Due to complex computery shenanigans, allowing the littlebaldbastard.com URL to lapse has disabled the feed that was syndicating content to Livejournal. Because LJ feeds are chiseled in granite and unmodifiable, this meant a whole new feed was necessary. The Ask the Little Bald Bastard/Suburban Panic LJ feed is now available at
http://syndicated.livejournal.com/suburbanpanic
I hope that you'll take the time to add the new feed to your friends list. Thanks for reading.
Everything you loved about Ask The Little Bald Bastard is now happening twice as hard at Suburban Panic! Get started with any of the recent headlines in the RSS widget-thingy above.
After almost six years on Blogger, Ask The Little Bald Bastard is pulling up stakes and hitting the trail. I've packed up the whole mess, and hired hundreds of industrious computer gnomes to cart it all off to my brand new old website, Suburban Panic!
My interest in the Internet has shifted a bit. I'm hoping to make my online writing something that could eventually find its way onto a résumé without instantly causing an embolism in a hapless Human Resources manager. Consensus seems to be that having "Bastard" in the URL won't exactly trigger an instant hiring frenzy.
The content won't be changing too drastically. I'll still answer questions when I get them, but the primary focus will be on short essays and cartoons. I'm making plans to bring some other contributors on board as well. The skeptical, anti-dogmatic rants will continue unabated.
What does this mean for you? Probably very little. Starting tomorrow, the Feedburner feed will start carrying the content from the new space. Livejournal readers, I'll be posting links to the feed for your use. The front page of Ask LBB will have links to the new page, as well as a saucy little feed widget posting links to the most recent updates.
Big thanks to everyone who's read and linked to Ask LBB over the years, and special "why can't you be more like them?" thanks to everyone who submitted a question. I hope you'll all join me at Suburban Panic! for another big announcement, 'round about the end of the week.
You. Yes, you. I don't care how little (or how much) you know or care about politics. I don't care how much you know or care about the Supreme Court, or the law in general. If you're a citizen of the United States, or you know someone who is, you need to read The Supreme Court: A User's Guide, by Dalia Lithwick of Slate. Why? Ms. Lithwick sums it up:
While the justices cannot bring down gas prices or bring home the troops, their decisions in the coming years will affect just about everything else: your rights regarding privacy, reproduction, speech and religion; how to count your vote and where your kids go to school; as well as your occupational and environmental protections. You name it, they'll decide it. Or they'll decide not to decide it (which may be even worse).You need to know what's happening in the Supreme Court, and the federal judiciary in general. You need to know that the Supreme Court is the only thing standing between you and the total abolition of your civil rights. If the Court abdicates its role of reviewing laws for constitutionality, Congress and the President will have free reign. (Free "reign." Get it?) If they agree that it's okay to start disenfranchising old people who don't have a favorite bible verse and college students who've ever discussed having an abortion, shipping them abroad to be waterboarded with crude oil drilled in your local park, and paying female torturers half as much as male torturers, while tapping the phones of their relatives, nobody will be able to stop them.
The most recent picture in NASA's Astronomy Picture Of The Day clearly shows the face of the Mantis God. His compound eyes gaze benevolently down upon us, his holy mandibles touch lightly as he showers his insecty love upon us.
Now known popularly as Hanny's Voorwerp, subsequent observations have shown that the mysterious green blob has the same distance as neighboring galaxy IC 2497. Research is ongoing, but one leading hypothesis holds that Hanny's Voorwerp is a small galaxy that acts like a large reflection nebula, showing the reflected light of a bright quasar event that happened in the center of IC 2497 about 100,000 years ago.Fear not, brothers and sisters. The Mantis God loves us all. When he returns to us, he will eat all the flies from every backyard, even of those soulless astronomers who gaze upon his holy carapace and see only a "mysterious green blob."
I went to the Popped! Festival Saturday lineup at Drexel University. Thanks are due to Y-Rock On XPN, and the woman who emailed their contest before me, and then couldn't attend.
I give the performers a score of 64 out of 73. Crystal Castles wasn't my cup of tea, but the acts were uniformly energetic and engaged with the crowd. They were mostly well-mixed too, with a minimum of vocals drowned out by instruments.
I have to give the festival itself a less-impressive 18 out of 25. Although the stage set-up (taking over 33rd Street north of Market) was interesting and well thought-out, there were other details that were wanting.
My biggest complaint was the policy barring re-entry. I understand that concession sales are necessary, but forcing us to stay in a two-square block radius for the planned eight-hour show, with three dollar water and eight dollar wraps as sustenance, was a tad frustrating. It was compounded by the fact that there was no notice of the policy. I didn't find out until after I'd gone in, and I was a little cheesed. After a few other people were similarly caught, they finally broke out the markers and scrap paper to make some handwritten signs, which would have been handier if they'd not been put up two hours after the gates opened.
There also seemed to be some disconnect between the yellow-shirted event staff and the grey-clad volunteers. Questions asked sometimes got different answers depending on the color of shirt worn by the answer-giver. That kind of lack of uniformity always grates on me.
Since I was there for free, I maintained a civil tongue. Through some clever wrangling, I managed to stay in the shade all day, whilst still being able to see the stage. All in all, it was a pretty good day, and I learned something valuable about myself.
I should never go to concerts.
I'm too self-conscious to dance, too spindly to mosh, and too concerned about hearing loss to get close enough to the stage to really connect with the performers. I wind up isolated in a crowd of people, feeling like I'm wearing the world's biggest pair of headphones. Instead of getting engaged by the music, I become hyper-aware of bumping into people, or sweating too much, or unexpectedly running into someone I know, and having to exchange awkward greetings over the din.
So the takeaway message is this. The Popped! Festival was fun. I am not so fun. From now on, I think I'll stick to my public radio podcasts. Somehow, I doubt the scene kids will notice I'm gone.
CNN.com/crime is reporting that a 16 year old Oregon boy, whose parents raised him in a faith-healing only church called the Followers of Christ, has died of a urinary tract blockage. The blockage caused a buildup of urea in his bloodstream, which poisoned his organs and caused heart failure.
He probably had a congenital condition that constricted his urinary tract where the bladder empties into the urethra, and the condition of his organs indicates that he had multiple blockages during his life, said Dr. Clifford Nelson, deputy state medical examiner for Clackamas County.In March, the boy's 15 month old cousin died of bronchial pneumonia and a blood infection, after her parents refused to do anything but pray for her recovery. The two children are the latest in a series of deaths among younger church members, which in 1999 prompted the state of Oregon to remove protections based on religion for parents who treat - or rather, FAIL to treat - their children with prayer rather than actual useful medicine.
"You just build up so much urea in your bloodstream that it begins to poison your organs, and the heart is particularly susceptible," Nelson said.
Nelson said a catheter would have saved the boy's life. If the condition had been dealt with earlier, a urologist could easily have removed the blockage and avoided the kidney damage that came with the repeated illnesses, Nelson said.
Clumps of a white substance, uncovered by excavations of the Martian surface by the Phoenix lander, have disappeared over the last few days. Observers are confident that these were chunks of water ice, which evaporated after being exposed by the digging.
