I was going to totally going mock Christian broadcaster Jan Markell because she is scared of vampires, but it's just not happening. Not in the mood. Feeling uninspired tonight.
I was thinking, hey, why not do a white supremacist poetry slam? You like those, Bing, but then I got to the page where some wit had invented the JewKu, or haikus about Jews. That depressed the shit out of me.
I thought, maybe I'll go over and catch up on CrAzY CrEaTiOnIsT NeWs, but the sheer magnitude of the fucktardery, the never-capable-of-learning aspect is just crushing.
Finding Jihad? Please. Kill me.
I thought, maybe a podcast, but I don't have enough material collected to do a good one.
Blah.
Popcorn. Popcorn will make things better.
There. All better. Anyway, here's a story about a girl who bedazzled her poozle. (Thanks to Blue Gal.) If she can get her sniz "VaJazzled," I can get those disco balls I've always wanted!
HJ
Update: I wanted a visual response to DrCogSci's note that PZ had already made the disco ball joke:
Well, maybe not, but it had at least one entry solid enough for inclusion in the Young Australian Skeptics' upcoming Best Skeptical Blogs of 2009 Anthology.
It was a post written by my roommate, Animala.
Damn it.
But it is damned good, even if she has to sleep in the car. It's called "Shakespeare was Sicilian and Sort of Jewish!" and I ran it in April of last year in response to the news that several US Supreme Court Justices did not believe that William Shakespeare was that William Shakespeare.
Yeah, and now corporations have the vote. Do we see any correlation here?
Yeah, I thought about doing it tonight. I was going to call it "Rocking the Boat" and put it on the Ark. There just seemed something wrong about Noah sticking it to his daughters-in-law with the goats watching.
If you were to pitch naughty fanfic to God, what would your title and synopsis be?
Wouldn't you like to see that headline one day? Me too.
Anyway, this is a CrAzY CrEaTiOnIsT NeWs, something that I haven't done in a while. This is where I correct the numerous, numerous errors of basic reading comprehension that dog the ignorant subnorms at Answers in Genesis. You see, every week they send out an email of really stupid evaluations of science news. Every so often I pick it up, find the sharp end and return it to them.
So let's jam it back up their asses:
1. PhysOrg: “New Book Examines the Flawed Human Body” Evolutionists often point to apparent flaws in human design to ridicule the notion of “intelligent design.” Now, the author of a new book on “design flaws” in humans offers his perspective.
Feet. Feet HAVE to be a design flaw. I mean, really, have you ever looked at feet? On purpose?It's like someone decided to just break your legs forward at the end. And God said, "It'll do."
University of California–Irvine evolutionary biologist John Avise is author of Inside the Human Genome, which a press release touts as “explor[ing] the many deficiencies of human DNA while recapping recent findings about the human genome.” While opponents of intelligent design have used human anatomical flaws (real and imagined) to attack the case for design, Avise points to genetic deficiencies.
Avise is partially right and partially wrong.
Whereas you monkey-tuggers have been all wrong always.
While it’s true that, theoretically, both natural selection and intelligent design can explain complex systems, information-adding genetic mutations would be required for natural-selection–driven evolution to “create” features that appear to be designed. Such information-adding genetic mutations have never been observed, however.
Down Syndrome (extra 21st chromosome). Fuck you. I win. Sit down and shut the fuck up, you children.
2. BBC News: “Space Rock Contains Organic Molecular Feast”
A meteorite said to be billions of years old contains molecules that include carbon atoms. Is it therefore proof that life on earth could have been seeded from space? The so-called Murchison meteorite, which crashed into Australia in 1969, has been an object of interest to scientists for decades. In June 2008, we reported that a team studying the meteorite had discovered “components of RNA and DNA” in the rock, exciting those who believe life exists beyond earth.
Oh, and also people who believe that examining the contents of the early solar system can give us an understanding of how things got to be how they are. Oh, and people who think that life started here. So, a lot of people. You folks are useless dingleberries in the butthairs of scientific inquiry.
A new study, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, examined more of the molecular structure of the meteorite. By using mass spectrometry on a sample and extrapolating based on previous studies, the scientists identified 14,000 different compounds. Many include carbon and are therefore deemed “organic,” as carbon is central to all known life.
[...]
Well, sort of...Organic as a concept goes back to vitalism, and the notion that some things are the stuff of life. There are lots of simple compounds that qualify, and we really should not be surprised to find some of these in the early stuff of the solar system. I mean, carbon is pretty low on the periodical table, it will be made in relative abundance in the furnaces of dying stars. So there is stuff about. If you are going to experiment with making chocolate chip cookies, you have to have the chocolate chips, is what they are saying. And you seem to omit the really important part of the BBC article:
The researchers says the identification of many different chemicals shows the primordial Solar System probably had a higher molecular diversity than Earth.
There are those liberal academics going on about diversity again! Damn them and their molecular correctness! DUDE THIS IS 4.65 BILLION YEARS OLD! Your little belch of a world is so less interesting than the real one, one that links us inescapably with an unimaginably ancient past.
Like fossils, however, meteorites are subject to interpretation. That this meteorite contains carbon proves only that this meteorite contains carbon; evolutionists have no clear answer to how lifeless molecules could have self-organized into reproducing life.
Not what these people were talking about, red herring boy. And what, you do? How did God do it? How is explaining an unknown in terms of yet another further unknown progress? It's like blaming your haunting on angels or something. Grow up.
God, this is why I don't do this more often. It's the staggering dumbness of your continued public failure. Fuck. You are so depressingly pathetic, if you weren't doing it to yourselves I'd feel sorry for you.
Starting to see a pattern, no? A brown tabby pattern.
So the little guy, whose name changes by the minute, is doing better today. We moved him to my room, which is away from the parking lot and excitement of "outside." It's quieter up there, and he seems to be calming down.
I'm a wreck, but that's par for the course.
I really wanted to wind up and unleash tonight, but I've got nothing. I looked through my blog feeds and, meh.
I thought about getting my rage on over my bus driver, who was on the fucking cell phone when I got on the bus this afternoon. It's like driving drunk. Your reaction times slow and it's sort of rude in public, don't you think? You know, it used to be so simple. When I was growing up, if you heard someone behind you on the street having one half of a conversation, you assumed they were insane. But even though still I assume that most people are insane, now the maniacs have phones.
