GO PHILLY GO!

  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.

  I can't get over how great this is, and I'm especially pleased that it kicks off the day after the release of Expelled. There's a huge schedule of events already on the agenda, and it's a WHOLE YEAR, so you can't say you didn't have a chance to attend at least part of it.


via Pharyngula

New Look (Mostly)

  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.

AmURLsing

Nominee for Best Unintentionally Funny Law Firm URL:

Marks, O’Neill, O’Brien & Courtney, P.C. - mooclaw.com

Expelled Exposed Live and in Color

  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

Question #124: Is Our Children Learning? Not For Long!

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).

  Here's an idea, loosely adapted from a lame bumper sticker. RIF is asking for $26 million in federal funding in fiscal year 2009. Each F-22 fighter costs in the neighborhood of $177 million. Maybe the Air Force could get by with one less this year, so some poor kids could get some free books? If you want, you can even use the leftover $151 million to fund some ridiculous and ineffective social program, like abstinence-only sex education.

  Fortunately, the curtain hasn't quite closed on this farce. There's still time to contact your legislators and urge them to restore RIF's funding. President Bush has been at the helm for the ruin of our economy, the trashing of our civil liberties, and the deaths of thousands of American soldiers. Don't let him threaten millions of American children with illiteracy.

I Draw Pictures

  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.

I Have Seen The Future

It isn't pretty.

A Modern Translation

  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'll make an exception.

I'm lifting my April Fool's Day hiatus for this item. Enjoy.

NASA Photographs Liquid Water On Mars

Internet Time Out

  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.

Question #123: Bile Expelled

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.

Necessary Linkage

  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.

Blog Spotlight: Losing My Religion

  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.

Last Day to Register

  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.

More Sad News For Geeks

Arthur C. Clarke, technological prophet and pillar of science fiction, is himself now indistinguishable from magic.