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Will Congress (belatedly) do the right thing on Zika?

Since Congress left for recess seven weeks ago without approving funding to address the Zika virus, the Obama administration has declared a public health emergency in Puerto Rico and the Florida Health Department has identified two areas in Miami-Dade County with local transmission of Zika. Now that Congress is returning to the capital, I hope this evidence of Zika’s spread will convince them to provide sufficient funding for all of the following: Research into vaccines and other healthcare measures to reduce Zika’s impact; Mosquito control and outreach campaigns to slow Zika’s spread (which…

Occupational Health News Roundup

At Mary Review, Mary Pilon writes about the experiences of women in the trucking industry, highlighting stories of sexual harassment and threats of violence that often get brushed to the wayside by industry employers and supervisors. The article notes that many women who seek out trucking jobs are in their 40s and 50s, are re-entering the workforce after a period away, and are attracted to a career that doesn’t require a higher education but can potentially yield a six-figure salary. Pilon begins the story with Cathy Sellars, who sought out a trucking job at age 55 after her divorce: Cathy…

Advocates must push regulators to improve, enforce standards

By Dan Neal Ensuring that U.S. workers return home from work healthy and in one piece requires pushing OSHA and other agencies to do more at the state and national levels to improve standards and aggressively enforce them. Meanwhile, health and safety advocates and workers must speak out loudly for worker rights, especially to protect workers who simply report safety problems at their jobs and to protect whistleblowers who reveal criminal behavior. Those points were discussed last week in Baltimore at the 2015 National Conference on Worker Safety and Health. More than 280 workplace safety and…

Inhabilitated

Universities in many European and Asian countries offer an upgrade to your PhD that turns the owner into a "habilitated doctor", that is, someone who is allowed to teach PhD students. In Sweden, the recipient of the upgrade is called a docent, which is funny because "docent" means "museum guide" in US English. It's not a job: more like an academic scout badge. No salary. To get the upgrade here in Sweden, you need to a) publish about a thesis-worth of new research after your PhD dissertation, and b) prove that you can teach. The latter proof can either take the form of a teaching portfolio…

Cool it?

Another unconvincing assualt on Lomborgs new book. I haven't read the book, so I don't know whats so terrible about it. But lots of people seem to dislike it. Alanna Mitchell says: Worse still, he fails to take into account three of the characteristics of global climate change that scientists fear will make it so dangerous. First, the climate will become unstable and unpredictable, meaning it will be hard for humans to adapt farming, housing, energy sources and, yes, even air-conditioning supplies. Well no. I haven't seen any evidence for this at all. Who says so? [Clarification: the problem…

Recent Archaeomags

For some years I have been a happy reader of (and frequent commenter on) Current Archaeology. Now Dear Reader Marcus Smith has arranged (or bought?) a complimentary subscription for me to the other big UK pop-arch mag, British Archaeology. While CA is a private property, BA is published by the Council for British Archaeology, "an educational charity working throughout the UK to involve people in archaeology and to promote the appreciation and care of the historic environment for the benefit of present and future generations", as Wikipedia puts it. The first issue of British Archaeology to…

The Hyperbole of David Horowitz

Came across a link to this article by David Horowitz about "indoctrination" on college campuses (which really means "they're teaching things I don't like on college campuses"). He claims that the article is about "the active suppression of conservative ideas", and I know of a few genuine examples of that happening (the number of conservative speakers hounded off campuses and not allowed to speak is quite high, which I think is inexcusable). But listen to some of his examples of what he consders "active suppression": Another form of ideological suppression conducted by faculty ideologues was…

Elaborate Mediocrity

While reading Sandefur's book I came across a wonderful quote from a businessman explaining why he left a big company to start his own business: I was going to move to a place I didn't like to work for a boss I didn't respect, devoting my energies to office politics for which I had little talent. I was going to make this sacrifice so that I could afford the surf and turf at an elaborately mediocre restaurant on the outskirts of nowhere..." I was struck by that delightful phrase, elaborately mediocre. So many things in American popular culture fall into that category. It reminds me of a book…

STACLU on HR 2679

Jay from Stop the ACLU posted one of his "blogbursts" about HR 2679, which is going to be the subject of hearings in the Senate (designated SB 3696), yesterday and his post linked to one of mine in an attempt to refute it. That post was picked up by many other blogs, all of whom appear to have posted it without any consideration of whether it actually made any sense or not. The problem is that the argument he cited to refute mine didn't even touch on my argument at all. Here's the part where he cites me: Despite all of this some people are trying to claim, like the ACLU, that this law would…

