FEBRUARY-2007
I tuned in to see tonight's (Thursday) scheduled Paula Zahn Now/CNN presentation concerning "an ostracized atheist family" only to find that they were filling the hour rehashing the seamy life and death of poor little rich girl Anna Nicole Smith.
PZ Myers @ Pharyngula reports that the segment WILL air TONIGHT, (Friday, 8 PM) with comments from Richard Dawkins, the World's Most Famous Atheist, and a panel that includes Christopher Hitchens, who apparently is still an atheist.
That's TONIGHT - Friday, 8 PM, Paula Zahn Now/CNN.
I am aware that the assumed instinctive belief in God has been used by many persons as an argument for his existence. The idea of a universal and beneficent Creator does not seem to arise in the mind of man, until he has been elevated by long-continued culture. [Charles Darwin]
But I own that I cannot see ... evidence of design and beneficence on all sides of us. There seems to me too much misery in the world. I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created that a cat should play with mice. [Charles Darwin]
If I had my life to live over again, I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once a week. [Charles Darwin]
DARWIN DAY, February 12:
CHARLES ROBERT DARWIN (1809-1882) British naturalist who revolutionized the study of biology with his theory of evolution based on natural selection.
On or around Charles Darwin's birth date, many will take part in a celebration of science and humanity, usually focusing on the marvelous contributions of this influential contributor to the advancement of science. To see if there is a Darwin celebration near you, go to: Darwin Day
EVOLUTION SUNDAY
The Second Annual Evolution Sunday will occur on February 11, 2007.
Evolution Sunday is being sponsored by The Clergy Letter Project, a collection of more than 10,400 members of the Christian clergy who have signed a letter asserting that Christianity and modern evolutionary science need not be at odds with one another. More info...
WHO ARE THE DODOS?!
(Photo: Muffy, the producer's Mom)
Randy Olson - biochemist turned film maker has produced and directed Flock of Dodos a humorous documentary take on the Evolution-Intelligent Design Circus over evolution in Kansas and elsewhere.
The film will be offered as part of special Darwin weekend events, hitting 31 screens from Boston to LA. Let’s see… Champaign, IL… Knoxville and Nashville, TN… I mention these ‘cuz it looks like they're the nearest venues to (purportedly purple) Ohio that will be presenting the movie this weekend. Oh, yes, it WILL be shown in Lawrence, KANSAS!
From most reports the film is funny. apparently it's effective, too. The ad agency behind the "Swift Boat" ads in the 2004 presidential election has been hired by The Discovery Institute, ID advocates.
View the Trailer
COROLLARY (of sorts) FOR BLACK HISTORY MONTH
THE MYSTERY OF CONSCIOUSNESS
By Steven Pinker - Friday, Jan. 19, 2007 
The biology of consciousness is a sounder basis for morality than unprovable dogmas about God or an immortal soul. Time to get real...
The young woman had survived the car crash, after a fashion.
In the five months since parts of her brain had been crushed, she could open her eyes but didn't respond to sights, sounds or jabs. In the jargon of neurology, she was judged to be in a persistent vegetative state. In crueler everyday language, she was a vegetable.
So picture the astonishment of British and Belgian scientists as they scanned her brain using a kind of MRI that detects blood flow to active parts of the brain. When they recited sentences, the parts involved in language lit up. When they asked her to imagine visiting the rooms of her house, the parts involved in navigating space and recognizing places ramped up. And when they asked her to imagine playing tennis, the regions that trigger motion joined in. Indeed, her scans were barely different from those of healthy volunteers. The woman, it appears, had glimmerings of consciousness.
Try to comprehend what it is like to be that woman. Do you appreciate the words and caresses of your distraught family while racked with frustration at your inability to reassure them that they are getting through? Or do you drift in a haze, springing to life with a concrete thought when a voice prods you, only to slip back into blankness? If we could experience this existence, would we prefer it to death? And if these questions have answers, would they change our policies toward unresponsive patients--making the Terri Schiavo case look like child's play? Read the TIME Magazine article here
VIDEO: CANDLE POWER: Who Needs Batteries?
THE "DON'T SAY 'VAGINA' " DIALOGUE...
Vagina Monologues, Florida Style.
By Massimo Pigliucci
This is the sort of small-minded bigotry that can ruin a good quarter of my day. There I was, exercising in my gym this morning, minding my own business, when I see a CNN segment on the latest idiocy started by someone who was “offended” by something she saw and had to start a revolution as a consequence.
The report says that a woman driving by the Atlantic Theater, somewhere in Florida, saw the marquis announcing the play “The Vagina Monologues” and got so upset that she called the manager of the establishment and ask him to take the offensive word off public view. When asked why she was so upset about it, the pious idiot said that she was driving with her niece, and was embarrassed when the girl asked her “what's a vagina?”
The management of the theater, of course, immediately obliged and changed the title of the play (presumably without asking the author or the company performing it) to the witless “The Hoohaa Monologues.” ... Continue here
(A hoohaa?! One commenter says, "A hoohaa is what you use to make whoopie!")
Alcohol and calculus don't mix - don't drink and derive!
DILBERT'S A FILBERT
Scot Adams may THINK he's an intelligent designer. He composes funny, intelligent comix, but he's in over his head - or he's trying too hard not to offend the nut-fundie adherents to the Creation Fable. Scot doesn't take criticism well, which leaves him with more than a few pissed off fans.
At any rate, the fundangelicals probably never read him anyway... Here's some humorous image doctoring @ Bronze Blog
(Click on any image to ENLARGE it)
DARWIN'S "DEATHBED CONVERSION" - NOT!!
PZ Myers, blogging @ Pharyngula has declared aging goody-two-white-bucks crooner Pat Boone A MORON!
Poor Darwin's False Religion has the former teen heartthrob explaining science!
The article remains, but the most ludicrous paragraph has been excised, probably by one o' the WingNut editors. In the now-removed passage, Brother Boone related the hoary fable of Darwin's "Death Bed Conversion". It's worth a look to see what passes for science writing @ WingNutDaily: ...
But in a fascinating book, John Myers' "Voices from the Edge of Eternity," we find the detailed personal account of Lady Hope, of Northfield, England, who visited the aging scientist often at his bedside during his last days. It's too long to recount well here, but she tells of the Bible he was reading constantly and of the worship services that took place regularly in the summerhouse in his garden. She says that when she brought up the controversy still raging between believers in the Genesis account of creation and the growing group of scientists and teachers dismissing that account in favor of his "The Origin of Species" and related theories, he seemed distressed. And "a look of agony came over his face as he said 'I was a young man with unformed ideas. I threw out queries, suggestions, wondering all the time about everything. To my astonishment the ideas took like wildfire. People made a religion of them.'"
PZ writes, "Lady Hope was a good evangelical Christian—that is, she was a shameless liar, fraud, and fool. I can see where Pat Boone might feel some affinity for her dishonest propaganda..."
PZ also notes the Wing Nut Daily site also offers "Chuck Norris weighing in on the appropriate qualifications for the presidency. Now if he'd said, "the ability to kick someone in the face while they're standing in front of you," I'd have this pegged as a humor piece. But noooo. His requirements that our president be "wise" and a "good Christian", pedestrian and merely brainless ideas." 
Good fortune. COMMENT! Please spread the meme. Don't smoke in bed...
