkins’ message, to write something that expressed some measure of respect from the editorial staff. But to dig up a pseudoscientific fraud whose sole claim to fame is that he has led the charge to corrupt American science education for over a decade is shameful.

I’m sure there’s an editor at Time sniggering over his cleverness.

True confessions

Oh, I hate these difficult questions.

If you’re a professor and you want to change the world, what do you do? In 1993–quit and become an activist. In 2007—start a blog.

Or so it seems. PZ Myers blogging at Pharyngula is probably doing more for evolution than PZ Myers publishing papers in scientific journals. Is that true PZ?

No.

Hmmm, I guess it wasn’t so difficult after all!

[Read more…]

Information must be free

My little trip distracted me with the perfect timing to miss the amazing fair-use flare-up — I’m back just in time to catch the happy resolution. I guess I’ll say something anyway, but I’ll be brief.

The general question is whether blogs should be restrained from using figures and data published in scientific journals. My position is that we should use them — scientific information should be freely and widely disseminated, anything else is antithetical to the advancement of science. The only constraints I think are fair is that all material taken from a journal should be acknowledged and formally cited, and that dumping whole articles to the web should not be done. It wouldn’t be appropriate for our audiences anyway; we should be explaining and synthesizing, not blindly replicating.

I’m glad it has blown over for now, at least. Let’s hope journals continue to be sensible about letting blogs excerpt portions of published work—they have a specialized audience, we have a more general audience, and we hope that blogging about science will lead to more scientists, which will increase the market for the science journals. Everyone will be happy!

Music for evilutionists

We have some musical talent among our readers. I was sent lyrics and a link to …

BRAINY PRIMATE BLUES words and music by Bruce Woollatt

Sometimes I wonder why
we ever left Olduvai.
It’s a mystery to me
why we didn’t stay in the trees.
Well a million years ago we should have thought the whole thing through
’cause a million years have gone and we’ve got those Brainy Primate Blues.

Listen to Brainy Primate Blues here.

Buy Tostitos Flour Tortilla Chips!

Commercials baffle me, but this one for Tostitos more than others. It’s a little trite, using the scenario of the little kid who asks “why?” to every explanation as a transparent excuse to drive exposition about why you should try their product, but it has an odd conclusion.

We’re all made from different DNA.
Why?
So we can adapt and survive.
OK!

It’s a bit clumsy, but there it is: biology used to sell snack food.

Why?

I know we evilutionists are a minority—why would there be a commercial to target such a narrow slice of the market? Could it be a test, to see if the ad generates a little buzz (I’m doing my part here, see!), or are they looking to see if they can tap into a market segment that is otherwise ignored? Maybe we need to have Mexican for dinner tonight.