Wanna see something completely batshit?

I mean, really, primo lunacy!

Pat Robertson jumps the undead shark!

My favorite is the one about vampires. They can't say they don't exist...so pathetic.

HJ

"I know what I heard. I know how I felt."

Last night, I was at a charming Halloween party talking up Uhura with silver-foil on my head. We were talking about ghosts.

"I was in the bathroom at some friends' new house," she said, "And they went out to get carry-out, and while I was, you know, going, there were three hard knocks on the door. 'I'M IN HERE!' I yelled. I thought that they were back. When I was done, I was washing my hands at the sink, right next to the door, and it happened again--three hard, solid knocks. This time I was close enough to open it and yell at them. And there was nobody there. I was so scared I ran out to the porch and freaked out until my friends came home. They said that I was not the first person to experience that."

"Well, there are any number of ways--I'd have to be there---but there are any number of ways that the door could be rattled."

"No, not rattled. Three solid knocks."

"A train or..."

"I know what I heard. I know how I felt."

And there's the problem. You know how you feel, and how you feel changes how you perceive things. I was having fun, you know, so I dropped it, and told her I had no idea what had happened to her, but I would be really interested in seeing it if I could. She was smart though, and she was well aware that she had been "primed" (she used that word) by media to entertain the idea that it was a haunting.

Next was an older member of my new department:

"I was on the road to San Juan, where I taught English for 20 years, and I was driving down into a valley, and then I saw this vast dark triangle in the sky. It was moving and it stopped."

"Was it at night?"

"Yes, and without prompting, I pulled over and I asked my kids if they saw something in the sky and they said yes." (I pointed out that the way she phrased it she was prompting them.) "To this day they don't talk about it, but if you ask them, they'll tell you they saw it."

"Did it stop when you stopped?"

"No, it stopped before. And down there they know that there are a lot of countries...you would be surprised at how much secret stuff is underwater off the coast there."

"I really wouldn't. There are all sorts of things out there from all sorts of countries."

Another person who was in on the conversation asked, "I think that Bing...Bing were you leading up to something when you asked about it stopping?"

"No, nothing in particular," I asked the woman telling the story. "What type of things are they testing out there? Could you give me an example?"

"Lots of things." I kid you not. That was her response. Not an example. I don't know. Maybe living off of the coast and in the shadow of the US breeds conspiracism. I think that is possible. But my coworker was adamant that she did not know what it was, and she thought it might have been a government project. I told her that was more likely than aliens. But I did not know what it was.

Then there was the Christian. "Do you believe that there is a dark side?"

I may have blinked. "Well, I know... I know that I live in an envelope, and the envelope is the real world. I'm inside it, it's all around me and I can't see outside of it. I am limited to knowing what is in the envelope."

"Well, God can be anything. He can be an overweight black woman who likes cooking."

"So, God's the Oracle in The Matrix."

Uhura started laughing, and so did Animala, who was also festooned in a silver cap and was going as "Jiffy Pop." "I was just thinking the same thing!" Uhura said.

"But the devil," the Christian said, "He can be anywhere, in the darkness, in the doubt and what we don't know."

"But doubt is a perfectly respectable position. I think it is OK to not know things. It gives us something to look at and think about."

"Oh, I agree we can't know what's on the other side of the envelope. I'm a Christian, you see." ("NO!" I thought) "And the Bible says that there is a devil."

"Yeah, but do you see what you just did. You said that we can't see what's outside of the envelope, but in the same breath you said that the Bible allows you to see outside of the envelope. It can't be both ways."

I'm a lot of fun at parties. No, really. Read my "about me" section.

HJ

Worldview Weekend publishes joke: Sean McDowell Reviewing Dawkins

Sean McDowell has an almost boundless capacity to humiliate himself and not realize it. It's a comic golden goose! Anyway, showing his typical lack of discernment, Brannon Howse ran McDowell's review of The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution. (Warning: do not drink milk while reading the review, unless you want to make cheese in your keyboard.)

I love a good challenge.

Remember that line, folks.

I would much rather read a difficult book that makes me think deeply about my convictions than one that provokes little thought. This is why I eagerly anticipated the release of The Greatest Show on Earth, by Richard Dawkins.

With The Blind Watchmaker, Climbing Mount Improbable, River Out of Eden, and many more, Dawkins has established himself as one of the foremost contemporary defenders of Darwinian evolution. As soon as a copy of his book arrived at my doorstep, I enthusiastically opened the Amazon.com box and jumped right into the book, hoping to be challenged to take another hard look at the evidence for evolution.

With this background information in mind, it's difficult to express how disappointed I was at the demeaning rhetoric and lack of substance that characterizes The Greatest Show on Earth.

Lack of substance? Were you reading the same book that I was?

First off, Dawkins utterly refuses to engage with any serious evolution skeptics.

Oh, I see. By "substance" you mean "wallowing in my own personal intellectual cesspool." That's the thing. This was not a book about you or your weird, intellectually bankrupt religious movement. If you had read and understood the book, you might have encountered the explanation of how the book got its title. A reader sent Dawkins a T-shirt that says: "Evolution: The Greatest Show on Earth, The Only Game in Town." You are not playing that game, and therefore do not reside in said town, by which I mean his book. Your side has amply failed to contribute to the accumulation of knowledge. Do you really think that a social historian of Germany in the 20th Century should refer to Holocaust deniers or take them at all seriously? That's the magnitude of the concession you seem to be demanding from the onset. Or to use Dawkins' example, should a teacher of classics seriously have to consider the opinion of someone who says that the Roman Empire never existed? Heck no.

He ignores the work of Jonathan Wells (Ph.D. from UC Berkeley)

Your first superstar is the guy who said this at the Kansas monkey trial?

I became convinced that the Darwinian theory is false because it conflicts with the evidence...I think the earth is probably four-and-a-half billion or so years old. ... But the truth is I have not looked at the evidence. And I have become increasingly suspicious of the evidence that is presented to me and that's why at this point I would say probably it's four-and-a-half billion years old, but I haven't looked at the evidence...There are already scientists-- respected scientists in this country who do experiments on things that most people consider supernatural, such as prayer. When Newton proposed the theory of gravitation it was dismissed as supernaturalism because it was action at a distance. What constitutes supernaturalism in today's science may very well not be supernatural in tomorrow's science.

It turns out that Wells is the bozo who came up with the weird syllogism identified by Jerry Coyne (who McDowell cites favorably below) in his review of Wells's book:

Wells's book rests entirely on a flawed syllogism: hence, textbooks illustrate evolution with examples; these examples are sometimes presented in incorrect or misleading ways; therefore evolution is a fiction. The second premise is not generally true, and even if it were, the conclusion would not follow.

Now where did I first hear about this particularly weird idea that evolutionary biologists teaching from examples is evidence of evolution's fabrication? DAWKINS' BOOK! The example he gives is the "ascent of man" series, and while I can't find it right now, it's the only evolution thing I've been reading for the last week or so. That's where it came from. So he doesn't cite Wells by name. So what? I don't name the pig that became my bacon.

Stephen Meyer (Ph.D. from Cambridge)

The only person to publish Meyer's asinine "information theory" article lost his job after it was published because this editor had circumvented his journal's standards of review. Also, the paper was retracted by the journal. Strike two.

and William Dembski (double Ph.D. in math and philosophy).

Dembski? The guy who has no published research in peer-reviewed biology journals? None? None? None? The guy who stole Harvard's animations and redubbed the voice-over? Go for it. Dembski garners no respect from any biologist.

They have raised substantive questions for the mechanism of Darwinian evolution. Rather than responding to their critiques, Dawkins sets up countless straw man arguments and focuses solely on young-earth creationists (and not even the leaders among them!).

Why would you say that he sets up straw men (presumably about the intelligent design advocates, about whom he has been speaking) and then, in the same breath, say that he focuses only on young-earthers? (Anyway, they are mostly the same people--two words: cdesign proponentsists".)

