Say…isn’t this called treason?

The governor of Texas is ranting about seceding from the United States.

Speaking to an energetic and angry tea party crowd in Austin Wednesday evening, the Lone Star State governor suggested secession may happen in the future should the federal government not change its fiscal polices.

“There’s a lot of different scenarios,” Perry said. “We’ve got a great union. There’s absolutely no reason to dissolve it. But if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, you know, who knows what might come out of that. But Texas is a very unique place, and we’re a pretty independent lot to boot.”

I seem to recall from my history books that some states tried that, once upon a time, long, long ago. How did that work out?

I also seem to recall from not too long ago that Republicans were rather free in slinging accusations of treason at Democrats (Ann Coulter wrote a book about it, and Jonah Goldberg tried to imply it), yet here is a governor actively inciting mobs with the idea of secession, which is a rather blatantly anti-patriotic act. Funny how their attitudes change.

Oh, and for comic relief: Chuck Norris offers to run for president of the independent nation of Texas. I’m almost tempted to agree that they should leave the union, just for the hilarious spectacle.

A simple suggestion for improving the popularity of Catholic iconography

As I’m sure many of you are aware, one of the more superficially off-putting elements of the Catholic church is to walk into one of their buildings and see it decorated with images of writhing, tortured men in loin cloths — it’s like stepping into a S&M fantasy, and I’m really not into that (not that there’s anything wrong with it, of course, if that’s your thing…). If the walls were draped with these, though, my reflexive rejection of the whole idea of church attendance might be softened.

i-0ac5693c7268ec361b45bf70971b09ce-welch.jpeg

I still wouldn’t pay any attention to the liturgy or the sermon or the hymns, though.

Somehow, I was also able to watch the whole movie that young lady was in without once grumbling about the banality of the plot or the ludicrous absurdity of mixing dinosaurs and cavemen, so she has proven powers in generating a willing suspension of disbelief, so I’m sure she’d be a perfect symbol for a religion.

Cleaning out the mythological clutter

Here’s a fine idea to benefit the public: an exchange progrram called Fiction for Fiction in which people can trade in their tired old religious texts for novels. It seems a little unfair, though: they’re offering great novels in exchange. Wouldn’t it be better to trade them some tatty old cheap pulp for the Bible? I think exchanging Gor novels for the Bible would be thematically appropriate. (Trading porn for bibles is also a good idea). The one big problem with these schemes, though, is that the organizers are going to end up with a big stack of even more crappy books than they started with.

An idea that doesn’t involve accumulating bad books is this one: debaptism. A fellow actually got a church to accept a debaptism certificate — he argued that because the original baptism was done against his will and without his consent, it was invalid and the church records needed to be amended. Of course, this was an Anglican church, and we all know how easy they are…I’d like to see this done with the Catholics or Mormons.

Anyway, all you have to do is a) buy the certificate of debaptism (£3), and b) live in the UK. Isn’t it just peachy that those of us who need it most live in places where we can’t get it? Some American group ought to run with this idea.

Yes, Virginia, Mad Scientists do exist

You have to watch this weird and engrossing video about Robert White, the neurosurgeon whose goal was to achieve a total body transplant. He’s the guy who was doing the monkey head transplants: cutting the head off one monkey, and sewing it onto the body of another…and it’s hard to get more Herbert West than that.

I’m afraid the freakiest part of the video for me, though, was that he has a reserved table at the local McDonalds.

The zombies of Boston

This looks like fun, but it’s a bit of drive for me: Steven Schlozman will be giving a talk on the neuropsychology of zombies. He’s talking about levels of activity in the brain and modeling of behavior, which could be interesting — fantasy and horror can be useful tools to get people interested in digging deeper into biology.

Where I always get stuck in any scientific examination of the entirely imaginary phenomenon of zombies, however, is the biochemistry and physiology. They just can’t work. They’re using meat to generate motion, but the properties of meat that can cause contraction/relaxation are dependent on a biochemistry that requires fuel and oxygen. Dead meat doesn’t do work! You just have to surrender to the premise and go with the story, because there’s no way it can be rationalized.

Man-hating Chinese doctors murder baby!

God blessed a Chinese woman with twin baby boys, each one ensouled at the instant of fertilization with personhood and a personal divine fate. At their birth, though, the doctors callously ended one proud male life…and they’ve probably got the poor fellow pickled in a jar somewhere. Here’s a photo of the pair.

i-1bebb470f7aee1ac66b17c45c220bc00-Baby_with_spare.jpeg

That is a baby. The odd blob on his back? That’s his brother, a nicely formed penis growing and thriving there. This is a case of fetus in fetu, in which a mass of cells, either an absorbed twin or a large teratoma (a surprisingly well differentiated, but abnormal, fragment of embryonic tissue), form a partial individual fused to a larger fetus. In this case, all that made it was a penis and what looks like some other adjoining tissues.

Please note that Little Wang (the kids were unnamed, but I have to call him something) is made up of entirely human tissue, and is genuinely alive — blood flows through him, he was probably innervated with sensory and motor nerves, he is obviously sufficiently differentiated that we have no problem calling him male, and he is a miracle of creation — yet what did the doctors do? In a cruel three hour operation, they cut him away from his brother and let him bleed to death.

Yeah, I know what you’re going to say: he was a parasite, entirely dependent on his brother for survival, and could not live on his own—but we all know that argument is totally bogus, because…because…well, because it just is! Life is precious, and you must choose life!

(OK, seriously, this was an awkward developmental difficulty for the child and his parents, but it’s also fascinating. Not enough detail is given in the articles; I’d like to know about deeper levels of organization. Were the various ducts present? Was there any recognizable pelvic tissue? Three hours of surgery implies there may have been some internal entanglements? And most importantly, that location implies that there might have been some spinal involvement — I hope the kid is entirely all right now, and that there won’t be any long term problems.)

(And again seriously, it does raise issues of individuality and human identity. I have no problem saying that the extra penis is an unwanted growth that can be eliminated with no ethical difficulties…but people who claim personhood for a tiny ball of cells ought to have greater problems with this case.)

I want this

It’s a full-sized statue of a buxom pirate on display at an antique shop in Girardville, Pennsylvania. It would look fabulous by the doorway to my house.

i-5c3c40c8aa171f08b8eb1d5e65c63848-pirate_statue.jpeg

This is not just an infatuation with pirates or cleavage, however. This pirate is special. A Catholic priest in Girardville was so irritated at it that he cursed the statue.

Father Commolly commanded the owners to remove it.

“He pointed to the statue and very dictatorially and said, ‘I curse you. I curse this place. I want to see this destroyed. I want her destroyed,'” said pirate owner Peggy Kanigoski.

The madman! With one stroke, he has greatly increased the value of the object, and has probably moved it way out of my price range. Now it’s not only a pirate statue, it’s a cursed pirate statue. And it would be even more appropriate at my house.

<sigh> It would probably get me cursed by the Trophy Wife, anyway.