Recently in Humor Category

My old friend, the Alert Reader, sent me a cartoon that he claimed had appeared on Ken Ham’s Facebook page. Captioned “Famous sayings of Ken Ham,” the cartoon shows a caricature of Ham and three balloons, including this one:

I found it hard to believe that the cartoon was not a parody and wondered why it is found on Ham’s own Facebook page. The Alert Reader responded with the following, also reportedly from Ham’s Facebook page:

I have been saying it for years: The transition from dinosaur (figuratively speaking) to chicken was gradual, but at some time we stopped calling it a dinosaur and started calling it a chicken. Or would have if we had been there. The chicken therefore emerged from an egg laid by a dinosaur. Hence, the egg came first. See Robert Krulwich’s article on NPR and the splendid video he links to if you do not believe me.

Acknowledgement. Thanks to Dave Carlson, who asks, “Which came first, the panda or the panda’s thumb?” for the link.

I haven’t the foggiest idea, but I recently saw a video, which you may link to here, in which Mr. Craig, a Christian apologist, argues that (nonhuman) animals cannot feel pain but only responses to stimuli. Or if they can feel pain, then they do not know it is pain. And if they can feel pain but do not know it is pain then it is not pain. Or something.

My unsolicited advice to Mr. Craig: Study today’s (Nov. 16) Non Sequitur cartoon very, very carefully.

According to the cartoonist Wiley, there were two Arks, and the one that carried the dinosaurs accidentally fell off the edge of the earth.

It’s here. Not only does this journal have the highest rejection rate of any journal; it has no page charges. You may submit your manuscript with no anxiety, since you know it will be rejected. Unfortunately, as a colleague of mine has pointed out, if the paper is rejected immediately, you may not leave it on your resume for long; it would be better if they held your paper under review forever.

You may buy a T-shirt at their store: they claim that they will not reject your money.

Finally, if you submit a paper to a journal that will never publish it, have you created any information?

Thanks to John Scales of the Colorado School of Mines for the link.

Read alla bout it! Radical Muslim organization Answers in Koran opens theme park in Kentucky. In rare display of ecumenism, governor promises additional theme parks dedicated to Buddhism, Hinduism, Mormonism, and Scientology:

Gov. Beshear [says] that even though he might not agree with the religious message of the park, the economic benefits of Koran Kountry make it worthy of his administration’s support.

“I wasn’t elected to debate religion,” Beshear said. “I was elected to create jobs.”

Thanks again to Dan Phelps for the link.

Williamstown, Kentucky, a city that is apparently near the fantasied location of the Ark Park (or is that the location of the fantasied Ark Park?) Is apparently letting that fantasy go to its corporate head, according to this article. The funniest line in the article? I am glad you asked:

The plans are based on the needs of the city and not the needs of the Ark Encounter, said [spokesman for the Kentucky League of Cities Tad] Long.

Inspired (I think) by that article, reader Dan Phelps sent us the following proposal to develop a coastline to spur economic development in Kentucky.

Dilbert discovers the Higgs boson.

…is probably this one.

Barnes & Noble is bringing out a slew of Westlake books for the Nook late this month. Westlake, who died nearly three years ago, was the creator of John Archibald Dortmunder, one of the great comic criminals in the genre, and it looks like a bunch of the Dortmunder books are among those being published for the Nook.

Looks like the cartoonist Wiley Miller has started a series of strips on teaching the “controversy.” He’s got the age of the dinosaurs wrong, and carbon dating does not work that far back anyway, but, hell, the strip is called Non Sequitur. The money quote so far is, “Um, just as an F.Y.I., saying ‘facts’ would be a lot less offensive if you used air-quotes.”

Wanna demonstrate how evolution and scaffolding can produce irreducibly complex structures at your next ivory tower wine and cheese party or evil atheist conspiracy kitten roast? Just repeat the demonstration seen in this clip.

(HT: Nick Matzke.)

From Tom the Dancing Bug:

Over at Science, Food, Etc. Mohamed offers an intentionally hyperbolic list of faculty stereotypes. He is looking for stereotypes that are missing from his list. So lets help him out. Here are some of his examples.

HALL-TALKER: Prof you never see actually doing work, but seems to be always standing in the hall (or worse, in your office) talking. Seems to even roam the halls trying to find the next person with whom to talk.

ABSENTEE: Prof who is either traveling or works from home so much that most of their colleagues forget that they even work there. Their students may have forgotten them, too. Everyone looks startled when they walk into their laboratory or into a faculty meeting– “Who is that?” someone asks.

…

Go have fun and read the rest.

… because then I could go to Minicon 46 and attend this bit of programming:

Creation Museum Slideshow - 8:30 PM Saturday
John Scalzi shares photos and stories from his visit to “the very best monument to an enormous load of horseshit that you could possibly ever hope to see.” Hilarity ensues.
John Scalzi, Rob Callahan moderating

Here’s Scalzi’s original report on the visit. One memorable extract:

Here’s how to understand the Creation Museum:

Imagine, if you will, a load of horseshit. And we’re not talking just your average load of horseshit; no, we’re talking colossal load of horsehit. An epic load of horseshit. The kind of load of horseshit that has accreted over decades and has developed its own sort of ecosystem, from the flyblown chunks at the perimeter, down into the heated and decomposing center, generating explosive levels of methane as bacteria feast merrily on vintage, liquified crap. This is a Herculean load of horseshit, friends, the likes of which has not been seen since the days of Augeas.

…

And this is, in sum, the Creation Museum. $27 million has purchased the very best monument to an enormous load of horseshit that you could possibly ever hope to see.

Just so.

Hat tip to Scalzi his own self

Natural selection seems to have overshot the mark just a little bit, but, as I predicted, last summer I began to see a few green dandelions in my lawn.

Taraxacum officinale viride – green dandelion. The visitor is a longhorn beetle, Crossidius sp., according to Eric Eaton, author, Kaufman Field Guide to Insects of North America.

Well, no, not exactly, maybe, but a recent article in the Los Angeles Times cites a study to the effect that young adults who participate regularly in religious activities are more likely to become obese than those who do not. Specifically, people with very high involvement in religious activities were 50% more likely to become obese than those who did not participate at all, even after the data were controlled for such factors as age, sex, race, income, and what I will call the initial condition, that is, the body-mass index of the subjects at the beginning of the study.

Why? The principal investigator, Matthew Feinstein, would not commit himself, but thought it might be the weekly potluck dinners. The LA Times worries about the future of the Jell-O salad. I immediately thought of the movie where Woody Allen decides to become a Catholic and brings home a loaf of white bread and a jar of mayonnaise.

iConfess. Speaking of Catholicism, this month’s issue of The Progressive cites a Reuters dispatch to the effect that the Catholic Church in the United States has approved an iPhone app for confession. Priests need not worry about technological unemployment, however; there is, at least so far, no app for absolution – or is that iAppsolution? – so Catholics will still have to get absolution from a priest.

xkcd: Beauty