Not at all clear on the concept

Ah, what a lovely example of theistic incomprehension. Did you know that the reason Christians go to church is out of a sense of civic duty, even when they think church is godawful tedium?

fail

Why do atheists think that just because they are atheists that they don’t have to go to church? I don’t like standing in line at the DMV. I’m not a car, but I do it anyway. I don’t like standing in line at the grocery store either. I’m not produce, but I still do it anyway! I am a responsible citizen and I do the right thing, so should atheists!!!

Responsible citizens attend science classes and learn. Have you been keeping up with your obligation to understand the complex world we live in?

(via FAILblog)

(By the way, if you start babbling about poes, I will cut you. I really really hate all the telepathic scrying people do to discern poeishness.)

I wonder what lesson Joshua Becker learned?

Becker is one of those guys who thinks it is fun to sexually harass women over the internet. Only this time, the woman fought back smartly and rationally. And tracked down her harasser and threatened to send Joshua Becker’s mother the screencaps of the chat.

I suspect, though, that the only lesson he learned was to do a better job of concealing his identity when he’s demanding that women give him sexual favors, since his response to being told to stop and that his stupid comments would be made public was “newsflash: your fat as fuck”.

Yeah, I think I can tell who comes off as the intelligent participant in that conversation.

The True Meaning of Christmas involves dead children, anyway

You’ve all been wondering, I’m sure, how William Lane Craig rationalizes the Newtown massacre with his faith in a benevolent god. Here he explains what came to his mind when he heard about the murders of little children, and asked himself how to reconcile the joyous season with the heartbreaking deaths. No problem, he says, this is what Christmas is supposed to be like.

You see, it’s just like the Bible, with it’s mythical murder of all the children Jesus’ age by King Herod. See? It’s supposed to be a vivid reminder that we live in an evil, fallen world, and that Jesus is the phantasm in the shadows waiting to scoop up our souls when we die and carry us to paradise.

OK, I’ll accept the parallels to the Herod fable (which is almost certainly not true, however), but now I want to ask a follow up. So, Dr Craig: were the Newtown killings ordained by your god? Was he sending us a message about the nature of the world and doing his best to extort us into believing in Jesus? (Will he murder more children every year to compel our belief?)

Or are you just into empty literary parallels? Because, you know, saying it reminds you of a passage in your bible doesn’t really explain anything.

Have you ever opened the refrigerator…

… grabbed the carton of milk, opened it to see if it had gone bad, had the smell of rancid horrible off hit your nose, recoiled, and handed it to the person next to you saying “Oh My God This Is Horrible Smell This”?

Why do we do that? Why is our first impulse, on having a horrible experience which we can spare those we care about from repeating, to insist on sharing that experience? It’s a mystery.

Anyway. This is horrible. Watch this.

It was a good week to go offline

I’ve had my head in the sand for the last week, so pardon me for arriving late to the recriminations following the violence in Newtown, Connecticut last week. Like everyone, I’m wondering why it happened, and looking for answers: unfortunately, the only people providing answers of absolute certainty are the deranged reactionaries of the far right, who are lining up at the media microphone to babble their rationales. Most seem to involve a neglectful god who is teaching us a lesson.

James Dobson: We elected the wrong presidetn and allow abortion, so: “I am going to give you my honest opinion: I think we have turned our back on the Scripture and on God Almighty and I think he has allowed judgment to fall upon us.”

William J. Murray: “Without the authority of God, there are no morals, and none are taught in the public schools today. The ethics that are taught are situational, perhaps the same situational ethics that led to the logic that caused the tragic shootings in Newtown.”

Gary DeMar: “The problem is, our current culture – through the educational system – is telling young people that they are animals, in some cases, less than animals. So genetically we are no different (really) from a worm, a bug, or a dandelion.”

Mike Huckabee: “We ask why there is violence in our schools, but we have systematically removed God from our schools. Should we be so surprised that schools would become a place of carnage?”