Best reaction to date comes from a co-worker, who observed that they should probably open a Rita's up there. Mm, Martian Gelati.
A routine resolution to formally recognize a convention taking place in Harrisburg stalled because the group in question practices the wrong religion.
The 60th annual convention of the U.S. chapter of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community is scheduled to take place in the state capital this weekend. Speaker Dennis O'Brien (R., Phila.) proposed the resolution for formal recognition by the House, noting the convention's mission to "increase faith and harmony and introduce various humanitarian, social and religious services."
Unfortunately, there was a slight problem with the whole "Muslim" thing. Rep. Daryl Metcalfe (R., The Crusades) objected. "The Muslims do not recognize Jesus Christ as God," Mr. Metcalfe helpfully pointed out, "and I will be voting negative."
After this impromptu lesson in comparative theology, Rep. Gordon Denlinger (R., Bigotry) tried to classy-up the debate by invoking September 11th.
"Certainly this nation went through an attack some years ago that is well-burned into the subconscious of our society," he said. "What I sense on our floor today is that, for some people, this evokes very strong passion and emotion."You know what else evokes strong passion and emotion? Legislators who fail to grasp the basic principles of the Constitution. I'll admit that I think the resolution itself is a bit of a time-waster; shouldn't the approval of their god be enough to sustain them? But to squash the resolution because the subjects don't worship the same god as you and your colleagues? You've in effect created a religious test for resolutions by a legislative body. And did you not notice that you've now said on the record that some portion of our state legislators hear the word "Muslim" and immediately think "terrorist?"
Colleen Leduc, of Barrie, Ontario is a single mother, raising an 11 year-old autistic daughter. She sends her daughter to public school, because that's all she can afford.
On May 30th, she received a call from her daughter's school, asking her to come in right away. When she got there, she was informed that there were suspicions that her daughter was being sexually abused.
"The teacher looked and me and said: 'We have to tell you something. The educational assistant who works with Victoria went to see a psychic last night, and the psychic asked the educational assistant at that particular time if she works with a little girl by the name of "V." And she said 'yes, I do.' And she said, 'well, you need to know that that child is being sexually abused by a man between the ages of 23 and 26.'"Based on this ridiculous cold reading trick, school officials called the Children's Aid Society, which launched an investigation into the allegations.
[A] case worker came to the Leduc home to discuss the allegations of sexual misconduct, only to admit there wasn't a shred of evidence that anything had ever happened at all. They labelled Leduc a "diligent" mother doing the best she could for her child under difficult circumstances, closed the file and left, calling the report "ridiculous."This, right here, is why belief in spooky mind powers isn't harmless fun. These baseless allegations wasted the time and resources of the school, the CAS and most significantly of Colleen Leduc. She's only lucky that the "psychic" didn't blame her for the non-existent abuse. I hope that Ms. Leduc sues the crap out of the "psychic," and every school official who was involved in perpetrating this farce.
I haven't been writing about my battles with caffeine (and empty calories) lately because there hasn't been anything to report. I'm sure a better writer could have made almost two weeks of nothing into something interesting. Maybe made a point about how mundane struggles and small, uninspiring moments eventually add up to a life story. If only I was one of those "talented" people you hear so much about.
Like I said, it was a whole lot of nothing. There weren't any inspiring victories. I didn't manage to climb a mountain, cure Cancer, or completely kick the soda habit. I cut down a good deal, but it wasn't anybody's idea of cold turkey. My poultry products were lukewarm at best.
Unfortunately (for narrative purposes, anyway), there also weren't any dramatic reversals. I didn't wake up in the doorway of an abandoned theater with an empty three-liter bottle of store brand cola jammed up my ass and a two day hole in my memory. I didn't knock over a delivery truck, drive it out onto the desert and snort soda syrup until I induced diabetes. I had a couple of cans here and there, but I didn't fall back into my old (two weeks ago) soda-drinkin' ways.
Until yesterday.
A few days of hot, swampy Philadelphia weather, a noisy window air conditioner and some stress-related aches and pains conspired to keep me from sleeping very well. I survived all weekend on grape juice and water, but coming back to work on Monday was the (really badass) straw that took out a 10 pound sledgehammer and pulverized the camel's spine. I fell off the wagon. Into a ravine. Where I promptly drowned in a river of high fructose corn syrup.
As we speak, I am draining the last drops of a fountain soda that I got with my routine sandwich. The neglected sweet sensors in my tongue are buzzing with excitement, as I've kept them at speed for about 24 hours now. I have to convince myself that this is a temporary setback, rather than proof that I'm too weak to change even this small facet of my (shallow as a pond in a drought) character.
Crap. I just realized that this actually is the most interesting thing happening in my brainpuddings right now. How sad.
After another not-so-hot night's sleep, I once again gave in to the sweet siren song of soda. It was a fountain drink, so I loaded up on ice. I feel approximately 34% less guilty than I would have without ice.
This quick sketch sums up my day before that. Beware of impossibly exciting shenanigans.
I just discovered an interesting podcast called To The Best Of Our Knowledge. It's produced by Wisconsin Public Radio and distributed by Public Radio International. It's a little hard to distill, but I'll give it a shot. Otherwise, this will be a complete waste of a groggy, early morning post.
It's kind of an audio idea tapestry. They do two themed hours every week, and they interview a bunch of people with really different backgrounds on each topic. It turns out to be a thorough, nuanced and often surprising treatment of each week's central idea. Think This American Life, replacing the "fascinating lives of ordinary people" with "the engrossing implications of commonplace ideas."
I've listened to a few episodes so far, but I was really hooked by last week's second hour, "Revenge Of The Nerds." Five interviews illuminate some unexpected facets of a defiantly intellectual outcast culture. It was amusing and enlightening and weirdly empowering. I've always self-identified as pretty nerdy, and I suspect that I'm not the only one around here. =)
I've blathered enough. Go check out the podcast. And consider yourself lucky that I spared you my little tangent about how much I love podcasts of radio shows that don't air in my geographical area.
Trying to hack out my first soda-free day went surprisingly well until the middle of the afternoon. I drank about 36 ounces of water, and only missed the sweet taste a little.
Okay, it was a lot. An awful lot, actually. No matter how many times you drink it, water doesn't taste good. It just tastes like wet. I think I drank so much because I kept hoping that the next sip would be sweeter. It wasn't.
Around 3 pm, things went rapidly south. I started to have trouble focusing on the screen in front of me. Blinking turned into several seconds of closing my eyes, and my head took on a definite downward trajectory.
I tried getting up and walking around, but it didn't really help. There's a limit to how vigorously one can exercise in an office suite shared with 20 other people. So, I gave up and shuffled over to the soda machine for a 12 ounce can of cola.
Even though I failed, I'm calling it a partial victory. I just about halved my average daily consumption, and didn't actually fall asleep for more than a few seconds. These are the only marks in my win column, people. Let me enjoy my pathetic accomplishments.
My primary caffeine delivery system is soda. I only resort to coffee very occasionally, when I'm particularly exhausted and I have to resort to drastic measures.
