I think the chemtrails have been destroying the brains of Arizonians

It’s the only possible explanation. The Arizona senate has just appointed Sylvia Allen to be chair of the Education Committee. This Sylvia Allen:

Allen is best known for her controversial public comments over the years. During a legislative hearing in 2009, she said the Earth is 6,000 years old, a belief held by “Young Earth” biblical creationists. In 2013, a Facebook post about chem-trail conspiracies gained widespread media attention, as did a March comment suggesting mandatory church attendance.

She was appointed to regulate the educational policy in Arizona by a fellow Republican, the senate president. I don’t know what he was thinking — she sounds like the kind of loon you steer into positions where she can’t do much harm. Maybe it’s just the standard Republican game of blowing up the government from within?

But you can’t just blame this on Republican idiocy.

Sen. Steve Farley, D-Tucson, who had criticized Allen’s church comment, said he looks forward to working with her on education issues.

“She’s made some interesting comments to the public, but it’s not like she’s going to be teaching,” he said. “We have accredited teachers for that.”

He said Allen has always had an open door for lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.

“I think she’ll do a pretty good job,” he said.

A pretty good job. Of what? Saying stupid stuff to make the Republicans look even more nuts? Or did the chemtrails get to him, too?

What is freethought?

Apparently, I need to periodically explain what freethought means, because right now I’m being helpfully informed by many people who don’t have a clue that it means thinking any damn thing you want.


clues in the name “free”, ie without limitations. Irrational belief always attempts to limit freedom of thought

My response: If naive etymology were your guide, then freeways don’t have any traffic rules.

Look, I know a lot of people experience total brain lock when they see the word “free” — just see the usual response to the phrase “free speech” — but you’re wrong. Free speech does not mean there are no limitations on what you can say, it just means the government can’t control the expression of opinions. You still don’t get to yell “Fire!” in a crowded theater, or commit libel with impunity, or be obnoxious without social repercussions.

Likewise with freethought. We don’t need a damned philosophy to allow you to think whatever you want — there is no way anyone can control your mind. Of course you can think freely! But freethought refers to something more specific: having ideas that are not dictated by dogma or authority, but by reason and empirical evidence. It means free of dogma, not free of all constraints. If you are using the phrases “because that’s the way it’s always been”, “because it’s human nature”, “because the Grand Poobah said so”, “because it’s written down that way in this book”, you are certainly free to think that, but you are not being a freethinker.

I know this is going to blow some minds, but reason and empirical evidence are limitations on your thinking. We impose them on our minds because we value consistency, reproducibility, consensus, and independent confirmation of our conclusions, and those restrictions enable us to achieve that. If we didn’t care about those requirements, well then Jesus loves me and I can fly and weeee, let’s go all kittens and fluffy pillows and pass me that cloud, I need to get high.

The same people who insist on the dictionary definition of atheist seem incapable of reading the dictionary definition of freethought, or even the wikipedia entry. But then, those definitions are more complicated and difficult than off-the-cuff knee-jerk not-thinking that they specialize in, so it’s no wonder they shun the actual evidence.

Spider gastrulation

spiderembryo

It’s my first completely free day of Christmas break! Grades are all submitted, nothing is hanging over my head, but I still got up at 5:30am and needed to do something, so I learned about spider gastrulation.

This was a disgraceful gap in my knowledge — I’ve worked on insects and on vertebrates, and am fairly familiar with gastrulation in those kinds of organisms, but one thing I did know is that there’s a lot of variation in the details of gastrulation, so every new clade seems to exhibit some novel way of tucking cells in to the early embryo. Spiders do it in a cool way.

[Read more…]

Gwen Pearson just ruined Christmas for everyone

The war on Christmas is over. Everyone just gave up in disgust. They read this story about reindeer parasites, complete with burrowing snot flies, vaginal maggot guns, and people picking maggots out of their eyes, and decided it just wasn’t worth it any more.

What kind of gun should I get to pick off flying reindeer? I’m thinking of spending Christmas Eve patrolling the neighborhood and making sure none of those diseased vermin get anywhere near my house.

