…or at all. I don’t anticipate hearing these phrases that comfort truly socially anxious much, and I just realized reading them that there are several of them I say often to other people.
Except that one about “meeting cancelled”. I love hearing those words.
Watch State Sen. John Milkovich make his case for creationism before the Louisiana legislature. He’s a Democrat. I’m so embarrassed.
This guy just sits there and lies his ass off, supremely confident that the truth doesn’t matter in the least.
Scientific research and developments and advances in the last 100 years — particularly the last 15, 20, 10 years — have validated the biblical story of creation by archaeological discovery of civilizations in the middle east that seculars said did not exist …
No, science has not validated Genesis. The Earth is not just a few thousand years old, there was no global flood, all animals were not created in a single week. Finding evidence of a civilization mentioned in the Bible that “seculars” never heard of is not evidence for all the miraculous poofing described in the book.
And what civilization is that? It seems entirely reasonable to me that the authors of the Bible would have good knowledge of contemporary cultures, and it wouldn’t surprise me if some obscure people mentioned in the Bible were confirmed by trustworthy evidence. On the other hand, some of the treasured stories of the Bible are being found incredible and lacking in evidence. The Exodus almost certainly didn’t happen, for instance.
there is some published research that a large boat or ark was found on top of Mt Ararat …
Published…where? On the web pages of Ron Wyatt? Because no, there is no credible evidence of a 4000 year old big boat sitting on a mountaintop in Turkey.
But hang on, here comes my favorite part of his argument.
the notion of instantaneous creation has been validated by the scientific study of heliocentric circles in rocks which is consistent with an instantaneous…I guess I’m asking this. Are you aware that there’s an abundance of recent science that actually confirms the Genesis account of creation?
He doesn’t say instantanous what — he just lurches off into more assertions. But still, I’m amazed at heliocentric circles in rocks
. What does that even mean? Is he saying something in the rocks circles around the sun? Or is this some strangely garbled version of Gentry’s bogus polonium halos claim, which, even if you believed it, does not say anything about instantaneous anything — he uses them to claim that the earth is young.
I think he’s just pompously pleased at being able to seem wise by babbling out a 5-syllable word. Incorrectly. Which makes him look like a world-class fool.
And no, there is no recent science that actually confirms the Genesis account of creation
. All of the science says that the literal interpretation contradicts the evidence.
Almost. I would love to have an all-electric car, and the new Tesla Model 3 has been announced. It looks good, but it’s not quite there yet.
Look behind the squid — I know it’s hard, why would you want to look past cephalopods? — and what do you see? That blurry poster in the background? It’s a space shuttle launch.
And now you know. This is a top secret program to train Euprymna scolopes to pilot spacecraft. They’d probably be better at 3-dimensional thinking than us, so it’s only natural. Quick, reboot Star Trek with a more appropriate cast!
Oh, I think it’s been done–the Thermians from the Klaatu Nebula in Galaxy Quest. Man, that was a prescient movie.
Librarians noticed something about their clientele.
Of the 5,000 people who visit the San Francisco Public Library every day, about 15 percent of them are homeless, PBS reported. After years of watching this underserved demographic float through to get Internet access, a restroom and often, just refuge from the cold, the library realized…
Wait. Before we go on, allow me to channel my inner Libertarian/Republican.
THEY REALIZED THESE PARASITES WERE LEECHING OFF THE TAXPAYER, SO THEY INSTALLED UNCOMFORTABLE CHAIRS TO PREVENT NAPPING AND REDUCED THE HEAT TO 50°F AND REQUIRED PROOF OF HOME OWNERSHIP TO USE THE WIFI AND PUT IN PAY TOILETS AND HIRED SECURITY GUARDS TO ROUST THE RIFF-RAFF.
Actually, that wasn’t their response. They realized…
it was in an auspicious position to stage effective interventions.
