Howse sucks at theology, poltics AND history! Yay!

Regrettable survivor of birth Brannon Howse has seen fit to assault my email box with crap. I get lots of silly stuff, but it is the stuff that comes from the pen of Brannon Howse that really amuses.

And he HATES America. Really, really HATES America deeply. And he has no idea that he does.

When I teach writing, I encourage students to not make complete asses out of themselves. Brannon should take my class. First of all he makes this ludicrous assertion:

Listen to the "Best of " Radio Programs of Worldview Matters with Brannon Howse

Unless he is talking about that 5-minute stretch of dead air a couple of weeks ago, I don't believe that there are "bests"of that show. He goes from valley to valley to the Marianias Trench.

I know that when I level a charge against someone hating America, you are apt to say, Hey, Bing, he just has an untraditional relationship with America. But in this case, he's a symptom of a larger pathology (that means "sickness," Brannon), a mass movement of far-right wingtards who have no idea how much they truly hate everything America stands for.

The email was called: 25 Similarities Between America and Nazi Germany

See? Great patriot. And he wonders why he can't get elected to...anything but ass-clown.

Anyway, Howse makes the assertion that paganism, socialism and pragmatism are threatening to turn the good ol' U.S. of A. into Satan's playground. It's interesting, but that is pretty much the same thing that the Puritans thought when they started hanging witches: that the devil was trying to establish a parallel kingdom to Christ's in New England. Oh, well. The more things change, the less Brannon is able to deal.

In the agonizingly titled section, Similar Is as Similar Does, our own greasy Forrest Gump asserts:

Please understand that I’m not sensationalizing when making these observations.

Brannon, you live in a world so singularly isolated from Earth, I can't even imagine what the word "sensationalizing" means on your planet.

First Chronicles 12:32 says men of the tribe of Issachar were called wise because they “understood the times and knew what God would have them to do.” To help you make your own assessment of the situation, I’ve distinguished 25 benchmark issues that clearly define the intensity of the tempest that is nearly upon us. And yes, there are obvious comparisons with the growth of Nazism in Germany.

Here comes the ad naziam fallacy, which is basically a thought-stopping invocation of Hitler.

I will point them out unabashedly because...

You are clearly impossible to shame?

...it’s only reasonable to say so if something that looks similar to an earlier, dangerous historical parallel actually is similar. After all, storm warnings, by nature, foretell bad news.

Clearly the weather-people in Memphis are better than the ones in St. Louis. I was promised ice-encased bodies on the highway this week and all I get is one snowed in car.

As you read through my list, I invite you to understand the times and prepare to respond with a Biblical worldview.

Throw a bible at it?

1. Hitler eliminated Christian holidays in the schools first by calling Christmas “Yuletide.” Most American public schools now call Christmas vacation a “winter break.”

Oh my lack of God. Hitler was deliberately invoking a nationalist past. This is part of the Nazis' nationalist ideology. "Winter break" is simply accurate. Besides that, it is not exclusive like "Christmas Break" is.

2. Hitler outlawed school prayer in Germany. In 1962, The U.S. Supreme Court did the same for us.

Not completely true. Prayer is allowed as speech, but not the type that gets the official endorsements of school districts or the government. Hitler sought allegiance to himself. The modern ban allows people to think for themselves and prohibits people in authority from abusing unequal power relationships to indoctrinate kids.

3. Hitler took Easter out of schools and instead honored that time of year as the beginning of spring. It has likewise become common for schools in America to refer to time off at Easter as “spring break.”

Yep, this is what Hitler had in mind for Easter:

Jesus, Brannon, get a grip.

4. Hitler controlled the church using intimidation and threats. A half-century ago, U.S. Senator and Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Baines Johnson, promoted a bill that included an amendment to use the Internal Revenue Service to remove the non-profit status of a church that speaks against the election of any specific political candidate.

A complete ban on the mechanisms of democracy is not the same thing as keeping churches from abusing their authority, which god knows they would. Look at you, straining at the bit. God I hope the IRS reads your fucking website.

5. Hitler enticed thousands of pastors to promote paganism in their congregations. Neopaganism is one of the fastest growing religions in America, doubling every 18 months according to a June 2008 article in The Denver Post. Many American church-goers practice paganism such as “Christian” yoga, contemplative prayer, and walking a labyrinth. As evidence that church doors continue to open further to aberrant beliefs, a 2008 survey found that 57% of evangelicals do not believe Jesus Christ is the only way to God.

Walking a labyrinth?

6. Hitler prevented dissenters from using radio to challenge his worldview. Many powerful liberals in America have made clear their intent to reintroduce the “Fairness Doctrine” that would require conservative and religious radio stations to offer equal time to anti-Christian, anti-conservative worldviews.

Well, since the radio frequencies aren't yours...they should be used to further the public interest, not a specific cause's interest. They are a public resource.

7. Pastors who spoke against Hitler’s worldview and his murderous regime found themselves on trial and frequently imprisoned for “Abuse of Pulpit.” In America, hate-crime legislation has the potential to criminalize Christians and pastors who speak out against the homosexual agenda.

There is no homosexual agenda. I mean, other than to make your son gay in the Barnes & Noble. And the hate-crime legislation that you fear specifically limits the scope of public interest in whatever you weirdos say to each other to deliberately inciting minors to commit acts of violence against homosexuals. This is already illegal, but it tears down any pretense of a religious shield against inciting violence.

Now, Brannon-cakes only teases me with 7 of his 25. And by teases, I mean "rapes my mind." People must truly be mind-damaged to put up with your shit constantly.

HJ

Run! It's--YOGA GUY!

I was at one of my favorite breakfast haunts this morning, but things are no longer the same. Mindy, oh! Mindy! She left for a much better job at a museum, and her omnicompetence is sorely missed! (I feel like Jack Nicholson in As Good As It Gets.) For instance, my fiesta wrap arrives and it is slathered in salsa. Salsa? For breakfast? Not this little warrior-scholar. Every time I have gone there for the last 2 years, I have had the same thing and Mindy, oh! Mindy! didn't even have to ask. But as in a lot of food service jobs, there is a lot of turnover (I suspect, however, that the commerce with museums is rather higher at this place than elsewhere). This is the first time that I ate there since she left, and they fucked up my order.

Because the only thing I like less than salsa in the morning is confrontation, I choked down the assigned prison food. Eventually, a big guy with a graying red beard sat down at the next table. And started laughing at his laptop and apologizing loudly, when all I really wanted was to read about the unbridled slaughter of slaveholding families for a while. Certainly everyone has been in the same situation. He went on and on to the otherwise busy wait-creature about how magnificent his breakfast was even though (surprise!) they prepared the wrong thing.

Apparently, he noticed what I was reading (Nat Turner's Confessions) because when I put the book down for a minute to digest what I had just read (0 calories!), he said: "Do you think that the Wal-Mart workers are going to rise up and kill their masters?"

"Heheh," I replied, when I meant "Oh, sweet fucking tofu Christ." "Oh, I'm reading for a class I'm teaching. It's about [Racoon Uteruses]."

"Sounds really interesting."

"Yeah, it's fun."

"It came out of a course about extraordinary claims I taught last year. We'll be talking about conspiracies next week..."

"You know the eye above the pyramid on the dollar bill? Do you know what that is?"

"The all-seeing eye of God, which a lot of people mistake for the Illuminati?"

"Well, it's Illuminati, but it's your third eye. Did you know that if you meditate, within a few hours, you can discern your third eye." He pointed to the spot on his forehead where I wished he would shoot me. "Its color depends on what your personality is like. And it's not crazy, like, anyone can see it after a few hours. Yeah, I spent years taking care of my mind and just started taking care of my body doing this yoga."

"Heheh."

It was one of those conversations that does not end but lingers awkwardly and finally dies of emaciation. Mindy, oh! Mindy! would have swatted him down like the large intellectual horsefly he was.

I'm going to have to start eating breakfast at the museum.

HJ

Tales! Of! Interest!

I floated to the top of the "most blogged about" for the topic "Rod Blagojevich" on YahooNews. Yay! It brought me about 12 hits! Yay!


Yay!

HJ

It's the Rod Blagojevich Suicide Watch!

