I am disappointed to learn that another robot has ended its mission — the Ingenuity helicopter on Mars. Scott Manley breaks down the details.
Wow, those are some amazing shots of Martian landscapes, too. Send more probes!
Poor man. Ken Ham is being left behind by other creationists, which is of course not his failing, but of all those other faithless Christians. So he’s going to tell us where they are going wrong.
Many things have changed since we started the biblical apologetics ministry that became Answers in Genesis, in our home in Australia in 1977. The culture has changed. But God’s Word has not changed and never will. Man’s word of about origins has continued to change in various ways over this time..
This Bible record of creation rules out the evolutionary philosophy which states that all forms of life have come into being by gradual, progressive evolution carried on by resident (natural) forces. It also rules out any evolutionary origin for the human race, since no form of evolution, including theistic evolution, can explain the origin of the male before the female, nor can it explain how a man could evolve into a woman. But the bible has never changed in its statement that God made two genders: “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” (Genesis 1:27)
While we were still living in Australia, I read a report in 1977, that the Assemblies of God denomination had adopted a “Doctrine of Creation” which stated the following:
“This Bible record of creation thus rules out the evolutionary philosophy which states that all forms of life have come into being by gradual, progressive evolution carried on by resident forces. It also rules out any evolutionary origin for the human race, since no theory of evolution, including theistic evolution, can explain the origin of the male before the female, nor can it explain how a man could evolve into a woman.
If you’re like me, your jaw dropped at that claim that …no form of evolution, including theistic evolution, can explain the origin of the male before the female, nor can it explain how a man could evolve into a woman.
This is Ray Comfort levels of ignorance; we don’t argue that men evolved before women, or that the sexes evolved independently, or that men evolved into women. Those are creationist arguments. We all evolved together, our ancestors had male and female forms, and the first humans were the product of a gradual shift in populations. Anyone who tries to claim that evolution argues that the sexes evolved sequentially is abysmally ignorant, and this question about how women evolved from men is an example of a truly stupid question.
But why does Ham say the same thing twice? The first bit is quoting Answers In Genesis’s statement; the second is quoting the Assemblies of God statement, which AiG plagiarized. What he’s whining about, as he goes on, is that the Assemblies of God no longer claims that evolution can’t explain the origin of the male before the female, nor can it explain how a man could evolve into a woman
. Assemblies of God has abandoned a stupid claim, while AiG still holds to that idea, therefore, to Ken Ham, Assemblies of God has abandoned the truth of scripture! Worse, nowadays they’re arguing for more tolerance on scientific matters, and reject the dogmatism that is the foundation of Ken Ham’s beliefs.
“As a result, equally devout Christian believers have formed very different opinions about the age of the earth, the age of humankind, and the ways in which God went about the creative processes. Given the limited information available in Scripture, it does not seem wise to be overly dogmatic about any particular creation theory. We urge all sincere and conscientious believers to adhere to what the Bible plainly teaches and to avoid divisiveness over debatable theories of creation.”
Uh-oh. That is a direct attack on Answers in Genesis. Ham is going to forever insist on promoting deeply wrong and ignorant ideas, and he’s still clinging to Ray Comfort’s misconceptions.
It happened again. Monday rolled around. When will Science master the ability to predict these cataclysmic disasters? Surely there is some cause that we can treat. Vaccinations, maybe? Monday shelters, buried deep underground? Is there a pesticide that will selectively kill off all Mondays?
Once again, I’ve done it to myself: I set up all the material for my classes for the students on Monday, which effectively means my weekends are shot. This week we’re finishing up The Triple Helix with a conversation about the limitations of reductionism, Wednesday we discuss strategies for answering thorny research problems, and Friday we’re reading a paper about snake ecology, development, and evolution that takes a multidisciplinary approach. I’ve got it all queued up, almost as if I have a plan and know what I’m doing. I’m also tired, bleary-eyed, and I have a headache.
It is all my fault. The easy thing to have done would be to trundle through a series of lectures in which the students sit back with glazed eyes and absorb my wisdom, but instead I’m setting up frameworks and making the students do most of the work, at least two out of three classes. It turns out that’s far more work than just telling them what they need to know, so Mondays are going to be my days of pain.