Coffee is obviously more efficient, since it's richer in the hyperactive ingredient. Unfortunately, I'm unnaturally sensitive to hot liquids. Freshly brewed coffee has to sit for a long time before I can drink it. Iced coffee is fine, but it winds up being so diluted by water that it's mostly useless. Also, coffee breath is perhaps the foulest oral stank that one can achieve short of a gangrenous tongue.
The problem with soda is, of course, the metric buttload of empty calories in each serving. As I fall rapidly into my mid 30s, my metabolism has finally started to fail me. My midsection is turning into honky pudding, and there's a slab of flesh under my jaw that's threatening to envelop my chin.
For the sake of my health, my wife's visual environment, and my dwindling supply of pants that fit, it's time for me to cut out some of the gratuitous high fructose corn syrup. And don't talk to me about diet soda. If sugar cane could urinate, it would taste exactly like diet soda, and it probably wouldn't linger on the tongue for quite as long.
Difficulty: I'm still in law school. When I was only working full time, I'd almost completely cut out caffeine, but the pressure of law school reawakened my jitterbug in a big way. I'm working over the summer, but classes start again in late August. I can't predict what will happen once I'm back to that grind.
Because you're no doubt curious it's my blog and I'll write about whatever stupid, solipsistic topic I want, I'm going to start tracking my progress as I try to wean myself from the caffeine habit. I'm sure it will be riveting slightly less boring than trimming your own nose hair. Stay tuned.
The BBC is reporting that a mob in western Kenya has burned to death 11 elderly people. The eight women and three men, all of whom were over 80, were on a list of people who supposedly attended a "witches meeting," which produced a list of people who were scheduled for future bewitchment. The victims were dragged from their homes one by one and set on fire in the street. The mob then burned down their houses.
The best (most appalling) part of the article concerns the response of the people who weren't burned to death:
Residents have been ambivalent about condemning the attacks because belief in witchcraft is widespread in the area.Yes, let's not get up on our soapbox about burning old people to death, because a lot of people think that witchcraft is real. Hopefully, it won't be MY grandmother that's tortured and murdered next time.
But local official Mwangi Ngunyi spoke out against the murders. "People must not take the law into their own hands simply because they suspect someone," he told AFP news agency.OH CRAP YES, Mr. Nugunyi. It's not so important that your neighbors are vicious predators, murdering elderly people. It's not the fact that their ridiculous superstitions are inciting them to this kind of appalling violence. No, the real problem here is vigilantism. We can solve the whole problem with a small shift in behavior. Next time your suspect that your elderly neighbor is casting spells on you, don't burn her to death. CALL THE POLICE ON HER!
Okay, a lot late, but I've been busy. The excellent skeptic/girl power communal blog Skepchick.org has a regular "Comment o' the Week" feature. From what I can tell, a shadowy cabal of the site's contributors arbitrarily pick a comment that amuses them.
Despite the lack of transparency in the process, their picks have been consistently excellent and LOL-inducing. Until last week that is, when, for some inexplicable reason, they picked one of my comments.
Don't let this oversight dissuade you from reading an otherwise interesting and amusing blog. This is just evidence that it's always good to keep your critical thinking brainmeats engaged. Even consistently smart people can make odd, irrational choices.
As part of its Expelled Exposed project, the National Center for Science Education tackles that tired creationist argument, irreducible complexity. If you're not familiar with this line of reasoning, it basically goes like this:
"I can't imagine how [COMPLEX ANATOMICAL STRUCTURE] could possibly have evolved from simpler structures, without any deliberate guidance. Therefore, relying only on my own ignorance as evidence, I conclude that [COMPLEX ANATOMICAL STRUCTURE] must have been conjured up fully formed by a benevolent sky-grandpa."Luckily for the poor, misguided creationist, there are plenty of scientists who can imagine, and describe in great detail, the intermediate stages and slow development that led to the current version of [COMPLEX ANATOMICAL STRUCTURE]. In the video below, they demystify the development of perhaps the favorite target of the irreducible complexity argument, the eye. Enjoy.
If you've ever suspected that the complexity and perfection of the human body are evidence that it must have been deliberately sculpted by an intelligent hand, I'd like to introduce you to the epiglottis. It's a small flap of cartilage in the back of your throat, that hangs out just behind your tongue. When you swallow, it lays down to block off the opening to your larynx, directing food and liquids into your esophagus, and away from the "gas only" zone that is your lungs.
If something did deliberately design human anatomy, it made the choice to channel all the normal states of matter through a single space, with only a small flap of mucous-covered cartilage to play traffic cop between the lungs and the stomach. It's both needlessly complex and downright dangerous. Building separate, dedicated pathways for breathing and swallowing would have been simpler, and far less prone to catastrophic failure.
If the human body were intelligently designed, Dr. Heimlich would have died in obscurity.
Despite millennia of being consistently mistaken, charlatans and true believers alike continue to predict that the end of the world is just around the corner. The latest entry in the Book Of Inevitable Failure comes from pastor Mark Biltz, of El Shaddai Ministries in Bonney Lake, Wash. Pastor Biltz has determined that a series of lunar eclipses that will appear in 2015 are a likely herald of the long awaited second coming. Why? Because they happen to fall on the same days as his religious festivals.(video)
This prediction has all the classic elements. Regular, predictable astronomical phenomena, reference to vague bible verses, coincidental timing with arbitrarily dated church holidays, current political unrest and enough wishful thinking to kill a yak at 20 paces.
My favorite part of this whole scenario is that Hal Lindsey, crackpot and lifetime member of the failed prophets club, dismisses Biltz's theory as "pure speculation." Talk about the 100% non-reflective surface calling the kettle black.
Someone remind me to send Mr. Biltz a postcard in 2016. I'm sure I'll be way too busy not burning in hell to remember by myself.
Dear Little Bald Bastard,
How are you going to celebrate the national day of Prayer?
- Belief/relief
Dear Belief/relief,
In the classic Christian tradition of co-opting other people's holidays (and crotch-punching the First Amendment's Establishment Clause), U.S. evangelicals have managed to shove poor, neglected May Day 2008 aside in favor of a federally sponsored day for people of faith to beseech their favorite deity. This putatively ecumenical event has been entirely hijacked by evangelical Christians, led by Focus on The Family's Shirley Dobson. Dobson heads the National Day of Prayer Task Force, and requires all of her coordinators to sign a statement explicitly stating belief that Jesus was both a ghost AND a zombie.
I'm going to spend my day like I spend any other. I'll be angry that the rights of those who opt out of the supernatural aren't as important as those of believers. I'll be appalled at how tolerance of diverse faiths doesn't apply to people who place their faith in the natural rather than the fantastic. I'll be aghast at this country's sad, greasy slide toward outright theocracy. Most of all, I'll wish I was surprised by any of it.
Three things I did not know:
1. Dr. Henry Heimlich, purported inventor of the famed and (I shit you not) registered trademark "maneuver" for rescuing choking victims is still alive.
