Last weekend, for some reason, I read an unusually large number of blog posts that struck me as brilliant. Here’s a wrap-up:

Comedy is Cynical by Robin Hanson: Plays off a brilliant-in-its-own-right Onion article about the naked status-seeking of American consumerism. Hanson comments:

Comedy is full of such cynical observations like the above, far more than most other media. (Why?) Since we immediately recognize such descriptions, we must think this sort of behavior is pretty common. But we only rarely admit that we are at the moment motivated by such concerns. So just how much of human behavior do most people think is driven by status seeking? 10%? 90%? And just how different do we each think we are relative to the average?

We are all Hansonians at the comedy club.

Parapsychology: the control group for science by Alan Crossman. Short version: if you want to know whether a field of scientific study is producing legitimate results, see if it’s doing any better than parapsychology.

Guardian: 50 books that defined the noughties by Jerry Coyne:

Dawkins also took some flak in The Greatest Show on Earth for bashing creationism. (I remember a particularly grumpy review in The Financial Times.) That criticism was unfair. I’ve read TGSOE twice now, and the creation-bashing is limited, measured, and entirely appropriate. For god’s sake, how can you avoid bringing up creationism when proffering a book that gives evidence for something scientists and the educated public have accepted for decades? What other reason is there to produce such a book? As Richard said, “This book is necessary.” (Whether it — and my own effort — will be effective is another issue.)

Anytime you meet someone who thinks creationism-bashing is a bad thing, you’ve met someone who’s civility has strangled their sanity. Good for Coyne catching this.