Here’s a swarm of quad-rotor robots hovering in formation. They’re a creation of the GRASP labs at the University of Pennsylvania.

Kind of cool. Before you get too impressed, check out the blooper reel at io9 and see all the ways the little four-rotor guys can screw up.

Sure, they’re cute, but what can the little guys do? Here’s an exhibit titled “Flight Assembled Architecture,” created at the FRAC Centre in Orléans, France. Several quad-copters are used to pick up polystyrene foam blocks and drop them into place, eventually creating a 6m tower. This is the work of Swiss architect Gramazio & Kohler and Italian robot designer Raffaello D’Andrea.

There’s more about this sort of Flying Machine Enabled Construction at the website of the Institute for Dynamic Systems and Control.

These little rotor robots are not the only kind of flying bot out there. Markus Fischer and his team at Festo, a German tech company, have created “SmartBird,” a robot that flies in the same manner as a bird. Here he is displaying their creation at the TED Talks:

Finally, the good folks at Neural Robotics, Inc have produced this RC gunship. For all I know, Neural Robotics is a respected company with a sterling reputation. However, it looks like two good ‘ol boys got together and said, “Hey, let’s build us a big RC chopper and strap a shotgun to it!”

Evangelicals rapping = bad thing

Evangelicals with puppets = bad thing

Now for the test: Rapping evangelical puppets = ?

Via Scott Bailey

This should really be paired with Umberto Eco’s essay, Travels in Hyperreality. Sometime in the early 1970′s Eco traveled the United States, stopping by museums and tourist attractions. He toured a number of wax museums, including “Christ in the Smokies.” He witnessed many instances of what he called “hyperreality,” a simulation of reality that exceeds and distorts the actual reality.

It’s a dense piece, so pulling out a few pithy quotes isn’t going to work. So here’s a big chunk about his experience with wax museums:

The whole of the United States is spangled with wax museums, advertised in every hotel—in other words, attractions of considerable importance. The Los Angeles area includes the Movieland Wax Museum and the Palace of Living Arts; in New Orleans you find the Musee Conti; in Florida there is the Miami Wax Museum, Potter’s Wax Museum of St. Augustine, the Stars Hall of Fame in Orlando, the Tussaud Wax Museum in St. Petersburg. Others are located in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, Atlantic City, New Jersey, Estes Park, Colorado, Chicago, and so on.

The contents of a European wax museum are well-known: “live” speaking images, from Julius Caesar to Pope John XXIII, in various settings. As a rule, the environment is squalid, always subdued, diffident. Their American counterparts are loud and aggressive, they assail you with big billboards on the freeway miles in advance, they announce themselves from the distance with glowing signs, shafts of light in the dark sky. The moment you enter you are alerted that you are about to have one of the most thrilling experiences of your life; they comment on the various scenes with long captions in sensational tones; they combine historical reconstruction with religious celebration, glorification of movie celebrities, and themes of famous fairytales and adventure stories; they dwell on the horrible, the bloody;
their concern with authenticity reaches the point of reconstructive neurosis. [...]

Between San Francisco and Los Angeles I was able to visit seven wax versions of Leonardo’s Last Supper. Some are crude and unwittingly caricatural; others are more accurate though no less unhappy in their violent colors, their chilling demolition of what had been Leonardo’s vibrance. Each is displayed next to a version of the original. And you would naturally—but naively—suppose that this reference image, given the development of color photo reproduction, would be a copy of the original. Wrong: because, if compared to the original, the three-dimensional creation might come off second-best. So, in one museum after the other, the waxwork scene is compared to a reduced reproduction carved in wood, a nineteenth-century engraving, a modern tapestry, or a bronze, as the commenting voice insistently urges us to note the resemblance of the waxwork, and against such insufficient models, the waxwork, of course, wins. The falsehood has a certain justification, since the criterion of likeness, amply described and analyzed, never applies to the formal execution, but rather to the subject: “Observe how Judas is in the same position, and how Saint Matthew . . .” etc., etc.

