Spend some time beneath the tracks of the Market-Frankford El with David Kessler’s Shadow World. It’s a video blog featuring the people who live and work in the city’s Kensington section. These are folks you don’t see in the “Philly’s awesome” flick that runs before Imax movies at the Franklin Institute. Their neighborhood struggles like an underfed vine in the grimy shadow of the El. The videos don’t editorialize; there is no Michael Moore-ish self-promotion. Just simple, revealing moments among the city’s forgotten, that should be mandatory viewing for the mayoral candidates.

LAW SCHOOL MUSICAL

  Thanks to Skepchick.org for the heads up. This is without exaggeration the funniest things I’ve seen in months. If you’re easily offended, fuck off. Also, don’t watch the movie.

As part of its Expelled Exposed project, the National Center for Science Education tackles that tired creationist argument, irreducible complexity. If you’re not familiar with this line of reasoning, it basically goes like this:

“I can’t imagine how [COMPLEX ANATOMICAL STRUCTURE] could possibly have evolved from simpler structures, without any deliberate guidance. Therefore, relying only on my own ignorance as evidence, I conclude that [COMPLEX ANATOMICAL STRUCTURE] must have been conjured up fully formed by a benevolent sky-grandpa.”

Luckily for the poor, misguided creationist, there are plenty of scientists who can imagine, and describe in great detail, the intermediate stages and slow development that led to the current version of [COMPLEX ANATOMICAL STRUCTURE]. In the video below, they demystify the development of perhaps the favorite target of the irreducible complexity argument, the eye. Enjoy.