Pharyngula

Posted by: Queef | January 6, 2010 4:19 PM

I liked the previous one better, but the Goodall part really made me smile :)

Posted by: Celtic_Evolution | January 6, 2010 4:30 PM

I've been reading Meyer's awful Signature in the Cell lately

Ah... yet another major characteristic that separates us from creationists: the willingness to actually read and understand material from opposing viewpoints, despite how awful they might be.

Posted by: Skyhook | January 6, 2010 4:44 PM

PZ, I am looking forward to your review of Meyers' book. I went to see him on his 'lecture' tour and got a chance to throw some questions his way. Of course he did not offer much of anything in the way of answers in my opinion!

Posted by: HombreMoleculos | January 6, 2010 5:01 PM

Sigmund @ #4

Thanks, that was great.

Posted by: Zeno | January 6, 2010 5:08 PM

Why would you expect poetry in creationism, PZ? It's all prose, prose, prose -- taken word for word from Genesis 1 (preferably the King James Version; though it doesn't read too bad if you don't try to turn it in to a science book -- lots of sex and violence, too).

Posted by: Maslab | January 6, 2010 5:18 PM

Very nice. It's good to have a reason to smile.

Posted by: evolvingcomplexityii | January 6, 2010 5:21 PM

Another great video by MelodySheep. The lyrics are available at YouTube by expanding for more info.

Love Jane Goodall's line:

"It's a very wuzzie line,
and it's getting wuzzier
All the time"

Posted by: sreichgott | January 6, 2010 5:35 PM

Yeah, I love the lectures, and there's You Tube for that. Autotune is the death of music. It's horrible, and makes my teeth ache.

Posted by: glenister_m | January 6, 2010 5:41 PM

I agree with Celtic_Evolution. At least we are willing to read books about subjects we disagree with. I've read several books/articles on homeopathy, spirituality, and religion. My views are unchanged since their arguments were pathetic. However I still read them with an open, but critical, mind.

I gave a copy of TGSOE to someone I knew thought that 'evolution is garbage', with a challenge/bet that they wouldn't read it. They refused to do so. My comment: Is your faith so weak?

Posted by: Zernk | January 6, 2010 5:58 PM

oh jan #12, ya just gotta let go sometimes. As a former musical snob, I learned to find wonder in so many things after dropping my pretenses. Been dancing lately? Thought not.

I liked how he squeezed charming little melodies out of the fluid rhythm of the prose.

Posted by: Zernk | January 6, 2010 6:18 PM

#19 (#12) Oops. Jan. Sorry. That was mean. Sorry.

Posted by: Modoc | January 6, 2010 6:31 PM

Attenborough really doesn't even need autotuning, but I dug this one just as much as all the others. Which is to say I loved it.

Posted by: eddie | January 6, 2010 6:54 PM

No accounting for taste. I wonder if they would do something more like Deicide, although Deicide's own message is pressty good anyway.

Posted by: JerryM | January 6, 2010 8:40 PM

Great video from Charles Darwin and the Tree of Life, BBC 2009, and his new series Life

Posted by: John Morales | January 6, 2010 9:05 PM

johnhei:

The symphony of science video would be better titled the symphony of creation, as it is blatantly obvious that the existence of a creative divine composer is the only logical and rational conclusion any thinking person could come to.

Um, is it not by your very same reasoning "blatantly obvious" that a super-creative divine composer composed/created this putative "creative divine composer"?

And, therefore, that a super-super-creative divine composer created the super-creative divine composer?

And, therefore, that a super-super-super-creative divine composer created the super-super-creative divine composer?

(need I go on?) :)

Posted by: sandlin.john | January 6, 2010 9:25 PM

PZ, you say:

I've been reading Meyer's awful Signature in the Cell lately, and I have to say — there's no poetry in creationism.

This is so surprising. I mean, aren't the cdesign proponentsists always claiming the greatest art ever created was by the religious? Why then do they drone on so monotonously and artlessly?

Perhaps, just maybe, there is another explanation for the great art of Mozart, and Michaelangelo. Maybe, as shown in the Symphony of Science, all it takes is human genius.

