At least, that’s how Andy Schlafly characterizes Conservapedia in a New Scientist article. I called it “shallow and useless or downright wrong,” if you’re interested in an alternative position on it.
Josh Rosenau wasn’t any more charitable.
They are re-defining their own truth and seem to think facts are malleable.
Strictly speaking, I guess Schlafly was correct: if you’re redefining facts and making up nonsense as you go along, you certainly are presenting a new way of learning.
This fellow Mike up around Toronto asked me for assistance a while back—he was planning to attend the Bible Skeptics Conference, an event put on by the Institute for Creation Research. I couldn’t say much, but I did suggest he get in touch with Larry Moran at the U Toronto.
Well, he attended and survived. It’s a good summary of the usual combination of drivel and lunacy that comes out of these events. He also attended a second talk by Bruce Malone. Malone, by the way, was the fellow who was speaking in the Twin Cities last week, to whose talk on Mt St Helens as evidence for a young earth I was invited by a creationist. This is the instance where I begged off by saying I wasn’t a geologist…and, amusingly, the creationist admitted that was OK, since the speaker wasn’t, either.
There’s going to be a third write-up soon. I’m pretty sure his sanity survived the harrowing, although I do have one concern. Mike told me in email that Larry Moran was a “nice guy”—I’m suspecting that there might have been some residual impairment of his mental facilities. Everyone knows that Larry is godless curmudgeon.
DarkSyde is plugging the Yearly Kos Convention, which will be held in August in Chicago. I recommend it highly—we attended last year, and it was a blast meeting all those people. I suspect this year’s event will be even bigger.
This message came by a roundabout route—a reader sent me a link to an Italian blog (translated) that was discussing a protest petition of a ‘blasphemous’ play that is being put on at…the University of Minnesota! The petition is titled “Blasphemy is not education”:
I understand the University of Minnesota plans to stage an anti-Catholic play, “The Pope and the Witch” by Dario Fo, a communist playwright. … I believe this play is blasphemous and not a legitimate expression of academic freedom. I am deeply offended as a Catholic. Together with thousands of TFP Student Action members, I urge you to respect the Catholic Faith and cancel “The Pope and the Witch.”
I beg to differ. Blasphemy is highly educational, and I hope our university can do more of it. We are not here to reassure you that your ignorance and prejudices are alright, we’re supposed to shake up our students.
I’m also amused that all this indignant young person can say about Dario Fo is that he is a communist <gasp!> — right. Dario Fo, winner of the 1997 Nobel for literature. Religion does seem to make for a fine set of blinders, doesn’t it?
I don’t think the petition has had the slightest effect. I hadn’t heard a single word about it until it was mentioned in my email, and the play opens this week. I’m tempted to go, because it should be entertaining and being able to thumb my nose at religious bigots adds a little extra flavor to it. If only we weren’t expecting several more inches of snow later this week…
The pets got a little out of hand.
(Actually, it’s from a page of photoshopped giant squid pictures. The squid haven’t invaded the Netherlands…yet.)
I’ve rarely seen it so starkly said:
“We are witnessing a social phenomenon that is about fundamentalism,” says Colin Slee, the Dean of Southwark. “Atheists like the Richard Dawkins of this world are just as fundamentalist as the people setting off bombs on the tube, the hardline settlers on the West Bank and the anti-gay bigots of the Church of England. Most of them would regard each other as destined to fry in hell.
“You have a triangle with fundamentalist secularists in one corner, fundamentalist faith people in another, and then the intelligent, thinking liberals of Anglicanism, Roman Catholicism, baptism, methodism, other faiths – and, indeed, thinking atheists – in the other corner. ” says Slee. Why does he think the other two groups are so vociferous? “When there was a cold war, we knew who the enemy was. Now it could be anybody. From this feeling of vulnerability comes hysteria.”
Let this be a lesson to you: being a moderate will not spare you from the reactionary criticisms of the lunatic right. Chris Mooney is an unbeliever, but he’s also one of those softies who thinks atheists ought to be less vigorous in their assault on the public sphere (I recall arguing with him a few times about that). I confess to feeling a little schadenfreude that now the Discovery Institute pillories him for daring to be a secular humanist. The DI doesn’t like theistic evolutionists either, though, so it’s not like it’s a big surprise that they’d have the vapors over a secular humanist.
Also, it’s Casey Luskin, attack mouse, leading the charge. It’s hard to get too worked up over a squeak from that incompetent joke.
It looks like Lindsay Beyerstein dodged a bullet—she was offered the position with the Edwards campaign that Amanda Marcotte accepted, and she turned it down. It’s a smart article—there are some good lessons to be learned about blogs and politics from it.
The Edwards campaign wants decentralized people-powered politics. Ironically, by hiring well-known bloggers to manage a destination Web site, it was actually centralizing and micromanaging. Every campaign needs a blog, but the most important part of a candidate’s netroots operation is the disciplined political operatives who can quietly build relationships with bloggers outside the campaign. And the bomb-throwing surrogates need to be outside, where they can make full use of their gifts without saddling a campaign with their personal political baggage.
Lindsay knew she’d be targeted, just as Amanda was — she’s a godless pro-choicer, too. That’s actually a disturbing problem; why should favoring secularism and a woman’s right to choose be a detriment to someone working for a Democratic candidate?
What’s happening in the Antarctic? Researchers are looking at seabed changes that result from global warming.
The researchers catalogued about 1,000 species in an area of the Antarctic seabed where warming temperatures are believed to have caused the collapse of overlying ice shelves, affecting the marine life below.
“This is virgin geography,” said expedition member Gauthier Chapelle. “If we don’t find out what this area is like now following the collapse of the ice shelf, and what species are there, we won’t have any basis to know in 20 years’ time what has changed and how global warming has altered the marine ecosystem.”
Here’s what’s cool: lots of photos of these creatures.
