www.jeffthefish.com

This t-shirt is what I want!

On Sunday, for the first time ever, I told my older sister that I am no longer a creationist. She did not seem pleased.

The reason it came up was that she was telling me about how she’d seen Bobby Jindal, governor of Louisiana, speak at a local church that morning. My sister loves him. Since I’d been looking for an opportunity to bring this up, I told her that the only thing I didn’t like about Bobby Jindal was that he was a creationist. At first she didn’t know what creationism was, so I explained to her that I didn’t take the Genesis story literally anymore, and that I accepted the theory of evolution.

I thought that she sounded mad, but she said she wasn’t. I was very nervous and kind of shaking a little bit. She said she was surprised. I was actually surprised that she was surprised, because my sister is Catholic, and the Catholic church famously accepts evolution. I said, “As much as I’m into science?” She responded, “Yes, but you were also into God.”

She asked me how long I’d “believed” this. I tried to explain that it’s just not possible for the Genesis story to be literally true, and that this was based on evidence, but I don’t think that really matters to her. She said, “So you don’t think that God had anything to do with it?” I tried to explain that that wasn’t really the case. I am not very good at explaining things.

Then she said, “Well, all I know is that we need politicians in office who believe in God.” I don’t agree with this, but I said “yeah” and let the conversation move on.

It was a difficult thing for me to do, because I really had no idea how she would react. When I first got my lungfish, I explained to her how lungfish are more closely related to humans than to most other fish, and even sent her some cladograms illustrating this. She did not seem to have a problem with that idea. I guess most people compartmentalize their knowledge like that. I know I did.

Now, I do not expect my sister ever to give me a hard time about this. She’s just not that kind of person. But, to be fair, if she did give me a hard time I would be totally deserving of it. She raised me from the time I was 13 until I got married. I was a know-it-all annoying fundamentalist teenager, and on several occasions gave her a hard time about her Catholicness.

I’m glad this has finally been done though. And I’m glad that I don’t have to reveal this to my grandmother. My mother still doesn’t know. My wife’s mother knows that I accept evolution, but I don’t think she knows that my wife does. We’ll cross that bridge when we get there, I guess.

Does anyone else have any coming out stories they’d be willing to share? They don’t have to involve creationism or religion.

Man up (bitch).

I saw this AWESOME EM EFFING graffiti on Capitol Hill in Seattle.

This was probably done to lure PZ Myers up here.

I saw this fascinating graffiti in a hospital restroom this weekend:

Last Saturday I went to see a Seattle-based band called Natalie Portman’s Shaved Head. They’re a great and fun band, and you should listen to their music! As evidence I offer you this video I took of their final song, Ice Age Babeland. As always, I apologize for the horrible sound quality.

Live blogging.

“Love of God and compassion and empathy leads you to a very glorious place, and science leads you to killing people.” - Ben Stein

“Not long after our wedding, we were awakened in the middle of the night in our own bedroom by deputy sheriffs and actually arrested for the ‘crime’ of marrying the wrong kind of person. Our marriage certificate was hanging on the wall above the bed. The state prosecuted Richard and me, and after we were found guilty, the judge declared: ‘Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.’ He sentenced us to a year in prison, but offered to suspend the sentence if we left our home in Virginia for 25 years exile.” - Mildred Loving

“There’s no genetic basis for any kind of rigid ethnic or racial classification at all…I’m always asked is there Greek DNA or an Italian gene, but, of course, there isn’t. . . . We’re very closely related.” - Bryan Sikes

In case some of you haven’t seen this, here it is:

I used to go to this church.

When I was doing my “research” for my Larry Norman pun, I came across a crazy person’s web site!

Here is a minimal background story: Larry Norman was a Christian musician whose heyday was in the 60s and 70s. With church kids my age, he is probably most famous for the apocalyptic song “I Wish We’d All Been Ready”, as popularized in a DC Talk cover.

Anyway, Larry at some point realized that Christian pop music was becoming cheesy, and that secular music was….less cheesy. So he wrote a song called “Why Should The Devil (Have All The Good Music?)”. It was really meant to be as tongue-in-cheek as it sounds. It was also meant to be a sort of plea for Christian musicians to make quality, innovative music.

But fundamentalists can be nuts.

These folks use sophisticated logic like:

“…where did ‘Why Should the Devil Have All the Good Music?’ actually come from? The ‘mis-quote’ was taken from a message Reverend Rowland Hill, pastor of Surrey Chapel in London, preached in 1844. Reverend Hill did NOT say, ‘Why Should the Devil Have All the Good Music?’ — what he actually said was, ‘The devil should not have all the best tunes.’ “

Wow, big diff lol.

But my absolute fav part was when they said: “Let’s conduct an observable, provable and scientific experiment…”

1. You missed Larry’s point completely didn’t you?
2. Observable? HAHAHAHAHA
3. Provable? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
4. SCIENTIFIC? JAJAJAJAJAJAJAJAJAJAJAJAJAJA (that’s how they laugh in Mexico)

So what’s the experiment?

“Here are two songs in RealAudio. Listen to both. You decide — which one is GOOD! And also which one is the DEVIL’S.”

Holy frick. So I did it. They did not make it easy. The first song is a heavy metal song featuring a guy grunting things like “God is dead and now you die.” I personally don’t like heavy metal, but the music was fine. The vocals, meh.

The second song was a lawrencewelkian version of Some Generic Hymn. Acoustic guitar playing predictable chords, predictable (OMG is it predictable!) three part harmony, generic lyrics, violin solo exactly where it’s supposed to be.

And the site never explains which song is better and more importantly, why one of those songs is better! It’s supposed to be self-evident, I guess.

So which one is good? Neither is very good, but the second one, in my Official  Internet Opinon, is less good than the first. Which one is the devil’s? Over the top, anti-religious lyrics or overwhelmingly bland formulaic music that makes would-be believers vomit? Is this a trick question?

The page goes on and on with logical fallacy after logical fallacy. I’d make fun of all of it, but there’s only one Internet and I don’t want to waste it all.