Posted by: sandlin.john | January 6, 2010 9:43 PM

I feel suddenly compelled to mention I am not claiming that the auto-tune versions of these lectures are great art, but that the source material, Cosmos and the various works by Sir David Attenborough are.

The auto-tune videos are entertaining and fun, though.

Posted by: Anri | January 6, 2010 10:56 PM

johnhei sez (in the faint hope that this is not a drive-by)

The symphony of science video would be better titled the symphony of creation, as it is blatantly obvious that the existence of a creative divine composer is the only logical and rational conclusion any thinking person could come to.

If anyone can translate that better than "I can't figure out how this might have happened naturally, and if you say you can, you're dumb" I'd be interested to hear your alternate translation.

If you believe all this highly complex and integrated living symphony is the product of random chance events, and blind mindless natural selection, which has no overall perspective of knowing where everything is evolving to, or why, you need to take a deep thoughtful breath and rejoin the real world.

Except that almost all of those people who have spent their lives taking deep breaths - and deep thoughts, too - and actually studying the real world have come to the opposite conclusion that you have.
Again, just because you're not bright enough to see what's going on, doesn't exclude anyone from being more perceptive than you are.

Of course, it's just possible that all of those people who know enough about rocks and animals and time to reach down through the rock, back through time, and find the tiny bits and pieces left of ancient animals - maybe they are all, every single one, just flat-out dumber than you, johnhei.

Anyone wanna lay odds?

Posted by: defaithed.myopenid.com | January 6, 2010 11:27 PM

#24: "...it is blatantly obvious that the existence of a creative divine composer is the only logical and rational conclusion any thinking person could come to..."

You tell 'em, johnhei! Nature is so *obviously* the work of a Divine Composer who screwed up the human eye and knee and appendix, and created bacteria and viruses so perfectly adapted to preying horribly on humans, and, incidentally, is utterly obsessed with genitalia and foreskins and masturbation.

Oh, and always remember, he forbids us to to mix fiber types in our cloth. Or live in a house with a pointed roof. I'm sure you were going to mention that but didn't have time, right johnhei?

This message brought to you by People Believing Whatever Makes Them Feel Good.

Posted by: ericwilliamlin | January 7, 2010 12:27 AM

Ah OK. Thanks for the info. I'll have to watch some of the original sources videos. Though in principle, of course, you can entirely make such a video without autotuning, though the pitches (and tune) would be different.

The "Upular" video is really cute. haha

Posted by: Rich Wilson | January 7, 2010 1:48 AM

Um, before we go too gaga for Goodall:

BILL MOYERS: I know the story, but for my audience, tell me what happened to you when you had that very powerful experience in the spring of 1974, when you visited Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris?

JANE GOODALL: Yes. It was a sort of low time in my life. And there I was. I went into this cathedral. And as I walk through the door, Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor just suddenly filled the whole cathedral. And the sun was just coming through that rose window. And it just so powerful a feeling that, you know, how could this amazing cathedral, all the people who built it, all the people who'd worshipped in it, all the brilliant minds that had been within it. How could that all be chance? It couldn't be chance.

and also:

I don't want to explain this whole life business through truth, science.

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/11272009/transcript3.html

Posted by: John Morales | January 7, 2010 5:57 AM

Rich,

[Goodall] How could that all be chance? It couldn't be chance.

Sigh. I didn't need to know that, but thanks anyway.

Deal a bridge hand — any hand.

The odds of getting that particular hand (deck = 52 cards, 13 cards dealt) is ₅₂C₁₃ = 635,013,559,600.

How could that all be chance? It couldn't be chance!

Yet it happens again and again...

Posted by: paleos04 | January 7, 2010 7:19 AM

Quit posting videos until I can fix my computer! I love these symphony of science things, but since I put a new video card in my computer my sound doesn't work. I have no idea how the two are related, but until I can figure it out you have to stop making me scream with frustration that I can't hear anything!