As a rule the Last Supper is displayed in the final room, with symphonic background music and a son et lumiere atmosphere. Not infrequently you are admitted to a room where the waxwork Supper is behind a curtain that slowly parts, as the taped voice, in deep and emotional tones, simultaneously informs you that you are having the most extraordinary spiritual experience of your life, and that you must tell your friends and acquaintances about it. Then comes some information about the redeeming mission of Christ and the exceptional character of the great event portrayed, summarized in evangelical phrases. Finally, information about Leonardo, all permeated with the intense emotion inspired by the mystery of art. At Santa Cruz the Last Supper is actually on its own, the sole attraction, in a kind of chapel erected by a committee of citizens, with the twofold aim of spiritual uplift and celebration of the glories of art. Here there are six reproductions with which to compare the waxworks (an engraving, a copperplate, a color copy, a reconstruction “in a single block of wood,” a tapestry, and a printed reproduction of a reproduction on glass). There is sacred music, an emotional voice, a prim little old lady with eyeglasses to collect the visitor’s offering, sales of printed reproductions of the reproduction in wax of the reproduction in wood, metal, glass. Then you step out into the sunshine of the Pacific beach, nature dazzles you, Coca-Cola invites you, the freeway awaits you with its five lanes, on the car radio Olivia Newton-John is singing Please, Mister, Please; but you have been touched by the thrill of artistic greatness, you have had the most stirring spiritual emotion of your life and seen the most artistic work of art in the world. It is far away, in Milan, which is a place, like Florence, all Renaissance; you may never get there, but the voice has warned you that the original fresco is by now ruined, almost invisible, unable to give you the emotion you have received from the three-dimensional wax, which is more real, and there is more of it.

Courtesy of Stuff Fundies Like. It looks like an entry in the Washington Post Peeps Show, but I can’t find the specific entry.

The whole review was interesting, but this passage stood out to me:

Hubbard had frequently compared life to a game, and he didn’t want to be ‘playing some minor game in Scientology. It isn’t cute or something to do for lack of something better.’ The game hinged on the idea that we can choose what we perceive to be ‘true’, and discard everything else as an illusion. Yet soon Hubbard’s postmodern religion strove to become a ‘real’ one. His followers – among them hippies as well as educated and ambitious young people – surprised him with the intensity of their belief. Hubbard told a group of doctoral students in Philadelphia in 1954 that his followers were more convinced of Scientology’s cosmology than he was. ‘I’m just kidding you mostly,’ he said. ‘I don’t believe any of these things and I don’t want to be agreed with about them … All I’m asking is that we take a look at this information, and … let’s see if we can’t disagree with this universe, just a little bit.’

That’s a very different way of looking at Hubbard than I’m used to, and that quote is very telling. I’m used to seeing Hubbard and his followers as either scammers, lunatics or dupes. But if you are (for lack of a better word) postmodern enough to believe that you can create your own reality, then what better way to shape this new reality than by creating a religion?

And this might go some way towards explaining why so many of Scientology’s most prominent followers are actors or authors. These are people who work at creating a new reality for their audience.

1) Were our ancestors all dumb and bigoted because they thought homosexuality was wrong? Some may think that accepting homosexuality is innovative and progressive, but others say abandoning our previous norm may be presumptuous on our part. In other words, our ancestors might have been right, and we might be wrong.

Our ancestors thought no such thing. Our ancestors did not even have the word “homosexuality,” nor did they understand the modern concept of “sexual orientation.” The most we can say is that some of our ancestors – the ones who wrote the Hebrew Testament at least – thought that penetration between men was against the will of God. That’s quite different from saying that same-sex marriage is immoral.

Richard Fellows, who blogs at Paul and his Co-workers, has a good breakdown of how our Greco-Roman ancestors understood sexuality and how our early Christian ancestors felt about it. Neither side can be said to think that “homosexuality is wrong” in the way we understand the phrase.

2) Don’t our sexual organs exist for reproduction? How does homosexuality square with that?

This line of questioning has always baffled me. As an evolutionist, I do not believe that purpose is a useful way of finding natural morality. In an evolutionary understanding, function follows form. Purpose is something that humans assign to the form after the fact.

