Journal of No. 118

All 50 Chapters!

I liked the parts where these old Yehudis tolchock each other and then drink their Hebrew vino, and getting onto the bed with their wives' handmaidens. That kept me going.

A faithful (so to speak) adaptation, and remarkably restrained, given much of his other work. Sure, every woman typifies his ideal proportions, but they mostly have clothes on, and the sex scenes are hardly gratuitous, though the adult supervision warning on the cover is justified.

The pictures force you to slow down, and think about some of the weird stuff going on, and some of the pictures may help to draw the weirdness to your attention. Why exactly is Abraham pretending his wife is his sister, so he can prostitute her not once, but twice? Crumb actually addresses this in his afterword, suggesting that this was some remnant of a hieros gamos-type ritual, in which Sarah plays a role as goddess to cement a relationship with these political leaders. Anyhoo.

Or other things like Jacob and Laban, where the two basically take turns screwing each other (in the business sense), including bonus magic, as Jacob uses striped sticks to produce stripe-y sheep and goats.

I mean, yeah, yeah, Adam & Eve & the Flood is all great, but why don't we ever hear about the animal husbandry of stripe-y flocks?

This sat on my amazon wishlist for a long time. And now I have it so that I can...

✓graphic novel

Imagine there's a bird called the isoduck that lays eggs. And you're an isoduck farmer, and you have lots of isoducks and lots of isoduck eggs.

You discover that if you have a bunch of isoduck eggs, half of them will hatch into isoduck chicks every hour.

So if you put 16 eggs in a big box, after an hour, there would be 8 eggs and 8 chicks. And after another hour there would be only 4 eggs and 12 chicks. And so on.

One day one of your farmhands shows you a box. Inside it are 3 eggs and 9 chicks. He tells you that he only put eggs into the box, but now there are both eggs and chicks. You tell him, "I know when you put the eggs in the box."

He asks you how you know that. So kids, how do you know?

That's right! You know that half of the eggs hatch every hour. If there are 3 eggs now, that means an hour ago there were six eggs, and that means instead of 9 chicks, there were only 6 chicks and hour ago. And with six eggs and six chicks, obviously one more hour ago, there were 12 eggs. So your farmhand put the eggs into the box two hours ago.

By counting the number of eggs and chicks, you can calculate how long ago the eggs were put in a box.

Now the isoduck is made up. But in real life there are certain atoms that are radioactive. These radioactive atoms, also called isotopes, don't hatch into ducks, but they hatch into different kinds of atoms. For instance, one kind of potassium isotope hatches into an argon isotope.

And they hatch with the same rules as the duck. Only it isn't half of them every hour. It takes 1.3 billion years for half of them to hatch!

But the rules are the same, by counting the number of potassiums and argons, you can calculate how long ago the isotopes were put in a box.

Of course, there aren't any potassium farmers that put potassium isotopes in a box. But there are certain kinds of rocks that have potassium in them. And argon is a gas, so it shouldn't be found in a rock like this. But when we look, we find there are little argon isotopes trapped inside the rock! When the rock was hot and molten, the argon would all bubble away like steam escaping. So when the rock cools and gets hard, there's no argon inside. So all the argon that we see today came from the potassium isotopes hatching.

By counting the number of potassium and argon isotopes, you can calculate how long ago the rock cooled down and became solid.

And when we do that, we find that the oldest rocks on earth we find are more than 4 billion years old.

Likely 2016 voters prefer gay people over evangelicals.

"In it, 53 percent of respondents held a favorable view of gay people, while 42 percent held a favorable view of evangelical Christians. Meanwhile, 18 percent of the likely voters surveyed held an unfavorable view of gay people, while 28 percent held a negative view of evangelical Christians.
...
When evangelicals, for instance, were asked if they favored or opposed gay marriage, only 19 percent of those older than 50 favored same-sex unions, but 45 percent of the 18- to 29-year-old set did."

It will be interesting to see the Republicans slowly change their tune on this. They want to keep their hoodwinked conservative evangelical base, but these are the new realities. And we'll probably get to see it played out in the polling and primaries and presidential candidates. I know the social conservatives hope to do well in Iowa, but if gay marriage is their only message, they may be disappointed when they find that 36% of Iowans are pretty 'meh' about the whole thing.