Now, either Dawkins is unaware of their work, or he chooses to ignore it. The charitable response would be to assume he's simply unaware of the revolution in Christian philosophy, and the intelligent design movement. But this is hard to believe. Dawkins has refused to debate William Lane Craig, Stephen Meyer and many other leading Protestant thinkers.

Oh, that's just because it would look better on their resume than on his. They can go to any of his talks and ask a question, just like everyone else.

Dawkins is content to pick on arguments from decades ago rather than dealing with the current state of the debate. He is banking that most of his readers will not catch on. Sadly, he's probably right.

Are you going to talk about the book, the variety of arguments that he lays out, backed by evidence and the research of numerous scholars? Heck, are you going to cite even a single example in support of the point that you think you are making?

This is especially ironic since he castigates evolution skeptics for not fully understanding evolutionary theory: "It would be so nice if those who oppose evolution would take a tiny bit of trouble to learn the merest rudiments of what it is that they are opposing" (155). It's a shame Dawkins ignores his own advice.

Dawkins claims the evidence is so strong for evolution that doubters are "ignoramuses" that can be compared to Holocaust-deniers. On page 9, Dawkins says, "No reputable scientist disputes it." How can he say this? Since 2001, over 800 Ph.D. scientists have signed the "Dissent from Darwin" list, agreeing with the following statement: "We are skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life. Careful examination of the evidence for Darwinian theory should be encouraged." Why don't these scientists count?

Read carefully. No reputable scientist disputes it. These, Sean, must not be reputable scientists, at least not in the evolutionary field.

After all, some are from institutions such as MIT, Cambridge, Princeton, UCLA and many more.

What is with your academic name-dropping? It's sad. Lots of morons graduate from everywhere. Your assertion only means anything if you can say, "Everyone who graduates from X University is smart or capable of producing useful scholarship." Having been at some of these institutions for the last decade and a half, I can say without the slightest possibility of contradiction that this is total balls. I'm perpetually surrounded by idiots. In my new, top ranked institution, for instance, a new friend of mine was indignant when I pointed out that homeopathic medicine has no possible therapeutic effect besides placebo and no plausible mechanism by which to have any sort of effect. The fact that the day before I had taken 60 homeopathic sleeping pills in front of my class and made it to my meeting for him to be indignant at me seems to have made no impact on his perspective of the whole argument.

But let's pretend that every good school is populated by good students and excellent instructors, none of whom hold aberrant beliefs, and that everyone's boneheaded assertions must be given equal consideration, no matter how frequently or thoroughly they have been debunked. Have you heard of Project Steve? Do you see the people who are on there? Vets? Dentists? Professors of aviation? Philosophers of psychology? 800 people was all you could muster? The NCSE has almost 1200 scientists named Steve who agree that evolution is the best explanation and Project Steve has a higher proportion of people in the biological sciences than the Discovery Insitute has on their list! Your appeals to false authority are daft and pathetic. When you consider that Steves are about 1 percent of the scientific community, the degree of marginalization you enjoy is vast, yet you would have Dawkins waste time looking at the opinion of this insignificant sample of non-expert weirdos?

This example is indicative of what seems to be Dawkins approach in the book: state your views as strongly as you can and completely ignore substantive challenges.

What are they, Sean? Seriously. Name one that is substantive. Seriously.

My second criticism of Dawkins book is that he fails to advance any new evidence for evolution. He points to poor design (dysteleology), biogeography, vestigial structures, the fossil record, homology, and more of the same old arguments evolutionists have been proclaiming for years (William Dembski and I respond to most of these in our book Understanding Intelligent Design). I realize this may not be his point, since he is aiming for a lay audience, but it needs to be pointed out, especially in light of how strong he says the evidence for evolution really is. Consider one example of how his case is remarkably one-sided.

Dawkins approvingly cites Jerry Coyne (author of Why Evolution is True), who says that the evidence for biogeography so strongly favors evolution that he has never even seen a creationist attempt to answer it (p. 283). He obviously hasn't actually read many creationist books.

Of course not. His time is worth something. But do you honestly doubt that he has not heard every tired alternative explanation presented from religious folks in the crowds of people who have heard him speak over the decades?

As always, there is another side to the story. The biogeographical evidence does seem to indicate that organisms (finches, mockingbirds, etc.) have adapted to their unique environments. But this provides little substantive proof for Darwin's grand claim that ALL organisms trace back to a common ancestor through a process of natural selection acting on random mutation. Most evolution skeptics accept the biogeographical evidence; they just question its significance.

The biogeographical evidence indicates that organisms experience a loss of genetic mutation from populations that were isolated through migration or some other natural circumstance. Thus, the biogeographical distribution of species is not the result of new biological information appearing in a particular species (which is what macroevolution requires), but the shuffling or elimination of pre-existing genetic information. While Darwin's theory can explain minor biological adaptations within existing organisms, it cannot explain how mockingbirds-or any other organism-first appeared.

You miss the point and don't understand mutation. This is why he calls you evolution deniers. You refuse to recognize that novel mutations arise. This just misses...all biology. Just saying that additive mutations don't occur, or that somehow they don't accumulate over time as they are passed down from generation to generation, doesn't make them not occur or make anyone take you seriously at all! You are looking away from the glaring larger patterns and the genetic evidence. For instance, why are all the monotremes, all of them, including platypuses and echidnae, in Australia and New Guinea? These are mammals with multipurpose bird-like vents, through which eggs and waste are passed. Did Noah drop them off there? You have to resort to, "Well, it's just like that," which is not good enough. Common descent explains it. Are you saying that the monotremes are an example of "microevolution" (which is not really any different from evolution proper, but you folks somehow fail to see that lots of what you call microevolution directly results in what you call macroevolution--it's all evolution to us).

Much more could be said about The Greatest Show on Earth. Overall, it felt like Dawkins could have cut the book (437 pages) down by about two-thirds without losing any key material. He goes on multiple tangents that, at times, made it hard to follow his reasoning. Overall, I can't really recommend his book to anyone.

So, you didn't understand it? Or your criteria for a good book is that it is not challenging? This would go far to explain why your side has not made any headway or, indeed, shown any capacity to learn. Real science is hard, Sean.

Look, you address none of his arguments, just bitch about how your crackpot theory is treated. Tough, leathery ta-tas. You don't challenge a single point about the various methods by which the age of the universe has been determined, the many and diverse ways in which evolution has been demonstrated. The genetics, for crying out loud! Which had the potential to deep-six the whole evolutionary project and only confirmed it spectacularly! You fail to engage with a single piece of evidence or line of argument. I thought you liked a challenge?

Overall, I can't really recommend your review to anyone.

HJ

And now for something completely useless...

This is least new-like thing that I have ever encountered.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2009/10/ghost_in_the_brain_an_appariti.html

Resist the urge to dumb it down, NPR!

HJ

Antivaccine bullies...

Amy Wallace has written an article about the antivaccine movement, "An Epidemic of Fear: How Panicked Parents Skipping Shots Endangers Us All," and by listening to the NPR interview with her, one of the most popular stories run on NPR yesterday, she has received a torrent of hate mail, aiming low and demeaning her, furthering research into the actual causes of childhood diseases not at all, and saving not a single child. Way to go, antivaxxers! If all you have is emotion, you are not going to be able to contribute to the solution.

HJ

This is not my first goat-fuck...

I've been on the web since I was knee high to a pole cat, but today was one of the dumbest damned computer training sessions that I ever had. I swear. My department wants me to make a professional web page, which is totally cool. I get that. But this afternoon, I spent a lot of time with a fellow who was really unprepared to teach a class of cranky, tired PhDs. There were cascading link-thingies, and CSS widgets and what not that all these kids are using today, and I don't know what all else. The dumbest thing was trying to get us to, as a group, photoshop a picture of ourselves for the web. I could have had kittens, I was so frustrated. Also, since I only learned about the class today, I did not have a photo ready, and they did not have a picture for me either. So I pasted Evil Burt into a picture with the dean and called it a night. What else was I supposed to do?

