h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

If the teaching of Intelligent Design to schoolkids bothers you, you gotta see this....

http://www.venganza.org/index.htm

Aha, you've been going to some of the same places as I have. I think the person who invented that FSM stuff the other month hadn't seen the previous years of IPU stuff (Invisible Pink Unicorn). Though the pirate references have brought in a somewhat different set of fans.

The teaching of evolution is *already* optional in Kansas. It can't get any more retarded than that.

Yes it can:

- banning teaching of evolution: "Eh, what's that then that I'm not meant to teach? What if I teach it by accident? How do I explain in confession?"

- teaching creationism etc instead: "So men have one less rib than women. No, Billy don't you dare check an actual woman. We don't allow experiment and observation in godology."

The Invisible Pink Unicorn is charming! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invisible_Pink_Unicorn

It's a lot prettier than the invisible Spaghetti Monster, whose meatballs I find particularly gross; but the Spaghetti Monster has a better website, which to my mind is a sign that it is the One True God.

Don't go to church on Sunday
Don't get on my knees to pray
Don't memorize the books of the Bible
I got my own special way
But I know Jesus loves me
Maybe just a little bit more

I fall on my knees every Sunday
At Zerelda Lee's candy store

Well it's got to be a chocolate Jesus
Make me feel good inside
Got to be a chocolate Jesus
Keep me satisfied


{Tom Waits: extract from Chocolate Jesus.]

The IPU has been around longer (unless you believe in last-Thursday-ism) and I've had an emoticon/smiley or two of the IPU for a while now:

http://img33.photobucket.com/albums/v101/_SEF_/smiley/myth/_ipuR.gif

whereas I don't have an FSM one at all (yet ...)

though I do have an EAC "pin" (which covers the generic position):

http://img33.photobucket.com/albums/v101/_SEF_/smiley/myth/_EAC15b.gif

I think your FPU smiley's the best smiley I've seen.

What is EAC?

EAC = Evil Atheist Conspiracy (and I think there's also something like GAC = Great Atheist Conspiracy mentioned occasionally).

Many of the pottier religious extremists, ie ID/creationists, seemed to imagine there was one, ie some sort of organised world-wide atheistic conspiracy in charge of science (or whatever other paranoid delusion the religious fanatics happened to have that day). So a few people started teasing the creationists on web-sites by playing up to this and claiming the black helicopters would be round for them, or that there were no black helicopters wink-wink, or that they did or didn't have EAC membership cards etc telling them who/what was in or out. A couple of joke websites for the pretend conspiracies were started too. It's mostly a bit silly but the flow-chart of advice *for* creationists (based on how they already argue/behave) was quite amusing.

So, since much of the religious (rather than scientific) controversy centres around evolution (ie biology being apparently most offensive to their current beliefs whereas astronomy was some centuries ago) and since this imaginary conspiracy would pretty much have to be everywhere and bugging everything/everyone (in order to have the properties the religious imagine it to have), I thought a beetle/bug logo made from the initials and possibly in the form of a stick pin would be the most appropriate thing to represent that.

Oo yes, I've seen a few sincere adherents to that conspiracy theory on the BBC science boards.

Your pin is very nifty.

I like the phrase 'Happy Heretic' to describe atheists, too.

If you don't like the meatballs, how do you feel about the noodly appendage? Or the pirate regalia for followers? You'd get a neat hat for your collection of course.

On the smiley front: I've had a pirate one for longer than the FSM site has been around (though not as long as I've had the IPU one) and even a dead fish (sans eye patch). I had a go at a smiley sized FSM earlier today but the letters don't really fit well in the body at 16 pixels or less, when allowing for noodly appendages and eyestalks too.

I think your IPU is definitely one of the coolest!

The original right facing one (and the left one) was static. But people wanted the invisibility aspect to be portrayed too. So now it spends some of its time invisible and phase shifts between the invisible-pink duality which is its singular unicorn-ness.

Well, it clearly works.

(Clearly--d'you get it? Clearly.<bigdaftgrin&gt

"If you don't like the meatballs, how do you feel about the noodly appendage?"

I love His Noodly Appendage. It's just that the meatballs look... well, gross.

"Or the pirate regalia for followers? You'd get a neat hat for your collection of course. "

I think you've answered your own question, there.

I particularly like the stuff about global warming, as it seems to me about as scientific as current claims by environmental groups about the so-called causes.

*Waits for Sea Change to bite.*

I'd better point out here that I really *do* care about the environment and saving the planet and all that kind of stuff; it's just some of the methods that I disagree on. Some look to me like a ridiculous waste of cash resulting in no change at all; others look like contol freakery on a fatal scale.

[still too lazy to get refutation from library, keeps mouth shut]

That's okay, Sea Change: you're free to express your opinion here without backing it up, you know. If I want to see your sources, I can always Google. I'm not going to jump to the conclusion that you're lying to me.

Evidence that Bjorn Lomborg's a chemical industry whore is probably irrelevant in this case anyway, as I was skeptical about the causes of global warming way before I discovered him. There are two main reasons for this: first, that Earth has been warming up at a more or less steady rate since the last Ice Age, with a few short periods where it warmed a bit faster or a bit slower. The current increase in the rate of global warming has not yet extended beyond the size of one of these little 'blips', so to extend it into an exponential curve is unrealistic--especialy since the blip began hundreds of years before PCP's were invented. Secondly, Mars's global temperature is increasing at the same rate as Earth's.

Where did I get all these facts? I have no idea. I can't remember!

And when I say PCP's, I mean CFC's, obviously.

CFCs haven't got much to do with Glodbal Warming though have they? They're the hole in the Ozone layer... Which is something that has been observed within your lifetime. Also how many cars and houses and exhuast producing industries do you really think are needed to cause change in temperatures when combined with deforestation.