blacksundae

BBC News:

Ms Garwood says it is an “historic fallacy” that everyone from ancient times to the Dark Ages believed the earth to be flat, and were only disabused of this “mad idea” once Christopher Columbus successfully sailed to America without “falling off the edge of the world”.

In fact, people have known since at least the 4th century BC that the earth is round, and the pseudo-scientific conviction that we actually live on a disc didn’t emerge until Victorian times.

Theories about the earth being flat really came to the fore in 19th Century England. With the rise and rise of scientific rationalism, which seemed to undermine Biblical authority, some Christian thinkers decided to launch an attack on established science.

Samuel Birley Rowbotham (1816-1884) assumed the pseudonym of “Parallax” and founded a new school of “Zetetic astronomy”. He toured England arguing that the Earth was a stationary disc and the Sun was only 400 miles away.

In the 1870s, Christian polemicist John Hampden wrote numerous works about the Earth being flat, and described Isaac Newton as “in liquor or insane”.

Well, he was kinda right about Newton. The guy was crazy as a loon (but amazing). Read on.

McClatchy:

On Wednesday, Fagan’s 7-foot statue of the nation’s 40th president will be unveiled at the U.S. Capitol, replacing the likeness of a lesser-known California hero, Thomas Starr King. Nancy Reagan is expected to attend, along with Fagan.

It’s the end of an era for Starr King, a 19th-century San Francisco Unitarian Universalist preacher who’s received star billing at the Capitol for 78 years.

It also caps a five-year effort by California Republican Rep. Ken Calvert, who launched the campaign to remove Starr King shortly after Reagan’s death on June 5, 2004.

“I thought, well, you know, he was a great person, but he’s been here for a while. Maybe we can replace him with Ronald Reagan,” Calvert said. “And one thing led to another. … We were able to get it done.”

Because Reagan is underrepresented in the public sphere? Also, nice logic. “Washington was a great guy, and all… but the city’s been named after him for a while. Why not change it to Mister T, DC?” Link

Spiegel Online:

According to the recipe, the meat was to be cut into small pieces or slices, sprinkled with “myrrh and at least a little bit of aloe” and then soaked in spirits of wine for a few days.

Johann Schröder, a German pharmacologist, wrote these words in the 17th century. But the meat to which he was referring was not cured ham or beef tenderloin. The instructions specifically called for the “cadaver of a reddish man … of around 24 years old,” who had been “dead of a violent death but not an illness” and then laid out “exposed to the moon rays for one day and one night” with, he noted, “a clear sky.”

Read on.

I have a healthy appreciation for bullshit. Don’t get me wrong, I’m generally very anti-bullshit, especially when it comes to things like justifications for war, regressive anti-science and scaring people to (literal) death. You know: things that matter.

But I must confess, I do take a certain amount of pleasure in watching bullshit separate fools from their money. If it’s audacious enough, it can be like watching a well-crafted crime caper.

Which leads us to H²Om.
Read the rest of this entry »

or, Journey to the Center of Eden

JESUS CHRIST, IT’S A JESUS LIZARD! GET IN THE CAR!

According to Walden Media’s Wikipedia entry, they deny that they are an overtly Christian production company. They have had to make this denial as they are owned by Philip Anschutz (noted conservative Christian and funder of the Discovery Institute), not to mention they produced the film adaptation of your favorite Feline Christ narrative and mine, The Chronicles of Narnia.

I’m actually inclined to go along with them. As I look at their filmography, it’s all family oriented stuff, but very few of their films have overtly Christian themes. Some of their output has been absolutely atrocious, but only Narnia is clearly Christian propaganda.

At least I thought so. That brings us to Eric Brevig’s 3-D Brendan Frasier vehicle, Journey to the Center of the Earth. Wait a minute, I can hear you asking, How can an adaptation of a Jules Verne novel be seen as Christian propaganda? Well, that’s the thing: it’s not an adaptation.

The premise of this theme park ride film is that Verne’s account in Journey to the Center of the Earth is literally true. Frasier’s older brother was a geologist with some kookie ideas about lava tubes thousands of miles deep, who went off to Iceland to investigate his theories and vanished. Ten years later, Frasier comes across an old, dog-eared copy of his brother’s favorite book (guess) that’s cryptically annotated¹ in ways that suggest what he was up to.

Frasier, being the sort of grossly irresponsible adult that keeps these types of movies clipping along, scoots off to Iceland with his annoyingly-surly-cum-annoyingly-eager teenage nephew (the lava-tube-kook’s son, of course). Yadda, yadda, yadda… Strained comedy happens. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

In short time, they find out from the leggy, blonde, Icelandic love interest that their brother/father was a “Vernian:” someone who believes that Jules Verne’s account of the lost world at the center of the Earth is literally true. Whether Vernians extend this to his other works is never addressed, although I’m rooting for Mysterious Island.

Through a series of unlikely events (lightning, mine cars), Frasier, the kid & the hottie end up falling down a lava tube and landing in Verne’s weird subterranean world. “He was right!” Frasier says of his dearly departed brother, “People ridiculed him for what he believed but he was right!”

This is the point in this post when I get a bit nervous, wondering if I’m reading way too much into what is otherwise simple escapist fare. “Overthinking a plate of beans,” as they say at MetaFilter. OK… is this aspect of the story speaking directly to the Creationists in the audience?

This guy takes a clearly fictional and ridiculous story and interprets it as true, all evidence to the contrary, and is ridiculed by the scientific establishment. But, get this: it turns out he was right!