I don't know why, but I always assumed that such a simple procedure must have been invented in the 19th century. Based on the last name, I pictured a humble Bavarian physician, decked out in lederhosen and suspenders. While knocking back a pint at a rural ale house, he rushed to the aid of one of the town volk who was choking on a bit of bratwurst. Thanks to his quick thinking, his technique became the namesake maneuver, and his improvised flailings (and maybe the bit of horked-up sausage) were preserved for posterity.
As it turns out, the maneuver was first described in the mid-70s. Although it is still taught as a remedy for choking, it isn't the recommended first treatment. Dr. Heimlich was born in Delaware in 1920, and doesn't seem to be particularly humble. Or Bavarian.
2. Dr. Heimlich has been dogged by allegations of fraud.
One of Dr. Heimlich's most persistent critics is his son, Peter Heimlich. Among the allegations he levels against his father is the charge that the famous technique was appropriated from Dr. Heimlich's long time colleague, Dr. Edward Patrick.
3. Dr. Heimlich may be completely, dangerously, batshit insane.
Dr. Heimlich advocates the use of his system of abdominal thrusts to treat drowning victims, despite much evidence that such use is dangerous and potentially fatal. Most obviously crazy, though, is his insistence that he can cure HIV/AIDS with an injection. Of malaria.
Dr. Heimlich, who has no training as an immunologist, seriously believes that he can cure AIDS, as well as cancer and Lyme disease, by injecting patients with malaria. In support of this hypothesis, he's conducted ethically suspect trials with HIV patients in China and Africa. One of the conditions of those trials was that participants couldn't receive any other treatment, either for their HIV or the symptoms of their malaria infections.
This is what I get for relying on Eddie Izzard for information about a public figure.
I'm not about to say that my hour of casual reading amounts to a definitive case, but there is a good bit of evidence of a disconnect between Dr. Heimlich's self-promoted legacy and the details of his actual career in public health. If you think I'm wrong, feel free to argue.
Interviews and artwork in the new book Colorful Illustrations 93°C were ripped off wholesale from Darren Di Lieto's Little Chimp Society. Dozens of original illustrations and interviews with the artists who created them have been copied and repackaged as a $100 book.
It's the modern nightmare of electronic distribution. On the one hand, it's an inexpensive way to get your work in front of a worldwide audience. On the other hand, a fake publisher in Hong Kong can copy it all and publish it under a fake ISBN with very little fear of legal retribution.
If you or someone you know/love/share fluids with is a big fan of overpriced art books, please make sure they know that purchasing this particular tome is a kick to the soft bits of all hard working artists who share their work online.
Dear Little Bald Bastard,
Have you ever given somebody a piece of gum because they had nasty breath? What do you do if they say no?
- Mjr. Halitosis
Dear Mjr. Halitosis,
Wow, awkward city. I've only ever been in that situation once. The unfortunate stank dragon didn't take the hint, but he wasn't in my space for very long, so my discomfort was short lived. If you're stuck in close proximity to the freshness-challenged individual, you could be in for a long, gross day/evening/sexual encounter.
If the breath offender is someone you're close to, breath shallowly and tell the truth. If you say it nicely, you'll likely get a better smelling environment without suffering through too much indignation.
If you're not comfortable saying it straight, it's time for some passive-aggressive escalation. Repeat the offer of gum, then offer mints, mouthwash and (for good measure) gum again.
If all of these hints fail to bring the message home, just announce loudly that you're going to brush your teeth. You'll either get your point across, or create an opportunity to wriggle out the bathroom window. Either way, your poor, offended nose will thank you.
Look at my city, doing something awesome.
With the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin, originator of the modern theory of evolution, just months away, the University of Pennsylvania, in conjunction with Penn Museum and joined by major Philadelphia cultural organizations, launches an ambitious YEAR OF EVOLUTION of public programs and events.
If you're reading Ask LBB in a feed, today is a good day to wander off of your electronic front porch and take a gander at the stuff in another neighborhood. I've made some changes to littlebaldbastard.com, including a new banner and an updated list of links to interesting stuff.
Because I'm nobody's design professional, I'm just using a slightly tweaked Blogger theme. The banner is all me, though, and I think it turned out pretty well. I hope you'll stop by and check it out.
Nominee for Best Unintentionally Funny Law Firm URL:
Marks, O’Neill, O’Brien & Courtney, P.C. - mooclaw.com
For those of you keeping track, the National Center for Science Education's Expelled Exposed up and running. It digs into the lies and misrepresentations of the upcoming creationist propaganda film Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed.
Expelled Exposed thoroughly explores the film's junk science, and the mendacity (and laughable incompetence) of its producers. It refutes the conflation of Darwin with the Holocaust, and presents the laughable truth about the scientists who claim they've been punished for believing in "Intelligent" Design.
If you're curious just how hard the believers are willing to lie as they try to prop their fairy tales up against real science, check out Expelled Exposed. Then, keep a close eye on your local school board.
via Pharyngula
Dear Little Bald Bastard,
Hey LBB, did you hear that Bush's 2009 budget kills the funding for the RIF [Reading Is Fundamental] program? Doesn't that suck?
- Wonk-a Wonk
Dear Wonk-a Wonk,
Thank you, President Bush. Every time I think it's impossible to despise you and your disastrous presidency any harder, you find some way to become even more loathsome and horrible. It's as if you sense outrage fatigue setting in, and you make up your mind to prevent us from giving up on hating you.
The latest salvo in the arms race of unconscionableness that is the Bush executive is an item in the President's 2009 budget. More accurately, it's something that's not included in the $3.1 trillion plan. The Bush Administraitor's proposal eliminates federal funding for the Reading Is Fundamental program, which has been part of every budget since 1975. From their website:
RIF is the oldest and largest children's and family nonprofit literacy organization in the United States. RIF’s highest priority is reaching underserved children from birth to age 8. Through community volunteers in every state and U.S. territory, RIF provides 4.5 million children with 16 million new, free books and literacy resources each year.I applaud you, sir. It's as if you scoured federal spending for the cutest, cuddliest puppy you could find, and then clubbed it to death on the south lawn as a sacrifice to the Gods of War (Iraq Regional Office).
I recently had to do an in-class presentation on a federal public service tuition forgiveness program. In order to spice up a Sahara-dry topic, I tossed some illustrations in to break up the monotony of my Powerpoint slides. I'm gonna toot my own horn a bit, and say they turned out pretty well.
The set of 10 is available as a slideshow on Flickr. If you want to humor me, take a look and let me know what you think.
Atheist and self-described "tumbleblogger" Ryoga M celebrates his 1,000th post with the start of a new feature looking at "the greatest plot holes in Bible stories."
God: Oh man! It tastes like chocolate strawberry and brandy. But don't eat it, or you'll live forever! I mean, die! Die. Forget I said live forever.It's funny. Go read it. And tell him that, while he's poking about in Genesis, he should take on the creation myth.
I'm lifting my April Fool's Day hiatus for this item. Enjoy.
NASA Photographs Liquid Water On Mars
I guess I'm a crusty old curmudgeon, but April Fool's day doesn't hold the same amusement that it used to. I'll catch you all on 4/2.
