Grey Matter

Cross-posted from PhaWRONGula: Wasmannia auropunctata. Those fire ants sure do have interesting ways to pass on their genes. Read Pharyngula: Clone war of the sexes first.

Ploidity-droidity
Diploid queen fire ants
Clone themselves daughters to
Be the next queens,

Giving them life via
Parthenogenesis—
No need for males to get
Into their genes.

Clonally-dronally
Haploid male fire ants
Stoically cope with a
Karma to spurn,

Living their history of
Amatrilineal
Roots—a glass ceiling but
One that won't burn.

Ask, "Is this love?" I'll ask you what you mean
By love—some silver screen that makes you blind
To faults, or some fantastic pact between
Imagined gods who've had your fate designed?
Perhaps four little letters are a key
To probe the private—password to the pants—
But used again, describe the wrath of she
Whose cubs are threatened by a pervert's glance.
This many-splendored word's a whore who sleeps
With sycophantic shallow flawless skin
And gloms the sinner's soul in haste but keeps
The way they are at bay because it's sin.
So tell me, why is such respect conferred
On one old overloaded worn-out word?

Over on Pharyngula, a fundie troll has been trying to assert that godlessness is related to family problems during childhood. e.g.

Well, I just can't help but notice that the people who espouse atheism, evolution, anti-Christian viewpoints, wild and cra-zee promiscuity, and aberrant sex of all kinds, all had some really tough stuff happen to them when they were young, usually involving big problems with their fathers, which I firmly believe is why they have a hard time establishing a relationship with their Heavenly Father.

Of course, the troll goes on to employ the time-honoured "proof by selective example" to show the "strength" of her argument. She lists a few prominent figures who've expressed views she hates and points to their family problems, and hopes to thereby denigrate their views. You can read the easy refutations of her assertions in the Pharyngula comment thread.

So, there's a fundie troll commenting on PZ Myers's blog. What's new?

A coincidental encounter with another fundie who clings to a similar opinion. That's what's new.

Last night a man, after talking to me for five minutes and finding out of my apostasy (the subject was inevitable since we met at a party of a mutual Christian friend), convinced himself that I must have suffered some life-changing negative event to cause me to reevaluate my faith. As became apparent during the conversation, this "perceptive" man was an only-a-theory, all-scientists-have-been-duped, not-a-clue-about-science fundamentalist.

I have lived a fortunate life. Abuse free. Trauma free. Happily married for over 23 years. Well balanced kids. Stable employment. What led me away from faith was learning—finding out about the history of the church, finding out how a council of ordinary men decided what books to include in their canon, examining the claims that had been taught to me and reinforced by Christian friends, understanding how religious memes survive and propagate.

It seems to me that the idea that learning leads away from the church is uncomfortable for fundamentalists. Any other excuse (e.g., traumatic experience) is a rationalization to cling to. Counter examples must be relegated as exceptions. 

I won't try to generalize to all Christian fundamentalists, but when you meet a fundie, it's wise to be prepared for the preconceptions they may have about your life, the way you think, and the way you've been duped by the world-wide conspiracy to marginalize (their interpretation of) God.

Teresa at Making Light "actually managed to come up with a poem so bad that the International Library of Poetry ... neither declared it to be a semifinalist in one of their contests, nor offered to publish it in one of their pricey yet unreadable anthologies."

How? By sending one example of spammy scam as a poetry submission to the poetry.com scammers. I know it's possible that it was automatic spam blocking that blocked her submission, and that her poem could have otherwise won critical acclaim and been featured in one of their prestigious publications, but to manage to get any verse rejected in any way is an achievement.

Inspired by Teresa's efforts I wondered if I could summarize her "poem" in a double-dactyl.

Scammily-spammily
Miriam Abacha,
Widow of former
Nigerian chief,

Seeks your assistance to
Pseudofiducially
Hold thirty mil for her
Family's relief.

Cross-posted from PhaWRONGula: Learning to Fly.

