Religion is only one source of irrationality

So now aliens are bigger than Jesus.

According to a recent survey carried out by the makers of the new alien-shoot ’em up video game ‘XCOM: Enemy Unknown’, an estimated 33.1 million inhabitants in the UK believe that life exists on other planets, while only 27.5 million – less than half the country – believe there is a God.

52 percent of the population believe evidence of UFOs has or would be covered up, because the fact of their existence would threaten the stability of the government.

10 percent of the country claim to have seen a UFO, with almost a quarter more men claiming to have done so than women.

Although the source of the survey might have skewed the results a bit, I can believe it. I’ve met a few UFOnuts, and they’re pretty dotty…and worse.

By the way, I may have a brief appearance on the UK Conspiracy Road Trip series soon — Jerry Coyne was on the episode with creationists last week. I’m not the draw in the show, though. It’s the deranged theories. One guy tried to tell me that Jews were reptiles from another planet.

OK, OK…so that cracker really was Jesus

According to Michael Nugent, today is the “Day of Agreement” and we’re supposed to be really really nice and go along with all the nonsense people tell us we’re suppose to respect. Just for today — we can go back to being normal tomorrow.

So I’ll go along with that and agree with the Catholics that the cracker I abused really was of one substance with The Lord Jesus Christ, Ruler of the Cosmos, Grand Judge of All Humanity, Vengeful Enemy of Fig Trees.

I’ll also admit that I really enjoyed stabbing Him, and would gleefully do it again if I had a magic cracker handy.

Nerd life forever

Oh, no, there are more reasons I can never run for public office in the United States.

Colleen Lachowicz is a Democrat running for the state senate in Maine. The Republicans are running attack ads against her, arguing that she isn’t fit for office because she plays an orc rogue in World of Warcraft. It’s not clear whether she’d be OK if she’d been playing an elf paladin.

Alas, I think I’m worse. I play an undead warlock. Also, I’m an atheist. Doooomed.

Oh, no! I just noticed in that picture…I’m also wearing a dress! Crap, I’m just going to have to resign myself to spending the rest of my life sucking at the public teat, never contributing anything, aren’t I? I’d move into my mother’s basement, but she doesn’t have one.

Hasn’t changed a bit in half a millennium

Archaeologists are digging up a Tuscan convent and have found some skeletons that might include the remains of Lisa Gherardini del Giocondo, also known as Mona Lisa. She’s still lovely after all this time.

One investigator has been going through the bones, trying to identify the dead woman, so they can apply forensic reconstruction to her skull.

Wait…why?

I mean, we already know what she looked like. I can understand general historical research on Renaissance remains, but pawing through the graveyard to find one famous person simply to reconstruct a face we’re already familiar with seems peculiarly ghoulish — nothing but a sensationalistic game. What question does this answer, what do we learn from this pointless exercise?

Fortunately, I’m not the only one who wonders about that.

But not all experts are convinced by the claims of Dr Vinceti and his team. Dr Kristina Killgrove, an anthropologist at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the US, said on her blog: "Although the excavation is being carried out in a professional manner, Vinceti’s quest to dig up the ‘real’ Mona Lisa is not grounded in scientific research methodology." She added: "The news media’s breathless coverage of it threatens to signal to the public that archaeologists are frivolous with their time, energy, and research money."

Maybe, once they identify the skull, they can send it off to the Louvre and mount it on the wall next to the painting. <sarcasm>That’ll be informative.</sarcasm>

A curious bit of frivolity

There’s this game called Minecraft (oh, have you heard of it?) which is a kind of world-builder game — you gather resources like wood and ore and meat, and you craft stuff out of it. I’ve learned something odd about it.

You gather wool from sheep. You can make colored wool with dyes.

Nice revelation: you can dye whole sheep and harvest colored wool from them. That was unexpected: it grows back in the color you dyed it. That’s not physiological!

And then…if you dye a sheep and then breed it to produce more sheep, the color breeds true. Dye two sheep lime green, and you can generate a whole flock of lime green sheep.

I don’t know whether to be appalled or delighted. It opens the door to exploring rules of Lamarckian inheritance, except there doesn’t seem to be any room for any kind of selection or predation or variation in anything that affects survival or reproduction. Someone tell the game makers to get a biologist as a consultant, there are possibilities here!

(I hear I can breed wolves, too, but I haven’t tried it. Do they vary in any interesting ways? Can I select for sheep-eating wolves?)

Come to think of it, I did have a gannet appear in my toast yesterday

A wildlife photographer gets a lucky break and captures an aerial photo of a flock of flamingos that’ has spontaneously assembled into a rough wading-bird shape. Cool enough, a nice example of pareidolia in wildlife form, and then the photographer has to go and ruin it:

“The reaction to this photo has been remarkable. Some people have actually said that the image is divine intervention and proof that there is a God.”

That’s a pretty remarkable reaction right there, first crediting the Ultimate Patriarch for a happy accident and then distancing yourself from it, FoxNews style, with the “some people say.”

I don’t stampede my herd of pronghorn through your cathedral, guy. Please keep your God out of my Wonders of Nature.

The Bill Nye story is not true

You may have heard that Bill Nye, in a flurry of profanity, challenged Todd Akin to a debate. Enticing as the story sounds, I hate to tell you…it’s completely made up. False. Phony. A bit of lazy satire.

It seems to be spreading everywhere. Let’s nip it in the bud right now.

Also, I’ve met Bill Nye, and had dinner with Bill Nye, and that article did not sound like Bill Nye at all.

Someone explain this to me

That nutcase Jack Sarfatti (he’s been a plague on the internet since my usenet days) left a comment on the Scienceblogs side of things, which is very similar to a lot of my email, and I really don’t understand it.

You sound like a Nazi with The Final Solution for those you consider crazy. Shame on you – another self-hating Jewish Liberal. I don’t buy Creationist’s stuff either but I would not send them to the ovens as you clearly would do if you could with the venom in your writing.

Jack Sarfatti

He’s objecting to the fact that I pointed out there’s a concentration of stupid building up in Kentucky. I didn’t say anything about concentration camps, or ovens, or Final Solutions, unless you think Kentucky is all of those things, but that never stops run-at-the-mouth Sarfatti.

What I find weird, though, is all these people in my in-box who a) use “Jewish” as an insult, and b) think I’m Jewish. I don’t consider (a) to be true (although obviously many do) and (b) is simply incorrect, as far as I know. I can’t quite put my head in the same space as theirs, so I’m just wondering what it is about me that triggers this assumption that I fit a Jewish stereotype. My accent? My curls? That funny cap I wear? My resemblance to Tevye? A fondness for a good New York bagel?