Carnivalia, and an open thread

That Jonathan Coulton video you posted yesterday led me to discover this other wonderful song by him:

That Spells DNA

DNA, you're in my heart
DNA, in fact you're in every part of my body
Each cell has a nucleus, each nucleus has chromosomes
And DNA, baby, that spells DNA

If it says TGGTCGAAC
Then you might get the cancer
If it says GTCACGACAGG
Then you shouldn't eat shrimp or nuts
If it says TATACACATATCCTCGT
Then you'll probably wish that you didn't know

The God Delusion -- Answering Responders

"Discussing Richard Dawkins' book 'The God Delusion' has aroused a lot of emotional responses (reminding me that Darwin considered strong emotions to be a survival trait). I'd like to emphasize that I was not attacking Dawkins personally---he represents an old paradigm that is reductionist in its insistence on limiting science to materialism, a model that is quickly crumbling."

Deepak Chopra

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/deepak-chopra/the-god-delusion-answe_b_35…

I strongly suspect your blog is the reason I've gotten more hits today than yesterday from both CotL and Skeptics' Circle. So thanks, PZ.

Rather than feed the ChoppedTroll, let's continue on music. I'm enjoying Jenny Lewis' album "Rabbit Fur Coat" a lot - and most of its songs have anti-religious themes, though not the title track. The genre is pop/folk, and her voice is very good:
NPR interview page with links

Other singers celebrating the secular?

Celebrating the secular. . . . "Shores of California" by the Dresden Dolls and "Mercyfuck" by Mary Prankster?

Ahhh... Mary Prankster.

Breakfast isn't a bad track either.

Christopher Hitchens says, of Ann Coulter's book Godless:

The closing chapters are lifted from the brief submitted by the absurdly-named 'intelligent design' school to a recent trial in the town of Dover, Pennsylvania. Not so long ago, when the voice of liberalism was muted, the 'Creationists' - to give them their correct name - sought to forbid the teaching of evolution. Now that they no longer feel confident enough to impose themselves in this manner, they have fallen back on a spurious 'equal time' plea, whining that pseudo-science should be taught, in the name of 'fairness', alongside the real thing. In the Pennsylvania case, as in other recent trials in Ohio and Kansas, not only were the Creationist members of the school board thrown out by voters, but it was decided by the courts that the proposed teaching of 'intelligent design' was (a) a violation of the United States Constitution; and (b) a fraudulent waste of time for both teachers and judges. (By the way, it seems to me that these outcomes ought to alter the picture, beloved by so many European liberals, of the United States as a wasteland of fundamentalist knuckle-draggers).

Hee. Considering "shores of california"'s lyrics, and just the title "Mercyfuck", I'm most reminded of Ogden Nash's immortal 'higamous hogamous'. While this is a conceptual foundation for sexual selection theory, I'm not sure secularism is derived from that. But I haven't listened to the tunes...

If you're after carnivals, there's also Philosophia Naturalis #4 up at Down to Earth.

The SAF and the ACLU are on the same side:

http://www.aclu.org/privacy/speech/27445prs20061116.html

http://www.saf.org/viewpr-new.asp?id=203

I don't think PZ has posted an extract of or link to one for quite a while, but can anyone remember the name of the cartoon series which involves a dark-haired girl(?) taking the religious tactics to cynical extremes? I'm pretty certain I'm not thinking of Calvin and Hobbes but there were some similarities. There was also a cartoon involving some child talking to their father and deconstructing some silliness or other (not sure that was the same one or even a girl though). So far I'm back to the summer in the archives here without spotting an example.

You're thinking of Danae from Non Sequitur, I think.

This might even be the one you're thinking of.

Yes, thankyou, PZ. I think it was primarily Danae I was remembering. However, I still think there might have been another child one, probably a boy, possibly more blond and definitely positioned on the other side of the parent (I'm very visual with my memory and unfortunately rubbish at names!).