1. Neanderthal genetic analysis?

Another, a variety of FOXP2, is related to speaking and the capacity to create a language and therefore suggests they could communicate orally.

Dammit. Not again.

Even Wikipedia knows that the presence of FOXP2 does not equal language ability:

Different studies of FOXP2 in songbirds suggest that FOXP2 may regulate genes involved in neuroplasticity: During song learning FOXP2 is upregulated in brain regions critical for song learning in young zebra finches.

FOXP2 has also been implicated in the development of bat echolocation.

2. This has got to be a joke.

If interpreted as such, it's pretty damn funny:

As Governor Palin and the Wasilla Assemblies of God Church will tell you, the End Times will soon be upon us. As noted in the video linked below, Governor Palin recognizes that Alaska will be a refuge for Christians in the End Times. This is why she tells us (and the Masters Commission graduates she's addressing) that the $30 billion natural gas pipeline she's promoting is God's Will.

See? This can't possibly be real:

After that, I can't muster up the legitimate fear to be seriously scared by the 'Theocracy Now' bumper stickers.

1. Really interesting (study on autism and eye gaze).

2. Idiots. I live in a city full of idiots.

3. I want one!

It'd also be a good teaching/ABA/occupational therapy tool.

4. I need to make sure I make it down here before I move away from the northwest.

5. An interesting argument for the use of alternative medicine:

The problem is, an evidence-based medical practitioner cannot really use a placebo to full effectiveness.

But there's another way. We can get people who are naturally more convincing - because they actually do believe in the effectiveness of the treatment. And if that helps the patient believe, we may be able to take more complete advantage of the placebo effect.

That is, I'd like to consider the possibility of the established medical fraternity co-opting the alternative medicine crowd (at least where the treatements are clearly harmless, like homeopathy) in order to take the fullest possible advantage of the placebo effect when it's the most effective treatment available.

1. The best photo of a hippo's ass you'll see all day.

2. The study helps to explain why metal concert goers often seem dazed, confused, and incoherent.

Beavis & Butthead are studied as test subjects:

It is well understood, however, that cartoon characters are able to tolerate greater than normal impacts without injury.

3. The subject of many a childhood nightmare right here. The worst part was peeking through the curtains to see the motionless animatronics pre-show.

And there's a documentary....

4. It's kinda cool that no one really knows his/her gender. But I find it hard to believe that a woman would create a series with such a dearth of truly interesting female characters....

5. Deep-sea superorgasm.

Or not. But the porn soundtrack doesn't help.

1. Perfect.

2. Win!

(After the fact, but still.)

3. Why isn't there one of these in every city? I'd join in a heartbeat.

4. Best insult ever:

You can slide down my hunchback using your tongue as a brake.

From here. I wonder how many of those phrases/words actually mean what they claim when interpreted by a native speaker.

5. Why can't we, as a species, get past the point where women are seen as possessions to be given away as rewards? I myself don't enjoy being equated with a pat on the back. (Though I'm all for supporting the shoe-thrower.)

1. Quoth Answers in Genesis:

Chimpanzees do have intelligence. They do have general learning abilities, limited though they are (by comparison to those of human infants). They can ‘learn’ words, but the don’t ‘acquire’ language naturally.

And...

The various experiments which have produced language learning in chimpanzees have been achieved by methods that are not those used by all normal babies around the world, who spontaneously and sequentially acquire speech/language.

Are they just ignoring Kanzi? Sure he didn't acquire full human language, but what abilities he possesses he definitely acquired. He was not taught. He merely observed and applied what he observed.

2. The subject, in its spiritual, religious, and even eschatological dimensions, needs to be treated and debated among us, not simply as an unfortunate social deviation or ephemeral social fad, but as a cutting-edge component of a rising, all-encompassing religious world view that is diametrically opposed to the world view of Christian theism.

What is the subject at hand, you may ask? Materialism? Communism? Liberalism? Atheism?

No. Homosexuality.

An "all-encompassing religious world view that is diametrically opposed to the world view of Christian theism"?? What about gay Christians? They're more diametrically opposed to Christian theism than straight atheists?

Thus, while sexual liberation in its popular, successful, government-financed versions strategically associates itself with "civil rights," pro-choice civic values, and politically-correct tolerance, often studiously avoiding any obvious religious dimension, its ultimate legitimization-since all human beings are religious-proceeds from the age-old dogmas of paganism, which, unlike their modern equivalent, never tried to hid behind a thin veil of temple-state separation.

They just throw that in there so casually, that all humans are -- of course -- religious. Heh.

In a time of moral confusion and politically correct intimidating "tolerance" [....]

