Finally, after months of silence, my old server at pharyngula.org lives again. It turns out that all my head-desking was for nought — the reason it was offline is that it had been intentionally blocked on suspicion of harboring illicit p2p activity. They just forgot to mention it.
Anyway, all anybody will really care about there is that my daughter’s blog, Lacrimae Rerum, is back online now.
The Birmingham city council has put up blocking software to lock out atheist websites, which is OK — they’ve got to crack that whip and keep their employees focused on the work at hand, of course. Unfortunately, they apparently aren’t doing this to improve productivity, but simply to shut down a point of view some bureaucrat doesn’t like.
The authority’s Bluecoat Software computer system allows staff to look at websites relating to Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and other religions but blocks sites to do with “witchcraft or Satanism” and “occult practices, atheistic views, voodoo rituals or any other form of mysticism”.
I’m always peeved at this inconsistent categorization. If you’re going to group undesirable topics under the heading of “Forms of mysticism”, then atheism does not belong there, but Christianity and Islam do, right along with witchcraft, the occult, voodoo, and New Age nonsense. I suppose we could even stretch that category to cover pornography, since it largely seems to consist of imaginary bodies airbrushed and photoshopped into an impossibly ideal form.
I approve of this article criticizing the dumbing down of science in museums. I think a lot of science museums need a good sharp kick in the pants, because they are going too far down the road of pandering to mass media sensations — our local museum is running a big show on the science of Star Wars, and that article is complaining about the exhibits at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia about “Real Pirates” and “Chronicles of Narnia”. These are real concerns, and there has been a steady drift away from challenging attendees with interesting ideas towards merely entertaining them.
On the other hand, some flash and dazzle is a way to get the younger set involved. Museums, especially ones geared for younger family members, shouldn’t go too far the other way in pretending that popular culture doesn’t exist, or become too dry and serious. When we lived in Philly, we’d occasionally (not often, though — as the article points out, these places have become absurdly expensive) take the kids into center city, and walk down Benjamin Franklin Parkway to Logan Circle, and we’d catch of few of the museums there. The Franklin Institute was always the one with the caravans of school busses outside and the mobs of kids running through it, so we knew what we were getting into there. I always preferred the Academy of Natural Sciences museum myself — it was just across the street, and it had lots more substantive science on display.
We need a balance. It sounds like the Franklin Institute has gone too far in one direction, but it’s still filling an appropriate role…except, maybe, for that “Narnia” thing. I don’t see how to make a science story from a complete fantasy without even a technological angle to its story.
What do you think of this “fossil”?
It’s supposed to be a human footprint with that of an Acrocanthosaurus on top of it, showing that dinosaurs walked the earth after human beings.
Unfortunately, they both look ridiculously fake. The human print has toes like tubes and a wierdly dug-in big toe, and looks ridiculously fake. The dino print is even worse — it’s basically a three-pronged flat plate, looking like it was modeled after the smooth bottoms of a plastic dinosaur toy. Here, for instance is a photo of a cast of an actual dinosaur print.
A fellow named Alvis Delk “discovered” this rock in Texas, and is now, naturally enough, trying to sell it.
A domestic fall from a ladder eight months ago nearly crippled Delk, resulting in surgeries, a long recovery and expensive medical bills. He decided to try and sell some of his archeological treasurers, so he turned to the large piece of limestone, thinking he could clean it up some and sell it to the Creation Evidence Museum located adjacent to Dinosaur Valley State Park near Glen Rose.
Heh. Right. He’s also found a sucker — Carl Baugh, who is falling all over himself praising the authenticity of this blatant fake.
The only way this could be considered evidence for Baugh’s godly vision is in the sense of that well-known quote from Voltaire: “I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: ‘O Lord make my enemies ridiculous.’ And God granted it.” And he keeps on granting it — religious explanations for the world are everlastingly ridiculous.
So many people are asking where I got my “Knowledge is Power, Power Corrupts, Study Hard, Be Evil” t-shirt, as modeled here, and I wish I could help you, but I don’t know where you could order your own. I can tell you exactly where I got it: in Detroit, at Moonbase ConFusion, from one of the many vendors in the dealer’s room. I know, that doesn’t help much. Sorry.
Someone could always go to Cryptic ConFusion in January and hope that the same t-shirts are available then…it’s a great con, even if this particular shirt isn’t always available.
Hooray! ElfPirateMonarch found that identical t-shirt design!
The Kaiser network is hosting a live webcast to discuss the influence of the blogosphere on health policy — the panel is tilted towards right wing bushites who prioritize money over health, so a more progressive contribution from the audience would be desirable. It’s going to be on tomorrow, Tuesday, at 1pm Eastern.
Oh, and if you worry about the future of health care, get a load of this: nurses in California can get continuing education credit by attending a Catholic conference full of woo. This is not reassuring. I don’t think a lecture on sex ed by a nun reciting papal dogma should count as education.
It’s the Expelled DVD…and wouldn’t you know it, it’s already got a pile of positive reviews from creobots. If you’ve seen it, maybe you’d care to go give it an honest review?
Don’t forget to mention Expelled Exposed!
It is another mark of the incompetence of the ID movement that they actually hand out an award named after Casey Luskin. Pick the most ineffectual, uninformed, pathetic loser on the creationist side, and use his name to inspire the next generation of IDiots. It’s actually amusingly appropriate.
I note that the latest awardee is keeping his name anonymous. That’s hopeful — at least some of them can still retain a sense of shame and embarrassment.
And she has pictures to prove it! You can also download the podcast in which we both speak. Oh, and there’s about 40 people who showed up at the Pharyngubrunch at Q. Cumbers who can testify that we all had a wonderful time.
People keep writing to me about this wretched scumbag who shot up a Unitarian church in Tennessee, killing two people there to watch a children’s play. I don’t know what happened, but despite it happening in a church, I don’t get the impression that it’s a consequence of a conflict between Christians and an atheist. It was a Unitarian church, full of secular humanists and deists and non-specific theists, not exactly a prime target for a psychotic atheist. More likely issues are that the place had a sign out front saying “Gays welcome”, that he was a Confederate South sympathizer, that he was insane, and that he “was motivated by frustration over being unable to obtain a job and hatred for the liberal movement.” At least, that’s the word that has leaked out of a long note he left behind.
So until we know more specifics, it sounds to me like this is the work of a far right-wing nut who targeted a particular church not because it was religious, but because this is the kind of church where you’ll find the highest concentration of bleeding heart liberals. We’ll have to wait until more details are made available, though, to know for sure.
New reports: “He disliked blacks, gays, anyone who was a different color or just different from him”, and his ex-wife was a member of the church he targeted. There’s a whole bunch of crazy motives behind these actions, I suspect.
