Normally, I leave the boring clouds of gas and emptiness to Phil, but this Hubble photo of the Carina Nebula actually has something cool.
Now I don’t want to hear anything from any of you about pareidolia. If the loons get their Virgin Mary in burnt pancakes, I want my Cosmic Cephalopod in distant smears of hydrogen.
The Science Museum of Minnesota has a regular feature where they pick some local scientist and put them on the spot to answer questions — it’s like the dunk tank at the carnival, I think, where someone becomes the target and everyone else gets the fun of flinging things at him. This time, it’s my turn. Serious and sincere questions about biology only, please. Kids especially welcome. Trolls will meet an ignominious fate.
My colleague, Van Gooch, preceded me in this exercise. You can read his section to get an idea about what kinds of questions are appropriate…and you can also learn something about circadian rhythms!
No, my work is not yet done, and my deadlines haven’t yet been met, but I’m confident that I’ll reach my goals by this afternoon. Bear with me with patience, please. Until this afternoon, when I slap these puppies and ship them off to their destinations, I’ll leave you with something to discuss among yourselves: the movies!
Last night was Oscar night, and I had the awards yammering in the background while I was pounding the keys. I have to get out more; I’ve seen virtually none of the nominated movies this year. There’s something called “Slumdog Millionaire” that’s getting a lot of buzz? Shows what I know. I hadn’t even heard of it until last night. My pop culture cred just took a nosedive.
As for the awards show, Hugh Jackman was pretty and congenial, which I guess is the role of the emcee. The format was grating: at each award, they’d have five past winners come out on the stage and slather flattery on each nominee, while the camera locked onto each one, simpering and squirming under the barrage of praise. This was not good; Hollywood already has a reputation of being the domain of the vain, and amplifying the effect with a prolonged demonstration of how happy these people are to be fawningly serviced in public had me cringing.
The high point, I thought, was Sean Penn’s acceptance speech for best actor in which he shamed the people who don’t want to see equal rights for everyone, gay or straight.
On a related note, Bill Maher was one of the presenters for best documentary, and what did he do? Plugged his movie, Religulous, while moaning over the fact that it was not nominated. Bad form, Bill, very bad form. Maybe it just wasn’t good enough.
I did finally see Religulous a few days ago, and I confess to being a bit disappointed. It consisted of a series of short interviews with, for instance, truckers at a truck stop chapel, Catholic priests, an “ex-gay” minister, a Muslim rapper, etc., and it was all capped with excellent and scathing monologue that strongly criticized religion. Don’t get me wrong, it was good, and there were some funny bits, but something nagged at me throughout, and only when I saw the conclusion did I realize what it was.
Maher cheated. He had a clear idea of what his opinion was, but he wasn’t sharing it with the people he was interviewing. They were left to flounder and make poor arguments in part because there are no good arguments for religion, but also because they were left in the dark about what they were arguing against. It may be funny, but it’s no fair; contrast that with the Dawkins’ documentaries on religion, which are less funny, but more honest, because the people on camera know (or should know) exactly what they are wrestling with.
A better Religulous would have recorded the closing monolog first, and sent that to each of the potential interviewees with a note saying, “Here’s my position. Are you willing to argue against it on camera?” That would have made for a much more interesting movie, and Maher would have had to break a sweat to address criticisms…and it would probably be less funny. There’s a reason Maher wasn’t nominated for an Oscar, and I think it’s because his documentary took no risks, and didn’t probe very deeply.
It’s been quiet here today for a good reason: I’m facing a bunch of deadlines, and I told myself I’d stay offline until I’d met them. I haven’t met them quite yet, but I hate leaving the blog dead for a day…so I’m just offering this note of explanation, and setting this up as an open thread.
Now I’m gone again, back to my labors.
9am Central. Sunday morning. The evil atheists of the upper midwest will continue their nefarious plan to disseminate propaganda internationally by means of the radio waves, which will vibrate even within the walls of Minneapolis’s churches, synagogues, and temples, and also via the godless intertubes. This week, they will once again spread the infidel lie that atheists can “lead rich, ethical and fulfilling lives without appealing to gods or religious authority”, when every Christian knows deep in their heart that they want to murder, maim, rape, and steal, and only God’s holy extortion can keep them in line.
Go ahead, tune in if you want to lead hedonistic lives of ungodly self-indulgence. Click on that link if you want to make Jesus cry. Destroy all of Western civilization by letting the heathen weaken the shackles of your sacred servitude.
(Just don’t tune in before 9 or after 10, because Air America runs some awesomely stupid informercials before and after the hour of reason.)
They’re finally getting organized. Minnesota has had our citizens for science group together for years now, and only now is Wisconsin catching up. Better go sign up now, Wisconsinites, lest your membership look pathetic next to ours.
I’m looking at you, UW Madison. Get in there and participate and keep your state off the creationist roster!
Just go and gape in awe at the obliviousness of our national media. This is a poll on US News & World Report, and it asks, “If you had a choice of four daycare centers run separately by Michelle Obama, Sarah Palin, Hillary Clinton, and Nancy Pelosi, which would you choose for your kids?” Incredible.
I believe that next week they’ll have a question about Barack Obama’s, Colin Powell’s, Al Sharpton’s, and Jesse Jackson’s hypothetical fried chicken stands.
We’ll have to see how long this video remains available. Thunderf00t, the well-known godless anti-creationist creator of fine youtube videos, is routinely targeted by Christian/creationist scriptbots to downgrade his videos and even get them banned, and he’s had enough — this clip takes the youtube management to task for kowtowing to the ignorant god-crowd. It was, of course, deleted by the youtube management, but not before it got copied to many other places.
It’s actually rather sad to see. There have been a lot of shenanigans like this recently, and I’ve gone from regarding youtube as merely poorly managed to suspecting that they are actively evil.
It’s an interesting edition of Bloggingheads: the always pleasant Carl Zimmer in a dialog with hyper-enthusiastic Phil Plait. If I ever do one of these things with Phil, I’m going to have to send him a horse tranquilizer to swallow first, just so I can keep up.
Have you ever gotten sucked into one of those endless “Teach the controversy!” or “You’re afraid to look at both sides” kinds of arguments? You know, the ones people backing the most ridiculous positions always make? I need to make a copy of this cartoon to carry with me. It’s a point I’ve often tried to make.
Unfortunately, the kinds of people who advance those arguments are exactly the kinds of people who won’t be able to get it.
I’m never going to get to go to parties anymore, am I?
