paralepsis

I must have recorded this some years ago. Found it on microcassette and transcribed. One day a flying lizard was going in a fierce place called Fierce Desert , and it heard something very very fierce. What are you doing with that? I’m just — OK, done. And then it woke up a sleeping lizard. The sleeping lizard was grunting. And — can you record that again? I’m recording, I’m recording now. Keep going. And then, the fierce lizard just ate it like it eats a snake. Snake chomped up by the hungry lizard. And then it tried to eat it. And then he killed it! Is that the end of the story? No it isn’t! OK . Cause there’s a crocodile! Right . And it kept eating until its mouth was full. Of snake. [eating sounds] Then what? Then, the crocodile came. And it tried to — bited itself — and it bited with the slimy lizard — and then it killed it. [killing sounds] It kept eating until t...

On NPR's Weekend Edition this morning, Scott Simon delivers a commentary about the recent exposure of gang-banger "memoir" Love and Consequences by Margaret Jones (actually Margaret Seltzer). Simon observes that "the book is a fraud, but Ms. Seltzer came within hours of of being on NPR." Wrong . In fact, Jones/Seltzer did make it onto NPR's syndicated show "On Point," and the show followed with an hour-long, hand-wringing examination of how they got punked in the first place. But that minor error is nothing compared to what happens next. Simon quotes Seltzer making up some bullshit about her life and observes (my transcript of the online audio): Now if some Brooklyn or London novelist had written a story set among drug gangs and uttered those words, people might have dismissed them as pretentious nonsense. Put those sentences into a so-called memoir, people call it "gritty and real," or "raw, tender, and tough-minded,...

My brother lives in Singapore, where I spent a lovely Christmas. We're twins, so we look alike (except that he's in shape, so I look like my brother in a funhouse mirror). He's been learning Chinese and singing Chinese songs in Singapore karaoke bars. Here is is singing an acoustic version of the pop song Xiao Wei : Also, if you don't know it, tune in to Radio Otherfunk . Their Darwin Day episode was my first contact, but I've been catching up on previous broadcasts since I heard it. Fantastic stuff: worth the time.

I love this guy.

Mitt Romney has the tie, the white shirt, and the smile. All he needs is a name tag and a bicycle .

So Dr. Dr. Dembski has notpologized for plagiarizing stealing using the Harvard-produced video "The Inner Life of the Cell." It's all very touching, how mean old Harvard refused to sell him the DVD (as though that would have given him the right to use it) and so he was forced to plagiarize not the original, but someone else's mangled version: A few months after announcing the video at UncommonDescent, I found on the Internet a version of the video that did add a voiceover, giving the relevant biology, and was in a format that allowed me to incorporate it into my PowerPoint presentations. I used the video a handful of times, including at a talk in Oklahoma this September. Dr. Dr. Dembski's misuse of Harvard's video is pretty egregious even in the way he tells it. But right now, Dr. Dr. Dembski's convenient narrative has what Brick Pollitt used to call "the powerful and obnoxious odor of mendacity." Here's my question: Where did he find th...

Plagiarism and intelligent design: two of my favorite topics. Turns out they taste great together. Intrepid grad student blogger and creationism-whacker ERV has discovered an interesting factoid: Dr. Dr. William A. Dembski , whose co-authored Darwin-destroying textbook has just been vanity published , has been poaching a legitimate animation while lecturing about Intelligent Design around the country. The animation, called "The Inner Life of the Cell," is fascinating both with and without narration. Beth Marchant described it last July: Created by XVIVO, a scientific animation company near Hartford, CT, the animation illustrates unseen molecular mechanisms and the ones they trigger, specifically how white blood cells sense and respond to their surroundings and external stimuli. But Dr. Dembski's lecture takes the non-narrated version, clips the credits, and adds his own woo-filled ID-friendly narration. Is it a mashup? A remix? ERV has another name for it: Fr...

Just a little post about Norman Finkelstein, who is briefly alluded to at Respectful Insolence . I responded in the comments, and of course the conversation became hijacked, as it does when someone like Finkelstein is discussed. So I won't comment further over there beyond pointing people here. So: If you surfed over here from there, I'm responding to this comment from SLC: I agree with Dr. Orac that the issue of Finkelstein is greatly off topic. I would have been willing to cease and desist except that Mr. Hermagores' [sic] characterization of of the investigation of Prof. Dershowitz by Harvard is totally inaccurate and unreliable. As I understand it, ther [sic] was an official investigation of the charge led by the dean of the college with which Prof. Dershowitz is affiliated. The charge of plagiarism is a very serious one which could have resulted in the firing of Prof. Dershowitz had it held up. As requested by Dr. Orac, I will have nothing more to say on the matter....

I am very glad that scordova has done the right thing : My third loose end which I would like to tie up is that I would like to apologize to Ms. Smith if I have said anything that may be construed as an accusation of dishonesty on her part. Some concern has been expressed that any suggestion of dishonesty could be damaging to her career and I do not wish to damage Ms. Smith’s career as I’m in a similar boat as her. I vigorously disagree with her on various matters, but this should not imply that I am accusing her of lying or dishonesty. Perhaps I made some ill-tempered remarks, but it was not my intent to accuse her of lying or dishonesty. I simply disagree and at times was very irritated…. Good for him. Seriously. I'm not going to take anything away from that.

Below is a totally accurate , police-sketch level Simpsons version of me. (Note the presence of Blinky, the three-eyed mutant fish from Season One, on my T-shirt.) You can create your own avatar over at The Simpsons Movie site . (HT, Omnibrain ).

