The Austringer

Over at NPR, there was a post asking people for the song to be played during the Rapture as predicted by Harold Camping. I gave several choices in my response:

For years, I’ve kept a directory of songs, just called “apoc”.

Top choices that are explicitly about the end of the world out of that directory would include:

“The Old Gods Return”, Blue Oyster Cult
“The Horsemen Arrive”, Blue Oyster Cult
“Black Blade”, Blue Oyster Cult

Ones that are evocative of end-of-the-world hopelessness or creepiness if not outright apocalypse would include:

“Silent Running”, Mike and the Mechanics
“No Way Out of Here”, David Gilmour
“Voices”, Russ Ballard
“Wings Wetted Down”, Blue Oyster Cult

And no list of end-of-the-world songs is complete without an homage to the people who keep saying it’s this time, for sure, really truly:

“Lunatic Fringe”, Red Rider

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I was looking for a quote from Thomas Huxley, and having found it, found out that part of the context has become a favorite among “intelligent design” creationism advocates. What I was looking for I’ve italicized, and what the IDC advocates like to use I’ve put in bold.

It was badly received by the generation to which it was first addressed, and the outpouring of angry nonsense to which it gave rise is sad to think upon. But the present generation will probably behave just as badly if another Darwin should arise, and inflict upon them that which the generality of mankind most hate—the necessity of revising their convictions. Let them, then, be charitable to us ancients; and if they behave no better than the men of my day to some new benefactor, let them recollect that, after all, our wrath did not come to much, and vented itself chiefly in the bad language of sanctimonious scolds. Let them as speedily perform a strategic right-about-face, and follow the truth wherever it leads.

— Thomas Henry Huxley

‘On the Reception of the Origin of Species’. In F. Darwin (ed.), The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Including an Autobiographical Chapter (1888), Vol. 2, 204.

It is pretty ironic that the folks continuing the tradition of spewing “angry nonsense” nonetheless enthusiastically use phrasing from later in the same quote.

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We’re watching one of these reality-TV shows with someone doing a survival stint in the Australian outback. Our hero was discussing the lack of water, and just before the commercial break announced, “I’m going to have to drink my own pee.”

The scene faded to black, and the first commercial came on. It was advertising for some brand of beer.

I think the beer brewer should get a refund from their agent.

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Spring has arrived on the calendar. Here in Michigan, what arrived was a heavy snowstorm dropping about four inches of new snow on things.

Ed Brayton came to Lansing this evening for a performance by a friend of his, Don Reese. I got invited to tag along. We met for dinner at “Smokey Bones” at the Eastwood Town Center. I was unfashionably late, having left in time to get there — if the roads were clear and dry, which they weren’t. It took the better part of an hour to make the trip I usually do in about fifteen minutes.

Don is a stand-up comic who has appeared on A&E, MTV, and worked with Adam Sandler. Don is about my height and weighs, I don’t know, somewhere in the upper 200 pound range. Don’s response to male pattern baldness was a razor. Ed and Don engaged in a batch of shoptalk plus discussion of various things about the entertainment industry, but mostly things to do with the stand-up comedy business and people they knew. I couldn’t aid that much at all, so I primarily applied myself to a beef brisket sandwich.

Eventually we parted ways with Don, who needed to go change wardrobe for his appearance. Ed and I went out to our cars and performed the ritual of brushing off snow and scraping off ice so common to early spring here in Michigan. Then we were off to Connxtions Comedy Club in Lansing. There were three acts, and Don may kick me next time I see him, for though Don made it part of his act to bring up the tendency for audiences not to remember the names of the people who just made them laugh, I am not at all sure that I have remembered the names of the first two comedians up on stage. As near as I remember, they were Andy Badinga and Marvin Todd. I’m sure Ed can correct me, and I’ll update this once I do get that correction.

Ed and I somehow got the front center table. Usually I prefer being more inconspicuous, especially where live comedy is concerned, but this didn’t have any untoward consequences this evening. Andy’s set was pleasant, if a bit rough on the delivery. Marvin Todd had an edgier routine, often playing off the mismatch between his skin color and the preponderant white-bread appearance of the audience, but handled with an experienced delivery. Todd also went between some self-deprecation and some bits where, thank goodness, another part of the audience came in for attention. A group had wandered in late and were fairly noisy in rearranging tables and chairs to suit them. For the rest of Todd’s routine, he would intersperse some vocal sound effects mimicking the moving chair noise, eliciting a “Sorry!” from one of the girls in the group.