Yep, I'm afraid Rod Blagojevich is on his way out folks. Let's face it, for the last several days, the self-possessed former Illinois governor who has nothing to live for has utterly squandered his sanity. While the Illinois Senate carried out its Constitutional obligation to protect the citizens of that state, Blagojevich leaped from talk show to talk show like Tom Cruise leaps from couch to couch in his rumpus room. If Britney Spears is any indicator as to what this delusional moonbat is going to do next, this dizzying mania can only be followed by a crushing depression. This is about a month and a half overdue, by my reckoning.

So, Rod, when you are staring into that dark abyss and thinking that everything is completely hopeless, that there is no way that you will avoid spending the rest of your life in prison, remember this: You're absolutely right. You should probably leap into that murky void and embrace the sweet relieving darkness. Indeed it is the only decent thing to do to destroy yourself Rod: How else can you frustrate and abuse your former constituency but deny them the immense satisfaction of seeing you receive justice? In short, your death is the last reward to yourself and the only perk left to you, you selfish disgrace. This thing is golden, and you just don't give it away.

Was that too dark? I never know.

HJ

Ham, Galling and UpChurch

(A. Peter Galling, John UpChurch and Ken Ham, in no particular order)

A. Galling Peter and John UpChurch from Answers in Genesis have decided to finally explain why among God's glorious miracles there is not a single healing of an amputee in their article: "Feedback: Why doesn't God heal amputees?" The question comes from SS in Canada, who, by his/her typing, I can tell is a double-arm amputee. Heheh.

Thank you for your question. We first want to note that none of our answers should be construed as us not empathizing with or downplaying the loss of those who have lost a limb.

"It's GOD who's not empathizing." Oh, Jesus. I thought I was politically correct. But first I wanted to note an important point [silently edited for readability] that SS made in their question:

I'm really curious to see how do you TWIST this one too, 'cause lots of your answers are twisted and NEVER give answers to the question of the article.

Never! Banish the thought! Oh wait:

Your question seems to merely be a very specific re-articulation of the general argument against God due to the existence of evil. Formally restating your argument:

1. An omnipotent God would heal amputees.
2. Amputees are not healed.
3. Therefore, an omnipotent God does not exist.

You could just as easily replace the major premise with anything else unpleasant: why do people lose limbs in the first place? The ultimate question you’re really asking is Why Does God’s Creation Include Death & Suffering?

NO, YOU SPINELESS, DISHONEST MOTHERFUCKERS! THAT'S NOT, ABSOLUTELY NOT WHAT THE FUCK THEY ASKED, YOU GODDAMNED... KOALA... HERPES. There. Congrats. I finally ran out of insults for you.

Oh wait, found some more. Let's continue.

What part of "why the fuck doesn't God heal amputees" didn't you understand, you morons? Even assuming that there WAS a Fall, and that the Fall, by unknown mechanisms, is the cause of all suffering, the question remains, why among the tricks in God's "bag of holding" is there never a "heal amputees" spell? People with lesser ailments are constantly crediting Jesus/God with healing them. Why never amputees?

If you already believe that flaws in the world disprove God, then naming any flaw that God doesn’t fix—or any good deed God doesn’t do—will just reaffirm your perspective.

No! Again, you vomitous pigeons, even if there is a god, like I just said, the question still remains. Also, you have goolies the size Maine Coon kittens to accuse someone of wearing blinders.

But once you understand that the problems in this world are a result of sin—tracing back to the Fall in Genesis 3—we can reconcile the existence of a perfectly good and loving God with the existence of death and suffering.

Well, you can. Your standards are shit. And again, I grant you that for the sake of illustrating how ridiculous your assertions are.

The Curse is actually the punishment for sin necessitated by God’s role as perfect Judge. Knowing that, it is nonsensical to blame God for the consequences of our own sin.

Did they just say, "Every amputee deserves it"? You suck. You can rationalize anything. Way to go!

Answering your question completely requires a few tangential comments:

(Translation: "Here are answers to other questions you didn't ask.")

Miracles aren’t a grab-bag of goodies for us to enjoy; rather, God uses miracles in particular points of time for very specific purposes. God doesn't need to prove Himself to us (we’re on trial, not Him), nor does He “need” to bless us. When He does bless us, it is entirely out of mercy.

(Translation: "God has no mercy for amputees.")

God has done greater works than restoring limbs. If He created the entire universe out of nothing, spoke all plants and animals into existence, sculpted and breathed life into the first two humans, and raised His Son from death, it is clear that He has the power to heal amputees if and when it is His will.

(Translation: "We believe lots of weirder shit. Why even ask the amputee question? Duh!")

If there is no God, why should we care if people have lost limbs? To borrow from C. S. Lewis, in a truly godless world, amputations wouldn’t be “good” or “bad”; they would simply be, a fact of life no different from a tree shedding leaves. Attacking theism on a moral basis undermines the argument.

(Translation: "We assert that morality comes from religion despite global evidence that there can be morals without Yahweh. We simply give our puny God credit for something he stole credit for.")

You qualify your own question with “[e]xcept the ear that Jesus put it back.” You may as well ask, “If God is all-powerful, why did He never part the Red Sea—except for that one time in Exodus?" And not only is your argument qualified; it is also, essentially, an argument from silence. Even if the Bible doesn’t record the healing of an amputee, that doesn’t mean God never has.

(Translation: "Give us an inch, and we'll take a mile. That'll show you for conceding a single goofy, improbable point. Also, even though we're going to suggest that God does heal amputees, but that does not oblige us to provide evidence. I mean, what are we, scientists?")

So far we have conceded your point that, other than the scene in Luke 22, “never, ever in all Bible was a case of an amputation healed.” But is this so? First, it may be that there was no biblical Hebrew, Greek, or Aramaic word for “amputee”; it is possible that some passages referring to individuals as “lame” or “crippled” (Matthew 15:30, 21:14; John 5:2–9a) are actually referring to those who had lost limbs.

(Translation: "We've stopped caring and now are clearly just making shit up. Fuck you.")

Besides, how is healing a totally useless limb any less miraculous than restoring an amputated limb?

(Translation: "How is standing on a foot you have less miraculous than standing on a foot you don't have?" Dumbasses. These people go to magic shows and accuse performers of wizardry, I'm sure.)

Second, because of the nature of leprosy, the healings of lepers in the Bible actually does imply the restoration of some body parts, such as fingers.

(Translation: "So what if it doesn't say that Jesus performed reconstructive surgery?" So what if he did? Why has nobody else been healed?)

The next argument is unbelievable. Truly astounding.

Even if there were amputees in Bible times, there may not have been as many. Many amputees nowadays lose a limb because of diabetes, dysvascular diseases, or cancer; doctors in Bible times would not likely have known to amputate for such reasons. Also, machinery—more powerful and more widely used than in Bible days—is the leading cause of accidental amputations. Finally, while some amputees surely survived their wounds in Bible times, modern medicine and emergency services no doubt increase the percentage of people who are able to survive the loss of a limb.

Yep: There weren't all that many amputees for Jesus to cure. Also, what is this "Bible times" and "Bible days" shit? You sound like fourth graders.

[...] But when you accept God and His Word, you can understand how Genesis explains the death and suffering as a result of the failure of humanity, not God.

(Translation: "This is the type of shit you need to believe to understand instead of understand to believe.") Fuck you. (Translation: "Fuck you.")

HJ

That's it. I'm naming my child "The Edge."

Pretty neat.

HJ

104th Skeptics' Circle: There will be a test.

It's up at Space City Skeptics. As always, the contributions are splendid.

Oh, also, I am Rev. Dr. Bing McGhandi now, since my Certificate of Ordination came from The Universal Church Triumphant of the Apathetic Agnostic ("We don't know, and we don't care.")

Need a wedding? I'm all over that shit.

Hey, I'm just like David Berman, except my additional title actually gives me actual legal authority that I did not have before.

Rev. HJ

"That's where the minorities live..."

