The scene above is from a Pentecostal church in Detroit, where workers are rightfully concerned about their economic future. The religious approach, however, seems to be to put a couple of big ol’ dinosaur SUVs (at least they’re hybrids in this case) on stage, streak people’s foreheads with oil, and pray for a big bailout.
I hope they don’t get a dime.
Not that I’m unsympathetic to the plight of the workers, but this irrational approach is how they got in trouble the first time.
Here’s an interesting example of genetic programming: use a program that slightly alters colored polygons, compares the results to a target, and selects variants that most resemble the Mona Lisa. After less than a million generations, a black square turned into this:
Not bad. The description of the algorithm is a bit thin, but he promises to release the source code soon. It sounds like a million generations is an overestimate, since his population size in each generation was 1, and it also sounds like his selection was far more stringent than you’d find in nature, but it’s an interesting if oversimplified example of the power of chance and selection.
Bill O’Reilly makes one of his trademark screeds against the War on Christmas, but it doesn’t quite have the effect he intended, I think. He’s very cranky about the atheist sign in the capitol of Washington state, which is Olympia, so he rants against Seattle. I’m sure it makes sense in Billo World.
Seattle now rivals San Francisco for secular-progressive nuttiness. The city fathers are allowing public nakedness in city parks, nude bike riding, and in Fremont, a Seattle suburb, they actually put up a statue honoring Lenin, the father of communism.
What’s wrong with nudity? That sounds like a perfectly reasonable idea, especially in such a cloudy place — it would increase the exposed surface area for enhanced synthesis of vitamin D. It’s probably not something people could do very often there, but in the summer…sure.
And the statue is lovely. It wasn’t put up to honor Lenin, though — it was a work of art rescued from a Russian scrapyard.
Some on the Seattle school board actually supported denigrating Thanksgiving by teaching children about the atrocities against Native Americans by the Pilgrims.
Rather than keeping the children in ignorance? What does Bill think the purpose of a school is? I think it is a good idea for students to learn from the ugly events in our history.
In addition, Washington State voters have passed assisted suicide, and the state gives out free birth control pills, including the “morning after” pill.
This is wonderful! A state that promotes dignity for all and freedom for women, that does the right thing to reduce teen pregnancy, and uses government to promote the welfare of society. What’s the objection?
On the quality-of-life front, the streets of Seattle are full of homeless people, but they don’t have to be out in the rain. The city will pay to house alcoholics and drug addicts if they want it. They can actually get free furnished apartments. Taxpayers, of course, pick up the tab.
Helping the poor and needy? My dog, this place sounds like paradise.
Everything he listed sounds great! Bill O’Reilly has succeeded in making me homesick. I want to go back now, even though I know Seattle can’t quite be the rosy-dawned utopia he’s painting for us here.
Please go away, Mr Bush. And please, President-elect Obama, clear away the rotting debris of this ghastly administration. The latest example of dreadful Bush appointees: Stephen Johnson, head of the EPA. Asked about the evolution/creation debate, this is what he had to say:
It’s not a clean-cut division. If you have studied at all creationism vs. evolution, there’s theistic or God-controlled evolution and there’s variations on all those themes.
Wobble and waffle. Religion and science, it’s all the same to him.
Now you might say that maybe this is irrelevant — as the EPA chief, he’s just a bureaucrat who must manage a horde of underlings, and his scientific qualifications aren’t all that important. Now I’d hope that the guy who is in charge of protecting the environment would know something about science and would care about the environment, but Johnson seems to be a complete flack, a lackey for corporate interests. Josh Rosenau sums him up:
So, on evolution, he rejects scientific evidence in favor of the opinion of his authority figures. On climate change, he again rejects the scientific evidence in favor of the opinion of his authority figure. On the ethics of human testing of pesticides, on the appropriateness of using atrazine, on the environmental risks of mega-farms, and on value of a human life in cost-benefit analyses, Johnson has consistently ignored his scientific advisors, going along with the opinions of his political superiors.
Both of the above links also tap into this typical interview with George W. Bush. We have had this joker in office far too long.
MCFADDEN: Is it literally true, the Bible?
BUSH: You know. Probably not … No, I’m not a literalist, but I think you can learn a lot from it, but I do think that the New Testament, for example is … has got … You know, the important lesson is “God sent a son.”
MCFADDEN: So, you can read the Bible…
BUSH: That God in the flesh, that mankind can understand there is a God who is full of grace and that nothing you can do to earn his love. His love is a gift and that in order to draw closer to God and in order to express your appreciation for that love is why you change your behavior.
MCFADDEN: So, you can read the Bible and not take it literally. I mean you can — it’s not inconsistent to love the Bible and believe in evolution, say.
BUSH: Yeah, I mean, I do. I mean, evolution is an interesting subject. I happen to believe that evolution doesn’t fully explain the mystery of life and …
MCFADDEN: But do you believe in it?
BUSH: That God created the world, I do, yeah.
MCFADDEN: But what about …
BUSH: Well, I think you can have both. I think evolution can — you’re getting me way out of my lane here. I’m just a simple president. But it’s, I think that God created the Earth, created the world; I think the creation of the world is so mysterious it requires something as large as an almighty, and I don’t think it’s incompatible with the scientific proof that there is evolution.