Barnette and the Flag Burning Amendment

Yesterday was the 63rd anniversary of one of the most important Supreme Court rulings in our history, West Virginia State Board of Education v Barnette. The case dealt with the question of whether the government could force students to salute the flag and recite the pledge of allegiance, and it was brought by a family of Jehovah's Witnesses who believed that to do so would be blasphemy because only God is deserving of such a vow. Justice Robert Jackson's opinion is incredibly powerful, one of the most lucid and bold statements on liberty ever written. The historical significance can't be…

Every Day I Write (in) the (Lab) Book

One of the features I always like in the print edition of Seed is the lab notebook pictorial. Every month (or, at least, all three of the months that I've looked at the print edition), they publish a reproduction of a page or two from the lab notebook of a working scientist. It's sort of cool to see how they differ from one field to another, while remaining largely the same. Back when I was doing the "A Week in the Lab" series of posts, somebody asked me about my own lab notebooks. I present here the reason why Seed is never likely to ask me to supply notebook pages for their monthly feature…

Wallingford

Yes, another boatie post. I promise you a short break for at least a few days after this one. Unlike our little event on the Cam, Wallingford is The Big Time, and to celebrate the regatta is... yes, you guessed: nowhere near Wallingford at all. That confused me no end. It is in fact on Eton (old sausage) rowing lake (Dorney), a massive trench in the ground designed, as far as I can see, primarily to demonstrate that Eton has (or perhaps had, before they did this) stupendous quantities of spare cash. Though to be fair they did a decent cup of coffee and flapjack at a fair price. Here is a…

Sandefur and Brayton on Fire

Time for another installment of, “How bad have things gotten for the ID folks?” It is now almost a year since the big ruling in the Dover case. As I'm sure you recall, that's the one where the ID folks put their most formidable legal and scientific talent in front of a Court, and the Court promptly laughed in their faces. Still smarting from this, they have decided that attacking Judge Jones is the way to go. But since there is no legitimate point on which Judge Jones can be criticized, they have decided to go to the old standbys of trumped up charges followed by phony outrage. Here's the…

What Does Slate Have Against Physicists?

Benjamin over at The World's Fair and Chad over at Uncertain Principles have already blogged this, but neither acheves the proper level of indignation in my opinion. In this post from September 15, I discussed an astonishingly poor discussion of string theory, written by Gregg Easterbrook and published in Slate. Now, in an apparent effort to cement its reputation for unreliable commentary on science, they have run this silly essay. The subject is a recent experiment by sociologist Henry Collins. He posed seven questions about gravitational waves to a professional physicist. Both Collins…

How Not to Control the Weather for Your Dog

I'm rooting around in my bag for a pen, and pull out a laser pointer by mistake. Since I'd really prefer not to be grading, I flip it on and shine it on the floor next to the spot where Emmy is half-dozing. She immediately leaps up (she's pretty spry for a dog of 12...), and pounces on it. Or tries to, as I flick the spot across the room. "Get the dot! Get the dot! Getthedotgetthedotgetthedot!" she mutters as I lead her on a lively chase around the room. After a few minutes, I click the laser off, and put it down. Emmy comes over, panting, and I scratch behind her ears. "That was fun, eh,…

Scientific Paradoxes are Omens of Advance

"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." -Charles Darwin There are problems with science today, no doubt. With all the knowledge we've accumulated about the Universe, from the smallest subatomic scales to the farthest recesses of deep space, there are still realms and regimes where our best theories fail, where the predictions and the data don't match, and where no known explanation is sufficient for the phenomena that shows up…

Messier Monday: A Straggling Globular Cluster, M30

"The man's a born straggler... another lucky exception to the rules of natural selection. A million years ago he would've been an easy snack for a saber-toothed tiger." -Carl Hiaasen Welcome to the latest Messier Monday, where each week we take a look at one of Charles Messier's original catalogue of 110 deep-sky objects that comet-hunters might easily confuse with those transient passers-by in our Solar System. Image credit: Greg Scheckler, from his 2008 Messier marathon, where he nabbed 105/110. Quite to the contrary, each of the 110 objects in the Messier catalogue are (semi-)permanent…

Where do Type Ia Supernovae come from?