Dear Little Bald Bastard,
Why haven't you been screaming off the top of your lungs about this Expelled movie? It looks like something that would really wind you up.
- TooDo0od
Dear TooDo0od,
Sure enough, I have been keeping a quivering, rage-filled eye on the marketing of Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. If you've just gotten Internet access in your cave, Expelled is an odious piece of creationist propaganda that purports to uncover a vast conspiracy by "Big Science" that keeps legitimate evidence for "Intelligent" Design out of the science classroom, and ruins the careers of innocent scientists who dare to question the "Darwinist" regime.
The exploits of the movie's producers are legendary and widely documented. They lied to secure the participation of prominent science advocates like Richard Dawkins, PZ Myers and Eugenie Scott. They prevented Myers from attending a screening, and then lied about why they did it. They've packed screenings with creationist wonks, while trying to exclude legitimate film critics.
The film appears to be as incompetent as its producers. It quickly abandons its central thesis in favor of a ridiculous (and entirely ahistorical) attempt to blame Charles Darwin for the Holocaust and Stalinism. It tries (and fails) to cast Ben "Bueller..." Stein as a right-wing Michael Moore. It gets wrong basic facts about the scientists whose careers it purports to defend, and about the evolutionary science that it blames for all the world's ills. And apparently, it's an all around amateur mess.
All of this is tangential, though, to the actual question. Why haven't I weighed in on the controversy surrounding the movie? Why wouldn't I go all head-splodey over a creationist flick that claims scientists are conspiring to keep "Intelligent" Design out of science and science education, and that other researchers are losing their jobs for taking "I"D seriously?
It's true that the controversy has been thoroughly dissected by just about every blogger with an interest in science or religion. I doubt my contribution to the general chatter will be at all interesting or enlightening. But that's not the real reason. The real reason...
I wish they were right.
"Intelligent" Design is a non-testable, non-falsifiable hypothesis, for which not one shred of verifiable evidence has ever been discovered. It's entirely based on the ignorance and misunderstanding of fools, who believe that their inability to comprehend the details of evolution means that their idea must be better. Their whole argument consists of pointing out parts of evolutionary theory that haven't quite been ironed out, and pretending that those wrinkles support their nonsensical alternative.
Call it Creationism, call it "Intelligent" Design, call it Magic Dancing Deity Jizz - call it whatever you want. It's NOT. FUCKING. SCIENCE.
I would love it if real scientists had the necessary combination of will, clout and impressive genitalia that it would take to grind this nonsense out of science education once and for all. Every time I read about another school board trying to inject religion into public science education in the guise of a non-existent scientific controversy, I want to take a road trip just so that I can throw up all over the officials responsible. I want to force feed them pages of the Kitzmiller v. Dover opinion, brand the First Amendment on their chests, and then vomit on them until they resign.
I would also be just fine with the summary firing of any scientist whose grasp of the scientific method is so tenuous that he or she agrees with Creationist arguments as they're currently framed. If you want to be a scientist who believes in "Intelligent" Design, fine. But you damn well better come up with evidence to support your argument, or be willing to check your faith at the laboratory door. Science, REAL science, is all about evidence and examination, and letting other scientists test your conclusions to their limits. If you can't handle that, you're not a scientist, and you should go get a job with the Discovery Institute.
So there you go. I've held off on mentioning the whole Expelled mess because, in my cold, dark, secret heart, I wish that they had a valid point. If anybody actually read my blog, I'm sure I'd be in for criticism for fueling their righteous fire. (As if these hacks had gathered anything remotely flammable on their own.)
I'm going to slither off my soapbox now, but I want to say one last thing. Mr. Stein, show us one, ONE piece of evidence, ONE THING that is not a straw man swipe at Darwin or a ridiculous conflation of evolution with genocide. Show us that one piece of evidence, or shut your fucking lie hole.
Expelled Exposed, a website set up by the National Center for Science Education to counter the lies in the creationist propaganda film Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed.
I'll be haranguing you about this more thoroughly in the near future. In the meantime, check out Expelled Exposed, and you'll know why I'm foaming at the mouth and biting chunks out of the walls.
Like a lot of atheist agnostic skeptic humanist freethinkers, I didn't just wake up one day with morning wood and the realization that god was kind of a silly idea. I was raised in a church. We went every Sunday. I sang in the choir, performed in plays, and went to camps during the Summer. (We were Methodist, the plain toast of Protestant denominations). While I don't ever remember being wholly enthralled by visions of an omniscient, miracle-slinging, invisible sky-grandpa, it didn't occur to me to really question the idea until long after I'd ceased to be a regular churchgoer.
Notwithstanding the people who make the most noise on the Internet, the world isn't cleanly divided into true believers and soulless atheists. There are a lot of people who are in the midst of a long fall away from a childhood religion, and there are also nonbelievers who come to (or back to) some religious faith. People on either side of the divide may yell the loudest, but there are plenty of interesting perspectives that fall somewhere in the middle.
My new favorite representative from the middling masses is frequent Skepchick commenter Improbable Bee. Her blog Losing My Religion tracks her trajectory out of her religious upbringing toward a more skeptical, evidence-based worldview.
I'm sure that I'm biased because of the direction in which she's heading, but she's talking about it in a thoughtful, articulate way that's very appealing. She's wrestling with more intense versions of a lot of the things I faced, but she's far more insightful than I was. Regardless of your place on the believer-skeptic continuum, it's worth your time to take a look.
In case the small army of volunteers wandering about the city haven't made it out to your dank cave, today is the last day to register or update your voting records if you want to participate in the Pennsylvania presidential primary on April 22nd. This might not be terribly exciting for the Republicans, but Democrats should be peeing their pants in anticipation of the chance to cast a vote in a contested primary for the first time since Jesus created dinosaurs.
Try not to let the fact that the Democratic nomination is going to be decided by the superdelegates dampen your spirits, guys.
I find it absurdly fascinating that, in a close contest, where every single vote should theoretically be invaluable, the Democratic party has found a way to make individual voters irrelevant.
Arthur C. Clarke, technological prophet and pillar of science fiction, is himself now indistinguishable from magic.
Dear Little Bald Bastard,
How do you spend your time when you aren't being a tool on the Internets?
- Devil in the Details
Dear Devil in the Details,
Although my voluminous post count belies it, I actually do have interests that don't involve telling strangers how stupid I think they are on the Internet. I like to read, I play a video game or two, and I have a lucrative business waxing badgers for private collectors.*
The biggest chunk of my non-bastardly day is taken up by my studies. I'm in my second year of law school, which means I spend approximately eleventy million hours a week poring over casebooks.
As part of my laws school experience, I lucked into an internship with Pennsylvanians For Modern Courts. PMC is a policy group working to reform the judiciary in Pennsylvania, and to educate citizens about how to access and navigate the courts.
Coincidentally, we just launched a new blog, called JudgesOnMerit.org, which is all about our campaign to replace partisan election of appellate judges with a Merit Selection plan. I'll spare you my pro-Merit screed. I'll just say that I hadn't ever thought about judicial elections before November of 2007. Now I love Merit Selection like a pirate loves booty.
