In a desperate effort to scrape some of the egg off their faces, the creationist wingnuts are spinning the story to make it look as though PZ and I were ‘gatecrashers’. The ill-named ‘Discovery’ Institute heads its web article, “Richard Dawkins, World Famous Darwinist, Stoops to Gate-crashing Expelled.” The article says that I “apparently acknowledged that I was not invited”. Mark Mathis himself said something similar about PZ in the Q & A after the showing, when I publicly challenged him to explain why he had expelled him, claiming that this performance was by invitation only, and PZ had not been invited. But, as many commentators have pointed out, this was most certainly not an invitation-only affair. The way to get into this showing of the film was simply to go on the Internet and apply. This was exactly what PZ did. He went on the Web and put his name down for a place at the showing, just like everybody else, including several others from the American Atheists annual conference in Minneapolis. Not a man to hide behind a false name or false beard, PZ openly sported his own. Like many other people, including his daughter and Kristine Harley (see her Amused Muse website), PZ took advantage of the generous offer to let him book guests in as well, and then kindly invited me to be one of them. There was no request to give the names of guests, and no machinery to do so, which was why my name did not appear on the list.
Many people have wondered why, if PZ was expelled, I managed to get in. This has been adduced as further evidence of Mathis’ bungling incompetence, but I think that is unfair. It was easy for Mathis to spot PZ Myers’ name on the list of those registering in advance. Like all guests, my name was not on any list, and therefore Mathis didn’t spot me. So I think he can be absolved of stupidity in not spotting me. But convicted of extreme stupidity in expelling PZ when he spotted him. What was he afraid of? What did he think PZ would do, open fire with a Kalashnikov? Now that I think about it, that would have been all-of-a-piece with the overblown paranoia displayed throughout the film itself.
(via The Daily Grail).
“Sometimes I think my head is so big because it is so full of dreams,” says John Merrick in the play The Elephant Man. He might have been speaking for the Boskops, an almost forgotten group of early humans who lived in southern Africa between 30,000 and 10,000 years ago. Judging from fossil remains, scientists say the Boskops were similar to modern humans but had small, childlike faces and huge melon heads that held brains about 30 percent larger than our own. 
Nerve “O” has endings in the nasal cavity, but the fibers go directly to the sexual regions of the brain. Indeed, these endings entirely bypass the olfactory cortex! Hence we know the role of Nerve “O” is not to consciously smell, but to identify sexual cues from our potential partners. 
