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June 22nd, 2011

WWJD?

Yes, I know. The point has been made before, but not with a bad pun.

Thank you for all your kind words about the Brum Skeptics podcast. For those who missed it, it’s still available here: http://ipad.io/caD

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Discussion (40)¬

  1. greyvity says:
    June 22, 2011 at 12:00 pm

    Hahaha! 😀

  2. HaggisForBrains says:
    June 22, 2011 at 12:08 pm

    @ Greyvity – seconded. Best LOL for a while 🙂 🙂 🙂

  3. Darwin Harmless says:
    June 22, 2011 at 12:24 pm

    I love a bad pun. But he might have said he’s hung up on the issue. 🙂

  4. Second Thought says:
    June 22, 2011 at 12:41 pm

    I happen to really like puns. The bigger the groan factor the better. This one had a high groan factor for me.

    And the comic is an interesting continuation of the euthanasia question begun in the last comic. All in all, nice work.

  5. Acolyte of Sagan says:
    June 22, 2011 at 12:44 pm

    Thank you author for answering my prayer, it just shows you really are more powerful than god:->

  6. Author says:
    June 22, 2011 at 12:46 pm

    @DH – That would certainly have nailed it.

  7. Santa says:
    June 22, 2011 at 12:50 pm

    Look at this: http://xkcd.com/229/
    Just reminds me that there are thousands of theologists who find a lot of meanings in the texts where the author didn’t actually mean much.

  8. Andrew Hall says:
    June 22, 2011 at 1:49 pm

    Too much pun-ishment for a Weds morning.

  9. James says:
    June 22, 2011 at 2:17 pm

    Seems Jesus is wiling to spear-head this moment!

  10. Joe Fogey says:
    June 22, 2011 at 2:44 pm

    Your handling of a thorny issue is crowned with acclaim.

  11. Nassar Ben Houdja says:
    June 22, 2011 at 3:29 pm

    Being crucified would make one cross
    And for blood, at a bit of a loss
    But being divine
    In three days was fine
    After giving the tombstone a toss.

  12. HaggisForBrains says:
    June 22, 2011 at 4:37 pm

    Definitely improving, Nassar, but I’d still hang on to the day job if I were you.

  13. Acolyte of Sagan says:
    June 22, 2011 at 4:39 pm

    When God Said “I’ll show them who’s boss”,
    And got himself pinned to the cross,
    He forgot all about
    Those who weren’t that devout,
    And really could not give a toss.

    Thank you, I’m here all week!

  14. random ntrygg says:
    June 22, 2011 at 4:50 pm

    brilliant! one more way that the followers of jebus do not follow his example.

  15. Wrinkly Dick says:
    June 22, 2011 at 5:06 pm

    Dead good

  16. MrGronk says:
    June 22, 2011 at 11:35 pm

    I admire the author’s Passion

  17. Ketil W.Grevstad says:
    June 23, 2011 at 11:03 pm

    this was funny, i like it 🙂

  18. Darwin Harmless says:
    June 24, 2011 at 1:55 am

    Off topic, but check this out. What can the young earth creationists offer compared to accurately measuring the body temperature of dinosaurs? With a method that can be verified yet. Scientists continue to amaze me with their ability to figure things out.
    http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=119874&WT.mc_id=USNSF_51&WT.mc_ev=click

  19. James says:
    June 24, 2011 at 2:37 am

    Once was a man from Nazareth / and t’was not Lazarus.
    On and on he would blather us.
    Then some soldiers came/ and never was He the same.
    Perched on a hill, he was cadaverous.

  20. Darwin Harmless says:
    June 24, 2011 at 2:49 am

    Yikes. The Nassar Ben Houdja meme is spreading. Maybe not the one he intended to spread, but this could be worse. 🙂

  21. Morgan says:
    June 24, 2011 at 3:10 am

    Awesome reasoning for allowing euthanasia, I have to remember this one.

