God causes a Sumerian recession 17 Dec 2009 The Onion, as always, nails it… Members of the earth’s earliest known civilization, the Sumerians, looked on in shock and confusion some 6,000 years ago as God, the Lord Almighty, created Heaven and Earth. According to recently excavated clay tablets inscribed with cuneiform script, thousands of Sumerians—the first humans to establish systems of writing, agriculture, and government—were working on their sophisticated irrigation systems when the Father of All Creation reached down from the ether and blew the divine spirit of life into their thriving civilization. “I do not understand,” reads an ancient line of pictographs depicting the sun, the moon, water, and a Sumerian who appears to be scratching his head. “A booming voice is saying, ‘Let there be light,’ but there is already light. It is saying, ‘Let the earth bring forth grass,’ but I am already standing on grass.” “Everything is here already,” the pictograph continues. “We do not need more stars.” I bet this caused a major error in the local economy. Humor Religion
Evolution The evolution of bacon 7 Jun 20117 Jun 2011 From Calamities of Nature… The alt text reads “Ironically enough, four billion years later the world witnessed the birth of the first bacon creature, which just happened to be a direct descendent of Harold.” Read More
Administrative Off to the wilds of Oxfordshire 14 May 2010 So, tomorrow I fly to Oxford (well, to Heathrow, and bus to Oxford) to this conference on religion and toleration. It looks to be an interesting conference, and I am commenting on a paper by one of my favourite anthropologist/psychologists, Ara Norenzayan from UBC. It includes such luminaries as Amartya… Read More
Religion If you don’t believe what I believe, you aren’t fully human 14 May 2009 [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xbrfz1DIq9Q&hl=en&fs=1] Read More
“And people over there fell for it completely!” The tablet went on to say. “What a bunch of tools.” “We had a bloke here who had a neat trick of appearing to turn water into wine. He couldn’t get there fast enough.” “I hear he did very well for a while . . .”