Don Reese’s routine was thoroughly professional and while it was clear that Andy and Marvin have talent, Don certainly brings talent and polish to an act that is nonstop laugh fest. Don’s brand of humor ranges from some medium raunchy stuff common to a lot of comedy to allusions that challenge the cultural literacy of the audience. For instance (on the allusions, not the raunchy stuff), there were the references to trying to keep from offending an audience of senior citizens and having to skip his material on the Hindenburg and the Teapot Dome Scandal. Quite a bit of Don’s humor concerns his imposing physical appearance that Connxtions describes thus: “Looking like the illegitimate son of Uncle Fester and G. Gordon Liddy…”. Since he’s shaved off the mustache, I think the G. Gordon Liddy thing can be retired. But a part of Don’s routine that I particularly enjoy is his exploration of a common science fiction B-movie dialogue cliche’, having a scientist exclaim at some point, “Why, that’s fantastic!” This he folds into making the phrase relevant to more common experience, while defending the exclusivity of it. “Raspberry vinaigrette is salad dressing. It can be delicious, but it isn’t fantastic. Fantastic is having a Viking materialize in your living room because of a botched time-travel experiment.”

But I think a short summary of Don’s performance with, “Why, that’s fantastic!” isn’t really a stretch.

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As with many guys in the USA on New Year’s, I’m in a room with a big screen TV and college football playing. The particular game is the Konica-Minolta Gator Bowl, but the thing that motivated me to write this entry is a commercial from Konica-Minolta. They are selling office equipment (having sold off their photographic equipment division to Sony), including an advanced copier. The commercial shows two office workers discussing the capabilities of their new Konica-Minolta copier, and one of them mentions the built-in biometric access facility. The other one responds with a warning that the machines are going to take over the world and take dominion over humans. The first office worker gives him a look that plainly says, ‘What a nut’, and turns away.

I think it says something when marketing for a major corporation here is willing to take a pot shot at this sort of paranoia.

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I asked Amadan if he would be amenable to adding a verse concerning listmaking to his earlier poem. Instead, he came up with a whole new poem, again giving a nod to W.S. Gilbert. Without further delay, here it is.

I’ve Got a Little List

As the scientists and seculars are all satanic tools
I’ve got a little list, I’ve got a little list
Of the great and good and godly who will keep them out of schools
Where they will not be missed! ‘Cause they’re all atheist!

There’s a plethora of engineers who think cells are machines
And some Bible College lecturers who hope to be has-beens
There’s the eminent professor (in an unrelated field)
And a lady from Canadia whose mind is firmly sealed
A slimy politician who is loudly boo’d and hissed -
He surely won’t be missed! But he’s there on the list!

You can put ‘em on the list, you can put ‘em on the list
For they’d none of them be missed, hardly one’s a scientist

There’s the First Amendment Expert who has never been in court
I’ve got him on the list! I hope we don’t get Kitz’d!
There’s a fire and brimstone preacher of the theocratic sort -
A true creationist! We’ll say he’s I-D-ist!

We have versions of the Second Law that are completely new
We have lots of publications – well, perhaps we have a few
We’ve Design and CSI and complex mumbo-jumbo too
But pathetic things like saying what they mean are up to you
And if you laugh out loud at us, you are a Darwinist
An Evidenciarist, an Evilutionist.

You can just ignore the list, there’s no pandas on the list
And there’s no Steves on the list, there’s no Steves on the list.

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Over the the “After the Bar Closes” forum, “Amadan” has a timely update of a favorite bit of nonsense. I’ve added URLs here and there to the original.

In anticipation of a special anniversary tomorrow…

I Am the Very Model of a C-Design-Proponentsist

[Note: Malicious allegations have been made that this work somehow plagiarises something by W.S. Gilbert. Nothing could be further from the truth and I emphatically state that I have nothing to apologise for. And I'm really sorry. Comments on this subject are now closed.]

