Christ and Corruption

Ken Ham commissioned a company named “America’s Research Group” to produce a feasibility study for the construction of his theme park for biblical literalists — I’m sure its conclusion that the park would bring in 1.5 million visitors and $200 million in revenue was a factor in convincing the Governor of Kentucky to embrace the idea.

Only there’s a catch. America’s Research Group is run by Britt Beemer. Who is Britt Beemer? Oh, look: the feasibility study was written by Ken Ham’s personal friend, coauthor, and fellow fundagelical kook.

This wasn’t an independent study at all. It was by a personal ally with multiple ties to Ken Ham.

I don’t know about you, but I smell something rotten.

Rush Limbaugh, racist pig and sterling representative of the modern Republican

It’s hard to listen to this. It isn’t just racist, it’s stupid. I have to suspect that Limbaugh is back on the oxycontin.

For a great communicator, he sure does have a knack for drawing out his discussion beyond what is necessary; pithy and cogent are not words to apply to Rush. Here’s the relevant part of his talk.

How many native americans were killed by the arrival of the white man through disease and war?

…

how many people have died since the wm arrived due to lung cancer, thanks to the Indian custom of smoking? Who are the real killers here?

…

Where are our reparations?

The questions don’t make much sense. Of the Native American population that existed in the 16th-19th century, all of them are dead, most by disease and war; it’s what people die of. Typical estimates I’ve seen is that 80% of the native population was wiped out by introduced diseases, and the remnants were killed in wars or forced into militarily monitored districts. The descendants of those people, at least in North America, are largely confined to reservations, where the people have the lowest standard of living, the highest infant mortality rate, the shortest life spans of any group in this country. The white man nearly exterminated all of the native peoples of this continent by infection and execution and confinement.

Conversely, the European invaders have thrived, have suffered no general deprivation of life or liberty at the hands of the native population (although there were transient local flareups of violence that did cause suffering in white populations, but which were always followed by imposing greater torment on the natives).

White peoples: massive net gain. Native peoples: massive net loss. Fat privileged jerks like Rush Limbaugh do not get to play the persecution card.

And don’t even get me started on the smoking comment. Watching your children die of smallpox, seeing your friends gunned down by cavalry, having your land stripped from under you, watching your way of life eradicated, and seeing your descendants condemned to a life of poverty does not quite stack up against lighting a stogie and sipping brandy with your over-privileged pale-skinned buddies. And who, I ask, is profiting from tobacco? I don’t think it’s the native Americans.

Would you believe Rush Limbaugh is the most beloved commentator of the Republican base? It’s past time to recognize what the Republican party is: the last bastion of KKK mentality.

One more Molly added to my army, time to gather another into the horde

It’s the beginning of another month, and time to announce the Molly winner for October, and that sninily unique Pharyngulistan honor goes to…Mattir.

No sooner do I announce one winner, though, than we just move on to collecting nominations for the next one. Leave your comments here declaring your appreciation of some particular person for their contributions to the threads of November.

How authoritarians treat art

Somebody needs to grab Bill Donohue by the ear and drag him to the Neues Musem in Berlin — all the way to the airport, during the long transatlantic flight, and on the taxi ride to the museum. Pinch hard, too, and make him squeal all the way.

While digging a subway tunnel in Berlin, construction workers discovered a cache of buried expressionist sculptures, hidden survivors of the Nazi campaign to destroy what they considered “degenerate art”.

Researchers learned the bust was a portrait by Edwin Scharff, a nearly forgotten German modernist, from around 1920. It seemed anomalous until August, when more sculpture emerged nearby: “Standing Girl” by Otto Baum, “Dancer” by Marg Moll and the remains of a head by Otto Freundlich. Excavators also rescued another fragment, a different head, belonging to Emy Roeder’s “Pregnant Woman.” October produced yet a further batch.

The 11 sculptures proved to be survivors of Hitler’s campaign against what the Nazis notoriously called “degenerate art.” Several works, records showed, were seized from German museums in the 1930s, paraded in the fateful “Degenerate Art” show, and in a couple of cases also exploited for a 1941 Nazi film, an anti-Semitic comedy lambasting modern art. They were last known to have been stored in the depot of the Reichspropagandaministerium, which organized the “Degenerate” show.