There was the large woman at the train station who was circling my bench saying, "Oh, I made a big mistake. A big mistake. A big mistake. I made a big mistake." I put on my sunglasses so I would not have to interact with the crazy, but she seemed to have the "guilt switch" flipped to on. There was also the guy on the bus who...I don't know who he was waving at enthusiastically, but I can't imagine that anyone would wave back, and he really did seem to be looking at me. When I did not wave like a jackass back, he marveled at how cold it was outside, as if we all somehow forgotten how we'd just been standing out there waiting for the bus.
Why was I out today? I didn't have to teach or have office hours. I was trying to get away from my new cat, which is a horrible thing to say, but his yowling, when he is in yowling mode, scrapes against my very spinal cord. I just can't take it. I got nothing done at work, of course. I went to the library to attempt some grading, but just as I settled down to work in the silent area, a student and her physics tutor sat down next to me. They were going over Newton's laws of motion, which I thought were very basic. This poor girl was having a hell of a time with some pretty basic concepts. Anyway, I decided that I would rather listen to the yowling than try to work with loud, uncomfortably incompetent physics happening in my ear.
I broke out the sardines today. The little nipper had not eaten in 24 hours, and I was a little concerned. So, I broke out the fish. It smelled so awful, you knew the cat would love it. He did. And then he took a nap next to me, which was nice. He was like a normal cat tonight. That calm room is just the thing, I think. I don't know how Mina, the cat who sleeps in my room every night, is going to fare sleeping in the hallway.
I only say that because this new blog is from Australia, where they live in the future and walk on their hands.
Mobyseven has a new science, math and miscellany blog that is a separate project from his regular gig with the Young Australian Skeptics. It is Divisible By Pi. Go there now.
The Amazing Randini is adjusting, sort of. Here's the deal. Ever since we started allowing him out of the bathroom for little bits, he has become less "I totally want to nuzzle myself up your nose" to "Everywhere I look I see forces aligned against me." He's suspicious, unsettled and clearly "pining for the fjords," as it were. I think it has to do with the other cat smells, and he sits at the window whining constantly and pathetically. Also, loudly. He wants out.
Can't have out.
Has inside now.
There was a sinking feeling in the apartment today that the whole expensive expenditure would be rather different than we had anticipated, but this is OK. I am willing to work very, very slowly with him to get him adjusted.
I ranted rather significantly about someone being a complete and perfect abusive asshole teacher when in fact the person in question was merely indistinguishable from being a complete and perfect abusive asshole teacher. So, if you found a post in your email or whatever and it is no longer here on the site, it was a stunt taken out of context and should have been more careful to only have an opinion after I had a full grasp of the situation.
Bodie Hodge's latest... article seems to strong a word...argument is definitely too strong... How about botch? I haven't used botch in a while.
In Bodie's most recent botch, he asks the questions that any skeptic would ask of biblical literalists, and he's answering them badly. Very, very badly. Again. His most recent subtraction from the wealth of human knowledge is called: "Is Original Sin (Sin Nature) Passed through the Father’s Genetic Line?"
The correct reply is, of course, "Who says there is sin?" What we see, of course, is Bodie floundering like a...flounder out of water, hung up on presupposition that yields absurdities that he thrashes about in a futile attempt to reconcile. He sees 3 possibilities for how Jesus could be human and yet be born without sin (none of which is, "I am wrong," which one must always reserve, no matter how great you think you are).
There are several popular responses to this (basic arguments given below) that show there is no contradiction within Scripture:
Father’s line: Jesus inherited genetic material from Mary (to be fully human, i.e., descendant of Adam to become the Last Adam) but not from Joseph, therefore, original sin must pass through the father to the offspring. This allows Jesus to avoid original sin.
Sin nature is not sin: the terms “sin nature” or “original sin” are not found in the Bible and are terms derived by humans when looking at certain passages. Sin nature is a tendency toward sin, not sin in and of itself. This avoids Jesus being a sinner.
Sin nature passes spiritually: original sin is nonmaterial and doesn’t need to pass along to offspring via genetics. It is passed along spiritually by virtue that all are descendants of Adam. But God withheld original sin from entering Christ in the womb.
Bodie, seriously, whatever. You actually posited a sin gene for a second there and did not end your sentence with---"PSYCH!" Also, I seem to notice that in your weird-ass theology, souls are inherited. But we are different people. So there is variation, you know, varying features. If the soul has anything with your chances of reproducing here on earth, HOLY SHIT WE HAVE EVOLUTION OF THE SOUL. Stop thinking, Bodie. You suck at it.
Well, how are we going to test these various hypotheses? OK, the first one is relatively easy. We could look for a sin gene on the Y chromosome. (Let me know how that one turns out.) If we find one, we can engineer a virus to fix it, and then we will all be like gods! Yay! Designer Baby Jesuses! The other two would take further research to adequately describe and quantify "sin" and "sin nature," and--Oh! I have it. What do you say that we build a person from scratch? you know, someone who is not a descendant of Adam! Then we will see if that person is capable of sinning! Science marches on, answering the big important questions.
Of course, Bodie, in his pipsqueakiness, does not dare to challenge the Bible, a laughably ridiculous document on a good day. He does something that great Church thinkers have always done, which precludes them from being actually great, he builds up great logical absurdities from goofy premises and then steps back and says, "Funk dat. It's a mystery!" And that's what they use as answer-substitute, a sort of metaphysical aspartame. Check out how the Catholic Encyclopedia regards a "mystery":
The Vatican Council has explained the meaning to be attributed to the termmystery in theology. It lays down that a mystery is a truth which we are not merely incapable of discovering apart from Divine Revelation, but which, even whenrevealed, remains "hidden by the veil of faith and enveloped, so to speak, by a kind of darkness" (Constitution, "De fide. cath.", iv).
Thanks, Vatican Council! Don't even try to understand this shit we made up, they are saying. You can't. It's impenetrable. It's a "different type of truth." Can you smell the bullshit in here?
Oh, wait, that's just Bodie:
In a discussion like this, it is good to keep in mind that there are many mysteries and secrets that belong to God. Even these explanations merely touch the surface and require years of research and books to cover this difficult topic. But the hope is that this short overview gives some food for thought.