Courtney Queeney was an undergraduate student of mine in a modern American poetry class at Duke. Later I was her advisor for her creative writing honors thesis. Her first book of poems , Filibuster to Delay a Kiss , is just out , is from a major publisher (Random House!), and looks great. Go read a couple of poems here . Courtney, if you're out there, drop me a line, will you?

I asked for a tag, and I got it . Thanks Kristine! We have to post these rules before we give you the facts. Players start with eight random facts/habits about themselves. People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules. At the end of your blog post, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names. Don't forget to leave them a comment telling them they're tagged, and to read your blog. Okay, here goes: I'm an identical twin. Until college separated us, nobody could tell us apart. Now it's easy: I'm the heavy-set English professor, he's the fit rich scientist guy. We lived in different states for twenty-plus years. In 2004 I moved within three miles of him, and within half a year he moved to the other side of the world (Singapore). For about a month in college I was in a Dead Kennedys cover band called "Sirhan Sirhan and the Lee Harvey Oswald Choir." We also played song by the ...

Welcome, Uncommon Descent members ! For the record, I don't ban users or arguments (I will delete threats and suchlike.) As long as you're here, you might check out the reality behind ICON-RIDS (if you haven't heard about this before). A letter to GilDodgen, responding to this : I, Hermagoras, am banned at Uncommon Descent but apparently still discussion-worthy. Indeed, a whole post devoted to refuting someone (me) who is not allowed to respond. You guys are certainly committed to fair debate! I was trying to make a fairly simple point, which I would have thought IDers agree with: that all observations and all "facts" are theory-laden. It's simple enough. I elaborated it in a post which Dembski apparently thought was off-topic and led him [to] ban me in precisely the terms I previously discussed on my blog . Hilarious. Then continued discussion (again I can't respond) about how I'm trying to be the clever one . Nothing in my banned posts ...

"Pixie is no longer with us." That's a comment on Uncommon Descent , the intelligent design (and global warming denialist) blog. Apparently the user "Pixie" was kicked off the comment board for saying terrible things like this : Tribune [another commenter], there is some ambiguity in both those cases; we do not know for certain why Gonzales failed to get tenure (maybe Iowa State did want anyone associated with anti-science, rather than someone who criticised evolution). Micheal Behe, Granville Sewell and Michael Denton still hold university positions despite their criticisms of evolution. Larry, why do you think it is the teacher? Do teachers often have to write lines on the blackboard in your experience? A general comment: Why should we suppose from this cartoon that there is a “Church of the Living Darwin”? Is a rejection of any and all criticism a distinguishing feature of religion? No longer with us . The kind of thing you say when someone has died, or y...

Just following up on the previous post: the first parody comment on Dembski's link seems to have made it past the censors (though really, it's hard to tell what's not parody). I thought I'd link to it here before Dembski et al. erase it along with the whole embarrassing episode. The poster calls him/herself "NoeticGuru," and writes : Heh, long time lurker, first time poster here. But I’m glad that organizations like ICON-RIDS are showing up, and that proponents of ID are taking notice of them. I think that it will help show that ID isn’t a single religious doctrine since it can incorporate so many different non-materialistic philosophies. ICON-RIDS, for example, will probably attract a lot of followers with its ethical philosophy (you’ll probably need to scroll down a bit to get to his Transparadigmic Pleasurian socio-ethical paradigm, but it’s worth a read). Since I’m also a dabbler in mathematics, I’ve been particularly impressed with Dr. Brookfi...

From time to time, I surf over to Uncommon Descent to keep tracks on the intelligent design folks. They're an odd bunch over there: constantly proclaiming that this or that study is the stake in the heart of Darwinist Orthodoxy TM -- but then, nothing changes, and so a new stake must be discovered next week. I commented there for a while but then I got banned, I guess -- anyway, my comments stopped showing up. I guess they were considered too snarky: this at a site where Dembski actually began a post by comparing the face of Jerry Coyne with Herman Munster. What. An. Asshole. Today Dembski posts the following : It will be interesting to see how the National Center for Science Education Selling Evolution deals with the growing number of non-religious ID proponents. Check out the following link: icon-rids.blogspot.com . Yes, very interesting. No doubt the NCSE will be shaking with fear at this guy : I don't hold any degrees from any university of any kind. My job as a citize...

Check out this picture from a Flickr set of the creationist museum. Then look at the first comment. I got the giggles and just could not stop.

Update: In the comments, John points out (rightly) that I've misremembered some details of the Simonides legend. Specifically, although there's a forensic aspect to the case, it's really about identifying the bodies. Thanks to John for alerting me to this. Corrections are marked below: deletions are marked by strikethrough and additions with underlining . Apologies for the long delay since the last installment. This entry, for Memorial Day, is on memory . In classical rhetoric, skill in memory was considered essential to good speaking and good citizenship. Memory is one of rhetoric's five parts or "canons" (the others being invention, style, arrangement, and delivery). Memory supplied the speaker with anecdotes, examples, and maxims that could be brought to bear in a variety of situations. It allowed the speaker to connect with his or her audience, bring forth detailed examples, and energize a dry or abstract discussion. Our current administration do...

I saw this at Talking Points Memo .

I won out over Bono To run the World Bank Then Saha she said "Oh No My job is in the tank" I placed a few quick calls To some old friends at State Diplomacy's all right Only when it gets you laid Now it's come back to bite me My bank life ends too soon Retirement's come early I'll leave the end of June I managed to hang on Just long enough to lance The boil I call multi- Lateral finance I'm Mr. No Corruption Top fox in the henyard Excuse me while I play my Golden parachute last card. for Paul Wolfowitz, with apologies to Warren Zevon