I’ve found one small collection of photos of these works, and of the “Degenerate” show. They’re interesting, not great masterworks or anything, but it’s amazing how a touch of harsh history imbues them with much greater meaning.

Mr Donohue should contemplate how history regards people who try to dictate what art means, and that the person who is thought to have hidden these works from the hammers of the Nazis, Erhard Oewerdieck, is now considered heroic.

God save the Queen!

The Queen of England gets it right:

The Queen, who is supreme governor of the Church of England, said: “In our more diverse and secular society, the place of religion has come to be a matter of lively discussion. It is rightly acknowledged that people of faith have no monopoly of virtue and that the wellbeing and prosperity of the nation depend on the contribution of individuals and groups of all faiths and none.”

I tip my hat to the lady. She’s a voice of reason for at least once.

Unbridled Laughingstock

I’ve been poking fun at Kentucky this week, which is easy to do — investing in a theme park that has Biblical literalism as its centerpiece is embarrassingly ridiculous. But let’s be fair. Ken Ham could have landed in Minnesota, if instead of aiming for a location within a day’s travel of 40% of the nation’s population, he’d wanted a place within a day’s travel of North and South Dakota, and then we’d all be laughing at this rural assembly of yokels. And also, of course, Kentucky has plenty of smart, aware, rational people, as we can see from this editorial in the Louisville Courier-Journal.

Gov. Steve Beshear needs a vacation. Indeed, he should have taken it this week.

Other than extreme fatigue, how else can one explain his embrace of a project to build a creationism theme park in Northern Kentucky (near the Creation Museum) and the apparent willingness of his administration to offer tourism-development tax incentives to developers of the park?

Even if technically legal (in that the law allowing the tax breaks doesn’t discriminate against other religious or anti-religious views), a state role in a private facility that would be built by a group called Answers in Genesis and espouses a fundamentalist view resting on biblical inerrancy indirectly promotes a religious dogma. That should never be the role of government.

Moreover, in a state that already suffers from low educational attainment in science, one of the last things Kentucky officials should encourage, even if only implicitly, is for students and young people to regard creationism as scientifically valid. Creationism is a nonsensical notion that the Earth is less than 6,000 years old. No serious scientist upholds that view, and sophisticated analysis of the Earth’s minerals and meteorite deposits generally lead to an estimate that the planet is about 4.5 billion years old. Furthermore, creationism teaches that the Earth (including humans) was created in six days, thus rejecting the well-established science of evolution.

But if the Beshear administration is determined that Kentucky should cash in on its stereotypes — and wants to fight Indiana to snare the theme park — why stop with creationism? How about a Flat-Earth Museum? Or one devoted to the notion that the sun revolves around the Earth? Why not a museum to celebrate the history and pageantry of methamphetamines and Oxycontin? Surely a spot can be found for an Obesity Museum (with a snack bar).

And while we’re at it, let’s redo the state’s slogan. Let’s try: Kentucky — Unbridled Laughingstock.

I give that one a standing ovation — exactly right.

Episode CXXXVIII: The Christmas caroling has begun

Oh, no. It’s December. We’re having another snowstorm. The thread of a thousand mysteries has filled up again. And people are singing Christmas carols.

I’m not a fan of most of them, but this one at least is crude and funny. Don’t listen at work. Warning, too: it’s mostly an exercise in throwing out phrases for sexual intercourse. Don’t let the children listen, unless you want them to ask you lots of questions.

(Current totals: 11,446 entries with 1,201,573 comments.)

Another reason to avoid visiting Answers in Genesis

Those porn sites you’ve been browsing? They’ve been slurping in more of your private data than you think. A paper has been published documenting the invasive practices of many websites. They’re doing something called history hijacking, using code that grabs your entire browsing history so they can monitor every site you’ve visited. Cute, huh? There are tools you can use to block this behavior if you’re using Firefox, at least.

Several people have written to me about this because of Table 1 on page 9 of the paper. There among the porn and gaming and commercial sites one stands out as unusual. It’s the only site with the category of “religion”.

It’s Answers in Genesis.

Yep, don’t be surprised. Answers in Genesis wants to know where you’ve been.

Even better, a reader named Ivan extracted the sleazy history hijacking code from the AiG site. Wanna see it? It’s actually rather amusing. I’ve put it below the fold.

[Read more…]