The Origin of Stupidity

This video has been getting some play on the old FB, and more recently on MetaFilter, so I thought I'd toss together some of my thoughts about Kirk, Ray, Darwin, and the manufactured controversy of ID/creationism vs evolution.

Backstory: Kirk Cameron and Ray Comfort (a goofy creationist duo) are releasing a new version of the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin. Their version is prefaced with a 50-page introduction by Comfort, who is most famous for claiming that bananas are verifiable proof of God's existence. They've released a video to promote their anniversary edition.

The video contains a slew of the usual creationist/fundamentalist canards: Christianity in under attack, Christians everywhere are persecuted, college will make you an atheist, our kids are being brainwashed by atheistic evolution, etc. Criss responds to these with scathing wit, so I won't do so here. Instead, let's ask the question: Why should creationists feel the need to release an anniversary edition of the Origin?

After hearing Kirk give a summary of the book's new introduction, I can tell you why: they are out of ideas. Every single 'attack' made by these loons against evolutionary biology has failed utterly, so they are reduced to spending their money on producing free books with a truth-free introduction. (Said introduction is apparently being rewritten by Comfort, and is not currently available for dissection. Expect more on this later.) Here's a sampling of what will be touched on in the introduction, according to Kirk:

- a history of evolution
- a timeline of Darwin's life
- Hitler's connection to evolution
- Darwin's racism
- Darwin's misogyny
- Darwin's thoughts on God

I'm not sure how they can screw up evolutionary history or Darwin's biography, but I'm sure they'll find a way. The Hitler zombie rears its ugly head here, as was to be expected. And then we have three ad hominem attacks on the man himself. As if Darwin's personal poilitics matter when considering the validity of evolutionary theory. The introduction goes on to cover the 'hoaxes' of evolution:

- nothing created everything
- the structure of DNA
- lack of transitional forms

I'll go ahead and repeat Criss here. Evolution is not abiogenesis. The structure of DNA is a hoax... how? Everything is a transitional form. Even you, Kirk.

Criss suggests taking as many copies as you can, tearing out the toilet paper, and giving them away to friends and family. I'm going to keep one with the introduction for my own amusement. Hopefully we can take this misguided effort and turn it into something useful.

Usher Redux

This is the second time I've played Roderick Usher on stage. The first time was in college. We had a studio theater program that allowed students to write, produce, and direct their own work a few times a year. A friend of mine had chosen to lump a bunch of Poe stories together under the banner of "The Masquerade", and I was given the part of Roderick Usher. The production was ambitious to a fault. We had costumes, complicated lighting, and the Red Death who spoke entirely in sound cues. It was fun to do. We had a waltz. I still have my crushed green vest.

Now it's September of 2009, and again the House of Usher is falling. It started falling, at least for myself and the rest of the Fool Collective, about six months ago. Looking at my calendar now, I can see our first rehearsal was on April 2nd. You might think this is a lot of work to do be doing for a 17-minute show, and you might be right. But it's part of the Fool Collective process to play a long game with whatever project we're tackling. For myself, and for those interested, a brief outline of said process:

• Get together a group of phyiscal performers. For Fear this was a combination of people we'd worked with before, and people we had been in workshops/classes with. We ended up with five boys and two not-boys.
• Start with meetings/chats. We met throughout April just to talk about fear, death, depression, and whatever else seemed appropriate. Much of this is archived on the show blog.
• Generate ideas via text and physical exercise. Most of our early rehearsals fell into two camps: we would be given a writing/thinking assignment and told to either blog it or bring to rehearsal, or we would be given a physical assignment to present to the group. These things influenced each other. Chairs were tossed in the air and landed on their legs. A light bulb was swung by the cord, faster and faster as a body descended into a box.
• Collect the most interesting images and swirl them around in your head until you have an order. We were helped(?) on this step by the addition of the Poe story. Originally we were just doing a show about the fear of death. Having a specific text in which to base our physical abstractions gave us a clear direction to pursue.
• Create sounds and lighting which support the images you've created. The Fool Collective likes to use practical lights, personal lights, multiple speakers systems, and atmospheric soundscapes. We try to transform a theater into a different place entirely. There are no seats in the House of Usher.
• Rehearse it over and over until each moment has a purpose, and there is an overall clarity of focus. This does not mean, necessarily, that things will be clear to the audience. You find that out during previews. Or after.

Things will change during the performance run, of course. The different audiences will cause moments to be shorter or longer, and our cycling cast of narrators will lend their varied specialties to each run. Hopefully we have made something which will at least elicit reactions from the audience. At most, it will communicate something about the cyclical nature of life and death and perhaps reveal some novel elements of The Fall of House of Usher. I'll let you know what I think after performing it upwards of sixty times.