'The New York Times' Doesn't Know What the Flying Spaghetti Monster Is

In Julia Moskin's piece on molecular gastronomy in the New York Times today, I couldn't help but notice a familiar noodly-appendaged creature. To my dismay, the caption for the photograph of the Flying Spaghetti Monster just read "a noodle monster."

Is it a conspiracy by the Times to deny recognition of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster and its Pastafarian followers? Or are writers and editors at the Times woefully unaware of Internet memes that date back to 2005? Did they not check their own archives?

What's the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, you ask? Wikipedia has the answer:

The Flying Spaghetti Monster (FSM) is a character created as a satirical protest to the decision by the Kansas State Board of Education to require the teaching of intelligent design as an alternative to biological evolution... Since the intelligent design movement used ambiguous references to an unspecified 'Intelligent Designer' to avoid court rulings prohibiting the teaching of creationism as a science, Henderson believed that literally anything imaginable could be used as this Designer.

As they say, knowing is half the battle.

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