So, I farted about with generating a website. I told the instructor that I recognized all of the words that he used, but just not in that order. The other thing that was kind of goofy was that there were a number of changes that we were supposed to make to the entire website (depending on how deep it was--one page deep or more, and you'd have to make the changes) of the underlying source code. I mean, really, is this worth it? I will have an entry page and host a professional page elsewhere.

Anyway, this morning I encountered an ant mound. Ok, in the early morning light, I thought it was moss and pushed it over with my toe, and the sudden swarming was impressive. They weren't after me or anything; they were just concerned that a large section of their earthworks (which must have been built since yesterday's storm) had just jumped about 4 inches to the right, and that makes sense--I'm with the ants on this one. But it did give me a (dim) look into their little lair. What was most interesting, I thought, was the debris and shell husks and bits of leaves that they were carrying down and apparently burying. These caught my eye because they were the pale moving things that I could see. I will go back tomorrow morning when the sun is up and take a peek.

So, html mayhem and a science excursion.

I'm going to go read my EO Wilson book that I bought several months ago. Superorganism. He's a swell writer. I'll enjoy it, I'm sure. Just have not yet had the time.

HJ

2009 Golden Crockoduck Award

Pretty funny stuff. Thanks to Animala. (attaboy, Bananaman!)

HJ

Let us pray...

From Not the 9 O'Clock News:



and...


Not from Not the 9 O'Clock News



Here endeth the lesson!

HJ

Waiting for the front room...

I am waiting for my roommate to clear out so I can finish looking at my students' annotated bibliographies. It's the damnedest thing, Ghost Lab. 10 seconds into the show and they have already fucking ruined any objectivity by telling every single person on the team exactly what they hope to find. That and they don't even consider alternative explanations. They are looking for the ghost of a tattoo artist at his place of employment; he died recently; all of his friends, who clearly miss him, see him everywhere. Clearly, they are grieving. This is what grieving looks like. Instead of saying, "Guys, I'm very sorry, but this wound is too fresh. There is too much emotion here for you to be objective. Something would be wrong if you didn't think that you were seeing him. It's a normal part of grieving," they throw gas on the fire and then say, "Look at the thermal cam! It just got really hot!"

These pudgy motherfuckers deserve a cockpunch.

HOLY SHIT THEY JUST DISCOVERED THE CAMERA GUY!!!

Now they are looking at the sine wave displays of EVPs on the wall of the Douche Van. Class B? A class B EVP? Categorizing your delusions doesn't make them any more real, asshole. Discovery Channel, you suck. I think the ghost who is saying, "God damn you," is addressing the Discovery Channel.

Mike Rowe, seriously, buddy, isn't there some sort of conflict of interest in being on two ghost hunting shows? And besides, you already have a show of your own! An interesting, occasionally nauseating one. Why do you feel compelled not only to enable lesser shows, but put other voice actors out of work?

The only thing that I can say is that at least they aren't talking on the cell phone while driving, like the Ghost Hunters. That's like driving drunk! However, I have a suspicious feeling that the Ghost Lab Rats are eating while driving. Entire roasted pigs.

HJ

Ziztur delivers the goods!

This is essentially what I did with my class today. 3 times.




60 homeopathic sleeping pills. My first class did not want me to take them all. ("Just take 10, Dr. McGhandi!") My last class offered to get me a glass of water. I'm not sure what I did to them to make them want me to off myself, but whatever. My revenge will come while I am grading.

I may edit a version of it later, since I audio recorded my first class. But we'll see. I don't think that I would be able to, in good conscience, use something that my students understood was for me. So, no. I won't. But I did! And homeopaths can suck eggs! (Very, very small eggs.)

HJ

I would like to thank the antivaxxers for posting this stupid fucking edit...

Did you catch that edit? Like nobody would notice the big, convenient skip? Seriously, you suck, antivax scumbags.

It could have happened no matter what vaccine she got, not just the flu shot. It's as awful as it is rare.

HJ

Why is Glenn Beck trying to stifle investigation into his alleged murder of a girl in 1990?

It makes you wonder why someone would want to sue those who are merely asking questions about this important issue. I mean, if a girl was raped and murdered, why would anyone deliberately try to stifle the investigation. Some would say that his denial is perfect proof of his guilt.

Nonetheless, this obfuscation and refusal to deny any possible involvement in the rape and murder of an 11-year old girl, and whether or not he enjoyed it, is unacceptable, and we should demand straight answers.

HJ

Also, Glenn Beck is a donkey douche. (tip of the hat to JollyRoger of Reconstitution 2.0, who you should have been reading all alone)

Late night, brief post...

Tomorrow morning, I need to tally scores and record grades for my most recent batch of papers. They are looking pretty good, but my students suck at citation and bibliographic formatting. I will yell at them during class. That usually helps.

We start our section on alternative medicine in the morning. The book I am teaching from has a selection of readings on alt med. Also, I am going to swallow a buttload of homeopathic sleeping pills in front of my class tomorrow. That should be fun and gross. (Seriously, they taste like dissolving ass tablets.)

I got an email from my boss recently. I had submitted a version of my CV to him/her for a department wide inventory, or some such thing. They wrote back, saying that my publications seemed "skimpy." Ouch. I'm working on it, dude or dudette. I have stuff in the pipeline. I'm also waiting to hear from Awesome Prestigious Journal, who asked for a rewrite of an article I submitted. That's a good thing. It's not my fault that they are slow.

On the writing front, I do need to come up with a paper on a certain WWII writer, since I am giving a paper on him this month. I sort of dread it, but I look forward to the convention and seeing a number of my chums there. That's the important thing.

Ah, well. Off to sleepy beddy-byes. My day starts at 5:00AM and it's almost 12:15 now. Double ouch.

HJ

Hi!

Right now I am running an experiment. I just took 20 sleeping pills! Don't worry, they are homeopathic sleeping pills. Heehee. Next week, I am going to start a section on alternative medicine, and I want to do a demonstration that James Randi has done. I intend to be around for that.

Why would I even want to run a test, though? Well, here's the deal. These doses are absolutely tiny, of course, but they are not so vanishingly small as I would like. What I have is a concoction that is "Hyoscyamus niger 3X." This is also known as henbane, because it can kill animals. The 3X means that it started in a 1/10 mixture, then that was put into a 1/10 mixture, and that was put into a 1/10 mixture. Nonetheless, that is only 1/1000 of a dilution, which is actually detectable, even if it is not in this case dangerous at all. Seems there is a little rift in the quack community about whether there should be detectable levels of the active agent in homeopathy. Also, who the fuck knows what other filler is in these things? I think that popping 20 pills for each class should give them the idea about how useless these damned things are.

Anyway, it has been a few days since I've posted, and I apologize. Really, I am such scum. I do have an excuse, though, and it comes in the form of my parents, who came to Atlanta all the way from St. Louis to see me. Yay!

The first night they were here, I went with them to a place called ENO for dinner, a pretentious little restaurant that is absolutely not worth it. The food was skimpy, eclectic and blech. The steak was OK, but there was a lot of stuff to scrape off of it first. Good wine list, I suppose.

The next day we hit the Aquarium, which was supposedly, according to Animala, investigated by the douche-nozzle Ghost Hunters. I saw absolutely nothing ghost-like. I have a feeling that they rented the entire place out for a sleepover, which is something advertised all over the place there. Basically, it was a building they could be in overnight. Losers. But the exhibits were...stunning. Absolutely amazing. I'll have pictures and commentary in a few days, I'm sure.

Today was the World of Coke. Never do it. Pathetic. I did find out, however, that "I'd like to teach the world to sing" will be the soundtrack to my murderous rampage, should it ever come to that!

