I complained before that Florida lawmakers were being treated to creationist propaganda at a facility of Florida State University. Perhaps I should have had more confidence in the people of Florida. The movie was shown, and…
But the evening at downtown’s IMAX Theater, which was rented out to Mr. Stein’s group for $940, was a bust, with only about 100 people attending the movie.
They paid to have people attend for free, and they still couldn’t get a decent crowd.
Define Epic Fail:
I’d feel pity if it weren’t so damn fitting that this should happen.
Welp, I feel better about my fellow Floridians. I just hope that will seal the fate of the “academic freedom” bill trying to make it’s way into law.
Ben Stein FaiL
and to think I liked “Win Ben Stein’s Money”…
And in a related story the Expelled producers complained that 100 invited journalists posed as students, calling it another instance of a string of “leaks.”
Sounds like this film is comparable to a leak of some kind, most likely Ben Stein taking one on science.
FAiL
Unfortunately, we can’t find a confirmed account of how many lawmakers actually attended. The newspapers are strangely silent on that little tidbit. But from what we have been able to gather (keeping in mind that this is unconfirmed), it appears that the number of lawmakers was in single digits.
You are welcome to visit the Florida Citizens for Science blog for regular updates concerning this “smelly crap.” From our perspective, the news for the Discovery Institute is not good at all. They bombed big time and got all tripped up over their pet project, intelligent design. Fortunately, the newspapers picked up on that. So, I guess the best advice for anyone who wants to combat “academic freedom” bills and other such nonsense in your state is to invite the DI folks to town. Their shooting themselves in the foot routine is priceless.
http://www.flascience.org/wp/
No press, no public, only a handful of legislators, and yet almost 100 people were there. The Expelled road crew must be huge.
Dude, I finally got the venue I wanted. I’m Performing my dance quintet–you know, my cycle–at Crane Jackson’s Fountain Street Theatre on Tuesday night, and I’d love it if you came and gave me notes.
Hmm, the article also says why the lawmakers couldn’t come. they had other obligations:
“[…] and there was also a significant spiritual event going on. The 33rd annual Red Mass of the Holy Spirit started at 6 p.m. at the Co-Cathedral of St. Thomas More. It was part of “Catholic Days at the Capitol,” and leaders from all branches of government, and Floridians of all faiths, occupations and political persuasion were invited.”
Well it couldn’t be as bad as the movie.
PZ, when Richard Dawkins called you Pee-Zed, did you every worry that he was calling you “pea’s head”?
And poor Mr. Stein forgot to unzip his pants first, by the look of things.
Chris Thill said:
Apparently the “Expelled” PR people have just demonstrated that No Intelligence was Allowed when they put together their screening scheduling!
Maybe they should try spiking the popcorn.
WTH? They have Catholics in Florida? I’m shocked. Hard to say whether they are worse than evolutionists and Big Bangers or not.
In most fundie mythologies, Catholics especially and most other Xians are really Fake Xians(TM) and don’t count for anything. The Pope is the Antichrist’s representative on earth.
A hardcore fundie wouldn’t dare enter a Fake Xian(TM) church.
Sounds like they gave up one religious event for another.
#7 Big Lebowski quote FTW.
Flori-duh did something right?
Nah, can’t be. Something’s up.
I love how much time and energy they expend upon revealing what an inept bunch of clods and anti-science theocrats they really are.
I don’t think they have yet caught on to the fact that this is the internet age, that all of their lies can be quickly and ably countered by people who know a great deal more than themselves. They’re acting like everybody is as parochial and closed-off as their favorite audiences are, fundie churches.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
Best comment over there was about how this was a private, closed screening for legislators, for them to see a movie that purports to be about freedom of speech.
YOUHOU
Maybe that’ll learn them that their foolish religious political action is worthless and bound to fail. This is just a fucking fear campain trying to relate honest people to genocides.
FUCK YOU BEN STEIN & CIE, you’re the fucking stubborn intolerants, dishonest propaganda makers. Your political views have no power on scientific evidence.
assholes.
YOUHOU
Maybe that’ll learn them that their foolish religious political action is worthless and bound to fail. This is just a fucking fear campain trying to relate honest people to genocides.
FUCK YOU BEN STEIN & CIE, you’re the fucking stubborn intolerants, dishonest propaganda makers. Your political views have no power on scientific evidence of evolution. Wanna be critical on science? DO FUCKING SCIENCE!
assholes.
