Hitchens has big brass ones

It takes some confidence to charge into this: Hitchens will be debating Jay Richards (of the Discovery Institute), with Ben Stein as “moderator”, in an event sponsored by the Stanford IDEA club. The creationists are stacking the deck against him rather thoroughly.

I’m not enthused about the idea — the only people who have anything to gain from this are the loons on the side of ignorance. But if there’s anyone who can pull it off, it’s a master of fiery rhetoric … or a comedian. The topic is purportedly “Atheism vs. Theism and the Scientific Evidence of Intelligent Design,” and since the creationists have no evidence, it’s got to be a tedious bore without someone on hand to skewer the fools.

Let’s hope there’s a video.

I don’t think I could make something this ugly if I tried

The video clip below is from a game called Noah’s Adventures. It’s awful—Noah sounds like a drunk with brain damage, the graphics look like a preschooler tried fingerpainting with his feces, and the whole plot is ridiculous.

Now here’s the question: is this the work of a sincere creationist, or is this the product of the evil atheist conspiracy, made with the intent of making creationists look like talentless, tasteless hacks? I can’t tell.

Those wacky Russians

Maybe “wacky” isn’t the right word — if you read through this collection of Russian jokes translated by Mark Perakh, you might find some are fairly funny, others are completely opaque and strange, and others drop with a leaden thump. One common seems to be finding a kind of morose humor in misery.

Having a strange sense of humor is the only way I can explain this: Pravda, the Weekly World News of Russia, has an article explaining Intelligent Design creationism, which fits right in with their usual fare of UFOs, girls in swimsuits, devils, and muscular bronze stallions with weird human genitalia, but just to add some real spice to the joke, it was written by babblin’ Babu Ranganathan.

I don’t know who the joke is on, Babu, ID, or people gullible enough to buy Pravda, but I know it’s not me, so I’m laughing.

You have been granted permission

This is very strange. After all the kerfuffle over that ridiculous online bookstore, they just sent me this message:

Hi! Abunga CustomerService ([email protected]) has used the Abunga.com Email-A-Friend service to send you this message.

Personal message:
Please help us Empower Decency by encouraging as many of your readers to register with us.
Their votes are needed now more than ever.
Thank you

Please click this link or copy and paste it into your browser:
http://abunga.com

Did you know that on Abunga.com …

+ You support non-profits with 5% of every purchase?
+ You can help us monitor our book offerings by blocking titles?
+ You can buy brand new titles 30% off everyday!

Abunga.com
Empowering Decency
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877-566-0501

We’ve got a blog! Come tell us what you think at http://blog.abunga.com

This is a little odd, because I did not register with them, and I haven’t been flagging any of their books. I guess they just like the attention — and you are all now encouraged to empower decency at their site.

Carnivalia and an open thread

Hey, it’s been a while since I did one of these, so let’s catch up!

The Tangled Bank

Karl Mogel will be hosting the next Tangled Bank at The Inoculated Mind — get moving and send those links in to me or [email protected] by Tuesday!

And of course, this is an open thread, so say whatever you please.