Go ahead and talk about the Republican debate

I don’t want to talk about it — I despise the whole field — but everyone is emailing me about it, and I was even talking to my mother on the phone tonight and she asked me about it (I said I wouldn’t watch those weasels unless they were in a crotch-kicking contest). I’ll let this thread open up for a free-for-all discussion of the cacophony.

All I’ve heard so far is that a) they avoided talking about Bush, preferring to measure themselves against Reagan (Reagan was almost as great an incompetent as the current resident, so they’re obviously aiming low), and b) when they were asked about evolution, a goodly subset of them were so stupid that they said they didn’t believe it. Too bad this debate wasn’t merged with that quiz show, so some stern harridan could have announced, “You are the weakest link!” and pulled a lever that would have catapulted them into a shark tank or something entertaining.

So who are the Republican anti-science goons? Huckabee, Brownback, and … ?

Watch the response at Crooks and Liars. The foolish three are Huckabee, Brownback, and Tancredo.

Kevin Padian explains macroevolution

The gang at the NCSE have put together Padian’s testimony at the Dover trial with the slides he used. You may have already read the transcript, but with the figures added it acquires a whole new dimension — it’s basically a wonderfully done primer in the basics of macroevolutionary biology. Next time some creationist tries to simper at you that he accepts microevolution, but that there’s no evidence for macroevolution and he refuses to believe it, point him at this page. It’s aimed not at scientists, but at the judges and lawyers at a trial, so it’s eminently comprehensible to any intelligent layman … and it crushes the bogus rejection of macroevolution that they are so fond of using.

WAAGNFNP declares war on Technorati

And who can blame them? Technorati, if you’re unfamiliar with it, is one of those services that watches activity on the web, and then puts up metrics and ranks and scores, and tries to distill the flux into something simpler and more comprehensible, which often reduces to telling you how many people are trying to find pictures of a naked Paris Hilton. When the mob votes, it always seems to lead to the lowest common denominator. The We Are All Giant Nuclear Fireball Now Party is trying to subvert all that with a campaign to push the WAAGNFNP into the upper ranks of Technorati’s odd WTF category. A “WTF” is a user-written blurb that tries to identify a hot topic and explain something about it—any member of Technorati can write a blurb, and also vote for it, and the WTF page is another ranked list of these popular blurbs. Get in there and rock the system!

There are no Pharyngula blurbs, sad to say, and even sadder, I used to be on their Top 100 Favorited Blogs, and I’ve slipped off the list lately. Don’t forget, new people, you can click here to increase my Technorati favorited rank.

Another blithering ignoramus against science: Roy Varghese

The Dallas Observer has published a profile of Roy Abraham Varghese, a wealthy computer and business consultant who funnels money into ‘spirituality’ nonsense, that is not only so stupid that it pained me to read it, but but was also poorly and confusingly written — the reporter is utterly credulous and gushes over Varghese like the most pathetic fanboy, but then every once in a while tosses in a paragraph that takes a critical stance, but reads as if he has just cribbed an argument “for balance” and stuck it in, like a lump of hard thought floating in a sea of New Agey, fuzzy religious porridge. It makes one wonder if an editor had tried to sharpen up the slop by telling the writer to throw in some random scientific paragraph. The goofy philosophy is bad enough, but the graceless prose and incoherent structure is agonizing.

You know this article is in trouble from the first paragraph.

For a quarter-century Roy Abraham Varghese has been assembling God proofs. Along the way he won over the world’s most influential atheist.

[Read more…]

WTF?

The incompetence is stunning. Richard Dawkins makes the Time 100 list, and who do they commission to write up his profile?

Michael Fucking Behe.

That’s not just stupid, it’s a slap in the face. It would have been no problem to find a smart biologist, even one who might be critical of Dawkins’ message, to write something that expressed some measure of respect from the editorial staff. But to dig up a pseudoscientific fraud whose sole claim to fame is that he has led the charge to corrupt American science education for over a decade is shameful.

I’m sure there’s an editor at Time sniggering over his cleverness.

A couple of acknowledgements of all the other people out there

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First order of business, we have a new inductee into the Order of the Molly:


April 2007 Torbjörn Larsson I, too, would like to cast a vote for Mr. Diacritical, Torbjorn Larsson, not for any one post but for the overall excellence of his contributions. And his wit. And his cool name. And his hair. I bet he has nice hair.

Having read some of his offerings, I have to say it would not surprise me in the slightest should TL turn out to have access to more than one mind at any given moment. He’s, um, really smart.

Secondly, my latest blogroll open enrollment day harvested 88 90 new souls blogs. Take a look below the fold for the long, long list of new additions.

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Woo hoo II!

My next Seed column was just sent off to the overlords. I love this time of year! Everything is coming to tidy conclusions, so I can focus on one thing at once instead of 10, get it done, and unlike the usual Lernaean Hydra-like state of affairs, it doesn’t bloom into two new tasks.

Then, tomorrow … no classes, so I’m going to be able to just rip through all my grading without interruption. And then Friday and this weekend I’ll be free to tear through a major administrative chore that’s been dogging me for the last few months.

Freedom!