As you can see, it is a
ransom noteinvitation to a private screening of Expelled.Sent by cowards. Men who are unable
to achieve on a level field of play.
Men who will not sign their names.
Weaklings. Bums.
So the majority of the legislators of Florida have done something right this year.
Too bad it was skipping this movie – they just used up their year’s quota…
So, you never heard of Ave Maria, Florida?
Also, you are wrong about hardcore fundies not entering a catholic church. If they share a common cause, it does happen. I have seen anti-abortion rallies with fundamentalists groups end up in a catholic church. But the main reason for that is that Chicago’s most energetic anti-abortion activist, Jumpin’ Joe Scheidler is catholic.
Sure jfatz, I’ll be there.
I don’t know why. Seems unlikely the state as a whole suddenly just rejected creationism and embraced science. I’m skeptical the poor attendance of the movie reflects the population’s degree of sympathy for the content. Florida will continue to be a problem.
My read on this is they invited a bunch of legislators who stayed away because they were worried they were going be accused of violating a law about open government. Private screening and all that.
They must be Fake Fundamentalists(TM) !!!
I wasn’t being entirely serious. The intolerance and bigotry of some of these cults is so medieval it is amusing. A favorite pasttime of theirs is excommunicating other Xians, sometimes by the billions.
A huge theatrical run was never the idea; they want this to bounce around churches on DVD for a generation. They want to show it to hapless idiot legislators. It’s a very fancy tract.
Certainly a lot of science has been developed since Darwin proposed his conjecture. Dark rabbits are easy prey in snow leaving only white rabbit DNA in polar areas; this type of natural selection within a species is rather irrefutable. Scientific American magazine stated that if the rough draft of the human genome were stored on compact discs stacked on edge in their cases, shelf space would need to be nearly one half mile long! Yet mutations- never having added ANY scientifically detectable NEW DNA, leave macro evolution wholly inadequate to explain such extreme complexity even given a great time span. Think about it, what is a partially formed heart good for? Really do you believe both human eyes evolved with 3d focusing… at the same time- TWO SIMULTANEOUS randomly formed eyes? The evolution theory is even more weird as each male AND female ‘randomly’ developed the same two type eyes, That’s four SIMULTANEOUS randomly formed eyes, dual random simulataneousness/duplicated!
Perhaps the following analogy can lend clarity:
Eons ago deep in the ocean iron ore began to develope and form into sheets, the sheets came together over time and formed holes- a process known to theorists as ‘mutealotofstuff’; soon a fully formed ship floated into harbor…PLEASE- Where there’s a watch there is a watch maker, where there is a world there is a world maker!
Ladies and gentlemen, that was Michael Woelfel! That was quite humorous! Please give him a good hand!
Yes, because it’s not like men and women share any genes, or anything.
Moron.
Raven wrote:
“WTH? They have Catholics in Florida? I’m shocked.”
Florida = mucho Cuban exiles = Catholics.
Janine’s correct, too…conservative Catholics and conservative Evangelical Protestants, who would normally hate each other, are able to unite in temporary alliances such as opposing abortion, etc, and Pope Benedict is definitely more anti-science/anti-evolution than his predecessor, John Paul II.
“A Flop” might also have been an appropriate headline for your PREVIOUS entry!
Yet mutations- never having added ANY scientifically detectable NEW DNA
Wrong. Polyploidy.
leave macro evolution wholly inadequate to explain such extreme complexity even given a great time span.
Wrong. There is no demarcation between “micro” and “macro” evolution.
Think about it, what is a partially formed heart good for?
A partially formed circulatory system.
Really do you believe both human eyes evolved with 3d focusing… at the same time-
There is no gene for “left eye” and “right eye”, they *have* to evolve together.
TWO SIMULTANEOUS randomly formed eyes?
Evolution isn’t random, try again.
Perhaps the following analogy can lend clarity:
Hey, if humans were made from dust, how come there’s still dust?
This is a false statement and shows your scientific ignorance.
Gene duplications are among the most common mutations in eukaryotes and we see them often.
To cite just one common example, duplications of oncogenes are seen in cancer cells, such as HER2, EGFR, Myc, MET and are known to contribute to the malignant phenotype. There is a even a commercial test for HER2 as a therapy is directed towards this form of cancer. Drug resistance in cancer cells is also gene duplication mediated, DHFR and MDR and this contributes to treatment failure often. The numbers are huge, 1/2 million people die in the USA of cancer every year.
Go peddle your lies somewhere else or read the wikipedia article on gene duplication.
Ah, I knew Michael’s idiocy sounded familiar.
