Hey, look, everyone! Canada
has
creationists! Ha ha!
If you look at a map and notice how that big peninsula Toronto is on is protruding into the US, and note that that penetration has been going on for hundreds of years, I guess it’s not surprising that they’d catch a nasty disease.
Scott Lanyon, director of the Bell Museum, has an article on two disease we should worry about, VHSv and EAS.
Personally, I think VHSv is the worst. It’s a virus that causes hemorrhagic septicemia in fish; just from the name you know it’s bad, involving blood and sepsis. My most horrible experience raising zebrafish was the time hemorrhagic septicemia swept through my colony and I had to euthanize every animal and bleach every last bit of plumbing to eradicate it. This disease has been detected in waters of Wisconsin, and it’s definitely not good.
EAS may not be as dramatically gory and lethal in its effects, but it strikes humans directly. It’s Evolution Avoidance Syndrome, and it causes the brains of scientists and journalists to seize up when circumstances are appropriate to discuss evolution in public. Apparently, we want local fish populations to develop, acquire, improve or have arise resistance to the hemorrhagic septicemia virus; we can’t possibly suggest that evolution might be at work.
And what a sweet review it is. There are points on which I disagree with Hitchens (as there are with Dawkins, too, of course), but I agree that the book is an excellent contribution to the ongoing evolution of secular thought.
I wonder if one of the factors that is making everyone consider this movement the “New Atheism” is a confusion of cause and effect. The cause, the advancement of outspoken atheism, is the same old idea; the effect is different, because we don’t have just one Ingersoll who could be marginalized and humored because he was mostly alone, we have a growing core of literate and uncompromising atheists who can reinforce each others’ message, leading to greater and greater gains. Hitchens and Dawkins, despite differences in politics and perspectives, can find common cause in one thing, at least, and will gladly work together to promote it. And everywhere new groups supporting secularism are springing up and encouraging discussion and criticism of religion.
If I were a follower of one of the Abrahamic religions, I’d be worried. The opposition is growing bolder, and their religious belief relies on acceptance of authority — and that is being challenged and weakened.
It’s early, you’re sipping your coffee, you want something odd to pique your interest and make you realize that maybe your boss isn’t the biggest screwball on the planet. I’m happy to oblige with a few words of wisdom from a sagacious UK writer.
Everyone go say howdy to The Society of Non-Theists at Purdue University, a brand new student freethought group. They’re popping up everywhere!
It could have been a much bigger story. A reporter came out to talk to me about that lawsuit a while back, and he had talked with Pivar and many of those involved, and he said he was preparing a fairly substantial write-up … and then after he got back to the Twin Cities, he got a call from Pivar announcing that he had dropped the suit, and so the story got cut way back. Dang. If only Pivar had held off for one more day.
Anyway, you can now read the abbreviated story of the Pivar vs. Seed/Myers lawsuit right now. I guess I got a little snark in, anyway.
One thing that didn’t make it into the story is that Pivar accused me of being a big bully, picking on him like that. The irony is incredible. I’m the $45K/year associate professor at a small town university, he’s the multi-millionaire septic-tank magnate from New York City with buckets of cash to throw at expensive art, lawyers, and frivolous lawsuits. He was suing me for a sum that was more money than I’ll probably make in my entire lifetime, yet was maybe six months income for him. And I am the bully.
Man, I’m tougher and fiercer than I thought. I should have beat him up for his lunch money — I’d probably be able to pay off my mortgage with it.
You’ve got to read this account of the intelligence that led to the Iraq war.
On April 23, 2006, CBS’s “60 Minutes” interviewed Tyler Drumheller, the former CIA chief of clandestine operations for Europe, who disclosed that the agency had received documentary intelligence from Naji Sabri, Saddam’s foreign minister, that Saddam did not have WMD. “We continued to validate him the whole way through,” said Drumheller. “The policy was set. The war in Iraq was coming, and they were looking for intelligence to fit into the policy, to justify the policy.”
Now two former senior CIA officers have confirmed Drumheller’s account to me and provided the background to the story of how the information that might have stopped the invasion of Iraq was twisted in order to justify it. They described what Tenet said to Bush about the lack of WMD, and how Bush responded, and noted that Tenet never shared Sabri’s intelligence with then Secretary of State Colin Powell. According to the former officers, the intelligence was also never shared with the senior military planning the invasion, which required U.S. soldiers to receive medical shots against the ill effects of WMD and to wear protective uniforms in the desert.
Bush knew there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. He was told that the source that claimed there were was not credible, and he was told that the information coming from a source close to Hussein had been validated.
Bush lied to drag us into a pointless, unjust war.
Bush must be impeached. It doesn’t matter how impractical the process seems to be, or how timid the Democrats are. This is an issue of the rule of law: are we to be governed by criminals? Is there to be no punishment for such hideous acts that lead to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people? These men are monsters.
All I’m asking is that Bush and Cheney be thrown out of office in disgrace. If justice were served, there’d also be a subsequent act of extraordinary rendition that delivered them into the hands of the government of Iraq.
This is appalling. How dare a mere blogger do the research, write up a detailed account, and break an important health story before the NY Times writes it up without recognition of the source? Some will demand that the NY Times retroactively acknowledge the work and expertise of the blogger, but nay — that is not the one true way. Bloggers should proactively acknowledge the possibility that the NY Times might someday use their research and rewrite their stories for them.
— grateful acknowledgment —
The NY Times hasn’t published anything about this article yet, but if they do, this post was the product of borrowing their future hard work and good name. With my magic time machine.
The managing editor of a small town newspaper in Wisconsin, Rose Eddy, is very upset with certain vicious hate groups, so she made up a list for her staff and announced that they will not be accepting ads or information from them, ever. And then she publicized it, declaring her unimpeachable moral probity in the pages of her newspaper. Here’s her list of awful, terrible people who must not appear in print:
The Nazi Party. Bad, very bad. I think this one has been condemned by history well enough.
Al Qaeda. A known terrorist organization that wants to destroy America — the very symbol of evil today.
The Ayn Rand Institute. Um, well. OK. They are kind of selfish libertarian creepazoids, who seem to be infamously pretentious … but they don’t seem to be quite in the same category as Nazis and fanatical terrorists.
People looking for Elvis. What! That’s half of small town America! These people may be mildly wacky, but they’re definitely harmless.
Nazis, Al Qaeda, Ayn Rand, Elvis, and atheists. Ms Rose Eddy has a very peculiar pattern of discrimination, I think. How could she have left off mimes, Amway salesmen, and Paris Hilton?
*Obscure Talk.Origins reference. Old hands will remember the list lord.
(via Jeffrey Shallit)
