I should probably rotate the objects of my ire more often. Way back in the days before Scienceblogs, a couple of my common targets were people I rarely talk about anymore, like George Gilder, or Gregg Easterbrook. Easterbrook is a pretentious sports writer and creationist who hates godless books and movies, who somehow managed to land commissions with Slate and Wired as a science writer (this is comparable to me getting hired to be a sports writer — Armageddon is nigh if that ever happens).

I am very pleased to see, though, that someone else shares my contempt for the guy: Tom Levenson can be provoked to peevishness by an Easterbrook column. Easterbrook’s not just bad at science, he sucks at writing. What does this mean?

A Cosmic Thought: Last week researchers announced they had found, in a South African cave, evidence of painting 100,000 years ago. The previous oldest evidence of painting was from 60,000 years in the past; the famous Lascaux cave paintings in France were made about 17,000 years ago. The latest find, in South Africa, shows both that our ancestors were experimenting with iron oxides to make permanent paint 50 millennia in the past: all that time ago, they painted inside caves, seeming to hope their work would last long enough to be seen by distant descendants.

Each time telescopes improve, the universe is revealed to be larger, older and grander. Each time anthropology makes an advance, the human experiment is shown to be older and more complex than thought. Who can say where the cosmic enterprise may be headed?

Hey! I’m talking about that really cool discovery of a 100,000 year old pigment set in New Orleans this coming weekend! It really is a nifty story that shows people have been doing art for about as long as they’ve been Homo sapiens.

But I haven’t a clue what Easterbrook is talking about. I think the cave art was painted for the people of that time, and they don’t seem to have been doing it for posterity, or Gregg Easterbrook; I’m also baffled by the odd implication of a prediction of greater, older complexity of human culture far back in the past. People 100,000 years ago were fully anatomically human; I think everyone expects that their would have been cultures existing coincident with our evolution.

Let’s not even get started on his math confusion that 100,000 years = 50 millennia.

I do wish someone could explain to me how that hack continues to publish.

Ken Ham claims to have turned 60 years old yesterday. I don’t believe him. For one thing, I wasn’t there, and for another, if we apply the same magnitude of error to his age that he does to the age of the universe, he’s actually less then 15 minutes old. And I’m sorry, Kenny, you don’t get presents for being 15 minutes old. You get a spank, a couple of shots, and an Apgar score, nothing more.

You get mad raving nonsense.

In my opinion, Adam and Eve were born with a small organ attached to their appendix tube. An organ that produced stem cells which kept their perfect human body perpetually healthy and forever the equivalent age of thirty years old. In my opinion, this now missing human organ is the Tree Of Life depicted in the Bible’s book of Genesis; an organ that grew from a now missing 24th human chromosome in the human genome. To ‘take fruit’ from the Tree Of Life is to live forever… immortality.

As most of us know, Adam and Eve contaminated themselves by eating the forbidden fruit (cells) from the Tree Of The Knowledge Of Good And Bad. The forbidden fruit (cells) was the ingestion of cells, chromosomes, genes and DNA found in the flesh of mammals. This destroyed the 24th chromosome in Adam and Eve’s reproductive cells (sperm and egg), and also destroyed the Tree Of Life organ attached to their appendix tube. With the 24th chromosome gone from Adam’s sperm cells, and the 24th chromosome gone from Eve’s egg cells, hereditary immortality could not be passed on to their offspring, and hence, to all human beings thereafter. To ‘take fruit’ from the Tree Of The Knowledge Of Good And Bad is to positively die… mortality.

Most of us also know that God took a rib from Adam in order to build Eve. The rib was taken before Eve came into existence. The rib was taken before any kind of contamination to the human genome. The rib was human flesh, blood and bone; human cells, chromosomes, genes and DNA. The rib was made of human cells that have the 24th human chromosome that produces the Tree Of Life organ attached to the appendix tube. Adam’s rib cells are immortal human cells with 48 chromosomes (24 pairs), rather than our present 46 chromosomes (23 pairs).

