It is my honor to induct into the Grand Order of the Molly, with all rights, privileges, powers, and obligations thereof, the distinguished commenter known as Sastra. Everyone stand up, applaud frantically, and remember to bow when you meet her in the street henceforth.
A few little videos by way of the marvelous Kevin Hayden:
Ladies, did you know that you are just like a cardboard box? We’re supposed to treat you delicately and with respect, just in case you’ve got something in your uterus. If you’ve had a hysterectomy or you’re menstruating, though, and we know the box is empty, well, we don’t have to worry about you so much.
Guys, did you know that you are followed everywhere by a mob of enthusiastic, hyperactive sperm? I love how both sexes can be objectified by the functions of our gonads.
I’ve shown the video for this one before, but I’m going to do it again just because I love the New York Dolls and this will put you in a happy mood for a Monday morning. Here are the New York Dolls performing “Dance Like a Monkey” live:
Whoa. Somehow, I think I’ve ended up in the Bizarro Universe. New Scientist reports that the Discovery Institute has a problem with the information for teachers that accompanied the recent Judgment Day documentary.
The teaching package states: “Q: Can you accept evolution and still believe in religion? A: Yes. The common view that evolution is inherently anti-religious is simply false.” According to Casey Luskin, an attorney with the Discovery Institute, this answer favours one religious viewpoint, arguably violating the US constitution. “We’re afraid that teachers might get sued,” he says.
Say what?
Zeno compares Dinesh D’Souza to Mark Twain. This exercise is much like comparing mouse droppings to our upcoming Thanksgiving feast, but I suppose it must be done. Note D’Souza’s argument for free will:
I am sitting at my computer with a cup of coffee on my desk. I can reach over and take a sip if I choose; I can knock the coffee mug onto the carpet if I choose; I can just leave the cup alone and let the coffee get cold. Now I ask: Is there anything in the laws of physics that forces me do any of these things? Obviously not.
I had no idea that he was that stupid.
Wilkins is about to review a new paper on sociobiology by Wilson and Wilson, but he hasn’t quite done it yet. I’ll be looking forward to it, though.
After urging you all to do something to save the Tasmanian devil, I discover now that Tara wrote about DFTD last month. I guess I have to work harder to keep up with all these science bloggers.
Today’s Freethinker Sunday Sermonette first tells the tale of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, which is utterly wacky by intent…and then has a most amusing cartoon retelling of Sodom and Gomorrah, which is even more insane. Who needs the FSM when you can discredit religion more effectively with its own words?
People had some peculiar ideas in 1932. Try reading this wonderfully detailed diagram of evolution (if you’ve got the bandwidth, download the 3212×8748 pixel version).
The vertical axis makes sense: it’s a logarithmic scale of geologic time. It’s not quite right, since it has life arising about 1.6 billion years ago, when we now have good evidence that that occurred more than twice that long ago. I’m not going to complain about that — science does march onwards, and it probably represents the best estimates of that time.
The horizontal scale is a real problem, and is revealing something about early attitudes towards evolution. It’s completely unlabeled and poorly explained. Each of the bands of color is, apparently, a lineage; in the excerpt from the beginning of the histomap below, the light green are the bacteria, the dark green are the chlorophyllic plants, the yellow are the porifera, etc.
The extent of each lineage along the horizontal axis is drawn with some care, but it’s meaningless. The legend says, “The horizontal width of any strip at any time suggests in a general way the relative dominance of that type of life at that time.” It’s got the Porifera as the bulk of chart 900 million years ago, for example, with plants and bacteria as a narrow strip, tiny in proportion. It doesn’t even make sense to talk about “dominance” in these terms, and obviously there is no way to measure this.
Another problem with this particular rendering of evolutionary history is that almost every band arises independently from a spot on the left border. Read it literally, and this is a chart of sequential creation, with no detectable relationship between most lineages.
The absurdity grows increasingly apparent as we read down the chart. Here’s the bottom of the histomap; the modern era is completely dominated by the bloated bands of humans to a ridiculous degree.
The yellow (of course!) bands on the left are the Chinese and Japanese — the map is broken down by human races and nationalities by this point — the orange are the Russians, and that broad pink grouping near the middle are the Americans on the left, the English on the right, and a narrower lighter pink swath separating them representing Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders, and South Africans. Then the Germans in blue, the Latins in light green, etc. If you look way, way over on the right, you’ll find those unimportant bacteria, plants, insects, and mammals as teeny-tiny little ribbons which together compose about as much relative importance as the Greeks and Italians.
The focus of the entire chart is on two trivial and poorly defined entities: human “races” and “dominance”, with evolution as only a badly represented premise. All that impressed me is how badly it is done.
The creator, John B. Sparks, seems to have done a lot of this kind of visualization work. He also did histomaps of world history, religion, and who knows what else. The world history map seems to be uncritically praised, but what little I’ve seen of it looks like more of the same — charts with the author’s subjective impressions of importance illustrated over time. I don’t get it. They look utterly useless to me, except as pointless accumulations of words and a false representation of a few events in time. Oh, and as a historical curiosity. I hope no one is trying to learn history or science from these things.
If you’re curious about the public response to PBS’s Judgment Day, the PBS ombudsman has an article up on it. It had above average viewership; there were a lot of complaints that it was “one sided”, but that’s just too bad, since the science is decidedly one sided.
The letters are the best part. Here are a couple of my favorites:
It doesn’t take a “Rocket Scientist” to figure out that if we, as humans, evolved from monkeys . . . THEN WHY? . . . Are there STILL Monkeys??? We were “Created” by God!!! Pull up AOL now and you’ll notice the Gov. of Georgia praying for rain, (No Doubt to GOD). When 9/11 happened what did every good neighbor do? PRAY. Not to monkeys . . . To our “Creator”!!! It shouldn’t take tragic and desperate circumstances for people to realize this fact!!! GOD BLESS AMERICA!!! In GOD We Trust!!!
Yeah, you can tell which side had the geniuses. That’s just pathetic.
It was fascinating to see those dipstick high school teachers, bolstered by the heir to the Darwin fortune explain the impossible and to the great lengths that these . . . will go to deny that there is a greater power than some . . . that passed teacher’s college in some backwater . . . state.
“Heir to the Darwin fortune”? Like Darwin got rich off of his science. I don’t think Chapman is a wealthy heir, either. And insulting the teachers is a nice touch.