Alright. Going to go read. I'm almost through Dawkins' new book. Pretty good. A good basic science primer, I think, showing how various lines of evidence all point toward evolution. I should finish that tonight. I bet God did it. I'm just saying.

HJ

ACLU Tells High School to Allow Students to Protest ACLU at Football Game

That's the title of the press release, and I see no reason to not use it as the title of this post.

I love the ACLU.

HJ

The 122nd Skeptics' Circle is up...

Friend of HJHOP Richard Hughes has posted the minutes of the SkeptiCirc, Inc., board meeting. I know we don't meet that often, but is always good to see everyone at these meetings.

I am going to highlight two posts. One is the 2012 end of the world scenario as seen by, well, Mayans, which comes from The Skeptical Teacher. The other is from Heathen Mike, from Mike's Weekly Skeptic Rant. It's a debate with anti-vaxxers.

Speaking of taking skepticism to the streets, as I sat on the bus home from work, a couple of kids from a local college hopped on. I perked up when someone said, "blah blah Jesus. We make a cake that says, 'Happy Birthday, Jesus'."

"Really?"

"Yep."

"Well, you know that he was actually born in August."

"Christmas is pagan. The tree? It's a pagan symbol. Yeah, I read that the Christmas star is something that only appears in August."

"Mumble, mumble, the Three Wise Men or Kings or Shepherds."

At this point, it was clear that I was going to have to butt in: "It's possible that the Star did not even exist, you know." And they looked at me, and I explained why I was getting involved, "I teach a class about extraordinary claims."

"Oh, do you teach at Pretty Nice University?" one asked, pointing at my baseball cap.

"Yep. Are you students there?"

"No, we go to Rival University."

"Well, that's OK." And there was much laughing.

Anyway, I warned them to be skeptical, lest they turn out like this guy...

HJ (suddenly I want to puree a bass)

Thank you, Baptists!

A breath of fresh air from our religious fellow citizens. An article from the Baptist Press about fear and rumor.

Now be nice to gay people, women and scientists, and we'll be cool as drool.

HJ

Mike Adams, Health Ranger, on Sen. Alexander's man-hooker list

People get me steamed.

I recently started getting emails from a "natural health" dickhole named Mike Adams. He's pretty bad, and I have not seen him say anything right about vaccination...or anything, actually. The man is a walking dispensary of death.

But even completely useless dregs can be complete self-shaming cocks. Take for instance his smug "How to be a swine flu vaccine zealot."

(NaturalNews) Swine flu vaccine zealots are like zombies... they just keep coming at you, mindless... heartless... empty-headed and a tad funky on the smell, too. But I've noticed from observing the behavior of a few such zealots that not all of them fully comprehend precisely how to act like a mindless vaccine zealot. There's more to it than just parroting whatever the FDA says. You actually have to get with the zealot program if you want to be taken seriously as a swine flu vaccine zealot.

Haha! We smell bad! And you're a doodie! And you smell like doodie! Alright, whatcha got, douche-boy?

Step 1) Loudly proclaim you vaccines are backed by "science," but when critics ask you to produce that science, just tell them you don't have to because "everybody knows they work." (Then grunt and paw at the air from time to time for effect...)

Step 2) Practice scoffing. Scoffing is an important skill for swine flu vaccine zealots. When someone asks an intelligent question like, "Where are the placebo-controlled studies that show flu vaccines work at all?" simply scoff at them. This avoids having to answer the question because, as you know, there are no such studies.

Well, you can't count to one accurately, because these are the same objection. Nice.

When you do a search of the literature at PubMed under the following limitations:

Humans, Animals, Clinical Trial, Randomized Controlled Trial, Core clinical journals, MEDLINE, PubMed Central

You get 556 hits. So you can take your first two objections, sharpen them, and jam them up your ass, Mike.

Step 3) Practice making people feel guilty for not getting the flu shot. Blame them for pandemic. Just ignore the fact that the shot itself has zero ability to actually prevent the spread of influenza and focus on what works: Guilt!

And still, there is ample evidence that it does. 556 and counting, pig-boy. Sure, the sucker mutates like gangbusters, and it will always return to infect you again, but that's the nature of the beast. Luckily, you have no conscience, Mike, so we don't have to worry about you ever feeling guilty. Ever.

Step 4) Spread more fear! Guilt and fear go together like peanut butter and jelly on processed white bread -- a favorite zombie food! In combination, they work like gangbusters if you're trying to scare up some vaccine sales to generate billions of dollars in profits for the drug companies. In the absence of any actual science, just invoke fear! (Hey, it worked for the Patriot Act, too...)

There you have it. The weirdest, least connected, most surreal...string of words found next to each other in history of the English language. Seriously, do you have some sort of mental disorder? And you reused my word "gangbusters," pig-fucker. Get your own words. Again, 556 studies. Actual science. You have snark. I have science (and snark). I win. Of course the hypocracy of some man-tool who professionally scares people away from legitimate medical treatment to scold me for "spreading fear" could only be supported by a sociopath or someone with a systematic disregard for human life.

Step 5) Remind people that they are not doctors and therefore don't know anything. Then quote some doctor who's pro-vaccine (and probably taking kickbacks from some pharmaceutical company that's been caught committing a felony crime) and declare that no one can question them because they're a doctor. Doctors are God, didn't you know? Just ask all the victims of thalidomide... or Vioxx.

Dick. This is public knowledge. And it is up to you, you vacuous pustule on the inside of my ass-crack, to show...some sort of conspiracy. And everyone knows that people can sue doctors all the time! You fucking flipper-baby.

Step 6) Strip off the plastic coating on both ends of an extension cord, exposing the wires. Attach the two wires on one end to the temples of your skull, then attach the two exposed wires on the other end to the exposed slots of a live electrical outlet in your home. You are now "WIRED." (Want a free subscription?) This process will destroy any critical thinking regions of your cerebrum, disabling the annoying ability to think for yourself (which can interfere with what the vaccine industry wants you to think instead). Once achieved, you're half-way qualified to being a vaccine zealot, unhindered by critical thinking skills!

(Don't forget to grunt, moan and leave your mouth draping open from time to time, or the whole effect will be ruined...)

I take it back. Step 6 is the weirdest thing ever written.

Step 7) Defend mercury as safe. It's not that bad, really. What's a little mercury in your shot anyway? Ignore these inconvenient facts: A typical flu vaccine shot solution is 50,000 parts per billion of mercury. The EPA classifies any substance with more than 200 parts per billion as hazardous waste. (The EPA limit in drinking water is 2 parts per billion.) Thus, the mercury density in a vaccine is 25,000% higher than the level required to be considered hazardous waste. This is injected directly into the bloodstream of infants, children, expectant mothers and senior citizens. What could possibly be dangerous about that?

Except vaccines, even when they have preservatives like thimerisol, do not contain straight mercury. I point you to Skeptoid:

Proponents of the alleged link between vaccines and autism charge that vaccines contain mercury, which in large enough doses, kills cells and causes neurological damage. What some vaccines contain is actually not plain mercury, but the preservative thimerosal. Thimerosal's main active ingredient is an organic version of mercury called ethylmercury. Ethylmercury is naturally expelled from the body quickly. Methylmercury, on the other hand, is not. It stays in the body. High doses of methylmercury will cause physiological damage. However, ethylmercury and methylmercury are not the same thing, despite the similar names. Methylmercury is not present in thimerosal. In short, vaccines preserved with thimerosal do not even contain the type of mercury that activists say is dangerous. And even if they did, the amount would be too small to be considered a risk.

So what about your numbers? They aren't even relevant to the discussion, you feeb. You can scream, "Teh mercureez iz in mai vassine!!!1@#!" all you want. It only serves to highlight your ignorance. Hear that, pig? Now suck it.

I'm done with this bozo.

Fucking fool.

HJ

Obama gets 4 times the death threats as Bush, Jr.

How's that happy crappy?

I kind of figured that there were more threats against Obama than the tedious George Bush, but even I didn't think that it would be 4 times as many. What the fuck is wrong with people?!

