SPORE May Finally Turn Me Into a Video Game Nerd

I've really never been high on video games, I've always had a hard time finding any value in them. But Spore has certainly caught my attention.

It allows a player to control the evolution of a species from its beginnings as a unicellular organism, through development as an intelligent and social creature, to interstellar exploration as a spacefaring culture.

This game ends up being a coincidentally perfect example of what creationism would look like if you were God. Hope no one gets confused ;).

Reminds me of that Halloween Simpsons episode where Lisa accidentally creates life - she watches the evolving humanoids create fire, civilization, and then futurama-like cities. Since their technology surpasses ours, they develop a shrinker ray and beam her down into their world believing she's God. Then they start asking her all the big life questions - my favorite, "Why do good things happen to bad people?"

Geological Perspective

Cute video of time between ice ages. Provides a bit of perspective for human existence and evolution. Also neat through the eyes of little, sentient rock beings especially when you consider that Darwin was able to understand that physiological changes occur in species over geological time, not human life spans. Probably one of the biggest reasons people have a difficult time really grasping the central tenants of evolution.

Fucking Computers

An elementary step in the progress towards The Singularity as defined by Raymond Kurzweil. A dick mouse, and a program that will respond to the motion of your ocean. Good to know sex is still the main fuel for progress. The Singularity as it's defined in his book is the point at which we won't be able to differentiate between our biology and our technology.

If Mr. Kurzweil is correct, computers will be able to mimic the human mind by 2029. He believes we will have a fully functional understanding of the human brain by then, as well as the computer processing power to simulate it. Given this prediction, he is working on staying as healthy as possible to he can eventually pull a Lawnmower Man, and upload himself, making digital copies so he can live forever. I don't see this happening personally, but it gives me comfort to know that soon I'll at least be able to fuck a computer program.

Creationism Alive and Well

A pretty transparent picture of creationist indoctrination. This bible study field trip to a science museum has the "teachers" exposing why evolution is "somebody's fantasy."

These kids are taught pretty well how to defend their lunacy, here's a good argument:

"With the amount of damage happening to the earth these days, all the crazy things? it would have fallen apart by now, like billions of billions of years." Which is why it's obviously only been around for 6000 years. Convinced?

This poor brainwashed little girl just made me feel badly, she so effectively embodies what they teach - that any scientific explanation is like a cute, silly fairytale (about 7:00 into the video, watch how she says the following quote):

"God created the earth, and it didn't, like, evolve from a big asteroid in a bagillion years (like an asteroid is some absurd figment of our imagination) ."

Is the only way to fight this kind of indoctrination with indoctrination? Instead of explaining evolution like a science, maybe it just has to be taught like a religion. No matter how it's taught, the creationists will paint it that way. At best, their argument is "they have their story, we have ours." For the record, I don't believe you should fight misinformation with misinformation - as far as I'm concerned any indoctrination, even with a good cause, is a bad thing.