Via the Panda’s Thumb, I found this video of Carl Sagan’s Cosmos, "edited for rednecks".  It’s lifted straight from last night’s episode of Family Guy, which I’m afraid I missed.

Occasionally people ask me how I can be a Christian and still believe in things like evolution, the big bang, and so on.  Putting aside for a moment the fact that the majority of Christians in the world actually have no problem reconciling their faith with these concepts (the official position of most mainstream Christian denominations in America, such as the Methodists, the Catholics, and Episcopalians, and so on) is that the theory of evolution poses no threat at all to the faith), I usually try to explain that these scientific theories actually help me understand my own faith.  The idea of sin, for example, is easier for me to understand as a set of selfish and self-driven behaviors that are left over as baggage from our evolutionary heritage and that we hang on to because they’re easier than following the Christian ethic (of course, the Christian ethic is twisted far too often to justify these behaviors — people like to hate, and they’ll use any excuse, including religion, to do so).

In writing news, I’m falling behind in NaNoEdMo with Solitude of the Tentacled Space Monster.  Hopefully I can catch up tonight.