Tuesday
Two Times thoughts
First, an annoying and possibly revealing error in today's science Times. I'm not sure if it is actually revealing or what is being revealed, but the following paragraph from the article about how conservatives really like the film March of the Penguins got my goat: "[T]he only allusion to evolution in "March of the Penguins" is a line near the beginning, intoned in the English-language version by the narrator, Morgan Freeman: "For millions of years they have made their home on the darkest, driest, windiest and coldest continent on earth. And they've done so pretty much alone.""
Mentioning the world being old is simply not an allusion to evolution, it's a mention of a piece of scientific knowledge that is inconsistent with a completely literal reading of the Bible. If even Science Times' writers are using 'evolution' as shorthand for any knowledge that people who think the Bible is literally true don't like, we're going to need a lot more than the Daily Show's "Evolution, Shmevolution" week to set things right.
Second, I know the Times, to much gnashing of blogospheric teeth, announced their plans to put the Op-Ed writers behind a pay wall months ago. But today's edition included an announcement that they're actually going ahead with putting them and a bunch of good content behind said pay wall in six days, and (by omission) that the pay subscription won't include the one thing which may have motivated me to get it: a crossword subscription. Apparently that will still require its own fee.
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Mentioning the world being old is simply not an allusion to evolution, it's a mention of a piece of scientific knowledge that is inconsistent with a completely literal reading of the Bible. If even Science Times' writers are using 'evolution' as shorthand for any knowledge that people who think the Bible is literally true don't like, we're going to need a lot more than the Daily Show's "Evolution, Shmevolution" week to set things right.
Second, I know the Times, to much gnashing of blogospheric teeth, announced their plans to put the Op-Ed writers behind a pay wall months ago. But today's edition included an announcement that they're actually going ahead with putting them and a bunch of good content behind said pay wall in six days, and (by omission) that the pay subscription won't include the one thing which may have motivated me to get it: a crossword subscription. Apparently that will still require its own fee.
