Teaching Your Inner Fish

Next Fall, I’ll be back in the classroom teaching introductory biology again. One thing I’m planning to do is to use Shubin’s Your Inner Fish for that course…and just look what the good man has done just for me: all the figures from the book have been released as powerpoint slides.

OK, he probably didn’t think about me at all, and he’s releasing them for everyone to use, but still…it’s awfully serendipitous.

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Grab ’em all, teachers! These are tools for getting more evolution into the biology classroom!

Only two shoplifting days until Christmas!

Strapped for cash? Don’t know how you’re going to afford a few gifts for the family? Don’t worry about it, just steal them! It’s OK because a priest says it is, and they’ve got the backing of God. Just remember: don’t rob the little stores, always hit the big ones, since they’ve got capital to spare. And they’ve also got the really good stuff.

I’m a little behind the times. I did all my Christmas shopping online, where it’s really hard to shoplift. Would it be OK if I stole some credit card numbers, Father? How about if I give the church its 10% cut?

Maybe they should poll the dead to get the answer

Last night, Larry King Live (without Larry King, who was off getting his internal organs stuffed into canopic jars or something) was all about life after death, and guess who they brought on? Deepak Chopra, new age nutcase; Dinesh D’Souza, dithering moron; and Sanjay Gupta, their usual token MD, who was completely ineffectual and didn’t say one word to criticize the pair of loons sharing the screen with him. They did bring out Michael Shermer in the middle of the show to say a few words, but again, he was too busy being nice to actually hammer on the Chopra/D’Souza BS.

They have a poll. I’d be curious to know if your answer would change after seeing (or reading the transcript) of that ghastly show. I suspect knowing what Chopra and D’Souza had to say could only increase the frequency of “no” answers.

Do you believe in life after death?

Yes 80%
No 20%

Evolving fish of the lower Congo

The lower Congo river is deep and complex, and there are a surprising number of hydrologic features that act as barriers separating populations of fish — this very nice video explains the diversity of species and the ongoing evolution of the fish in this environment.

They too briefly showed a blind depigmented cichlid that apparently lives in very deep troughs in the river — I wanted to see more about that. It’s probably out of the question to send divers down into that maelstrom, but cameras? Someday? Please?

Prayer works!

Tom Coburn, the odious Republican from Oklahoma, is one of the America-hating pseudopatriots opposing even the lame and neutered health care bill sludgily working its way through the senate, and he recently sent out a call to his teabaggin’* electorate and fellow travelers to pray that “somebody can’t make the vote”, so the Democrats wouldn’t be able to break any filibuster. They responded by prayin’ their little hearts out, and one group even proudly admitted to praying for the death of Democrats.

And it worked! No, nobody died, but someone didn’t make it to the vote.

One catch: the no-show was James Inhofe, the other Republican dimbulb from Oklahoma who opposes health care.

Keep praying! Maybe soon all of the Republicans will go away. Or even better, Holy Joe Lieberman will be ascended into heaven.

*I still snicker over the fact that they actually call themselves that.

Awww, poor widdle Ken Ham’s feewings are hurt

Ken Ham is distressed that he gets no respect. This triggers a little litany of self-defense.

Guess what’s missing from Sunday’s Cincinnati Enquirer‘s (our main Cincinnati newspaper) long articles about local Christmas/holiday activities?

This long piece-plus other Christmas-related articles–appeared in the paper yesterday (Sunday). No mention of the Creation Museum and its Bethlehem’s Blessings Christmas programs–not even the free day on Thursday (the museum is open to the public for free for Christmas Eve), even though through our publicist, we sent two news releases to the paper about our Christmas activities.

Interesting, considering over 920,000 people have visited the Creation Museum–tens of millions of dollars has been brought into the community each of the past two years–hundreds of jobs created locally–already 7,500 people have visited the Creation Museum’s Live Nativity (five more dates for this spectacular event) and phenomenal garden light display. (By the way, we have submitted a letter to the paper to inquire about the omission of our major series of Christmas events that will attract over 15,000 people to a place that has won major tourism awards for advertising excellence–maybe there is some explanation for this oversight; while the paper’s reporters over the years have generally been fair towards us, we sometimes wonder why some of the editors seem to look at us differently–see a previous article of ours, for example.

There’s a reason the world looks at you differently, Ken.