Where there’s a watch there is a watch maker, where there is a world there is a world maker!
Where there’s a Contender for Dumbest Fuck in History, there’s a Contender for Dumbest Fuck in History maker!
Why is God so obsessed with making morons so fucking stupid I want to claw my own eyes out knowing that they exist and are breeding?
I hate you Michael! I hate you because you exist only to waste the largest brain evolution has ever produced (well, more or less in your case), and have a computer, and can type, when there are so many deserving children in Africa, Asia, Europe, Australia, and the Americas, who’d give nearly anything to have the opportunities that you only waste.
I hope you get hit by a snowplow, you meathead. Fuck you. Fuck you! FUCK YOU!
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!! IDiots!
Mr. Woelfel. I’m not a scientist, but I’m pretty sure that mommies can give birth to both boys and girls, so I’m pretty sure they would pass along genes to boys, event hough they are girls. Those genes might make sure they pass along traits, like the form of the mommy’s eyes. I think. Again, I’m not a scientist.
I get the feeling you’re a wee bit stressed my dear Brownian. Now, how about a nice cup of tea?
Brownian: There there. Soon you shall be numb.
HER2 gene amplification is common in a subset of particularly aggressive breast adenocarcinomas. Because a targeted treatment is directed against this form, commercial tests are used to screen breast cancer patients for this form. The numbers are huge, 183,000 cases a year. Not only are gene mutations leading to new DNA common, they are medically significant, killing hundreds of thousands of US citizens every year.
BTW, a creo is here. You can tell by the series of outright lies and incredible ignorance.
This should fit in well enough here. I posted it at Expelled‘s blog:
Not only are gene duplications common, we see copy number variations between one human and another. One of these is now known to have adaptive significance. Not only are humans evolving, we can see it in our recent history.
So much for the No New DNA lie. It’s OK, creos always have a large supply of lies, nearly infinite.
Here is one example. Humans are evolving as I type and we now know examples of recent adaptive changes, adult lactose tolerance is one of several. Ability to digest starch is another. Different human populations have different copy numbers of amylase and this correlates with their diet.
I’m sure Mr. Woelfel has some conclusive, slam-dunk ID explanations for all your counter arguments. Go ahead Mr. Woelfel.
Mr. Woelfel…Mr. Woelfel?
Woelfel: Where there is a god, there must be a god-maker. That one, I agree with–the argument works for fictional entities.
Actually, a better way of putting it is that the argument works for human artifacts.
I am trying to pick out which is more funny, that the left eye and right eye developed separately or that male and females of the species evolve separately.
Mr. Woelfel…Mr. Woelfel?
Save your kilobytes. The best contribution to humanity someone like him could make would be if he were rendered down for his fat to make soap to stem a cholera epidemic.
Brownian, please, let us not have that kind of talk. Even in jest, those kind of threats are not funny.
Okay, Brownian, my gut hurts from laughing now.
I see a double OM in your future.
Brownian, please, let us not have that kind of talk. Even in jest, those kind of threats are not funny.
Hardly a threat; merely a colourful description. But maybe that was too close to inciting or suggesting violence.
Point taken. I’m sorry. I feel much calmer now.
Nobody do any rendering, okay? (Unless you’re Fremen. And then you only get the water.)
Thank you Brownian. I desire to save my dominatrix skills for the creationist.
(Oh, nice way to slip in a Dune reference.)
Incorrect. It IS a false statement. But it does not show ignorance. He has made this claim before, on this very blog. When he did so, it was thoroughly explained why he was wrong, with examples. Therefore, he can no longer use ignorance as a defense. The last time, this false statement showed ignorance. This time, it’s an outright lie.
Though there is a lot of ignorance there too. The nutcase does not seem to be able to grasp the concept of symmetry, or realize that males and females actually share genes. Does he not realize he’s related to his mother?
Mr. Wolfel, please look inside your shirt. Got nipples? Good. Isn’t it amazing how those evolved separately from their counterparts on the female of the species? And even the right one from the left one?
I desire to save my dominatrix skills for the creationist.
Wha? How come he gets rewarded for being stupid?
In response to Michael Woefel:
*Noone* believes that “two simultaneous randomly formed eyes occured”. Not you, not me, noone. Your rant about men and women needing to evolve separately is laughable. What do you know about Straw Man arguments?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man
Please don’t vote or have children.
Not to be a wet blanket but 100 people sounds like a lot for a doc(mock)umentary. If there was a counter-movie called Flunked: No Intelligence Period about why ID isn’t taught in schools do you think it would have done better?
