A decade ago I briefly tangled with Bob Enyart and his pal Fred Williams. They had a show called Real Science Radio where they preached nonsense about creationism — there’s no real science anywhere in it — where they constantly claimed to have disproven evolution and threw debate challenges at every nobody (like me) that they stumbled across. Even then, I was disgusted with creationist debates and wasn’t going to get into it with a kook like Enyart. He sent me a challenge anyway, to explain how a little connective tissue loop in the eye socket called the trochlea evolved. I answered honestly.
I don’t know.
I don’t see any obvious obstacle to an arrangement of muscles evolving, but I don’t know the details of this particular set.
I explained why. We don’t have any intermediate forms for this tendon, so any thing I might suggest would be pure speculation, although I really don’t see anything unevolvable about the feature. I should have added that an interesting approach to answer it would involve tracking its development in some model vertebrate, such as a zebrafish, but I knew that would be a difficult job, given that it had to develop at something like 10-16 hours post-fertilization, not a task I would want to jump into. This is a solvable problem, even if it hasn’t been solved yet, and we won’t get an answer by prayin’ on it.
As you might have predicted, slimy ol’ Enyart declared victory, because of course he did. To a creationist, saying “I don’t know” is the same as saying “God done did it”.
Well, now Fred Williams has announced that Enyart is dead.
It comes with an extremely heavy heart that my close friend and co-host of Real Science Radio has lost his battle with Covid. Bob Enyart was one of the smartest, and without question the wisest person I’ve known. All the while being exceedingly kind and humble, and always, always willing to listen and discuss anything you wanted. It was an honor beyond measure to have been alongside him for 15 years and over 750 science shows. I always marveled how Bob put up with me all those years together. 🙂 When we pre-recorded a show and he asked me to do a retake, I’m convinced that many times he would on purpose follow it with one of his own retakes just to make me feel better. The number of lives he touched is immeasurable and I’m sure Jesus has an extra special place for him in heaven. ‘Well done, good and faithful servant’.
I was with Bob at his last public appearance in mid August in San Antonio Texas for an ex-JW conference. What an incredible honor and great time we had! I fondly reflect on my journey with Bob, from watching his eye-opening TV show in the 90s, to meeting Bob at St John’s church for an Age of the Earth debate (RSR sells that debate and the old earth group doesn’t, in case you are wondering who won), to Bob asking me to join him in doing Real Science Radio, then 15 years of weekly radio shows, culminating in the conference in San Antonio. In between we had many lunches and dinners together, some Nuggets games tossed in, and so many other good times and fond memories. I also really loved Bob’s sense of humor! As an example, the theme of our presentation at the ex-JW conference was “dinosaur blood”, perhaps the greatest discovery of the century that destroys millions of years. During Q&A, Bob responded to a question and asked “what two words do you say when someone says the Earth is billions of years old?”. No one answered, including myself, so Bob turned to me and said “Fred, you’re fired!” (you can see this at 1:12:50 here: https://www.facebook.com/watch/live/?v=4518764224820454&ref=watch_permalink).
Heaven’s gain has left an enormous hole here on earth. Bob’s enduring legacy will live on with the treasure trove he leaves behind, including an amazing website which many have recognized as the best online resource of science confirming the Genesis record, his captivating Bible study MP3s, science DVDs, YouTube videos, etc.
I miss my best friend and mentor. Please especially pray for Bob’s family.
It’s good that he admits that it was COVID-19 that killed him, but he doesn’t mention that part of their real science
show, and a view held by the wisest person
Williams knew, was actively, fanatically anti-vaccination and COVID-denialism from a guy who also taunted AIDS victims.
So about this: pic.twitter.com/HfqUNHtEBI
— Dan Savage (@fakedansavage) September 13, 2021
So Bob Enyart is dead. Fuck that guy.
Enyart was an asshole who polluted the biosphere in Colorado. I live in Denver. Not going to miss him.
(This is a partial cross-post from the current Infinite [Pandemic and Political Madness] Thread thread…)
From the Encyclopedia of American Loons (#651, August 2013):
(Another cross-post, a later follow-up…)
A snippet from the Gruniad’s Colorado radio host [Bob Enyart] who urged boycott of vaccines dies of Covid-19:
As the Washington Post explains, Conservative radio host who spurned vaccines, mocked AIDS patients dies of covid-19:
I took a brief look at that site (which I’m not linking to), and “promot[ing] falsehoods” is another candidate for the Understatement of the Year Award.