Posted by: https://www.google.com/accounts/o8/id?id=AItOawkcB17yH3liuPvogLrqUR2oI06Qof0EixE | January 7, 2010 10:15 AM

Its not AUTOTUNE! its a technique called VOCODING (VOCODER), where you use the voice as a modulator and a synthesizer as a carrier wave. This way you can modulate any musical material (single notes, chords, anything) with the nuance and expressions of another sound source (in this case the voices).

Autotune is a process to tune notes to a musical scale. When badly done it sounds like those awful rap songs, and when correctly done you don't hear it at all, but it can be used in a stylish way (like Madonna in die another day)

Personally I think this wave of songs are just bite sized lazy collages with a theme. Whenever the original is better then the remix the attempt has failed. And IMO all those documentaries and lectures are far more interesting than this songs.

Dan Barker, Tim Minchin and TMBG are far more interesting. Wouldn't mind have more music like this popping up, the symphony has stopped being interesting from the third one.

Posted by: shonny | January 7, 2010 11:10 AM

Sadly Greg Goebel's review at Amazon of this garbage book was removed. He had made the Poe of the century, and also got the IDiot author to respond. It was hilarious, because IDiot author tried to explain that what sounded like high praise was only awarded by one Amazon star, and GG said that one star meant it was no. 1, which the IDiots tried to explain was not the case.
But alas, now gone.

GG unfortunately made very similar reviews for other IDiot literature drivel, so Amazon and the IDiots cottoned on to him. Fun while it lasted though, and GG really had them in a spin.

Posted by: BlueMonday | January 7, 2010 11:39 AM

Sounds like a lot of folks here want these damn kids to get off their lawn.

I appreciate electronic music, and playing a vocoder is no simple task. It takes skill and artistry. Cheapening the work done here by calling it a gimmick is unfair. This artist is making music and getting names out there that are not well-known to most of the population (at least in the States).

Furthermore, kids these days like it.

(No, I'm not a kid. But I play one on tv.)

Posted by: sandlin.john | January 7, 2010 8:58 PM

@#47

Its not AUTOTUNE! its a technique called VOCODING (VOCODER), where you use the voice as a modulator and a synthesizer as a carrier wave. This way you can modulate any musical material (single notes, chords, anything) with the nuance and expressions of another sound source (in this case the voices).

You know, I'm pretty sure that AutoTune is a form of phase vocoder. While it is true that these modified voices are vocodered, according to the web site for Symphony of Science AutoTune was indeed the tool that did the modifying.

It's one thing to be pedantic... but another entirely to be pedantic and wrong.

Posted by: Ichthyic | August 31, 2010 3:08 AM

Stunning insight,John! In which case we would have an infinite "dependent" regress of super-dupers where "nothing" was ever capable of bringing itself into existence, not ever, and thus there would never be any basis for existence, and we wouldn't be having this conversation.

assumes existence requires something.

nobody has proved this empirically.

first cause is a lost cause; give it up already.

Posted by: johnhei | August 31, 2010 3:11 AM

#35 Except that almost all of those people who have spent their lives taking deep breaths - and deep thoughts, too - and actually studying the real world have come to the opposite conclusion that you have.

Since when has real science ever been decided by counting heads, and dividing by two. It is individual and groups of scientists that bring paradigms shifts, which you may not have noticed.

Posted by: Ichthyic | August 31, 2010 3:21 AM

holy crap, it took you THIS long to reply?

actually studying the real world

are you implying you have some peer-reviewed research to back up your claims?

well?

It is individuals and groups of scientists that bring paradigms shifts,

...that publish actual, repeatable, research that adds explanatory and predictive power.

Galileo didn't just pull shit out of his ass, you know.

Posted by: johnhei | August 31, 2010 3:50 AM

Are you actually suggesting that the principles on which science operates, namely the statement that everything in science is tentative and not necessarily the final word, should be peer reviewed.

Are you suggesting that the reality of the dependent universe running down towards heat death and maximum entropy should be peer reviewed.

Maybe, we should also peer review whether the universe,you or I actually exist. We could go one step further and peer review whether those doing the peer review actually exist.