You know who else tweets really stupid, offensive stuff?

Ken Ham.

Let’s see…diminishing the horrors of the Holocaust and Stalin’s purges, equating women’s health care and autonomy with Naziism, neglecting to mention that most abortions are spontaneous “acts of God”…you know, probably the least stupid thing in this cartoon was advocating the useless response of prayer to something Ham claims is mass murder.

Welp, I guess that means he’s going to get rewarded with a speaking gig at a major atheist/skeptic conference now.

Stop the beatification of Scalia

I’ve been seeing so many articles praising Scalia, now that he’s dead. He was a consistent jurist; he was enthusiastic and lively; he was best friends with Ruth Bader Ginsburg; he was steadfast and sincere in his beliefs.

I don’t give a fuck.

For me, this is what defines Scalia: his dissenting opinion in Edwards v. Aguillard. The man was a confident ignoramus.

The body of scientific evidence supporting creation science is as strong as that supporting evolution. In fact, it may be stronger…. The evidence for evolution is far less compelling than we have been led to believe. Evolution is not a scientific “fact,” since it cannot actually be observed in a laboratory. Rather, evolution is merely a scientific theory or “guess.”… It is a very bad guess at that. The scientific problems with evolution are so serious that it could accurately be termed a “myth.”

The core of his argument was that the creationists said they were teaching the scientific evidence, and gosh, they sure seem sincere when they insist there is no religious purpose to teaching that the world was created in 6 days and there was a big flood and a boat, so who am I to question them? His originalism and insistence on a strict literal interpretation of what was said was a disingenuous sham that he hypocritically adopted whenever he saw a conclusion he wanted to reach for.

It’s also ironic that he was an affirmative action hire. Maybe he should have been appointed to a lesser court, except that I don’t believe any court in our country would be well-served by a racist dumbass.

Obama will nominate a competent legal scholar to the Supreme Court

yandle

I’m seeing lots of rumors that Obama has made his choice for Scalia’s replacement (but no good confirmation), and that he’ll make the formal announcement on Thursday. Her name is Staci Michelle Yandle, and she is a United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Illinois.

For some reason, the rumor sites are all emphasizing the fact that she is a black lesbian woman, rather than the real shocker, that Obama isn’t installing another far right wackaloon in the slot.

I don’t know that I trust this rumor, but if true, it would show that Obama is completely out of fucks, which would be awesome.

Sorry to confuse you all — there is no good evidence for any specific choice anywhere. I’m just amused at the headlines that all babble about “black lesbian woman”, and you know that when Obama does deliver a choice, unless it’s a “white heterosexual man”, the headlines will all be entirely about the person’s color, sexual orientation, and gender.

Seven billion problems, and declining fertility isn’t one of them

I have many peeves, but one of them is this: the near-permanent state of anxiety some people have about fertility. Not just their personal fertility (anxieties about too much or too little of that are reasonable), but cultural fertility. We are apparently doomed if not enough of the right people, and by that they usually mean us white people, have enough babies. My annoyance is prompted by this post, in which a man-baby predicts the end of the Western world, because feminists don’t have enough children.

[Read more…]

Maybe we can rename it MRAtheism?

Modern atheism continues its swirling journey down the drain hole of irrelevance.

There are two predominant reasons that can explain why sexism exists in the atheism movement. The first reason is the influence of social Darwinism. Philip Kitcher, professor of philosophy at Columbia University, wrote in The New York Times in 2012 that the first tenet of social Darwinism is the belief that “people have intrinsic abilities and talents (and, correspondingly, intrinsic weaknesses), which will be expressed in their actions and achievements, independently of the social, economic and cultural environments in which they develop.” A concept such as “men are from mars, women are from Venus” is one version of such gender-essentialist, social Darwinist ideas.

In the atheism movement, social Darwinism has played out as the justifiable assault of women by (naturally) aggressive men. Buzzfeed’s Mark Oppenheimer detailed many accounts of alleged sexism, sexual assault and coercion in his excellent exposé on the atheism movement. “Some women say they are now harassed or mocked at conventions, and the online attacks—which include Jew-baiting, threats of anal rape, and other pleasantries—are so vicious that two activists I spoke with have been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder,” he writes.

In related news, NECSS has retracted their disinvitation of Dawkins to their conference. Why? What changed? They don’t say. They just had second thoughts.

Or they got a bunch of cancellations and pushback and decided to bugger principle in favor of the bottom line.

Is this the new Intelligent Design creationist strategy?

If you watch the Discovery Institute, you’ll discover they’re constantly playing games, trying to find that winning PR technique that will persuade the hapless ignorati. Some of them are effective, even if dishonest: “irreducible complexity” injected all kinds of misleading chaos into the brains of their followers, and “teach the controversy” was a potent slogan. They’ve been flailing about in recent years, trying to emphasize their pretense of scholarliness with tripe like West’s efforts to use pseudohistory to blame Darwin for Hitler, or Meyer’s farcical, long-winded distortions of modern biology in Signature in the Cell. Those haven’t worked so well.

The one thing that is always a constant, that has been true of everything the Discovery Institute has ever done, is that they don’t have any new ideas to offer, and everything is focused on being anti-evolution, or as they call it, anti-“Darwinism”. I really think that one of their big problems is that they’re actually anti-something-they-don’t-understand-at-all, so all their efforts fall flat. They especially fall flat with real biologists, who are gobsmacked that anyone would seriously say this crap.

[Read more…]

Check your pantry and shelves

detoxfatburner

There are two phrases that should compel you to immediately grab an item and throw it in the garbage. If you see them in the store, turn away; warn other people that they are a waste of time.

The two magic phrases: “detox” and “fat burner”. There are others, as well; “cleanse” comes to mind when it’s on a box of something you consume, rather than scrub dirty things with.

I just had to deliver this warning after reading this story about a man who lost his liver due to a reaction with an herbal weight loss supplement. That is a rare reaction, so I don’t consider that cause to reject a medication; well-tested, useful medications also have a degree of risk. A good reason to be suspicious of such “supplements” is that they are not well-tested or useful — “fat burner” or “fat blaster” is meaningless noise suitable for snake oil salesmen like Dr Oz, and “detox” or “cleanse” products don’t actually do either. That’s not how biology works!

Just on general principles, run away from things with lying advertisements splattered all over them. All you’re getting is the risk and none of the benefit.