The rest of the week, though, is cake. Mostly. Then this weekend I have to prep for next week, when we dive into the first chapter of our eco-devo textbook. Plasticity. Plasticity, plasticity, plasticity. That’ll keep us busy for a while.
Also, every day is grading day, and Tuesdays and Friday mornings are my spider days. I’ll recover tomorrow.
I may have to give my students extra credit just for being born. They’re all “Gen Z” (personally, I’m not a fan of lumping people into these cohorts), and polls are showing some heartening trends.
A new poll demonstrates that younger Americans are decidedly more progressive, less religious, and more likely to describe themselves as LGBTQ than other generations.
In fact, Generation Z adults in the survey were more likely to identify as part of the LGBTQ community than to say they were Republicans.
Now that is hope for the future! I would love to live in a world where gay people outnumber Republicans, while aware that LGBTQ+ people can also be conservative. I would say that Republicans ought to be dreading the future, except that they already do — it’s their nature — but also, Democrats need to wake up and smell the coffee too. They Dems haven’t been doing a great job of securing progressive bona fides.
On political ideology, the poll found that Gen Z voters were more progressive than all other generations, with 43 percent describing themselves as liberal, 28 percent as moderate and 28 percent as conservative — versus 31 percent of adults overall who said they are liberal, 34 percent moderate and 33 percent conservative.
On which party they supported, a plurality of Gen Z’ers said they were either independent or unsure of what party they supported, with 43 percent expressing one of those two views — a higher rate of those combined options than any other generation besides Millennials, among whom 44 percent said the same.
Other good news:
Gen Z voters also expressed less religiosity than Americans overall in the survey. According to the report, 33 percent of Gen Z respondents said they were religiously unaffiliated, versus 27 percent of adults overall. Only Millennials expressed less affiliation with religion than Gen Z’ers, with 36 percent of that generation defining themselves that way.
Hey, atheists: same thing I said about Democrats. If you ignore progressive values, this demographic change won’t help you.
Conservatives, at least, don’t understand what’s going on. Here’s that notorious twit, Tim Pool, making a prediction that conservative Christians will win out, because they “have babies.”
There are a few obvious problems with his reasoning.
I think I’ll just rest easy, knowing the kids are mostly all right.
Who would have thought it? Having a classless, obnoxious lawyer, ranting on social media, and stomping out of the courtroom during closing arguments is not a winning strategy. Donald Trump lost again and has been ordered to pay $83.3 million in damages to E. Jean Carroll.
The saddest thing about it is that will not derail the asshole’s presidential campaign in the slightest.
I just hope the Democrats hammer on his unsuitability for any office at all in the looming campaign.
You may have heard of the concept of retrospective coronation — the idea of looking back, and well after the fact deciding that a moment or phenomenon was the key event in history, even though at the time there was no sign of its significance. In evolution, for instance, there’s this idea of “mitochondrial Eve,” that a hundred thousand or two hundred thousand years ago there was one human woman walking around who was the ancestor of everyone living today. If we had a time machine and went back to that era, though, she’d be unrecognizable, no one special, and the only thing that actually distinguishes her is future events, many of them driven by chance. That’s the retrospective part, that such a person can only be recognized with hindsight.
I think I’ve found a complementary concept: retrospective invisibility. Or maybe it’s the same thing? It’s the idea that because we didn’t see something happening in the past, it isn’t real now or then. Here’s a perfect example:
Cool. Amazing. How true. When I was growing up in the 1960s and 70s, I didn’t know anyone who’d been diagnosed with autism. Not a one!
I did know lots of kids who couldn’t concentrate, or who were weird, or could never get their homework done on time, but we just called them stupid and let ’em fall through the cracks.
I didn’t know any kids with life-threatening allergies, but that was because it was their own look-out. You couldn’t expect other kids to worry about whether a peanut could kill another kid; that was their problem. I imagine there were quite a few parents who were quietly desperate about keeping their kid’s failed biology quiet while trying to insulate them from a dangerous world.
I did know kids who had chronic illnesses that kept them out of school all the time. I don’t know what the heck was wrong with them. They were just weak, I guess.
