Brokeback bigotry

I’m stretched out in my easy chair getting ready to watch the Oscars this evening, when this horrid ‘news’ profile about Brokeback Mountain and middle America comes on. I found it offensive: they seem to have sought out the most narrow-minded representatives of this part of the country—your stereotypical Christian bigot, a clutch of white-haired geezers—who hadn’t seen the movie, who rejected it out of hand, who claimed Hollywood didn’t understand farmers, who thought a good movie was that treacly crap, The Sound of Music. If there is anyone who doesn’t understand this part of the world, it’s the patronizing yahoos at CNN who went out of their way to find people who fit their stereotypes.

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I don’t think anybody here fits this description

If you’re a fan of kitsch and Christianity, don’t read
this article. You’ll think it starts out OK…

Thomas Kinkade is famous for his luminous landscapes and street scenes, those dreamy, deliberately inspirational images he says have brought “God’s light” into people’s lives, even as they have made him one of America’s most collected artists.

A devout Christian who calls himself the “Painter of Light,” Kinkade trades heavily on his beliefs and says God has guided his brush—and his life—for the last 20 years.

…but then you’ll get stories of corruption, drunkenness, lewdness and groping, and most horrifying of all, peeing on Winnie the Pooh!

Schism!

Ken Ham shows his sleazy colors a little more. Ham and Answers in Genesis have split from the organization that included Carl Wieland of Creation Ministries International. Big deal, you say; so what if a gang of creationist wankers can’t keep their act together?

The interesting thing is why Ham left the umbrella organization. It’s because Wieland insisted on “checks/balances/peer review” on some of their content. Where AiG formerly hosted a list of bad arguments that creationists ought to avoid, that list has been yanked from the AiG site at about the time they broke up with CMI.

I guess Ham didn’t want any constraints on his ability to lie for Jesus.

A significant revision and clarification: it wasn’t the ‘creationist arguments you should not use‘ article that was pulled, but rather a later article called “Maintaining Creationist Integrity” that directly confronted Kent Hovind.

Adomancy

In case you were wondering, GrrlScientist has a link to Billboard’s list of number one songs, so you can find out what people were listening to on important dates in recent history.

For instance, in the month when I was conceived, the number one song in the US was “Teddy Bear” by Elvis Presley, and on the day I was born it was “Young Love” by Tab Hunter. Mom does like Elvis, and those songs are so appropriate that this might beat astrology as a signifier of prospective character.

Unfortunately, the number one song on the day I was married was “Another Brick in the Wall” by Pink Floyd. Never mind.

Koufax Award voting is open

Ummm, well…seven eight Koufax nominations is rather flattering. These are the semi-finals, though, so it may well be that none of them make it to the finals, and to then actually win one is an even more unlikely eventuality, but hey, here I am.

If you want to vote, all you have to do is follow the link and mention the entry or blog you like in a comment. This is a sensible left-wing blog, so unlike those weird wingers, you only vote once in each category, and all votes will be tallied manually and accurately by the hard-working team at Wampum. (and don’t be tempted to cheat—they know what they are doing.)

Now the point of this award isn’t for everyone who reads a high-traffic blog to stampede over there and vote automatically for said high-traffic blog—it’s to expose the range of talent out there in the liberal blogosphere. So even if you are certain you want to vote for Pharyngula, like because you’re married to the guy (hint, hint, Mary) or gave birth to him (Hi, Mom!), you should feel obligated to also check out the competition. Click around at least some of those links at Wampum before casting your vote. I promise I won’t get mad if you decide to vote for someone else.

Dr Free-Ride has a list of the science-relevant worthy competition. I could mention all the other great blogs and articles listed over there, but the quality of the competition depresses me. I’ll just list the Pharyngula nominations (but don’t forget to look over all the others!):

Best Blog (non-professional): Hah, yeah, right. I think Pharyngula may have been nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars, too.

Best Expert Blog: Oh, I’ve been here before. Expect Juan Cole and Informed Comment to kick my butt again, unless some of the other great nominees decide to turn it into a tag-team butt-kicking.

Best Single Issue Blog: and the issue is ME.

Best Post: I’ve got three nominations for this category. Name the one post you like best of these (I’m pushing for “The proper reverence…”, myself).

Best Series: My infatuation with the bizarre sexual practices of invertebrates pays off. Vote for “Pharyngula invertebrate sex series” if you like this one, which includes this set of posts:

Most Humorous Post: An awful lot of people did not think this post was funny at all. If it makes it to the finals, expect mass rioting in middle America.

It’s nice to get all those nominations, but we must also have balance. So here, as a counterweight, is some email I got today. It was titled “Probably the Worst Site of All Time”, which is rather impressive, actually.

Your Blog, or whatever it is, is not scientific. It is pure delusion, masking itself as reasoning, and scientific.

The fact that you portray yourself as a “Liberal” simply adds to the unscientific thinking that masks your ideological psuedoscientific nonsense.

Perhaps a good shot of bourbon is all you need, to bring you into reality.

The wonders of the modern “university” are amazing. And since when was ignorance a point of view?

Uh-oh. I bet he’s going to vote for Juan Cole, isn’t he?

Aww, heck. I’m getting a lot of hate mail this morning (weird correlation: any time I criticize Powerline, I get a spike in the angry mail for a week or two afterwards.) Here’s a classic; this one is titled, “Read this azz”.

if you people think that eveything you see in the world was from evaluation then you are the dumbist mother fucker out there. live to complex to just have evolved from a single cell.and if the dna code is wrighten to that animal then you can not get highter life forms from that code wrighen for that animal .i got lots more if you wanna get in to a debat

No, not the debat! I fear the great skills of this typically knowledgeable and literate creationist—I hope he doesn’t hit me with another one from his vast store of deep arguments.

Shiny

Unlike Orac, I’m happy with the ship I’ve been assigned; I suspect Chris wouldn’t mind ending up on the good ship Serenity, either, although Chad might have some gripes (oddly, I’m less bothered by the wacky physics of the Firefly universe than I am by the abominable biology of Trek).

We science bloggers really are a bunch of geeks, aren’t we?

i-27c5ba1f7740e32636630b694860f696-serenity.jpg
You scored as Serenity (Firefly). You like to live your own way and don’t enjoy when anyone but a friend tries to tell you should do different. Now if only the Reavers would quit trying to skin you.

Serenity (Firefly)
88%

Deep Space Nine (Star Trek)
81%

Moya (Farscape)
75%

Babylon 5 (Babylon 5)
69%

Nebuchadnezzar (The Matrix)
69%

Enterprise D (Star Trek)
69%

Andromeda Ascendant (Andromeda)
63%

Millennium Falcon (Star Wars)
63%

SG-1 (Stargate)
44%

Galactica (Battlestar: Galactica)
38%

Bebop (Cowboy Bebop)
31%

FBI’s X-Files Division (The X-Files)
19%

Your Ultimate Sci-Fi Profile II: which sci-fi crew would you best fit in? (pics)
created with QuizFarm.com

A great loss to caninity

Sad news: Carl Buell and Hank Fox have lost a good friend, Tito.

Dogs are easy animals to get to know, sometimes too easy. I haven’t been able to bear the thought of having a dog again since the day, when I was 12, that I stepped off the school bus one afternoon to find my dog, Snoop, crushed and broken by the side of the road. At least it sounds like Tito had a good life and a dignified end.

Carl has put up a short photo essay and testament to Tito.