Bryan Fischer: “I think God would say to us, ‘Hey, I’d be glad to protect your children, but you’ve got to invite me back into your world first. I’m not gonna go where I’m not wanted; I am a gentleman.'”

On the less ardently god-walloping side of the right wing, though, they’re offering secular solutions. Mad, dangerous, unworkable solutions.

Louie Gohmert: “I wish to God she [the principal] had had an m-4 in her office, locked up so when she heard gunfire, she pulls it out … and takes him out and takes his head off before he can kill those precious kids”

Ann Coulter: Only one policy has ever been shown to deter mass murder: concealed-carry laws.”

Megan McArdle: “I’d also like us to encourage people to gang rush shooters, rather than following their instincts to hide; if we drilled it into young people that the correct thing to do is for everyone to instantly run at the guy with the gun, these sorts of mass shootings would be less deadly, because even a guy with a very powerful weapon can be brought down by 8-12 unarmed bodies piling on him at once. “

Those are all awful and ridiculous ideas. But the very worst is this anonymous poem making the rounds of facebook. WARNING: dangerous levels of treacle and stupidity! Have a vomit bag handy!

Wait. This is so bad, I better put it below the fold, just to be safe.

[Read more…]

At a loss for an appropriately angry title

machopaw

I wrote here about the accidental 2009 capture and subsequent euthanasia of Macho B, an aging male jaguar who’d wandered across the U.S. border into southern Arizona.

Last week, in a really rather remarkable bit of investigative journalism, Dennis Wagner of the Arizona Republic reported that Macho B’s capture may not have been precisely accidental:

Although Game and Fish officials claimed Macho B’s capture was accidental, [Biologist Emil] McCain actually set the snare along a favored trail and baited it with scat from a female jaguar in heat. Then he flew to Europe to visit his girlfriend, leaving Smith and another Game and Fish employee to check the traps.

Macho B was caught on Feb. 18, 2009. Smith promptly shared the news with Ron Thompson, the Game and Fish administrator overseeing carnivores, who fired an e-mail to McCain in Spain, announcing: “Thorry did it!” [Thornton “Thorry” Smith, McCain’s colleague]

As word spread, congratulatory messages contained a hint of conspiracy. McCain received one e-mail from a co-worker who wrote, “And just think, he was an ‘incidental’ take. The hell with politics.”

The answer: “Yes, it was incidental, and you know that. Right? I had nothing to do with this right? And neither did Ron.”

Thompson then issued a warning about indiscreet messages: “Emil, be aware that we cannot use the government email to communicate with you. Sky Island (Alliance) is calling it a conspiracy, and for the first time they are right!”

For those of you not conversant in Endangered Species Act jargon, “take” is defined in that act as “to harass, harm, pursue, hunt, shoot, wound, kill, trap, capture, or collect [a listed species], or to attempt to engage in any such conduct.” An incidental take is a take that’s not deliberate, but rather a side effect of some other activity.For instance, accidentally capturing a jaguar in a snare you’ve set for pumas.

Which means, if Wagner’s report is accurate, that AZ Game and Fish employees and contractors tried to pass off a deliberate take as an incidental take. In other words, fraudulent violation of Federal environmental law.

Why? Wagner has an idea:

The ability to track a jaguar known as Macho B would make the state agency and its contractors clear favorites to win a multimillion-dollar research grant. It would bring prestige to scientists and administrators involved. And it might provide valuable information about the border travels and habitat of an endangered species.

The last three years have been a festival of conflicting stories and fingerpointing. McCain was convited of violating the Endangered Species Act and given five years probation, during which time he’s not allowed to study big cats in the US. So he’s doing so in the Eastern Hemisphere. Biologist Janay Brun, who had acted as McCain’s assistant, agreed to a plea bargain and is writing a book.

Here’s what that “incidental” take did to an aging cat:

[S]ometime on Feb. 18, 2009, an aged feline known as Macho B stepped on the tripping mechanism with his left front paw. No one witnessed what happened next. Based on injuries and evidence at the scene, however, there is little doubt that the creature’s escape efforts were panicked and prolonged.