"You have to have a canon so the next generation can come along and explode it." -Henry Louis Gates When it comes to stars, their fates are very well known. Every single star that's massive enough to fuse hydrogen into helium in its core will someday run out of fuel and die. Image credit: NASA, ESA, F. Paresce, R. O'Connell, & the HST WFC3 Science Oversight Committee. The very brightest and most massive stars -- about 1-in-800 of all stars -- will die in a spectacular, core-collapse supernova when their core burns fuel all the way through iron and finally runs out of room to go. This…

Sometimes, Size is Everything!

"I went into a clothing store, and the lady asked me what size I was. I said, 'Actual'. I'm not to scale." -Demitri Martin When you look out at the Universe, what you can see is limited, at the most fundamental level, by the size of what you look with. This is why you can see dimmer objects at night -- when your pupils are dilated -- than you can when your pupils are constricted. Image credit: National Institute of Health. This same principle that applies to your eyes applies to telescopes as well. As telescopes have grown in size, so has our ability to see deeper into the Universe, as we…

The standards for the proof of the existence of god are in decline

A Christian game company has started a promotion for one of their games, and one gimmick is that they are offering a $10,000 prize to any atheist or agnostic who can replicate the unique literary style of the bible, which they purport is evidence of its divine origin. Mankind has been debating the issue of "who wrote the bible" for centuries. Some view the Bible as only the writings of man. Others claim it is inspired. We offer a simpler comment and challenge. Bring all of your books, empty your shelves, from the crypt, ancient, new, lost, hidden, revealed, secret, inspired, outspired, by…

Aging: Even Opie. An evolutionary perspective

I'm not going to say that Ron Howard is old or anything, but he isn't Opie any more. (And, in fact, it has been fascinating and inspiring to watch his career, by the way.) Anyway, Howard produced a new documentary with National Geographic called "Breakthrough: The Age of Aging, which premieres Sunday, November 29 at 9 pm et on National Geographic Channel. And, pursuant to this, National Geographic's web site is sponsoring a Roundtable on the topic. The roundtable addresses the question, "By treating aging as a disease are we just prolonging the inevitable or can we change the course of our…

Nuclear Power: Fiction, Fear, and Facts

"And Lord, we are especially thankful for nuclear power, the cleanest, safest energy source there is. Except for solar, which is just a pipe dream." -Homer Simpson If you've been reading or watching the news, you've probably been hearing a whole lot of information about the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant in Japan. And how the recent earthquake and tsunami have combined to turn the above scene into a potential disaster. At present, however, contamination has been minimal, and the damage -- thus far -- has been practically zero. What do I mean? Let's explain -- in the simplest terms possible…

Some Surprises about Big Black Holes

"Einstein was wrong when he said, 'God does not play dice.' Consideration of black holes suggests, not only that God does play dice, but that he sometimes confuses us by throwing them where they can't be seen." -Stephen Hawking Welcome back to Starts With A Bang after a brief vacation! Apparently, I go away for a few days, and the world tries to turn all we know about supermassive black holes on its head! Think about any galaxy like ours. Tens of thousands of light years across with great spiral arms, they house anywhere upwards of a hundred billion stars. If you take a good look at any…

Some good science and thinking related books for you

A Fortunate Universe: Life in a Finely Tuned Cosmos This is a concept that has always fascinated me, ever since reading some stuff about the Periodic Table of Elements. Check it out: Over the last forty years, scientists have uncovered evidence that if the Universe had been forged with even slightly different properties, life as we know it - and life as we can imagine it - would be impossible. Join us on a journey through how we understand the Universe, from its most basic particles and forces, to planets, stars and galaxies, and back through cosmic history to the birth of the cosmos.…

My Review Of The White Rabbit Project

The White Rabbit Project is a Netflix project in which former MythBusters cast members Tory Belleci, Kari Byron, and Grant Imahara lead the viewer down various rabbit holes to explore a range of interesting and often strange things. Before going any further in this review, I need to tell you two things. First, since this is a MythBusters related thing, and Mythbuster fans hate everything (especially myths, of course), you will probably see a lot of iffy reviews of this project. (This isn't just a MythBusters thing, it is a skeptics thing, a science-cheerleader thing, a geek thing. Just comes…

What it took to get me to believe... in Dark Energy

This is what science is all about; getting thrown a curveball by Nature and plunging in to find out what's going on. -Andy Albrecht Imagine waking up in the morning and heading out into the sand dunes. They never look exactly the same from day to day. But each day that you go out, they'll look somewhat like this. You consider yourself smart and well-informed, and you have a sense of adventure. So each morning, you venture out a little farther into the dunes. You find a variety of different features, but everything pretty much just looks like, well, sand dunes. One day, however, all of that…

Carnival of Space #108: Solstice Edition!