I guess we all know what music to play for the great news of this asshole biting the dust.
That is not actually true.
The mRNA vaccines were mostly tested in mice and Rhesus Macaques, because they are vaccines and the desired response is an immune response.
There are claims that they tested them also on HEK 293 cells, a common laboratory cell line. I haven’t traced down the reference because I’m busy right now.
HEK 293 cells came from normal embryonic kidney cells in 1973.
The origin of these cells is unknown!!!
It could have been from an aborted fetus. Or it could have been from a miscarried fetus.
Not all embryonic cell lines are from aborted fetuses. Miscarriages are common, roughly half of all human pregnancies end in miscarriages. They can be and are used as sources of fetal cells.
In addition, this isn’t even a fetal cell line any more.
These are not “cells from an aborted fetus”. They are at most a derivative, a long ways from that stage.
It has been transformed and immortalized with adenovirus DNA. It has a highly abnormal karyotype of between 2 and 3 haploid genomes.
The babbling about testing on aborted fetal cells is just an excuse anyway.
Enyart was a religious kook and was never going to get vaccinated, no matter what.
As mentioned above, Enyart believed in beating children and did 2 months in jail for child abuse.
A horrible person whose one noble act was dying to make the world a better place.
Now I need to watch The Manchurian Candidate again.
I’m not feeling Schadenfreude, but I would respectfully observe that he practiced a deadly sort of “wisdom” given the cause of death.
@2 ” Encyclopedia of American Loons” ,thanks for bringing this to my attention .
@5 So divorce was ok with him .
I wonder what will be revealed now he is dead ,a gay lover seems likely .
Your use of Comic Sans here is perfect. Gave me a good smile for the day.
I’m not much of a grave-dancing kind of person, but I agree: fuck this guy. Especially fuck him for gloating about people who died of AIDS. I have a total lack of empathy anymore for people who are anti-vax and then die of COVID-19, especially when they have lived such callous and disingenuous lives. Too bad, so sad.
PaulBC@6
Sure of the path ahead of him, he walked straight off the cliff with his eyes closed.
Raven @ 5
Good riddance to bad rubbish.
One should only say good things about the dead.
He is dead. Good.
Imagine how much less misery and pain there would be in the world if this man had never been born.
No doubt he’s gone to a better place.
No sorry, correction:
He’s LEFT a better place.
I don’t know if he’s in a better place or not.
But I know we are.
I’m thinking of starting a franchise business selling diuretics and asparagus in the vicinity of the graves of assholes. This guy would be among the first–as would Rush Limpdick. Anybody else want go get in on the ground floor of this two-story outhouse?
Off topic but related
Idaho is once again leading the way. The Idaho GOP put an antivaxxer quack doctor on their largest public health board and just recently, a week ago, September 7. This guy is just repeating mindless antivax talking points that are completely false.
At the time the Idaho GOP did this, their hospital system overloaded and failed because it was overrrun with Covid-19 virus patients. They are now exporting their problem to Washington state which is being overloaded with patients from Idaho.
I am not surprised. But for every one of these loons who dies there are a hundred to take their place. This is nothing more than suicide by ignorance.
https://youtu.be/-nG6Q7MqVCo
https://youtu.be/Qy9_lfjQopU
This song is for Bob Enyart, Todd Tucker, Jimmy DeYoung Snr, Phil Valentine and all the other Covid-deniers talk back radio hosts who are dropping like flies. So long arseholes.
https://youtu.be/rY0WxgSXdEE
The evil men do lives after them.
I’m not sure he had any good to be interred with his bones.
It seems like I’ve been reading a lot of COVID obituaries of specifically medium-scale right-wing media figures. Can anyone tell me if this is:
A. Just my imagination
B. Because there are just so many antivaxxers dying now that it was inevitably going to hit this many broadcasters
or
C. Because there are just so many medium-scale right-wing media figures that any epidemic was going to kill a lot of them
Vicar, it seems like a lot because it’s a topical trope.
(Consider the sheer number of infected and dead, and what proportion makes the news as individuals’ stories)
@#24, John Morales:
It still seems like there have been an awful lot, even considering the topical nature.