If you like politics, if you're concerned about judicial fairness, or if you just want to help a bastard out, go take a look at JudgesOnMerit.org. See if you can recognize my writing when I'm not allowed to use profanity.
*You don't want to know how hard it is to get insurance.
Political wonks will no doubt already know that President Bush has spent a little more than a third of his presidency on vacation. He's surpassed the previous record for personal travel by a sitting president, held by modern republican messiah Ronald Reagan.
Take a minute to think about all of the stupid, appalling, ridiculous, evil shit that has gone on under the current administration. President Bush has managed to accomplish all of that with less time spent in the White House than any president in history. The man is either amazingly, ruthlessly efficient, or he's got an unbelievably motivated cadre of henchpersons. Either way, I think it's obvious that he's some kind of undercover supervillain. I doubt that even Voldemort could do better.
Hey, Philadelphia. If you'd like the presidential candidates to stop yammering about which version of god they like best, and start addressing vital science and technology issues, come on out to the Franklin Institute tomorrow and support Sciencedebate 2008!
Our economy is based almost entirely around science and technology. It's time for the people who want to be president to show that they can address these topics.
Sciencedebate 2008!
From the email:
Please join us FRIDAY MARCH 14 at a rally & press conference at the Franklin Institute to promote Science Debate 2008 and make some announcements. The media have been invited.
Climate change, America’s declining economic competitiveness in the new global knowledge economy, declining financial support for college and university students, declining research grants, and mounting scientific and engineering challenges (see Bill Gates’ testimony on our web site) unresolved environmental challenges and healthcare challenges directly affect our lives. We need you to come out and support this initiative.
Who: Shawn Otto and Matthew Chapman from Science Debate 2008 will join Dennis Wint, president of the Franklin Institute, and representatives from the National Academies, the Council on Competitiveness, Drexel, U-Penn, The Scientist, and Chemical Heritage Foundation at a rally and press conference. We want you to come!
When: Friday, March 14, 10:30 AM
Where: Franklin Hall, the Franklin Institute, 222 North 20th Street, Philadelphia
What: Rally & press conference
We hope to see you there!
If I were of a superstitious bent, I'd find the following coincidence full of some sort of meaning. I'm not sure of what, but meaning nonetheless.
Two bloggers, one a friend I've known for years, the other I met on the Internet a few months ago. Within 24 hours of each other, they each wrote a post explaining why they don't bother to tag their posts. The God Of Internet must have inspired them somehow.
Thanks to Skepchick.org for the heads up. This is without exaggeration the funniest things I've seen in months. If you're easily offended, fuck off. Also, don't watch the movie.
Dear Little Bald Bastard,
As a post-modern heathen, I find myself terribly bored with the traditional sins. While I'm sure that my soul is irretrievably soiled with the caustic filth of my decadent lifestyle, I find that living like a character in an Anne Rice novel just isn't as fascinating as it was when I was 17. How can I preserve the smear of acidic, putrid ichor that I call a soul, while trying new things at the same time?
- Soul Possessor
Dear Soul Possessor,
There's good news for those of you who consider the mundane dalliances with lust and sloth to be horribly banal. After 1,500 years, the fun-loving scamps at the Vatican have finally doubled their list of seven deadly sins. The seven newest deadly sins (now 100% deadlier!) are supposed to reflect the moral decline of the modern, secular world. They are, in no particular order:
* Abortion
* Damaging the environment
* Carrying out morally questionable scientific experiments
* Allowing genetic manipulation which alters DNA or compromises embryos
* Dealing or using drugs
* Pedophilia
* Social injustice that causes poverty or
the excessive accumulation of wealth by a few.
The mind-stomping irony of the last two items notwithstanding, this represents a boon for those of you who are tired of the trite, clichéd evil of the old list. Now you can enjoy the tingly thrill of mocking god every time you don't recycle.
One only hopes that the church will commission someone to write The Divine Comedy 2: Electric Boogaloo, so that we'll know for certain what eternal punishments await us for each of the new infractions. I can't see the deterrent effect being really powerful unless we know the penalties up front.
New Humanist
Times Online
The Order of the Stick has a touching tribute to the recently deceased E. Gary Gygax, the founding father of the modern roleplaying game. If I were designing an afterlife, there would definitely be a place for a man whose work brought such joy to so many.
The Virginia Supreme Court upheld the conviction of a notorious spammer under Virginia's anti-spam law. A divided court said that spam isn't protected speech under the First Amendment. Associated Press.
Personally, I wouldn't bet on this being the definitive word. The Supreme Court may not weigh in on this particular case, but it will likely have to rule on the issue some time in the near future. I lean toward the argument that spam is often fraudulent and causes economic harm, and spammers should be boiled in penis-enhancement cream. The debate is an interesting one, though.
Dear Little Bald Bastard,
Can you tell me how to make crystal meth?
- Every Third Visitor to This Blog
Dear Every Third Visitor to This Blog,
I know you're out there. My sensitive scalp - and my StatCounter service - tell me that approximately one in three of the people who wander past this site wind up here because I once made a sarcastic reference comparing my skill at making crystal meth with the competence of the Emmy voters. Thanks to Google, I'm now some kind of creepy, deserted side street on the pilgrimage to chemical entrepreneurship, right after "Here's A Good Idea," and just before "I'm The Prom Queen of Cellblock D!"
Until a catastrophic event wipes out the Internet, and sends us all back to drawing cleverly captioned pictures of cats on the walls of caves, I'll be stuck with my status as a false lead for wannabe drug kingpins. In hopes of hastening the LOLpocalypse just a tad, I offer you my 100% foolproof recipe for making crystal meth. Please note that making, taking, selling, and probably even thinking about meth are all extremely dangerous and very illegal. Don't expect me to bail you out or pitch in for your hospital bill if you screw something up.
Please be sure to read instructions completely before proceeding.
Ingredients
In order to make drugs of heart-stoppingly high quality, you will need the following items:
* 1 bottle anhydrous ammonia
* 14 boxes pseudoephedrine-based decongestant
* 1 bottle drain cleaner (sulphuric acid)
* 2 cannisters camping fuel or propane
* box wooden matches
* cigarette lighter
* box unbleached coffee filters
* Hammer
* Mortar and pestle
* Duct tape
* 1 five-gallon plastic bucket
* 1 wooden spoon
* scissors
Preparation
Place all ingredients on a sturdy table in a sealed room, preferably with no windows. Use duct tape to seal any cracks or spaces which might allow suspicious fumes to escape.
Using scissors, remove heads from entire box of wooden matches. Place match heads in stainless steel bowl. Dispose of match sticks.
Using mortar and pestle, grind decongestant pills into a coarse powder.
Pour ammonia into bucket. Add drain cleaner, pouring slowly.
Using wooden spoon, stir powdered decongestant into liquid mixture.
Slowly pour match heads onto mixture. Try to distribute them in an even layer on top of the mixture.