One of the jaguar’s legs was cut and severely swollen. A canine tooth was broken off at the root. Claw fragments, hair and fluids were recovered from the tree trunk. A javelina tooth was inexplicably stuck in the jaguar’s tail.

Brun has described the cat’s struggles in an online interview, based on her visit to the site afterward. “Macho B fought,” she said. “I don’t know how long he fought, but he was climbing this tree, clawing the tree, biting the tree, banging himself against (a boulder). He fought and used probably every last ounce of strength he had. … It just absolutely killed him.”

Macho B was tranked, collared, and released, and recaptured two weeks later when his transmitter stopped moving. Despite being gravely ill, with a septic hind leg that was hugely swollen, it took some doing to get him back in custody.  He was euthanized for kidney failure shortly after recapture.

Wagner details further dissembling, both before and after Macho B’s death, by both Game and Fish and US Fish and Wildlife Service staff. It’s a difficult read, but Macho B deserves no less.

STOP DISTRACTING ME, PHARYNGULA!

Oh, yuck. I just looked at the site (haven’t had much time to do that lately), and we’re carrying ads for “Concealed Carry” magazine. A whole magazine, dedicated to people who are obsessed with carrying deadly weapons in public, and whose promoters have put up a general ad buy for any site that has discussions about gun control. Like this one.

Just the fact that such a rag exists and that it has people who buy it says a lot about one of the things wrong with America.

Jeez, I got work to do. I shouldn’t ever look at a site like Pharyngula that works me up into a lathering fury.

And so as not to pollute the previous post with Michelle Malkin

… because I didn’t want to have to use the “Fuckbrained assholes” tag on the last post.

This is how Michelle Malkin started a screed six months ago against public school teachers in Wisconsin:

They really outdid themselves. In Wisconsin and across the nation, public school employee unions spared no kiddie human shields in their battle against GOP Gov. Scott Walker’s budget and pension reforms.

We all use metaphors that turn out in retrospect to have been distasteful.

But this was beyond the pale even before Sandy Hook.  Malkin needs to apologize for this, and she needs to do it now.

Welp, I’m all convinced and stuff now

The ongoing dispute about sexism in the secular community has been settled at last by one incredibly insightful post.

Atheism is a ‘guy thing,’ I would say, like needlepoint is a ‘girl thing.’

We don’t have to consider why the sexes fall (or are pushed) into these particular roles; they just are. And with that simple argument, we’re done. By golly, we ought to make the guy who said it some kind of leader of the atheist movement. We wouldn’t want to have him wasting his time on things like needlepoint, you know.

Jeez, Harding, ease up on the equivocating, OK?

Jezebel justifies its existence every now and then, and today is one of those days. The publication is celebrating a first instance of what will likely become a hallowed tradition, and it starts off with a post by Kate Harding wwith the people-pleasing title Fuck You, Men’s Rights Activists. I really hate when my militant friends start to pull their punches. You know?

Excerpt, with emphasis added for local interest:

 

So fuck you, MRAs. Fuck you for showing up every time women speak, especially about rape and abuse, and trying to make it all about you. Fuck you for derailing threads about the victims of Marc Lépine, a man who screamed about his hatred for feminists as he murdered fourteen women and injured many others, because you also hate feminists and want a fucking cookie for not killing anyone. Fuck you for making rape and death threats against young women who dared to protest a speaking engagement by a man who thinks little girls would enjoy being raped by their fathers if it weren’t for society telling them it’s dirty. Fuck you for whining about how unfair it is that women might wonder if you’re a rapist when you approach them out of nowhere, while completely ignoring how unfair it is that women feel the need to be on guard all the time in public. Or that if we relax and behave normally—drinking, dancing, dressing however we want—you will be the first motherfuckers in line to blame us for getting ourselves raped.