Q. Readers want to know if the Movie Answer Man is too PC to review "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed"?
Ruddy Spencer, Tucson, Ariz.
A. The last I heard, it is not considered Politically Correct to agree with Darwin. I think it is more like, oh, intelligent.
Ms. Sheyla Hershey has breast implants. In an uncredited (?) story from Fox 29 in Philadelphia, the anonymous author writes, "Sheyla's implants are filled with a thousand CCs or two quarts of silicone."
I'm pretty sure my readership is literate. So you know that 1000 cc = 1 liter = 1.06 quarts. In fact, the abbreviation "cc" has been obsolete for decades in science and engineering (though I have no idea if that's equally true in medicine).
There was a day when people in journalism had at least the minimal education needed to recognize common units used in supermarkets. Has the unnamed reporter never bought a 2 liter bottle of soda? Compared it to a quart bottle of, say, ketchup?
Mr. Marc Lipton of Monterey, CA, has found another image of the Virgin Mary. You've all heard about her and her son appearing on potatoes, grilled cheese sandwiches, and tree trunks. Now she has manifested herself in road rash.
To those less insistent about supernatural intrusions into the physical world, this is a classic example of pareidolia. In a rational culture this example would be used in psychology classes.
Also making appearances in weird places: Homer Simpson.
Not literally, but: the US Army is distributing handheld polygraphs to our soldiers in Afghanistan. Polygraphs simply do not work.
I'm totally in favor of doing this, if the soldiers are properly briefed.
The thing is, the Talibani and their supporters will believe the polygraphs work, and they'll be an effective bluff, like the famous cop-and-colander story.
You know how evolution deniers always claim that we never see evolution happening, so it's just imaginary, made up to deny the non-materialistic answer? It's a stupid argument ("We can't see gravity, so it's just something antireligious people made up to deny that angels move the planets around") but not only is it illogical, it's contrafactual.
As reported in the National Geographic online, scientists transplanted some Italian lizards to an island off the coast of Croatia in 1971. Now, in 2008, their descendants have radically evolved, from insectivores to herbivores, developing "cecal valves" that let them digest cellulose, along with changes in head anatomy that let them consume tough plant matter.
Major anatomical changes in about 30 generations. Ben? Ben Stein? Do you want to do a crockumentary about that, or will you ignore it to make irrelevant Holocaust accusations?
Of course, to actual biologists this is a very interesting experiment in terms of MacArthur's and Wilson's work in island biogeography. I look forward to future reports.
