Skepticism

Skepchick Quickies, 9.16

Jen

Jen is a writer and web designer/developer in Columbus, Ohio. She spends too much time on Twitter at @antiheroine.

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19 Comments

  1. Read the article and did the little polls at the top. As of right now, 52% think that sitting during God Bless America merits being kicked out.

    WTF.

    It’s not our national anthem. It’s just a song. Do we now need to stand solemnly during any song that mentions America? That’s a whole lotta songs.

  2. I might conceivably get up for a song about America if everybody else did. I dig America enough for that, but once God starts blessing things, that’s right out.

  3. I wonder how the ID and creationist folks will spin the snake with a foot?

    I wish they had let it live…I wanted to see it! :-D

  4. The opinion over at Pharyngula, and I agree, is that the snake’s foot actually belongs to a meal.

    1) The foot is *too* perfect.

    2) It’s in completely the wrong place.

    3) It’s sticking out of bulge where the stomach is.

    My contribution :

    That’s a grown snake, not a baby. There’s no way it would have been able to survive, let alone catch prey and grow, if that were a deformity.

  5. From the Scooby-Doo article:
    “Honestly, I find Sagan a little grouchy.”

    Wait, you want to solve the mystery instead of just saying that the Elves did it? Why, you old grouch!

  6. From the snake-with-a-talon article:
    “[Two-headed] animals are often caught and preserved as lucky tokens but have very little chance of surviving in the wild anyway, especially as the heads have a tendency to attack each other.”

    Sounds like some political parties I could name.

  7. All of my kids have become Scooby addicts, though I try to limit the dvr to only grabbing the original series and select ones from later years and direct-to-video releases so they are focused on ones that expose naturalistic causes for supposedly supernatural phenomenon. There is plenty of fantasy in all the other books and videos the kids are exposed to, they don’t need it from the one skepticish show as well.

  8. The article makes it clear it’s not really clear why the boys are suing rather than taking the out-of-court settlement.

    But part of me thinks they saw an opportunity to raise a stink about religious intollerance, and rightly so.
    This will make a nice precedent to perhaps prevent further erosion of the already heavily worn down barrier between christianity and state (I say christianity because, let’s face it, it’s not like there’s any real risk of any other religion meddling with the secular world. In the US at least).

  9. I gotta admit I’m hoping the snake thing is legit. The idea of a leg (and possibly pelvis) being expressed on a snake has major geek factor.

  10. Snakes have vestigial legs (called “spurs”), but I agree with NoAstronomer/Pharyngula. My contribution is that it is asymmetrical. I would expect a deformity like that to be reflected (at least to some degree) on the other side.
    I’m calling Figi Mermaid on this one.

  11. I find it odd the Scooby-Doo article brought up nothing about how the recent films, both animated and live action, all go the *real supernatural* route. That seems worth at least a paragraph’s worth of irritated rant about such an otherwise excellent franchise.

  12. The ballpark thing seems odd. It isn’t a Constitutional issue, as it was a private ballpark that kicked the guys out (if that happened). The damage seems to have been that they didn’t get to see the whole game, and maybe there was some embarrassment or humiliation. There’s no indication that they were being disruptive, so there doesn’t seem to have been any legitimate reason for ejecting them.

    Ross Gadye [lawyer, and father of one of the boys] said he met with general manager Mark Skeels and James Wankmiller, a co-owner, following the incident. He said they apologized and offered and free tickets, but Gadye said the boys wanted an apology from Cetnar, who was not at the meeting, and sued when there was no resolution.

    That sounds like the owners are trying to make it right, but Gadye is looking for something else.

    Interesting little episode.

    I am a Hedge

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