In a related story:
God Admits Humans Not Most Impressive Creation
Loves me some The Onion…
Category Archives: Humor
Uh oh, I may not be legal
To be filed under “Better Know Your Blogger”:
The archaeological dig being conducted by my mother at my parents house continues. Unfortunately this time she has unearthed evidence that I may not be a properly licensed Dinosaur Hunter (at least in the state of Utah)!
It seems that while I got the license itself (when I was 10 years old), it was never properly filled out:
The address has been redacted, but missing from the original is the signature of the Deputy Lizard Warden of the time, Al E. Oup. This could be a problem next time I’m in Utah!
Deputy Warden Oup (or Oop as it is more properly spelled) with one of his charges.
I had totally forgotten about this fun bit of tourist ephemera, which as it turns out, they still give out at Dinosaurland in Vernal, UT. In fact you can download a copy of the much fancier current Dinosaur Hunting Lic. from their website. Though I notice that the current Deputy Lizard Warden is now given as being “Al O’saurus” (obviously the Al E. Oup joke is for a past generation). But at least it comes pre-signed to spare future dinosaur hunters the legal difficulties that I am apparently going to have to endure.
Here’s a fun game kids, how many typographical and/or scientific errors can you find in the license?
leetle devil frog!
From the comic strip Pearls Before Swine:
[Hat tip to Mom (she clips anything evolution related out of the paper for me).]
My Weekend at the O.C. Freethought Alliance Conference
Here are a few of the new people:
Dave Silverman, president of the American Atheists who was famously challenged by Bill O’Reilly to explain how every day the tides go in and go out with “never a miscommunication”.
Aron Ra, a very popular YouTube anti-creationist and veteran of the talk.origins newsgroup. I had three people think I was him, before he arrived, though I’m not sure why. Considering how many things we share in common, it is somewhat surprising it took this long for us to run into each other.
And last but actually First the Lord Himself…
Mr. Deity, AKA “El“, AKA the very funny Brian Keith Dalton. If you don’t know who Mr. Deity is, go right now to his YouTube channel and start with episode one. See also the official Mr. Deity website.
The end of the conference came late Sunday afternoon just as a partial solar eclipse started and the organizers had two telescopes set up with special filters to allow us to safely view it. One of the scopes just showed the sun as a white disk with the moon cutting into it but the other actually allowed you to just make out the filaments of the many loops, flares and prominences in the corona of the sun. I have seen many pictures and films of these phenomena before but this was the first time I actually saw them with my own eyes. Incredible.
A NASA photograph showing solar prominences etc.
Once again I have a really great time and all the people I talked to, especially those at our table were a lot of fun. Thanks to Aaron for organizing our contingent and to the other members of our group for being such good company! My only regret is I got a bit distracted and got out of there kind of quickly at the end and didn’t get a chance to say a proper goodbye to them or to my friend and colleague Barbara Forrest (who was one of the speakers). Hopefully I’ll get to see them all again soon.
If you’re interested you can watch a streaming video or buy a DVD of the event from the O. C. Freethought Alliance (look for the guy in a black t-shirt with the long hair near the front) and if you live in the area consider attending the 4th Annual O. C. Freethought Alliance Conference in 2013. You just might see me there in person.
Is that what it takes?
Now I have no illusions about my blog being another Pharyngula or anything but with at least a couple hundred views a day, from around the world, you’d think I’d be getting few more comments.
Where are all the would-be “creation scientists” eager to show me the error of my ways? Here I am writing post after post spanking the heck out of their intellectual leaders and rather than reasoned defenses or even primal screams of rage I get:
Fine, let’s try Chuck & Beans advice:
inteligent design ain’t science!
Now I know this might seem like little more than a blatant cry for attention (which of course it is) but I am honestly curious about the seeming lack of comments around here. Is there a ‘visits per day’ threshold that one has to cross in order to overcome some sort of comment inertia? Has there been any research on this?
Oh, and hat tip to Scott Weitzenhoffer for the cartoon.
Something from the weird file…
Something creationists wish existed
[Hat tip to Larry Moran at Sandwalk.]
A funny, from Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
[Hat tip to James McGrath at Exploring Our Matrix.]
Holy crap, I’ve been demotivated!
That is I’ve been incorporated into a demotivational poster! It seems someone (picardo85?) over in the atheist section of reddit snagged my picture from the title explanation page of this blog along with an unattributed version of Scott Weitzenhoffer’s pigeonchess quote and combined them into a demotivational against Christians:
I have mixed feelings about this. While I have opinions about religion I tend to stay out of that debate and focus on issues involving science and attacks on science (creationism/antievolutionism), so having my image used (without my permission btw), as part of an attack Christians as a whole is a bit disconcerting.
On the other hand, having my image become part of a larger internet meme is somewhat amusing. Another funny thing came in the comment thread for the image on reddit:
If the pigeon represents the christians, why’s it playing chess with Jesus?
To which someone else responded:
It looks like Alan Moore to me…
Ha! Inserted into an internet meme, thought to look like the Messiah and/or the author of Watchmen and V for Vendetta all in one thread? Nice!
Seriously though, do I really look that much like Moore?
[I swear I already had this picture on my hard drive before I saw the one of Moore above.]
Doing my part for the war on Christmas…
…By putting up Christmas lights on the house while wearing my ‘Blasphemy is a blast for me‘ t-shirt:
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!
[More shirts can be found at Evo-T’s.]
Playing Chess with Pigeons 