I'm afraid I have never really understood rap culture.  I don't understand the connotations of 'ice', be it associated with dessert (vanilla ice) or what I assume is an American soft drink (Ice T).  To me, this is as if some London gangsters had decided that the way to make themselves seem hard was to associate their names with cream.  So, "Cream Tea" would some some terribly frightening thug, but nothing compared to the horror of "Coffee with Cream and Scones".  What really puzzles me though, I have to admit, is the naming of Snoop Dogg.  He started off as Cordozar Calvin Broadus, but at some point in his musical career decided that the stage name of "Snoop Doggy Dogg" would be useful.  I can only express my amazement at this in terms of British culture.  "Snoop" relates to "Snoopy", a cartoon animal.  This is equivalent to the young leader of a heavy metal rock back deciding that he could seriously further his career by changing his name to "Fluffy Fluffykins Bunny", and then, many years later, could emphasise his maturity by resorting to "Fluff Bunny".
It doesn't help that there is a rapper called "Nelly".  I mean, honestly.

Seriously - is there something I am missing here, or is all rap culture a total parody?

Yet again there is an attempt to convince doubters that evolution is true.
http://richarddawkins.net/articles/5212
I don't think it's going to work very well.  Why?  Because so many people don't reject evolution because of a lack of facts.  They reject it for emotional and political reasons.  They believe that if people accept that we are the products of mindless evolution then the standards by which people should live their lives will be rejected.  The creationists are at least coherent in their views about theism and biology: If there is evolution, then there was no original sin, and the death and resurrection of Jesus was meaningless.  If there is evolution, then morality isn't given by gods, by is just a matter of opinion.  This is a major threat to a way of life.  So, creationism becomes axiomatic - it has to be the foundation of their way of life.  No amount of scientific evidence will change most of their minds because they believe that the scientific approach in this matter is immoral.

The only hope is education, which is why I look forward to Richard's next book (for children), and suspect it will be far more effective in confronting absurd religious beliefs.

I find it increasingly difficult to debate religion the more materialist I become.  Right now I may be even more materialist than the hard-core materialist philosopher Daniel Dennett.

Discussing the contradictions in the concept of God, or ideas of what is natural, or absolutely moral seem so far in the distance from my current philosophical position that it seems a huge effort to get anywhere near there.

Right now, I see people's minds as neural networks that I'd like to understand more.  Why should I be concerned about discussing the nature of absolute morality when what I really want to understand is how the neural networks come up with such a deluded idea.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'm not that interested in dealing with the results of the bugs in the human brain - I'm interesting in debugging!