Perhaps the most popular page on my website, just after the one that mentions actress Lisa Edelstein's fantastic mams, is the one about an "Academic Publisher" who hits up people for business. I think that that particular post is probably the one that most people go to when they are wondering whether or not a publisher is interested in their work. Academics would be vulnerable to such a scam because publishing is essential to tenure. It's the perfect trap. Here's what they sent me:
Dear Bing H. McGhandi,
I am writing on behalf of an international publishing house, Lambert Academic Publishing.
In the course of a research on the University of the Damned, I came across a reference to your thesis on "The Unstable 'I/Eye': Images of Blindness in the Geriatric Disability Fiction of Lesbian Eskimo Midgets ". We are an international publisher whose aim is to make academic research available to a wider audience. LAP would be especially interested in publishing your dissertation in the form of a printed book.
Your reply including an e-mail address to which I can send an e-mail with further information in an attachment will be greatly appreciated.
I am looking forward to hearing from you. Olga Bobutac Acquisition Editor
LAP LAMBERT Academic Publishing AG & Co. KG Saarbrücken Dudweiler Landstraße 99, 66123 Saarbrücken Germany
The following letter was waiting for me when I came into work today:
me an jesse haz bof bin downstairs and--holi shit--did you no dat dere is mebbe a cat in da baffoom down dere? no reely, we iz bof sense a darkness. u iz want us to call the sterminators or iz u want to do it urself?
Someone is going to be disappointed, because we took the little guy into the vet to see what type of shape he is in. He's healthy. No really nasty terminal viruses. He is now vaccinated and on the record as having people. So, he is staying.
There is the matter of a name, however. Gavin McLoud was cute for about 5 minutes. Chief "Gavin" McLoud was not bad for another 5 minutes. But these, I don't think, are his real names. As it stands, we have not named his selectively, only cumulatively. Every idea that we have had just gets stuck in the middle. So far, his full moniker is:
Chief Grendel Lee Harvey Oswaldcat Ragnar Hairybritches McLoud-McGhandi of Ulm.
What's the deal? The deal is that when we went to drop him off, the rescue place was full. This was a bummer. But he's staying with us for now. The other two cats are still locked up and none too happy about it. I think that we are going to get this guy checked out for various diseases and if he is cleared, he may stay with us. But I don't know. Gavin McLoud is not a bad name, but we are thinking of calling him Chief "Gavin" McLoud. If you can name that obscure reference, you win a cookie.
Some breaking news out of Ancient Egypt--it seems King Tut was in all likelihood not assassinated. Instead, he probably died of every conceivable illness, malady, and ailment that has ever plagued man.
The Case of the Embarrassing Baroness: "At the start of last week, Baroness Jenny Tonge, the Liberal Democrat health spokesperson in the UK House of Lords, told the Jewish Chronicle that Israel should launch an independent inquiry to disprove allegations that its medical rescue teams in Haiti are ‘harvesting organs’ of earthquake victims." And what kind of name is Baroness Jenny? It's like having Queen Buffy II.
TIME did a spread on the perception of US conspiracies against Pakistan, in which the Pakistanis conveniently forget that nobody in the States can even find their country on a map.
Teabagging birther conspiracist fuck (too much? never!) Joseph Farah whines about how he is being lied about in the press. What goes around comes around, bitch.
My roommate, Animala, was looking through Craigslist for people searching for their missing kitties when she came upon a loathsome advertisement. And even though all I want to do is to go to bed, I am going to devote a little time to Spiritual Sharon.
I'm a Christian Psychic and Medium. Featured in a major Equine Newsletter, I've helped people all over the United States recover their lost and stolen pets. I don't have to be in person to help as I do most of my work over the phone. All work is kept in confidence. Please visit my website and read testimonials from happy clients.
A Christian Psychic and Medium. You're just a regular goddamned St. Francis, aren't you?
Of course, I followed the link! Actually, this is the second pet psychic that I have come across in Atlanta.
I love the story about how she discovered her psychic abilities:
I first learned of my psychic abilities at the age of 12 when an ambulance came roaring by and I knew the person inside was going to die of a heart attack. I could see the man's face and the paramedics trying to save his life. They were pumping his chest and I could hear the noise and confusion.
Really? You saw someone getting CPR in the back of an ambulance and thought that he was having serious heart troubles? You. Are. Fucking. Amazing. -ly retarded. Or did you spiritually see them? And how do you know you were right?
I tried to forget and ignore that I could see, feel and hear things most others couldn't.
Oh, I get it. You doctor said, "psychotic," not "psychic." Happens all the time.
Spirits show me what they look like, how they died and communicate with me through good old fashion pantomime. They make letters and point to objects and I put it all together so you can understand them.
Pantomime?
I went to France a few years ago and cried the entire time I was there; especially when I visited a church in Charte, France just outside Paris. Spirits were all around me; they had been persicuted and could see and feel their pain and sorrow.
Think of my sorrow when I read your attempt to spell persecuted.
I CAN'T READ MINDS AND I NEVER KNOW WHEN YOU'RE GOING TO DIE AND HOW. Boy, I get that alot so don't worry.
I connect with you first by seeing spirits, images, and words that can be sent to me one letter at a time; and then it branches out like a tree;
Oh, I know how you're going to die. You heart is going to stop beating. There. I'm psychic. Either that or an English teacher is going to impale you on their red pen.
Here are a few things to keep in mind before I do your reading.
And now the caveats! Check out how she almost perfectly describes a cold reading.
Let the medium know when they are correct.
Help me. I need to know what hits I have inadvertently found and I can't see your face.
Don’t attempt to confuse them. Be fair.
WOW! FAIR! YOU'RE A GODDAMNED CON, AND YOU ARE TELLING THE VICTIM TO BE FAIR! Also, I think that this suggests she has been tricked in the past, can't tell a trick from truth, and is also sort of aware that this is a game she is playing. She may think that she has psychic powers, but "be fair"?
Arguing or wanting things done your way makes it difficult for them medium to function effectively and may lead to failure.
Translation: "Shut up unless you agree with me, in which case, tell me. And don't trick me."
Something may make more sense by the end of the reading, or understanding the message may come at a later time after you have had a chance to think about it. So don’t be so quick to say “no” to what is given by the medium without giving it a little bit of thought.
"You may have to convince yourself that I'm not scamming the everliving shit out of you."