I am the very model of a c-design-proponentsist
The diametric opposite of all that is materialist
My engineering cert allows me call myself a scientist -
We won’t discuss those classes in Biology I might have missed

I work in a diploma mill I call a university
And there I struggle long and hard to teach the controversity
I welcome all opinions notwithstanding their diversity
I just reject the fact-based ones as atheist perversity

He just rejects the fact-based ones as atheist perversity
He just rejects the fact-based ones as atheist perversity
He just rejects the fact-based ones as goddam pervertersity

My publication record is quite pre-dispen-sensationalist
I regularly top the polls of books that are salvationist
Applause in the reviews keeps copies flying off the bookstore shelf
I couldn’t be more pleased if I had written the reviews myself

He couldn’t be more pleased if he had written the reviews himself
He wishes Amazon would keep his IP numbers to itself

When I go up for tenure I’ll submit my publication list
And if they ask for science then I’ll scream “Discriminationist!”
Religion has no place within the quest for natural knowledge
At least until I am the one who’s put in charge of college

I’m waiting for the day in court when Darwin meets his Waterloo
Though I might find that testifying isn’t what I ought to do
I know that what’s in Genesis is strictly and completely true
It’s just a shame it’s stuck in a six-thousand-year-long peer review

He knows that what’s in Genesis is strictly and completely true
He knows that what’s in Genesis is strictly and completely true
He wishes that the IRS would let him see his research through

I claim that Dover came about because the judge was activist
I dazzle congregations with my jargon that’s distractivist
I never answer awkward questions even if you do insist
I really am the model of a c-design-proponentsist

He never answers awkward questions even if you do insist
He really is the model of a c-design-proponentsist

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The Discovery Institute has been engaged in a full-blown media extravaganza in building up to their press conference today to beat up on Iowa State University for their turning down astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez’s tenure application. After all that foreshadowing and build-up, what did they come up with? Some emails among ISU faculty who did discuss Gonzalez’s “intelligent design” creationism advocacy, and how it didn’t go in the plus column. Wow. That has to rank right up there with all-time great denouements like Geraldo Rivera’s live TV special, The Mystery of Al Capone’s Vault.

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Commenter “FtK” at the YoungCosmos YEC cheerleader weblog expands a bit on an opening post that wonders whether commenters at “After the Bar Closes” might choose to neuter themselves.

Oh, and as for neutering the ATBC boys…hey, I’m all for it.

So, going from musing about reproductive choices among critics to espousing some active program (or would that be pogrom?) is, what, exactly? Is this that robust sense of humor that antievolutionists often claim to have, but so seldom demonstrate? Really, it can be tough to tell which statements they will stand by later, and which ones they will conveniently write off as “street theater”.

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Prof. Steve Steve finally stopped taking advantage of the hospitality of the Chicago contingent of the PT/AtBC community, arriving on my doorstep on Friday.

Prof. Steve Steve seems to have “Be Prepared” down pat.

Then we were off to dinner. Ed Brayton picked “Smokey Bones” in Lansing as the meeting place. Clockwise around the table, we have Prof. Steve Steve, a party-crashing cephalopod whose name I didn’t catch, Prof. Darwin, Ed Brayton of Dispatches from the Culture Wars, Diane Blackwood of Baywing.net, Prof. Rob Pennock of Michigan State University, and Prof. Jeff Shallit of the University of Waterloo and Recursivity.

And even accidents can be interesting. Here’s a photo that clicked off that I didn’t know about until I offloaded the camera.

Jeff came to town to see the Detroit Mineral and Gem Show on Saturday in Warren, Michigan. I expressed an interest, so we set off to Warren on Saturday morning. Here are a very few of the things we saw there:

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You see the darndest stuff on Craigslist, and not all of it weird personals or household detritus. Over at Panda’s Thumb, “GvlGeologist” notes a humorous entry on Craigslist concerning M&M candies and one man’s tournament to find the strongest candy shell.

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I’m going to describe an atomic theory of antievolution. Antievolution, I assert, is comprised of a large number of elemental arguments. The set of arguments can be arranged and deployed in a number of different ways, just as chemical compounds can be described in terms of atomic constituents.