I think we're already starting to see the shift. The gay marriage thing is getting close to 'stick a fork in it', but we may hear more and more about 'religious liberty' and its 'restoration'. But even that hasn't been going so well recently. When used as a codeword for discrimination, its popularity sinks like a rock and backpedalling ensues, leaving it as an empty nod to religious liberties that already exist. Much like all the other largely empty nods to religion that the Republicans have made to keep their base hoodwinked.

Of course, we're also hearing the new message about the poor minority of citizens who just have different beliefs about gay people, and how they're now being discriminated against, and you shouldn't treat people badly just because of their different beliefs. When they were the 'moral majority' they were deaf to the entreaties of the minorities, so they deserve to be ignored. But I will listen to them:

#1, to make sure no real discrimination is happening
#2, because their tears are delicious

Subtitle: A Sinner's Semester at America's Holiest University

It tells the story of a Quaker student at Brown who spends a semester at Jerry Falwell's Liberty University in 2007. OK, yes, it's a bit of a stunt, but at least it's an interesting one, and Roose definitely throws himself into the role, a lot more so than, say, Jason Rosenhouse in Among the Creationists. Roose enrolls at Liberty and presents himself as a Christian (At Liberty, "Christian" is synonymous with 'born again Christian') and (awkwardly) fakes up a recent conversion story to explain his presence (and why he has so little knowledge that he would flunk Sunday school for six year olds).

In short he comes to, generally, like the students and staff at Liberty, and a little Stockholm Syndrome sets in I think, and he finds himself simultaneously defending them, and disapproving of their (fairly common) homophobia and the one-sidedness of some portions of the 'education'. He even comes to have some appreciation for Jerry Falwell. And in "you can't make this shit up", he scores a one-on-one interview with Falwell for the school newspaper, gets praised for it by Falwell himself in convocation (I mean, what's not to praise, it was a puff-piece in the Liberty newspaper; the hard-hitting exposé uncovered the fact that Falwell had a peach Snapple every day at 3pm, which he slammed down in 6 seconds). A few days later, Falwell's dead, and this Quaker mole has published the last print interview Falwell ever gave, which comes to have a life of its own as it is reprinted in the memorial for the funeral.

I have once again abused the highlight feature of the Kindle...

( if you click here, I'll reward you with Larry Flynt's parody ad featuring Falwell that led to a Supreme Court case )

Interesting discussion from the NCSE about evolution questions on science literacy tests. First, given certain cultural biases against evolution, one has to be careful to navigate the difference between knowledge of, rather than acceptance of, evolution. "Life has evolved over several billion years." vs. "Scientists have formed the consensus that life has evolved over several billion years."

Even for these apparently(*) more neutral questions, there are problems. Although the correct answer is positively correlated with other measures of science educational background and knowledge, it is still more strongly correlated (in a negative fashion) with religious belief and religious service attendance. Should we use questions like this as a measure of science literacy, when in fact it is a better measure of something else? It's enough to make your head spin.


(*)Although "Scientists have formed the consensus that life has evolved over several billion years." is more 'neutral' about the student's belief, I would also note that one of the memes pushed by the antievolution crowd is that there are many scientists who reject evolution, and that the pendulum is swinging away from evolution. So students may give the incorrect response on the question, because they've been lied to by people they trust. Creationist students have been lied to about the science, and they've also been lied to about what scientists believe.

I got word that Professor Gerald Larue passed away recently at the enviable age of 98. There's a certain irony, I think, in the first president of the Hemlock Society living so long. I can't claim to have really met him, but I did bump into him at a debate on evolution/creationism between libertarian creep Mike Shermer and liar for Christ Duane Gish, 25 years ago at UCLA.

Larue was an interesting fellow. An early life of faith led him to study the bible and to profess biblical history and archaeology at USC for many years. But by that point, he had become decidedly skeptical.

One particular stunt stands out, and it's hard to untangle, since so many stories tell it out of order.

In 1985, a certain George Jammal wrote a letter to creationist Duane Gish, announcing that (after many travails) he had obtained a piece of Noah's Ark. Many, even in the creationist camp, had doubts, but...

