Cohen misses the point

You know I’m no fan of Richard Cohen. He’s not the person I’d go to for some sharp insight or even for the ability to recognize humor, so it should be no surprise that he failed to see the humor in Stephen Colbert’s performance at the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner. Comedy is a matter of taste, so that Cohen didn’t find it funny is no big deal…but this comment shows off Cohen’s typical obliviousness and tin ear.

In Washington he was playing to a different crowd, and he failed dismally in the funny person’s most solemn obligation: to use absurdity or contrast or hyperbole to elucidate — to make people see things a little bit differently. He had a chance to tell the president and much of important (and self-important) Washington things it would have been good for them to hear.

Huh? What would have been good for them to hear? I heard pointed comments about the war, the economy, Bush’s unpopularity, privacy and civil rights, and most importantly, the spinelessness of the Washington media. In fact, that’s exactly what Colbert did: he used absurdity and contrast and hyperbole (which Cohen did not find funny, but so what?) to point out a great many hard truths. Even if he wasn’t funny to some people, he used his opportunity to tell these guys some important things. He met his “most solemn obligation.”

Oddly enough, Cohen did not say what he thinks would have been good for the audience to hear. Which fork to use for the salad? A joke about airline food? A riff on the uselessness of algebra?

Needs pygmies

Various science-deniers at the ID websites were unhappy with me because I said belief in ID was an indicator of incompetence, and that I wouldn’t vote to to support tenure and promotion for one of their guys. I think they ought to adopt Florentino Floro as a cause.

“They should not have dismissed me for what I believed,” Florentino Floro, a trial judge in the capital’s Malabon northern suburb, told reporters after filing his appeal.

Floro was sacked last month and fined 40,000 pesos ($780) after a three-year investigation found he was incompetent, had shown bias in a case he was trying and had criticized court procedure, a ruling showed.

The poor man! Martyred for merely believing in something!

A Philippine judge who claimed he could see into the future and admitted consulting imaginary mystic dwarfs has asked for his job back after being fired by the country’s Supreme Court.

In case you were wondering, the dwarfs were named Armand, Luis and Angel.

He’d still have his job if they’d been named Jesus or Mohammed or JHWH.

(via Exploding Aardvark)

Cole vs. Hitchens

Christopher Hitchens is one of those guys who sometimes takes your breath away with his strong writing, but then a moment later you want to retch as he goes haring off on some sodden militaristic crusade. It’s with some sadness that I see that he deserves to be minced by Juan Cole. Although when Cole has him writhing on the ground and turns around to put the boot in…well, maybe that’s a bit harsh.

Nah, he deserved that, too. Kick him again, Juan! Harder!

And South Carolina must be the most blessed state in the whole blessed union

Speaking of too incredibly stupid to be believed, here’s a candidate for Lieutenant Governor of the fine state of South Carolina.

“I think everything ought to be taught … and let people decide for themselves. There is no science to support trans-species changes, in other words, a monkey becoming a man,” the Republican said in an interview Monday with The Associated Press.

“A bunch of amoebas didn’t get together and design all this,” Jordan said, referring to the human body. “We’d be operating on people … looking at their hearts, their liver and their lungs, I’d tell the techs, ‘Can you believe those little amoebas figured all this out?’

“I mean you’ve got to be stupid to believe in evolution, I mean really,” he said.

He’s a medical doctor, as you can tell, and you can also tell from that middle paragraph that he’s so full of Shinola that his eyeballs squeak when he blinks. Who in their right mind would think that evolution proposes that the human body was assembled by the planned, conscious action of protists? It’s revealing of a limited mind that he can only myopically imagine evolution as a kind of design by the miniscule, instead of design by nonexistent vapor.

And what is it with creationists and amoebae? The amoeba is a general form found in diverse groups, and it’s yet another indictment of their etiolated imaginations and scant scholarship that they can only think of amoebae when they need to come up with a word for that vast domain of the single-celled.