Okay! But remember, safety words are for wusses.
Gah! Foiled by Big Science again. We all know that all the scientists, atheists and other heathens clogged all the roads with their fancy sports cars. And they used their bags of money and porno to lob at people attempting to enter the theater. Sure, a few of the righteous made it inside, but, well, politicians will be politicians. Money and sex are often distractions.
Damn you Big Science! Damnnnn youuuuuuuuu!
HA!!! Take that, you sub par person!
as a florida resident, i’m not so much concerned about the public. it’s that openning bit about ben stein in front of the florida state legislature that concerns me.
Okay! But remember, safety words are for wusses.
And, um, so is not pretending you’re my eighth-grade gym teacher, so–
Ahem! Where did you want me to store these balls, Mrs. Tookey?
Well, is this suprising? Is the film really about anything? It reportedly doesn’t even describe what ID is.
Ben, what good is half an IDea? ;-)
I think we’ve found the the Theoretical Concept worthy of following “specified complexity” and “irreducible complexity.”
Darwin’s Back Blox: Dual Random Simulataneousness/Duplicated and the New Scientific Waterloo of Godless Darwinism, by Billy Behe
shit! shoulda been “Billy Beheski”
party in Brownian’s gym teacher’s pants…
As Ben Stein would say deadpan, “Wow.” The bad news about the Expelled movie limited engagement tour in FL is that it only takes a few state legislators to cause major headaches. Maybe they can pony up to pay for the legal bills for the state they will incur–yeah, right. By that time they will be on to some other piece of nonsense.
Have any of you seen the Ben Stein “Grab a Fork,” commercial for Alaskan seafood? He seems to as well informed about sustainability of fish et al. stocks in the world’s oceans as he is about ID. In a few year from now: “Would you like a spork to eat that soylent green with, Ben?”
“I see a double OM in your future.”
Pretty soon it will be “Brownian, OMNOMNOMNOMNOMNOM…” We’ll have to start an extra special society called the, um, Order of the Deluise.
Careful jeh – Janine is gonna be all over you for that comment…
To counter-act Teh Crazy, you should all, each and every one
of you, visit the Expelled the Movie site, and sign up now
for free tickets to the closest local theater. Since I have already signed up, I can tell you that you will need to enter a “title” to get admission. I think “Pastor”, “Bishop” or Tel Evangelist will get you in right away.
Sorry Janine – “Dominatrix” ain’t gonna cut it I believe. Maybe “Proper Demure Christian Submitting Woman” will work for you and Kristine.
As you sign up, they will also let you bring 3 friends – I recommend this, because even if your friends don’t show up, you will have helped both yourself and the rest of the crowd, by creating more legroom so all 5 of you in the theater can enjoy yourselves.
Now get out there and sign up! Do it Now!
Really do you believe that all of the genes that control the development of eyes are located on the sex chromosomes, and are unaffected by the embryo’s axes of symmetry?
Scientific American magazine stated that if the rough draft of the human genome were stored on compact discs stacked on edge in their cases, shelf space would need to be nearly one half mile long!
Is this a rare example of a new creationist lie? I couldn’t find it on the web anywhere.
In the real world, the human genome has about 3 billion base pairs, each of which takes two bits to store, so that’s 750MB. That won’t quite fit on one CD, but you could fit five copies onto a DVD.
You could save more shelf space if you don’t use those clunky full-size CD cases. The slim-line cases are only half as wide.
With all the repeated elements in the genome, it would compress into less than a CD. If only God had invented LZW at the same time as DNA, we’d be way ahead of the game.
Personally, I’d love to win some of Ben Stein’s money. But I don’t know if I could stay in the same room with him long enough. How did he get all that moolah in the first place?
BS’s seafood commercial was a complete shock. He almost – almost – smiled and broke out of his monotone at the end.
I nominate Expelled for the Reefer Madness Award. The Latest Greatest Drunken Frat Party Supposedly Serious Flick! Everybody hit the boozería and the junk-food aisle of your local supermarket, and get ready to fling that popcorn and peanuts at the screen!
It actually wasn’t his money. The show’s producers allocated a certain amount for prize money for each show. He got to keep whatever wasn’t won by the contestants.
I enjoyed the show, but it wasn’t Jeopardy. The questions were pretty challenging, but you could beat him if you stayed away from history and politics. (Obviously, science would be a winning strategy.) They made you wear a dunce cap if you answered in the form of a question.