In the beginning, there was naive creationism. It was simply part of Christian theism. Arguments for creationism were almost purely apologetics, means to support the faith of the faithful rather than to fend off natural philosophy. Among the first atomic elements of antievolution, then, are the arguments from design. In 1802, the Reverend William Paley put together a number of these, in part to counter the arguments of David Hume. These included the argument from artifacts of several parts serving a function, the argument from improbability, the argument from anthropic match to earth’s conditions, and the argument from conditions for advance of human knowledge.

As evolutionary science developed, further antievolution elements were discovered: the argument from more and more people leaving secular theories to adopt literalist biblical views, the argument from denial of the particulars of evolutionary science, the argument from recantation of authorities, and many more. So driven and diligent were the antievolutionists in their search for the elemental arguments that would cause listeners to abandon evolutionary science that almost all of these arguments were described and deployed by 1925 and the time of the Scopes trial.

The elemental antievolution arguments, though, are a small subset of arguments in general. If I represent a particular configuration, or compound, of antievolution arguments comprising “creationism” as it was before 1968, the date when the Supreme Court handed down its decision in Epperson v. Arkansas, I might choose to model it as using, say, the red blocks from a popular type of toy:

Frustrated that the Supreme Court had rejected their compound, antievolutionists could have attempted to re-evaluate their approach, perhaps take up arguments from outside their particular set of elements, and try something different. Apparently, they found it easier on the whole to work using just the same elemental arguments as before, but leaving out some that they believed were particularly troublesome in the legal sphere. Their new compound, “scientific creationism”, could be visualized like this:

As time went by, it gradually dawned on Henry M. Morris, a prominent antievolutionist, that a slightly different arrangement might be better accepted, and so “creation science” was created:

“Creation science”, though, was recognized as being just the same thing as the “creationism” that came before it in the 1982 McLean v. Arkansas decision and the 1987 Supreme Court decision in Edwards v. Aguillard. A group called the Foundation for Thought and Ethics had been working on a “creation science” textbook for use in public schools, and the 1987 Edwards decision made them think about what they would do with the draft of their textbook. Again, they could have chosen to investigate a new approach using other arguments, but this was not the path they took. They found it easier all around to once again rearrange the existing arguments into another compound that they were certain that, this time, no one would notice it had anything to do with “creation science”. They called this entirely unrecognizable compound “intelligent design”:

“Intelligent design” did cause some confusion for some people, who generally were looking at claimed motivations of advocates rather than looking at the composition of both “creation science” and “intelligent design”. Once the composition of both “creation science” and “intelligent design” was analyzed in a courtroom in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania in 2005, the confusion evaporated and the decision in the Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District case noted that “intelligent design” was simply “creation science” rearranged and relabeled.

Antievolutionists are nothing if not persistent, so a “new” approach has been announced. This latest compound is simply being called “evolution”, and can be visualized like this:

One might notice the absence of the sorts of arguments that lie at the frontier of scientific inquiry in evolutionary science. The antievolutionist compound of “evolution” now simply fails to take cognizance of any portion of evolutionary science that has not been touched upon by some form of elemental antievolution argument. Antievolutionists are betting that you, your science teachers, your school board, and the legal system where you live will all demonstrate the sort of cognitively challenged view of things that does not see any similarity of antievolution’s compound of “evolution” and the compounds of “intelligent design”, “creation science”, “scientific creationism”, and “creationism” that went before.

Update: Thanks to Marshall Berman for getting my brain back on track concerning Epperson.

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Steve Story at the “After the Bar Closes” forum riffed off of some posted questions comprising a final exam in rhetoric offered by William Dembski, to create a new question. I think the new question should be more widely heard:

14. You are the head of a PR company in Seattle. You have $4 million a year to try to promote Science X. In 20 years Science X has solved no problems, performed no experiments, and generated neither hypotheses nor interest from serious researchers. You don’t even bother to publish your fake journal anymore. Virtually all scientists say Science X is an enormous pantload and obviously fraudulent. Despite all this, a small percentage of zealous nitwits believe in Science X and buy your books and attend your fake conferences. Explain, in 300 words, whether you should get leather or fabric interior for your new Jaguar.

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