At some point in history, a proto-giraffe was born with a long neck. It must have been useful for reaching leaves, but also in getting a higher vantage point to see predators and (for males) in mating combat. None of these functions were assigned to the giraffe’s neck by nature, and we can hardly say that the neck has only one purpose and all the other uses are sinful.

Would anybody follow this line of reasoning to other aspects of the human body? We clearly have an omnivore’s digestive system, but are we willing to say that a meat heavy diet or strict vegetarianism are sinful lifestyles?

3) It is no secret that the human sex drive is a lot stronger than is needed for reproduction. Do we just give into those desires, or do we try to control them?

Obviously we try to control our drives and emotions. We learn at an early age that we have to control anger, jealousy and other emotions. We Americans have learned that the basic drive to eat can lead us to consuming more than our bodies can process or consuming things that are ultimately unhealthy, hence our expanding national waistline.

But saying this isn’t actually an argument. If I were to tell you that you must restrain your emotional affection for your children, I’m sure you’d insist that I give a reason why you should. How are displays of affection harmful? And so I return the question: so what? Why should some couples control their love and attraction, simply because they are both of the same gender?

And of course it should be said that same-gender marriage is more than an outlet for the sex drive, just as heteronormative marriage is more than just about producing children. The fact that we have to keep pointing out that this is more than just a matter of men having sex with other men is disquieting. It says bad things about our understanding of married relationships.

[summation]4. Adultery, pedophilia and bestiality are wrong. So homosexuality?

I think this just goes back to my above points. Rev. Cressman answers this in a straght-forward way.

5)Prevalent homosexuality has made its appearance in human history before and has never lasted. Why is it going to work this time when all the other appearances failed? Changes in norms require universal acceptance. Why should we go down this road again when many, probably a majority, will always see homosexuality as going against nature, not normal? Can’t we learn from the past that prevalent homosexuality will not work in society?

I have no examples of “prevalent homosexuality” making an appearance. As Richard Fellows points out in the link above, the ancient idea of sexuality is very different from the modern idea. I honestly don’t see a way to make a historical argument for or against gay marriage without comparing apples to oranges, and everybody knows how much I love historical arguments.

As for the idea that changes require consensus, this is obviously false. In America, major changes in our society have frequently been unpopular. Segregation and anti-miscegenation laws were all popular in certain regions. Contrary to Gov. Christie’s comments, a referendum on civil rights would not have created equality between the races.

Further, this is an issue of rights. In our system, the purpose of a right is to protect the minority from the majority. If what we’re arguing for is unpopular, then that just means we’re doing it right. Requiring majority consensus on a matter of rights completely misses the point.

As we approach the next election, the examples are worse. Chuck Norris? Seriously? Seriously seriously?

But somehow the worst is Victoria Jackson. She’s just so … baffling. She’s playing a ditzy blonde character while ranting about Tea Party talking points. Is she joking? Is she serious?

Julia Sweeny, who has apparently been a target of Jackson’s, believes that she’s serious. Or to put it another way, “She’s not Andy Kaufman,” so she’s not yanking the audiences’ chain. She wants the laughs she gets from her “dumb blond” character, but also believes the opinions that character is spouting.

Sweeny considers how counterproductive Jackson’s style is:

To me it would be like, like if there was a “comedian” who’s character was a Marxist-Leninist. He wears a beard and small round glasses and all black and he says things like: The Government should own all the land! People should not be allowed to own any money! Free Enterprise should be stopped!

And then he has a soap box that he carries around with him, and he puts it out there – and it even says “Soap Box” on it, and he gets on top of it and yells and gesticulates like a cartoon of communism.

And he’s on talk shows and everyone laughs at how nutty he is.

Only he really believes what he’s saying. He may be somewhat confused about why people are laughing. But he doesn’t care enough to analyze it, he really just wants the laughs. He hears the laughs, and he’ll happily take the laughs.

Now, wouldn’t you have a certain contempt for this person?

That makes Jackson sound like she’s desperate for the attention, not matter what kind of attention. But in playing both self-mocking comedian and pundit at once, she’s doing more damage to her side than anything else. Which, of course, means that I hope she keeps it up.