Brannon, are you paying attention? Do you see what you are inciting? Are you proud of that?

HJ

HJHOP to Sen. Lamar Alexander: Don't make a "people I'm going to have killed" list

Dear Sen. Alexander,

It is with some urgency that I write to you and stress how important it is that you do not keep a list of people you intend to kill. Every single time such a document has surfaced, it has proven to be a great impediment to effective leadership for the keeper of the list. Unless you fancy yourself a teeny Stalin, in which case, it is really only to be expected that you would keep such a list.

I would also like to urge you to not keep a list of children you, Sen. Lamar Alexander, would personally enjoy sodomizing. Deciding ahead of time which children you intend to slip your senatorial meat into really is a barrier to effective child molesting and precludes many opportunities to get away with the goodies. And if you must keep such a list, Senator, be flexible and be prepared to seize on any opportunity.

While we are at it, I would emphasize how vital it is that you do not keep a Rolodex of preferred male and female hookers, whom you have rated by "Kiss on mouth?" and "Willingness to crap on me." While such items are of immense practical value when you need to get your freak after watching child pornography, you never know into whose hands such a list will fall and therefore it is best that you simply memorize that information.

And I would be remiss if I did not remind you to avoid keeping an itemized list of bribes you are willing to take. At the very least, don't let it sit out on your desk.

With all due respect,

HJ

Why is NASA trying to blow up the sun?

For an explanation of this video, if you haven't already, go to NASA's Astronomy Photo of the Day.

HJ

For want of a course plan, the semester was lost..

It's strange. I have given talks recently about podcasting to my colleagues and employer. I have a spectacularly mediocre podcast myself. Now that I am forced to discuss "the podcast" with my students, however, I'm a little worried.

When giving a lecture, it is always nice to have some sort of outline, some way to break down the subject matter. I mean, you can wing it if you need to, and I usually do wing it, but it is nice to have that flight plan to return to.

Oh, hell. I'll have some platitudes and we'll analyze an episode of Radio Lab.

HJ

Grandma, stop grabbing my junk!

Seriously, this is the most disturbing advertisement I have seen in a long time.

Watch your hands, lady!

HJ

Why aren't the reporters grabbing this kid and running?

It seems that our Muslim friends are also not beneath faking a lame-ass miracle at the expense of a child.

Is it me, or is that kid bruised?

HJ

I'm praying that you get well soon. I'll send you my bill.

My money worries are over. No overhead, no responsibility or standard of care, no expectations for outcomes. I am delighted.

If the Republicans wanted to whine about wasted tax dollars, this would be the bill. C'mon, guys! Be worth something!

From Orac, via Richard at the Young Australian Skeptics.

HJ

Follow up on balloon boy hoax

Following up on my drunken revelry the other night, I wanted to put together, well, sentences that expressed meaning in a way that others would be able to decode. It's been a few days since I've done that, after all.

They are nailing the hoaxers to the wall. Unfortunately, the joke is still on us, and here's why.

Today I was discussing hoaxes with my class. We discussed the various incarnations of the War of the World hoax, the Yes Men and the boy in the balloon. Let's look at the Yes Men, in case you are not familiar with them:

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/07202007/watch.html

Ah, that Bill Moyers is in excellent fooling today!

When I asked my class, "What makes a good hoax?" the first answer without fail was always, "It's believable." I pointed out that the stuff that we had been looking at was entirely unbelievable (aliens killing everyone in New Jersey, Vivoleum), and yet people still believed it. We decided that a large part of the success of these hoaxes was in the way in which they appropriated authority. In the case of the Yes Men, the mere act of standing on stage in suits as invited guests conferred authority upon them as experts to be listened to, regardless of what boneheaded things came out of their mouths. In the case of the War of the Worlds broadcast, the very fact that it aired on the radio conferred authority upon the broadcast, and the fact that it appropriated the conventions of radio journalism was the icing on the...un-iced thing.

In the case of these hoaxes, it is easy to see, to quote Marshall McCluhan (I thought that I would be original), the medium is the message. But where does that leave us with the balloon hoaxers?

It was such a bad hoax, primarily because it was insanely illegal and the message, if there was one, was "pay attention to me!" But the joke is not that a couple of ill-informed weirdos are using their kids attract attention, but that the media does not say, "Holy shit, these people hoaxed the ever-living bejeezus out of us and we swallowed it! Boy is our face red. Perhaps we should be more careful about what we report and the relative weight we give to these goofy things. Wow, I can't believe we talked about it for six hours! Whew!" Nope. Instead, we keep learning more about these sad and utterly unimportant people. Sure it's cheaper to lurk outside these dongs' house than it is to, I don't know, keep a science bureau open, but it's such a shame that the media is turning what I see as a complete failure of journalistic discernment into an ongoing media circus.

Congrats, media. The hoaxers got what they wanted, and you are the butt of their joke.

HJ

OneNewsNow Invents, Bewails "Viewpoint Discrimination"

The problem, it seems to me, is that science does discriminate against wrong.

It's a documentary called Darwin's Dilemma, and it is about the Cambrian Explosion, and its tagline seems to be "Where did all of the information come from?" Yes, they put the "ass" in "tired reassertion." The "information" came from inherited beneficial mutations. Class dismissed, assholes.

HJ

The balloon hoax...

I have learned that I can not spell balloon. My fingers seem to think that it should be spelled baloon. I have been trying to reason with them for the last 10 minutes, but they are pretty thick and seem committed to their ridiculous position.

Anyway, I like to think that the Colorado police read my drunken blog and decided, on the basis of my scintillating if somewhat disconnected prose, to pursue charges against the ding-dong publicity whores who pretended to launch their least useful child into the sky.



A good hoax should have a good message. "Pay attention to me!" is not good enough.

I am going to have my students design hoaxes this week in honor of these ding-a-lings. Well, we also finished our week on mass hysteria with a discussion of the War of the Worlds panic. Hoaxes seem appropriate this week. I'm think that we'll show a clip from the Yes Men.

HJ

Good morning. Time to go to bed.

Has a day ever just disappeared? Mine did. And for most of the time, I was trying to come to terms with our new alien masters.

When the disks appeared in the air, we did not have time to contemplate their meaning, like you do in the movies, they just started attacking. The lasers swept through neighborhoods, obliterating everything that they came into contact with--it was a lot like the heat beam in HG Wells' War of the Worlds, reducing every mote and beam of every building to ashes. There was much confusion about what to do--were we supposed to run or was it safer to stay put? I ran and fell in with a small group of people who vowed to organize a resistance band if we survived the attack. This sort of felt like a promise we really did not have to worry about making good on, since the chances of anyone surviving seemed to be almost nil. Had it not been for army artillery firing on the searching saucers from over the hills, the lasers would have certainly swept through the building we finally decided to hide in, a television station.

When the first shells struck the saucers and distracted their pilots, we made the decision to run back into the part of town that was already destroyed--there was no reason for the attackers to expect anyone to be alive there, as the destruction was almost perfect. An underground mall had served as an unintended shelter for hundreds of people in one section of town, and we found that otherwise completely ruined section of town surprisingly well-populated. Without a doubt the most disturbing sights were the bodies that still held lifelike poses.

My parents were gone. I imagine that they fled.

The distraction of the military units (which were presumably turned into globs of melted flesh and metal) actually saved a purpose. The saucers (yes, they were saucer shaped) apparently had orders to attack only for a day. Anyone who survived that first day was allowed to continue to survive. The first time I saw an alien, I was reconnoitering an area where I had heard shouts and the sounds of heavy equipment. I worked my way through the debris of what had been a housing project, wondering why none of the remaining apartments had any doors or residents, when I reached a window that overlooked a courtyard. The aliens stood in groups of two in the center. They were tall, maybe 7 feet, and traveled in pairs, a phenomenon I did not yet understand was related to their longevity. They were of all different builds, shades, textures and features: it would be completely impossible to describe a "typical alien," aside from its height. It turned out that they shifted shape quite easily. I saw no weapons, but somehow they managed to load humans onto low, gated pens that looked like horse trailers, but without wheels or any visible means of locomotion. They hovered and went to where the aliens silently directed them. The commotion was coming from the other buildings, and were clearly the screams of people who were being pushed out into the courtyard, also in pairs, and turned over to alien handlers who lassoed them around the neck with a flexible metal cord.