So, in 2009, the library hired Leah Esguerra, who is believed to be the nation’s first psychiatric social worker to be employed full time at a library, SFGate reported. Since the program started, about 150 homeless people have received permanent housing, and another 800 have enrolled in social and mental health services, according to PBS.
The success is due in part to the fact that the library has become a hub for homeless people, and that those involved in the program approach homeless patrons with empathy.
Holy christ, Jesus has returned to Earth as a swarm of librarians.
That is so awesome. That is exactly how a community should respond to the underprivileged and needy, by helping them.
Do you have to take a test for basic humanity in order to become a librarian? I’m not sure I’m angelic enough to ever meet the requirements.
And if that tingled your feels, you are now required to read this Superman comic.
I guess Ken Ham is feeling the sting of all those comments about the absurdity of his efforts to build a “life size” ark — he’s got cranes and steel reinforcements and concrete and a swarm of construction crews laboring to assemble his boondoggle, yet somehow, this giant imaginary boat was supposed to have been built by one guy and his sons 4000 years ago, out of wood. How to reconcile the contemporary tech of his construct with the basic woodworking skills of a Mesopotamian carpenter? Easy! Imagine they had super-scientific engineering technology that has been lost to us! You want proof? He’s not joking: archaeologists found non-stick frying pans in Roman sites, therefore, Noah might have had diesel trucks.
The truth is that we don’t know what kind of technologies Noah had—details are not given in the Bible. But we do know that all people are made in God’s image (Genesis 1:27), and man was intelligent, resourceful, creative, and innovative from the beginning. We also know people were already working with metals such as bronze and iron and were playing musical instruments (Genesis 4:21–22) long before Noah was born. People were also living over 900 years—imagine what geniuses like Sir Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, or Thomas Edison could’ve accomplished if they’d lived that long! By the time of Noah, they may have had technology we would envy today.
And we find evidence that this might be the case. In the generations after the Flood, Noah’s descendants built pyramids in Egypt and ziggurats in South America that engineers have been trying to explain for years. Since much of their technology disappeared with these civilizations, we still don’t know how they accomplished these architectural feats. But we’re continually getting glimpses of the genius of ancient man.
A recent discovery made in Italy sheds more light on the intelligence of our ancestors. If you cook, you probably know the frustration of everything sticking to your frying pan. Well, people 2,000 years ago did too! So they invented non-stick frying pans. Found in a garbage dump near Naples, the high-quality pottery pans featured a “red-slip coating” to keep food from sticking.
That is, they had pans made with really fine-grained clay, to give a particularly smooth surface. Yeah, I’m convinced. Maybe Noah did have CAD and giant cranes, because Roman pottery.
And for all that, his damned boat still won’t float.
Shocking. It turns out that Milo Yiannopoulos is ghost-written. Everywhere. He’s got interns writing his articles, his talks…I wonder if he’s so lazy that he’s got them writing his tweets.
Yiannopoulos confirmed in an interview with BuzzFeed News that he has
about 44interns —a mix of paid and unpaid— writing and conducting research for him. But he denied that other people write stories for him start to finish.
Two people write Breitbart stuff for me,he told BuzzFeed News, butghostwriting is too great a word.[Nope. Ghostwriting is exactly the word. –pzm] He said that the majority of his interns are researchers and that some write speeches for him.I have two books coming out this year,he said.It’s completely standard for someone with a career like mine to have researchers and assistants and ghostwriters.
A career like his…what career? He is, supposedly, a writer. What he does for a career is write stuff. He doesn’t have any other job. His wikipedia page identifies him as a journalist. He’s employed at Breitbart as their tech journalist — he doesn’t know much about “tech”, but I guess he’s as qualified to be labeled that as “journalist”.
You know, if he were calling himself an astronaut, and it turned out that the only people to step into a rocket were his paid staff and volunteers, It would be fair to call him out on that phoniness. If he said he was a movie star, but had a team of proxies who were doing all his acting for him, I’d wonder why anyone needed him at all. He’s got about as much of a career as a Kardashian, apparently, famous for being famous rather than talented, and mainly his job is posting selfies and preening.