I'm back from Squirtsville College, where I had a fairly decent interview, I thought. It was like pulling teeth to get the kids to talk during my teaching demo, but by the end of class everyone had said something, so that's something. I got good feedback from the Dean, who sat in on the class, and I was able to drive the conversation toward a topic that he enjoyed, war memoirs. A lot of people missed a lot of meetings with me, however. It seems that they aren't lying when they said that this was a teaching position. The President told me that I was probably not going to be a publishing scholar if I joined them. My thought, "Yeah, but I'd be an employed one, and that's a start."

When I first arrived at my hotel, I had about 15 minutes to chill out before my first appointment. A realtor was showing me around town. And she took me to a single apartment complex to pick up some brochures, and her son is getting married. We drove to a nice, newish part of town, and also her son is getting married. Then we went through the really expensive part of town, and at this point, her son was still getting married, and I "had to meet him. He's in communication and you'd get along real well, since he'd like to write screenplays and the like. Now down here is Squirtsville College and you'll park there tomorrow. The houses around here aren't so nice but over there is where the minorities live, in the free housing. Behind the fence there, yeah. They used to be really bad, but you know, but now if you know a kid is living with grandma and he is caught selling drugs, they kick out grandma too, so it's getting nicer here."

I was floored. Realtors can't talk about the ethnic make up of areas or steer people away from areas based on race. That's positively illegal. My next action, once the search ends one way or another, will be to encourage the school to discontinue using that crazy woman whose son, did I mention, is getting married. I'm not sure she was consciously hateful, but she was was thoughtless and daft and made a poor impression, something a school during the hiring phase does not want to do.

So, that's that. I am currently working through a load of wingfuckery to see what I missed in the day that I was away. So much bullshit, so little time.

HJ

A quick note....

I'm at the school. I had dinner with the search committee. I am hoping to not make an ass of myself. We'll see. I am at a public computer in the lobby of my hotel, so I feel that I should write quickly and then get off.

Hey, I just realized why people Twitter!

Actually, there is a medievalist on the search committee who knows by reputation, well, the medievalists I know and we talked about them quite a bit. And she's a Buffy fan. This is the committee member who I think, should my class go well, be in my corner. We shared genuine interests.

So, we come to academic interview tip one: Always schmooze with the Joss Whedon knowledge. You will find another fan and you're in like gin in Lynn the Finn. Also, show an interest in them, fer chrissakes.

The last thing that I am going to do here before signing off the computer is to look up some stuff about the school.

I am going to be run through a gauntlet of academic administrators after class. That should be fun. They are the interviews that I am most concerned about, really.

Here's something strange. The chair, when he picked me up, said that he had cyberstalked me looking for a picture to recognize me by, but there was none to be found. I haven't had a picture of me taken...for years. Heehee. My evil plan is working! 'Fraid it'll steal my soul. Heh heh.

HJ

Unadventurous underemployed university underling's U-turn

I have decided that the job search, though I really could have used the jolt of enthusiasm that being unreasonable might have given my class, is no place to be experimental or avant-garde, especially if you are a nothing but a bundle of goofily firing nerves. Upon sober reflection and a nap, I decided that I am going to give my, "Unknown Citizen" spiel. The same one that has kept me from being hired everywhere else I have taught poetry. I mean, in one sense, I would rather be sodomized with a bucket of Tabasco than teach poetry. But I think that I am going to do some prewriting exercises on the board. We all know how well group discussions go when I teach them.

Animala just came in and revealed that the school, which is regional (hence my car trip tomorrow), is closed tomorrow because of the icy weather. There's a spanner in the works. I'll call 'em in the morning to see what's what.

Oh, I would also like to say to the rest of the world: "You're welcome" for working on Obama's campaign. The era of "fuck you" diplomacy is, for the moment, over. I really hope he doesn't fuck this up.

HJ

Don't listen to this at work...

This is pretty pathetic. It comes from nullifidian.



Fucking Kiwi bastard. :)

Oh, also, I deny Christ and God. Neener.

HJ

Wicked Wonderprof Wows World With Awesome!

Tomorrow afternoon, I am driving (through all sorts of bad weather) to Squirtsville to interview for a position at another campus. They have me teaching a class on Thursday morning. The class is roughly the equivalent to the freshman argument course at my school. (No, not teaching the freshman claim: "But I worked haaaaaard!") They use literature, however. We have made a point of divorcing lit from writing at my school. But whatever. I was fretting about teaching about poetry perhaps because I ran out of steam while doing Shakespeare's sonnets last semester. No matter.

I emailed the instructor and pitched the class to her:

Squiggy,

I think that I had a humdinger of an idea for writing about poetry, and I thought that you might want to hear about it ahead of time. I will get a shortish, rigorously metrical poem that has an argument to it, something with a little bit of thematic development (I'll be looking through my vast library tonight). I will introduce "meter" as a sort of "constrained writing," writing in which the selection of individual words are partly determined by rules. We will look at Wordsworth's "Lesson for a Boy":

Trochee trips from long to short;
From long to long in solemn sort
Slow Spondee stalks, strong foot!, yet ill able
Ever to come up with Dactyl's trisyllable.
Iambics march from short to long.
With a leap and a bound the swift Anapests throng.

Then we will scan it together to show that each line obeys the rule it names.

Next, we'll read the poem I brought and give it its due close reading to make sure everyone is on the same page about the meaning. And we are going to write the poem out in prose, which is as mundane a project as is humanly conceivable, but with a twist. They will have to write out that prose obeying a rule. Not a metrical rule--that's too hard to do in a class period--but using a lipogram, so that students will have to write out the argument unable to use one letter. I'm thinking the letter "i." This will, I think, give them a sense of how carefully a poet writing in meter chooses how she says something, not just what she says. This, I think, should take fifty minutes. Hopefully we will have time to read one or two out loud.

Is this too far out there? Would it be appropriate?

Bing

I think it freaking rocks and that I am perhaps the most clever person since the invention of the forward pass.

I did this not so very long ago on this site in "The Letter After H."

HJ

You just never know what will come out of my mouth...

I write because, often, while I talk my brain is pulling me in several directions at once. Instead of well reasoned discourse, you get a sort of intellectual slurry. I know I can get off topic here, but Jeez, you should see me in class. I'm showing up just to hear what comes out of my mouth.

It's late in the day by the time I teach my very long class (I only just got home), and I get tired about 1:30 hrs into a lecture. Go figure. And my words start to make less sense and less sense until I have to let rabbits with small tails correct my spelling.

See?

Anyway, I tried explaining a concept to my students, one that linked together rather disparate thoughts and I realized that my words were really only for me. "Does anyone know where I'm going?" I asked. 30 heads shook. So I tried again. And this time it all made sense until the last 5 words. It was a virtuoso performance about something that ended with a very generic, meaningless ending. I told them to forget the last few words.

My class is pretty interesting, I like to think. Since we were talking about the Salem witch hunts, I decided to do a "where are they now" bit about Bridget Bishop, the first woman executed in the Salem witch trials of 1692. So, of course, I opened the class with a Penn and Teller sketch where some "modern witches of Salem" contact Bridget through a ouija board. It was 10 minutes (of a 2.5 hr class) over, and at the end I summarized: "So, Bridget Bishop is currently hanging out in a restaurant with losers." Good laugh.

We had a lot to do. The article "The Paranoid Style in American Politics" by Hofstadter, which will be an article we refer back to all semester and play off of. He says it's a pathology... I think it's close, and his is a great article. Every historian I've talked to immediately asks: "Have you read Hofstadter?" Yes, my friends. Now my students have to. And they had given it a pretty close read, bringing up good points. And I think that everything kind of came together really well assignmentwise. We did "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" only a little, which was a pity, because it fit pretty well. We did selections from Cotton Mather's writings on the trials. Lastly, we did "Young Goodman Brown," which I was very pleased to see that they liked. It tied the witch stuff together very nicely and, best of all, it resists easy explanation (remarkable given it's structure as an allegory). Nathaniel Hawthorne had an ancestor, Jonathan, I believe, who was a judge at the trials.

Oh and there was a little psychology too. I asked them to give me their best guesses as to why the bewitched acted as they did. We talked about mass hysteria a little. The disappearing penises of West Africa. Dancing nuns, and the like. We talked about confirmation bias. It was all there, baby!

