It’s “Report a scientist to the Feds” day!

Now William Dembski, that untiring advocate of academic freedom and the open discussion of controversial ideas, has reported Eric Pianka to the Department of Homeland Security.

Could Pianka be charged with terrorism/conspiracy to commit a terrorist act? What happens if a student actually takes his suggestion to heart and kills a bunch of people? Why shouldn’t we think that Dr. Doom himself would commit the act of human destruction he is advocating? How is what he is saying any different from somebody at an airport saying that he plans to plant a bomb there.

Hmmm…anybody ever read any apocalyptic Christian literature? Did you know those guys are looking forward to Armageddon? Maybe the screeners at airports ought to arrest anyone caught carrying a Left Behind book…or a Bible. This is the crazy world to which paranoid kooks would lead us.

Although, actually, I don’t think Dembski is paranoid: I suspect there’s more a kind of vile glee at seeing a way to harass a scientist.

Yearly Kos stampede!

Everyone is going to be there now—Duncan Black is going, so are the Firedoglakers, and oh, yeah, me. Not yet in the press releases is the fact that the lovely Dr. Mrs. Gjerness Myers will also be attending. It’s going to be quite a crowd at the Yearly Kos. Anyone else joining the gang?

There will be so many of us, I don’t think we’ll need to worry too much about the blustering wingnuts showing up with ax handles (by the way, don’t these right wing kooks ever consider the meaning of their words? Or is it intentional?)

Now if only it were being held in an interesting place. At least there is one spectacle I’m going to have to try to make time to see.

Gosh, and skippy, too.

Sunday morning nausea

Thanks, Jody Wheeler, for poisoning my morning a little bit. You just had to mention this guy, Stephen Bennett, of Stephen Bennett Ministries, who is “Emerging as One of the Nation’s Key Speakers on the Issues of Homosexuality & the Homosexual Agenda…A Man who is Not Afraid To Speak the Truth… in Love.” Here’s Stephen Bennett’s kind of love:

As a heterosexual man who once engaged in homosexual behavior for 11 years, I’ve lost numerous dear friends to AIDS. While recent news in the search for a cure for AIDS is promising, I believe this possible HIV prevention pill is only going to push a culture down an already dangerous and risky path. This pill is the equivalent to a drug rehab assisting heroine addicts in their addiction by giving them needles. What is wrong with this picture? Why can’t these intelligent scientists and doctors understand we need to educate people on abandoning their risky, unsafe sexual practices and behavior-not give them a pill to enable and encourage them?

He has lost “dear friends” to AIDS, but apparently, they got what they had coming to them, and the loving Bennett would rather that scientists and doctors abstain from trying to help people. Let them suffer, let them die—it’s the only way they’ll get the message that God cares very much about what they do with their penises.

Oh, and I can explain why intelligent scientists and doctors and pursuing this line of research: because human beings engage in a great many sexual practices, and if we can reduce the factors that make them risky and unsafe, it will make them happier and healthier. It’s a much smarter strategy than simply filling them up with self-loathing.

Why am I not surprised that a callous, stupid, hate-filled freak like this finds a home in evangelical Christianity?