Using hammer, remove valves from fuel cannisters. Allow cannisters to drain until hissing sound stops.
Using cigarette lighter, ignite the layer of match heads in the bucket.
The resulting explosion should neatly remove you from the gene pool, and will hopefully serve as a warning to your dumbass friends that running an illegal drug lab full of volatile chemicals is a suicidally stupid idea.
YOU'RE WELCOME.
On Sunday, Carl Hiaasen waded into the argument over science education standards in Florida with a great editorial warning about the damage that the teaching of evolution could do to the state's reputation.
Unfortunately, it looks like the state school board didn't take Mr. Hiaasen's recommendation seriously. Four of the seven board members voted to include the word "evolution" in public schools science standards for the first time.
After much wrangling, The board approved the use of the term "scientific theory of evolution," so as to placate the anti-science crowd, who still seem to think that tossing the word "theory" about somehow weakens evolution. It's so sad that, in the 21st century, it still takes this kind of pandering to get real science in front public school children. Somebody call Spain and ask if they'll take the peninsula back.
Dear Little Bald Bastard,
Over the course of your internet ramblings, what is the most bizarre web site you have ever seen?
- Ryoga M
Dear Ryoga M,
When we're children, we're told constantly that each of us is a unique snowflake, utterly distinct from every other person on the planet. This is, of course, eight kinds of bullshit, just as mythical as the Tooth Fairy and your chances of becoming President.
Like the spiteful kid on the playground who tells everyone else the truth about Santa, the Internet has exposed the absurdity of this bit of populist propaganda. Pick your favorite obscure band, your most embarrassing sexual proclivity, or your most outrageous conspiracy theory. Plug some related keywords into your favorite search engine, and you'll discover hundreds, if not thousands, of kindred souls waiting to welcome you with open arms and, more often than not, a little bit of drooling.
If you look, you'll find flat-earth conspiracy buffs, sad sacks who can't get off unless they're dressed up like furry creatures, and people who think that Sting has been worth listening to since leaving The Police. Weirdos and cranks, obviously.
I'll spare you a laundry list of the strange, mostly sexual, oddities that are festering in the dim, damp corners of the web. If you want to immerse yourself in a thick stew of cephalophiles, sewage-huffers and body-modders, Warren Ellis and Ectoplasmosis are good places to start.
The most appalling, unfathomable thing I've ever stumbled over online isn't furries or scatplay or brimstone-breathing fundamentalists. There are communities of "bug chasers," gay men who are sexually aroused by contracting sexually transmitted diseases in general, and HIV/AIDS in particular. They swap stories of how they were infected, set up parties where disease-free men can have unprotected sex with infected partners, and brag about "breeding" their diseases in unsuspecting hookups.
The whole thing blows my mind so thoroughly that I can't even wrap up with something pithy. Actively wanting to get a fatal disease is strange to the point of madness. Deliberately infecting others is beyond obscene.
The silver lining to this corrosive, brain-soiling cloud is that the web also provides solidarity and community for rational people, who might feel like they're all alone in decrying the superstitious nonsense that permeates society. There are opportunities to have meaningful discussions with skeptics and freethinkers from all over the world. If the creationists and true believers can do it, we can do it better. Thanks for the question.
Here's why it pays to be skeptical, guys. It turns out that the makers of the "male enhancement" pill Enzyte weren't inflating anything but their claims. The government is prosecuting company officials for conspiring to defraud its customers out of 100 million desperate, small-wanged dollars. From Cincinnati.com:
James Teegarden Jr., the former vice president of operations at Berkeley Premium Nutraceuticals, explained Tuesday in U.S. District Court how he and others at the company made up much of the content that appeared in Enzyte ads.
He said employees of the Forest Park company created fictitious doctors to endorse the pills, fabricated a customer satisfaction survey and made up numbers to back up claims about Enzyte’s effectiveness.
Several other company employees, including [the founder's] mother, Harriet, also are charged with participating in the conspiracy.
In the middle of an interesting report on the aftermath of the Texas UFO sightings, Sam Ogden of Skepchick.org reports this little tidbit.
"I sat across the aisle from some fellow Texans on the plane ride home from Florida who were very vocal that the reversal by the air force was proof that the government is covering something up."This, my friends, is the definition of ambivalence. I love to be right; I hate the credulity. It's a powerful sensation, akin to choking myself to death with delicious cookie dough.
Dear Little Bald Bastard,
Do you think those people down in Texas really saw a UFO?
- Scott Baio Gave Me Pinkeye
Dear Scott Baio Gave Me Pinkeye,
I have absolutely no doubt that people in Stephenville, Texas did see several UFOs on the night of January 8th. I am, however, just as certain that they didn't see a spaceship full of aliens out for a night of "probe the redneck."
The key is the U in "UFO." To belabor the point just a bit, it stands for "unidentified." I'll spare you the dictionary definition, but it's worth pointing out that any object or light in the sky that the viewer can't place is a UFO. I'd bet that the nearly every person in the industrialized world has, at some point, seen something in the sky and not been quite clear as to what that something was. Yet there has never been any compelling evidence of extraterrestrial visitation.
It's a pet peeve of mine that "unidentified" has become popular shorthand for "alien." Despite the squawking of true believers, nobody has ever produced evidence for alien origin of UFOs. Read up on any major UFO sighting, and you'll find a perfectly rational, and entirely mundane, explanation. Lo and behold, the Air Force Reserve has confirmed that ten F-16 fighter jets from the 301st Fighter Wing at the Naval Air Station Fort Worth Joint Reserve were conducting training flights over North Central Texas that night.
It's unfortunate that the Air Force Reserve initially disclaimed any military aircraft activity in the area. Doubtless the conspiracy theorists will seize on this revision as "evidence" that the government is covering up something it doesn't want us to know about. This might seem odd to you, the rational reader, but I promise it will happen. It takes a special kind of crazy to believe in a government conspiracy to cover up the truth about alien visitors. National governments are large, unwieldy organizations. They employ multitudes of personnel who rate at all levels of incompetence. The idea that even the most ruthlessly efficient national government could successfully suppress such a sensational revelation is just silly. The idea that the same government which brought you Watergate, Filegate and countless other -gate suffixed scandals could keep a lid on such big news is unfathomably absurd.
Supposed extraterrestrial hijinks always make a little sad, and a lot purple-faced with rage. I'm a sci-fi geeeeek. I want so hard for intelligent alien life to be real, and for interstellar travel to be practical. To my continued frustration, we've found no evidence to suggest that either of these things is true. Whenever I read about a kerfluffle involving odd lights in the sky, a small part of me dares to hope that this will be the time when it turns out to be something truly exciting. 'Tis a small hope, repeatedly dashed. It's annoying that credulous assbaskets can't stop setting me up for disappointment. It's infuriating that paranoid nutbags retreat to insane theories about covert shenanigans, rather than dealing with the woe like the rest of us. I can only hope that, if the aliens ever show up and start handing out anal probes, they start with this guy.
Instead, I offer you a list of 100 crazy quotes, courtesy of Fundies Say the Darndest Things! God commands you to click, and discover the wonders of his greatest creation.