Next up, we'll be talking about fear of slave revolts. I am going to have to reign in my presentation. I got a great book on slave revolts that I will use to compliment the stuff that we are doing with Nat Turner's (original) confessions. Great stuff that. I think that I am going to make the transition by pointing out some of the "monstrous" women not knowing their place in Puritan society and linking that fear into the fear of another usurpation of an established order. I hope that it comes out alright.

I often back into good ideas while talking, and I wish had a voice recorder so I could have exactly what I had said and how I said it. Sometimes it sounds right, but then I have to move on.

HJ

A Happy Jihad minute with Ken Ham...

I have to teach so this will be brief. We're talking about Puritans today. Yay! Witches! Yay! Mass hysteria, possibly a little ergot poisoning. Yay! Faith-based initiatives. Boo!

Anyhow, today Ken published mind-stumping fuckheadednes, to coin a phrase that applies only to one person, and I just needed to express my scorn. For once.

It looks like an aside from a larger textbook, the type of thing you'd see in a blue box, and it is called "Antibiotic Resistance as 'Evidence" for Evolution."

One of the most common evidences used in textbooks to support evolution is antibiotic resistance in bacteria. However, the marvelous ability of bacteria to survive against antibiotics does not support the idea of progressive evolution at all. Public school textbooks claim that bacteria’s sophisticated capacity to change—which appears to be built into their systems—supports the claim that molecules can change into completely different kinds of creatures, like mosquitoes, mushrooms, and men—despite the fact that these changes require the addition of completely different kinds of genetic information.

The textbook authors recognize that the resistance is already present in the bacterial population (Fig. 15.5) and then claim that selection for resistant bacteria in a population is direct evidence for evolution. Selecting for something that is already present does not provide support for the information-gaining change required for evolution. Students are left with a confused understanding of evolution and are expected to equate observed changes in bacteria with the conversion of one kind into another.

Alright, pigfucker, let's play your little fucking word game, dismissing as baby babble your asinine assertions about "information," which is creationist porn and just as fake. Are the folks at AiG ready to take that leap of faith and take me up on my longstanding challenge to anyone who wants to go toe-to-toe with me over bacterial evolution?

I propose that we expose Staphylococcus aureus to low levels of vancomycin in a controlled environment over several generations, gradually increasing the dose of vancomycin.

First, we would take a sample of the staph, and kill it dead with the vancomycin, just to show that it is vulnerable to the drug. Then we breed another sample of the staph in a solution that has a little tiny wee plop of vancomycin and, over successive generations of staph, we increase the vancomycin concentration in the bacteria's environment. After many months, the challenger and I will infect ourselves with staph, the challenger with the new strain and me with the original strain. Since we have both been on medical regimens of vancomycin for weeks (forgot to tell you about that), we will be able to put our asses where our faith is, to coin an awkward image. The winner gets to live.

Your problem, Ken, among others, is that you misrepresent what the textbook author actually says. When you say that "the resistance is already present," they really said "The bacteria vary in their ability to resist antibiotics." At the end of our little experiment above, we show that we have a strain of staph that can survive doses of antibiotic that NONE of the original batch could live (and didn't). That resistance is a characteristic that was not there before. We call that the evolution of a trait. You call it "confusing."

How's your faith, Ken? Are you ready to take the challenge?

HJ

Bing and his office wife, Dr. Snazz, come up with a get rich quick scheme

A synchronous google chat

me: You.

Dr. Snazz: me

me: Whaddup?

Dr. Snazz: I'm in freak-out stress mode about my interview Thurs.

me: that sounds like fun. Are you crying? Call me over when you are crying. I feast on misery.

I mean, I'm here for you.

Dr. Snazz: I'm out of tears.

me: Did you save any?

No leftovers?

Dr. Snazz: How did you guess? There in a coffee mug right here beside me!

me: Salty coffee? Yuk!

Dr. Snazz: No, just the tears.

 
me: Tears! Yum!

I was thinking, we could dehydrate them and sell them.

All natural!

at Whole Foods!

Or, better yet, dehydrated tear substitute.

Just add water! I'll, er, we'll be rich!

Dr. Snazz: Okay, I'm pissed all of a sudden.

me: Uh, I was going to cut you in. I swear!
 
OK?

Dr. Snazz: No... the library sent me a message last week to tell me that my [electronic course material] was up and it isn't

What do I do? I have no time today, my students need to read it for Wednesday, and I've got a shit-ton to take care of between now and when I fly out.

 
me: You can call them.

Let me look for the number.
123-4567

Dr. Snazz: I found the email. Thanks.

me: Drop my name. That'll get it done.

'Cause I'm important.

(sigh)

Also, thank you for adding shit-ton to my vocabulary. I will make sure to use it a shit-ton.

HJ

From HCwDB

This link comes directly from Hot Chicks with Douchebags. It's an electronic do-it-yourself douchebag machine!



What is it that prevents these man-pons from looking at themselves in the mirror? Probably the dazzling glare of uberscrote.

HJ

Phil Harris: "Let me repeat what others have said repeatedly: 'I'm totally original.'"

Now, I don't have a lot of time. I'm preparing to teach and I have a lot to get through and write up for tomorrow. But Phil Harris is like the Russian fighter that pulls Rambo out of retirement from being a mob boss hanging from a cliff. I think it was the fact that no matter how hard I tried, I could never conjure an opening sentence as horrific and vile as the first one of his Townhall article, "Atheism--A Godless Delusion."

Throughout the ages, a single question hangs on the face of mankind like a hairy wart on the end of the nose.

I mean I could try to be that repulsive:

• "A curd from my wife's frothy discharge got stuck in my teeth."
  
• "It was during my colostomy that I decided what I really wanted was to have sex with my mother's corpse."
  
• "The puttering from the unconscious man's anus kept me from enjoying my naked time alone with the retarded children."

These are pretty good, but for all their awfulness, they remain too elegant for Harris. I mean, warts don't "hang" in the first place. If he were any type of writer, the wart would clearly have been a booger. A slippery, ropey, deliciously dangling nose-goblin.

Each of us will live our lives, raise our children, and then lay down to die with this question asked, but never answered.

Who am I, and why am I here?

I'm me, and why not?

It is a question that Richard Dawkins and other rejectionists can never answer through the scientific method; although, they claim all mysteries of the Universe would surely be unraveled given enough time and study.[...]

Dawkins never made a claim of potential or eventual omniscience, nor has anyone else.

Am I simply a clump of molecules, arranged in a complex fashion after billions of years of trial, error, and happenstance?

Yep. Pretty much.

This raises more questions for me than I had before, such as these:

Oh, boy. List of idiocies coming up. By the way, raising more questions is not inherently a bad thing, as long as they are valid questions. Boy, where the hell is all that extra mass in the universe is a question raised by answering questions about the rotation of galaxies. The question that draws to the monastery the most revered scholars, monks, and religious thinkers from all of Europe in The Name of the Rose: "Would the Messiah own his own clothes?", not so valid. Funny, though.

…what additionally came into existence (chemically), to cause these innate compounds to seek their own survival, diversification, self improvement via evolutionary processes, self-discovery, and an insatiable awareness and curiosity about the environment and Universe?

Except in your case, apparently, since you seem to poop on the notion of "discovering" things about the universe.

It is amazing to realize that such an incredible chemical accident occurred on a planet that hangs in an orbit so precisely tuned distance-wise to the Sun. How fortunate that this same planet includes physical systems of weather and climate that insure fresh water cycles in such a way to support life of all types. [...]

Anthropic principle. Easy. Where the crap do you expect critters like us to arise? Pluto? You are mixing up cause and effect in the harmonious tuning of the universe. We are as we are because of those laws, not the other way around. Ray Comfort once botched this by the following illustration: "I am lost in the freezing forest and come upon a cabin. Nobody is there, but there is a fire roaring in the fireplace, my favorite meal on the table and a collection of my favorite DVDs loaded in the stereo. Clearly someone knew I was coming. That someone is God." My answer is, "No, you dolt, you don't need to posit a super brain-reading deity. It is far more likely that someone who was a lot like you was there before, which is exactly the case with evolution. That someone is Steve."

The ridiculous caricatures of "God" that Dawkins and devout atheists stand up for the purpose of knocking them down have no chance when compared to these ingenious chemical compounds.