In the early 90s, when Sun International Pictures wanted to make a documentary about the ark, Henry Morris of the Institute of Creation Research, gave them Jammal's name.

Sun's documentary, "The Incredible Discovery of Noah's Ark," which included Jammal's claims, aired on CBS.

Larue declared the whole thing to be a hoax.

Sun International Pictures doubled down. Quoting Talk Origins:

The secondary defense consisted of four parts: (1) That Sun had examined Morris' interview with Jammal. (2) That Sun had conducted their own two-hour audio taped interview looking for inconsistencies in Jammal's story. (3) That Sun compared the two interviews and found them to be consistent with each other. (4) That Sun gave Jammal's interview tapes to psychiatrist Paul Meier, who pronounced Jammal credible. By late September, Sun added a fifth defense: (5) That Sun had Jammal's hand-drawn map of Ararat and his expedition routes examined by Ararat expeditioneers who "assured us that it could not have been drawn by anyone who did not have experience with the mountain."

Reaction from CBS and the ICR was similar: "CBS, Sun, and the Institute for Creation Research (ICR) set out to control the damage to their credibility by defending the program against the criticisms of Larue. Since Jammal was continuing to defend his story, at first the three organizations went on the offensive against Larue. CBS Entertainment President Jeff Sagansky stated that "There was clearly a hoax perpetrated ... we're not sure whether it was on Sun International and CBS or whether it was on Time magazine." A press release from Sun called it "sad and unfortunate that Dr. LaRue [sic], a distinguished USC professor, would victimize Mr. Jammal and his family to execute a third party hoax in which he was the primary benefactor." John Morris, the Administrative Vice President of the ICR, made much of Larue's "long association with humanistic and anti-Christian organizations" and concluded that "This is hardly the resume of an objective critic." All defended the overall quality of Sun's research."

In 1993, "the Long Beach Press-Telegram--Jammal's hometown newspaper--ran a story about the hoax. In the story, Jammal did not admit to a hoax, but stated in response to a question about his religious background that "If I told you that, you'd know the secret." The reporter noted in the article that a poem framed in glass on Jammal's piano begins, "Humanism is a philosophy for people who think for themselves ....""

And so, eventually, Jammal revealed the deliberate hoax, and that Larue had been in on it with him from the beginning. They offered up a chunk of railroad tie marinated in teriyaki sauce, and creationists either bought it, or were happy to let other 'liars for Christ' perpetrate a fake on the public.

World Vision recently changed its rules to allow them to hire gay people who are legally married.

So certain segments of the Christian population behaved predictably, decrying the change and announcing they would stop supporting them.

Apparently, no one was around to shout, "Won't somebody please think of the children?"

And World Vision has unchanged its rules: "We have listened to you and want to say thank you and to humbly ask for your forgiveness."

First the North Carolina school wouldn't allow the Secular Students Alliance club to form.

Then the school would allow it to form.

Then due to threats and verbal abuse against her and her family & friends, the would-be club founder has decided not to form the club after all.

Yesterday, I posted this story (Iceland: Mystery Basalt Pillars 'Not Formed by Trolls Fighting') to FB, and was delighted by my friends sticking up for trollism. It was also cathartic to respond in kind, saying things I would probably never say to a creationist (unless I had really been worked up into a tizzy).

Yesterday was also the Ham on Nye Debate (still available for the time being on YouTube - when Ham starts selling DVD's, the free stream will likely vanish.) I only listened with one ear (literally) at work, but Nye did better than I feared. Most people seem to think he won handily, though the actual number of changed minds is probably zero. I paid more attention to Ham, who did okay with his rhetoric, but he's no Duane Gish.

Some dude on Buzzfeed who was there gave creationists from the audience a pen and asked them to write messages to evolutionists. I find it odd that a couple of them refer to there being 'only 1 Lucy'. I dunno if that's something Ham said in the debate, but obviously, there are many A. afarensis fossils. Maybe they'd accept evolution if they only knew.


Anyway, I now feel the urge to translate all creationist arguments into Troll.

How do you explain a sunset if their is no troll?