Destination: Boston

I’m on my way to Boston for a day. A few people have written wondering if there’d be any free time to get together, and I’m afraid today is booked solid. The one possibility is tomorrow morning (Thursday), my plane leaves at 11:20, and I’ll probably just hang about in the coffeeshop nearest my hotel for a while, and if anyone wanted to join me, please do. I’m staying in the Charles Hotel on Harvard Square in Cambridge — if any Bostonians can recommend a decent coffee house with wireless access near there, I’ll be grateful, and I’ll also probably be there at 8 am on Thursday.

A brief history of disbelief

I just finished watching a copy of a three-part program that was broadcast in England three years ago — A Brief History of Disbelief, narrated by Jonathan Miller. All I can say is … wow. It’s less an advocacy of atheism than a kind of post-atheism, a historical and philosophical review of this strange, dying idea of “religion” that reveals the progressive growth of atheistic thought. It’s wonderfully dismissive. The real question isn’t how people can disbelieve, but how faith can survive and still linger on.

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The most important battle in the history of mankind!

The most important battle in the history of mankind!

A bit more than a week ago, I mentioned this interview I did for a site called One Blog A Day. The comment thread on the interview has grown in a peculiar way — John A. Davison and his pet sycophantic monkey, VMartin, are babbling away in a most painfully lunatic fashion, cruelly egged on by wÒÓ†. It’s hard to beat this comment for delusions of grandeur:

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Anyone in Columbia, Missouri reading this?

Did you also attend this Intelligent Design quackery talk by John Marshall? Report in, please, and let us know how stupid it was (there is no doubt that it was stupid, we’re just interested in measuring the degree.)

Marshall is yet another M.D. who became a creationist because he looked objectively at the evid… oh, wait, no. None of them do that. It’s because:

But Marshall began to look into what he said were holes in the theory. And after becoming a Christian, Marshall found it hard to reconcile evolutionary theory with Genesis, the biblical account of how God created the earth and everything on it in six days. Marshall has since become a proponent of the view that there are some natural systems that cannot be adequately explained by natural forces, and therefore must be the result of intelligent design, or ID.

Isn’t it curious how religion is such a powerful force for inoculating people with appalling inanity?

Superman is doomed!

Bwahahahaha! At least … we have a source for Kryptonite!

Researchers from mining group Rio Tinto discovered the unusual mineral and enlisted the help of Dr Stanley when they could not match it with anything known previously to science.

Once the London expert had unravelled the mineral’s chemical make-up, he was shocked to discover this formula was already referenced in literature – albeit fictional literature.

“Towards the end of my research I searched the web using the mineral’s chemical formula – sodium lithium boron silicate hydroxide – and was amazed to discover that same scientific name, written on a case of rock containing kryptonite stolen by Lex Luther from a museum in the film Superman Returns.

“The new mineral does not contain fluorine (which it does in the film) and is white rather than green but, in all other respects, the chemistry matches that for the rock containing kryptonite.”

Wait … it’s white? Phooey. We need the green stuff. As everyone knows, white kryptonite only affects plants. Boring!

Deliberate and calculated lies

Atrios has links and videos of the Tillman hearings on misinformation from the battlefield; Tillman, you may recall, was the soldier who was killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan a few years ago. Jessica Lynch also gives an accurate account of her story. The common theme is that our government lied to us, intentionally distorting the facts to achieve propaganda goals. These are ugly stories of a government with no regard for the truth, except in how it can be twisted to support failed policies.

Why is this administration still in office again?

Start driving!

Did you know that if you left Minneapolis right now, you could be in Morris in time for the last Café Scientifique Morris of the 2006-2007 academic year? Tracey Anderson will be telling us all about aquatic insects, as well as just about anything you might want to ask about arthropods. If you can’t make it to this one, you’ll have to wait until September for your next opportunity.