My favorite creationist web page of all time

I just had to share. Look at this sample: at least 5 different fonts, 6 different colors, shadowed text, and all superimposed on an irrelevant and elaborate background.

And then there’s the content: It’s a creation museum! It’s a taxidermy collection! And it’s run by some antique tools!

Savor the Creation Museum and Taxidermy Hall of Fame of North Carolina; I don’t think it will change any time in the near future, so there’s no hurry. It’s so nice of creationists to erect these monuments to stupidity and tastelessness on the web.

(Also on Sb)

I think his money is safe

A professor at the University of Minnesota, Steven Miles, is offering a $1000 reward for the name and release of the medical records of the person Michele Bachmann says became mentally retarded after getting the HPV vaccine. I’d like to see that, too.

One unexpected consequence of Bachmann’s accusation: Rick Perry is now defending science.

Perry himself has weighed in. “You heard the same arguments about giving our children protections from some of the childhood diseases, and they were, autism was part of that,” he told NBC News. “Now we’ve subsequently found out that was generated and not true.”

I guess Rick Perry just lost Jenny McCarthy’s vote.

Next debate, I’d like to see Bachmann promote creationism and pooh-pooh global climate change, just for the unusual spectacle of seeing Republicans rushing to puncture her claims by citing real science.

Christian compassion

Pat Robertson gets a difficult question: a man’s wife is suffering from Alzheimer’s. He thinks he ought to go find a new wife. Pat, what should he do?

Divorce her. She’s gone, so your marriage vows don’t apply any more. How sweet!

I’m going to have to have a talk with my wife, though: if I go senile in a few years, I don’t think I’d like to be thrown out of the house while she goes looking for a date, and so no taking advice from fundamentalist kooks.

(via Right Wing Watch.)

Michele Bachmann: pseudo-scientist and anti-vaxxer

There was another Republican debate (I skipped it; there are limits to the horrors I can endure), and apparently, many people think Michele Bachmann trumped Rick Perry by jumping on his ‘liberal’ endorsement of using the HPV vaccine to prevent cancers in women. Bachmann ranted about the federal government forcing innocent little girls to get mental retardation injections, and the teabaggers loved it. They loved it almost as much as they loved Rick Perry’s record of executions.

Orac rips her apart. It’s great fun, and informative, too.

As I’ve pointed out time and time again, Gardasil is incredibly safe by any measure. Also by any measure, it’s been very heavily tested and monitored. Of course, there is no evidence at all that the HPV vaccine can cause mental retardation. I’ve also pointed out how the vast majority of the reports of adverse reactions after the HPV vaccine made to the VAERS database were almost certainly not due to Gardasil and have castigated Medscape, of all publications, for buying into anti-vaccine myths about Gardasil. Meanwhile the American Academy of Pediatrics immediately issued a press release to correct Michelle Bachmann’s false statements about Gardasil. What Bachmann is peddling is pure pseudoscience. I suppose I shouldn’t be in the least bit surprised, given how gullible she is when it comes to science in general and how much she allows ideology to trump science.

Once again, the Republicans step forward as the anti-human, anti-science, anti-health party.

(Also on FtB)

Say something kind to Ashley Marie Chavez-Rubertt

She’s an up and coming scientist, a young biology student at the University of Florida, and she has been targeted by the animal rights radicals and human-hating monsters at NIO for harassment as a “career animal mutilator”. They’ve posted links to her email address and facebook on a page that conveniently also provides a diagram on how to make a molotov cocktail. They also declare that “She has now forfeited all of the rights that she denies her victims”. Her crime seems to be that she actually listened to NIO, thought about their position and hers, and disagreed with them:

Your website seems to indicate otherwise — look, I can appreciate what you do and I appreciate the fact you have your own opinions. Really, we need more opinionated people in the world. The fact of the matter is I myself have examined the evidence and I have already made a decision for myself.

For this, she’s targeted for “Phase II”, whatever that is. I don’t want to know.

They’ve posted contact information for her, but I hope she’s sensible and just shuts down that email account. These people are rabid fanatics, terrorists plain and simple.

(Also on FtB)