You might think this is a story out of ‘The Onion’ but it is a real story.

An Oklahoma lawmaker files a bill to ban the making and selling of food or products that use aborted human fetuses.

State Senator Ralph Shortey says he’s done research and found reports that companies have used stem cells in the research and development of food.

This is the first I’ve heard of stem cells being used for food R&D. Usually it’s something about how fetuses are being used to make gelatine, or about how some restaurant in part of the world we don’t like is serving grilled fetuses as an appetizer.

The lawmaker that represents Oklahoma County couldn’t give any specific examples. [...]

A number of food makers have denied the claims.

Big surprise there.

Over at Dangerous Minds, Richard Metzger did some checking about Senator Shortey:

Also in 2012, Shortey introduced a bill seeking a public vote on amending the Oklahoma Constitution to abolish the Court of Criminal Appeals. In the past he’s introduced measures to deny citizenship to babies born to illegals and an amendment to a bill that would have allowed legislators to carry firearms anywhere, including government buildings. If you’ve seen any video footage of this guy, he’s as dumb as fucking rock.

You do know how this moron got into office, don’t you? It’s simple: He ran and more people voted for him than his opponent.

Depwessing isn’t it?

The science is not settled on this. The idea that we would put Americans’ economy at jeopardy based on scientific theory that’s not settled yet to me is just nonsense. Just because you have a group of scientists who stood up and said here is the fact. Galileo got outvoted for a spell.

There’s been a lot backlash. In one response, Corey Robin dredged up one of the most painful examples of the Galileo Gambit in American history. This is a quote from Alexander Stephens, vice president of the Confederate States of America, and his famous Cornerstone Speech. This was delivered in Savannah, Georgia, shortly before hostilities began:

As I have stated, the truth of this principle may be slow in development, as all truths are and ever have been, in the various branches of science. It was so with the principles announced by Galileo it was so with Adam Smith and his principles of political economy. It was so with Harvey, and his theory of the circulation of the blood. It is stated that not a single one of the medical profession, living at the time of the announcement of the truths made by him, admitted them. Now, they are universally acknowledged. May we not, therefore, look with confidence to the ultimate universal acknowledgment of the truths upon which our system rests?

Any guesses which principle Stephens was talking about? Any guesses at all? It’s the same principle which Stephens declared was the cornerstone of the Confederate government:

Our new Government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition.

I could wish that this had discredited the Galileo Gambit for American politicians, but sadly that is not the case.

I thought it would be a good time to repost a scan of the “Medieval Safe Sex Flow-Chart” from James Brundage’s Law, Sex and Christian Society in Medieval Europe:

Brundage based his chart on his reading of the “Penitentials,” works written within the Christian Church for use by confessors. These works suggested penalties for various sins, and function as a good benchmark for what was considered immoral at the time. Note that not everybody would know or agree with all these rules, but it’s a good overview of the major ones.

Brundage writes,

“The penitentials by and large took a gloomy view of the sexual proclivities of both men and women. Many of their authors no doubt shared Pseudo-Gregory’s belief that even in marriage sex is always pleasurable, always impure, and always sinful. Marital sex was a concession, they believed: God allowed married persons to have sex only for procreation, never for pleasure. This opinion was consistent with the predominant teaching among the Fathers.

Since marital sex was a concession, not a right, and since pleasure was
an ever present incitement to lust, penitential writers maintained that sex in marriage must be strictly scheduled and closely monitored. Without periodic abstinence from sex, according to the Penitential of St. Finnian (written ca. 525-550), marriage itself lacked legitimacy and degenerated into sin.” (pp.154-155)

I could wish this was a little more balanced. I’ve gotten used to hearing conflicting reports from the media about whether coffee prevents cancer or causes cancer. If you read the Daily Mail, probably both at once.

Interestingly, the video gives credit to caffeine for helping fuel the Enlightenment. Since modern atheism is a product of the Enlightenment, that means that coffee created atheism. Somehow, I always suspected that.

Via Open Culture

Um … about that last one.