The first thing that Dawkins does in The God Delusion is saying that no, he is not making a charicature of God, no man in a white flowing beard. He is talking about an omniscient, omnipresent being that operates in the world and knows what everyone is thinking at all times. Surely this approximates your idea of God, doesn't it?

I may not hold the educational credentials of the likes of Dawkins, but I am intelligent, open minded, scientifically curious, and mindful of how little is truly known about the Universe we live in, despite the considerable knowledge that has been accumulated. [...]

HAHAHAHAHA!!!! You suck! Twice on weekends! Three times when leap day is on a weekend! I'm done with you. You clearly don't need me to trash your own reputation. Seriously, look up the anthropic principle. Do these people really think that they are somehow breaking new ground while they are chanting the same moronic drivvel over and over and over and over?

HJ

Bible Babble

Yeah, I'm sure I'm the first one to put those words together. And I don't need to check the Internet to prove how right I am.

Anyway, this evening's sermon was inspired directly by God and is therefore inerrant and should be considered an appendix to the Bible. A Letter from Bing to the Imaginary People on the Internet, I want it to be called. I'm not even really in control of my keyboard right now, which of course you already know since you have seen my spelling. Also, because of my God-given inerrancy, any mispellings are in fact the standard spellings. Deal with it.

And whoa, the Angel of the Lord appeared to me as I resurrected leftover donuts from the dead in the microwave, and verily did the Angel say, "Go thou unto bloglines and check out Bible Prophecy Today. It will crack thy shit up." And so I goethed, and it was shewn unto me that Dave Hunt had posted an article mistitled "Q&A"; it should more rightfullierly have been called "Q&Eh?"

And I saw it was very bad.

It is clearly modeled on the Greek dialogue, wherein a man, "Q" of James Bond fame, asks "A" a question and "A" being a little goofy pants, makes an "S" out of himself.

Question: Sam Harris (one of "The Four Horsemen" leading the "New Atheists") writes, "Every devout Muslim has the same reasons for being a Muslim that you have for being a Christian. And yet, you do not find their reasons compelling. The Koran repeatedly declares that it is the perfect word of the creator of the universe....Can you prove that Allah is not the one true God? Can you prove that the archangel Gabriel did not visit Muhammad in his cave? Of course not!" How can one tell which "holy book" is true and which is not? Isn't it one man's word against another man's?

Alright, Mr. Smarty Yoda-Looking Guy, what have you to say to that?

Well, essentially he gives a couple of weirdly blindered answers.

The "God of Israel" inspired 40 different prophets over a period of 1,600 years to write the Bible. Most of them never met any of the others, yet their prophecies all agree with and supplement one another. There are no prophecies in the Qur'an, any more than in the Hindu Vedas or sayings of Buddha.

You know, if these were better controlled conditions, say, each prophet designate absolutely isolated from the tradition to which he would (after the fact be seen to) contribute, preferrably by huge geographic and linguistic differences--then we can talk about "never met" each other. It's not great evidence, even if you admit that the stories don't conflict (which I, of course, do not admit). Nobody in the OT makes a prophecy worth a turd anyway. Prophecy, actually, if it were proved true would deny free will because visions really granted by God can't be wrong, people are not free to act in other ways, and free choice, according to the Christians, is what got us into this whole Messiah-needing mess in the first place. Ouch. Yeah, the other major world religions don't have prophesy because they are too smart to include it. Of course some Bible Prophesies are just wrong. (See my "Ray Comfort and Nostradamus: 'My Vague, Unverifiable Twaddle is Better Than Your Vague Unverifiable Twaddle," in which I apparently wrote the surprisingly amusing line: "[Comfort] is basically saying that Nostradamus is right because he plagiarized the Bible. It's like a warm air mass of silly colliding with a cold front of strange and producing a funnel cloud of stupid.")

For the veracity of the Qur'an, there is only one—Muhammad. He began his career with more than 20 murders and perpetuated his power by murdering thousands more through disciples following his example. This evil continued until his death. Islamic historians admit that far from dying like Jesus Christ as a willing sacrifice, Muhammad died ignominiously, poisoned by the widow whose husband he had murdered.

Muhammud was a prick. Sure, I can agree with that. But he still might have been right. You are arguing against the man and his character, not the veracity of his claims. So, whoops. You know, if you want to boil it down to basics, you essentially have one guy in the Christian tradition saying, "Hey, check me out. I'm the Messiah." And that's Messiah-boy himself. But at least Muhammud's death makes logical sense--where's the logic in having someone who is also god himself die for the benefit for others' transgressions? Sees like overkill to me, but then again Yahweh was always showy. He's like the Liberace of Deities, or to maintain the Trinity, the Sigfried, Roy and the tiger. Three separate persons. One show.

Christians have a multiplicity of prophecies and witnesses, testifying to Christ's sinlessness.

You do not seem to realize that you are confirming Harris' suspicion. He asked "isn't it one man's word against another" and you are pitting men's words agains men's words. There is an unbelievably naive closer however, and I thought I wouls share that with you.

Many eyewitnesses have attested to the fact of Christ's resurrection. Some of the greatest legal minds and many historians declare that the Resurrection of Jesus Christ is established on such solid evidence that it would stand up in any court. Islam has nothing comparable.

OK, so a slight exaggeration and he's never heard of Sharia courts. Oh well. Do you know what I have been reading lately? Lots of stuff surrounding that America's first great faith-based initiative, the Salem witch trials. There were so many eyewitnesses, including dead people who appeared in spectral form. Were they all right simply by virtue of being eyewitnesses? I haven't seen a single historian worth a fossilized dino poopy (which come to think of it, would be worth quite a lot) say that the Salem accusers were reliable witnesses. Eyewitnesses are ridiculously unreliable, even when they are actually present at the event in question. The fact that the eyewitness testimony was gathered dozens and dozens of years after the events and compiled by people who never met the eyewitnesses or interviewed them further complicates your dubious claims. I don't know what legal minds you are talking about, but they probably have a witch-dunking to get to (and you know they hate Harry Potter).



HJ

The Bipolar Character of American Democracy

In the last 4 days, we have seen a hint of immense changes in governmental social. Most importantly, I believe, is that the government is no longer assumed to be instrument of certain religious practices. And as I gloat and wave my privates in the general direction of Texas, I wonder how wide these swings can be before we consider it pathological.

Last week, when my class started, I warned students against mistaking the clinical condition of paranoid schizophrenia for the cultural, political and artistic paranoia that may pop up from time to time in their readings. "Don't turn the mind into a metaphor for the collective mind of America," I said. "American identity (itself a narrative) is a loose sort of mutual understanding based social contract, not a mind that operates strictly along the lines of individual psychology. So be careful. Now go read a titanic pony-load of writings by Puritans." Heehee.

But the American political system is for all intents and purposes of a bifurcated mind, given to extremes of behavior. Well, extremes in one direction and a moderate conservatism in the other direction. I don't really think that we have a left, per se--we have nothing like, say, French unions. Nonetheless, the difference between the manifestations of Texas-sized conservatism and what Obama is doing is vast. Government money released to groups that provide comprehensive gynecological and educational services? No me digas! Restoration of important parts of the Constitution, human rights and habeas? Mentiroso, tu! Getting out of Iraq? Jodeme en el culo con una chimichanga congelada! The American beast has a completely different personality now.

But maybe there is a better metaphor, a meatier one. Consider the person who has had their corpus colossum severed to prevent the spread of seizures. An interesting thing happens when the two halves of the brain don't communicate directly. The person feels whole, like an integrated person, but instead of sending direct signals to coordinate motion, behavior and thought, the brain has to get information about what's going on in the other hemisphere through external observation of the behaviors of the parts of the body controlled by that other hemisphere. This seems to me to be how the right and left use government. We develop an understand each other through observing how the other half of the American political brain controls the body politic. Every 4 years or so, we come together and decide which face of Eve will take over control of the body.

There. 3 different ways to misuse a metaphor. You're welcome.

HJ

My big RSS

Just futzing about with a facebook app. Hopefully this will publish the blog feed to Bing's account so his friends will see his posts.

