…and this is a 
Chickens, roads, crossing thereof
Category: Humor • Skepticism
Posted on: February 3, 2006 9:55 AM, by PZ Myers
If you can only read one thing today, make it Skeptico's answers to Why did the chicken cross the road?
It's dead-on funny—read the hypothetical answers from all the skeptics and loons like John Edward and O'Reilly and Icke and many others, which are just perfect—I'm stealing Behe's answer!
A chicken crossing a road has:
eyes
legs
a road
the other side
If any one of those irreducibly complex parts is missing the chicken will be unable to cross the road, so if it looks, walks (across roads) and clucks like a chicken, then, absent compelling evidence to the contrary, it's an intelligently designed chicken. Its legs are molecular machines, literally outboard motors. Look at Mount Rushmore…
And then he takes it up a notch and starts poking fun at his fellow skeptical bloggers. Fantastic!
Comments
I died laughing reading that last night - every one of them was right on the mark!
Posted by: coturnix | February 3, 2006 9:56 AM
I'm hoping he'll do me, since I'm one of his regular commenters. :)
Posted by: BronzeDog | February 3, 2006 10:10 AM
Are we sure that Dembski's answer wasen't really personally answered by him?
Posted by: Rocky | February 3, 2006 10:21 AM
He left out a few though.
Dispatches from The Culture Wars:
Timothy Sandefur has done an excellent job fisking Robert Posner's analysis of why the 14th amendment protects the chicken crossing the interstate re the commerce clause...
The Intersection:
Folks, I'm travelling through El Pollo, Tx, and blogging is going to be light for the next week while I slowly drive through all these chicken-crossings...
Posted by: fake ed brayton![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/nav-commenters.gif)
|
February 3, 2006 10:24 AM
hahaha, priceless.
Posted by: Geral Corasjo | February 3, 2006 10:26 AM
Fake Ed Brayton - those are funny. Although I thought that the chicken crossed the road in order to attend a reading of "Republican War in Science"...
As for myself, it is not important if and whether the chicken crossed the road but at what time of day it did so. And since crossing roads is a symptom of psychopathology, I conlude that the chicken is a conservative. And it is NOT in the chicken's genes - it is a developmental response to the environment.
Posted by: coturnix | February 3, 2006 10:40 AM
The Mathmo version:
Why did the chicken cross the mobius strip? To get to the same side...
Posted by: Corkscrew | February 3, 2006 10:50 AM
Doesn't saying "the chicken crossed the road" assume a special frame of reference, without taking into account the relative speeds of the road, the observer of the chicken and the road, the rotation of the planet holding all three, and its revolution around the sun... Could the road have moved beneath the chicken?
Posted by: Kristine | February 3, 2006 11:15 AM
Chicken crossed the road. Heh! Hugh Hewitt has more.
Update: Dean Esmay has more.
Posted by: fake Instapundit | February 3, 2006 11:34 AM
Chicken crossed the road to start another open thread.
Posted by: fake Atrios | February 3, 2006 11:35 AM
Q: Why did the chicken cross the road?
A: I find it IRONIC that so-called 'tolerant' liberals would make fun of chickens.
Posted by: Dr. Retarded | February 3, 2006 12:46 PM
Q. Which came first - the chicken or the egg?
A. Surely there were fishes that produced eggs hundreds of millions of years before birds even evolved. So, clearly the egg came first. Ha.
Posted by: Ian B Gibson | February 3, 2006 12:49 PM
George Bush:
In the spirit of respect and decency, Americans on the Internets can agree: chickens have crossed the road at some point. I know. I have a ranch...with chickens....and shrubs...and a road going to it. I have it under good authority that chickens have made it across roads in Crawford.
But this should not deter us from meeting our destinatious goal: The unending tide of poulty must be seen as a threat to our country's asphalt.
Posted by: BlueIndependent | February 3, 2006 2:04 PM
Maybe it was to print some bacon?
http://livescience.com/scienceoffiction/060203_print_bacon.html
Hmm. Can't wait for the version that lets you print pets. lol Seriously though, some days the world gets both more amazing and simultaniously bizzare.
Posted by: Kagehi | February 3, 2006 2:19 PM
This is right up there with Ted Barlow's lightbulb jokes.
***
Q. How many bloggers does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: Only one, but when has that ever stopped us?
***
Q: Ari, does the Administration have any plans to repair the growing number of broken lightbulbs?
A: I reject the premise of the question. They could be better described as opportunitybulbs.
***
etc.
Posted by: ymr049c | February 3, 2006 2:20 PM
Re: funniness of this bit.
I have to respectfully disagree. The reason it is so "on target" is that the author has simply taken the exact words of these people and simply substituted "chicken" for the original subject. It's not very funny and anyone can do it:
Abraham Lincoln -- Fourscore and seven years ago, our chickens tried to cross the road.
Posted by: CrackWilding | February 3, 2006 2:23 PM
Sociobiological explanation
The chicken crossed the road to improve access to food or mate sources. Perhaps other chickens find road crossing sexy. Otherwise, the behaviour would not exist.
Posted by: Loris | February 3, 2006 5:19 PM
CrackWilding- what a party-pooper. The brain-deadness is part of what's funny. I like your Lincoln one.
Posted by: ymr049c | February 3, 2006 7:14 PM
Thanks for the plug PZ. Glad you liked the Michael Behe bit.
Posted by: Skeptico | February 4, 2006 1:06 PM
http://www.trolls.org/mckeown/chicken.html
Posted by: paul | February 4, 2006 4:46 PM
*burp!*
What chicken?
Posted by: Roadtripper | February 6, 2006 11:28 AM