J-Dog, your leash is too long!
Michael,
I’m curious, was it your Urim and the Thummim that helped you to your divine knowledge of human development?
Let’s be even more generous. Let’s say you were ridiculously inefficient, and used an entire byte to represent each base pair. That’s 3GB for the entire genome. You could fit all of it on a single DVD. With space left over. Without any kind of compression. Still insist on using CDs? It would take only five, again with some space left over.
The DVD edition of the movie “JFK” contains more information than the genome of John Fitzgerald Kenneddy himself.
With compression, you could store the entire genetic codes of Will Smith and Muhammad Ali in less space than that taken up by a copy of the movie based on Ali’s life that Smith starred in.
A personal anecdote to put this in perspective. I am a member of an anime club. The DVD library for said club contains more data than the genetic codes of every club member combined.
“Really do you believe that all of the genes that control the development of eyes are located on the sex chromosomes, and are unaffected by the embryo’s axes of symmetry?”
You lost him at “genes”. Or possibly even “believe”.
“Hazmat team to aisle three, Creationist hit by Pharyngula train in aisle three”
Ha, yeah. I’d watch it, too, if you paid me $9.40. It couldn’t be any worse than Ferris Beueller’s Day Off.
#44
Now raven, don’t go using that peer-reviewed research to prove your point. We all know that there’s a global conspiracy by the Darwinists and their media lackeys to keep all the brilliant ID manuscripts by the Discovery Institute fellows from being published. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to finish writing this negative review for a paper that presents evidence of an intelligent agent responsible for eye development.
I despise Ferris Beuller’s Day Off. Ferris’ unwarrented sense of entitlement makes my teeth hurt. It takes having an opponent like Ben Stein to make a “hero” like Ferris seem cool by comparison.
In a weird way I kind of like this one. He reminds me of the Cybernetic Ghost of Christmas Past from the Future (from Aqua Teen Hunger Force). Thousands of years ago before Sigourney Weaver…
The free chips are to die for.
Michael:
If you’re seriously interested in learning something about evolution, I suggest you start by reading this, this, and this, which either answer most of the issues you’ve raised or show why the questions themselves are wrong, before moving on to browsing this.
Even if you’re not, at least prove you’re smarter than the average troll by getting it through your skull that none of your criticisms are unanswerable, new, or even particularly creative.
Whenever someone tries to use the moronic watchmaker argument on me I point out to them that nothing in nature even vaguely resembles a watch. Then I ask them whether, when they find an apple on the ground, they look for an apple factory or a tree.
David vun Kannon @72
Careful what you wish for. If Dog had used compression routines on the genome and kept the same mitosis and meiosis mechanisms, we’d have much higher cancer and bad mutation rates.
Better would have been to go in the opposite direction with good redundancy, using a Reed-Soloman block code or a CRC or something. At least then there would have been none of this problem with the original ‘kinds’ evolving into other things.
Another advantage, of course, would be the clear indication that there really was a designer. No more pesky atheists pointing to evolution and sqeezing Dog into smaller and smaller Gaps.
chaos_engineer #71 says, “In the real world, the human genome has about 3 billion base pairs, each of which takes two bits to store, so that’s 750MB. That won’t quite fit on one CD, but you could fit five copies onto a DVD.”
Nice – so one can fit a modest-sized nuclear family on a DVD…
But in the OTHER ‘REAL’ world, nature is not so clumsily encumbered by having to store info on gargantuan objects like disks. Everything fits quite admirably within the confines of a cell’s nucleus…the material weight of which must be a very VERY tiny fraction of that of a plastic disk.
I don’t have the figures available to perform the calculation, but I would not be surprised if the decimal reached well beyond 12 places. Anybody who knows care to give an estimate? What exactly IS the mass ratio between a complete set of human chromosomes and a disk, these two means of storing (virtually speaking) the same amount of information?
(Of course, the disk containing that “same info” will never start reproducing and express itself into the many specialized cells of an operational organisms, even when you add the mass of the computer to it in order to read it out, but all the machinery the chromosomes need is available in it’s cell).
It only cost $940.00 to rent an IMAX?
What?!
That can’t be right. Does that include labor?
Because if that’s all it takes to rent an IMAX I’m missing out on some business opportunities.
phat
Maybe they should try spiking the popcorn.
phht.
the obvious answer is that they should have provided free beer!
*newsbreak*
“This just in: Several Florida legislators involved in massive multiple vehicle pileup, all surviving arrested for DUI. Details at 11.”