If you have lost your pet, this bottom feeder will charge you $75 for an hour consultation. But at least she does not guarantee results:
I promise to give you the best I have but please remember with any Psychic Reading, I can never guarantee the return of your pet or pets
Fuck you. In good ol' pantomime. She of course horns in on the most desperate, the person who is least likely to think critically:
It is a must that I speak to whoever has had the most contact and emotional attachment to the lost or stolen pet.
Then she gives them her victim this ball-shattering information:
I will see images and using my mind's eye, I will see the direction your pet went missing in relation to your front yard. I will either tell you north, south, east or west. I may see north west and so on. Most of the time I see the shape of a road or a specific building.
Flat road. Squarish building. You suck awful hard for someone who sucks as much as you do. Also, remember, you don't get your pet back. Because that would demand results.
She'll also prey on people who are scared that their houses are haunted at the scumbag-approved rate of $200 an hour. Spiritual Sharon, you can jam Fido's bone way high. You are a moral monster.
I know this because it makes the Siamese death cry. The Siamese death cry is a wail that originates in hell and passes into this world through the mouth of a cat.
How do I have a part-Siamese tabby in my apartment right now, I mean, since I don't actually own one? Well, there's a story behind that, as you might imagine.
I have a special place in my heart for critters. I pull over if I see a stray and take it in if I can catch it. My roommate is currently volunteering at 3 dozen cat rescue places, all of which are closed on Sunday.
This always happens on a Sunday. Fuck.
Anyway, I was returning from lunch and grading (well, commenting, at any rate). I was listening to my headphones as I walked up toward my apartment building, when there was suddenly a very loud, "Meeeeeeeeeeeeeeew?" And then I was set upon by a ferocious cuddle-bunny. He's young and looks like he's in good shape (but really, who knows?). A nice little crowd of people from other buildings gathered, but nobody had ever seen him before. I asked someone to knock on my door and get my roommate out here. Like I said, 3 dozen rescue places. We saw that he was lacking in the male equipment department, and decided, yes, he probably belongs to someone. We'll go see what his chip says. So, we caged him (he sure as FUCK knew what a cage was and did not like it one bit) and took him to a 24-hour vet around the corner from us.
No chip.
Fuck.
So, there's a cat of unknown provenance temporarily (very temporarily) living in my bathroom.
The other two cats are locked in my room right now. They do not even learn of the other cat's existence. So depressing. It kills me every time I have to do this.
He also just got a name: Gavin. Because Animala sent me an email calling him "Loudy McLoud." Gavin McLoud it is, then.
I had a really vivid dream this morning and I know that it had to do with a plot line in Buffy the Vampire Slayer...and something else that was going on...perhaps my students' online assignment? I don't know. It's frustrating as hell not to remember, because in the early morning it seemed so damned clever.
No idea.
I am tearing through student papers again. It never ends. I think that I have the next couple of months' worth of research and writing planned out. First, I've been promoted to speaker at a symposium I was slated to be a respondent at. It's about science. Why me, I'm not too sure, but I have something in the pipes that will be useful. (I typed "sueful," which unaccountably makes me happy.) I can't say I agree with the method by which I was approached to give this talk, or actually, promoted without recourse, but I can do it. It's a 10 minute talk. That's about 5 typed pages, if I remember correctly. I'll aim for 7. Next, I have a paper in St. Louis at the end of the month. That talk is sort of set in stone. Now, I am seriously toying around with the idea of writing an article about Mystery Science Theater. We'll see though. That's a little far afield of anything I have ever done before, and I'm not sure the editors of this particular publication will want to see a pedagogical manuscript.
And still I ask, "What exactly is my job?" I mean, I teach writing...but that's one component of an otherwise completely scattered group of interests which people encourage me to pursue for (hypothetical) profit. I have such an ill-defined life. I have relatives who excise cancers and tackle bank robbers (not at the same time, except for that once), but when I look back at my career several years from now, when I am old and incontinent, I'm going to be damned confused, and it won't just be the dementia.
I...uh...yeah. So, like, a few days ago, I wrote something about Christopher Maloney, professional bullshit peddler, and misery profiteer. So I got a reply, presumably from the turducken himself:
Anonymous said...
Hello, zombie drone,
Perhaps you missed the cry of your master, PZ? It wasn't me, please try to keep up.
To which my very civil reply was:
Dear Chris,
Lick it, fraud. How do you sleep at night? I mean, really? What's wrong with your conscience? Seriously, energy healers? Vaccine denial? You're a goddamned menace and deserve a damned thorough financial bankruptcy to go along with your complete moral bankruptcy.
I'll have you know that I have a long history of opposition to useless shitbags.
You will notice, you illiterate subnorm, that my original post says, "the people who support this bullshizzle" are the ones who did this, you ego-surfing sack of putrescence.
I vomit on your dog, you taint stain.
Well, the following ended up in my comments of another post, in which I said that Andreas Moritz is perhaps less than noble:
Anonymous said...
Naturally, you can reserve judgement on the basis that the universe is not a linear construct and we're all learning in non-linear directions.
Maybe you're trying to understand from a limited perspective, especially considering your quintessentially desperate linguistic intent - that is, your re-appropriation of the word quack...
Who isn't a quack?
What do you think about the anthropological relevance of very profitable pharmaceuticals and medical fatcats?
I despise those who subvert others from non-linear open-mindedness...
Nature is the chief recycler/undertaker and only those neo-sapiens who're brainwashed by mass programming fail to personally acknowledge and reconcile that with their own world view.
Maybe Moritz is less-than-genuine, but at least there lies the stimulus for curiosity...
The complex of big pharma and the medical establishment naturally would like to perpetuate itself (as a very profitable enterprise), so it will invariably quieten the voice of natural reason and the stimulus of a true healing therapeutic.
Let's burn, poison, butcher, medicate, whatever. Dicks, all of you and more - everyone for that matter.
Backlash upon backlash upon backlash. False doctrines and manipulation.
Chant down Babylon! Peace for ALL men/women! ;-)))
Dude, we gave alternative/natural medicine 200,000 years to not kill us and it failed. Get over it. What, is it going to work now that it comes in packages? You feeb.
I teach writing. What you have left me is a sample of mental illness. Seriously. Your words...don't mean anything. I'm sure they feel very good, but they are not stitched together in any but a grammatical sense (and even then...). I guess what I am thinking is that you need to buy a dictionary. Or a ghost writer.