Also, because I want to see if photos will be published as well, I publish this.

Do links get published as well?

See? Easy peasy.

HJ

Onion Radio News...

HJ

Still lazy after all of these years...

First off, I'm pissed off at Obama. Motherfucker has been blogging for the whole of 3 days and he's already got more cred on Technorati than me. Fuckin' noob.

Anyway, Starfleet Captain David Berman, Th."D.", who is indirectly responsible for this blog, seems to be in end stage brain rot. I hope he goes quietly in the night. But only after suffering a writing career-ending paralysis very very soon.

When I am not slinging around ad hominems like so many bodily fluids at an orgy, I teach argument and rhetoric. I have seen logical fallacies that would make you dig out your eyes with your bare hands. Really. In a real sense, they are what pay my bills. So when Berman entitles his article: "Rational Answers To Homosexual Propaganda," my crap-dar goes off. It's loaded with presuppositions. For instance: Verbal support of homosexuality = propaganda. Statements in favor of...things that homosexuals might like...may in fact be logical arguments (we'll see in a minute), but he's pissing in the fountain by slapping the label "propaganda" on anything that anyone might say about homosexuality that didn't bubble over with Dave's instant approval. At the same time, he is implying that, somehow, the "rational answers" are opposing..."irrational" homosexual propaganda. So, there are two turds in your glass of Coke before you even take a sip.

When dealing with this issue we must understand that it is an emotional one. People who practice homosexual behavior see it as their "right" to be as they say; "who they were born to be". Conservatives see it as a behavior that should not be given special rights or encouraged in any way. In this debate there is some very interesting arguments (I said interesting, not logical). Let's examine the homosexual arguments;

Christ, David, you punctuate like you were in 5th grade. Or maybe you hired orthographically challenged lemurs to do your punctuation for you. OK, you suggest a false dichotomy in the opening paragraph--you are either a practicing homosexual or conservative. Sure, he's just being sloppy with terms, but, hey, if you want to build a quality house of logic, you don't use shitty building materials.

Argument One - Homosexuals contend that they are born homosexual and therefore should be given the same consideration as heterosexuals.

This position is a ruse.

A ruse is a lie. They are lying. They are intentionally deceiving you. Gays who want rights lie. Of course, I'm not sure that he knows what a ruse is, because he drops the "deliberate deceit" motif and goes on to evidence.

First there is no conclusive evidence that people are born homosexual, however for the sake of this discussion let's say that is true.

A ruse is not "something for which there is no evidence." Operation Mincemeat (look it up) was a ruse. An awesome ruse. Compare and contrast. Now weep, David.

The argument then would be that every person who is born with any attraction, disposition, or behavioral desire must have those attractions, dispositions, and behaviors accepted by society.

Wow. I could (and am) writing a book about what is wrong with that sentence. First, what is your standard of conclusive evidence? Predicting gayness at birth (or once all contributing factors are in play)? Because there is a lot of predictive evidence out there. But let's lay this statement bare:

If people are born homosexual [...] then [...] every person who is born with any attraction, disposition, or behavioral desire must have those attractions, dispositions, and behaviors accepted by society.

It's like taking a ride on the Vomit Comet of logic. Your argument is sort of like this: "If you are going to light the one-year old's birthday candle, you have to burn the apartment complex down." Some attractions, dispositions and behaviors are positively destructive. But even if some destructive behaviors are allowed, smoking, for instance, but it doesn't mean that we have to embrace drunk driving. Let's look at genuinely destructive behaviors, like child molestation. Child sex predators seem really, really hard to "cure." It really seems innate. Probably a misfiring of a sex instinct that says, "Hey, this one will breed for a long time." Maybe. Dunno. What we have there is a fundamentally unequal relationship of power between individuals. Sex with a child, in essence, is always rape. This simply is not the case between consenting adults. Their argument for gay equality does not alone rely on, "They were born that way." There are other factors.

Argument Two - Homosexuals say that this is a civil rights issue and therefore it is like discrimination against a race or ethnic group.

Only if you mean an arbitrary encroachment on equality. It is a social issue. It is a legal issue. You could say, I think, that by that definition Nambla's asserts a civil rights issue, but it's a non-starter for, well, everyone but Nambla.

This is a stretch to say the least.

I'll be the judge of that.

Let's talk about what a race or ethnic group is. A race or ethnic group is made up of a large group of people who have married over a long period of time. Through procreation certain genetic traits develop. This is due to dominant genes. As a group of people they live together in a society, the society develops an ethos that is specific to that group. Without reproduction you have neither a race nor ethnic group. It is quite literally impossible to compare homosexuals to a race since by definition homosexuals do not reproduce. If we for discussion's sake took 1000 heterosexual men and women from various places and put them on an island with no outside contact, and came back 500 years later, they would be an ethnic group with certain physical genetic characteristics. If however we took 1000 homosexuals and placed them on an island with no outside contact, and came back 500 years later, not only would there not be an ethnic group, there would be no one alive since again they by definition do not reproduce. The idea that this is a civil rights issue based of homosexuals being some sort of minority group akin to a race defies logic. Reproduction is necessary for there to be a race.

Nobody claims that gays are a race. Your definition of civil rights is positively bizarre. Free speech? Civil right. Right to assemble? Civil right. Neither of these has boo to do with race. Of course, even if you put gays and lesbians and bisexuals (let's not forget them!) on an island, I think that there is a very good chance that you would not only find descendants of various sexual persuasions (they can and do have kids all the fucking time, just not with each other at first) but also a race with a highly developed sense of fashion.

Argument Three - Homosexuals say that all they are asking for is equal protection under the law concerning the right to marry since all people should have the right to marry whoever they choose and be equally protected under the law..

[...] Since marriage is defined as a man and woman and has been for all of human history, it is a bit absurd to say that this is an equal protection issue.

A factual error and an appeal to antiquity in most unholy congress. The predominant model for sexual relationships has been polygamy. Look at your fucking Bible. Also, just because for most of history people have had kings does not mean that we should not embrace liberal democracy. Dumbass.

Argument Five - Homosexuals say that it is no one's business and does not affect anyone else if society allows for homosexual marriage.

I protest his response of grounds of (his) illiteracy. He goes into a "gays in schools" jag. The schools don't spend time worrying about it in the first place. Have the high schools in Massachusetts become faggot boot camp? Fuck no!

The last one rests on the absolute moral authority of a 1st century rabbi. I can't even get into how many bad arguments support his final conclusion and half-assed interpretation of the bible. So, that's it. Ongoing proof that letter after your name don't make you smart.

It was nice to see you again, David. Jump off something tall.

HJ

Hot, breaking creationist action news at 11:15!

Just read the opening. It was just pinched off by the anus that is OneNewsNow.

Proponents of critical thinking in science classrooms were handed a blow by the Texas State Board of Education.

The Texas State Board of Education has decided to take the teaching of the strengths and weaknesses of evolution out of public school classrooms. The 15-member board passed the measure by a vote of 7-to-7 on Thursday; one member was absent. The decision is "outrageous," says Jonathon Saenz with the Free Market Foundation.

Johnny, I think you will find, failed both biology and civics in high school.

What is this Free Market Foundation, anyway? I never heard of them. I bet they are some sort of high impact science advocacy group packed with Nobel Laureates. Their mission?

To protect freedoms and strengthen families throughout Texas by impacting our legislature, media, grassroots, and courts with the truth. To do this we are guided by the principles, which limit government and promote Judeo-Christian values.

Vision
That all Texas government and culture would create and foster an environment of freedom that strengthens families and protects faith. That the intimate relationships of family, community, and church would take on their God-given responsibilities and government would relinquish these areas.

So, not really advocates of science. Just their version of the "truth."

I would like to remind Texas, the entire fucking state, that "critical thinking" does not mean "criticizing." Critical thinking is a productive exercise. It is exactly not what you are doing, pushing personal belief as universal fact and enforcing your personal beliefs by legislative fiat (ad baculum).

[...] Saenz says board members ignored the many emails and phone calls from constituents who wanted the teaching of strengths and weaknesses to remain. "[T]hey decided that they don't care what their constituents think, and they voted in favor of stripping the language out at the recommendation of a small group of activists," he asserts.