Ha. Tolerance is intimidating. Okay then.

In 1923 Feder Mühle, a businessman who became involved in Spiritualism, founded the Gottesbund Tanatra in Görlitz, Silesia-home of Jacob Böhme. Members wore the God's Eye badge and believed that homosexuals "were vocationally mediums."66 They also, with a certain logical consistency, held that heterosexual intercourse impaired the mediumistic talent. This small detail of Germanic occultic history is significant. Since leading contemporary homosexuals make the same claims,67 without any apparent dependence on the theories of Mühle, such parallel thinking would suggest an organic connection between homosexuality and shamanistic religious activity.68

Leading contemporary homosexuals believe that heterosexual intercourse is harmful??

3. This basically re-states my feelings on the Atheist placard in the WA state capitol. Worth a read, though. Especially for the argument in the comments section....

4. Scarily accurate.

5. They are not tame, and are still convinced after four months that I'm going to eat them in the morning. This is becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.

They are very noisy. If your neighbor has a barking dog or annoying offspring, these would be fine revenge. If you just find it amusing to see brainless alien freaks that look like old-style football helmets running around on tiny orange legs, they will fit the bill.

Can't talk. Coming down.

1. The saga continues some more.

But he was offended by the atheist message, which he felt was designed mostly to mock religion.

Well, not solely, I'm sure. And in the FFRF's defense, how many Christian displays/messages do you run across that proclaim that they're right and everyone else is wrong?

I still don't like the sign very much, though.

2. Snails have teeth??! Shit. Something else I need to be afraid of.

3. What the hell is up with this scale illustration?? Is that a woman in a long dress? A priest in a cassock? Is that a neckerchief or an ascot?

4. Jesusduck!

5. And these nimrods say that all dinosaurs died out like 65 trillion years ago? I'm a Christian, and even I know that number is insane, but leave it to science to brainwash the masses using "data" and "carbon dating". You can't tell how old a rock is without reading the Bible. We know from the Bible that the world is about 6,000 years old.

I'd like to expand the use of that phrase: "You can't know ____ without reading the Bible."

You can't know I got that exam question wrong without reading the Bible.

But Officer, you can't know I was speeding without reading the Bible.

1. This is really scary. And dangerous. People actually want the world to become worse and back it up with religion.

2. Ow ow ow ow ow. That poor woman with the paperclips....

3. Cephalopod!

If reincarnation exists, I want to be some sort of cephalopod. Preferrably not a calamari squid. Or one of those giant squids that ends up dissected by scientists live on the internet.

4. A really good idea. Now all they need to do is schedule more of these. Maybe divide them up like they do concerts -- one all-ages, one over-21?

5. Ha. I didn't know Twilight was written by a Mormon.

1. Way to make horn players look good, guys....

And apparently what makes their acts criminal (or at least one thing that does) is that they're "ritualistic." Apparently rituals are illegal in Louisiana.

B.(1) For purposes of this Subsection, "ritualistic acts" means those acts undertaken as part of a ceremony, rite, initiation, observance, performance, or practice that result in or are intended to result in:

(a) The mutilation, dismemberment, torture, abuse, or sacrifice of animals.

(b) The ingestion of human or animal blood or human or animal waste.

What about Communion?

C.(1) No person shall commit ritualistic mutilation, dismemberment, or torture of a human as part of a ceremony, rite, initiation, observance, performance, or practice.

Circumcision? And I'm sure Baptism could be argued to count here.

(3) No person shall commit ritualistic psychological abuse of children or of physically or mentally disabled adults as part of a ceremony, rite, initiation, observance, performance, or practice.

Sunday school? Vacation Bible School? I could go on for days here....

2. The tsar and his wife Alexandra believed that Rasputin had the power to heal their hemophiliac son Alexei, so they kept Rasputin around the house as sort of a turn of the century Kato Kaelin.

Best metaphor ever.

3. The saga begins.

I was with them until the fourth sentence, which I tend to agree with generally, but it's unnecessary on the sign.

4. Sheep!

5. Yay!

It's always nice to find allies in unlikely places.

The American creed is faith in liberty for all, not the religion of most.

It always struck me as strange when people try to argue that America's a Christian nation simply because most of its citizens are Christian. That would mean that it's also a Euro-Caucasian nation because most of its citizens are white. Clearly there's some faulty logic at play here.

1. And yes, someone has finally complained about the least offensive atheist publicity-stunt ever.

Re: the Christians protesting:

The billboards are not about them. They’re not even mentioning, much less attacking, their beliefs.

And how many Christian billboards have I seen? And how much more aggressive are they?