My grandfather was raised Southern Baptist.

My father was raised Southern Baptist.

… Hi.

Via Jesus Needs New Pr

Honestly, I’m having a hard time believing that this isn’t a parody. The only thing that makes me think it’s real is the fact that it’s no more creepy or ridiculous than the “Purity Balls” and “Purity Rings” that this crowd has already come up with.

Via Christian Nightmares

To treat the Exodus story as literal, factual history, one would have to believe that at some point God devastated the agriculture, economy, and military of Egypt, and yet somehow not only no king but no other person saw fit to mention these events in a letter.

Which is the greater miracle? Believing that God sent plagues and drowned soldiers? Or believing that God ensured that no one in Egypt made any mention of these occurrences and that no shred of tangible archaeological evidence would be left?

McGrath mentions the lack of “correspondence, fiscal transaction records, and other textual as well as archaeological evidence,” which warms my archivist heart (acid-free and buffered). That’s exactly the sort of evidence that we would hope to see. Historians acknowledge that Egyptian scribes generally did not report the bad news, but there still should have been some physical evidence of a mass migration of people out of Egypt.

If nothing else there should have been spin. While we don’t get the bad news directly, there will frequently be back-handed acknowledgements of a crisis. For example, an inscription might read, “Praise to the Pharaoh for guiding us through a time of famine.” So we know that there was a famine, even if no official at the time wrote about it.

Egyptologist Bob Brier quipped that you know that the Egyptians were losing a war when the glorious victories kept getting closer to Egypt. Still, we do tend to find out about the battles and we can piece together the actual results.

The usual response to this is to draw back from the popular depiction of the Exodus. Perhaps it wasn’t as large as the scriptures indicated. Perhaps there are errors in the translation, or things got exaggerated. Perhaps there was no dramatic confrontation.

Which leads us to a tricky question of identity: how large did the migration from Egypt have to have been in order for it to be the Exodus? If a small family escaped during the Fall of the Bronze Age, ditching the slave masters in a swampy “reed sea,” does that mean that Exodus occurred?

From The Kid Should See This

This particular device, created by “kinetic artist” Joseph Herscher, is a gorgeous example of the breed. It is the most contrived and destructive method imaginable for turning a newspaper page.

Via Open Culture

Damn near everyone else has already posted comments on this particular virus of a video. Some notables are (on our side) Friendly Atheist and Godless Girl. From Christians, The American Jesus pans the whole thing and picks apart the assumptions. On top of these, Jonathan Fitzgerald at Patrol has the decency to call it out as bad poetry.

For myself, I’ll just say that Bethke has an extremely narrow and completely self-serving definition of religion that would be unrecognizable to a good chunk of the world’s religious population. He’s attempting to project everything he doesn’t like about his tradition onto the word “religion” and then disassociate himself from it. It doesn’t work that way.

Naama Margolis, an 8-year-old from Bet Shemesh, is the most famous girl in Israel today. In fact, nobody can stop talking about her.

And why is that? Well, on Friday evening, Naama told her story on the most watched news show in the country. Interviewed by Channel 2’s Shai Gal, Naama told how she was afraid to go to school, just a few hundred meters from her house in Bet Shemesh, because Haredim cursed and spit on her for being dressed “immodestly.”

In response to this and other incidents, women in the Bet Shemesh neighborhood staged a flash mob: a dance for women’s equality and pluralism.

On Friday, Jan 6th, 2012, a group of 250 women from Bet Shemesh decided to raise their voices against the exclusion of women from the public domain by holding a mass public dance in the city square. The women, residents of the city from all ages and sectors, religious, traditional and secular, gathered together in a flashmob dance, in the city square and started dancing towards a change.

Via Forever in Hell, who violated the first rule of the Internet: Don’t read the youtube comments!

Copying and file sharing recognized as a religion in Sweden

Can the gospel of file sharing really be recognized as a religion? In Sweden it can.

In the midst of a worldwide debate about Internet piracy, Swedish authorities have granted official religious status to the Church of Kopimism, which claims it considers CTRL+C and CTRL+V (shortcuts for copy and paste) to be sacred symbols, and that information is holy and copying is a sacrament.