Whenever someone tries to use the moronic watchmaker argument on me I point out to them that nothing in nature even vaguely resembles a watch.
But we (scientists, teachers) often do talk about “molecular machines” in the cell, and then IDists co-opt the language for their own purposes. We need to make clear to students the limitations of this “machine” metaphor. There are any number of ways in which these cellular “machines” are quite unlike human-designed machines.
How many human machines have mechanisms that purposely employ biased random processes? Do IDists believe that the randomness seen in the Brownian motion of microscopic particles is actually an illusion? Are the movements of microscopic particles and molecules being purposely steered by a deity? Do watches exhibit a behavior like microscopic reversibility in which the underlying individual mechanisms can suddenly reverse direction, and then go forward again? Are there any macroscopic devices that behave in a manner analogous to Brownian ratchets or motors?
Likewise I also wonder if nanotechnologists initially focused too much on re-creating human-made macroscopic machine parts (e.g. gears) at the nano level instead of radically re-thinking how things might be done with “goo”.
I’ve been thinking about writing a brief paper on this topic. Perhaps a reader knows of whether this has been before. I very much doubt that I’m the first to think or write about this.
GOD MUST HAVE WANTED BEN STEIN TO LOOK LIKE A TOTAL ASS*
(*Paraphrasing Sam Kinison, on Pat Robertson – hence the shouting)
If it’s only $1000 to rent an Imax for a night I wonder if they’ll let me do a screening of “Story of O” or something like that…. Oh, wait – you mean xTian hack schlock is OK but good clean porn isn’t?
Really do you believe both human eyes evolved with 3d focusing… at the same time- TWO SIMULTANEOUS randomly formed eyes? The evolution theory is even more weird as each male AND female ‘randomly’ developed the same two type eyes, That’s four SIMULTANEOUS randomly formed eyes, dual random simulataneousness/duplicated!
Creationists get more and more amazing. This is a new level of utter stupidity.
Ray
A flop? Only about 100 people? Well, let’s see how truthful you liars are being.
The screening was closed to all but Florida’s legislators:
www[dot]uecrescent[dot]org/articles/stories/public/200803/14/4eaa_news.html
So the claim that most of these people weren’t lawmakers is false.
What about the number of people in attendance: 100? The Florida legislature has 160 members:
But, you know, just keep lying to yourselves and others if it really makes you feel good.
en[dot]wikipedia[dot]org/wiki/Florida_legislature
100 out of 160 is hardly “a flop.”
Ugh. Bad cut-n-paste there. Meh. Better than being a liar.
The screening was closed to all but Florida’s legislators:
So the claim that most of these people weren’t lawmakers is false.
uh, hate to break it to you, but one doesn’t necessarily follow from the other, or did you just miss the big brouhaha about the journalist who attended after being “uninvited”.
seems they claimed he appeared as a ‘student’, even though it was clear he didn’t. It was documented just a few days ago, in fact.
now wait, who was it that has been caught lying again?
try, try again.
btw, how often do you get rousted about your handle…
disemvoweled?
are you serious?
It’s just Larry Farfarman again.
No, it’s actually not.
Oh, okay. So someone lies to get into this screening, but you believe everything he says about it afterwards. Riiiiiiight.
Not really.
The invitation says, among other things:
So right there, they are explicitly saying that a member of the Legislature is permitted to bring a guest along who can be anyone, which obviously means even someone not a member of the the Legislature.
So the estimated percentage of the 100 who are members of the Legislature drops to about 50.
Now, I don’t know how they estimated that the number of legislators was in the single digits, but it occurs to me that on the one hand, they had a better idea of who showed up to the other event the night the movie was screened, and on the other hand, they might have been able to see that there were clearly more guests at the movie screening than one-per-legislator. Perhaps some of the more influential legislators brought along family and/or staff? Perhaps even family of staff?
He didn’t lie.
He showed up after being uninvited, and did not sign the nondisclosure agreement.
Kind of like… someone showing up on a blog where they’ve been “uninvited” from, and posting using a different false name.
“Judge not lest ye be judged, bitch“, as Jesus of Nazareth is alleged to have said something like.
Here’s my version- “Expelled: No Bones About It”
The scene begins in a nice restaurant whose specialty is steaks. The waiters go about their business serving people their meals. One day, one of the waiters, Guillermo, announces to the rest of the waiters – “God has spoken to me and in his manifestation as a cow, told me that eating meat is all wrong. Julia Child was wrong! Emeril? Wrong! Martha Stewart? Spawn of Satan! This restaurant should not serve steaks, but only vegetarian dishes!”