2. I want one! I want a whole house made out of those things. It'd be like living in a beehive.

3. Aside from the obvious political and emotional impact, this is also just a really beautiful photo.

4. Orthodox Christianity and/or Russian culture didn't try to stifle women's sexuality, did it? Surely not....

5. Truly disturbing gas-masks? Check.

All the more reason to join the military!

NCSE-sponsored review of the Creation Museum

Some interesting excerpts from a review of the Creation Museum that I ran across the other day:

A December 15, 2003 posting on the AIG website went into considerable detail about what the museum would have to counter traditional natural history museums and eventually christened the "Creation Museum" with the far more appropriate name of "The Anti-Museum." Hence the title of this review.

This reminds me of that "What's Your Anti-Drug?" campaign. The Bible is my Anti-Museum.

In front of the ticket booth is a very nice composite wooly Rhino fossil from Siberia on loan to AIG from two of its supporters. I thought this was merely a cast when I first saw the skeleton, because only a thin strip of cloth blocked it off. This cavalier attitude towards a valuable specimen is rather remarkable for a museum, even this one. The mannequins of various biblical characters that appear much later in the museum tour were much more protected by railings and other security.

That's really scary. I suppose they either don't realize the value of the fossil, or they assume that their guests will all behave like good Christians and look but not touch.

About the planetarium show:

The closing credits listed Dr. Jason Lisle as the writer of the program. Dr. Lisle has a Ph.D. in Astrophysics from the University of Colorado, Boulder. He moved to Kentucky after his graduation to work for Answers in Genesis. He has yet to publish his claims about Blue Supergiants and time dilation of light in peer reviewed journals.

Man, what a loophole. If you want to get your claims 'legitimized' the easy way -- without submitting to peer review -- just give them a Creationist spin and send 'em on over to the Hamster.

If fish could scream, the ocean would be loud as shit. (Thanks Mitch.)

Some actual text from the Museum:

Views about fossils have come and gone. But fossils do not tell us where these creatures came from or how they died.

Um. Sometimes they do. Go check out a children's paleontology or archaeology book from the library. You'll find plenty of examples there.

Genesis also gives an eyewitness account of a catastrophic, worldwide Flood, about 4,350 years ago

This got me thinking. What was happening worldwide at around that time, according to "secular" scientists? Has anybody ever made parallel timelines? I'm just wondering what that flood is supposed to have been interrupting. Not that the AIGers would agree -- they already know what was going on at the time because they've read the bible.

Most fossils are a silent testimony to God's worldwide judgement.

So fossils are God's way of saying, "If you don't listen to me, this is what'll happen." How...merciful. I've thought it for many years, but this emphasizes the fact that the Christian god (as a literary character, of course) is a complete asshole.

POV switch! Back to the reviewer:

The display also included a really poorly reconstructed Iguanadon eating a cycad tree model. The artist must have read that Iguanadon had pebbly skin texture and gave him giant platy pebbles unlike what skin impressions really reveal about this dinosaur. The cycad plant is so bad that it looks like a giant pineapple.

People, do your research. You knew you were gonna be scrutinized by unsympathetic viewers. It's not rocket science. Give the job to a Bible college intern or something. Make sure they've got an internet connection and a library card, throw a few bucks their way for some journal subscriptions, and you're done.

Re: the Ark display:

I really loved the animated figure with the Yiddish accent.

Oh no. Where's Mel Gibson and his historical linguistics team when you need him?

Paleozoic sedimentary rocks are depicted as forming catastrophically in underwater environments, although many terrestrial environments, including tidal flats, soils, and desert dunes are well represented in the Paleozoic. Another biggie in Flood geology is having Pennsylvanian coals form from floating forests that are catastrophically buried. There is a really nice mural of a "floating forest" on one wall. Most Mesozoic terrestrial and marine environments are also depicted as forming under water. One plaque reads "as the sea level rose, flood waves reached farther and farther inland. Ecosystem after ecosystem of plants and animals were carried out to sea and buried." An accompanying cartoonish diagram depicts a dinosaur walking underwater with its mouth open and leaving footprints.

I just don't think I get this. Terrestrial ecosystems form underwater? I have to be missing something. Please let it make more sense than this.

The presence of a marsupial-dominated vertebrate fauna in Australia must really worry the creationists. A most remarkable explanation is given: "marsupials, which have pouches, can nurse their young while moving. That may explain why on each continent [marsupials] were the first mammals buried and preserved after the Flood."

