For the many international CV readers, today is the US’s Independence Day celebration, which is in large part an excuse to bar-b-que meat products, blow up fireworks, and drink beer. If you’re tuning in from abroad, you are probable sober enough to read Daniel’s upcoming post on gravitational waves. For the rest of the drunken US crew, you can probably handle the Muppets.
PS. While we’re talking beer, I must recommend the current Full Sail Limited Edition L.T.D. (Recipe No. 3), sold in bottles with the pale blue label. Seriously. Try some.
As a diehard baker of extremecakes, I understand the difficulty in complex cake construction. Truly, I do. But this commemorative space shuttle cake at an event to salute the achievements of women in space has gone fabulously off the rails.
I never thought the phrase “External Fuel Tank” could sound so, well, dirty.
Picture below the fold to protect the children. (From the always entertaining CakeWrecks).
I was planning a mildly amusing joke about “Pastaeidolia,” hoping that Phil would forgive me, after seeing this map of the Paris subway system (via Bioephemera).
But then I stumbled across the Flying Spaghetti Monster page at CreationWiki: The Encyclopedia of Creation Science. This is my new candidate for Funniest Page on the Internet. Marvel as they explain, with helpful charts and a compelling level of earnestness, why the FSM does not, in fact, deserve the same amount of respect as one should show to Creation Science.
Flying Spaghetti Monster
Evolution
Intelligent Design
Creationism
Intended as parody
Intended as science
Intended as science
Intended as a scientific model of intelligent design
Creator (the Flying Spaghetti Monster itself) assumed to exist and identified
Creator assumed not to exist
Creator (designer) inferred from the evidence but not identified
Creator assumed to exist and specifically identified
Evidence for evolution claimed to be planted by the creator
Evidence for evolution is not to be questioned
Evidence for evolution challenged with academic arguments
Evidence for evolution challenged with academic arguments
Creator makes things appear older than they are as a test of faith
Accepts uniformitarian ages
Generally accepts uniformitarian ages
Rejects uniformitarian ages as based on unprovable presuppositions
Has no genuine support in the scientific community
Has the support of the vast majority of scientists
Has the support of (at least) thousands of scientists
Has the support of (at least) thousands of scientists
Has no supporting evidence
Has supporting evidence that is highly contested
Has supporting evidence
Has supporting evidence
Against professionals like that, we amateur humorists stand little chance.
You can always count on the Daily Show. As John presaged earlier this month, correspondent John Oliver visited CERN to do a report on the LHC, which has finally appeared. Watch as John Ellis lays the science smackdown!
The best thing about it is that, once again, Jon Stewart and company have taken an issue that completely flummoxed most major news media — in this case, the purported danger that the LHC will destroy the world — and actually get it right. In addition to visiting CERN itself, Oliver scored an interview with Walter Wagner (”graduated UC Berkeley with a Minor in Physics”), originator of much of the hysteria and lawsuits. You’ll get to hear Wagner explain that the probability the LHC will destroy the world is — wait for it — fifty percent. You know, because when you have two things that can possibly happen, obviously each has half the probability, right? I don’t want to say too much about Walter Wagner, because, if nothing else, the guy is really fond of a good lawsuit. So I have no comment whatsoever on Walter Wagner’s competence or sanity. But I do know people who are utterly incompetent and completely insane, who resemble Walter Wagner in certain ways. I’ll stop there.
His Brains, anyway. (Which he never talked about himself, but that’s neither here nor there.) Random fluctuations make an appearance in Dilbert. (Hat tip Nick Suntzeff.)
One can only wonder what Calvin and Hobbes could have done with this.
In the progression from magazines to blogs to Twitter feeds, the tea leaves are clear. I think we need a new social network, on which updates will take the form of nothing more than a single “0″ or “1″.
PUBLIC INFORMATION STATEMENT
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE JACKSON KY
1145 PM EST FRI FEB 13 2009
…POSSIBLE SATELLITE DEBRIS FALLING ACROSS THE REGION…
THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE IN JACKSON HAS RECEIVED CALLS THIS EVENING FROM THE PUBLIC CONCERNING POSSIBLE EXPLOSIONS AND…OR EARTHQUAKES ACROSS THE AREA. THE FEDERAL AVIATION ADMINISTRATION HAS REPORTED TO LOCAL LAW ENFORCEMENT THAT THESE EVENTS ARE BEING CAUSED BY FALLING SATELLITE DEBRIS. THESE PIECES OF DEBRIS HAVE BEEN CAUSING SONIC BOOMS…RESULTING IN THE VIBRATIONS BEING FELT BY SOME RESIDENTS…AS WELL AS FLASHES OF LIGHT ACROSS THE SKY. THE CLOUD OF DEBRIS IS LIKELY THE RESULT OF THE RECENT IN ORBIT COLLISION OF TWO SATELLITES ON TUESDAY…FEBRUARY 10TH WHEN KOSMOS 2251 CRASHED INTO IRIDIUM 33.
Our day (and night) jobs notwithstanding, the blog is about whatever we find interesting — science, to be sure, but also arts, politics, culture, technology, academia, and miscellaneous trivia. We have similar outlooks on many things, widely disparate opinions about others, and will do our best to keep the discourse reasonably elevated.
