Please, please, please…I want to cast my vote for Al Franken in 2008, and I want him to be my representative in the Senate.
Why don’t our official news media ever dig into the truth as plainly as our comedians?
It’s BC and Johnny Hart, so you know it’s going to be godawful bad. Don’t read the rest unless you’ve got a vomit bag handy.
Paleontologists have uncovered yet another specimen in the lineage leading to modern tetrapods, creating more gaps that will need to be filled. It’s a Sisyphean job, working as an evolutionist.
This creature is called Tiktaalik roseae, and it was discovered in a project that was specifically launched to find a predicted intermediate form between a distinctly fish-like organism, Panderichthys, and the distinctly tetrapod-like organisms, Acanthostega and Ichthyostega. From the review article by Ahlberg and Clack, we get this summary of Tiktaalik‘s importance:
First, it demonstrates the predictive capacity of palaeontology. The Nunavut field project had the express aim of finding an intermediate between Panderichthys and tetrapods, by searching in sediments from the most probable environment (rivers) and time (early Late Devonian). Second, Tiktaalik adds enormously to our understanding of the fish-tetrapod transition because of its position on the tree and the combination of characters it displays.
Brian Alters, of McGill University, had a grant proposal turned down for an unusual reason.
I mentioned that I was getting a curious number of hits for the term “anencephaly” the other day, and was wondering what was prompting it. Readers have been sending me strange and obscure bits of news that might be relevant, such as this account of an unusual birth in Nepal.
The neck-less baby with its head almost totally sunk into the upper part of the body and with extraordinarily large eyeballs literally popping out of the eye-sockets, was born to Nir Bahadur Karki and Suntali Karki at the Gaurishnkar Hospital in Charikot.
The article has pictures (if the description above makes you cringe, don’t look), and also reflects a very different attitude: it looks like people put the dead baby in a tray and had a parade, with crowds of gawkers. They also had a refreshingly pragmatic attitude towards the whole unfortunate event.
Nir Bahadur, the father, says he does not feel any remorse for the newly-born baby’s death. “I am happy that nothing happened to my wife,” he said.
That’s an excellent point of view, I think, much more sensible than that of old Senator Fetus Fondler. Our country could do with a little less embryo worshipping and a little more moving on with the important things in life, too.
And, by the way, I think “Suntali” is a really lovely name.
Yes, it’s true: DeLay has said something with which I find myself in accord.
Last Tuesday Mr. DeLay spoke at “The War on Christians” conference during which he agreed with the central theme – that there is, indeed, a “war on Christians” in America today. He went on to say that America treats Christianity like a “second-rate superstition.”
I don’t agree with the first bit, of course: there is no “war on Christians”, although I think maybe there should be a rather more work on putting Christianity in its proper place (in the home and in people’s entirely personal beliefs, and out of government, the workplace, and public education). I am happy to see, though, that someone else has noticed that religious beliefs are just glorified superstitions.
There are important questions remaining. DeLay seems to be aware of a rating scale for superstitions with which I am unfamiliar. What distinguishes a second-rate from a first-rate superstition? Is the scale like the burn scale, where a third-rate superstition would be much, much worse than a first-rate superstition, or is it more embarrassing to believe in a first-rate superstition?
Working out the details of his scoring system for superstitions would be a good project for Mr DeLay in his retirement. I daresay he’d even be able to work on writing it up from a jail cell.
There are still a few pocked and dirty piles of it across the street, but as of this morning, all of the snow in my yard was completely gone. We’re catching up with those Californians!
I have a dream. I want to see the Genetic Omni-Dominance guy and John Titor, Time Traveler get together and have a conversation. I think it would be cosmic.
This is controversial stuff, too…should I be teaching it in my classes?
(via FrinkTank and Overcompensating)
Andy is looking for donations to a good cause. I lost a good friend to colon cancer several years ago myself, so I’ve kicked in a few dollars.
A reader sent me a note about this rather well known and deeply stupid poster from Jack Chick…I’d already seen it and addressed it some time ago, but I thought I’d bring back this old article.
Jack Chick, the author of the infamous Big Daddy anti-evolution tract, has an amusing poster he’s peddling.
It purportedly illustrates a series of frauds in the reported evolutionary history of human beings. The text is too tiny to read at this size, but it’s listed at Chick’s site, and I reproduce it below, along with my response.