As of this posting, one month, 12 days, 5 hours, and 21 minutes until Bush is out of office, and it’s not soon enough.
He has written recently about the terrorism in Mumbai.
Grand old hotel, in an increasingly progressive and prosperous India: Suddenly, hundreds of innocent, unsuspecting people are hostages, some of them being systematically murdered. Bombs are exploding, people are screaming, military are descending into the chaos, TV crews are coming from everywhere to broadcast the carnage worldwide.
Yes, it was a terrible and shocking event. However, he really doesn’t care about Indians suffering and dying — he wants to warn Americans that it could happen here.
Look around. Watch your evening news. Read your newspaper.
Oh, Pat! I have! Where are these terrorists bombing buildings and gunning people down?
Have you not seen the awful similarity between what happened in Mumbai and what’s happening right now in our cities?
In our cities? Now? I checked the news web sites right away — they seem to have missed it. All looks quiet. Give me a better hint, Pat.
I refer to California’s Proposition 8. You haven’t heard about the well-oiled campaign to find out the names of every voter and business that contributed as much as $1,000, or even much less, in support of Prop 8? You haven’t heard about the announced plans to boycott, demonstrate, intimidate and threaten each one – because they dared to vote to retain marriage as between one man and one woman? You haven’t seen, on the evening news, prominent entertainers and even California Gov. Schwarzenegger, urging the demonstrators on, telling them they should “never give up” until they get their way?
Uh, Pat, gay people aren’t threatening to kill anyone — they are demanding civil and judicial action. How divorced from reality are you?
Slavery was abolished, blacks and women obtained the rights to vote, and these true rights were not obtained by threats and violent demonstrations and civil disruption (though these things did occur, of course), but by due process, congressional deliberations and appropriate ratification.
Oh. On Pat Boone’s Alternate Earth, the Civil War never happened, and the 50s and 60s were placid periods where lawyers and politicians quietly and without fanfare enacted civil rights laws in the absence of any citizen action. How nice.
What troubles me so deeply, and should trouble all thinking Americans, is that there is a real, unbroken line between the jihadist savagery in Mumbai and the hedonistic, irresponsible, blindly selfish goals and tactics of our homegrown sexual jihadists.
I don’t quite know what to say, Pat. I don’t believe that the thinking Americans will be troubled by your imaginary line, but perhaps the purblind ignorant ones will be…so it makes sense that you’re peddling this rancid tripe on WorldNutDaily.
Uh-oh…I’ve been so scatterbrained lately that I’ve neglected the Molly Awards. You know how it goes: I put up a post for nominations, leave it to simmer for a while, it scrolls off the bottom of the page, and I lose track of it all. Then I come back and the soup is all scorched and horrible. Oh, wait, no — it’s fine! This internet thingie let’s comments sit there forever if I let it.
Anyway, I’ve caught up with two months’ worth of nominations, and here they are:
For September, two awards: Patricia and Nick Gotts. Give ’em some belated applause!
For October, the winner actually got lots of votes for September, too, but if I gave her both months’ awards everyone would accuse me of being lazy (which would especially sting because it would be true). So, finally, SC gets the Molly for October.
Now that I’m all caught up, of course, it’s time to collect nominations for the best commenter of November. Leave your suggestions here, and someone remind me before they all boil over this time.
If you haven’t been following the New Humanist advent podcast, where each day someone picks a scientist/philosopher they’d like to see honored for the holidays, you’ve missed Robin Ince (he likes Carl Sagan), Christina Martin (a Russian father of soil science, or several others), Alexei Sayle (Albert Ellis), Dave Gorman (Paul Erdos), and Natalie Hynes (Seneca). You’d better go catch up.
Well…3D Science News recently ran an article on Harun Yahya and the Turkish censorship of Richard Dawkins’ site, and what happens? Turkish hackers wipe out the news site (turn your speakers down if you visit — they’ve got it playing some obnoxious music now).
There was a protest against the atheist sign in the Washington state capitol this weekend. These people don’t seem to pay much attention to what comes out of their mouths.
“The No. 1 thing is, we want the state of Washington and the governor to represent everyone in the state,” said the Rev. Kenneth Hutcherson, the pastor of Antioch Bible Church in Redmond. “But just because you must represent everyone in the state doesn’t mean that you put up with intolerance from the people that you represent.”
So please tear down the sign representing the views of atheists in Washington! Silly man. And if he’s complaining that the atheist sign says mean things about religion, how does he explain this information from a little later in the story?
After being stolen and returned, the atheists’ sign is now cordoned off in an upstairs hallway next to the bust of George Washington, a sign from Hutcherson’s church mocking the atheists’ sign, a traditional nativity display and two other religious signs.
It sounds like the signs are proliferating. With any luck, the state will realize that all this noise about a holiday is entirely inappropriate, and kick the whole bickering lot of them out. I’d be fine with that — keep the government secular.
Let’s leave the final word in tolerance and fair representation of all view to State Rep. Jim Dunn, who also spoke out at the rally.
“It is time to chase out of the house of God all the unbelievers and evildoers,” Dunn said.