Oh, Jesus Christ, the hair. It was supposed to be – had been, about six weeks earlier – red. Purple goop, squeezed from a tube and smeared on unsuspecting follicles resulted in a red that, given candlelight and sufficient squinting, could probably have passed for natural. After a month and a half, the weak winter sun had stripped the pigment, leaving behind a tarnished brass like a trumpet pulled from the rubble of a house fire. Under the fluorescent bus lights, it managed to appear vaguely auburn, brown, and a weird purplish green at the same time. My cones screamed in frustration as they tried to reconcile the conflicting signals, while my rods chuckled and went back to sleep. I've never been so happy to have a book to read.
Dear Little Bald Bastard,
What's your favorite part of the holidays?
- Elf Help
Dear Elf Help,
My favorite part of the Winter goodwillgasm is when it's finally over. The trappings are packed away and the insane amount of refuse and discarded wrapping is hauled away to the landfill. Radio stations shelve the all-Christmas tunes and go back to their brain-numbingly horrible soft rock and adult contemporary schedules. People drop the rotting veneer of holiday spirit and go back to being unbelievable pricks.
And yet, there are nuggets of real enjoyment buried amongst the vast strip mine of treacle, especially for veteran cranks like myself. One of those compact bundles of corrosive glee is the 2004 animated train wreck The Polar Express.
Screenwriter/director Robert Zemeckis is either a black-hearted, cynically commercial holiday troll or a pathetically desperate believer in the secular magic of Christmas. Whatever his motivation, Zemeckis and his team of animators managed to turn a 32 page children's book into a feature length Christmas freakout.
I love this movie because it fails so spectacularly. It wants so hard to be a warm parable about the wonder of the season and the magic of belief, punctuated by family-friendly thrills. But despite all efforts, it steams right past the village of Holiday Charm and derails just outside of Fucking Creepyville. Here are just a few of the unsettling elements of this Christmas creepfest.
The Animation: The rich, warm painted illustrations of the book are replaced by a gasping attempt at photorealistic animation. Everything is rendered in crisp, hyperaware detail, which makes the human characters really odd to look at. To be fair, the animators are pitting their processing power against millennia of evolution teaching our brains how to interpret human faces. The result crashes right into the Uncanny Valley; the faces are too detailed to be cartoonish, but not quite human enough to be... well, human. As a result, the non-intoxicated viewer can't help but twitch a little bit every time one of the human faces is in close-up.
The Scary Train: Let's start with the fact that this train is clearly haunted. Not only is there a hobo who appears to live on top of the train, but he's a DEAD HOBO GHOST. Maybe it's just because I'm old, but I suspect I'd be too freaked out by the fact that I'd been hanging out with a dead hobo to be all that impressed by meeting Santa.
Next, let's talk about safety features. Rather, let's talk about the total lack of safety features. Why is a train, specifically intended to transport curious pre-adolescents, designed in such a way that a passenger can scamper onto the roof? And why does the track seem to be laid out in such a way as to pretty much guarantee mortal peril? Again, maybe I'm showing my age, but I think the pants-filling scares of nearly crashing and derailing several times, not to mention almost falling off the top of a moving train riding on what is essentially a roller coaster track, would put me right out of the mood to believe in a benevolent winter spirit.
The North Pole: Santa's Fortress Of Holi-tude is usually depicted as a homey place, with fireplaces and overstuffed armchairs and earnest elven workers making wooden toys by hand. Santa keeps the naughty and nice lists, but nobody worries about how he actually knows the moral balance of each child's soul. He just knows.
This is, of course, an absurdly quaint and sentimental notion. To manufacture and ship billions of toys a year would require a huge facility, armies of workers, and assembly line automation that would make Henry Ford's colon explode. To give Zemeckis credit, his North Pole, modeled after a railroad car manufacturing complex, tackles this conundrum. It's huge, cavernous, and mechanized to the hilt.
There are two issues with this approach. First, it sort of undermines the whole "belief" message. Who needs to believe in magic when there's a giant conveyor belt shuffling thousands of machine-wrapped packages off to be shipped. Second, the whole place is creepier than Grandma's thong drawer. It's massive and empty. Christmas carols play on a skipping record player, and tinny speakers echo in the vast spaces. (If Hideo Nakata ever directs a glacially-paced horror movie set at Christmas, he'll have his soundtrack.) A skeleton crew of elves mutters Yiddish slang while keeping tabs on the children of the world, peering at them on a giant bank of video monitors straight out of Orwell's dream journal. Giant machinery sits brooding, lurching to life without anyone at the controls. It's the antithesis of the traditional North Pole, and the least heartwarming place outside Hades.
The Elves: So much is wrong with the movie's version of Santa's traditional indentured servants that I have a hard time even seeing them. My brain tries to focus on other details of the scene, so that I won't have to look at them directly. To start with, they suffer from the same not-quite-lifelike facial animation plaguing the human characters. This is compounded by the exaggerated features that are supposed, I guess, to look comical, but just come off as unsettling. They look like the world's sprightliest nursing home patients, with big floppy ears, long pointy noses, and eyes that scream about centuries of cabin fever. All of this is stuck onto tiny bodies so small that, even to the 10 year old protagonist, they're running around just below eye level.
To make matters worse, there are millions of the little lunatics. When they all pack into the square surrounding the North Pole, it looks like an inside out ant colony.
The final straw is the Steven Tyler elf, who appears to sing about how the elves all rock out after Santa departs. That guy is weird enough looking, and the transposition of his features onto such a cringe-inducing character design kind of makes one wish he'd done us all the favor of overdosing when he was still doing heroin.
Know-It-All (That Fucking Kid With The Yellow Pajamas And The Horn-Rimmed Glasses): All of the other kids sound like kids. Why are they hanging out with a "child" who is clearly a middle-aged Jewish man?
Tom Hanks: I respect Tom Hanks. He's a good actor and, based on interviews I've heard, seems like a genuinely decent person. That said, why are we forced to pretend that he's a competent voice actor? Was there no other voice talent available that week? Hanks had to voice the Father, the Conductor, the Dead Hobo, the Janitor, the Guy With The Wart, and God? All of these characters are clearly Tom Hanks. The small affectations he puts on aren't enough to distinguish any of the voices from the others. Why do we have to pretend that they are?
The Difficulty Of Believing: Let me say that I am a skeptic. I like to see evidence before I believe in things, especially extraordinary things like, say, a fat guy in a sleigh who delivers toys to billions of kids in a single night. That said, how much do you need to experience before you start to buy the party line? A bell flies off a reindeer's harness and lands at your feet and now you finally buy it all? We're talking about a kid who has literally climbed into Santa's actual toy bag, and been dropped out of the sky into his sleigh. Somebody tell the Tooth Fairy that she'd better punch this kid in the nuts if she doesn't have all night.
In short, it seems like the message of this film is something like "you'd better believe, or we'll freak you out until you do." Alright, Mr. Zemeckis, you win. Just don't make me look at Steven Tyler elf anymore.