We have a treat for you this week: Starts With A Bang gets to host this week's Carnival of Space! We take the best space and astronomy posts from around the internet and pull them together in one great extravaganza! I've gotten to host twice before, and this is a very special edition for astronomers. Why, you ask? Yesterday was the Summer Solstice! Longest day of the year (for us Northern Hemisphere folk), most sunlight, the Sun gets highest in the sky, and shadows are the shortest. If you want to go all the way back, this was the day that allowed us to discover the Earth was round! Let's…

In which I dwell on the flaws in King Kong

In Peter Jackson's Return of the King, there was a spectacular scene in which the elf Legolas single-handedly takes out a giant war elephant, first dispatching the entire crew riding its back, then firing a couple of arrows into its skull. Finally, with cool aplomb, he slides down the dying beast's trunk, looking like a skateboarder doing a simple skid. He isn't just a superlative shot with a bow, he has a semi-automatic bow and arrow and can take out entire platoons and mega-monsters without breaking a sweat. I hate that scene. It represents the worst of fanboy juvenilia—the hero inflated to…

Blackmun's Papers and the Supreme Court

The late Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun left all of his papers to the Library of Congress, as is customary, and asked that they be relased on the 5th anniversary of his death on March 4, 1999. That release was made this week. For avid court watchers like me, this is an opportunity to get a glimpse behind the scenes on the internal working of the court, especially on the interplay of the personalities of the justices. Blackmun was apparently quite the packrat, keeping virtually every scrap of paper that ever crossed his desk and taking voluminous notes on every meeting and conference in…

Response to Rusty's Questions Below

Rusty posted a brief response to my last entry on the testable creation model. I'll paste the comments here because it allows a bit more space to respond: Ed, you really are tempting me to respond... I really think a good, long conversation on this topic would clear a lot of things up. We would each still be sitting in our respective camps, but we'd probably have a better understanding of what the other was positing. Let me explain in the next comment... Case in point is the "order of appearance" argument you make (e.g., Wolf-like creature to whale). Both models support the fossil data. But…

Pan Am 103 from Frankfurt

Scene: Berkeley, California, April 1986. A bar. Five conference attendees, myself included, grabbing a hamburger and a beer in a fern-bar on or near Telegraph. All eyes are on the TVs mounted over the bar, where we watch footage of an air strike against Libya. This is the retribution by Ronald Reagan against Insane African Leader Muammar al-Gaddafi. The White House was issuing statements about al-Gaddafi's involvement in bombings in Europe, the OPEC oil ministry kidnapping, linkage to the infamous Jackal, and so on. Nikki, a friend and colleague, said something, and I remember asking…

Wild Mississippi

A new multi-part special, Wild Mississippi will be first aired on February 12 at 6 Central on National Geographic Wild. I can't watch this when it is on because I don't get the channel on my TV, but I copped a review copy and have enjoyed it quite a bit. Here's the description of the first episode: Nat Geo WILD travels to the starting point of the mighty Mississippi River -- Lake Itasca in Minnesota, where the 2,350-mile journey to the Gulf of Mexico begins. Harsh cannot begin to describe the winter in this region, where temperatures reach 33° below zero. Survival strategies are as…

Which Linux Do I Turn To In My Hour of Need?

RIP Ubuntu. Ubuntu was great. For years, I kept trying to get my own Linux box up and running, initially so I could relive the halcyon days of UNIX and later so I could avoid Windows. But every time I tried to get Linux working some key thing would not be configurable or would not work. Well, I'm sure it was configurable and could work but configuring it and making it work was beyond me. Those were also the days when what little support was available on the Internet was limited mostly to the sort of geeks who prefer to give answers that are harder to parse than one's original problem. In…

Are the climate science deniers criminals?

Our future is at risk. The science is settled, in the main, though there are many details to continue to work out and there are unknowns. But no one doubts that business as usual release of fossil carbon into the atmosphere mainly as the greenhouse gas Carbon Dioxide spells big trouble for humanity and the planet Earth, including eventual massive sea level rise and highly disruptive changes in the Earth’s climatology that will make a mess of many things including our food supply. Think failed state. Think Syria. Now, think failed planet, Syria over half the globe, the other half merely a mess…

How do birds survive the winter?