  22. FreeFox says:
    June 24, 2011 at 10:34 am

    @DH: Cool (or hot?) link. Ta! Love it when they do that Sherlock Holmes thing and take something tiny like the ratio of clumped unclumped isotopes and make these brilliant deductions. Though from the article I’d say they only deduced the temperature of the dino’s heads, not their main bodies. Given the long neck, that might be very different things, mightn’t they? (And the idea of super-heated dino bellys and their long necks and tails as radiators is kinda neat…)

    @Daoloth: Re – Free Will/Effective theories (from last thread). I think the king-ambassador analogy/metaphor is my own, but no guarantees. It seems so obvious anyway, that anyone could come up with it. No claim to originality there. I agre with the “free will as everyday effective theory” statement, but in this particular instant, when the question is “how do we know or even define a ‘free’ choice of such magnitude” I think it breaks down and it becomes necesary to really examine how ‘will’ works. And given that we can (and even will) always die later, if in doubt I prefer to err on the side of life (and thus keeping more options), even in the face of suffering. But I admit it is a hard choice that needs to be reevaluated all the time and not done dogmatically, either way.
    As for the “effective theory”, thank you, that is exactly how I feel about God, gods, magic, the soul, and the afterlife. I agree that if examined scientifically en detail none of these are constructs necessary to explain the world… but they all, if kept in reality-check, make very functional “effective models” that allow me to treat parts of reality “en block”. They are more useful terms/handles for complex phenomena. Nobody needs to use them, of course, just as nobody needs to call 3.14159… Pi. Everyone is free to try to use the full number. But sometimes replacing it with a simplifying symbol makes it easier to solve certain problems.

  23. FreeFox says:
    June 24, 2011 at 10:37 am

    @James: Love it. ^_^

  24. Rob A says:
    June 24, 2011 at 12:44 pm

    Gentlefolk, a haiku:

    Our author depicts
    how personal sacrifice
    veils self promotion

  25. Darwin Harmless says:
    June 24, 2011 at 4:15 pm

    @FreeFox yeah, I love that they can state the conclusion with much more certainty than the average Sherlock Holmes deduction, which usually could have gone wrong and any one of a thousand directions. Sherlock once went on at great length about the intelligence of a hat owner, based solely on its size. We all know that a big head does not necessarily imply a working brain. Whether or not the main body of the dinosaur was hotter than the head, it’s pretty cool that they can now say with confidence that they were not reptilian cold blooded critters. Those science guys are way smarter than me, for sure. Glad you liked the link.

  26. random ntrygg says:
    June 24, 2011 at 4:28 pm

    it’s been long thought that the frills and crests were to allow body heat to be vented off the bodies – so it makes sense that creatures with sizable mass would generate heat

  27. Acolyte of Sagan says:
    June 24, 2011 at 4:49 pm

    @DH, great link, thank you. I’ve been fascinated by the dinosaurs since childhood, and it’s truly amazing to me to think just what we can discover about creatures that last walked the earth 65 million years ago.
    The article you linked to sparked a memory from my formative years that I would like to share (Author, if I’m de-railing the topic please let me know, I wouldn’t want you ‘do a Solomon’ on me!).
    At around the age of 10, I found a very large and very freshly dead frog in the garden. I had already read quite a lot on paleontology and for some reason a line from one of the books leapt into my mind, something along the lines of ‘every new fossil unearthed brings with it a new mystery’. Being a bit of a joker even then, I pinched the rubber wet-suit from my brother’s Action Man (the British G.I Joe) and, with the help of a goodly amount of grease I managed to squeeze the frog into it, then buried it deep in the garden, complete with snorkel and face mask, in the (naive) absolute certainty that I had just given future fossil hunters a real mystery to get their teeth into.
    Just thought I’d share that with you all.

  28. Daz says:
    June 24, 2011 at 5:05 pm

    Kind of strayed away from the main point a tad here, but:

    The ultimate gift, a life for a life
    To save another from trouble and strife
    The ultimate gift, to save another
    Be they stranger or brother, sister or lover
    The ultimate gift, all you have left to give
    A worn out life, that another may live

  29. Acolyte of Sagan says:
    June 24, 2011 at 5:05 pm

    DH’s comment about Sherlock just reminded me of one of my favourite jokes;
    Holmes and Watson were camping on the moors. At 1 in the morning Holmes wakes Watson and says “Watson, look up and tell me what you see”.
    Watson replies “Well Holmes, I see stars, hundreds and hundreds of stars”.
    “And what can you deduce from that”? asks Holmes.
    After a moments thought, Watson says “Well Holmes, each of those stars is a sun, pointing to the existence of countless solar systems in our own galaxy, and there are countless galaxies in the universe. Potentially, life has emerged in any number of those solar systems, so I deduce that life is, in all probability, rife throughout the universe and that we here on earth are a totally insignificant part of it. Is that what you deduce too, Holmes”?
    “No”, said Holmes, “By looking up and seeing the stars, I deduce that somebody has nicked the fucking tent”!