The church was founded by philosophy student Isak Gerson, who is also the self-appointed spiritual leader of the movement. [...]

The blog Torrent Freak reports that membership in the church has grown from 1,000 to 3,000 in the last six months, and the founders expect more people to join now that its religious status is making a splash on the Internet.

“Being recognized by the state of Sweden is a large step for Kopimi,” said Gerson. “Hopefully this is one step towards the day when we can live out our faith without fear of persecution.”

I suspect that “persecution” means government agencies who want to shut down file-sharing sites like Pirate Bay.

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I had hoped that this would be an online affair, but apparently you have to pay $10 just to see this thing. I suspect that it’s designed to help you reach the verdict,
“Yes, I am possessed by a minor demon!” At that point, Larson will have a line of products and help sessions designed to let you bind the demon and free yourself – all at an affordable price, sorry no credit, but guaranteed to work because you have no chance of proving anything in court.

Via Dangerous Minds

MPT calls this “atheist church,” and many of his commenters agree. I see it as a fairly standard support group. I don’t want to be the snide Episcopalian – I’m a snide EX-Episcopalian – but if this is what church has been reduced to for many Americans, then suddenly all those “moralistic therapeutic deism” cracks make a lot more sense.

My first impression is that it’s a painfully awkward field in which you have to cater to the shifting biases of you market:

To an outsider, visiting the religious sites feels a bit like listening to the bleeped-out version of an explicit hip-hop song: the substance is the same, it’s just missing the X-rated details. None of the sites feature any nudity, instead relying on mannequins to display lingerie. Nor do they feature any sexy language. Kosher Sex Toys, for example, rewrites product descriptions that risk shocking its audience. (The “Butterfly Clitoris Stimulator” becomes, simply, the “Vibrating Stimulator.”)

What am I missing? Are butterflies not kosher? But really, that’s the least of it. Everyone else has their own hang-ups:

Despite consistencies across the religious sites, the vendors do vary based on doctrine, audience, and each owner’s preferences. Wilson refuses to sell anal devices and condoms, not because she objects, but because her customers do. “The Catholics protested the condoms, and the evangelical Christian community is sensitive about anal sex and play,” she said. “But I’ll special order anything if people ask.”[...]

Aouragh, who rejects the term “sex shop,” preferring to say that he’s in the business of “sexual well-being,” sells only Sharia-compliant items. Meaning: no vibrators, dildos, or drugs that claim to enhance size or use, because these items misinterpret the male form.[...]

Meanwhile, Kosher Sex Toys’ Gavriel won’t stock male masturbatory aids because, he says, God frowns on wasted potential, according to the Torah. However, since Judaism doesn’t prohibit female self-pleasure, he carries myriad trinkets that buzz.

What a mine-field of taboos.

I’ve read through the Bible multiple times, and I honestly don’t remember it offering much guidance about what we’d call sexuality. I’m less familiar with the Qur’an, but my impression is that it offers little guidance as well.

The ancient writers were more concerned about behaviors that could disrupt the community. Things like adultery were a problem, since that disrupted the family alliances that were bound together by marriage. Sex before marriage could be a problem, since it might result in a child that the community would have to raise. But the ancients didn’t really seem to care that much for the actual mechanics.

Apparently, we moderns care. And those of us involved in religion expect it to offer some guidance. But since our religious texts and traditions don’t care, they have to be dragged into the discussion, kicking and screaming if necessary. And so we get problems like the above, or the problem noted by Rachel Held Evans in her harsh review of Mark Driscoll’s new book of marriage advice:

The chapter entitled “Can we…?” which has scandalized so many people with its advice on everything from oral sex, to role playing, to sex toys really isn’t that shocking to me. It seems like common sense that couples should feel free to engage in such activities if both partners enjoy them, so long as they don’t become obsessions. The fact that Christian couples seem to need the approval of a pastor along with some strategically placed Bible verses in order to engage in these activities is a bigger concern to me. It seems that we are once again demanding more from the text and from our pastors than they can and should give.