But wait! Before you blow your budget…

…at the Pharyngula store, something desperately urgent has come up: Sarah Morehead is in trouble. Those of you who know Sarah for her gentle activism in the atheist movement should also know that she’s an exceptionally nice person with a family, so these problems are not to be tolerated. I’ll keep it simple: it’s an ugly spousal abuse situation, which has left her and her kids with no support…and really, when you read her story, you’ll see she had no choice but to get out.

She needs help. She needs donations. If you can, get over there and chip in.

Support Pharyngula! Shop at the store!

Are you scrambling for last minute Xmas gifts? I have a solution for you. Go to the Pharyngula online store, coming to a sidebar near you soon, and buy books and stuff from Skeptical Robot and Amazon. It doesn’t cost you anything more, but I get an itty-bitty cut, which is nice. Think of it as taking a small slice of the Evil Amazonian Empire’s profits and giving them to me, an Evil Blogger.

I just set this thing up, so there isn’t a lot there yet (I haven’t even started on the fiction section yet), but I’ll keep stuffing new entries in, as the whim strikes. Recommendations are welcome, but I’m only including books I’ve actually read myself.

Who’s the idiot now?

Steve Harvey has long been notorious for saying stupid things.

Emmy Award-winning TV host and best-selling author Steve Harvey advises women not to date atheists because you don’t know where the man’s “moral barometer” is, and says that as far as someone not believing in God, “well, then, to me you’re an idiot.”

Harvey, who also hosts a radio show and started his career in stand-up comedy, went on to say that Darwinism is essentially nonsense because he doesn’t think the universe “spun out of a gastrous ball and then all of a sudden we were evolved from monkeys.” If that were true, he says, then “why we still got monkeys?”

Yep, that’s his argument, the dumbest argument against evolution ever…although at least he spiced it up with that “gastrous ball” comment. So now I am full of schadenfreude at his latest gaffe.

[Read more…]

My status as the local Grinch is affirmed

I even made the Minneapolis Star Tribune! They have a story about my griping about the damned annoying cemetery bells that plagued us for years.

Some neighbors were less enthusiastic than the visitors. Local blogger and biology professor PZ Myers railed for years against the bells that tolled near his home, rousing him from sleep with the sound of “hymns. Cheesy hymns, played mechanically on an electronic carillon.”

Myers, who lives two blocks from the cemetery, said the clangor of bells started at 5 a.m. and continued until 10 at night, despite his protests.

I wasn’t the only one complaining, as the story makes clear, but now the guy who thrust the chimes upon us is busily nailing himself up on a cross.

[Read more…]

Liven up that Christmas get-together!

I’m more than a little tired of Christmas carols now — to be honest, I was exasperated around Halloween — so I don’t know if changing the lyrics is quite enough. But maybe it will work for you: here’s a gallery of scientific songs of praise, mostly familiar Christmas carols with fresh words.

I think I’ll stick with my usual medley of Nine Inch Nails songs of angst and frustration.

Guess who is all done grading?

ME, that’s who. I still have to upload these last few grades to the official site, but my computer is acting up, as always, so I’m going to have to walk in to my office and do it there. But to celebrate, anyway, I took off to fly my gadget. This is a quick buzz around the Morris Wetlands management district offices. Just because it’s empty and open land, and it’s very quiet (the whole town is quiet right now — students have gone home for the break).

This thing is fun, and the mechanics of flying it are easy, but just a word of warning to anyone who gets one: it takes practice. Lots of practice. Right now I can do all the basics of getting it to go up and forward and backwards and left and right, but I tell you, when it’s a kilometer off in the distance and you’ve lost track of its orientation and your depth perception is off so you think everything is fine but the camera is telling you you’re flying straight towards a tree, it’s a little nerve wracking.

Also, it’s really cold out there, around -15 to -20° C, and you’re actually kind of relieved that the battery is only good for about a 20 minute flight, because you’re fingers are freezing off. Note also it’s not the best day for photography: hazy and gray, flying over a world that’s mostly white. But that’s Minnesota.