By "a small group of activists," of course, he means, "all scientists everywhere." And science is not democratic (ad populum). You suck.

But as I surf the Free Market Foundation Foundation website, I love their section on "Texas vs. the ACLU."

The ACLU is for Gay Marriage and the Homosexual Agenda

Only if the homosexual agenda means "being treated like humans" or "share fundamental human dignities."

The ACLU is for Religious Hostility

They list a couple of public land use cases. Big, huge fucking crosses on public land and the like.

The ACLU is for Terrorists

This is interesting because they mention Hamden v. Rumsfeld and Ali v. Rumsfeld, two cases that challenged the Bush Administration's improvisational justice system. You can't rightly call them "terrorists" if they have not been convicted of anything, can you? These subtle distinctions excape the ideologically blindered.

The ACLU is for Pedophilia

Shitheads. The ACLU argued that free association extends to groups of completely depraved pervs who had nothing to do with the crimes of one of their (possible) members. When a sherrif unlawfully seizes lists of members, well, when they come for the jolly group of assholes at...what's this group called? Texans for Evil?...you'll thank your imaginary god that ACLU has denied the "sherf" precedent. They aren't for pedophilia, but sometimes the ends do not justify the means.

So you are dishonest liars. And bad people.

HJ

The Feng Shui Diet

Introduction to HJ's the The Feng Shui Diet

I have often wondered what it would be like to watch a news story about obesity and realize that one of the rear ends at the mall that the cameraman has surreptitiously filmed to illustrate the national problem was my own. But you don't need to appear on national television as the emblem of a national health crisis to realize that you probably could stand to lose a little weight, just like you don't need a fitness Messiah to tell you that America has a weight problem--you see it everyday. In the Wal-Marts, at Hardees, in the movie theaters, at the zoo, America as a nation has a weight problem. But you don't have to worry about being part of the problem. You can be part of the national solution.

You know that even though you have limited portion sizes and have cooked healthier foods that you are still not losing weight in the long term. We know that diets, as a rule, do not work for the vast majority of Americans. The problem, of course, is that there are too many variables that go into the typical American's daily diet. We are a nation of busy people: we want to eat what we can when we can. We are a nation of impatient people: we want to eat now. We are a pampered people: we want flavors to explode on our tongue, and this means we favor fats and sugars.

The common misconception is that these factors conspire to cause people to gain weight. They may play a role, but not as much as you would think. Far more important than what you consume is how you consume it. Preparing proper meals--that is what this revolutionary new diet system is all about. In the weeks that follow, we at Happy Jihad's House of Pancakes will explore and explain the proven health benefits of proper preparation based on the time-cherished principles of the ancient Chinese science of feng shui.

Why Feng Shui?

What most people fail to understand about weight gain is not that it is not, at its root, a problem that comes from eating too much food. It is primarily a disproportionate intake of energy, which we measure in "calories." The human body stores these calories very efficiently in the form of fat. If we can tap that energy and guide it so that it leaves the body, it follows that an individual will lose weight. The human body is a pool of energy, which is also known as chi. Feng shui allows us to puncture that basin where excess chi energy has collected and allows us in effect to drain the pool until it has reached perfect equilibrium. This is where the Chinese science of energy manipulation comes in. Feng shui allows people to manipulate energy in the environment and create healthful spaces for better living.

I know that you are thinking, "Hang on, Bing! Once the energy is stored in fat, you have to work off that excess energy. My coach in high school health never told me about energy manipulation." There are a lot of things that your coach never told you because he or she did not know about them. These exciting new developments in the field of feng shui will revolutionize weight loss in this country, and you are going to be a part of it.

The feng shui lifestyle and weight loss system is one of any number of healthy alternatives to crash dieting, starvation and liquid diets, and exercise fads. And it's proven, unlike exercise. Really. Most people don't realize how overrated exercise is. How often have you seen an overweight person at the top of the stairs sweating and puffing? It doesn't do them any good! You can tell. Even though they have worked hard to climb those stairs and have achieved no benefit whatsoever! They deserve the reward of weight loss, and so do you! The feng shui nutrition lifestyle system provides its own reward--the reward of weight loss!

In Chapter 1, we will discuss preventative medical tips for chi management that ensure the foods that you consume and enjoy have as low a chi density as is possible. A healthier you begins in the farmer's field, and I will show YOU how to identify products that have been grown in areas that have allowed for the proper flow of chi.

Chapter 2 is devoted to a type of feng shui that you may already associate with nutrition: the design of those living spaces where you prepare and eat food. We will also look beyond the four walls of your home and into commercial establishments so you can minimize your consumption of unwanted energy.

Chapter 3 is about how your table should be presented. There is a reason why elaborate formal rules of seating and utensil arrangement have developed over the years, but the health benefits have not been studied systematically until now. I'll tell you what I've found.

Chapter 4 is the heart of the book and breaks new ground in the exciting field of feng shui. We will show you that beyond a shadow of a doubt that weight loss mostly depends not on how much you eat but on how you arrange the food on your plate.

Chapter 5 will introduce you to an exciting array of exclusive feng shui health system products that will help you lose weight and to be and feel like the "you" you know you are.

HJ

(n.b. Doing "market research" for this book proposal, I found that some people have already come up with this idea. They deserve to be kneecapped for not selling their books in the humor section.)

And you thought there would be no email in heaven...

Sure, the Rapture looks like a hilarious thing to trick ugly, stupid girls with, but it's deadly serious. When the Rapture comes, and it's coming any day now (they swear), how will you get off one last email or blog post once you have been taken up Heaven's Chimney? Never fear! You've Been Left Behind is here!

Yes, You've Been Left Behind is a service that allows you to be a tedious tit even beyond the grave! Or whatever. I wish I had come up with this plan, because it is so simple it's genius. It's a forty dollar annually recurring idiocy tax on Christians. (I have a book idea in mind that would prey on the gullible, but I just can't bring myself to write it because I have a conscience. It might end up on this website one day.)

What do they offer?

Services Overview

We have set up a system to send documents by the email, to the addresses you provide, 6 days after the "Rapture" of the Church. This occurs when 3 of our 5 team members scattered around the U.S fail to log in over a 3 day period. Another 3 days are given to fail safe any false triggering of the system.

You send them documents by the email. What, was this written in Nigeria? Jeezis. I like how they know who's going to be raptured and that they know they are the ones who are going to be Raptured.

I can't decide whether or not it is a scam. I'm going to err on the side of caution and say it's a titanic waste of money.

HJ

White Supremacist Poetry Slam #9

Every so often, I peruse the board at Stormfront, the clearinghouse for all things white supremacist, and take in the poetry that they have on their poetry board. Why? Perhaps it's because it looks so pathetic and I am a sucker for hard luck cases. Nah. These people have odious beliefs and their poetry runs a close second. Which is interesting--the poetry is horrible and their sentiments are horrible: the sound mirrors the sense. Which makes their poetry successful on one level. But only if they want to repel all living things and alienate themselves from higher beings and their betters (everyone).

So, here's this week's contribution, brought to you by Water, "Nature's Liquid" (MST3K, yay!):(Click to embiggen.)

HJ

A shout out to NYT photographer Doug Mills!

I thought that today's front page photo was much more ironic than the caption allowed.

HJ

Give Tengrain some love!

Giant attacks inauguration! Cheney seizes power!

OK, I threw up a tad.

HJ

Time to give Sean McDowell a swat on the behind before starting work

Conspiracy lunatic Brannon Howse (you should see his One World Government rant this week--I'm getting him tinfoil headgear for his birthday), when not scaring the shit out of the gullible and borderline psychotic, sometimes lets his fellow inmates contribute to his ongoing public humiliation, Worldview Weekend. This week Sean McDowell opens his mouth big time and crams his foot and the feet of several friends into his gob with his article "Evil and Intelligent Design." It reminds me of the title of Austen's work Pride and Prejudice, where even though the conjunction suggests that the words it is coordinating are in opposition to one another, they both have negative connotation. The only difference is that Jane did it on purpose, whereas Sean inadvertently stumbled into and impaled himself on it. (By the way, I really did like the Calibri font, which I had to lose for formatting reasons)

Since the release of Understanding Intelligent Design last summer, I have had the chance to speak to thousands of Christians and non-Christians about the case for design in nature. Probably no challenge is raised more frequently than the seemingly ‘evil designs’ in nature, such as the AIDS virus or the Great White Shark. How could a good God create such efficient killing machines? The apparent cruelty of nature was actually one of Darwin’s chief contentions with creation. He couldn’t see how the cruelty of nature could have been created by God.

