He has really left the building. As you may know, he departed freethoughtblogs rather acrimoniously, took a few potshots at Natalie, and returned to his old blog. He also created a second blog, which I guess I’ll recommend to you: Loftus Unleashed.
I have no idea what is going on in his head. I don’t think I want to know, but I hope he’s got a few real-life friends to help him out.
It truly does, and someone has caught us out and published a stunning exposé that reveals the horrible, awful behavior that our goddess, Nature, endorses. You must read “God Hates Checkered Whiptail Lizards!!!” and weep. This is but one page of a devastating revelation.
(Also on Sb)
Poor dinosaurs. They’re constantly getting dragooned onto the side of stupidity: the creationists love to pretend that dinosaurs frolicked with human beings, no doubt because damning them as a myth would remove them from the profitable lunchbox and Saturday morning cartoon market, and leave them without any tools to appeal to youngsters.
But now they’ve gone too far. There is a theme park in Virginia that imagines (key word, that: if only the creationists would recognize the imaginary nature of their mythology) that Yankee soldiers discover a lost valley populated with dinosaurs, and try to draft them to fight in the War of Northern Aggression. The dinosaurs will have nothing to do with it, and instead fight for the Confederacy. Of course. Dinosaurs are obsolete antiques with itty-bitty brains, so it’s only natural that they’d side with the South.
Hallelujah! At long last, we can reconcile Jesus and science — all we need is to know a little quantum physics. Very little quantum physics. So little that we can get it all wrong, and it really doesn’t matter. Heed this call to improve the world by having Christians embrace physics!
It is time for the spiritually faithful to openly support the acceptance of this new science, which is called quantum physics theory. It replaces Newtonian physics theory, which is based on concepts developed in the 17th century when scientists separated themselves from the Church of Rome to avoid being burned at the stake when their discoveries were at variance with the teachings of the church.
Uh, hey, what? I had no idea that Newtonian physics was a cop-out to avoid conflict with Catholicism. The things you learn on the interwebs…
The Newtonian physics the-ory describes most day-to-day physical phenomena well, but does not support concepts of intuitive, spiritual or other "nonphysical" phenomena, such as electricity and field theories.
This is getting weirder and weirder: electricity is non-physical? It’s an intuitive, spiritual phenomenon? I know James Clerk Maxwell was a devout evangelical Christian, but he managed to keep all of that out of his work.
I think you can see where this is going: wicked Catholic-appeasing Newton doesn’t support spirituality (which is already ridiculous and ahistorical), but quantum physics does.
Quantum physics theory sees the universe as an infinite, interactive field of energy patterns (quantum holograms) in which the true intentions of humankind influence the application of infinite sources of energy in our physical world.
See?
I don’t think quantum physics includes human intention as a factor at all. This sounds more like Deepak Chopra’s version of physics, i.e., total bugwackin’ nonsense.
So how does this guy justify this idiosyncratic version of physics? By personal experience, of course.
I have personally experienced and observed the moving of physical objects, the changing of chemical compositions and the healing of sickness by means of true intentions, alone. I foresee a near future in which each of us "who does not doubt in his heart" quietly and without ostentation, helps to keep turning the wheels of industry, transportation and electric generation, as required. How many Christians truly believe in the teachings of Jesus?
I look forward to our bright future in which the prayers of devout Christians cause the turbines of dynamos to whirl about telekinetically, generating free godly energy for us all.
If you doubt this, you do not truly believe in the teachings of Jesus, who was all about magic-powered industrial machinery.
Did you know that Rick Santorum thinks atheism leads to beheading people?
“They are taking faith and crushing it. Why? Why? When you marginalize faith in America, when you remove the pillar of God-given rights, then what’s left is the French Revolution. What’s left is a government that gives you rights. What’s left are no unalienable rights. What’s left is a government that will tell you who you are, what you’ll do, and when you’ll do it. What’s left, in France, became the guillotine. Ladies and gentlemen, we’re a long way from that. But if we do, and follow the path of President Obama and his overt hostility to faith in America, then we are headed down that road.”
Which led me to a crazy thought…maybe the atheist symbol should be a little guillotine. I understand there’s a peculiar trend in religions to use an execution device as a fashion statement, so it would fit right in.
It would also be of some practical utility to cigar smokers.
And what overt hostility to faith does Obama have? Did you see his prayer breakfast remarks? He’s so fucking pious I don’t want to vote for him.
Do you see anything wrong with this table?
It’s bizarre, and it’s posted on the BBC site. There have never been only two human beings on the planet. The “births since previous date” column is absurdly precise — I could see estimating the total at 100 billion, but 107,602,707,791? Jeez, was that 6:21pm tonight, or 6:25?