The one who caught me was had a face that came to a point, no eyes and no mouth. He wore an immense gauzy tunic, and it was clear to me when he appeared I was no longer a free human. I had conflicted emotions about this. On the one hand, I could no longer be expected to be a part of the resistance, which would have been a relief. I decided that I would look for weak points in the alien transportation and communication systems. Part of the problem was that the aliens were so damned charming...I couldn't understand it. They were clearly subjugating us, but we were fine with it, even after the person in front of me in line, when I was herded into the courtyard, someone stepped out of line and was instantly disintegrated in swift punishment. I was appalled by my reaction, "That'll teach you to disobey," I thought, but those weren't my thoughts. I mean, how could they have been? The cord around my neck, was it tapping or hacking my nervous and endocrine systems? I did not know, but as I stepped into the hovering holding pens, I realized that my handler would be with me constantly and that it would be nearly impossible for me to escape without him noticing me.

I had a moment of terror when a woman ahead of me started fighting, and her handler, swallowed her. He merged with her. Stepped into and around her. The creature, who I now abhorred, no matter how much guilt I was induced into having for that hate (the aliens were working very hard on mastering my emotions, which I knew would leave me susceptible to their influence, even if my reason remained intact) left the pen to look for another person to put at the end of their lasso. I pulled a tack from the sole of my shoe and carved a message to my future self, whoever that would be, on my arms. On my left arm: "Slave. Escape. Remember." On my right arm: "Guilt is good." The effort was immense, and the emotional agony I felt for writing such a subversive message on my otherwise unmarred skin was clearly disproportional to the crime. (Why was I suddenly worried about the condition of my skin? Why was I not worried about the state of my brain?)

HJ

Yessss!

Greetings from the smug one himself to the folks at Skepchick. You will be surprised, no doubt, to learn that I went drinking (sort of) with Masala Skeptic yesterday. I am everywhere! Muahahaha! I have updated my opinion and have adjusted it for sobriety.


I called it, and I called it early!

It was the boy-in-the-balloon hoax. It's just so wrong in every way, and stank stank stank. I told my 8:00 AM students (one of whom, by the way, wanted to interview me today for another class and said that they were going to have the best interview of everyone in her class!) that, as we move from the mass hysteria to hoaxes via the War of the Worlds broadcast, that I suspected a hoax from the dongs in Colorado the second that the kid was not found, and now I am apparently vindicated. I mean, when I saw it was flying-saucer-shaped, shit, it was over for me.

Also, I'm drunk, and that makes it sweeter!

*hic*

HhJj (seeing double!)

Quote of the Day

"How many times have you tried to explain a political situation to a family member, friend, or acquaintance and they look at you like you have three heads, saying, "no, that just can't be"? It happens to me a lot." --Bill Wilson

HJ

Jack Black is leading us into the light...of Darkness!!!!

"Dear Satan, please come fill me with your big naughty evil!"

Guest punching bag, James L. Lambert, is today's disposable columnist at OneNewsNow. I thought that I had never heard of him before, but it turns out that I once didn't write about him. (See this HJHOP "lost episode.")

His article is called "Prayer to Satan during MTV telecast - sign of the times?"

The correct answer is "probably not," but Jimmy comes up with another answer, but this is probably because his alarmist ninniness prevents him from being completely forthright.

During last month's MTV music video awards ceremony, actor Jack Black urged the audience join hands and pray to "dear dark lord Satan." In his prayer, the actor prayed that the musicians and nominees would have "continued success in the music industry." The awards program was broadcasted on the MTV network (a subsidiary of the Viacom Corporation) throughout the country through cable and satellite television.

Oh, that's why I felt a dark, intoxicating power the likes of which I had never experienced before rush through me like an orgasm! Satan wuz in the ayer wavez!

The Radio City Hall audience readily acquiesced to Black's invitation to pray to the devil.

My favorite bit was when they slit the neck of the goat and then bit the head off of a baby. That cracks me up all the time.

In a video posted on YouTube, Black encouraged the large audience to join in by saying, "let me see those horns." Black, dressed in a "muscle suit" continued by asking the awards ceremony audience to join hands during "the prayer." He then held hands with actress Leighton Meester while he prayed aloud.

Hm. Why do I think that this is perhaps not completely forthright.

Black's prayer went basically unnoticed among most conservative and Christian media circles -- perhaps because they feel the comedian was simply joking as he displayed his contempt for Christianity with the prayer invocation. In fact, this would be in keeping with Black's previous behavior.

It wasn't a real prayer, you Prep-H wipe. Do I have to explain humor to you?

The crowd is laughing, you retard! It's a joke! They thought it was a joke! He's playing on the old "rock is the debbil's music" adage and is suggesting that the people in the music industry have sold their souls.

In 2008 he participated in a video that mocked supporters of California's marriage initiative, Proposition 8. In commenting on that video, the Culture and Media Institute (CMI) said Black "appears as Jesus rebuking the Proposition 8 supporters while munching on a shrimp cocktail and saying that the Bible condemns eating shellfish too. Then he [Black] reels off some scripture references without context to suggest that the Bible is self-contradictory and unreliable."

So, you are saying that the Bible does not condemn eating shellfish? And what is the "context" you speak of? The shit you make up so that the contradictions only seem to you (and you alone) to not be completely irreconcilable? That doesn't count as scripture.

In their press release (December 4, 2008), CMI described Black as "an anti-Christian bigot."

So what? Who are they? He is an anti-bigot non-Christian. Yes, you can be a Christian and a bigot. Often among fundamentalists, these two go together.

Others claim last month's public "prayer" to Satan was just a publicity stunt to promote the new heavy metal video game, "Brutal Legend."

No idea. Is he in that? Sure, why not?

But regardless how one looks at Black's actions, it sets a dangerous precedent. Author and King's College professor Paul McGuire labels Black's prayer to Satan as "just the tip of the iceberg of what is happening in our nation and in the entertainment industry." The conservative commentator contends that "although it is hidden, Satanism is one of the fastest growing religions in America." He adds: "We can expect to see Satanists demanding and getting the same rights as any other religion."

What's wrong with that? Why shouldn't they get the same rights? And where is your evidence? And King's College London? Wow. That's pretty prestigious. Oh, wait. Are you sure you did not mean, "The King's Seminary?", because it sure looks like he is teaching a $45 dollar, 8-week course at the Pentecostal King's Seminary and Charismatic Circle-Jerk-o-Rama's equivalent of classes at the Y!



I love that the male host is the voice of SpongeBob.

HJ

HJHOP Podcast 15: Duets

Hi, folks. 4 hours before I have to be up to teach a damned class, and I'm finishing a podcast. Why? Honestly, I teach better when I'm exhausted. Seriously. I don't know why. I'm a morning person who is also an insomniac. Not a good combination.

Anyway, I have included a very special musical guest for you on this episode, which is my 15th podcast. Me! (But you need to hear it.)

Anyway, I have included the strangest audio clip I have yet come across, Answers in Genesis talks about aliens, and Brannon Howse channels Glenn Beck.

Sources

Angel Bling.

Our kids aren't at the bottom. Yet.

Answers in Genesis takes on extraterrestrial life by refusing to even think about it. That's the scientific spirit! "The Search for Alien Life"

Brannon Howse's show on teachers.

HJ

Liberal Puritan Hippies...

You thought that the Puritans were unpleasant, myopic control freaks? Dude, they were dope-smoking dropouts compared to the following unenlightened primitives. Anyone up for a good ol' fashioned book-burning?

