I think Bill Donahue is too busy right now dealing with a Pope that doesn't believe exactly what he believes.

When they burned him alive, believing in a heliocentric universe was on the list of reasons. But the overall point of the example was that when you take your world view from authority, scientific thought will always suffer. Just because there are Catholic scientists does not mean that Catholicism did not constrain…

I think a big part of being a creationist is teaching yourself *not* to be curious. Most of the ex-creationists I've interacted with online or in real life just couldn't do it after a point, when the information just couldn't be ignored any longer.

I've never met a YEC creationist scientist, but I have met a molecular biologist that was unconvinced about evolution. But he was also a wacky Russian immigrant, so who knows what years of Soviet education can get wrong. The other creationist science teacher I knew was really smart, but she just couldn't believe in…

Oh yeah, and I really enjoyed it. But there is a particular slower, artier style of movie that gets good ratings from the AVclub reviewers that I just don't always care for.

Yeah, course, the last common ancestor probably looked like a monkey.

Yeah, after the Nye vs Ham debate, Buzzfeed had a list of Creationist responses to Bill Nye, and all of them could have been answered with a Google search. That's pretty much why a lot of creationists homeschool, and send them to religious colleges that force teachers to sign pledges against teaching evolution.

For a lot of homeschoolers in the US, there are literally no standards, or if there are standards, they are completely unenforced. That's largely where the creationists reign.

I'd also heart that the Bunyip might be very, very large carps, which apparently grow to large enough size that they could potentially eat small children.

Certainly its acting is not very good. I actually thought it was alright it until people started talking and I fell asleep. Primer seemed much better to me on all fronts, really.

That's my list of "Highly Rated AvClub movies I found just alright" Its interesting that they all reflect a certain sort of 'deep' movie. And I guess I'm getting to the age where I start to see 'pretentious' or 'slow' just as often as I see 'deep'. And yet, all of them had good moments and ideas. Well, I assume…

Yeah, I went into it expecting a really interesting set of characters, but it was the same tired old "Man wants to quit job for Woman, gangsters use Woman to try to control Man, Man kills everyone".

There is just a certain type of movie that always seems to get an 'A' score at the AVclub: they are brooding, quiet, with a lot more characters staring intently at each other rather than having dialogue. Drive, Another Earth, Upstream Color, all of them are like that to varying degrees, and I just find them a bit…

The nice thing about comic movies is that dramatically different reboots and weird sideplots and crossovers are part of the package.

Ouch. That is very true.

I recently read the book Persian Fire by Tom Holland, that covers the two Greek-Persian wars, and puts about half its time into describing the foundation and function of the Persian state, which was quite interesting, though Holland points out that there just isn't quite the same wealth of information about them as…

The earth and water was a power symbol relating to Persian religion, if I recall. They kept a whole bunch of containers of them in the Emperor's palace. But they also wanted trade, and control of resources to supply them for other conquests.

But weren't the helots also subject to the actions of Spartan secret police, who straight up murdered anyone they even thought was trying anything?

Historically, maybe not. But it amuses me to imagine a really, really tired ancient Greek body waxer just off screen. Which, I suppose they must have had in real life to make this movie.

Stupid sexy Flanders!