I hope the problem isn’t that the data comes from an American source.
(via Further Thoughts for the Day)
I read this Guide to Pairing Your Comics & Beer a bit differently: I have opinions on beer, but not such strong opinions on comics. So I looked through the list for the beer I’d order, and determined from that which comic book hero I must be.
It was easy. No question at all.
I’m Batman.
Although I could be the Green Lantern in a pinch.
The latest edition of Randy Milholland’s Super Stupor mocks the ridiculous poses comic book artists contort their heroines into — you know the ones I’m talking about, the strange postures in which they simultanously thrust their breasts upwards and forwards, while thrusting their buttocks backwards and upwards, with their impossibly slender waists slung spinelessly between them (he also summarizes Liefeld Syndrome, a very scary disease).
But I questioned his accuracy. Panel 8 is freakishly bizarre; no one could possibly actually draw a woman in that pose, could they? And then, coincidentally, I was also sent a link to The 5 Most Ridiculously Sexist Superhero Costumes, and there, in the very first illustration for the article, is a super-heroine doing precisely the same weird spinal twist to face the reader and swivel her ass to face him, too, with one one leg splayed wildly in the air.
I’m sorry, Mr Milholland. I will never doubt you again. I guess there’s a reason I haven’t read any mainstream comics in 30 years, too.
(Jhonen Vasquez also has a marvelous send-up of the balloon-breasted, soda-straw waisted comic book stereotype, but I cannot show it here because it is totally obscene. Oh, all right, if you insist, I found a poor copy here.)
Ah, the 19th century…when mad scientists were really mad, and not only that, they were popular at parties. In 1818, Dr Ure and Professor Jeffray obtained the freshly killed corpse of Matthew Clydesdale, only an hour from the hangman’s noose, and proceeded to experiment on it with a battery in the Glasgow University anatomy theater before a crowd of spectators. In my youth, I had to settle for recent roadkill, a 9 volt battery, and a dark basement, all by my lonesome — my jealousy is acute.
Here is a small portion of the account of that day’s fun.
The supra-orbital nerve was laid bare in the forehead, as it issues through the supraciliary foramen in the eyebrow: the one conducting rod being applied to it, and the other to the heel, most extraordinary grimaces were exhibited every time that electrical discharges were made, by running the wire in my hand along the edges of the last trough, from the 220th, to the 270th pair of plates: thus fifty shocks, each greater than the preceding one, were given in two seconds. Every muscle in his countenance was simultaneously thrown into fearful action: rage, horror, despair, anguish, and ghastly smile united their hideous expression in the murderer’s face; surpassing far the wildest representation of a Fuseli or a Kean. At this period several of the spectators were forced to leave the apartment from terror or sickness, and one gentleman fainted.
The account of galvanic experiments on dead bodies is taken from The Young Man’s Book of Amusement, which on the cover promises to teach card tricks and how to make fireworks. You’d think an amusement in which the first step is to obtain a dead body would be listed a little more prominently, but I guess playing with cadavers was just commonplace in the year before Queen Vickie was born.
(Also on FtB)
First it was Stuart Pivar, deriving everything by twisting plastic toroids around; then it was Fleury, master of the swirling vortices, and then Andrulis, gyring and gimbling in the wabe. And now…The Thrive Movement. It’s completely bonkers. It’s got these high aspirations, striving to create a thriving world living in peace and harmony with nature and all that, and as far as goals go, it’s rather sweet. But then you watch the promotional video…
Ancient astronauts! Crop circles! Mysterious symbols! UFOs! David Icke and Deepak Chopra, mating! (Oh, OK, I made the last bit up…but they are both in the movie). Perpetual motion machines! Global conspiracies to bury the secret of free energy! People waving their hands over glowing CGI donuts!
Here’s their “science” proposal:
Let’s look to see how to use the lenses of the torus and the Global Domination Agenda (GDA) to optimize our solutions strategies.
In my view the GDA is focused on destroying individual wholeness and centralizing power over others. Surviving and thriving as individuals and as a species depends, I believe, on learning rapidly how to do just the opposite.
Through recognizing the wholeness of the toroidal energy form and the infinite abundance of the energy plenum we inhabit, we can have clean, inexpensive energy for everyone through “New Energy” technology. No war, no pollution, no combustion.
Further on, they announce that “Evidence continues to mount that we are all holons in a boundless holarchy, free nodes in a fully-interconnected, holographic and fractal universe of infinite energy.” None of this evidence is provided, of course. That would violate the first rule of kookery.
Let me tell you, though, I’m beginning to look on bakeries with great suspicion.
