It’s amazing to me that there are otherwise intelligent people who believe the scientific “theory” (really, hypothesis) that Earth was created by an intelligent, benevolent designer.

Sir David Attenborough has revealed that he receives hate mail from viewers for failing to credit God in his documentaries. In an interview with this week’s Radio Times about his latest documentary, on Charles Darwin and natural selection, the broadcaster said: “They tell me to burn in hell and good riddance.”

Telling the magazine that he was asked why he did not give “credit” to God, Attenborough added: “They always mean beautiful things like hummingbirds. I always reply by saying that I think of a little child in east Africa with a worm burrowing through his eyeball. The worm cannot live in any other way, except by burrowing through eyeballs. I find that hard to reconcile with the notion of a divine and benevolent creator.”

Neil deGrasse Tyson has the ultimate takedown of the intelligent design argument here. (Warning, there’s a disturbing slide about 3:10 into the video).

Watching Harry Reid pick a fight he couldn’t win with Roland Burris only to sheepishly back down is hilarious and sad to watch. What hasn’t been as funny is watching him pull the same “half-heartedly stand on principle only to be revealed as weak and ineffective” crap over and over again. Harry Reid has been allergic to confrontation (at least when it comes to Republicans) since assuming the caucus leadership in 2005. Even after the Dems gained control of Congress two years ago, Reid’s signature accomplishment has been sitting idly by while Senate Republicans mounted the most filibusters in U.S. history (all without ever having to stay up past their bedtimes).

Call me a cynic, but with Obama heading into office with a sweeping mandate (and the approval ratings to back it up), I can’t help but assume that we have more of Reid’s late night, “sorry guys, we tried” press conferences in front of the capitol building to look forward to :

“It looks like we’re going to have that second Great Depression after all, because a global warming-denier from a tiny state put an anonymous hold on the stimulus bill until we put in provisions thanking Jesus for writing the Constitution and granting zygotes the right to vote and own property.”

I’m not so sure I like the idea of a corporate healthcare apologist and CNN hack being the Surgeon General. Could they not find one doctor who has the guts to tell the truth about the evils of our profit-over-patients healthcare system?

UPDATE : More from Krugman :

I don’t have a problem with Gupta’s qualifications. But I do remember his mugging of Michael Moore over Sicko. You don’t have to like Moore or his film; but Gupta specifically claimed that Moore “fudged his facts”, when the truth was that on every one of the allegedly fudged facts, Moore was actually right and CNN was wrong.

What bothered me about the incident was that it was what Digby would call Village behavior: Moore is an outsider, he’s uncouth, so he gets smeared as unreliable even though he actually got it right. It’s sort of a minor-league version of the way people who pointed out in real time that Bush was misleading us into war are to this day considered less “serious” than people who waited until it was fashionable to reach that conclusion.

The world’s oldest person died the other day. When a 115-year-old dies, it’s not exactly shocking, but the end of her obituary is pretty sad :

For her 100th birthday, de Jesus had said she wanted to learn to read and write.

“A teacher came for a few months, but she never made it,” Madalena said of her mother’s efforts.

In completely unrelated news, I’m glad I’m not the only person who noticed this :

Name that film:

A white man is born fatherless in the south with birth defects that lead many to think he may never walk nor live a normal life. His saintly mother believes in his potential anyway. At a young age, the man learns to walk and sheds his exoskeleton of locomotive aids. Around this time, he also meets the love of his life, a vivacious girl who grows into a bold woman who parts ways with the man to have her own wild adventures. Meanwhile, the man reaches adulthood, and puts in a wartime stint in the U.S. military. During this stint, the man proves at first an indifferent asset, but during his one firefight, he turns out to be very valuable, saving the day singlehandedly, while also witnessing the death of one of his best friends. The man also spends much time on a small ocean vessel, serving alongside a rowdy, grizzled, hard-drinking man of the sea. This salty sailor serves as one of our man’s two best male friends; the other is a black man who first teaches our man the lessons of friendship before departing forever.

After two more paragraphs of the same, the post ends : “Acceptable Answers: Forrest Gump; The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.” Ouch.