Lacking a mechanism or coherent rationale, you can see why he would be concerned. When Sean speaks of the release of Understanding Intelligent Design (his book with William Dembski), by the way, I imagine he means "released" in much the same way that a supervillian would "release" Hanta virus over the Super Bowl.

The problem, indeed is more complex than "why is there pain"? Darwin undoubtedly knew that pain does have a real function in the struggle to survival--people/animals who feel pain are more likely to avoid, well, damage to their body that might inhibit procreation. It's a part of our immanent threat detection system. "Hey, Bing," my hand says to me. "Judging by the pain, I'm willing to bet that you should not be putting me into this blender." After careful consideration, I decide, indeed, I should pull my bloody stump out of the blender and retreat to a safer distance. I live to procreate another day! Yay!

I love it when stories end in me procreating.

The problem is that there are some animals that must kill in extravagantly unpleasant ways in order to exist. The example that comes to mind is a type of parasitic wasp often used for pest control. Let's do the chicken and egg thing....All adults of this wasp emerged from the bowels of a host caterpillar. They were laid in the host by...adults who....emerged from a host...who in turn... You get the idea. There has not been, properly speaking, a single adult that didn't emerge after devouring its host from the inside out. Never. Now, way back on the evolutionary tree, you may have had a series of protoparasitic stages (Hey! Protoparasitic is a word! Check me out with my science lingo!) which gradually favored longer incubation periods for the parasite, say, for reasons of geographical distribution of the parasite or other factors that were beneficial to its gene pool's spread. Simply stated, the modern version of the parasitic wasp could not have ever existed without inflicting significant pain and death on another animal.

For the sake of argument, let’s grant that AIDS and sharks were designed as killing machines.

I grant you no such thing, because you are loading the question with teleological content and will only abuse that generosity later.

This raises an obvious question: How does such an admission count against intelligent design? After all, a torture chamber is clearly designed, even though it is used for an evil purpose. Evil designs are still designs.

No, it raises the question of how you found a publisher. At some point you made the huge logical leap that would force you to say that parasitic wasp embryos are "evil." No, they aren't "evil." They just happen only to be able to continue to exist inside hosts that they eventually messily devour. You need to establish that "pain itself" is "evil," that there is moral content to suffering. "Undesirable" and "evil" are not equivalent concepts in the real word.

The challenge of evil designs is actually not even a scientific objection at all--it is theological. Why would an all-powerful and good God design something evil? Intelligent design theorists are certainly free to tackle this question, but they do so as theologians, not scientists.

First off, the issue was "cruel" not "evil" which I take to be "without regard for comfort or capacity for mercy." And even then, what gives a theologian authority to arbitrate between good and evil? What give a theologian any sort of authority at all? Evil, of course, is, ideally, a sort of short-hand for a narrative that allows us to divide up the world into desirable and undesirable. But it is a construction, especially when you are talking about the natural world, which just plods along without any thought to morality. People, well, I think that may be a different story.

Theology does in fact bear on this question. The Apostle Paul made it clear that sin affected not just human beings, but all of creation (Romans 8). Creation is actually “groaning” from the Fall of Mankind.

He said no such thing: "For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now." He doesn't say, "Up to a certain point everything was hunky-dory and then someone had an apple and its our fault that the world is immersed in suffering." He is saying, pretty much, "Creation has always groaned." I know this because I can fucking read and I know what an unqualified "until now" means. It is decidedly not clear that he meant that it was our fault.

While the world is still certainly God’s good creation, it no longer functions as it was originally designed to be. Sin has had physical effects on the world.

And this is why strung along the avenues of knowledge in the thriving megalopolis of modern scientific research, one finds the Intelligent Design movement lying in the gutter there like a boozy bum passed out with a poopy pantload--you are making claims about the real world. Once you stepped into the world of cause and effect, you made testable claims. What is the mechanism by which apple-picking makes wasps parasitic in their larval stage and how do we account for the massive changes in the genetic/behavioral makeup in all species of that wasp? Seriously. And the simultaneous physical mechanism by which all carnivorous behavior simultaneously arose? (And why the vegetarian exception, I wonder?) And painful childbirth suddenly appearing, somehow "turning on" pain sensing nerve endings.

From the point of view of the parasitic wasp, I might mention, parasitism is, to quote the oral composition of Bronze Age nomads, "very good," by which I mean, not only beneficial and desirable, but also positively necessary for survival.

How to know the extent of sin on the physical world is a matter of speculation and current research. Scientists are just beginning to explore how we can find the original design of nature behind its corrupted condition.

You make it sound like scientists believe that the world is somehow "corrupted," which is simply not the case.

For example, some design theorists have proposed that many harmful bacteria may have originally been helpful but have mutated to their present condition. Such a proposition cannot be proven yet, but it is an area of fruitful research guided by intelligent design.

And why should we give you the benefit of the doubt? You never give evolutionary scientists authority to look into the past and make reasoned judgments based purely on the evidence. You and "cdesign proponentsists" have always tried to say that so-called historical science is a separate beast that has its own rules (basically, you add the rule that no observation can ever contradict you or prove you wrong--not falsifiable, ergo not science):

"To help us understand that science has practical limits, it is useful to divide science into two different areas: operational science and historical (origins) science. Operational science deals with testing and verifying ideas in the present and leads to the production of useful products like computers, cars, and satellites. Historical (origins) science involves interpreting evidence from the past and includes the models of evolution and special creation."

Riiiight, Ken. Science doesn't really help, but only when looking at things that bear down mercilessly on your outdated ignorant beliefs. Of course, you just submarined the judicial system by saying that science can't really illuminate things about the past--forensic science depends on the assumption that the laws of ballistics have not changed since the gun was fired, for instance. Real scientists don't make this distinction between the bogus category of "operational" and "historical" science , and they have had far more success explaining the world than you have.

Ironically, evil design is actually a powerful reason to believe in a creator. An understanding of the nature of evil makes this clear. Simply put, evil is when things are not as they are supposed to be or are they way they are not supposed to be. Either way, some type of purposeful design is assumed. Thus, evil implies that there is a purpose to the world’s design. One can only complain of evil if there is first design.

That, by the way, also happens to make your God the complete bastard he appears to be. And anyway, this is is not what anyone was arguing. Remember, you made up this situation where sharks and parasitic worms are "evil." Effective replicators, hell yes. "Evil" was a leap that you made and that no scientist would ever claim as their own. I told you that if I granted you "evil design" that you would abuse it.

HJ

Westboro Clowns Fail

I know. You're stunned.



With a shout out to Animala.

HJ

Idiot misses point. News at 11:00

The first problem that I have with Bill Wilson is his photograph. When you put a member of the evangeliban in a tan hat and a fishing vest, you know that they are in the holy land. When you put them in front of an old wall, you know they think that they are Indiana Fucking Jones.

Oh, I should mention he's at Bible Prophesy Today. It might as well be called Waiting for Godot. His article is pretty sad today. It's called: The Abomination Of Government-Sanctioned Heresy And Curses Upon America.

You would think that these ass clowns would see this is exactly why I keep my state out of my church and my church out of my state. But no such luck. He has no introspection, but he has a hat! That's something! Right?

I wanted to see how this idiot keeps from decomposing (I was going to say "keeps body and soul together," but you know how I feel about that). So I farted on over to Bill's The Daily Jot. And it occurred to me, "jot" strikes me as a diminutive sort of word. Surely his website could not have an unintentionally hilarious name. Surely. Right?

? A person of small intelligence, or of low condition.

1362 LANGL. P. Pl. A. XI. 301 Souteris and seweris suche lewide iottis [v.r. iuttis] Percen wi a pater noster e paleis of heuene. [So B. x. 460 iottes, iuttes.]

Thank you, OED!

HJ