Uh. Is that true? Are marsupials the earliest mammals found on every continent? And when they say "first mammals buried and preserved," do they mean those that are farthest down in the strata? That are dated as being the oldest? Do they buy into "secular" dating methods for fossils/artifacts at all? Is that statement based on anything factual or was it pulled out of their asses (and/or their bibles)?

Races apparently begin with Noah's sons and are dispersed after the Confusion of Tongues at the Tower of Babel. After Babel, Ham's descendants go to Africa, Shem's to Arabia and Asia, and Japheth's go to Europe. This is basically insane, outdated 19th Century quack anthropology, but no one else seemed to notice. Homo erectus, Neanderthals, and Cro-Magnon are claimed to originate from these refugees from Babel and became cave dwellers.

Erectus originated from Noah's sons? Were they Homo sapiens? So they evolved backwards?

It was most fascinating and disturbing to see religion sold in the same way as diet pills, male enlargement creme, baldness cures, and the Bass-O-Matic ™.

Heh.

The walls had a number of fossil displays, but most were not yet labeled.

I wonder if they use any of the fossils for specific, fact-based displays? I hope the "yet" above is correct and they will label them as time permits. Otherwise, it's sounding to me like they just threw in a few fossils here and there to make the place look credible. Which is a huge waste.

According to artwork in the film, children in ancient Japan even had pet Stegosaurs.

Man. Japanese kids get all the cool toys.

The special effects consisted of the chairs vibrating every time the angels flew by and water being squirted from a hole in the back of the seat in front of you every time there was a water scene (like the Ark floating in the violent Flood).

You've got to be kidding me.

From a distance it was apparent there were several outdoors dinosaur models there including an outdated tail-dragging Tyrannosaurus.

Again. Research. Please.

Okay. I looked up a bit of AIG's thoughts on fossils, and here's what I found:

Of course, species is a man made term used to describe many variations of the same kind. There are several species of dog, but really they are all part of the same kind.

There aren't many species of dog, if they mean domesticated dogs. And I hope they do, because that's how the lay reader will interpret it. If they don't mean what the average reader will get out of their text, it's dishonest of them to publish it without clarification.

Anyways, all domesticated dogs fall under a subspecies (Canis lupus familiaris), not a species. Poodles, German Shepherds, and Labradors are not species. They're breeds, further subdivisions under the subspecies Canis lupus familiaris.

If you're gonna attack the concept of species and/or naming, at least be clear (and correct) about what you're attacking.

Of course, there is evidence of variation within the kind in the fossil layers. But they obviously didn’t change into each other, since the vast majority of the fossils in the fossil record died together.

They did?? Evidence? Who did the dating/stratigraphy?

Imagine this illustration of bad science:

In 300 years, people began digging in a human graveyard that was from a battle in WWII and find human bodies. They began lining them up by arm length and say that over long periods of time, the arms of people began to get longer!

But this is what evolutionists are doing

*headdesk*

I can't even summon a response to that. If they're that ignorant/deceitful, it's not even worth my admittedly worthless time and effort to refute them.

There is a predetermined age for certain fossils (once again based on assumption), and when they are found in a certain rock layer, that rock layer is given that age. Interestingly enough, the fossils are dated by the rock layers they are in, an example of circular reasoning.

How about some absolute dating methods? I know the good folks at AIG aren't ignorant of the existence of them:

Before we get into the details of how radiometric dating methods are used, we need to review some preliminary concepts from chemistry. Recall that atoms are the basic building blocks of matter.

But that's Just A Theory!

Anyways, this accusation of circular reasoning is dishonest -- they know it's not circular logic if it's correlated with absolute dating. Even if they don't agree with the 'Darwinist's' interpretation of said dates, they can't call the logic circular.

Interesting that Lucy is used as a evidence, considering the fossils reveal that it was a male, as anatomist Dr. David Menton points out.

Wow. Just...wow. Has he tried to publish this information? Is Johanson aware of it? Do any paleoanthropologists agree with him (you'll notice that his degree is in cell biology, not paleoanthropology or even anatomy, though he did teach the latter)?

[Dr. Menton's bio reveals that he's a Brown alum. Nooooooo!!! *Platoon-esque-fists-raised-heavenward*]

Damn. I've built up quite a backlog of stuff to post. [Just be glad I didn't go for the obvious pun with 'backlog.']

1. Mmm...self-referential.

2. Kentucky, you make me sad.

3. Only the stories of dead religions can be appreciated for their beauty. Living religions require much more of you.
--Salman Rushdie

Some good stuff. Some neutral stuff. Some stuff I disagree with. But good overall.

4. Paint sandwich!

5. This is starting to look like an advertisement for a career in jazz anthropology.