This is all we need

I worried about this some time ago. It looks as though I was right to be worried. 

(From 3 quarks daily)

Sorry, you need to click on the graph to see it properly - I can't make it shrink to fit...

Pat Boone surprised by joy

After the extraordinary success on this blog of Silvio Berlusconi's penis, I thought I'd lower the hurdle of acceptability even further by posting this. I don't remember where it came from - maybe someone can help me? What I do remember is falling for Pat Boone in The Voyage to the Centre of the Earth, when I was young and impressionable and PB was young, though less so, and extremely fit (and didn't sing a note). I remember the way he lost articles, and then sub-articles, of his clothing scene by scene, finally being belched out of a volcano in very little indeed. In fact, almost the only detail that wasn't visible at the end of that film is the one Mr Boone seems so delighted by in the photograph above. The one to the right, on the other hand, shows Boone at some point between the surface of the earth and its centre. Measured in garment loss, this depth is known as the boxer-short stratum. Believe me, he goes deeper. Presumably, the information he picked up on this journey will also have come in useful in his new career as debunker of Darwin.

And if you're really keen, you can watch the trailer here.

Wigan says no to wingnuts

It's not often I feel like applauding Wigan Council (or even mentioning it, despite my being half Lancastrian). But the news that it's refused permission to a group of wealthy wingnuts who wanted to build a creationist theme park on the site of an old B & Q store brings joy to my heart. The promoters, AH Trust, apparently think that multimedia displays of the world being whipped up out of nowt in six days will stop young people from binge drinking. Well, it's a fond, but foolish, hope. In the meantime, the Trust is still looking for somewhere that wants its "two interactive cinemas, a cafeteria, six shops and a television recording studio, allowing it to produce its own Christian-themed films and documentaries." I can't wait. (Thanks to the Guardian for this.)

Peter Jones, one of the trustees, said: "Wigan council slammed the door in our faces. You mention the C [Christian] word, and people don't want to know."

I wonder if the Guardian supplied the gloss. After all, Christian isn't the first C-word that springs to mind.

Vade retro, empiricism

One of the few areas in which fundamentalist Islam seemed to offer a less obscurantist view of the world than fundamentalist Christianity was that of evolution. Alas, no longer. An article in today's Independent reveals that a bunch of Turkish nutters calling itself, without intentional irony, the Science Research Foundation (BAV) is spearheading creationist claptrap in the Middle East. Not content with that, the group recently mass-mailed its Atlas of Creation (never mind the evidence, feel the weight: 6 kg of lavishly illustrated tosh) to schools and scientists in Western Europe. They're also building creationist theme parks museums, along the lines of the one in the States. Who knows where all the money is coming from? Even more worrying is the fact that Turkey's education minister publicly supports 'intelligent design'. What price EU accession now?

It will be fun to see if the ID cranks in the States and, increasingly, in the faith-friendly Britain created by Middle East envoy and peacemaker to the stars, Tony Blair, will jump into bed with their new Islamic brothers-in-codswallop.

It must have been quite a week...

Now, let's see. Monday, light, Tuesday, space. No, wait a minute. Monday, light, Tuesday, the land and the sky and the oceans. Oh hell. (No, that was later.) And all the things that creep on the surface, etc. Wednesday? Thursday?

I wonder which day he made the gigantoraptor on.

PS The image is blurred because it's a very old photograph.