Don’t get cocky

Hemant thinks he has a shot of winning an online poll to determine the sexiest atheist blogger. No way! I’m going to send you, my minions, over there to … uh … wait. You people are probably still in shock from that time I exposed my chest, aren’t you? Dang. I need to wait at least 20 or 30 years before those memories fade if I’m to stand a chance.

I voted for Greta Christina, anyway, and my second choice was C.L. Hanson.

People, what are you doing voting for me? That’s insane. Unless, of course, you’re one of those people who likes a bad boy with a hint of danger, even if he does look like Meatloaf or Jack Black … but as everyone who meets me says, I defuse even that with a mild and professorial air. Pick someone else!

Compound irony

Would you believe there is actually an award called the Award for Liberty and Truth? You just know in this Orwellian country of ours that it couldn’t possibly be given in recognition of actual liberty or truth … but it’s even worse than that. It is the Phillip E. Johnson Award for Liberty and Truth, and it’s handed out by the Bible University of Los Angeles, better known as Biola; named after a prissy old fraud, given out by a bible college with delusions of grandeur, and guess who the winner is this year?

Ben Stein.

I like it.

It’s a fake award by a fake college named after an infamous creationist and now given to a second-rate character actor. It’s the creationist version of the Nobel Prize!

February needs a Molly

It’s that time again: nominate your favorite commenter(s) in the thread for this post, and we’ll see who gets to be honored with a Molly this month. You can check the last Molly thread if you want to see what worthies lost out last time.

Also, you may recall that story of a large snake that tried to swallow a large alligator … this is how I feel right now.

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I have updated my blogroll with as many of the new submissions in the last Open Enrollment day as I could. It’s getting a bit bloated, I’m afraid. I do have to explain a few things, though.

If you aren’t on the current list even though you submitted your blogroll, there are a few possibilities. Some of you were already on it, so look harder. Some of the blogs failed to load — it’s nothing personal, but if there were technical difficulties at the time I tried to add you, I didn’t try too hard to overcome them. Some of the submissions did not have a syndication feed, and I’m afraid that I can only follow blogs with some kind of feed.

Everything in the blogroll comes straight out of the feed, including the title. If the title doesn’t look right, don’t blame me: check the settings on the RSS/Atom feed on your site. Also, some blogs have a little descriptive tag line after the title; again, that just comes out of your feed.

I’ve put the list of new blogs below the fold. Remember to nominate a new deserving commenter for a Molly!

[Read more…]

Poseur!

Approximately 1.4 million people have emailed me with a link to this article on body modification (I’m not complaining, do feel free to send me stuff). It includes this picture.

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I’m sorry, but no thanks. That’s a wanna-be kluge. It’s pathetic. The guy has just had some kind of silicone rings stuck under his skin, and I am unimpressed.

Here’s what I want.

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Give me a call when we’ve got gene modification and some method of reiterating ontogenesis in my arms. I want neural control of a sophisticated muscular structure, not some inert faux lump. Adding sharp-edged teeth to the structure is optional, but highly desirable.

And all those tatoos? Bugger those, too. I want these:

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Imagine a whole network of those under your skin, linked by nerves to your brain, with the ability to change color and pattern under conscious control.

I sneer at anything less. The body-modification crowd is hampered by feeble imaginations that think needles and ink and holes and bumps are impressive — I’m holding out for something a little more substantial than cosmetic geegaws.

Tragedy in Northern Illinois

I don’t have anything to add to the story of the lunatic who opened fire on a freshman science class, but here’s a place you can talk about it without the taint of piety that’s getting introduced into all the news stories right now.

The killers who have been executing these school shootings are all mentally ill, sick people. I suspect that the reason schools have been targets is that they are full of optimistic young people who are exercising their opportunity to learn and preparing for a productive place in society … and the hateful, petty pissants who believe guns and violence are the answer resent that. Let’s not see any more proposals that violence in reply is the answer, it isn’t — it’s an echo of the same problem.

Florida’s big problem

A poll by the St Petersburg Times reveals that the people in Florida are ignorant. 21% want creationism only taught in the schools, and 29% want both evolution and creationism taught. It’s a horrendous result, and it’s also strikingly different from the results we’ve see in similar polls, which usually aren’t quite so lop-sided.

Wesley makes a good point, that one reason is the form of the questions asked, which set up an adversarial relationship between religion and science and lead people to make a choice between the two, increasing the likelihood that people will break to support their church. He argues that “framing works,” and proposes a different set of questions that, while generally similar, would produce a less one-sided result.

But wait, hang on there — this doesn’t tell me that framing works. It tells me that you can play rhetorical games with polls and get people to nominally agree with my position, or you can tinker with them to get people to agree with some other position. If the purpose of a poll is to get insight into how the minds of the populace are working, neither is very desirable.

I’m looking at the original poll and seeing that I would have no problem answering the questions in a pro-evolution way — there’s nothing to bias me in any crazy way, but I don’t have any pro-religion buttons to push. What I see in the results is that many Floridians do have great, big, easily manipulated religious buttons, and that 69% are abysmally ignorant of the science they are dismissing. Those are important True Facts, and in an important sense the St Petersburg Times poll is better than the one Wesley proposes: the answers aren’t reassuring, but they do expose the ugly reality we have to confront. There is no virtue in designing a poll that doesn’t push the religion button, because in the real world these people are getting the religious message every day and every week, and leaving it out only allows us to fool ourselves into thinking that the superstition and ignorance fostered by American religion aren’t the fundamental source of creationist foolishness in this country.

I think Wesley is looking for a way to frame the problem away, rather than a solution. If framing works, it is only as a blindfold.

Unbelievable

Saudi Arabia is one screwed up, vile little backwater of a barbarous craphole. You have to read the case of Fawza Falih.

She has been condemned to death. By beheading.

She has been beaten to the point of hospitalization during her incarceration.

The authorities have a signed confession, which she has not had read to her.

She didn’t read what she signed, either, because she’s illiterate.

She and her representatives were not allowed to attend much of the trial.

And the crime for which she is to be executed? Witchcraft. She is accused of casting a spell that caused a man to become impotent, and threatening to cause people to be possessed by dogs.

Apparently, the spells must have worked all too well, since all the men of Saudi Arabia are now cowardly eunuchs with the souls of craven mongrels. At least, that’s the only explanation I can see for their uncivilized behavior.

Fame and power!

If I am to succeed in my goal of overthrowing all of Western Civilization, I must continue to gather notoriety and credibility. To that end, I’ll mention my latest victory: I am mentioned in a webcomic. Look closely at the pile of magazines drawn in the lower left panel…there I am! Soon I shall dominate all media!

Ginny has also acknowledged my ubiquity and puissance by mentioning this cartoon to me, which apparently portrays life at my house.

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Wait…you don’t think she was being sarcastic, do you?