Doesn’t this just ruin your day? A cephalopod is featured on Cute Overload. The comments will give you hyperglycemia.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
Doesn’t this just ruin your day? A cephalopod is featured on Cute Overload. The comments will give you hyperglycemia.
It’s Sunday morning! It’s that time when we lounge about in robes and jammies and mock (or feel pity for) the faithful, trudging off to be lied to at church. Here are a few fun links for us atheists:
Campus Atheists, Skeptics, and Humanists of UMM has a preliminary web page, designed by Skatje, and also has a forum. Their first meeting is on Thursday at 7 (pizza party at the Pizza Hut in Morris!), but the big initial recruitment fair is tomorrow — so she is looking for suggestions. She needs stuff she can put together now, but she’s also thinking longer term — ideas for tabling at the student union, for instance.
Kirk Cameron is getting feisty again in his own ridiculous style — he’s asking if we’ve “patronized blasphemy lately”. The answer is yes: frequently and with vigor, especially since the religious insistence on trivia makes it absurdly easy to commit blasphemy. S.Z. takes poor Kirk down a few notches. My favorite part: Kirk pines for the good old days when the Hays Code forbade blasphemy in the movies. S.Z. points out that the Hays Code also forbade miscegeny. Wash and Zoe: abomination!
Awful as it must be to be Kirk Cameron, I feel more pity for Matt Nisbet. Revere calmly pulverizes his liver, rips out his lungs, and gives him a classic Stooges eye poke. Nyuk nyuck nyuck. I don’t get it — I’m not averse to the principles of framing, but why is it that its proponents suck so badly at implementing it?
Lots of people have been sending me email to let me know that Coral Ridge Ministry is airing a program linking Darwin to Hitler. In case you missed it, this show, Darwin’s Deadly Legacy, was first aired last year, and I reviewed it then, Wilkins eviscerated its premises, and even the Anti-Defamation League got in the act. It’s a horrible piece of dishonest dreck, and now I guess it’s going to be a yearly television event, like a demented evil version of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.
This has me thinking — the Christianists will re-air their lies and stinking garbage over and over again, but have you ever noticed that the great science programs, the ones that inspired many of us, seem to be allowed one appearance and then … nevermore. Why doesn’t PBS have a yearly rebroadcast of, say, Carl Sagan’s Cosmos or Jacob Bronowski’s Ascent of Man? Those were great programs; I’ve seen bits and pieces of both now and then, and I think they’ve also aged reasonably well.
But no, we can find that droning mackerel’s lies for Jesus on a regular basis, but the beautiful and honest science shows get to rot in storage somewhere, with occasional fragmentary bits appearing on youtube.
Don’t miss Hector Avalos’ contribution to the debate on the relative morality of atheists and Christians!
I’m in the Middle Ages, where we don’t have computers, and it’s a real pain to have to hire a wizard to send these messages to the internet. You’ll have to talk amongst yourselves and peruse these fascinating carnivals without me.
The next Tangled Bank will be at Balancing Life on Wednesday. Send those links in to me or [email protected]. The list of future hosts is also shrinking, so if you have a blog and think you’d be interested in hosting, volunteer!
Not for me, for someone else. I just sit quietly and listen, but I must say this “Rule 11 of the FRCP” sounds awfully interesting. I’m not sure exactly what it means, but there sure are a lot of smart lawyers lining up on my side; they probably know, don’t you think?
Whoa, this one is a doozy. I dare you — I double-dog dare you — to stay awake through the whole thing.
Last chance at escapism before the school year starts: Skatje, her friend Nathan, and I are heading off to the Minnesota Renaissance festival today. I don’t know about this; hanging out with a gang of people pretending it’s the 13th century is a bit too much like meeting up with creationists.
I’ve heard of Hirschsprung’s Disease as an academically interesting instance of a developmental failure of nerve migration, but you really must read about the human cost of the disease — innocent little babies (and their parents) should never have to suffer this much. Chris Chatham is spreading the word about an expensive nutritional product, Omegaven, that has the potential to alleviate one symptom — liver failure due to the need for sustained IV feeding — and the idea is to encourage clinical testing so the treatment can be more widely used and supported by insurance companies. Let’s raise the profile of this work and try to get some media attention; reducing the need for infant liver transplants sounds like a worthy cause.
You may have noticed (how could you avoid it?) all the information about Seed’s new contest: if you’re commenting with a valid email address, you’re in the drawing. The prize is a 5-day trip to a great science city (there’s a poll to determine which one) — this is good, because even if some wacky creationist or HIV denialist or demented Republican wins, their reward will be some intense exposure to real science. I tell you, the brains behind this outfit are cunning and nefarious in their machinations. (If you are one of those deluded individuals who doesn’t want their illusions dashed, you can ask to be excused from the drawing. They’re cunning, but also nice.)
While I’m alerting you to the largesse of our host, let me mention another good deal: subscribe to Seed magazine, and they’ll give you this utterly faboo Sb beaker/coffee mug. I picked one up while I was in NY, and they are great — I’m half-seriously thinking I ought to get 6 subscriptions myself so I can have a whole set in my house, especially since my Trophy Wife™ has been casting covetous glances at my mug. Imagine your mornings, reading Seed, sipping coffee from that lovely mug; you’ll be the perfect image of the upscale nerd, just like me.