Can anyone decipher what this __(insert noun here)___ is saying? Anyone care to have a go?
Did you see the photographic plates that led to the discovery of Pluto? Visual examination of these plates led to Clyde Tombaugh, who must have been like fucking Rain Man to pick up on that, led to the discovery.
One news item in particular reported that a meeting on global warming in Washington, D.C., had to be postponed because of a snow storm—and the accumulating snow in D.C. is certainly making people question the claims of the global warming alarmists!
By "alarmists" this cretin means "the vast majority of climate scientists."
But as I watched the news, I heard the proponents of global warming claiming that such a harsh winter is exactly what one would expect from global warming! You see, just like with the evolutionists, it doesn’t matter what the evidence is—they will always have a story to try to justify their belief!
Alright, Ken, you fist-ready asshole, here we go. Global warming leads to warmer oceans. Warmer oceans put more water into the air (more water evaporates...don't tell me you don't believe in evaporation either). This means that we will have more precipitation. (It also means that we will have more global warming since water vapor is a greenhouse gas.) We still have winter on this planet, and it does not need to get super cold to snow, just cold enough. (Indeed, it can get too cold to snow, as I understand it.) Therefore, warmer oceans can easily mean more snow on land, you holder of a baboon's pizzle.
Your problem is that you, and other deniers, are looking at this single data point and daring to extrapolate based on weather (which is local and highly variable), not on climate (which is long-term and more generalized than weather). Your arrogant and stubborn vacuity only confirms that you have no respect for science, little understanding of its methods and are a pathological failure.
So, I am going over the last bits of my talk for tomorrow's classes. Still working on the assassination of Kennedy. I was struggling to come up with a classification system for the various conspiracies, but then I went back to the Warren Commission report, and they already came up with a quite serviceable categorization in one of their appendices. So many of the "loose ends" that people look to are complete crap. They were answered in the first report and usually demolished mercilessly. The bullet on Kennedy's stretcher? Never was there. It fell off of Connelly's stretcher (of course, he was the one that bullet ended up in). The don't discuss the "magic bullshit" theory, so I will assume that this will end up in another category, perhaps one later.
Anyway, I think what I am finding is that the reason why a much larger conspiracy seems to be necessary is because the evidence is so damned good. I mean, it really does seem to damn the heck out of Oswald. Again, the lack of good evidence, the thoroughness of the investigation...all of this is really persuasive. Eventually, you are going to have to invoke that you do not trust the Warren Commission and accuse them of faking evidence, which of course you have in droves.
3 official investigations have found Oswald to be the lone gunman, yeah? I mean, fucking case closed. The points of contention don't seem to really to put a dent in the lone gunman theory. So, why complicate things?
The "speculations" that are addressed in the Warren Commission report seem to follow a clear pattern. They, like 9/11 conspiracy theorists, lean heavily on the testimony of people who don't know what the fuck is going as the drama is unfolding. Take for instance the emergency docs who treated Kennedy. They gave him a tracheotomy (right in the throat wound, it seems), and never turned him over. He was trached, you see. They did not see that he had a wound in his back because he wasn't flipped. (I imagine it was the exploding head wound that they were most concerned about. A hole in his neck was the least of his worries.) But they go out and tell the press that it looked like an entry wound. What we don't get from the conspiracists is that these people 1) did not do the autopsy, and that 2) they accepted the autopsy results from Washington. This gets spun as "the docs who did the autopsy originally said it was a shot from in front," which is balls all the way through. If I had more time, I would certainly go through the 1100 page pdf I downloaded of the report, but I have things to do. Like write a blog, for instance.
He seems to think that diseases aren't diseases, and that's...beyond ludicrous. Check out what he claims on his website!
[ ...] Andreas has been involved in developing a new and innovative system of healing � called Ener-Chi Art � that targets the root causes of many chronic illnesses. Ener-Chi Art consists of a series of light ray-encoded oil paintings that can instantly restore vital energy flow (Chi) in the organs and systems of the body. Andreas is also the founder of Sacred Sant�mony � Divine Chanting for Every Occasion, a powerful system of specially generated frequencies of sound that can transform deep-seated fears, allergies, traumas, and mental or emotional blocks into useful opportunities for growth and inspiration within a matter of moments.
I'm Bing's America, he would be sent to the gulag for the Ener-Chi pun alone. Instead of defending his "light ray-encoded oil paintings" "chi" and "sound therapy," he has done the more sensible thing and decided to threaten legal action against the people who criticize him. Well, FUCK YOU, you useless, uberquack, HIV denialist, and fucking cancer denialist (seriously, I didn't know that even existed until tonight). Either your conscience or your higher reasoning functions are severely damaged.
Don't worry, Andreas. Why don't you just listen to some energy-activated sound frequencies and then you'll feel better? Dick.
He's a naturopath. Naturopathy is quackery. Ergo, Christopher Maloney = donkey douche. What's worse is that people who support this bullshit and the cowards at WordPress have decided to take down the website forthesakeofscience.wordpress.com, which published legitimate criticism of herbalist bullshizzle.
Naughty. Join the trillions of PZ readers who are now crapping down donkey douche Maloney's throat.
Send him a pleasant, encouraging email at: docleroymaloney@hotmail.com, and (hey, my font got small) tell him to encourage WordPress to reinstate valid criticism.
A good class today, I thought. We discussed the Kennedy assassination. I did my best to show that there was in all probability a lone assassin. It's wonderful when you ask the question, "So, why do you think that it was probably a conspiracy?" and then get points back that you can demolish handily. There are answers to these questions, I'm trying to show my students, and this is how we go find them out. (I think that my best line today was that the "magic bullet" was "magic bullshit." That got a snicker.)
Nonetheless, my students brought up a couple of good points. I have a really, really exceptional student in the second class, a girl whose brains are practically oozing out of her ears. She brought up a few things that I couldn't answer. For instance, Why didn't Oswald get a lawyer? Very good question. So, I did a little searching afterward. The Warren Commission, about 4 months after the assassination, when they announced that Oswald had in fact been charged with the President's murder, they also mentioned that he had not had the opportunity to be represented by a lawyer of his choosing (that is not to say he did not have a court-appointed lawyer, but I saw nothing on that either way). His interests were represented by the President of the Bar Association. And now you know.
What else... HJHOP had its 400,000th visitor today. That was neat for a second. I know I spend a lot of time fawning over my website, but it is my precious little foul-mouthed baby.
