Correcting errors is now anti-religious bigotry?

That paper that cited the Creator for designing the hand has been retracted. The authors say it was a translation error — that they assumed that “Creator” was synonymous with “nature” in English, and apparently, they weren’t aware of the potential for willful misinterpretation of the word “design” in the creationist community. I can sort of accept that, except, of course, that they managed to write an entire complex technical paper on the physiology and anatomy of the hand in fluent English. I wouldn’t have expected a retraction, though, but only a revision of an unfortunate mistake.

Except now it has become a different story: Science Journal Publishes Creationist Paper, Science Community Flips Out. Wait, who’s flipping out? It wasn’t a creationist paper, but an ordinary technical paper that leapt to an inappropriate conclusion. I think it was entirely reasonable for scientists to be irritated by some sloppy editing that would be abused by creationist propagandists. But no — this is now the tale of deranged atheist scientists getting unwarrantedly upset about a casual mention of a god in a science paper.

Even more amusingly, I am now the villain.

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Missives from never-never land

Over on Violent Metaphors, Colin reported on his adventures on the Conspira Sea cruise, a cruise ship full of people absolutely convinced that vast shadowy evil empires were out to personally get them. Now Jezebel reports on the same cruise. It’s all very entertaining. It sounds like the Jezebel reporter, Anna Merlan, got a more hostile reaction from the cruise participants than did Colin.

I’ll be plunging in again to something just as weird, but not quite as paranoid, this spring. I’ll be attending the Paradigm Symposium in mid-May, right there in Minneapolis, and will post a few summaries here. I don’t expect a hostile reception (well, not too hostile, anyway). These aren’t generally conspiracy theorists. Rather than believing in malignant shadow forces, they generally believe in exotic, other-worldly influences on the ancient past and fleeting encounters with strange entities today.

Needless to say, they’re both equally wrong.

I think I’m done with humanity today

A little story from a big city hospital:

“When you work on the east side of our hospital, psychiatric patients are a dime a dozen,” he said.

But this patient is different. She’s put together. She’s lucid. She’s got an incision.

A group crowded around the computer to see her x-ray.

“Embedded in the right side of her flank is a small metallic object only a little bit larger than a grain of rice,” he said. “But it’s there. It’s unequivocally there. She has a tracker in her. And no one was speaking for like five seconds — and in a busy ER that’s saying something.”

It turns out this 20-something woman was being pimped out by her boyfriend, forced to sell herself for sex and hand him the money.

Yeah, some days, you start to see the virtues of extinction.

Matt Walters: racist misogynist, and proud of it

mattwalters

Matt Walters of Houston, Texas looks so normal and ordinary.

And then you read the abusive message he sent to a black woman he didn’t know on Facebook, in which he goes on and on with a violent fantasy in which he kidnaps her and tortures her gruesomely for months before killing her, and you realize that he’s simply a bad person. A horrible human being. A disgrace walking about in nicely groomed skin.

This is where free speech as a principle starts conflicting with the reality of the human condition. He is allowed to ramble to strangers about hanging them upside down in the dark and cut them and burn them, but at some point someone ought to take them aside and get them some help, and maybe explain to them that that behavior is inappropriate and vile, and that they should stop doing it. And while it may be nice for him to get off on telling people about the graphic abuse and mutilation and murder stories playing out in his head, it’s distressing to others and raises legitimate concerns about whether he is a threat to their safety.

He was quite reasonably reported to the police. They “brushed it off”. His target reported him to Facebook. They informed her that it violated no “community standards” (what community is that? The community of psychopathic assholes?). And then, when she shared his nightmare stories with others, Facebook blocked her for a week.

I guess all I can do is use my power of free speech to spread the word that Matt Walters is a nasty piece of work. Oh, and that his brother Buddy Walters is a barely literate dumbass.

I call that an anti-endorsement

I’m trying to reconcile myself to the likelihood that Hillary Clinton will be the Democratic nominee, when along comes an announcement from a horrible fellow.

Conservative economist Ben Stein revealed on Wednesday that he was considering voting for Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders because Donald Trump was going to “sink” the Republican Party.

“I went to law school with Ms. Clinton so I’ve always had a kind of fondness for her, she was always a very nice young woman,” Stein told CNN’s Carol Costello. “I admire the fact that Bernie Sanders has a single-payer national health plan.”

I think he’s trying to scuttle everyone.