Digital Imagination

Ben Stein, the duldrum, yet charming personality famous for his monotonous voice and dry humor has a new movie coming out; Expelled : No Intelligence Allowed.

Apparently, Mr. Stein has taken it upon himself to challenge the current “liberal” education establishment that keeps insisting that Evolution explains our existence on this planet. His conjecture is that the current “Big Education” institutions “don’t like the very idea of an intelligent cause because they don’t like the idea of allowing even the possibility of the existence of an intelligent ‘designer.’ That might lead to scientific evidence in support of the unthinkable, i.e. G-O-D.”

The idea here, is that somehow, the education establishment has conspired to keep religion from interfering within a scientific context.

“Fucking Right”, I say.

Not only should proponents of “Intelligent Design” be driven out of our public universities, but they should be rounded up with the dingbats in the Flat Earth Society, pointed at, laughed at and forgotten.

The entire problem with the Creationist movement has not been with their hypothesis; that an intelligent creator envisioned and fabricated the building blocks of existence. I have absolutely no problem with that. What I have a problem with is that the “ID” movement plainly isn’t science. It’s faith. And faith, unfortunately can’t be tested.

See, in order for something to be considered “science”, it must be testable, it must be observable. Science is nothing more than the process of testing a hypothesis. We know evolution has occurred because we have absolute, undeniable, proof. We have tested, and tested, and tested. We have observed it in action, we have seen the missing link.

But Creationism doesn’t rely on proof. It relies on scripture. It doesn’t test, it sues. Creationism is not, and has never been about presenting an alternative view of how the world was created. It has been about smothering the very real, very true scientific principal that “things come from other things”. It is a pseudo-science created because religion felt threatened by the “proof” that humans were not, in fact, created by and perfectly in the likeness of God, but that we evolved from creatures, that evolved from creatures, that evolved from creatures that at one point were in no way similar to us whatsoever.

Creationism has at no point displayed any actual evidence that proves their hypothesis. Instead, they have chosen to present their theory as a series of criticism’s designed to disprove current evolution theory. They have chosen to litigate in order to force the inclusion of their material into school textbook, and as that has failed, they have now decided to play martyr and cry, “The entire establishment is conspiring against us.” And the reason they have chosen this path, very simply, is because what they present is an article of faith, not science, and can therefore never be proven.

All of this is moot though, I have absolute, unequivocal proof that Mr. Stein is in fact, a descendant of Ape.

I went to the Emergency Room last on Friday April 4th, with acute pain that began in the lower left abdomen and quickly expanded. I’d originally attributed it to a vicious stomach bug, but alas, it appeared after a CT-Scan to be a nasty case of Diverticulitis. I was admitted and given heavy antibiotics. I reeled in pain for about 3 days when my Surgeon informed me that he was going to need to do immediate surgery. He explained the operation, the chance of success and the probability of a temporary colostomy.

So on Monday, at 2PM, I had a funny man in a mask telling me to count backwards from 100…99…98…97… (has anyone actually made it past 97, please let me know).

When I awoke, I went back to sleep. I did that for a few days. Really, nothing before Wednesday is very clear to me, other than the fact that a lot of annoying people in gloves kept waking me up at unseemly hours like 3 in the afternoon. Oh, and that I had this little magic button that I could click which would make the pain go away, if I clicked it twice, I felt really fuzzy, and if I clicked it three times, the entire original cast of Pirates of Penzance would perform “Modern Major General” right before my eyes while flying around on real dragons, really, they’re quite amazing, should see them next time they’re in town.

I have to say, by Wednesday, I felt miserable. But I was still 1000 times better than when I was having the Diverticulitis attack. My chief form of frustration was not the abdominal pain (mostly from the incision), and wierdness, but from the damn Nasogastric Tube I had coming out of me. Actually at this point, with the NG, IV, Catheter and Colostomy bag, I officially had so many tubes running out of me that Ted Stevens had me declared “Part of the Internet”.

Since then, I’ve gone through a range of emotions from; “This is absolutely the filthiest, most disgusting, smelly thing on the planet.” to “This is absolutely the smelliest, most disgusting, filthy thing on the planet.” What can I say, I’m a diverse guy. Everybody keeps telling me that, “Hey, you can do anything with it, go diving, climb mountains, become ‘that dude at the office with the bag of poo hanging at his side’” Yeah, I can just imagine how great my life is gonna be for the next few months; Ol’ Scatty (as I like to call him) and me, hanging out at the bar, making pals.

I know that the trick to dealing with this is to have a good attitude, but dammnit, that’s really hard to do with this thing. I walk down the hall and it goes “poot-poot-poot”. Only a week into it and I’ve already had it publicly leak in front of a horrified audience in a waiting room as I was walking around.

I know, this stuff happens, and I can deal with that. But on a very deep and personal level, I have never felt like such a freak in my life. I know I’ll get used to it and I’ll learn to manage it, but right now, it just doesn’t feel that way.

“I remember landing under sniper fire,” Clinton initially recalled. “There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony, but instead we just ran with our heads down.”

But CBS News reports a much different story.

When pressed about her obvious fabrication, she explained, “I was tired.”

So, when you’re tired you get delirious and just make shit up? Maybe you’re not the best person to answer that 3AM phone call.

“To the left you’ll see the Jaws attraction! This is the last year Universal Studios will be featuring this attraction so that we can make way for rides based off of our newer films. Come back in 2010 to participate in “BrokeBack Mountain 2, Electric Boogaloo: The Ride” where you can feel the rush and excitement of participating in America’s favorite pastime, Hate Crimes! Yes, every visitor will be dressed in nothing but chaps and cowboy hats as they’re mercilessly beaten by sexually repressed rednecks. You won’t know how to quit it! We’ll also be replacing Back to the Future with an attraction based on our hit television show; House called “Emergency Room: The Musical!” As you enter the emergency room you’ll be injected with a mysterious illness. Participate and laugh as a drug addled Hugh Laurie makes bad decision after bad decision gambling on your fate! The musical numbers are to die for! “

So, I’ve decided to start a blag. Most people blog, I blag, because that’s the sound you make when you read it.