Axiomatic Breakfast

I saw this on BoingBoing and had to post it. Someone has a fantastic collection of theme songs from the cartoons we grew up with! Remember Captain Caveman? How about GI Joe? He’s got them all!

The New York Post has an interesting article about the problems with ‘Intelligent Design’. Intelligent design is the latest idea from the creationist crowd. It’s basically an attempt to push creationism without mentioning God. Lately there has been more and more push to get schools to teach Creationism/Intelligent Design. Anyway, the NY Post article a good job talking about the problems with ID. (Link from BoingBoing)

Excerpt:

From a scientific perspective, one of the most frustrating things about intelligent design is that (unlike Darwinism) it is virtually impossible to test. Old-fashioned biblical creationism at least risked making some hard factual claims — that the earth was created before the sun, for example. Intelligent design, by contrast, leaves the purposes of the designer wholly mysterious. Presumably any pattern of data in the natural world is consistent with his/her/its existence.

But if we can’t infer anything about the design from the designer, maybe we can go the other way. What can we tell about the designer from the design? While there is much that is marvelous in nature, there is also much that is flawed, sloppy and downright bizarre. Some nonfunctional oddities, like the peacock’s tail or the human male’s nipples, might be attributed to a sense of whimsy on the part of the designer. Others just seem grossly inefficient. In mammals, for instance, the recurrent laryngeal nerve does not go directly from the cranium to the larynx, the way any competent engineer would have arranged it. Instead, it extends down the neck to the chest, loops around a lung ligament and then runs back up the neck to the larynx. In a giraffe, that means a 20-foot length of nerve where 1 foot would have done. If this is evidence of design, it would seem to be of the unintelligent variety.

Happy Valentine’s Day! Looking over at my Yahoo News feed I ran across this article about a kissing class being offered in Seattle, WA. Sounds like fun!

Excerpt:

Each class begins with foot rubs, back-to-back dancing and tender kisses on the hand. Students slowly graduate to neck nibbles, ear exploration and finally lip locks.

As Byrd guides couples through exercises, such as kissing only the bottom lip or licking an ear, soft music plays. In a calm, breathy voice she tells them to “tease, surrender and risk” touching their partner in ways they’ve never tried before.