  30. Daoloth says:
    June 24, 2011 at 10:28 pm

    Two of may favourite people, one interviewing the other.
    http://tiny.cc/l9buq

  31. Darwin Harmless says:
    June 25, 2011 at 3:04 am

    @Daoloth: Great link and me too. The comments about Tom Lehrer really resonated for me. I too memorized all the words to the TL songs. But a couple of years ago I stopped singing them because suddenly they all seemed really ugly. Sure, it’s reality and an antidote to the saccharine bullshit, but still ugly and without that much of a point. “When You Are Old and Grey” leaps to mind. Or “My Home Town”. But Minchin is different. His stuff is way more evolved than Tom Lehrer. (Just compare the “Vatican Rag”, which is making fun of ceremony, with “The Pope Song” which is angry and attacking behavior) Minchin takes me places I’ve never visited before, like his thing about “fated love”. Two very smart guys in real conversation. Gotta love it.

  32. Tschmidt says:
    June 26, 2011 at 3:41 pm

    Enjoyed listening to the interview. Nice learning about the history of the strip. I stumbled upon J&M a couple of years ago and enjoy the cartoon.

    Agree with the other posters – the worse the pun the funnier is it.

  33. Daoloth says:
    June 27, 2011 at 6:54 am

    @DH. I think some of the Tom Lehrer stuff hasn’t dated (“Poisoning pigeons in the Park”, say) while some feels very much of its time (“My Home Town”). Given that there is always a (small c) conservative element to satire this stuff jars, for me at least.
    I wonder if some of the stuff that Minchin does now will feel as dated eventually? He has said so himself, kinds, sorta, which is why he doesn’t do “Don’t feed Donuts to your Fat Kids” (or whatever its called) any more.
    Fat people are still acceptable targets of abuse from lots of folk–including Minchin and Savage–along the “it’s your choice” lines, in ways that we may feel increasingly uncomfortable about as we learn more about epigenetics (early life history has dramtic effects on fat deposition and metabolic rate).
    Sure–its not so simple as the “gay is a choice” crap that the conservatives roll out, but even so…
    (I still love the pair of them BTW–but maybe I would love them a bit less if I was tubbier?)

  34. FreeFox says:
    June 27, 2011 at 10:48 am

    The best way to stop your child from becoming an atheist!
    http://i.stack.imgur.com/n8ZgC.png

  35. Acolyte of Sagan says:
    June 27, 2011 at 4:28 pm

    Cheers FreeFox, that sums it up just about perfectly.

  36. Darwin Harmless says:
    June 28, 2011 at 1:47 am

    @FreeFox thanks for that link. Spot on.

  37. carolita says:
    June 28, 2011 at 2:26 am

    You know that joke about the nuns driving through Transylvania, and a vampire leaps onto their windshield? They try spraying it with the holy water in the windshield wiper fluid, which doesn’t work, just annoys him. Panicking, one nun says to the other “Show him your cross!! Show him your cross!” So the other nun stops the car, gets out, and, hands on her hips, yells, “Right, you tosser! Get off our bloody windshield RIGHT NOW!” (your cross/you’re cross)

  38. Darwin Harmless says:
    June 28, 2011 at 3:27 am

    @Daoloth The Tom Lehrer song I appreciate now is when he sings the periodic table, and maybe the Harvard Fight song. “Poisoning Pigeons in the Park” may not have dated, but it’s a perfect example of the songs I find very ugly. I think the charm of juxtaposing a happy melody with a macabre fantasy has worn off completely for me, and now I just hear the ugly. “I hold your hand in mine” is another particularly nasty ditty, with all the intelligence of “Monster Mash”.
    For me, the reason Minchin tops Lehrer is that the things he satirizes are things I’d like to see changed. I don’t really want to live in a world where people poison pigeons for kicks. But I would like to live in a world where people feel stupid telling me that God cured their mom’s cataracts.
    @carolita you’re not playing with kids here. You don’t need to explain your punch lines. 🙂

  39. random ntrygg says:
    June 28, 2011 at 5:57 pm

    I adore Tom Lehrer and really enjoy Roy Zimmerman as the current generations’ answer to TL. His song “Ted Haggart is completely Heterosexual” is fanatastic – and I can’t wait til August, we we’re going on the Skeptic Society cruise/conference on climate change to look at Alaska Glaciers and Zimmerman will be performing!

  40. Darwin Harmless says:
    June 29, 2011 at 3:05 am

    @random ntrygg Wow, Nina. I’m going to see if I can get on that cruise.

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