There was exactly one time I went to a “serious” church. My parents took the family to the local Unitarian church every once in a while, but only because taught more lessons about tolerance than it did about Jesus. But my parents are also classical musicians. They have a hectic work schedule, and when I was five, they left us with the nanny on a Sunday morning.
Yes, the awesome has just gone up another notch, because Thunderf00t has joined Freethoughtblogs.
You will never leave, ever again.
There will be cheerfulness! And light-heartedness! Don’t argue with me!
(Episode CCCXXXIX: Steampunk time!.)
Maggie Koerth-Baker has an amazingly heartfelt post up about her abortion. You ought to read it, especially if you’re one of those people who wants to take her choices away or make her feel even worse about what she’s got to do.
There is no universal good option. There is no universal bad option. But for each individual there is an option that is the least bad. Here is why I am pro-choice. If someone has to make a decision and the best they can hope for is the least-bad option, I don’t believe I have any business making that choice for them.
My abortion is not a good abortion. It’s just an abortion. And there’s no reason to treat the decision I have to make any differently than the decisions made by any other woman.
(Also, Maggie Koerth-Baker will be joining the Skepchicks at Convergence in two weeks. Be there to learn.)
Have you ever experienced the situation in this Shortpacked comic?
No? You haven’t been reading the comments here, then.
Also, compare and contrast the response to car theft vs. threats against women. It’s…revealing.
I’ve been working up a science talk for the fall — I am going to do a basic review of many the mechanisms other than selection that contribute to evolution for lay audiences. And then I discover that T. Ryan Gregory has already done some of the work for me.
Maybe I should just plagiarize it?
(No, not really: my talk is less genomics, more development, and gets more basic than this one. But Gregory’s talk is very, very good.)
(via Sandwalk.)
He has been replaced by a ‘bot. And it’s amazing how well it captures the true spirit of Chopra.
Given the catastrophic flooding in Minnesota right now, I thought everyone would appreciate a summary of good flowers for the Minnesota floodplain, and a nice picture of a columbine.
Oh, boy — Bobby Jindal’s new program to open up state funds to support all kinds of random nonsense in schools is going to have some interesting (that is, horrifying) effects. They are going to be throwing money at A Beka Books and Bob Jones University texts, and Accelerated Christian Education. What kinds of things will Louisiana kids be learning?
Science Proves Homosexuality is a Learned Behavior
The Second Law of Thermodynamics Disproves Evolution
No Transitional Fossils Exist
Humans and Dinosaurs Co
Existed
Evolution Has Been Disproved
A Japanese Whaling Boat Found a Dinosaur
Solar Fusion is a Myth
It’s not just science! Look what else they’ll learn:
Only ten percent of Africans can read or write, because Christian mission schools have been shut down by communists.
“the [Ku Klux] Klan in some areas of the country tried to be a means of reform, fighting the decline in morality and using the symbol of the cross… In some communities it achieved a certain respectability as it worked with politicians.”
“God used the ‘Trail of Tears’ to bring many Indians to Christ.”
It “cannot be shown scientifically that that man
made pollutants will one day drastically reduce the depth of the atmosphere’s ozone layer.”
“God has provided certain ‘checks and balances’ in creation to prevent many of the global upsets that have been predicted by environmentalists.”
the Great Depression was exaggerated by propagandists, including John Steinbeck, to advance a socialist agenda.
“Unions have always been plagued by socialists and anarchists who use laborers to destroy the free
enterprise system that hardworking Americans have created.”
Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential win was due to an imaginary economic crisis created by the media.
“The greatest struggle of all time, the Battle of Armageddon, will occur in the Middle East when Christ returns to set up his kingdom on earth.”
Watch the video. It’ll show you that I’m not just making this all up.
Fortunately, the student body at my university is largely from the upper Midwest, so I don’t think we’ll have to worry too much about an influx of miseducated kids here — but other universities may have to look at Louisiana enrollments. How much remedial teaching do you want to do?
I’ve noticed this before, and I’m sure many of you have, too: you can often take creationist comments, especially when they’re lengthy, run them through a google search, and discover that the were lifted wholly from some other source. If you read the creationist literature for any length of time, it really begins to sound all alike, because what they’ll often do is cobble together their treatises by lifting whole paragraphs and pages from previous creationist tracts. It’s the kind of thing where, if they did it as a student in my class, they’d get an automatic fail, especially since they rarely bother to include attributions.
Here’s another similar case: Hamza Tzortzis, the Muslim creationist, wrote a critique of Dawkins’ The God Delusion. Guess what? It’s a copy-pasted pastiche of an article by William Lane Craig. The original Craig review was pretty bad, but running it through a copier a few times just makes it worse.