How do birds survive the cold weather, especially during really cold winters like the one we are having now in much of the United States? One part of this answer has to be, sadly perhaps, that the sometimes don't. But I'll get to that later. You need to know two things as context. First, there are a lot of different kinds of birds, and the adaptations I'll mention below are not found in all of them, and probably all of these adaptations are not found in very many species. Second, many birds are actually at great risk during cold periods because birds generally live on the edge when it…

Blog tag re: avian flu policymaking

So, like Kevin over at No Se Nada, this started out as a comment on his avian flu policymaking post but got rather wordy, so I'm spinning it off over here. For those keeping track, the initial volley was this post, but previous discussion was had over here as well (and this post discussed some of his comments from that one). So, in response, I think we are talking past each other a bit. I see a lot of difference between "wolf-crying" and simple education. I'll re-post what I said in the comments here regarding that issue (in response to the question, "How do you inform people that this…

The morning session at the Oregon evo-devo symposium

My brain is most wonderfully agitated, which is the good thing about going to these meetings. Scientists are perverse information junkies who love to get jarred by new ideas and strong arguments, and meetings like this are intense and challenging. I've only got a little time here before the next session, so let me rip through a short summary of my morning. Hopi Hoekstra talked about Golden mice in them thar hills: the molecular basis of crypsis in Nebraskan deermice. This was an excellent example of the kind of approach Coyne advocated the previous evening: she has a very cool system in mice…

What happens when a vaccine actually does something 'bad'

I love this. I love this so much. Jim Carrey and his anti-vax comrades know literally nothing about vaccines, how they are developed, and how they work. Vaccines do not cause autism. ... But... what if a vaccine *did* end up having a pretty 'bad' side-effect (outside of something expected, high fever, allergic reaction, etc)? How would scientists know? Would it be covered up by Big Pharma and the League of Evil Immunologists? Would The Truth come out when some post-doc henchman has a change of heart and runs to the internet to write a blog post Expose? !!!!!! This is what happens when…

A Brief History of Timekeeping: Final Notes

Between unpleasant work stuff and the Dread Stomach Bug wiping out the better part of five days, I only got my student evaluation comments for my winter term class last week, and I'm only getting around to writing the post-mortem now. This was, for those who may not have been obsessively following my course reports, a "Scholars Research Seminar" class with the slightly cute title "A Brief History of Timekeeping," which is intended to introduce students to scholarly research and writing. The topic for my SRS was timekeeping, specifically the development of various timekeeping technologies and…

The Spirit of Mawson

ATTP has a post on this, from which I've nicked most of my links. But he also has 50+ comments, so I abandoned my original plan to put some observations there, where they'd get lost, and have written this. I'm not going to pretend my opinion - for that is all that this is - is definitive. I worked in Antarctic science a while ago, but never went South myself. But I'll pretend I can evaluate some of this stuff. Other people have written stuff: * Andy Revkin * the Frogs seem very unhappy * Chris Turney defends himself in the Graun. * Their blog. * SPRI's own "Bob" Headland isn't impressed I'd…

Holly Holm Defeats Ronda Rousey

Sunday Chess Problem is taking the week off. But in other sporting news, Holly Holm defeated Ronda Rousey in their big fight on Saturday. I've been a casual MAA fan for a while, and I like Ronda Rousey, so I actually bought the Pay-Per-View to watch the fight. Now, the thing about fighters is that they seem unbeatable right up until someone beats them. Chuck Liddell was untouchable for several years, then Quinton Jackson knocked him out. Anderson Silva was embarrassing everyone he faced, until he got too cocky against Chris Weidman. Then Weidman won the rematch too. Now it's Rousey's…

The Bottleneck Years by H.E.Taylor - Chapter 75

The Bottleneck Years by H.E. Taylor Chapter 74 Table of Contents Chapter 76 Chapter 75 Ottawa, November 7, 2059 Over the next month I watched and waited from my vantage point in UNGETF for some Solar Radiation Management [SRM] scheme to take the place of the sunshield. None was forthcoming. There was talk about restarting the Japanese Group 2 effort, even funding Baumgarten, but there was also opposition. The long and short of it was... no other SRM technique was forthcoming. Finally I felt compelled to act. I was still worried about the unknown actors involved in Matt's death, so I…

