Those wacky Russians

Maybe “wacky” isn’t the right word — if you read through this collection of Russian jokes translated by Mark Perakh, you might find some are fairly funny, others are completely opaque and strange, and others drop with a leaden thump. One common seems to be finding a kind of morose humor in misery.

Having a strange sense of humor is the only way I can explain this: Pravda, the Weekly World News of Russia, has an article explaining Intelligent Design creationism, which fits right in with their usual fare of UFOs, girls in swimsuits, devils, and muscular bronze stallions with weird human genitalia, but just to add some real spice to the joke, it was written by babblin’ Babu Ranganathan.

I don’t know who the joke is on, Babu, ID, or people gullible enough to buy Pravda, but I know it’s not me, so I’m laughing.

Ask Mitt what he thinks

Alright, Mormonism is weird…but did you know there are some church ‘scholars’ who think Bigfoot is actually Cain?

Here’s a Bigfoot theory I haven’t heard before. Apparently there are some in the Mormon church who hypothesize that Bigfoot may actually be Cain, condemned to walk the earth forever. Matt Bowman provides some scholarly elaboration on this theory on the Mormon Mentality blog.

This is all spun out from an early church leader’s tall tale of encountering a hairy giant.

So you thought I wasn’t going?

Today is the day of the North Carolina Science Blogging Conference, and I was pretty sure I wasn’t going. This is also the weekend before the start of spring semester classes, and I’m going to be going mildly insane for a while.

But then, someone has photographic evidence that I am there. This is truly weird; maybe the insanity is kicking in a little harder than I expected.

If you’re at the conference, don’t expect to see much of me at the sessions. Looking at that picture, I realize I’m going to have to spend the whole meeting alone, in my hotel room, with my shirt off, marveling.

Super-evolution

One of my Christmas presents was something just for fun: Superman: The Dailies 1939-1942(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll). It’s a collection of the newspaper strips by Schuster and Siegel that were published in the earliest years of the superhero, and they’re both funny and disturbing now.

First off, Superman was always a jerk. It’s actually a bit off-putting: while he has this profound moral goal of helping the little guy, he’s also constantly treating Lois Lane like dirt — he uses his superpowers to get the big scoops at the newspaper, and Lois is always getting demoted to the “advice for the lovelorn” column. When he does let her get a story, it’s always in the most condescending way possible.

And then there’s his solution to crime: over and over, he uses his super-hearing and his super-telescopic-X-ray vision to find out who the big bad guy is, and then he kicks him around like a football for a few days worth of strips until he signs a written confession. Case solved! One begins to wonder how much of a bad influence growing up with a super-bully as a hero has had.

But what I really wanted to share was a subtly different origin story for Superman. The early Superman didn’t fly, wasn’t absolutely invulnerable to everything, and didn’t have the full suite of superpowers that would gradually be added to the canon. He was just an extremely tough guy with the “strength of a thousand men!” who was able to jump long distances; in one episode, he has to end a war in Europe (by grabbing the two leaders and kicking them around, of course), and he has to swim all the way…faster than a torpedo, of course.

But what was proposed as the source of his great strength? It wasn’t the rays of the sun, as we’d be told later. It was…evolution.

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That’s right. Krypton had a few million years head start on us, so everyone on the planet had super-strength, super-intelligence, and near-invulnerability, all because evolution had simply progressed farther than it had on earth.

That was the first panel of the newspaper strip. You can guess how I cringed. The story never quite got to the details of how selection worked to generate people with skin so tough that bullets bounced off.

I have to show you one other instance of unintentional humor. At one point, a wealthy bad guy puts a bounty on Superman’s head of one million dollars and recruits criminals to kill him. These new criminals have an interesting style of introducing themselves:

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Where do you get a super-science degree, I wonder? Can I just introduce myself this way in the future? “I am P-Zed, the super-scientist. Give me a million dollars.” I am relieved to see, at least, that super-scientists are not required to wear brightly colored tights.

Carlos, by the way, doesn’t really earn the title of “super-scientist.” His scheme to kill Superman is to lure him into a room (with Lois as bait) and then open up vents that release heat into the room, while he looks through a thick heat-proof glass window and gloats. Superman strolls in, the door closes, the vents open, he starts sweating and standing there dumbfounded, while Carlos chortles over the fact that Superman will be reduced to ash in a few minutes. Superman doesn’t know what to do until he suddenly remembers, oh yeah, he can smash down walls. So he breaks down the wall to Carlos’s room, Carlos and his pals are incinerated, and Superman and Lois escape.

From this we can conclude that the entrance requirements to super-scientist school must be really, really low. I’m thinking now that maybe I don’t qualify. But maybe, just maybe, this is the Discovery Institute’s problem — they keep hiring super-scientists instead of plain old ordinary working scientists, and they keep coming up with hare-brained schemes like “irreducible complexity” and “specified complexity” that are so easily ripped to shreds.

‘Twas the night before Squidmas

A mysterious person going by the name Red Mage sent me the following poem. If your kiddies are still awake and having trouble sleeping, you might want to read it aloud to them. Then they’ll really have trouble sleeping.

‘Twas the night before Squidmas, and all through the house
Not a cultist was stirring, not even a Dagon.
The sacrifices were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes that Cthulu would not pass past there.

The cultists were nestled all snug in their beds,
While visions of things man was not supposed to know writhed in their heads.
And mamma in her ‘kerchief, and I in my cap,
Had just settled our brains for a long eon’s nap.

When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,
I sprang from the bed to see what was the matter.
Away to the window I flew like a flash,
Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash.

The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow
Gave the lustre of mid-day to objects below.
When, what to my wondering eyes should appear,
But a miniature sleigh, and eight tinny Old Gods.

With a little old driver, so lively and quick,
I knew in a moment it must be Cthulu.
More rapid than eagles his coursers they came,
And he burbled, and shouted, and called them by name!

“Now Hastur! now, Ut’ulls-Hr’her! now, Zhar and Lloigor!
On, Eihort! On, Yig! on, on Nug and Yeb!
To the top of the porch! to the top of the wall!
Now dash away! Dash away! Dash away all!”

As dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly,
When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky.
So up to the house-top the coursers they flew,
With the sleigh full of horrors, and Great Cthulu too.

And then, in a twinkling, I heard on the roof
The prancing and pawing of each tentacle.
As I drew in my head, and was turning around,
Down the chimney Great Cthulu came with a bound.

He was undressed all in tentacles, from his head to his foot,
And they were all tarnished with ashes and soot.
A bundle of monsters he had flung on his back,
And he looked like a peddler, just opening his pack.

His eyes-how they twinkled! his dimples how scary!
His cheeks were like squids, his nose like a cavernous pit of evil!
His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow,
And the tendrils of his chin was as dark as the city of R’lyeh.

The stump of a man he held tight in his teeth,
And the screams it encircled his head like a wreath.
He had a broad face and a not-so-little round belly,
That shook when he laughed, like a bowlful of jellied remains!

He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old Squid,
And I whimpered when I saw him, in spite of myself!
But a wink of his eye and a twist of his head,
Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread.

He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,
And killed all those he came for, then turned with a jerk.
And laying his tendril aside of his nose,
And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose!

He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle,
And away they all flew like the down of a thistle.
But I heard him exclaim, ‘ere he drove out of sight,
“Happy Squidmas to all, and to all a good-night!”