I've spent a good deal of my waking hours going over scales on my guitar. Not really staggeringly interesting stuff, but there are some glaring deficiencies in my knowledge of the instrument that I am trying to remedy. Like, what the fuck is a scale? That type of thing. I sort of pieced together my own improvisational understanding of the guitar over the years without really caring, but I realize that I will never be as good as I want to be unless I start learning the fundamentals as fundamentals. The nice thing is that I have the motor skills already so following the scales is rather instinctual. I can navigate the scale fairly effortlessly as long as I am looking at it (haven't yet memorized it). I have a couple of licks that I have put together over the years that sort of take over when I am just futzing around. I have a feeling that I need to work these scales in until they become just as automatic. I'm starting with the pentatonic scale. Yay. Then I think there will be a blues scale.
Bodie Hodge's longstanding fight against common sense has reached the hair-pulling, spitting stage. He's been doing a series on really basic challenges to biblical literalism. So far, he has already introduced us to a species of vocally imitative snake that is unknown to science. Now what? Well, he gave us a sneak peak under his knickers a few weeks back and told us which questions that he was going to ask. I forecast his answer to this one (on the left) when he announced it and gave my own snarky answer (on the right, duh).
* Why do we get punished for what Adam did?
He'll quote the Bible about how we are all sinners or some such shit.
The answer is simple—we are without excuse since we sin too (Romans 3:23; 5:12), and we all deserve death before a perfect Holy God. To assume Adam’s descendants are innocent is a false assumption. Due to the sin nature received from Adam, death is coming for all since all have sinned (Romans 3:23).
Woohoo! I aced this quiz! Unfortunately, he goes on.
It is illogical to think that two imperfect people could produce perfect offspring.
But talking snakes...totally logical. Define perfect. Prove that there is something that is called "sin." Show that this sin thing is a shortcoming. All sorts of things have to come before we get to "two imperfect people could not produce perfect offspring." I fail to see how I need to be held accountable for being the natural product of two imperfect beings, completely against my will. But regardless. Now we get to the fun stuff:
Since Adam and Eve had both sinned and been cursed then it would be impossible for their children to be perfectly free from sin. So the real question is why would God permit sin nature to pass along to Adam’s descendants? Doesn’t that seem harsh? Recall, the Bible says:
Hebrews 7:9-10 Even Levi, who receives tithes, paid tithes through Abraham, so to speak, for he was still in the loins of his father when Melchizedek met him.
Consider that the book of Hebrews points out that Levi was in the loins (body) of his ancestor Abraham when he paid tithes to Melchizedek (Genesis 14:18-20).
If this applies to each person being “in” their ancestors, then we could say Abraham was in the body of Noah before the Flood. And Noah was in the body of his ancestor Adam when he sinned! In a sense, we were all in Adam when he sinned!
Let's hear it for cutting-edge 16th-century embryology! Notice the little angel in image C. And the little fellow doing a cannonball into the uterus in D.
So, you are saying that this is sort of accurate?
This is why we need sex ed in schools.
And I wonder, is Bodie really any dumber than the other people at Answers in Genesis, or do they know that they will sound stupid, hate Bodie, and make him the one to answer all the stupid questions? We may never know.
It was at Skepchick, and I was just pleased to see that some folks give me sloppy seconds after The Friendly Atheist, PZ, Wil Wheaton, Lifehacker, I Can Haz Cheezburger, and Roger Ebert. But I'm totally spanking Julia Sweeny! Woohoo! Any day now, I fully expect the producers of Wait Wait to call me up and invite me to be a panelist. And then I will probably sit on Paula Poundstone's lap and get myself uninvited, but the important thing is that I sat on her lap, and nobody can take that away from me short of inflicting massive head trauma, which, let's face it, if I climb onto her lap becomes damned likely.
As I look at this list, I realize how staggeringly predictable my personal preferences are. I'm just another member of the Borg. You can call me 10 of 9. Anyway, I am seriously appalled by my rigorous conformity. I am going to have to begin reading biker blogs (do they have those?), start a gator wrastlin' meetup group (I live in the south now), and maybe join a cargo cult. They won't have seen that coming.
It started in September with a post called "Ken Ham: Get Over Your Persecution Complex," in which I pointed out that every single FUCKING time someone in the media criticizes his idiot concentration camp (highly concentrated idiocy) that he screams and wails that his detractors are incompetent or malevolent. This also reminded me that Ken Ham has never once to my knowledge said that he was wrong about anything on his site, which is just yet another sign of his being completely estranged from reality and the self-correcting nature of science.
In the response section to that original post, a commentator named Christopher left a little pile in the corner, or, as I titled my response, "Christopher steps in it."
Well, Christopher is back and this time he's been eating lots of fiber:
Well. I just happened back upon the original comment page on which I posted and VAVOOM! I have an entire page dedicated to my comment. I am sincerely impressed. However, I feel I must (in the interest of not only YOUR mortal soul, but the mortal souls which read your much fair speech) herein respond. FIRST. Let's address the whole fallacy by popular/authority argument. I can sum this up simply. If every 'expert' builds their scientific knowledge and body of knowledge upon the interpretation of evidence given by those who come before them, then you will have a bevy of scientific bobble-heads nodding and saying 'amen - the genetic coding confirms creation of species via evolution (etc)'. This (for those who have ears) derails the idea that 'authoritative experts' debunking creation makes it ok to 'go with the (expert) crowd' as a logical argument. SECOND. Evolution in all honesty does NOT deal at all with the origins of the universe. I agree. However, this is REALLY the issue at hand when creationism is pitted against evolution. What IS the first efficient cause? If you don't answer this question, I could make any number of correct or incorrect assumptions. So who is to say that God did not create fossils? (Don't quote that as my opinion. This is just somewhere we could go by 'just examining the evidence around us' without dealing philosophically with the origins of the universe along the way.) I could explain ANY amount of scientific theory with God's omnipotence. THIRD. Mathematically, much of the 'evidence' evolutionists point to that would debunk creationism is empirically impossible to interpret. Geological evidence? How do you test in REAL LIFE the accuracy of a dating method that deals in millions of years??? Mathematically, someone would have to get at LEAST a 1% sample to say that repeating this experiment 100 times would give us the expected result. Who do you know who has tested this over 10000 years? Therefore, NO. The theory of evolution is NOT like gravity or the solar system. These things are measurable NOW. NOT over millions or even thousands of years. LAST. This all having been said, I will leave you with this. The truth exists regardless of my opinion, your opinion, or any thousands of 'expert' opinions. Every house must have a builder. Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth; and let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth, and walk in the ways of thine heart, and in the SIGHT OF THINE EYES: but know thou, that for all these things God will bring thee into judgment. Eccl 11.9 I will be praying for you. Thank you for your time.