The other waiters may think this is a little nutty, but let it go. Guillermo then starts announcing to all the restaurant patrons “My Cow -God has told me that that eating meat is completely wrong – you should all just order salads or leave”. He refuses to serve the customers their steaks, and disrupts the restaurant’s business.
The owners of the restaurant let Guillermo go, and Guillermo finds another job at a vegetarian restaurant.
Now enters the Vegetable Institute, a small, well-funded think tank of Cow-God believers who shout to the world – “Waiters are being EXPELLED and SILENCED just because they believe in the Cow-God. They are afraid to even say “moo”. Children are being taught in school to eat meat! We need to change the cafeteria menus! We must elect like-minded thinkers to the school boards! A group saying they are not affiliated with the Vegetable Institute proceed to make a movie including an interview with Guillermo saying that he was fired for his beliefs. The movie shows disturbing scenes of filet mignon, prime rib, slaughterhouses, concentration camps and Hitler.
.
.
Dear readers – I ask you –
Did the other waiters at the steak house want Guillermo to shut up just because his concept of God differed from theirs? Where they just too committed to their “meatism” to see the truth? Or was it that they felt Guillermo was promoting something that they could find no rational basis for, and interfered with their profession needlessly?
I wonder if Ben Stein is ready to do a sequel.
I could make a kosher version for South Florida.
Benjamin Franklin:
A well-argued point, but you’re basically (ahem) preaching to the choir here.
Also, our creationist commenter has his own thread on Fundies Say The Darndest Things (last name misspelled unfortunately): http://www.fstdt.com/fundies/comments.aspx?q=36294 Mike, have you ever heard of the concept of hox genes? That’s where all the good stuff for bilateral symmetry is stored…
Brian-
I agree with what you say. I was hoping it would give the posters a chuckle, and maybe, if PZ liked it, he would use it as a post on the main page.
I also came across a fellow posting on Internet Infidels as “imrational” who is trying to put together a rebuttal movie to be shown at his local theater either before or after Expelled, so I am offering this to him, but it is taking a while to set up an account with them so I can post it directly.
btw, don’t know if anybody cares, but the torrent for the whole movie appears to be available now.
standard torrent search pulls it up at a couple of places, but hardly anyone is seeding.
yeah, I know…
*shocker*
:p
Oh, okay. So someone lies to get into this screening, but you believe everything he says about it afterwards. Riiiiiiight.
oops, you missed the point of the episode.
the point was, the producers of expelled were caught red-handed demonstrably (posted emails documenting the lie) lying about what they said about the incident afterwards.
tell me who is lying again?
oh, btw, the mere fact that you would think 100 legislators from ANY state would attend a showing of ANY movie at the same time demonstrates your utter ignorance of legislators in general.
I’d say they would have been lucky to actually get a handful to show up, paid or not, even if it was the best damn movie ever made (laughable to even consider, in this case).
you lose.
care to start over with some other ludicrous premise?
So then how did he get in? It was for lawmakers and “[o]rganizers refused to let reporters or uninvited spectators into the theater.” He wasn’t invited and he wasn’t a lawmaker, so he should not have been able to get in at all. That is, of course, unless he lied. That is the only logical conclusion. (And yes, sneaking in is tantamount to lying.)
Aw, poor baby. Need a wowwypop?
So your real name is “Owlmirror?
Too bad none of your atheist types know the rest of that passage and what it actually means. You like to think you do and always bring this one verse up completely out of context as if you actually have a leg to stand on, but you don’t.
I’ve re-read the article and PZ’s post, and I see nothing about that. The point I see is that 100 legislators out of 160 is supposed to be a “flop.”
Well, unless you can provide all the names of the people in attendance, all you have is your say-so.
Based on… what, exactly? Your assumption based on your supposedly superior knowledge of how legislators function that you couldn’t ever get 100 of them to see a movie at the same time?
Sure. How about “your arguments are intelligent, logical and coherent?” That’s a pretty ludicrous premise.
So then how did he get in? It was for lawmakers and “[o]rganizers refused to let reporters or uninvited spectators into the theater.” He wasn’t invited and he wasn’t a lawmaker, so he should not have been able to get in at all. That is, of course, unless he lied. That is the only logical conclusion. (And yes, sneaking in is tantamount to lying.)
umm, did you ever stop to consider, even for a moment, that we might have been referring to a DIFFERENT showing of this trash?
go back on Pharyngula a few days and check out the thread on the showing for JOURNALISTS.
holy crap.
what a ‘tard.