Pharyngula: Well, maybe another catch is if getting up close and personal with flies makes you squeamish…

You want Dipteran smut? Here's the website, uncut:
Anatomical Atlas of Flies.
You'll need, for inspection, a broadband connection
Because of its gigabyte size.
So shrug off your shyness and feast on the flyness
Expressed in high-res for your eye.
Come hug the homology, munch the morphology;
Have to agree, "Pretty fly!"

I picked up a word I didn't know from a Pharyngula commenter.

From Merriam-Webster:

flyting:  a dispute or exchange of personal abuse in verse form.

From Wikipedia:

In Norse and Germanic cultures, flyting is a contest of insults, either as a prelude to battle or as a form of combat in its own right. The exchange is regular, if not ritualized, and the insults usually center on accusations of cowardice or sexual impropriety or perversion.

I like the word. It reminds me of old limerick battles.

A mischievous master lurks under my bed
With lint for a body and hair for a head.
His diet is dust so he's very well fed
Like all of his fat fluffy fiends.

He's planning a party to rage through the night.
He'll sniff my wet socks and get high as a kite
And scoff on dried skin-flakes and toenail delight--
Just him and his fat fluffy fiends.

He'll fall about laughing at lewd people-puns,
Make fun of our feet (big warped knobbly ones),
And dream about dandruff cascading in tons
To build up more fat fluffy fiends.

Because each scar invites me to explore
This convoluted sculpture of the past,
I can't resist; I must come back for more.

In every game one name is left till last--
A victim of the school of youthful crimes.
This convoluted sculpture of the past

Wears tangled thorns that still draw blood at times,
Revealing tales not shared except in trust.
A victim, of the school, of youthful crimes,

Of days in fear all hopelessly unjust,
Lives on despite the numbing of the years,
Revealing tales not shared except in trust

To those prepared to understand the tears.
A story dressed in memories of a youth
Lives on despite the numbing of the years

And tells us that we never know the truth.
Because each scar invites me to explore
A story dressed in memories of a youth
I can't resist, I must come back for more.

I suppose it was inevitable that the odious comparisons of the Bush administration to a Sith-controlled Star Wars galactic empire would prod at dormant questions in the Fictionology community. Old arguments are being revived. Again we're forced to address the question: "What Fictions can one legitimately believe?"

The two factions involved in this fracas are the conservative canonist Fictionologists and the extreme spontanist (or improv) Fictionologists. I'll try to summarize their positions.

Canonist:
- George Lucas had the whole Star Wars story, including script, worked out thirty years ago.
- George W Bush played out the whole of the WMD Fiction based on a dominionist script written thirty years ago.
- The apparent similarities between the two are coincidental but very instructive.

Spontanist:
- George Lucas had a rough story plus script ideas worked out thirty years ago. He's been winging it ever since.
- George W Bush just makes shit up as he goes and refuses to admit that he could have been wrong.
- Lucas decided to nail Bush in Revenge of the Sith because he couldn't find any other way to inject fun into the movie.

The conflicting world views shine through in their different interpretations of the same set of observations. Why is there such a heated discussion? Can't they just believe what they want to believe? That solution only addresses the superficial nature of the debate.

Looking under the surface from a Fictionological philosophy point of view, the bone of contention is still the legitimacy of believing in a Fiction that you (or your close colleagues/family) write for yourself. Most conservative Fictionology thinkers see this as a sure way to isolate yourself from reality and alienate anyone who is smart enough to understand what you're doing. It destroys any hope that you'll even be able to recognize other people's Fictions, and inevitably leads to conflict rather than communication.

As PZ Myers points out in Obligatory Sithiness we're looking at an overload for the irony meter here. (Cross posted from PhaWRONGula.)

Sithilly-Smithilly
Orson Scott Card-castle
Pokes at religions the
Movies reveal,

Then as a Mormon he
Hyperironically
Notes that the Jedi Force
Cannot be real!