Sorry. One last comment - a really BIG one that I cannot believe I forgot. I noticed in one of your links that you referred to 'hold[ing] God to anything like a moral standard'. I couldn't even read much further than that. You made mention of the Book of Job in one of your posts. THIS is what God had to say in Job: Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? declare, if thou hast understanding. I don't believe I have anything else to say about this one, except that I am amazed that we little ants shake our fists at an Almighty Creator and demand anything. Sigh.
Honestly, I'd rather throw this one to the lions, if you would. I have an immense number of things to do tonight, so if my more motivated readers could answer these questions systematically, I'd appreciate it.
Fuck it. I can't help myself.
If every 'expert' builds their scientific knowledge and body of knowledge upon the interpretation of evidence given by those who come before them, then you will have a bevy of scientific bobble-heads nodding and saying 'amen - the genetic coding confirms creation of species via evolution (etc)'.
You are saying that all scientists everywhere on the planet are bobbleheading "yes-men"? (Shatner, give me strength.) I am not saying that you should ever accept what a scientist says because a scientist says it. I'm saying you don't see a fucking plumber for a colonoscopy. There is value in expertise, of which Ken Ham has precious little. And you make it sound like scientists are all forcing the universe to make it fit evolutionary theory, which is balls, and if you said that in England they could totally sue you. (Of course, if you said you didn't like their sweater, they could sue you in England, but whatever.) I think that there is a staggering deficiency here. Scientists put their ideas on the line...they make predictions, and when the results don't line up, they poke around for a better explanation. For a sense of how science works, I'd recommend Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. What does creationism usefully predict? Balls-all, as best I can see.
SECOND. Evolution in all honesty does NOT deal at all with the origins of the universe. I agree. However, this is REALLY the issue at hand when creationism is pitted against evolution. What IS the first efficient cause?
How the fuck should I know? You are, however, explaining one unknown with another unknown, which gets you no closer to the truth. In fact, you have only compounded the number of things that need explaining. I'm not ashamed or even really concerned that I don't know the first efficient cause. (I mean, does the concept of "first" even apply in a singularity?) I feel no need to rush in with God to plug the hole in my knowledge.
If you don't answer this question, I could make any number of correct or incorrect assumptions. So who is to say that God did not create fossils? (Don't quote that as my opinion. This is just somewhere we could go by 'just examining the evidence around us' without dealing philosophically with the origins of the universe along the way.) I could explain ANY amount of scientific theory with God's omnipotence.
Which is what makes it useless. It's a miracle cure for everything that would require thinking (or in this case, only those things that you think you should apply the "god solution" to).
THIRD. Mathematically, much of the 'evidence' evolutionists point to that would debunk creationism is empirically impossible to interpret. Geological evidence? How do you test in REAL LIFE the accuracy of a dating method that deals in millions of years??? Mathematically, someone would have to get at LEAST a 1% sample to say that repeating this experiment 100 times would give us the expected result. Who do you know who has tested this over 10000 years? Therefore, NO. The theory of evolution is NOT like gravity or the solar system. These things are measurable NOW. NOT over millions or even thousands of years.
You know, if you put some salt on that brain slug it will just die and fall off. 1) Balls. You understand neither exponential decay nor what "testing" is. Let's start with exponential decay. I know that there are some physicists who are lurking here, but let's me take a good ol-fashioned English major stab at it. We can physically in real time observe that so much of element A decays into so much of element B and C at a certain rate. Armed with that information, we can determine the rate of A's decay. By looking at the relative quantities of A B and C in a sample, we can tell how long it would have taken for those ratios to be achieved by decay. With rocks, the initial quantities become fixed when the rock cools. In critters, the clock starts when the animal stops taking in Carbon-14. And these decay rates can be assessed in real time. It is up to you to show why the rates of decay might change over time. If you want to claim that the speed of light has changed over time so that we really aren't seeing objects that are millions of years away, you need to be able to explain that. Of course, either of these observations would earn you the Nobel Prize and highest praise from scientists (really), but the evidence is not there.
Evolution does allow us to make testable predictions. For instance, why not take the example of Tiktaalik. Going out to find an ancestor of tetrapods that has both fish and land-dwelling features armed only with a pick-axe, a shovel and mindless optimism is probably not going to end in success. But because we have a pretty good sense of what is where in the fossil record, scientists can pinpoint which rock layers they ought to be looking for based on evolutionary theory. They target that specific layer of rock and search there. And in the case of Tiktaalik, this is what happened. Working on the assumption that evolution is true and that rocks correspond to certain ages, they were able to find exactly what they thought they would exactly where they thought it would be in the geological column. Big win for evolution. Also, everyone knows that there are lots of similarities between chimps (like Bubbles) and chumps (like Ken Ham and me). There is a problem, however, that would challenge our understanding of common descent. Before we could go through and make maps of DNA (to be able to describe it as AGATCACATACGA...), we could image and count chromosomes. The thing was that chimps had 48 chromosomes and people had 46. So what gives? If evolution is right, and we are so damned close to the chimps, then we really can't expect to have lost chromosomes...that's a lot of programming to lose! When we could read the DNA in high resolution, we saw that two chimp chromosomes had fused into a single longer chromosome, and we could see the genetic markers of the ends of chimp chromosomes in the middle of the human particular one. Yay! Evolution! You can see real scientists talk about this on the Internet. You can also see an illustration of the chromosomes it if you follow the link to Indiana on that page.
LAST. This all having been said, I will leave you with this. The truth exists regardless of my opinion, your opinion, or any thousands of 'expert' opinions. Every house must have a builder.