I did get exposed to some of the secret stuff, though. My grandfather was a custodian at a ‘special school,’ and I sometimes helped him out. I met a few of my peers there, kids I’d grown up with until suddenly, they disappeared. If a kid had behavioral problems, or if a young girl got pregnant, whoosh, they were whisked off to Thomas School, and all the mainstream kids could forget about them.
A few times, I talked to a girl my age there. I liked her. She’d gotten pregnant — a bad influence, so they disappeared her. They later took the child away. She stayed in the “special school,” where she suffered from depression, another of those things that didn’t exist in the 1970s for teenagers.
There was also another “special school” on the other side of town, a Catholic school for boys where all the troublemakers were sent. It had a terrible reputation. But on the bright side, all the kids who were bouncing off walls were kept there, so we could pretend they didn’t exist!
Another tremendous bonus: now people of that era can look back on their youth and proudly brag about how wonderful those days were, without a single cloud in the sky. We clearly need to bring back special schools for bad kids and juvenile halls and good ol’ sanatoriums where we can lock away our troubled youth and forget they exist. Workhouses and prisons! The wave of the future!
The UN has a few words of condemnation for Israel.
The top court for the United Nations on Friday ordered Israel to take measures to prevent and punish direct incitement of genocide in its war in Gaza, although it stopped short of ordering a ceasefire in a case brought forth by South Africa.
“The state of Israel shall… take all measures within its power to prevent the commission of all acts within the scope of Article II of the genocide convention,” the International Court of Justice (ICJ) said.
In a sweeping ruling, a large majority of the 17-judge panel of the ICJ voted for urgent measures which covered most of what South Africa asked for with the notable exception of ordering a halt to Israeli military action in Gaza.
The court ordered Israel to refrain from any acts that could fall under the genocide convention and also ensure that its troops do not commit any genocidal acts in Gaza.
It’s something. It may be a rather ineffectual finger-wagging, but they openly state what’s obvious: Israel is a genocidal state that is killing and starving and depriving the people of Gaza of basic humanitarian aid, and should stop. Stop right now.
Unfortunately, we all know what the top genocider would say about that. Netanyahu says nuh-uh.
“The charge of genocide levelled against Israel is not only false, it’s outrageous, and decent people should reject it,” said Netanyahu.
“Our war is against Hamas terrorists, not against Palestinian civilians,” he added. “We will continue to facilitate humanitarian assistance and to do our utmost to keep civilians out of harm’s way, even as Hamas uses civilians as human shields.”
All 26,000 (so far) dead Palestinians were Hamas terrorists, I guess. Including the 10,000 dead children?
Somebody should explain to Netanyahu that even if they win on the body count score, even if they were to kill every Palestinian, they’d still lose the moral conflict, and the PR campaign. I know I’ll be voting against support for Israel whenever I get a chance.
Remember, well over a million civilians were killed in Vietnam, while about 60,000 Americans died. Who won that war?
A GOP Super Pac asked their members what their gender was. The choices are mildly surprising.
We men have to complain, though, that they left out our genders: alpha, beta, sigma, and cuck.
There’s a new movie out, titled Fly Old Bird: Escape to the Ark, which makes the Ark Park its MacGuffin. It’s perfect. Free PR for creationism, and it’s targeted directly at the prospective clientele for Ken Ham’s fake “museum” and “theme park”: old people with dementia.
Fly Old Bird: Escape to the Ark is a heartwarming blend of comedy and drama, set against the backdrop of a modern-day odyssey. The film follows Jon Koski, a 69-year-old battling early dementia in a Michigan mobile home park. Defying his children’s plans to place him in a nursing home, Jon teams up with Miller Gibbs, a new friend with a frail heart. Their mission is to reach a life-sized Noah’s Ark in Kentucky, symbolizing a sanctuary of hope and rebirth. Their journey is marked by clever tactics, including trading cars and swapping license plates, to outmaneuver those chasing them. This film is a testament to the indomitable human spirit and the bonds forged in adversity.
“Heartwarming,” huh. If any of you have any elderly loved ones with dementia, this is a movie about your nightmares. The problem with dementia is the intermittent lucidity and the ability of the patient to make decisions that might, without malicious intent, endanger themselves and others. Well, here’s a movie that says that your old parent with reduced mental capacity is charming, and sure, let him drive off to a goofy destination, it’ll make him feel better. If he has to steal cars to do it, gosh, that’s just an intellectual challenge for him to surmount.
