Bane of the scientific community

LOL! What is this from?

The sad part...

The number of creationists who won't understand the satire.

It's from the Upright Citizens Brigade. To their credit, they had some funny stuff, but not enough to keep me interested.

"It's from the Upright Citizens Brigade."

I remember this show (though I don't remember this skit)--weird but sometimes hilarious. It was on about the time that Strangers with Candy was on CC.

Mine eyes have seen the slurpee
That is dangling from the lip

It is spiritual saliva
That will never fall and drip

It defies the mighty Newton
And his godless gravity

God's loogie marches on!

Aw crap, who opened the spitty-slurpy Pandora's box? If the other side gets a hold of this, we're all doomed! Spitty-slurpy labels in our textbooks, demand for equal time... wait... let's just call it a theory, that'll shut 'em down...

This really made me smile: laughs aside, I think this sketch is a particularly accurate and incisive parody of the usual creationist tactics. I wish that more U.S. cable TV shows could have such fortitude to call out "intelligent design" for what it really is.

I never really watched UCB when it was on the air; now I wonder what other gems I may have missed...

This is insane. PZ, you're blowing my mind. First Look Around You and now this. UCB is my favorite show of all time. There's so many references to other jokes in the show. Ass Pennies, Hyperminimalism, Little Donny, Spaghetti Jesus, it's all good. They also have a sketch on Scientology, or Psychotonomy as they call it.

Matt Besser is the guy playing the Christian. He's an avowed atheist and does stand-up with many religious jokes. Here's a video of him redoing the Ten Commandments: http://mattbesser.com/video/commandments.mov

I forgot to post the video, but something else that might interest people is their take on Christian pareidolia.

http://www.ucbcomedy.com/videos/play/37

Hilarious! Exactly like that one Jack Chick tract involving the (oddly Aryan) student who shuts down the biology professor. I think Venger's right, though, in saying that the more fervent Christians won't even see the satire.

The phone just rang and, before I answered, I KNEW it was going to be my mum,. And when I answered it, you know who it was? It was my mum.

How does your "science" explain that?

Also, I had a premonition that my great aunt was going to die when I visited her on the ITU following her 5 months on the oncology ward, and she did just a couple of weeks later.

Explain that one, so-called "science".

[quote]The phone just rang and, before I answered, I KNEW it was going to be my mum,. And when I answered it, you know who it was? It was my mum.

How does your "science" explain that?

Also, I had a premonition that my great aunt was going to die when I visited her on the ITU following her 5 months on the oncology ward, and she did just a couple of weeks later.

Explain that one, so-called "science".[/quote]

Funnily enough those are some of the reasons my Nan uses to explain her belief in God. I was having a religious discussion with her, and she suddenly said, "My next door neighbour, who wasn't well, and who I regularly go over to look after, had a fall one night, and she just happened to phone me for help when I was in! Explain that!"

Great video clip. The sad thing is, when I took Bio last semester, the prof made a big issue about putting religious beliefs aside when we started the chapter on evolution. He was almost apologizing in advance of offending anyone. It was sad to see a scientist having to make that speech.

#11: I just read in the local tabloid about some 'psychic' woman. She had predicted that she'd get married four years from the prediction, and it came true!! There is no rational explanation!!!

A little off topic, but someone named Gravitationalist has done a FANTASTIC job of loading a bunch of educational evolutionary biology on YouTube. Hours & hours worth.

I haven't seen them mentioned by PZ.

This should get you started, and would have been great to have been mentioned on 2/12 (Darwin's B-day):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=910dz5sCb1I&feature=related

Its funny because its true. Nothing like a little satire in the morning to get me happy, followed by the immediate let down when I realize how close it is to real life. Damn, now Im in a crappy mood and its still 9 hours before Im going for a beer.