Well, yeah, houses have builders. But we're not talking about houses. We are talking about Life, the Universe and Everything. But let's take your image and run with it. Let's say that you are walking in the woods and you come across a cabin. It's cold and getting dark, so you go in. Inside, the cabin is stocked with your favorite books, dirty magazines, canned meats, whatever. Is it more reasonable to think that the cabin was stocked specifically for you or that someone with very similar tastes to yours had lived there before? This is, essentially, what you are arguing--that the place is stocked for you specifically. I'm simply saying that the people who came before me were a lot like me (and were the most successful at thriving in that environment), which is why everything now seems to be perfectly tuned to my liking.
Sorry. One last comment - a really BIG one that I cannot believe I forgot. I noticed in one of your links that you referred to 'hold[ing] God to anything like a moral standard'. I couldn't even read much further than that. You made mention of the Book of Job in one of your posts. THIS is what God had to say in Job: Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? declare, if thou hast understanding. I don't believe I have anything else to say about this one, except that I am amazed that we little ants shake our fists at an Almighty Creator and demand anything. Sigh.
Is it ok for God to kill buttloads of people, which he does throughout the Bible? I want to hear you say that it is hunky-dory, Christopher. I only ask that God not be a genocidal maniac, and he fails at that really simple task. Repeatedly. The dude needs therapy.
Please don't pray for me. Just give blood or send a little cash to Doctors without Borders.
I'm still interested in my readers' opinions and responses to this. I'd personally like to see a burly brawl of reason:
In this, the 19th episode, Bing and Animala find Jesus. And beat him up. Also, Richard Saunders basks in the glory that is my website. Lastly, the podcast ends.
UPDATE: Are people listening to this? I'm not seeing any downloads, but I wonder if streaming it does not count as a download to 4shared, and I just have no idea how many people are hearing it. Or should I just be depressed?
And is he going to be talking about the state of Australia? For all I know, he may be an American, but still, so am I, and I don't get to make a State of the Nation Address. Well, not a televised one. I often declaim on social injustices in front of my cats, but it's hardly the same as a televised State of the Union, which is what Ken Ham is planning.
I know! What the hell is that about? Self-important much?
Oh, also, he's selling it. Zonkey douche. Nothing that man does can't be sold.
You can sniff Ken Ham's finger tomorrow at 8:00, if you have absolutely nothing better to do.
You pronounce the word "bibl" as "bibble," which really is just a happy accident.
Oh, if you have the means to shoot down this satellite, that would be swell:
SATELLITE COORDINATES:
Ken Ham’s ‘State of the Nation’ Address Available via Satellite on Tuesday, Feb. 16
PETERSBURG, Ky., Feb. 11, 2010—Biblical apologist Ken Ham, founder of the world-renowned Creation Museum, will offer his “State of the Nation” speech next week. Ham will highlight how far the U.S. has wandered from its moral foundations and will call Christians back to their biblical roots.
Ham will present his speech from inside the Creation Museum live at 8 p.m. EST, Tuesday, Feb. 16.
Ham’s address will be available via satellite for programming and news reporting purposes.
SCHEDULE:
1500–1515 EST Test Satellite Truck Color Bars
1930–1945 EST Test Satellite Truck Color Bars
1945–2000 EST Control Room Feed begins
2000–2100 EST “State of the Nation” Address
SATELLITE:
AMC16 (85 degrees west) – TX14 Slot B9
Uplink frequency = 14275.500 Vertical
Downlink frequency = 11975.500 Horizontal
Allocated Bandwidth = 9MHz KU Digital Band
FEC = QPSK ¾
Data Rate = 8.447974 Msps
Symbol Rate = 6.1113
IMPORTANT NOTES:
This feed is digital, but not encrypted.
The feed will contain lower-third name keys and the Answers in Genesis logo. There will be no station or network identifiers.
Broadcast usage rights are granted for airing of the live feed and news coverage purposes only. Any tape-delay or re-broadcast must be individually requested and approved.
Speaking of an inflated sense of self worth, he is also giving out awards in the Cretin Olympics.
According to Joe Jackson, the tree from which dropped wacko-Jacko, Michael Jackson was still murdered.
Alex Jones at Prison Planet argued that the label "conspiracy theory" is used to protect the feelings of big scary powerful people. OK, he says "diffusing criticism," but really, would uberoverlords really be scared of criticism? More often, conspiracy theory is used to point out unjustified or patently goofy criticism. Big difference.
FoxNews writer Jamie Weinstein cautioned the Tea Baggers (notice how often they come up in my Google searches!) not to embrace to woo-woo. And I was talking about this in class today, Joseph Farah appeared at the Bag-fest in Tennessee or Kentucky or wherever the hell their circle jerk was.
Did you hear? Obama is going to use Interpol to round up tea baggers! Why would you ever want to be near tea baggers, much less house them in your place of work? Here's my favorite paragraph from the Mother Jones article:
But thanks to Glenn Beck, the National Review, Newt Gingrich, and others, this obscure directive has fueled a firestorm of right-wing paranoia. Conservative activists warn that Obama intends to use Interpol as a "secret police" with the power to knock down doors and arrest law-abiding American citizens. No matter that Interpol agents don't even carry guns and have no right to arrest people, or that its American office boasts all of five people. And the hysteria over the executive order is not confined to the Tea Party movement. It has also reached the highest levels of politics—that is, the US Congress.
Lastly, in a conspiracy theory close to my heart, not in a good way...think of it like a wooden stake near a vampire's heart. Seriously, as best I can tell is that they think that the English aristocrat Fulke Graville was Shakespeare, you know, not Shakespeare. The reasoning? It seems to hinge on the opulence of his tomb, which is pretty spiffy:
'There can be no other explanation for the sheer grandeur of the monument other than that there is something very special there,' Professor James Stevens Curl of Cambridge University told me this week. 'Until we look inside we cannot know for sure what it is.
'What is absolutely certain is that the size, cost and magnificence of the monument are intended to speak to us. There are plenty of clues about what it might be, and they suggest this is an incredibly exciting find.'
The thing that I want to see is the evidence that there is a new Shakespeare hidden in there, or the unseen bio of James I or the remains of Philip Sidney. I don't see it surfacing in a quick search. If you come across something, please better let me know.
The child Bing McGhandi was found in a catnip patch under dubious circumstances. His interests include sitting on lily pads, flies, inflating his air sac to attract the female toads, listing his interests in series, and world domination. He is available for employment, tenure and parties.
Wanna talk about it? Contact me at:
littletinyfeardemon [little self-circling "a" thingy] yahoo [period] com
Good luck!
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