My theories will also show you that Jesus was born from an uncontaminated rib cell. Jesus was born with a 24th pair of human chromosomes in his body cells, which produced the Tree Of Life organ attached to his appendix tube. Adam and Eve were born immortal (to begin with). Jesus was born immortal. My theories will show you that all human beings are destined to become immortal, after the ‘first’ death.

• An opinion is not a sound foundation for a scientific hypothesis—or even a pseudoscientific one. Show me evidence.

• There is no evidence of a magical small organ ever being attached to the end of the appendix.

• We already produce small numbers of stem cells throughout life. They don’t confer immortality, nor is there any reason to expect they would.

• A large collection of pluri- or toti-potent stem cells might have some advantages in enhancing regeneration. They’d have the disadvantage of also being a source of cancers.

• Chromosomes don’t map to organs. Organs don’t grow from chromosomes.

• Other apes do have 24 pairs of chromosomes. They aren’t immortal.

• Eating fruit, or even magic fruit made of mammalian flesh, won’t selectively destroy a chromosome. And if it did, it wouldn’t have the mild consequence of knocking out an organ.

• Where did Jesus’ mother get that uncontaminated rib cell?

• 48 chromosome Jesus just confirms my hypothesis that Jesus was a chimpanzee. You can’t prove I’m wrong!

He goes on for many pages of absurd speculation. Did you know that when Doubting Thomas was poking around in Jesus’ wound, he was actually inspecting his appendicular organ?

(via Adam Rutherford)

Eugene Delgaudio, a fellow calling himself the “Public Advocate of the United States” and from an organization called “Traditional Values”, writes to me a lot. To be fair, I think some kook somewhere signed me up for his newsletter — I get a lot of peculiar email that I only get because random organizations have an open sign-up process that allows them to be used for harassment — but poor Eugene is such a persecuted sad-sack that I thought I’d point and laugh at him a bit. He’s always complaining.

Dear PZ,

In the past, the radical homosexuals have attempted to kill me, even threatening and stalking my family. [Evidence?] However, all that did was make me more determined than ever to fight them. [Oh, come on, Eugene. You’ve been salivating over gay men for ages]

And with Public Advocate supporters’ help, I did.

Together, pro-family Americans have really rocked the Homosexual Lobby. We’ve held off so much of their agenda for so many years. [Like equality? Way to go!]

But now they want to take supporters like you out of the fight.

I’ve received letters from three different government agencies ordering me to stop sending mail to members like you. [Well, you know, I sympathize with the agencies here, since I’m a perfect example of a recipient of email abuse. I didn’t sign up for his deluge of paranoia, but he has such a sloppy opt-in sign-up that anyone can sign anyone else up for his crap.]

One letter from a Post Office bureaucrat actually declared my correspondence with Public Advocate members to be obscene! [This is one of his milder efforts. He actually is obsessed with homosexual practices, and tends to fantasize graphically about them.]

You see, in their sick world radical homosexuals can desecrate churches [Like that would bother me], spread their filth across the internet [I could send him lots more heterosexual porn, if he’d like], and run naked through the very halls of Congress [Has anyone seen that? I haven’t.].

But when I try to tell people about it, my letters are labeled obscene by those who serve the homosexuals’ purposes. [Like the post office? Your mailman might be gay, Eugene!]

And if they can find a judge who agrees with them, the legal consequences could be severe. Even if we win, the legal fees could destroy your Public Advocate. [Tell someone who cares.]

That’s why I’m desperate for you to send a contribution of $50 or even $100 today. I need your help right away, so I ask you to send whatever you can afford today.

Wait, what? This feeble complaint is a fundraising gimmick? I have seen the light! Christians have been poisoning the body politic for centuries, they send me threats, they frolic in the halls of Congress (clothes mostly on, but maybe you should read about the degenerates in The Family), I find their prudery obscene, and look! Wackos are sending me harassing email! Send me money. Paypal accepted. Cash in small bills also accepted. OK, very large bills are also fine, if you insist on forcing them on me.