Dr Jordan seems to be wingnuttily deranged all the way down to his core. Tell me, SCarolinians, that this guy doesn’t stand a chance of getting elected.

“There are only two nations I know of that have been supernaturally blessed: Israel, because God chose them … and the other is the United States,” Jordan said.

Oh, yay. Go us.

I’d really like to hear his opinion on the Civil War, too. Was the Unpleasantness that kept the nation intact a blessing, too? Or was the sanctity the sole position of the Confederacy?

A query from New Mexico

Not all my mail is from cranks and ravers; I actually get some nice and friendly and interesting mail, too. Like this one, from Hank Alme, who asks a good question:

To what extent does intellectual honesty require me to also read guys like Behe and Dembski, and to understand their arguments?

That’s an easy one: intellectual honesty doesn’t require that you read any of their crap. One of their great successes is that they’ve managed to convince many people that it’s only fair to read their books, often reading them instead of good science. It’s not true! You are far better off reading a solid science text than wasting it on their drivel.

The only reason to read any of their work is not because it’s the honest thing to do—if we carried that reasoning to its logical conclusion, I’ve got a library of stuff you need to read first—but because it will prepare you better to deal with their arguments. It takes the edge off that first moment of shock, when they say something so awesomely stupid that you find it incredible that anyone would even suggest such a thing. I’ve experienced that moment: your eyes focus on infinity, your lips move involuntarily as you try to parse the absurdity, your brain spins its wheels for a while as you mentally downshift, trying to get yourself in the proper frame of mind to handle the curious words of the deranged person in front of you. Otherwise, though, there isn’t much point to wading through the dreck.

So no, don’t read Behe and Dembski. Read Carroll and Dawkins and Gould. Understanding the science is all the preparation you need.

By the way, I’ve noticed that commenting is way down. It could be you’re all bored with me, or that it’s my fault since I’ve been distracted with grading and exam preparation, or most worrisome, the TypeKey requirement has stymied potential commenters, or at least discouraged them. Let me know if there’s a problem— the comments contribute much to the site, and I’d hate to see them chased away.

About last night

The Drinking Liberally event was packed. I don’t know how many people were there, but I think it was somewhere within a few orders of magnitude of a gazillion. Kos speechified briefly, exhorted us to buy his book because every copy sold makes a conservative cry, and then answered questions from the crowd.

Dr B and The Connoisseur did show up fashionably late, and didn’t even make it in the door before she was intercepted by her fans.

We all had many pleasant conversations, and I think there may be a few new converts to the Drinking Liberally phenomenon. I also learned something very important, and I revealed a sad ignorance on my part: I had forgotten the Molluscs sketch, but Dave Puskala reminded me. How could I? It must have been a repressed memory, because there it is, a complete outline of Pharyngula’s strategy for success, only it’s funny.

Oh, and the drive home was spectacular. There were severe thunderstorms across the middle of the state, and as I was driving it was like fireworks going off before my windshield. And best of all, when I reached them it was nothing but a narrow storm band, and I drove maybe 5 minutes through fierce driving rain and pounding hail before breaking through to the calmness on the other side.

The PowerLiberal has more, and Chuck has video (it’s cute how the Wege gets in two words before the camera dies).

My kind of guy

I’m going to have to get this book, Sex, Drugs, and DNA (amzn/b&n/abe/pwll)
just on the basis of a few excerpts…

Unfortunately, the US is a nation of very stupid people. So I
have stripped out the jargon and tried to deal with science
and health issues as though I was haranguing you at a party.

…and…

The strange thing about talking to non-scientists about science is that you quickly notice that some of the smartest,
most thoughtful and intellectually curious people have a terrible understanding of it. Most students leave high school
poorly equipped to manipulate even the most basic concepts. Nonetheless, I remain hopeful that we can increase
science literacy and intelligent discourse in the US. What can
I say? I’m an optimist.

…and a nice cartoon…

i-ef6ab72b4306a492bf82e9d27b36745e-war_on_evo.jpg