N.C. Church to Burn Satan's Books, Including Works of Mother Theresa

I'm not a big fan of Mother Theresa, personally, but it's the principle of the thing. You don't burn books, not even ones by Cathy Caruth. Her awful Unclaimed Experience, which is grammatically correct but literally meaningless--seriously...how come I can't get tenure for stringing together unrelated words that mimic sentences?--held down my dissertation and forcibly violated it for a month before I had to accept that I was not an idiot and that she was scamming a lot of people, herself possibly included. ALL HAIL FREDERICK CREWS! ALL HAIL FREDERICK CREWS!

Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah. Christians who don't find really Christian Christianity Christian enough. On Halloween, these freak shows are going to be burning books in their ongoing crusade against literacy and reason. But also against heretical forms of the Bible, by which I mean anything not King James. Because Bibles are best when they are written in "ye olde" English (quick fact...that "y" in "ye" is a "th"--and now you know, and knowing is half the battle).

(Name the character, win a prize! Or, more likely, not!)

It reminds me of Texas governor "Ma" Ferguson's shrewd observation: "If the King's English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for me!"

HJ

P.S.: I know that the quote is probably suspect, but shit, it just sounds so Texan!

Good classes today...

I was in fine lecture form, I think. Probably one of my best teaching days ever. I started with a girl laughing in Tanzania, went into the meaning of laughter, and from there went into a long talk about mass hysteria. It's good enough that I might use it in my podcast, I think. I want to check myself and check the two versions of audio I snagged to put together the best version. But, yeah, I thought I knocked it out of the park today.

HJ

H1N1: Get Your Damned Shots!

Go here.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=113746160&ps=cprs

There, I have saved dozens of lives.

HJ

Discovery Channel: Ghost Lab? You're kidding me, right?

I wrote to the Discovery Channel, home of Mythbusters, to complain about about the presence of Ghost Lab in their lineup. This is what I got in return.

Dear Viewer:

Thank you for contacting Discovery Channel. We appreciate your
correspondence and for taking the time to share your thoughts and concerns
with us about Ghost Lab.

In an effort to ensure the highest quality programming, comments such as
these are taken very seriously. Each and every comment is forwarded on to
our programming executives for review and consideration. Maintaining the
integrity of all of our networks is our primary goal. It is these types of
comments that contribute to creating change and improving our programming.

Again, thank you for contacting Discovery Channel.

Sincerely,

Viewer Relations
Discovery Channel

Perhaps "integrity" means that my letter was read, since it rings negative in my ear, but who knows? The wording is too vague. I think that "thoughts," which is positive, sort of negates it.

Dratted Discovery Channel!

HJ

Working on a podcast...

I can only do so much at a time, folks, so in lieu of an actual post tonight, I thought that I would introduce you to someone who will actually believe anything. Anything. The prerequisite seems to be that it make no sense at all.

HJ

Contingent faculty...

I thought this bloke made some ripping good observations about the plight of academics without the full academic freedom afforded by tenure.



(Via Rate Your Students)

HJ

Sarah Silverman and All the Pussy

HJ
(From: The Primate Diaries)

The militias are getting belligerant. -Er.

From Crooks and Liars:

Also, here is a future militia member:



HJ

How's things? Swell, pretty much...

I am working on a new podcast--no really, thank you, no, hold your, no...I...thank you. It's about AiG and their goofiness. There may be some other stuff too, but for now...it will have to do. Actually, I did make a couple of podcasts for a work-related project. I tried the two-host dialog format, which went really, really well, and I may want to try here that in the future, if I have any volunteers to see how I could make that happen online....Just saying. Maybe we could do an "Interview with a Subscriber" format. I'd really like to meet you. I know Ben and Flavin personally (just to brag a little) and I met the PerkySkeptic and her husband at Dragon*Con, and I would like to know what else is going on out there. This could be fun. Just an idea. I have heard that Skype has a feature, but I don't know if they still do. The Skype stuff that I have heard sounds pretty good, actually. The work-related project that I was working on was to come up with a way to use podcasts in the writing classroom. I and my new office wife recorded a conversation about the subject. I took it, edited it down and threw in some goodies. I may have to re-edit it to use on this podcast, and it is not exactly skeptical (although I do make some references to a couple of skeptical things I have used in class). But we'll see.

This last week has seen me at a number of excellent public gatherings. U2 was a hoot. Colin Mochrie and Brad Sherwood were a lot of fun too. I have always wanted to give improv a go, even if it was a class. I already do what I call "The Bing Show" everyday in front of classes. Now I'd just try to be funny.

Oh well.

I have found myself involved with a sci-fi conference. I will be chairing the session "Space Ants and Their Relationship to the Poetic Corpus of the Minor Indo-Eurasian Midget Lesbian Eskimo Diaspora." (You didn't think I'd actually tell you which session I was going to be on, didja?) So that is coming up at the end of the month. I will also be going to another conference in the middle of next month to give a paper with some of my old pals from grad school. Good times. Building the CV.

I have decided that I don't really want to look for a tenure-track position this year. I want to enjoy the appointment that I have. I have time and will start up again next year. Of course, my current gig was one that I picked up on in the Spring of last year, so there is that, if the right position opens up. I have not seen a lot in my field, honestly.

Tomorrow is the dreaded lecture on citation styles. The problem is that we do not have physical style guides in my class. Had I realized that this would caused me to have to print up a cheat sheet and then photocopy them for everyone so we could do an in-class exercise, I might have thought twice about the whole arrangement. Damn it. But I learned something. Innovative pedagogy is damned hard to get right the first time, even when it should be easy.

HJ

Colin Mochrie, Brad Sherwood, genitalia and mousetraps...

I bought the tickets right after I arrived in Georgia. Colin Mochrie and Brad Sherwood from Whose Line were going to be on the campus of the Georgia Institute of Technology (acronym: unfortunate). The premise of the show is, "We're not making this up....we're making this up as we go along, which is entirely different!" And they tour well together. They played a number of improv games. My favorite was like party quirks on crack: it was an interrogation where the audience came up with a crime that Colin had to confess to. In this case, it was that while wearing a thong, a tutu and Mardi Gras beads, Colin had gone cow tipping and given a dog liposuction at the "Speedy Like a Bunny" Cupcake Inflating Company and Rabbit Courier Service in Sopchoppy where he had left behind his chainsaw. It took a while for him to get there, and I really think that Brad was using coercive interrogation techniques. The other game that was really funny was their closer, "the most dangerous improv game," they called it. They put down 100 mousetraps, took off their shoes, put on blindfolds and sang an opera (with lines that started with sequential letters of the alphabet) about putting up a Halloween house, all while snapping the shit out of their toes. New forms of punctuation were invented during that skit.


They were immense fun.

HJ

The 121st Skeptics' Circle

The 121st Skeptics' Circle is up at The Mad Skeptic. Do it for the children, won't you?

HJ

Here comes the crazy...

The first of the usual disappointments has, well, not disappointed. Bill Wilson dropped this trouser dumpling over at Bible Prophecy today regarding the Nobel Peace Prize that went to Obama:

And the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize goes to - drum roll please - the man who occupies the Oval Office. Yes, you read me right, OOO has won the Nobel Peace Prize. April Fools Day has come six months early for some, six months late for others. The Nobel prize is now officially on the list of grand political jokes. They say he won it because of reaching out to the Muslim world, banning interrogation techniques that might be considered torture, promoting peace by bringing a new global monetary policy to the nations, and deciding not to deploy missiles in Europe. He also has made a public commitment to end the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Did you even bother to read the announcement? Multilateralism + nuclear disarmament. Why do you even bother pretending to have done your homework? I often ask this of my less talented and unmotivated students.

But Americans may find OOO's actions far less peace oriented. Perhaps a new name for the Nobel prize is in order - the Nobel Appeasement Prize.