Their destination, by the way, is not a “sanctuary of hope and rebirth.” It’s a venal roadside attraction for exploitive evangelical Christianity.
But OK, the movie could be a story about sensitivity and the importance of human dignity, if it has a good script and talented actors. Does it? You can watch the trailer and decide for yourself.
Oh god. The main character is simply cringe. On the plus side, the first few minutes where he’s emoting to project his frustration did convince me of his dementia. Everyone else is just flat — the scene with the joke wasn’t funny. They meet an old friend and say “Hey, you’re still tall I see, huh!” and he replies “And you’re still short, ha ha ha” is a scene that will have the old people rolling in the aisles.
It’s streaming on Amazon, and I could watch it right now for $4.99. Unfortunately, that trailer convinced me that I’d be unable to sit through 2 hours and 27 minutes of that dreck, so sorry, I’m not going to review it.
I didn’t. I know next to nothing about her. Apparently, she’s facing all kinds of health problems now that she’s in her late 50s and did the usual thing we Americans do when facing a health crisis: go online and ask for donations. Given that simple story, I, a liberal weirdo, would think it deplorable that anyone would have to deal with our lack of a sane health care system. But no. Now the libs are coming for Mary Lou Retton, according to one far right web site.
From America’s Sweetheart to the libs enemy list.
That’s where American hero gymnast Mary Lou Retton, who turns 56 on Tuesday, finds herself after facing death in the fall after battling what her family is calling a rare form of pneumonia. When the public first found out about Mary Lou’s battle, it was also revealed by her daughters that their mother was uninsured.
At that time, the libs, who have no problem with hundreds of thousands of uninsured illegals pouring over the Mexican border, were livid. How dare Mary Lou not have insurance, they screamed on social media.
Now that Mary Lou has survived and appears ready to get on with life, albeit with an oxygen tank and looking like she’s in her mid-60s, the libs want blood and they appear ready to destroy the gold medalist darling because her family won’t disclose what they did with financial donations that were sent to Mary Lou to pay for her medical bills.
She’s not on my enemy list. If I were to scream “How dare Mary Lou not have insurance!” it wouldn’t be a complaint about Retton, but about how we’ve outsourced health care to MBAs in suits running for-profit insurance companies, and about the failure of the American state to provide a reasonable social safety net. I don’t understand the complaint by this far-right yahoo in the slightest.
What does the plight of immigrants have to do with that? They all ought to get basic health insurance applied to them, too.
He actually seems to be upset at one specific columnist for USA Today.
On January 8, super lib USA Today columnist Christine Brennan went on the attack in a column titled, “Months after hospitalization, Mary Lou Retton won’t answer basic questions about health care, donations.”
Brennan wants an accounting of the $459,324 that was raised for Mary Lou.
“Asked in several text messages and a voicemail on Monday about her lack of health insurance until recently, her financial situation and why she refuses to divulge where she was hospitalized or the name of her doctor(s) more than two months after she left the hospital, Retton, 55, declined to reply,” Brennan wrote.
Oh, Christine Brennan is a super lib
, however that is defined. All I can see about Brennan is that she writes about sports, nothing but sports, and about the impact of sports on people’s lives, and it’s no wonder I never heard of her. There’s nothing particularly liberal about her output, so that’s mystifying.
However, she has written multiple articles demanding an accounting from Retton about how she is spending the money that was donated to her, which is a) none of her business, and b) not at all liberal. It’s more Karenish than anything. Beyond that, she has written about drug abuse and spousal abuse and discrimination in the sports business — is that what has outraged the right-wing pundit?
He really has a weird idea about super lib
values.
Super Libs don’t want to help people like Mary Lou. They want them to repent and admit they don’t live life the right way like a Super Lib like Christine Brennan lives life and hence it’s time for Mary Lou to be dragged.
I guess Retton was a pro-Reagan conservative, but I don’t care. Everyone deserves basic human rights, and I don’t appreciate a frothing MAGA nitwit telling me, incorrectly, what my opinion on helping people is. But this is what people like him do, misrepresent and lie and get everything wrong.
