Cephalopodmas Contest!

You’ve only got a few days left to enter: Everything Octopus is giving away a cephalopod tree ornament, and all you have to do is subscribe to the site and leave a comment. Easy!

I already own this very same ornament, and will be putting up our family christmas tree this weekend. I’ve received a lot of ‘pod gear from readers over the last few years, and I’m planning to decorate the tree with lots of it (I’ll put up a photo when it’s done). If you won this ornament, you’ll be on the path to outdoing the awesomeness of my tree. It’s something to dream of, you know.

You know it’s a stinker when they’re afraid of the reviewers

Way, way back on 16 July, I got a letter from the Discovery Institute.

Dear Dr. Myers:

I am writing to ask if you have plans to review Dr. Stephen C. Meyer’s new book Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design (HarperOne). I would be happy to ask Dr. Meyer’s publisher to send you a review copy.

I know you are busy but if you can get back to me about this, including any thoughts or comments you may have, I will grateful.

Sincerely,

Janet Oberembt
Assistant to Dr. Meyer
Discovery Institute

Oh, great, I thought — I know what kind of drivel Meyer was going to include in this book, just more of the same argument from ignorance and ‘ooh, isn’t it complicated’. I feel obligated to keep up with the creationist literature, though, and you never know — maybe someday they’ll come up with an original idea. So I replied, said yes, thank you, and gave Ms Oberembt my address. She wrote back promptly.

Thank you and I’ll send the request by email this evening.

No review copy ever arrived.

It’s going on 6 months. I’ve talked to a few other creationist critics who also received the offer of a review copy — no one has gotten one. How interesting. I almost certaintly would have bought a copy when it first came out, but held off because I thought one would be arriving in the mail any time now. They haven’t got any novel arguments for their case, but at least they’ve come up with new ways to temporarily stall their critics.

This is just like the movie studios, when they’ve got a clunker of a film on their hands: don’t let the reviewers get sight of it, make sure you’ve got only friendly audiences to see pre-screenings, and then, of course, push only positive reviews.

Yes, the Discovery Institute is also doing that: the creationists are running a push campaign to jack up the positive reviews of the book on Amazon. That’s an old and familiar trick.

I suppose I’ll have to read that 600 page pile of slop sometime…maybe in January. I’m going to be giving a whole series of talks on evolution and creationism at the end of that month, and maybe I’ll be able to squeeze in a section on just Meyer.

Harlan Ellison on God

I’m a big fan of the gloriously cranky Harlan Ellison, and here he gives his opinion of that whole god business in his characteristic way…which means that if you are at work you should not turn the volume up on this one.

I found this on a SF site, and the first couple of comments are from offended Christians, which always makes my day. It’s the usual stuff: atheists are contradicting themselves, god is all-powerful and can do whatever he wants, yadda yadda yadda. I felt like posting rebuttals, but a fellow named Alan Baxter has done an excellent job of swatting them down already.

Rick Warren, finally

By now you’ve all heard about the heinous Ugandan bill that would lead to the imprisonment of homosexuals and the execution of any with AIDS, and you’ve probably also heard that it was promoted by American right-wingers. There’s a curious phenomenon going on right now: people are trying to stir up some principled opposition to the bill, and the religious right is dragging their heels. It’s strange because once they’ve been cornered, wrestled to the ground, and forced to face a camera, they all quickly repudiate the bill — unless you’re Fred Phelps, it’s pretty much impossible to support it, it is so barbaric — but you can also tell they aren’t happy about having to make a public denial. Weasely ol’ Rick Warren has finally spoken out against it, but as archy analyzes Warren’s statement, it’s not very impressive:

By my count, about twenty percent of his message is a direct condemnation or call to opposition to the bill. About thirty percent of the message is self-promotion or promotion of his groups. The other half of the message is his greeting to the pastors and a Christmas message. The latter part should have been sent as a separate message an waters down the most important part of his message, but that’s quibble on my part.

This stuff isn’t hard. When someone announces that they want a legalized hunting season on gay people, you reject it, plainly, clearly, and loudly. It’s revealing when it takes you this much time to decide it’s a bad idea.

Glitchy commenting

Some people are still encountering bugs when trying to register for commenting, and a few of them have been emailing me. I don’t know what to do! I’ve forwarded your email to the powers-that-be, and we’ll see if something gets fixed some more.

Otherwise, if anyone out there has suggestions, leave them here. Is there one registration service that is more reliable than the others?