No Darwin films allowed here

"A British film about Charles Darwin has failed to find a US distributor because his theory of evolution is too controversial for American audiences, according to its producer. "

Read the whole article.

(And sorry if you've all already seen this! It's a few days old.)

One for de Foogoo!

Found this in a random wandering through the Wiki.
I think Fugu will appreciate...

The Stylish Richard Dawkins

Eddie Izzard: On Mass Murderers

Since we're on the subject, and Panic mentioned that whole magic number and empathy thing, and it's Eddie Izzard, after all...

Bonus! I hadn't seen this one before!

A few things collected from the internet this week

I wish I had the strength of will to fact-check this myself

This, is a fucking awesome walrus

The Perry Bible Fellowship

School lunches from around the world!

I believe the story for this was a guy asked his girlfriend to draw what happens during her period


And the title of this one is apparently "Rebel Rebel"

Have a good weekend, P.o.T.!

Douglas Adams: Is There an Artificial God

This is a guy who didn't even reach his prime. He's known for those staggeringly good Hitchhiker's books, but really, he only found his true calling when he branched out into science and conservation. 

Here's a talk he gave at a tech/biology conference in the late 90s. I've listened to this about three times now; it's crappy quality, and since he's talking more or less off the cuff his logic goes a little sideways at times, but it's still brilliant. If you're not an audio listener, here's the text.

A quote—his analogy of why we so often seem to believe we're the center of the universe:

This is rather as if you imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, "This is an interesting world I find myself in - an interesting hole I find myself in - fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me so staggeringly well, it must have been made to have me in it!" This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, it's still frantically hanging on to the notion that everything's going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise. I think this may be something we need to be on the watch out for.

Looks like I'm going to hell! Again!

We've got New Deadly Sins, people!

1. Genetic Modification
2. Experimenting on Humans
3. Polluting the Environment
4. Causing Social Injustice
5. Causing Poverty
6. Becoming Obscenely Wealthy
7. Taking Drugs

I just love these guys. Evidently the whole foundation of modern medicine is now a deadly sin! Namely those unethical double-blind clinical trials which, of course, require experimenting on hapless humans. But of course life was much better before with plagues, no antibiotics, no anesthesia for surgeries, etc... Thankfully animal experimentation still gets the thumbs-up from God, but then you get those pesky ASPCA guys on your back. You just can't win! 

And genetic modification–I guess that means that all those farmers since the advent of modern agriculture went straight to hell? I mean, corn  is a 100% genetically engineered plant that didn't exist in nature until we created it by selecting for specific phenotypic traits, so surely that must count. Oh! And not to mention all that genetic selection we did to make poodles and rottweilers and great danes and stuff. Damn. No wonder western society is all fucked up.

A tarsier, God, and THX Sound

Things like this:

It's actually a tarsier, not a maki or a lemur. And why did God make women menstruate? I mean, cats and rats don't have to menstruate and they make babies just fine. That's just mean to women. If I were women, I'd hate God.