I don’t have a great deal of time this morning – or really any morning – to blog (thus, Twitter). So, to celebrate Charles Darwin’s 202nd birthday and his enduring contribution to modern creationism (anyway something about apes – I can’t be bothered with the details), here is an intelligently designed cartoon depicting the errors of modern evolutionary thought for which Darwin is so deliciously to blame. Via Atheist Cartoons. (I’m sure this will pop up on a thousand other blogs today. Enjoy.)
Miseraestupendacittà took this photo. It’s a 2011 Mussolini calendar. Please, don’t touch. We all know how vain dictators are.
I’ve been ruffling through my bookshelves, preparing to box up my library (again!) for the impending move. It is at such times that I come across the most interesting passages. The following comes from Mark Twain’s Complete Humorous Sketches and Tales, and I dedicate it to all my New Englander family and friends who have been struggling of late with a snow-shovel.
“If we hadn’t our bewitching autumn foliage, we should still have to credit the weather with one feature which compensates for all its bullying vagaries – the ice storm: when a leafless tree is clothed with ice from the bottom to the top – ice that is as bright and clear as crystal; when every bough and twig is strung with ice-beads, frozen dewdrops, and the whole tree sparkles cold and white, like the Shah of Persia’s diamond plume. Then the wind waves the branches and the sun comes out and turns all those myriads of beads and drops to prisms that glow and burn and flash with all manner of colored fires, which change and change again with inconceivable rapidity from blue to red, from red to green, and green to gold – the tree becomes a spraying fountain, a very explosion of dazzling jewels; and it stands there the acme, the climax, the supremest possibility in art or nature, of bewildering, intoxicating, intolerable magnificence. One cannot make the words too strong.”
This weekend the 10:23 Challenge will be held across the world. That’s exciting, because any opportunity to poke a little fun at homeopathy is worth taking. I do it all the time, and the effects are strikingly similar to those of a full bottle of 30C Belladonna. Well, they’re a bit stronger really. Typical side effects include snickering.
I’ve been having a little fun myself on Facebook debating homeopathy with friends. It appears everyone knows it’s pretty much just a huge matzoh ball floating in a sea of schmaltz, but I’ve also heard a few voices claiming it still must not be entirely worthless.
Why? Because millions of people believe it works? Because it’s just a placebo dressed up for a dinner party? It’s true, the placebo effect is unpredictable and – ahem – mysterious, but I can’t see how that would give homeopathy any credit. Riding on coattails and all that. It’s the same as people who defend prayer by saying it makes people feel better. So does masturbation. What’s your point?
Perhaps you’re reading this and asking yourself, “What the hell is homeopathy anyway?” It’s not herbal medicine, if that’s what you were thinking. It’s a bit like taking a magic pill any time something ails you. People lie and tell you it does extraordinary things that science can’t detect or explain. And that it takes a while to begin working, and you can’t expect resuts right away. And so on and so forth. Stories. Anecdotes. People say this, people say that. “Malarial-shaped holes.” Bollocks, in short.
Have a nice weekend.
Remember when you were a kid in the ’80s and your sister had a copy of that gnome book with the weird cover? Well, now gnomes are back, hot on the heels of vampires, zombies and Android Jesus. What’s next, vengeful lawn furniture? Exploding Christmas ornaments?
via Butterflies and Wheels. Mwah!
I found this drawing on the wall in Stazione Termini in Rome this afternoon. It was on the stairwell, so I took out my phone and snapped a photo of it. It was too nice not to want to share. Besides, my wife is a capoerista, so I thought she’d appreciate the gesture. (She did.)
Imagine that…
*(I hope the artist doesn’t mind me posting this cartoon. Click on the boot to see more of his/her work.)
Have you ever wondered about cephalopods? Well, I present you with the first half-vegetable, half-squid: I’ll call it a cipollapod. Cipolla means “onion” in Italian, of course. I found them swimming in my kitchen cabinet this morning. Instead of throwing them away, I catalogued them. Then I threw them away.
Marc Di Martino 