It’s because you’re a gibbering nitwit. Your “museum” is a popular freakshow for ignorant yahoos, and it’s existence is an international embarrassment. You bring about as much prestige to the Cincinnati area as a combination leper colony and lunatic asylum; sure, it’s well-populated with the unfortunate afflicted, and it provides employment to local citizens, and the fact that you’ve turned it into a spectacle of stupidity for gawkers brings in tourist dollars, but it’s not something to be proud of. And unlike the leper colony/asylum, your institution provides no useful or charitable function for the community or its residents. Instead, you lie to children for money.

I suspect the omission was merely an oversight, because the American media tends to drool for money over principle, and one thing the phony “museum” has is buckets of money — for the same reason P.T. Barnum thrived — but one can always hope that the slight was intentional, and that someone at the Cincinnati Enquirer is aware that the presence of a Temple to Lunacy brings disrepute to the region.

You lie to children for money. You don’t get respect for that.

Christian shame

Salon has a peculiarly defensive article by a Christian confessing to being embarrassed about her beliefs, which seems like a good start to me. She should be embarrassed. As a fun exercise, though, try reading her article while categorizing its statements in the Kübler-Ross stages — there’s a bit of denial in there, some bargaining, and a faint hint of depression, but mainly what she’s got is anger. She lashes out at atheists a fair bit, but it’s in a revealing way.

Writers like Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens and Victor J. Stenger — and, of course, performers like Bill Maher — get loads of press mocking the dummies gullible enough to believe some guy a couple thousand years ago was God’s son. But come on. It’s like shooting Christian fish car magnets in a barrel.

Well, yes, it is easy to mock people who “believe some guy a couple thousand years ago was God’s son.” But, you know, that’s the central tenet of the Christian faith! Shouldn’t you stop and wonder about the validity of your beliefs when you realize the core idea is ridiculous? She isn’t going to defend that idea at all, though — atheists are just mean for noticing it, I guess.

Oh, and of course she trots out the standard fundamentalist canard.

And yet, atheists are at least as fundamentalist and zealous as any religious people I know, and they have nothing good to show for it: no stained glass, no great literature, no great art, no comfort in the face of death. Just dissipated Christopher Hitchens sounding off on “Larry King Live” and a stack of smug books with childishly provocative titles.

Atheists are not fundamentalists. Saying so just makes you look like a moron.

We have nothing good to show for being atheists? Hey, what about SCIENCE? I had no idea that atheists were unable to create stained glass windows — maybe this is the answer to Hitchens’ challenge, to find something good that a theist can do but an atheist cannot. Unfortunately for our distressed Christian, stained glass is a secular technology that has been used to decorate churches…but we godless people can use it just fine, if we want.

No great literature? One name: Mark Twain.

No great art? Berlioz, Paganini, Schubert, Saint-Saëns. If that’s not enough, browse the list.

No comfort in the face of death? What we lack is a collection of lies about death. I could say the same of Christianity, since I certainly find no comfort in unwarranted authority, wishful thinking, and delusional incentives. And at least atheists do not threaten others with hell.

Her snide comment about Hitchens is accompanied by a link which you should watch. It’s revealing. It’s Hitchens surrounded by a couple of McCain apologists before the last election, ripping into Sarah Palin’s anti-scientific views on genetics and research, and her ridiculous creationism. Does the sad Christian somehow find that antagonistic to her beliefs? I know many members of her own faith who would have expressed the same sentiments…just not as eloquently as Hitchens.

Finally, she wonders if she should speak up.

But also, increasingly, I wonder: When I’m getting a ride from some friends and they start talking about how stupid religious people are and quoting lines from “Religulous,” do I have an obligation to point out how reductive and bigoted they’re being, the way I would if they were talking about a particular race? Increasingly I wonder if I should pipe up from the back seat and say, “Excuse me, but these fools you’re talking about? I’m one of them.”

You certainly are. Please do speak up, we like to know when we’re in the presence of fools.

The equation of race with religion is also standard practice for fools. Sorry, lady, ignorance isn’t the same as being brown, and you can’t excuse yourself by claiming that you were born without knowledge.

Wouldn’t you know a whole bunch of people would write to me with examples of stained glass in scientific institutions? Here’s an example from the Pembroke College library at Cambridge:

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