We’re talking actual deaths, here, not the wider categories of symptomatic or long COVID. Doing a little digging around and comparing statistics, there have been about 301k COVID deaths in the US since the beginning of 2021, when “COVID anti-vaxxer” became eligible to become A Thing. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen at least 10 death announcements of right-wing anti-vax media figures in that time, which means that at least 1 out of every 30100 people who died of COVID this year was a right-wing anti-vax media figure.
If we make the not-too-outrageous assumption that right-wing media figures in the antivaxxer population are in about the same proportion that deaths of right-wing media figures are in the population of deaths of antivaxxers, and then add in the fact that some large-ish percentage of deaths were of people who were not antivax but caught coronavirus before they could get vaccinated (and, of course, some proportion were also breakthrough infections, so about 1% of ongoing deaths), it’s staggering that there are so many right-wing media figures in existence in the first place. 1 right-wing media figure per 30k antivaxxers? 25k antivaxxers? 20k?
Let’s extrapolate, taking the ridiculous red state of Indiana as a basis: as of the most recent figures I could find, 48.8% of the state of Indiana has not been vaccinated at all, not even one dose. At this point, any adult who hasn’t even had one dose is an antivaxxer; the shots have been available for free for months at a wide variety of locations. In that state, 48.8% of the population is 2.97 million people. If we assume that there are no vaccinations of people under 18 (which is not true but let’s give them the benefit of the doubt), there are 1.57 million people under the age of 18 so there must be at least roughly 1.39 million antivaxxers, which, at 1 right-wing media figure per 30k antivaxxers, means more than 46 right-wing antivax media figures for the state. The area of the state is 36418 square miles, so that’s more than 1 right-wing antivax media figure per every 792 square miles, enough to cover the entire state with a lot of overlap via local broadcast media. It also means that at least 1 in every 98k adult Indiana residents is a right-wing antivax media figure. (…or at least [evil grin] that was all valid at the beginning of the year… some percentage of them have quite possibly now died of COVID, bringing down the figures.)
And that lowball figure doesn’t count right-wing media figures who either aren’t antivax or publicly are but got vaccinated anyway! It’s maddening to think about!
Vicar, More than one in 500 Americans are now dead of COVID. Given the # of media markets in the US, that there would be 3500-5000 right-wing loons broadcasting doesn’t seem a stretch to me.
Of course, it is quite likely that the first-string assholes like Fucker Carlson are just killing off their followers for fun and profit while enjoying the protection of full vaccination while the 3rd and 4th tier loons are the true believers.
I suspect that during this latest wave of disease, people have been more actively digging out and talking about the deaths of horrible pro-plague influencers. By people I mean both journalists/media sites and social media activists/potential information sources. There’s growing anger and frustration with the pro-plague lobby, and people increasingly want to openly piss on the graves of pro-plague lobbyists and also increasingly feel it’s morally justified.
“He also told Insider he is concerned that the vaccine is causing mutations like the Delta variant, a false claim that has been repeatedly debunked.”
@ Raven, # 17: The Delta variant showed up before the COVID vaccines were developed, so it’s hard to argue that the vaccines caused Delta.
@28
not for a lying ignorant dolt talking to gullible ignorant dolts.
@Vicar — Even mix of B and C, I think. Plus what John said, it’s topical.
I checked the web archive of that old thread, and I see that I wrote ( June 26, 2010):
“I will bet 100 quatloos that Bob Enyart will still be a fuckwit ten years from now.”
Someone clearly owes me 100 quatloos.
christoph@28, unclefrogy@29,
Clearly, the vaccines are so noxious they not only cause those contaminated with them to shed virus, they cause them to shed mutant viruses backwards in time! In fact, they are probably responsible for starting the pandemic in the first place!!!!
raven@17 quotes: “Cole’s specialism is dermopathology”.
Too many letters there: it’s clearly derpology.
I saw a list somewhere with at least four of these conservative radio host nincompoops who have perished of COVID-19; besides Bob Enyart, we have:
Phil Valentine;
Marc Bernier; and
Dick Farrel.
Here in Australia, we have the same sort of radio shock-jocks, who are usually complete hypocrites: they push much of the same anti-COVID garbage, but are themselves vaccinated. They know they’re selling bullshit, as opposed to these poor senseless fools listed above who paid the price for their reckless ignorance.
Owlmirror, a good thing your wager was limited to ten years, as currently Bob Enyart is beyond being a fuckwit; he is now an ex-fuckwit. Unfortunately, I have no quatloos for you.
Hate to be slow but what is with “dinosaur blood.”