It means “don’t be a hypocrite”, but since hypocrisy is all you’ve got you won’t bother to explain what it really means so you can keep on feeling smug and superior to the “atheists”.
oh, in case you need more help figuring out what the hell we are talking about, since I doubt you have the ability to find it…
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/02/media_alert.php
also:
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/03/expelled_gets_more_bad_press.php
yeah, tell us who is lying again.
moron.
Michael Woelfel:
You’re a Jim Pinkoski fan, aren’t you?
If you ask politely, someone might even explain how it is there are PYGMIES + DWARFS.
This also applies to your claims about 100 out of 160 legislators being in attendance. Nice of you to shoot down your own argument, though.
Aw, poor baby. Need a wowwypop?
Sneaking in seems to be good enough for you, apparently. But hey, I guess lying is also good enough for you.
So it actually means that you are allowed to judge anyone you want in any way you want?
Cool. I’m judging you to be a sneak. And a liar. And a moron. And a hypocrite.
If you were paying attention, one of the real problems with the legislative screening of the film was that it was of seriously questionable legality for any legislators, no matter how many, to be together in one place in a location not open to the public. It’s in the same Tallahassee newspaper article linked to above:
But I guess reading comprehension is just too hard for you.
Since you’re probably not quite smart enough to Google for sunshine laws in Florida, here’s a direct link to the FAQs on Florida’s Open Government Laws.
No, because we’re talking about the screening for the lawmakers that was described in the link in PZ’s post.
Um, if you’re going to suddenly switch tracks to old threads in the middle of a more recent thread, you might want to make that clear next time.
Pot, meet the kettle.
Ah, so making straw man arguments is acceptable to you. Whatever. The point is that your smug, superior atheists who seem to know exactly what the Bible says constantly prove that you don’t. It wouldn’t do any good to explain it to you anyway because you’re quite comfortable believing what you believe. That much is proven from your invariably hostile reactions to your beliefs being challenged.
Still the journalists. One lied to get into one screening and another lied to get into another. Nice to know that sort of behavior is okay with you. I’m sure you’ll find some morally relativistic way to excuse it.
Pot.
Not really. See, the screening was closed to all but legislators (and guests). Thus, the default argument is that the people attending the screening were legislators (and guests). The argument that most of the people there weren’t legislators runs contrary to what was reported and thus needs proof.
This is traditionally called “Ockham’s Razor.” Perhaps you’ve heard of it.
Gosh. Original.
Who’s sneaking? Here I am. Right here. Not portraying myself as anything other than what I am in order to fool you.
How exactly am I lying? Is using a handle instead of my real name (which I never use online anyway except when ordering stuff) lying? Are you really named “Owlmirror?”
Wow. I’m impressed. You got it half right. Now try getting the second half. Here’s a hint: read the very next verse.
Pretty weak case for the Sunshine Law. I mean, geez. You’d have to get really anal with it to make sure things like private birthday or Christmas parties for legislators are monitored.
Nope.
What was reported was that “the majority of Florida legislators who stayed away from the private prescreening of a movie Wednesday nigh” and “most of those weren’t lawmakers“.
I note that the article now has blog comments, including from those who say they saw the movie Wednesday night (and certainly sound like creotards and IDiots), and they don’t dispute the assertion that most of the viewers weren’t lawmakers.
Sorry. You fail at reading comprehension, yet again.
So it looks like you have changed your mind about the reporter “lying”.
Since he was invited, and went to the film that he was invited to, he too could say that he was right there, not portraying himself as anything other than what he was — an invited person — in order to fool anyone.
See? Just exactly like you!
But this wasn’t a party, as you still don’t quite get. And it wasn’t just some Hollywood entertainment — it was a film that was directly germane to current legislation, yet closed to the public.
Now, the other event that Wednesday night might be called a party… but that one wasn’t restricted. Rather the opposite, really.
Hey, take it up with all of the Florida legislators who stayed away…
Nice try, sleazebucket. The default argument is that without evidence, you got nothing. And all you have is a claim that the showing was only for legislators and there’s no way to prove that’s what they did without that list of attendees. So you’re still shot down.
No, that’s what was reported and there’s no counter-report from anyone.
Ockham’s Razor involves using all the facts, and one fact you overlook is that the producers and promoters of this film are scum-sucking maggots without a hint of integrity. No wonder your vowels have left in disgust.