Pharyngula

Posted by: The Science Pundit | October 7, 2009 12:24 PM

That was good. I guess you're pretty happy that embryology was a yeah and not a no.

Posted by: Valdyr | October 7, 2009 12:32 PM

Wait, does this mean Ken Ham might start singing? He is from Australia originally.

Posted by: Bob O'H | October 7, 2009 12:36 PM

I'll warn Wilkins.

Posted by: Carlie of the lacy, gently wafting adjectives | October 7, 2009 1:20 PM

I'm incredibly happy that the women in the video were dressed like people who could actually have come straight from working in the lab, rather than being impractically sexed up.

Posted by: Hypatia's Daughter | October 7, 2009 1:33 PM

Large Hadron Rap

Posted by: SEF | October 7, 2009 1:40 PM

Some of them looked a bit as though they belonged in a Michael Jackson Thriller video as zombies instead! Then again, I haven't seen the original video for that Backstreet Boys song. So perhaps the lab dudes were convincingly like the band members.

Posted by: cervantes | October 7, 2009 2:01 PM

Is this the worst act of journalism ever committed? It's a contender, that's for sure.

Creationists Say Science and Bible Disprove 'Ardi' Fossil Is Evidence of Evolution
Discovery of 4.4 Million-Year-Old Fossil Does Not Shake Creationists' Faith
By RUSSELL GOLDMAN
Oct. 7, 2009

Posted by: Roameo | October 7, 2009 2:03 PM

Vaguely recognise some of these peeps... man, ive got to start actually making it into uni occasionally if they're going to be filming these kind of lulz.

Posted by: Lynna, OM | October 7, 2009 2:29 PM

All right, you Aussies from the "Horror" thread who have been working on the opera -- you need to get cracking and have something presentable for PZ's visit.

Posted by: Hot-Z | October 7, 2009 2:35 PM

OT, but important
I donate mt time in training these kids in CAD software, this is a vote for Engineering and Science!

Thanks
Alex Hatziemmanuel

A Vote to help FIRST Robotics

You may be familiar with Google's Project 10^100 (Project 10 to the 100) where Google opened up a suggestion box for ways to solve world problems that fell into different categories. Well, a FIRST’s team suggestion was picked to go into a small group of only 67 selected suggestions out of the over 150,000 suggestions received. Grouped into 16 categories, these suggestions are now up for final voting by the world! Of these 16 categories, up to five categories will be selected as winners of the $10,000,000 prize money – which will be split among them (so $2 million per category).

Go to http://www.project10tothe100.com/submit.html?id=T09 and cast your vote for this category which involves using funds to spread FIRST to more students and schools around the world!
Voting ends on Thursday, October 8th --- so please help by voting soon! And if you can encourage others to vote as well – that would be great!

Posted by: Lynna, OM | October 7, 2009 2:56 PM

Better link for Hitchens' talk in Sydney: http://www.abc.net.au/tv/fora/stories/2009/10/06/2706358.htm

Posted by: LRA | October 7, 2009 3:35 PM

Nerd humor. Gotta love it! :)

Posted by: http://openid.aol.com/e1dolon | October 7, 2009 3:39 PM

"As for evolution, it had been developed from a phenomenological
description centering around what was generally
termed natural selection into the modern evolutionary synthesis
through its union with Mendelian genetics. The modern
evolutionary synthesis should have been the 20th century’s
evolutionary bastion, the forefront of research into the evolutionary
process. No such luck!
The basic understanding of evolution, considered as a process,
did not advance at all under its tutelage. The presumed
fundamental explanation of the evolutionary process, “natural
selection,” went unchanged and unchallenged from one end of
the 20th century to the other. Was this because there was
nothing more to understand about the nature of the evolutionary
process? Hardly! Instead, the focus was not the study of the
evolutionary process so much as the care and tending of the
modern synthesis. Safeguarding an old concept, protecting
“truths too fragile to bear translation” is scientific anathema.
(The quote here is Alfred North Whitehead’s, and it continues
thus: “A science which hesitates to forget its founders is lost”
[32].) What makes the treatment of evolution by biologists of
the last century insufferable scientifically is not the modern
synthesis per se. Rather, it is the fact that molecular biology
accepted the synthesis as a complete theory unquestioningly—
thereby giving the impression that evolution was essentially a
solved scientific problem with its roots lying only within the
molecular paradigm.
There you have it. An entire century spent studying biology
without seriously addressing evolution, without assigning importance
to the study of the evolutionary process. Our understanding
of biology, of biological organization, far from being
near complete (as molecularists would have us believe), seems
still in its infancy.

Carl R. Woese, and Nigel Goldenfeld, "How the Microbial World Saved Evolution from the Scylla of Molecular Biology and the Charybdis of the Modern Synthesis" [8-page PDF], doi:10.1128/MMBR.00002-09, p14-21 v73, Microbiol. Mol. Biol. Rev., Mar 2009.

Posted by: nothing's sacred | October 7, 2009 4:17 PM

OT: Chris Mooney continues his attack on Richard Dawkins in http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris-mooney/how-richard-dawkins-commu_b_312208.html

Posted by: 'Tis Himself, Quel Dommage | October 7, 2009 4:32 PM

All right, you Aussies from the "Horror" thread who have been working on the opera -- you need to get cracking and have something presentable for PZ's visit.

And don't forget, the baritone gets the girl (or the guy, if he's a gay baritone).

Posted by: nigelTheBold, Minister of Spankings | October 7, 2009 4:51 PM

I've often said that life should feature a soundtrack, and you should be able to break into song and expect the random folks around you to sing back-up.

But that's just me.

Posted by: Jadehawk, OM | October 7, 2009 5:12 PM

I'm skeptical. There were no deadly critters. That can't possibly have been Australian.

Posted by: Dawn | October 7, 2009 5:57 PM

Testing Movable type signin - seems to work OK from my macbook with Firefox.

Loved the video. But now I'm going to have the song stuck in my head all evening.

Posted by: Bride of Shrek OM | October 7, 2009 6:22 PM

As someone who used to a Microclimatologist with CSIRO in the 1990's , all I can say is I don't think anyone would have made a song about us back then.

Posted by: KiwiInOz | October 7, 2009 7:15 PM

C-S-I-R-Oooooo. Bugger, now I'll be singing that all day long. I would have preferred it to be set to the Ray and Kirk Tribute music, but hey, any promo is good promo.

YRC Ichthyic.

The CSIRO communications policy was changed after that little episode. We still can't say publicly that policy a, b, or c are crap and the Government should take action z. But we can identify the implications of policy options and identify other options. Similarly, any internal advice to Government doesn't tell them what they should do, rather it gives them the information and options upon which to make decisions.

C-S-I-R-Oooooo

Posted by: sasqwatch | October 7, 2009 9:31 PM

#21 Lynna: thanks for the Hitchens link. Nice to be able to download the whole talk.

Pedant that I am though... Hitch did confuse me a little by mentioning the "there is still time, brother" quote along with Stanley Kubrick. (the book was "On The Beach", and the director of the movie adaptation was Stanley Kramer).

oh well... I'll try to enjoy the rest of the talk anyway. ;-)

Posted by: MaxH | October 7, 2009 11:09 PM

That was so awesome, I can barely contain myself. :)

I forsee some sort of rip to my iPod.

Posted by: Arwen | October 8, 2009 3:02 AM

For a moment there, I thought it was the Chaser boys again!

Posted by: Rorschach | October 8, 2009 6:02 AM

@ 46,

For a realistic look at the state of Australia science see: http://www.the-funneled-web.com/

If anything, that is the worstly designed website I've ever seen.