The Bottleneck Years by H. E. Taylor - Chapter 34

The Bottleneck Years by H.E. Taylor Chapter 33 Table of Contents Chapter 35 Chapter 34 Group 2 Disaster, February 17, 2056 At the next UNGETF conference, we were given an interim report on Corella Corporation activities on behalf of Group 2. They were using balloons to hoist tons of sulphur pellets for release in the stratosphere. It was fully automated. No people went aloft. The cargo was dispersed from a series of vents along the bottom of a V-shaped gondola. When the drop was complete, the balloon turned on a transponder and vented hydrogen to drop lower in the atmosphere. The…

Balkin on "Bad Originalism"

Jack Balkin has a couple of fascinating essays on how easily originalism is used to justify a particular result, an argument I have long made myself. I'm not an enemy of originalism, nor am I a "living constitutionalist", and I think that both original intent and original understanding or original meaning are important tools of constitutional interpretation and analysis. But when conservative originalists pretend that their judicial theory allows for an objective analysis that is divorced from results, like a mathematical formula that always reaches the correct answer, I think that's nonsense…

The Demarcation Problem

One of the issues involved in the evolution/creationism battle is the question of demarcation - what separates science from non-science? One of the most popular and, in my view, compelling arguments against Intelligent Design Creationism (IDC) is that it is not a genuine scientific theory at all because it has none of the hallmarks of science. The most commonly stated requirements of a scientific theory or model is that it must meet three criteria: A. It must be testable B. It must be falsifiable C. It must have explanatory power While the means of testing a theory changes depending on the…

I'm gonna be a ? MOVIE STAR ?

Last April, I received this nice letter from Mark Mathis. Hello Mr. Myers, My name is Mark Mathis. I am a Producer for Rampant Films. We are currently in production of the documentary film, "Crossroads: The Intersection of Science and Religion." At your convenience I would like to discuss our project with you and to see if we might be able to schedule an interview with you for the film. The interview would take no more than 90 minutes total, including set up and break down of our equipment. We are interested in asking you a number of questions about the disconnect/controversy that exists in…

I'm gonna be a ☆ MOVIE STAR ☆

Last April, I received this nice letter from Mark Mathis. Hello Mr. Myers, My name is Mark Mathis. I am a Producer for Rampant Films. We are currently in production of the documentary film, "Crossroads: The Intersection of Science and Religion." At your convenience I would like to discuss our project with you and to see if we might be able to schedule an interview with you for the film. The interview would take no more than 90 minutes total, including set up and break down of our equipment. We are interested in asking you a number of questions about the disconnect/controversy that exists in…

Thinking About Strauss

My many thanks to Jon Rowe and Timothy Sandefur for taking the time to answer my inquiry about Leo Strauss. After seeing multiple references to Leo Strauss, the late and famous political philosopher from UChicago, I became interested in his work and those he influenced. I knew that both of them had some background with students and followers of Strauss, particularly Timothy, who was (is?) a Lincoln Fellow at the Claremont Institute, the homebase of the "Western Straussians", so I sent an email asking them if they would take the time to give me some history and background on Strauss and his…

Direct Instruction: Scripts are Not the Issue

The libertarian side of the blogosphere is all abuzz about "Direct Instruction" at the moment, thanks to a Marignal Revolution post by Alex Tabarrok touting the method: Ayres argues that large experimental studies have shown that the teaching method which works best is Direct Instruction (here and here are two non-academic discussions which summarizes much of the same academic evidence discussed in Ayres).  In Direct Instruction the teacher follows a script, a carefully designed and evaluated script.  As Ayres notes this is key: DI is scalable.  Its success isn't contingent on the personality…

Sunday Sermon-Skit

THE SCENE: A circular room cut deep into stone; magma pits bubble left and right, all is lit by roaring torches that cast dark, flickering shadows. In the center, the Cephalopod Throne. THE CAST: PZ Myers broods on his throne, chin on fist. He glowers at a horde of SUPPLICANTS, bowing and scraping before him. Many are speaking at once, but all have the same concern. SUPPLICANT: “O Lord PZ…” SUPPLICANT: “…Great Lord PZ…” SUPPLICANT: “…Lord PZ, do you ever…” SUPPLICANT: “…ever worry…” SUPPLICANT: “…worry that your puissant and uncompromising godlessness might…” SUPPLICANT: “…might frighten…”…