You suck at sarcasm. More than most people.

If this were the case, OOO would win hands down in a way that would engender an all-knowing smile from Neville Chamberlain emanating from his eternal post in the depths of the pit of Hades.

WOAH! Big slam on Neville Chamberlain!

What follows from there is a series of unconnected thoughts that might well have been cobbled together extemporaneously by the insane. Seriously, substitute Muslim for "terrorist" in this following passage and tell me that Bill Wilson's ideal president would not be killing or torturing as many Muslims worldwide as humanly possible:

Appeasing the Muslim world with a landmark speech in Cairo to a bulk group of terrorists and terrorist sympathizers; extending the olive branch to the world's foremost sponsor of terrorism in Iran; threatening the peace loving state of Israel that its American ally's efforts against Iranian nuclear proliferation is tied directly to Israel's acceptance of a Palestinian terrorist state; releasing terrorists into society by closing the terrorist prison in Cuba; restoring diplomatic relations with the second foremost sponsor of terrorism, Syria; scuttling a planned defensive missile program in Poland and the Czech Republic that was designed to defend against a future terrorist missile launch from Iran; Ignoring general's advice by understaffing the military in Afghanistan while brave American soldiers are dying in increasing attacks by terrorists; yielding the sovereignty of the American economy to the International Monetary Fund; supporting a dictator for life wannabe in Honduras over its Constitutional Republic; banning mission critical terrorist identification and tracking techniques...

See? Pure batshit. Eventually, "terrorist" loses its rhetorical punch when you refer to every swarthy person as a terrorist.

As an American, I do not feel too peaceful about the actions of this administration. Sources I have interviewed who are involved or were involved in national security say that the Islamic terrorist network is emboldened by the actions of this White House and that by banning some very critical terrorist monitoring practices, it is now not a question of "if" a terrorist strike will occur on American soil, but "when."

I refuse to believe that this misshapen doofus has "access," for a couple of reasons. 1) There is more than one Islamist terrorist network. 2) He claims to somehow have access (either directly or indirectly) to the mind of people plotting against American interests. If you had useful information you would tell us when, I mean unless you are with the terrorists. Heehee. 3) It was always "when" it will happen again. However, I think that it will be easier for Americans who "do not feel too peaceful about the actions of this administration" to do something awful. I think the Americans will strike first, actually.

The question of King David should be welling up in every American's heart from Psalm 94:16,

"Who will rise up for me against the evildoers? Or who will stand up for me against the workers of iniquity?"

Appeasement is not peace. And only fools believe peace is about giving in or siding with evil.

So, by "rise up" you mean what exactly? Are you threatening the President? Seriously, watch your fucking lip, you incautious man-child.

HJ

Predictions on the crazy reaction to Obama's Nobel

I'm sure you know this, but a lot of people will interpret the Nobel Prize as a sign of:

1) Obama working for the UN;
2) Obama controls the Norwegian Nobel Committee;
3) Obama is the antichrist;
4) This final proof an international conspiracy to elevate Obama;
5) Obama is becoming World President, for a One World Government...yadda yadda yadda...

I know that Bill Wilson is shitting in his stupid hat right now. BILL, IT'S ALL TRUE!!!! LOOK OUT!!!!

Jeez.

All I'm saying is that any restraint remaining due to shame on the right will disappear with this.

HJ

WTF? Bono is going to be fucking furious...

Did you read this? Obama won the Peace Prize? How? Waaaay too early (or, depending how you look at it, waaaay too late for the US not to be a hegemonic dicksore).


Update: I have been looking at the announcement, and I can see an inkling of why the Norwegian Nobel Committee decided to make this preemptive peace strike on Obama:

Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world's attention and given its people hope for a better future. His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world's population

For 108 years, the Norwegian Nobel Committee has sought to stimulate precisely that international policy and those attitudes for which Obama is now the world's leading spokesman. The Committee endorses Obama's appeal that "Now is the time for all of us to take our share of responsibility for a global response to global challenges."

I'll try to not see this as a judgment of how awful Bush was for the world, though I don't think the award makes much sense without that strong turn away from unilateralism. Give the man some time. Of course, the Weegie Nobel Committee has been taking a similar tact lately, trying to use the prize in a way that will affect change. (See the Al Gore + friends global warming award a few years back.)

HJ

Welcome to the trailer park/ We got fun and games...

Seriously. Do you goofy goobers have to not only confirm every single stereotype of rural Alaska, but also invent new ones? Jeezis.

Also, I would like to thank Skepchick Amanda for the lead on the funniest series of photographs I have enjoyed in quite a while. I like the TV that also enables you to walk into walls!

Lastly, it's official. 1/3 of all breeding Americans are too stupid to be allowed to breed.

HJ

Religious dongs: Is there any party they can't not enjoy?

I'm thinking, "No."

I had a blast last night. The U2 show was...stunning. Total eye candy, and I lost all track of time as well as spatial orientation. Just lifted up and thrown down a few hours later, dazed but better for the journey. The spectacle was enormous. The crowd was huge, about 65,000 people. They hit most of the songs that I wanted to hear, so I have no real complaints.

I like this last blurry one, because it kind of summarizes the craziness for me.

Now, my former office wife, the one who said that the opening band, Muse, made her want to "drive really fast, kill someone and fuck, all at once" (sweetie, if you do the other two together, someone's going to get killed), reported that she was 3 feet away from Adam Clayton. I can now report that if I were three feet farther away, I would technically no longer be at the concert.

My seats were a little bit of a disappointment, but I did get the full effect of the light show, which was nothing to sniff at. And there were points where the band seemed to reach out to the boonies where I was (top deck, off at an angle, about 2 o'clock facing out from the stage, about as far out as you could go). The music was a little distorted by the time it reached us, but they had the courtesy to delay the video so that it synched up with the audio we eventually heard. I will say that the political activism toward the end was pretty tiresome, utterly masturbatory and ultimately extended no farther than the inner walls of the Dome against which I was pressed. I can't believe that such protests have the slightest effect on the Burmese authorities holding Yoko Ono captive. (Ok, maybe it was Aung San Suu Kyi.)

After the show, I was pretty much in a daze, wonder what the hell had happened to me for that hour or two, and sort of stunned that I did not remember more, honestly. I had passed through a mirror-ball time tunnel.

Then I saw the sign:

"Bono is the devil."

It was carefully scrawled on the back of a piece of torn cardboard with a sharpie. I could only wonder what possessed someone to take time out of their day to come down and make an ineffectual statement to a crowd that would at best have been indifferent.

Anyway, there was no time to ponder the sign, as the crowd pushed us along to the rail station. Just inside the entrance, there was the strangest preaching that I had ever encountered. I want you to think back to the last time you shuffling off of an airplane. The attendant didn't care that you were leaving, only mumbled, "Goodbyenowgoodbyethanksbuhbyethankyoubiebiethanksbyemmhmthankyou..." in a tone that they had repeated the word "goodbye" so many times that it really was a vocal reflex, a remnant of a phrase that once had meaning. Well, there were two people sitting off to the side gently haranguing the crowd in a similar tone: "Youreasinnerblasphemerwhoreofbabylonfornicatorandyoureapervertsbuhbyedoomedtohelleternal..."

This blanket condemnation of, well, absolutely everyone was just so strange that I actually laughed at them to their face. But it got me thinking, I had received a card earlier in the evening as I entered the stadium, which I had not yet looked at. When I got home I fished it out of my pocket and on the front....


This argument (click to embiggen) seemed familiar to me. So I typed in the link to OneHeartbeartAway.org. It's the site for Mark Cahill's book. You remember Mark, right? Sloth from The Goonies? I've written about him before. He has (or at least had) this "are you saved" test that is completely rigged so that you can not escape the conclusion that you are going to hell. I would have thought that I would have noticed being harassed by a man-ape, so I assume that I did not come into contact with Cahill himself. But I think I detected his spray.

HJ