Boat-on-Wheels, Googlewhacks, and Creationism
by Spock

I’m sure some of you readers are looking at the title of this post and thinking “Huh? What’s with this? What do these things have to do with one another? It only makes sense that this comes from a guy called Spock”. But there’s a point here, and a story, so bear with me.

Something bothered me while reading Gil’s post about the boat-on-wheels. It took me a few minutes to understand what’s wrong, but finally it hit me:

A boat-on-wheels isn’t that bad of an idea..Neither is a car with buoys. Probably the reason we’re not seeing these has to do with the fact that most people have no use for it, or have better alternatives such as airtravel when they do. Had we actually been given a challenge to create an amphibious vehicle (for military assault purposes, for example) those would actually be quite decent ideas, and I’m sure I’ve seen some of these things in the past.

Of course I agree that there is a difference between fake, lame-ass, unimaginative and mainly useless convergence and between true fusion. But I wonder if the boat-on-wheels is strong enough a symbol to describe the former. The fact that something is a simple, not very innovative synthesis of existing concepts from the fusing environments doesn’t actually mean it’s bad or useless. A boat on wheels, for me, is such a simple, yet viable creation.

So I was trying to think of a stronger symbol. Something that creates an image of unimaginable futility, of combining two old-world concepts into something new and utterly useless.

As I was pondering these fateful issues, I suddenly remembered one of the many experiences I had in Thailand, just two months ago. I went off on a trip to China and Thailand for 3 months a bit after leaving my high paying high-tech job, to have fun, chill, and collect my thoughts. It was great, thanks for asking. Just got back. This, of course, has nothing to do with the experience itself which took place in a book I was reading at the time (sorry my readers, no lady boy experiences in this post). Thailand was just where I was, and I’ll stop showing off about my trip just about…. now (amazing unbelieveable photos can be found at Fotki).

The book was named “Dave Gorman’s Googlewhack Adventure”. I picked it up randomly at a book store in Bangkok (yes, I’m a nerd). I wouldn’t really recommend it, it’s a bit tedious - but it is funny at times and covers a few very peculiar individuals and websites.

In the book, Dave Gorman, a British comedian, decides to write a Novel to prove he is no longer the foolish young man he knows himself to be. While struggling with it, he gets an email that introduces him to a web-based game of eccentrics, a.k.a Googlewhacking. A Googlewhack is a 2-word term (they have to be real worlds, appearing in www.dictionary.com), that when searched in Google, produces exactly one result. No more, no less. There are some additional rules, but that’s the gist of it.

The discovery of the game leads Dave on a world-wide Googlewhacking tour, visiting the owners of the whacky (so to speak) websites he finds. Needless to say, the book has some colorful web-based, land-based, water-based and psyche-ward-should-be-based creatures.

I got reminded of this because one of the people Dave visits is Prof. Duane T. Gish of the ICR - Institute for Creation Research. Creationism, for those of you who missed it, is the belief that the world, humans, life, etc were created by a supreme being rather than other foolhardy explanations such as evolution or the big bang. That’s how it is described to make it sound remotely scientific. In practice, creationism is mainly a christian thing, and most creationists are christian believers who denounce scientific theories that are perceived as opposed to the scriptures, occasionally using quite unscientific approaches disguised as popular science. You may detect a hint of disrespect here, and you would be correct. Let me assure you that my disrespect is not for the religious beliefs themselves, which usually cannot be argued against scientifically anyway. It is saved for those who make cynical use of half-truths or outright lies to fanatically promote their beliefs on expense of an unsuspecting and largely uneducated public (and yes, this may include some fanatic scientists, not just creationists).

Back to the story, Prof. Gish is a “scientist” in service of the ICR and the meeting between him and Dave, not surprisingly, is one of the less successful Dave has in the book. In a book that Dave randomly picks up from Prof. Gish’s desk, Gish supports denounciation of evolutionary theory by addressing the missing link question. The fact that while evolutionary theory suggests a transition between life forms as a result of a very long, slow process of successive minor changes, there is no evidence of “transitional” life forms between some very different creatures we know existed, such as fish and ner.com/main/wp-amphibians. And to prove that such transitional forms are illogical, the book contains an image of an animal half cow, half whale… with the caption “Transitional forms would have been extremely vulnerable in either of the worlds they theoretically were bridging”.

Connecting the dots already? Water… land…. fish… boats… amphibians…. cars… the whalecow… boat-on-wheels… foolish creationists… foolish convergists? Ok I may be a bit whack myself here, but hey it’s 1:13 AM and I’m reaching. Obviously Prof. Gish was right. The whalecow is a ridiculous animal, if not for looks, for functionality and survival capability. But even though this is correct, it obviously does nothing to refute transitional life forms - none of us really imagine the transitional life form as being anything like a cow mixed with a whale Escher style.

The whalecow, the fusion of the two worlds, is as futile and useless as it is pointless as part of a practice I find embarassing. It is a perfect symbol for me to remember what “scientific” creationism is all about.

What can I say, the boat-on-wheels image just doesn’t stir the same emotions in me as the whalecow (no sexual tendency comments please). I’m pretty sure the whalecow is way too whacky to use in this blog, but I’m opening the floor for suggestions - please, people, find me a convergence-futility worthy of the bottom of our rubber stamp.

Spock
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