A re-poll

You know how much I despise internet polls — they’re meaningless and biased, they draw on an already biased sample, and they tend to be so badly worded that their results are uninterpretable — there is a science of polls and surveys, and these things ignore it all.

Now how about this for an example of anti-scientific thinking: remember that last poll on a standard (but uncomfortably kittenish) scientific procedure? The Mirror didn’t get the result they wanted, so now they’re re-running the poll. Yeah, that’s valid. I want to shoot craps against these guys: every time I get a bad roll, I’ll just say I want a do-over.

This is exactly the same article and the same poll, they just reposted it with a new title: “Kitten controversy: 46% of people say stitching up kittens’ eyes for science is OK.”

Is the scientific experiment on kittens acceptable?

Yes 35.85%

No 64.15%

If we add more yes votes, will they just do it over again a third time? What fraction of “yes” votes do they consider acceptable?

No contest

If you thought Bambi vs. Godzilla was funny, you might want to witness AronRa battling Pastor Bob Enyart. I give you one representative sample of the back-and-forth:

AronRa wrote:Ignoring for a moment the thousands of creationist arguments which have all been proven wrong a thousand times, yet are still being presented on YEC websites around the world, can you show me one verifiably accurate argument, positively indicative of miraculous creation over biological evolution?

Enyart wrote:The 1st and 2nd laws of thermodynamics.

Thermodynamics does not invalidate evolution. Evolution relies on thermodynamic laws.

How not to respond to a Rethuglican

Ugh. Witness thuggish wingnut James Taranto’s comment on the killings in Colorado.


I hope the girls whose boyfriends died to save them were worthy of the sacrifice.

Perhaps he’d like to judge? Is he going to ask this question of every case where a person puts themselves in harm’s way to defend a loved one? What criterion is he going to use to define “worthy”?

That’s a repulsive sentiment he’s expressing, and seems to reflect a lack of empathy and an inability to imagine any kind of sacrifice without hauling out a ledger sheet to calculate its value. Not nice.

But then I read one of the first comments on the article at dKos highlighting Taranto’s sliminess. And I was ugh’ed out again!

I was prepared for a worthy rant. Apologies, should have known better. If another nitwit does something similar, refer them to Heinlein. Heinlein wrote “anycountry that does not place women and children first” as part of it’s values is a unethical country. (I am paraphrasing.)

Women take nine months to make a baby. Men take minutes. That fact prompted Heinlein’s writing.

Heinlein???!? Jebus, that man was an unrepentant sexist pig himself; I recoiled from his later books when I was 15, because they were too crudely horny and repellently attached to sexist stereotypes. When I was 15, and juiced on testosterone myself! Also, I was even then learning to dislike what would become a typical libertarian mindset.

But to respond to a challenge to women’s worth by declaring the importance of their baby-making abilities…talk about missing the whole point.

Mike Adams one-ups everyone

We’ve been seeing the spectacle of everyone with a cause blaming the Colorado massacre on every tinge of ideological difference they want to oppose. Now Mike Adams, the chronic wackjob behind the deranged alt medicine site Natural News, brings the lunacy to put everyone to shame. First claim: Adams rides his anti-pharmaceutical hobby horse to make a completely unsupported assertion: “James Holmes may have been involved in mind-altering neuroscience research”.

But that’s just the beginning. The rest is a wacky conspiracy theory fit for a 9-11 Truther: Holmes was set up by the FBI through “drugs, hypnosis, or trauma” to carry out a government-planned terrorist attack, all to the purpose of driving a UN-inspired effort to confiscate all of our guns. And then? “government genocide really kicks in like we saw with Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao and other tyrants”.

Don’t read the comments. A few brave critics express their incredulity, but the rest are saying, “it does make some sense.”

Give ’em a little time, the merely rancid turn rotten

I’ve criticized both atheists and the religious for trying to turn the recent tragedy in Colorado into an ideological battleground. You’d think at some point they’d learn that the best thing to do is shut up about how it shows Christians or atheists are evil, but no…one evangelical fruitcake, Jerry Newcombe, has taken it to the next level. He’s now arguing that not only did the shooting occur because Americans aren’t fearful enough of hell, but that the victims who were not Christian are now burning in hell.

While I appreciate his honesty and commitment to the principles of his religion, I can’t help but feel a little nauseous.

Rationalia isn’t

Ho hum. Another purportedly rational forum that thinks rape is a joke.

Would it be immoral to rape a Skepchick?

Post by Pappa » Fri Jul 20, 2012 8:46 am

Not for sexual gratification or power or anything like that, just because they’re so annoying.

I’m really torn on this one. :dunno:

You know what’s really funny? The guy posting that crap apparently has some admin role there, and every one of his posts has this little postscript:

For information on ways to help support Rationalia financially, see our funding page.

Because professional fundraisers everywhere like to encourage people to contribute by joking about how they want to rape someone.

In case you’ve been wondering who to blame…

The American Patriarchy Association has all the answers! The list of causes for the recent theater shooting is long and predictable.

  • We aren’t sufficiently afraid of god

  • We aren’t afraid enough of hell

  • The ACLU

  • Godless public schools

  • Liberals

  • Movies

  • The Internet

  • Gays

  • Lesbians

  • Professors

  • Liberal churches

Mankind is shaking its fist at the authority of God! And God will not be silent when he’s mocked!

So he’ll scramble the brains of a random person and have him go out and murder something less than a hundred entirely random people who are only united in a common interest in Batman movies. He doesn’t seem to have a very coherent or comprehensible way of enforcing his desires.

Hey! They left one out! Maybe god just hates Batman.

Rick Warren is a lying ghoul

Rick Warren has just weighed in on the Aurora shooting, and of course it is predictable inanity.

When students are taught they are no different from animals, they act like it.

Right. Because it’s only the lies of Jesus that keep people from waking up to reality and going on shooting sprees.

It’s simply a fact that Rick Warren is an animal, like all the rest of us. And what’s with the bum rap on animals? Puppy dogs don’t go on a murderous rampage, you know.

Gotcha!

This is an account from Connie Schultz’s facebook page, so I’ll put the whole thing here for you fb-haters.

Email from conservative blogger, dated July 9, 2012:

Dear Ms. Shultz,

We are doing an expose on journalists in the elite media who socialize with elected officials they are assigned to cover. We have found numerous photos of you with Sen. Sherrod Brown. In one of them, you appear to be hugging him.

Care to comment?

An exposé! Of the elite media! And he’s got the photographic evidence! It sounds so Breitbartian. And the followup is a classic Breitbartian pratfall.

Response, dated July 10, 2012:

Dear Mr. [Name Deleted]:

I am surprised you did not find a photo of me kissing U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown so hard he passes out from lack of oxygen. He’s really cute.

He’s also my husband.

You know that, right?

Connie Schultz.

I’m sure this will make headlines at the Drudge Report or the Daily Caller or The Blaze or some similar right-wing schlock factory.