I could have left this alone as a plot device, but that line of dialogue quoted above just won’t let me. In context, it seems shoehorned in, and it seems specially designed to cater to the persecution complex that most conservative Christians share these days. Especially Creationists.

Once that one line planted the seed in my mind, something else started bothering me. Despite the movie’s assertion that Verne’s novel is complete non-fiction, the reality of the underground world differs from the novel in a key way. From Wikipedia:

The living organisms they meet reflects the geological time; just as the rock layers become older and older the deeper one gets, the animals get more and more ancient the closer the characters come to the center. From a scientific point of view, this story has not aged quite as well as other Verne stories, since most of his ideas about what the interior of the Earth contains have since been proven wrong. However, a redeeming point to the story is Verne’s own belief, told within the novel from the viewpoint of a character, that the inside of the Earth does indeed differ from that which the characters encounter. One of Verne’s main ideas with his stories was also to educate the readers, and by placing the different extinct creatures the characters meet in their correct geological era, he is able to show how the world looked like millions of years ago, stretching from the ice age to the dinosaurs.

This is an element of the story that is completely thrown out the window, in favor of a smattering of “prehistoric” creatures that pop in here and there, such as bioluminescent birds, predatory plants, and a giant carnosaur that appears to be twice as large as the biggest T. rex.² I find it surprising that this blatantly educational aspect of the story was thrown out, considering Walden’s emphasis on education. Wikipedia again, because I’m feeling lazy:

Walden Media is unique among film production companies in that it works with teachers, museums, and national organizations to develop supplemental educational programs and materials associated with its films and the original events and/or novels that inspire the films.

But you eliminate this one element, you also eliminate two Creationist pet peeves: discussion of an ancient earth and a narrative that also functions as metaphor. There’s no room for metaphor in this literal view of Verne.

Again, I realize that I may be reading way to much into this, but keep in mind that it kept me entertained when the movie did not. I had absolutely nothing else to think about! The movie is a chore to watch, in a way that has nothing to do with religion or politics. The writing is flat when it’s not sappy, the action scenes are dull and few in number³ and, as an advocate of digital filmmaking, I’m going to pretend this movie was never made. By that, I mean it displays all the staginess of a movie that was shot in a small green screen studio by someone who doesn’t know how to make that not matter. The characters always seem confined to small areas as their epic surroundings swirl around them. I didn’t see this in 3-D, mind you, but I doubt it would have helped too much. Poor Frasier… I usually enjoy him!

¹ Why bother with encoding your notes if you’re going to half-ass it? Frasier and the kid crack it during a plane ride.

² Seeing as how we never see any prey animals of any size, I have to wonder how this environment supports an alpha predator this big. /DORK

³ “The food here is terrible!” “I know! And such small portions!”

Explores concepts of monstrosity in Western civilization from Beowulf to Jurassic Park.

We live in a time of monsters. Monsters provide a key to understanding the culture that spawned them. So argue the essays in this wide-ranging and fascinating collection that asks the question, What happens when critical theorists take the study of monsters seriously as a means of examining our culture?

In viewing the monstrous body as a metaphor for the cultural body, the contributors to Monster Theory consider beasts, demons, freaks, and fiends as symbolic expressions of cultural unease that pervade a society and shape its collective behavior. Through a historical sampling of monsters, these essays argue that our fascination for the monstrous testifies to our continued desire to explore difference and prohibition.

This book sounds fascinating. An interview with the editor.

Sue Jones-Davies, the actress who played Judith Iscariot in Monty Python’s Life of Bryan, is now mayor of the Welsh town of Aberystwyth* and is trying to lift the town’s ban on… The Life of Brian!

Some religious groups picketed cinemas which screened the film, and it was banned from being shown in some towns and cities, including Aberystwyth.

Nearly 30 years on, Mr Bell, vicar of the town’s St Michael’s Church, said the restriction should remain in place.

“There’s been no change in attitude or response to the film amongst the Christians who have spoken to me in Aberystwyth,” he explained.

“The film at its root is poking fun at Christ and we don’t want that to happen. I don’t think that the film should be shown. Why should the ban be removed?”

Asked if he had ever seen the film, Mr Bell said he had “seen a small clip, that’s all”.

Surprise, surprise. Read the whole thing.

*Gesundheit!

Science Daily:

One of the most interesting finds from a site on Vine Street was a ‘curse’ tablet — a sheet of lead inscribed in the second or third century AD and intended to invoke the assistance of a chosen god. It has been translated by a specialist at Oxford University, and reads:

‘To the god Maglus, I give the wrongdoer who stole the cloak of Servandus. Silvester, Riomandus (etc.) … that he destroy him before the ninth day, the person who stole the cloak of Servandus…’ Then follows a list of the names of 18 or 19 suspects. What happened to them is not recorded.

Read on.

As if Louisiana didn’t have enough to worry about.

As we noted last month, a number of states have been considering laws that, under the guise of “academic freedom,” single out evolution for special criticism. Most of them haven’t made it out of the state legislatures, and one that did was promptly vetoed. But the last of these bills under consideration, the Louisiana Science Education Act (LSEA), was enacted by the signature of Governor Bobby Jindal yesterday. The bill would allow local school boards to approve supplemental classroom materials specifically for the critique of scientific theories, allowing poorly-informed board members to stick their communities with Dover-sized legal fees.

Read on.