OK. So a bunch of IDiot types wont get the satire. But on the bright side, we can provided simple explanations to them:
The spitty-slurpy is simply explained by "some people suck"; the moonwalk explained by "The illusion of forward progress in the face of regression is the greatest contribution of the Reagan era; and edible panties explained by "some people don't mind eating crap as long as you coat it with candy---surely people of faith understand this"

And how do you explain the persistent appearance of Neil Shubin's fleece vest? Explain that professor!

haha, that was fantastic! Spitty-slurpy has always evaded me, I feel so morally fulfilled now.

By the way, anyone else notice that the moon walking girl is Amy Poehler from SNL?

The phone just rang and, before I answered, I KNEW it was going to be my mum,. And when I answered it, you know who it was? It was my mum.How does your "science" explain that?

Possibility 1: You have assigned a particular theme tune for when your mother calls you (my phone plays the theme from Keeping Up Appearances when my mother calls me). Or you saw your mother's name and/or number on the display.

Possibility 2: Your mother rings you regularly enough for you to be able to figure out when she is due to ring.

Possibility 3: Both you and your mother listen to the same radio station. A song being played (perhaps a favourite record from your childhood) triggered a subconscious response, wherein each of you thought of the other. Your mother was moved to ring you, while you were still thinking of her.

Possibility 4: Some real phenomenon, not currently well-understood, allows people to communicate wirelessly over a distance.

"Possibility 4: Some real phenomenon, not currently well-understood, allows people to communicate wirelessly over a distance"

I'm thinking smell.

"The phone just rang and, before I answered, I KNEW it was going to be my mum,. And when I answered it, you know who it was? It was my mum.

How does your "science" explain that?"

Possibility 5: You have had premonitions in the past, some of which have turned out to be wrong.

Possibility 6: This was a coincidence. Unlikely events such as this do not happen very often, but they still do occur. I would be impressed if many of your premonitions turned out to be correct.

Possibility 7: Your mother said that she was going to phone you at around this time.

Possibility 8: People have tired of how you attempt to draw attention to your accurate premonitions (and ignoring them when they point out your frequent inaccurate premonitions and non-paranormal explanations for your occasional accurate ones). Your mother is the only person who ever phones you.

Possibility 8:
Your sister yelled from downstairs: "Mom's on the phone".

I found the arguments of the "student" in this video unconvincing, because I truly CAN explain edible panties. Results of my experiments will be posted on arXiv.

#19: Yep, Amy Poehler was a member of Upright Citizens Brigade before she was hired for SNL. I loved her in UCB, back in the late 90s when she was only known to a select few.

Spitty Slurpy is fully explained by hydrogen bonds.

Stupid Spitty Slurpy Proponentists and their gravitic strawmen.

To expand on #17,

"Spitty-slurp" occurs due to a person evacuating the air from their mouth (via expanding their diaphragm to create more volume in their lungs). This creates a chamber which has a mechanical energy more favorable for the liquid (eg. spit) to contract into rather than flow from (eg. fluid mechanics).

The moonwalk (aka the backslide) is done through coordinating the foot and leg muscles to appear to an observer as if the dancer was walking forward while the momentum of the body going backwards. It's a cheap parlor trick since it's only an illusion to normal walking yet the leg muscles are still doing the motive work (but are different muscles doing different duties? Seems so to me...)

And lol at edible panties. That was too funy of an insertion at the end.

But science should look into how to alleviate my lack of a social life.

You know, a full analysis of "spitty slurpy" with the Navier-Stokes equation would likely be pretty difficult.

#25, I love her even more now after seeing this video! She's great.

That Spaghetti Jesus video reminds me of the even nastier Chaser skit. The Chaser guys are that Australian comedy team that pulled the infamous APEC-Osama-"it was just a misunderstanding"-3-point-security-breach wonderful stunt last year.

Hmm. I watched the "Spaghetti Jesus" clip and marveled at the line "Who would eat Spaghetti Jesus?", which was delivered in a tone of incredulous horror. Well, they should have checked the crowd for Catholics. My people are notorious Christ-eaters. (The others only pretend!)