1. To learn biology, just pick up the console

Comment #231097 by Filius Nithardi on August 15, 2008 at 6:37 pm

I played with the Spore creature creator right after the demo was first released. It is a lot of fun, even if you don't make penis men. And maybe this is committing the sin of pride, but I was a much more creative designer than God ever was.

I wanted to make a fast raptor creature, and I started out with a one-leg-pair design, I admit that this was based on God's prior art (dinosaurs). The problem was, that even with the fastest legs it didn't max out the possible speed, and what kind of predator would that be, if it can never run as fast as its prey? Ok, I added another pair of the fast legs, but this still wasn't fast enough. It looked like a common tetrapod at this time, and it's rather strange that they all look so similar. And this is kind of typical for God's design, he copies and copies the same design with small and boring variations again and again. Not very creative, if you ask me.

Now I went ahead and added another leg pair, and I saw, that it was good - and it also maxed out the speed. But it makes one wonder, why God never added another pair of legs to the Cheetah's design to speed it up even more. Why does an omnipotent designer restrict himself, when I as a mere mortal could come up with something better so easily?

Then I went crazy and added five heads with lots of teeth and my raptor was really quite good at biting after that (maxed): And it could sing really beautifully with five voices at the same time. God got pwned! Pwned badly. Why can't God do, what I could do so easily? Because he does not exist, that's why. ;-)

2. The rebellion of the child-brides

Comment #230491 by Filius Nithardi on August 14, 2008 at 6:11 pm

41. Comment #230387 by Vaal

You believe what?? Strange that nobody else in the entire world witnessed the Moon separating into two parts, and the earth's rotation changing direction.

It's probably only an allegory for the fact, that Muhammad ended the worship of Hubal, a preislamic moon god in Mecca, whose idol was worshipped as the highest ranking god in the Kaaba - by smashing it to pieces (=splitting it) after he had conquered the city. It seems obvious, that Muhammad's contemporaries would understand this meaning, but like many literalist Christians Muslim literatlists cannot be bothered to research the contexts, in which their holy texts were written, and thus hilarity ensues.

3. Group wants Wi-Fi banned from public buildings

Comment #186288 by Filius Nithardi on May 30, 2008 at 4:25 am

I know of a similar case of that happened in Amberg, Bavaria. Shortly after a mobile phone station with a big scary antenna was installed in a residential area the first people in the neighborhood complained about a whole range of symptoms like insomnia or visual impairment. The only problem was, that the station wasn't even in operation until many months later.

4. 'Reverse Evolution' Discovered in Seattle Fish

Comment #183632 by Filius Nithardi on May 22, 2008 at 11:49 am

A very interesting video about three-spine stickleback evolution (its armor is regulated depending on its major predator species) can be found on the site of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute:

http://www.hhmi.org/biointeractive/evolution/lectures.html

Lecture Two (Selection in Action starting) from ca. minute 32 is about the sticklebacks
http://www.hhmi.org:8080/ramgen/05lect2_56f.rm (modem)
http://www.hhmi.org:8080/ramgen/05lect2_225f.rm (broadband), but the other lectures are awesome as well. If you have four hours time, you should watch them all ;).

5. Ancient serpent shows its leg

Comment #159524 by Filius Nithardi on April 12, 2008 at 12:06 pm

Here are some nice photos of a Python's vestigial hind limbs:

http://www.edwardtbabinski.us/articles/snake_vestigial_limb.html

6. The Great Tantra Challenge

Comment #145039 by Filius Nithardi on March 17, 2008 at 7:51 am

I am sure Sanal Edamaruku cheated: James Randi cast a skeptical immunity against tantric powers spell on him before the challenge.

7. Hamas Kindergarten Graduation Ceremony

Comment #47737 by Filius Nithardi on June 5, 2007 at 11:40 am

Why is this stuff posted here without any comment about the source? MEMRI is a known propaganda outlet of right-wing circles in America and Israel, their founders and staff have strong connections to Israeli military intelligence.

A small quote from http://sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=MEMRI about this "institute":

Issues of reliability and veracity

MEMRI is operated by a group closely associated with the Israeli intelligence organizations. Now, in an article in Haaretz, we find that the Israeli Army has sought to plant stories about "terrorism" in the press, and

"Psychological warfare officers were in touch with Israeli journalists covering the Arab world, gave them translated articles from Arab papers (which were planted by the IDF) and pressed the Israeli reporters to publish the same news here." --Amos Harel, IDF reviving psychological warfare unit, Haaretz, January 25, 2005.

This should raise a question or two about the reliability and veracity of the stories peddled by MEMRI.

This is what Prof. Juan Cole had to say about this:

"So is MEMRI, which translates articles from the Arabic press into English for thousands of US subscribers, in any way involved in all this? Its director formerly served in… Israeli military intelligence. How much of what we "know" from "Arab sources" about "Hizbullah terrorism" was simply made up by this fantasy factory in Tel Aviv?
As someone who reads the Arabic press quite a lot, this sort of revelation is extremely disturbing.
I also saw an allegation that British military intelligence had planted stories in the US press about Saddam's Iraq.
You begin to wonder how much of what you think you know is just propaganda manufactured by some bored colonel. No wonder post-Baath Iraq looks nothing like what we were led to to expect by the press, including the Arab press!"

Another assessment:

If you rely on MEMRI for your knowledge of Arab discourse, you are really not informed. Arab public opinion, based on MEMRI's releases, is reduced or caricatured to either Bin Laden fans or Bush fans, while Arab public opinion is mosty a fan of neither people. --As'ad AbuKhalil

Although widely used in the mainstream media as a source of information on the Arab world, it is as trustworthy as Julius Streicher's Der Sturmer was on the Jewish world. --Norman Finkelstein

Funding

According to the National Review, 250 donors—foundations and individuals—fund MEMRI's activities. Among these private donors is the right-wing Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation , which gave MEMRI $100,000 from 1999 to 2000. In 2001, the Randolph Foundation gave MEMRI $100,000, and in 2004 the John M. Olin Foundation gave $5,000, according to Media Transparency .

Founders

MEMRI was co-founded by Meyrav Wurmser and Colonel Yigal Carmon, formerly of Israeli military intelligence, "both of whom were early critics of the Oslo accords."

Some of the reported things might be true (I don't know), but it's very likely that it is very biased and hand-picked in order to influence public opinion in the "Western world", especially related to the global war on some terrorists. But deciders and journalists in America really like them, because they are doing their work for them, so they themselves can avoid all this hard researching, translating and analysing of primary sources.

8. What I Think About Evolution

Comment #46546 by Filius Nithardi on May 31, 2007 at 3:44 pm

@Hip_Priest

Those aspects of electrostatic induction theory compatible with the truth are a welcome addition to human knowledge. Aspects of these theories that undermine the truth, however, should be firmly rejected as an a-zeus-ic theology posing as science.

Haha, that totally cracked me up!