By now I’m sure everyone has heard about the 9-year-old girl at a gun range who accidentally killed her instructor. She was using a Uzi; she opened up, with the instructor’s advice, on fully automatic, lost control, and the gun rose up and shot the instructor in the head.
The anti-vaxxers are excited. A recent paper, Measles-mumps-rubella vaccination timing and autism among young african american boys: a reanalysis of CDC data, claims that there is evidence that vaccinations cause autism. Only one problem: it’s a crappy paper.
Orac has covered it to an Oracian level of detail, so let me give the short summary:
We always knew Tony Blair could exceed the limitations of being George W. Bush’s lapdog. Look at W now; spending his life making crappy paintings that wouldn’t pass muster at a garage sale, yet get fawning media puff pieces and exhibitions in museums. It’s pathetic.
But Tony Blair now…there’s a villain with ambition. He has set up a little business in which he sells off his reputation to dictators, tyrants, and genocidal monsters, doing his best to make them look good. He’s been busy giving Nursultan Nazarbayev advice on how to plaster over the murder of civilians.
Tony Blair gave Kazakhstan’s autocratic president advice on how to manage his image after the slaughter of unarmed civilians protesting against his regime.
In a letter to Nursultan Nazarbayev, obtained by The Telegraph, Mr Blair told the Kazakh president that the deaths of 14 protesters “tragic though they were, should not obscure the enormous progress” his country had made.
Mr Blair, who is paid millions of pounds a year to give advice to Mr Nazarbayev, goes on to suggest key passages to insert into a speech the president was giving at the University of Cambridge, to defend the action.
Millions of pounds? I guess that prices him right out of the range of the Ferguson police department.
That’s a terrifying thought, actually. The Perth Zoo is featuring a week long lecture series on this important subject. We all go to the zoo for the educational experience, don’t we? Wouldn’t you be happy to spend Aus $660 on learning about animal dreams?
It’s this: while demanding empathy for the dangerous job of a policeman in an editorial in the Washington Post, a cop explains what he gets to do, with a complete lack of empathy for the citizen’s position.
Even though it might sound harsh and impolitic, here is the bottom line: if you don’t want to get shot, tased, pepper-sprayed, struck with a baton or thrown to the ground, just do what I tell you. Don’t argue with me, don’t call me names, don’t tell me that I can’t stop you, don’t say I’m a racist pig, don’t threaten that you’ll sue me and take away my badge. Don’t scream at me that you pay my salary, and don’t even think of aggressively walking towards me. Most field stops are complete in minutes. How difficult is it to cooperate for that long?
The contrast is agonizing. Palin tries to dismiss Warren’s comment about supporting fast food workers by claiming liberals think fast food is “of the devil”.
Would you believe she has something called The Sarah Palin Channel, where she babbles like this every day? At least for a few more weeks, until she quits.
He has now made several posts expressing his indignation that the media misquotes him. He really wants you to know that he never said aliens are going to hell.
Then Gray stated, “When Maher brought up the post . . . ” But Maher didn’t actually bring up the post. He regurgitated untruths that others were saying about my post. Maher said the following on his TV program:
Creationist Ken Ham who runs the Creation Museum . . . said this week that we should call off the search for extraterrestrial life because aliens haven’t heard the word of Jesus and thus are going to hell anyway.
So, Ms. Gray—where did I make that claim in my post? Check it out here.
Now, Gray does link to the video interview I did on Ray Comfort’s online program, where I made it very clear I did not say aliens “are going to hell anyway.”
But Gray of Salon.com didn’t want the truth get in the way of a good story in order to mock us!
It’s true, he didn’t say they were going to hell. He said that his magic book assured him that the creator of the universe only cares about one planet, Earth, and one very special species, us, and that Jesus’s agonizing death created blood magic that only helps human beings, so clearly there are simply not any aliens anywhere else in the universe.
The dang lamestream media needs to focus on that, his true message, which is of course not at all mockable.
You’re way ahead of me — you don’t even have that word in your vocabulary any more.
Brian Dunning of Skeptoid & Shermer’s stable of skeptics has been sentenced to 15 months in prison for fraud. It seems like a light sentence for skimming off a million dollars or so.
That wasn’t surprising. I guess this isn’t surprising, either. Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the replacement fourth horse-person of atheism, gave an interview in which she revealed her lack of humanist ideals.
Who do you admire?
"I admire my husband, of course. In terms of political leadership, I admire Henry Kissinger, and this is relevant now because I ask myself, what if we had Kissinger as the secretary of state today instead of John Kerry, what would all this look like, what would he do? I think he would advise on a more comprehensive level. He has a very interesting and incisive view of what American power is, and what it can achieve if implemented well.
"On an intellectual level I admire professor Bernard Lewis. I really admire Benjamin Netanyahu."
Why?
"Because he is under so much pressure, from so many sources, and yet he does what is best for the people of Israel, he does his duty. I really think he should get the Nobel Peace Prize. In a fair world he would get it."
Well, I guess if Kissinger can get a Nobel prize for this:
I guess it’s intellectually consistent to also believe that Netanyahu deserves one for this:
You’ll have to excuse me, though, if I scratch both mass murderers, as well as the person who admires them, from my list of admirable people.
Lenar Whitney, Republican congressional candidate from Louisiana, dared to use that line from Orwell while accusing virtually every climate scientist in the world of lying.
Practically every word in that monolog is a lie, or a product of exceptional ignorance. And the terrifying thing is that she knows it.
… when I pressed Whitney repeatedly for the source of her claim that the earth is getting colder, she froze and was unable to cite a single scientist, journal or news source to back up her beliefs.
To change the subject, I asked whether she believed Obama was born in the United States. When she replied that it was a matter of some controversy, her two campaign consultants quickly whisked her out of the room, accusing me of conducting a “Palin-style interview.”
Unbelievable. But these are the people dominating the Tea Party right now.
By the way, here’s the summary of the recent IPCC report (pdf), if you want to see the data that Whitney pretends doesn’t exist.
The latest gloating meme clotting up my email is this one; a lot of MRAs seem to think this is an irrefutable argument against feminism by a man who supports feminism, me.
The incident actually happened, and those are my words. I have no problem with that. However, it’s not making a point in their favor.
That the incident occurred does not refute anything I’ve ever said; false rape accusations do occur. But notice the last point; they’re relatively rare.
In over 30 years of teaching, this was the only time a woman attempted to extort me. Once. In 30 years. At the same time, every year I have heard of rapes and/or attempted rapes on my campuses. Final point stands confirmed.
One thing not mentioned in the story: when I went to immediately report this incident, I was not questioned. No one asked me if I’d led her on; no one thought I was making up a story to hurt a young woman; I was taken seriously and the complaint was addressed seriously. In part it was because I acted promptly and got witnesses, but let’s have no illusions — as a man, my word counts for more.
Perhaps the most important lesson, that my smirking taunters ought to learn, is that I did not come away from this unpleasant occasion with the idea that all women are conniving “bitches”. I was able to recognize that this was an unusual circumstance with a desperate young woman who was not plotting against me, but on the spur of the moment tried an unlikely ploy to save her grade.
So yes, please do keep trying to strike against me or my reputation with these kinds of games. Only an MRA would think this anecdote is somehow damning.
