It’s true—Ken Ham has a whole team of expert fabricators working for him. We knew that all along, of course.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
It’s true—Ken Ham has a whole team of expert fabricators working for him. We knew that all along, of course.
I have been informed of the existence of this device.
Do not be fooled. It transforms an inelegant tube-shaped dense paste of chopped chordate parts into a crude, inaccurate semblance of that pinnacle of molluscan evolution, the cephalopod. What next? Will Steven Spielberg take a mound of hamburger, call it George Clooney, and give it a starring role in his next movie? Shall I put a pot of alphabet soup on the stove and call it lyric poetry?
It is blasphemy. When the Great Old Ones come, I know who will be eaten first.
When she’s not making up stories about me, I’ve dragged Grrlscientist out to do some traditional midwestern things…like bowling. She has an interesting style—the fling-and-butt-flop, caught here on camera.
You can see the position of the ball. It doesn’t look like a strike to me.
I do have more photos.
Orson Scott Card has written a long essay defending Intelligent Design.
Oy, but it is depressing.
It’s a graceless hash, a cluttered and confusing mish-mash of poorly organized complaints about those darned wicked “Darwinists”. He lists 7 arguments. Then he repeats his list, expanding on them. Then he goes on and on, hectoring scientists about how they should behave. For a professional writer, it’s just plain bad writing—I’m struggling with how to address his arguments, but he’s written such a gluey mass of tangled ranty irrationality that it’s hard to get a handle on it. Ugly, ugly, ugly…and why do these guys all seem to think the way to defend the ideas of ID is to whine about the perfidy of all those scientists? Not once does he bring up any evidence for ID.
Card can’t discuss the evidence, because he doesn’t know or understand the evidence. That’s apparent when he begins by praising Behe’s Darwin’s Black Box, and regurgitates the argument from irreducible complexity. Irreducible complexity is not a problem for evolution, and Behe is a tired old fraud who hasn’t had a new idea in 15 years. That Card would be impressed with DBB says only that he doesn’t know much biology and that the depth of his thinking is remarkably shallow.
Oh, well. I’ll try the brute force approach and discuss each of Card’s arguments in turn. This will get long.
That is not my picture, I’ll have you know, and although last night’s party was lightly attended, it was quite pleasant, with plenty of food and good conversation, and it went on until midnight. I had no idea how louche Grrlscientist was, though…I should have gotten a photo of her dancing on the table with the lampshade on her head, but I figured it would be breaking her anonymity to publish it.
DarkSyde has another of his Science Friday interviews on dKos—this time with the gang at Real Climate.
Another week, another Friday Random Ten. This one is playing right now, and poor grrlscientist can actually confirm that yeah, I listen to this stuff.
| Bergfäst (Mountain Haunted) | Gjallarhorn |
| Before The Night Is Over | Gaelic Storm |
| My Weakness | Moby |
| Hjaðningaríma | Gjallarhorn |
| I’m not worried at all | Moby |
| The Good Times Are Killing Me | Modest Mouse |
| Forshyttan | Hedningarna |
| Don’t Make Me Dream About You | Chris Isaak |
| The Man Comes Around | Johnny Cash |
| Hot Hot Hot!!! | The Cure |
This is fun—it’s a proposal for remaking Inherit the Wind with the Dover case as its centerpiece. It’s also a good overview of the events of the trial.
(via Red State Rabble)
Inside, a NY editorial titled ‘Nuts!’ begins with a little historical lesson explaining the cover line.
“It may be the most famous one-word sentence in American military history, and it’s time to dust it off after yesterday’s pronouncement from Osama bin Laden: ‘Nuts!’ That’s how Brigadier Gen. Anthony McAuliffe responded to the Nazis when asked to surrender the town of Bastogne on December 19, 1944. Outnumbered and surrounded by Panzer tanks, McAuliffe gave his one word response to a courier.”
Did you see the problem with this Victor Davis Hanson-ing? The United States isn’t surrounded by superior forces, we’re the world’s military superpower, the one with the tanks and the “imperial grunts,” and Bin Laden is a single individual holed up somewhere along the outlaw border, yet the NY Sun would have us believe we’re the scrappy underdog with the never-say-die attitude.
The Editors quote George Orwell:
One of the most horrible features of war is that all the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting. The P.S.U.C. militiamen whom I knew in the line, the Communists from the International Brigade whom I met from time to time, never called me a Trotskyist or a traitor; they left that kind of thing to the journalists in the rear. The people who wrote pamphlets against us and vilified us in the newspapers all remained safe at home, or at worst in the newspaper offices of Valencia, hundreds of miles from the bullets and the mud. And apart from the libels of the inter-party feud, all the usual war-stuff, the tub-thumping, the heroics, the vilification of the enemyâall these were done, as usual, by people who were not fighting and who in many cases would have run a hundred miles sooner than fight. […] Perhaps when the next great war comes we may see that sight unprecedented in all history, a jingo with a bullet-hole in him.
I’d like to make it clear to the people who run the Democratic Party that I will not support Hillary Clinton for president.
Enough. Enough triangulation, calculation and equivocation. Enough clever straddling, enough not offending anyone This is not a Dick Morris election. Sen. Clinton is apparently incapable of taking a clear stand on the war in Iraq, and that alone is enough to disqualify her. Her failure to speak out on Terri Schiavo, not to mention that gross pandering on flag-burning, are just contemptible little dodges.
The recent death of Gene McCarthy reminded me of a lesson I spent a long, long time unlearning, so now I have to re-learn it. It’s about political courage and heroes, and when a country is desperate for leadership. There are times when regular politics will not do, and this is one of those times. There are times a country is so tired of bull that only the truth can provide relief.