And 44 interns? That’s ludicrous. What is there left for him to do after 44 people have written his text, edited his words, done all the labor of writing?
Worst of all, he’s outsourcing his writing to…goons from 4chan. That explains a lot, actually.
I really did. I got as far as the first sentence: Justice Antonin Scalia was among the greatest jurists in our nation’s history
, and decided that the flavor of that bullshit was going to be just a little too rank. So I skipped to the last paragraph, read Considering a nominee in the midst of a toxic presidential election would be irresponsible,
and realized that I have become wise in my years in skipping all the crap in between. What’s making this election toxic, I wondered? Has Hatch looked at his fellow party members?
Fortunately, a historian examined Hatch’s rationalizations for me. Reeking ordure confirmed, and that mysterious scent stinking up the joint? That’s cowardice.
If Hatch and his fellow Republicans want to vote against Judge Garland, they have every right to do so. But they should stop being cowards. They should make a substantive argument against him. vote against him, and accept the political consequences of that vote. They should stop pretending that this reckless path they have chosen is anything but a desperate attempt to hold onto a Supreme Court majority.
Dishonest, cowardly, and contemptible. That’s our Republican party!
Which ought to be a good thing, except that as we’re seeing over and over again, becoming visible makes one a target for the regressive ignoramuses of the world, as Arthur Chu describes.
Maybe we need an International Transgender Day of Respect.
I’m doing some sort-of local (on the other side of the state, that is) talks in April, so my Minnesota pals will have an opportunity to stop by and argue with me. The first is on Sunday, 17 April, in the Rondo Library in St Paul, at 2pm. It’ll be a slightly updated version of a talk I gave a few times last year.
Bad Biology: How Evolutionary Psychology Corrupts Evolution
The most powerful and versatile tool in your toolbox is the adjustable wrench. Not only can it tighten and loosen both nuts and bolts of all sizes, but it also makes an excellent hammer, can be used to punch holes in objects, and it also performs as a serviceable canoe paddle.
If that lack of respect for tools makes you cringe, now you know how PZ Myers feels. Natural selection is one of the most powerful concepts in evolutionary biology, yet many people use it excessively and inappropriately as a kind of quasi-miraculous explanation for everything. Most biologists know better, though, and realize that there are many other forces operating on evolution.
The dangerous aspect of the abuse of natural selection is that it allows the naturalistic fallacy to run rampant. If selection inevitably optimizes everything, then whatever is must be for the best – so human nature must be exactly what allows us to survive. This attitude is used to justify the status quo, whether it’s racism, or the superiority of Western culture, or the inferiority of women. This can only be done by ignoring the multiple forces that drive evolutionary change.
Prof. Myers will be explain what these other forces are, and giving examples of the abuse of science to justify several fallacies: so-called “scientific” racism and evolutionary psychology. He’ll also discuss how lack of knowledge of basic evolutionary biology can lead professional scientists astray.
Yes! Let’s annoy the evolutionary psychologists some more! They deserve it.
Then, the next weekend on Saturday 23 April at 10am, I’ll be joining the West Metro Critical Thinking Club to talk science education for a while.
STEM and the liberal arts: How do we teach science?
There is a constant push to change education from an experience that broadens the mind to one that focuses students on a vocation. We’ve got universities hiring business people with no educational experience to make them more profitable, and people seriously questioning the value of disciplines like philosophy, psychology, sociology, or anything that others disparagingly call “soft” subjects. At the same time, there are advocates of reform who think algebra is useless, and that we waste too much time teaching mathematics that, they think, no one will ever use.
I’ll be presenting an interdisciplinary, liberal arts perspective on science education — we need all facets of human knowledge if we are to adequately comprehend our own narrower fields of interest. I’ll be interested in getting a discussion going about what attendees expect from a college education.
I’m not sure of the location just yet — somewhere near the Ridgedale Mall.
Come on by to either one or both!
