Photo from The Metro.

It pains me to have to do this; xkcd is so often a bastion of sense and logic. But I am called upon to root out muddles thinking and superstition wherever I see it and, my friends, I see it on xkcd. If it were a simple mistake, I could forgive it, but Randall has persisted in his misinformation, even revelled in it.

He leaves me no choice.

I give to you, the truth:

Click to enbiggen.

… or er something.

Suddenly I feel a lot better about myself again. I mean, I might have underestimated the diversity of an important order of mammals, but at least I can tell the difference between a cat and an orange. This guy is either stupid enough that he can’t or stupid enough to think scientists can’t. I’m not sure which would be worse.

In any case, PZ says everything that needs to be said.

Regular readers will know what I think of magical thinking in general, but sometimes, even I have to admit they get something right. Check out this section from the Magician’s Dictionary:

Another word for persistence and maintained attention. Will is one of the two natural human powers for altering reality … When faced with an insoluble problem or great odds against us, it is the Will alone that leads us through to solution and victory.

They must have magic powers; it’s like they know me! ;)

I found this somewhere on the internet recently, but I forget where. Thankfully the little guy looks more embarrassed than hurt at the end of it.

Hat tip to Mike the Mad Biologist for the spot. (Do follow that link, to read about Mike’s ideas for an FMT.)

Update: Yes, I know it’s actually correct. I’ve been told a few hundred times (well, five) in the comments already. You don’t need to add your voice to the echo chamber if that’s all you have to say.

While we’re on the subject of those zany Bleimans, this is their video of the week, and my video of the … week _and a half_.

Wow - Mr. T is really in the news right now. First there were those WoW adverts, and now (or actually then, since this isn’t that new a post) there’s this. I know it’s daft, but you can’t deny it’s funny. And I bet you wish you’d been there; I know I do.

Basically, I think the commenter (Don) who said

What can you possibly do in your life that will top asking Mr. T is he still “pitties the fool?”

hit the nail right on the head. In way it must be tragic to be so acutely aware that your life has already peaked.

<p>While we’re on the subject of denialists and cranks, this piece of <a href=”http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2005/11/missing_link_cd.html”>paleo-crank-ology</a> made me laugh. Seriously, how can these people still bear to stand up in public and say the same things they’ve always said? Don’t they realise they look like fools?</p>

While writing that last post, I found that the corporate firewall here at my employer prevented me uploading the image if I called it “monser.jpg”, but not if I called it “bath.jpg”.

I’m honestly starting to think that all it does to determine whether we’re allowed to view a site is generate a hash of the url and then range-check the result. Anything more than 10,000 and it’s against our “access control policy.”

And yes, they say “access control” in the same way an exterminator might say “pest control.”