We know the movie sucks

A few months ago, I saw the movie, What the bleep do we know? at the library. I checked it out. I thought it might be worth dissecting for a blog post. I watched it. I wanted to lie down afterwards and pour lye in my ear until it dribbled out my eye sockets, just to scour the stupidity out of my brain. It’s this horrible pseudo-profundity delivered by quacks, gladhanding physicists who think being in a movie makes them rockstars, and a dead Atlantean warrior, all stitched together with a boring plot about a deaf photographer searching for meaning in her life. The whole thing was so dreary and superficial that I couldn’t work up the energy to even complain about it, and did my best to forget it.

Unfortunately, The Disgruntled Chemist had to remind me. At least we share the same low opinion of that piece of mushy dreck.

Beckwith’s tenure decision

More details are dribbling out about the decision to deny Francis Beckwith tenure. It’s a little bit odd, because these things are supposed to be confidential, and I will note that Beckwith, to his credit, is not commenting on the decision while trying to appeal it. I hope his appeal does not succeed, however. I agree completely with this fellow, Dr Jim Patton, who clearly states a legitimate reason for kicking Beckwith out (warning: Free Republic link):

When tenure time approached, the anti-Sloan [Sloan was the former Baylor president who had hired Dembski and Beckwith] interim president, William Underwood, appointed psychology professor Jim Patton, the chair of the anti-Sloan faculty senate, to Mr. Beckwith’s tenure committee. In an e-mail message about another faculty member shown to WORLD, Mr. Patton wrote, “I clearly do not think highly of anyone who claims ID theory is science.”

I get to vote on tenure decisions at my university, and I can assure you that if someone comes up who claims that ID ‘theory’ is science, I will vote against them. If someone thinks the sun orbits around the earth, I will vote against them. If someone thinks fairies live in their garden and pull up the flowers out of the ground every spring, I will vote against them. Tenure decisions are not pro forma games, but a process of evaluation, and I’d rather not have crackpots promoted. Beckwith may be a nice fellow with a commendable publication record, but when it gets right down to it, his untenable position on intelligent design puts him smack in the middle of the tinfoil hat brigade. And that position on ID is a focus of many of his publications, so it is certainly a legitimate criterion for judging him.

(Before the inevitable trollish twit starts claiming this is a sign of intolerance, I’ll short circuit that by stating that whether a person is Christian or Muslim or atheist, Republican or Democrat or Green, is not an issue in tenure decisions and would not be and has not been a factor in any tenure votes I’ve cast. I do not object to differences in opinion among my colleagues. I do object to keeping fools around.)

Couldn’t have happened to a more deserving guy

Poor Dr Dino, AKA Kent Hovind, AKA batshit crazy fundy guy, is a notorious tax cheat, and now the law has finally caught up with him. “Dinosaur Adventure Land” has been shut down, and he risks fines and the possibility of buildings being razed.

You know, Al Capone was taken down for tax evasion, too. As long as malicious stupidity isn’t criminal in this country, I’ll accept this strategy as one way to get Mr Hovind put away where he can stop doing harm.

(via The Panda’s Thumb)

Hovind schadenfreude

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(Since Kent Hovind is in the news for tax evasion again, I thought it would be nice to bring this article over here to the shiny new site.)

Ah, the continuing saga of Kent Hovind’s criminal industries…Hovind is an inexplicably popular creationist who, in addition to his dedication to creationist absurdities, has this devout belief that as a minister of Jesus, he is a resident of a celestial, Christian nation independent of the secular government of the United States, i.e., he doesn’t have to pay taxes. Ever. On anything. And little things like zoning laws? Pffft. They don’t apply to him. Only Jesus’s law counts, and conveniently enough, Jesus says that Kent gets to keep all of his money. (Isn’t it funny how Jesus, when he was alive, preached about rendering unto Caesar what was Caesar’s, helped the poor and sick, and was sort of down on the wealthy and worldly? Now that he’s dead, he’s had a change of heart and tells all his best friends to stockpile the moolah. I guess slow torture and execution turns people into Republicans.) (Hey, you don’t think…nah. Couldn’t be. Is the answer to WWJD, “Abu Ghraib”?)

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AiG on Tiktaalik

The Discovery Institute flailed about hopelessly trying to deny the value of Tiktaalik (which, as commenters pointed out, is kind of weird in itself—I thought ID didn’t deny the facts of evolution, just the mechanisms), but what about those forthright creationists at Answers in Genesis? They also fall all over themselves to argue the bad, bad evidence away. Read the Lancelet’s rebuttal to see Menton wrung out like dishrag.

The interesting thing about all this is that the Menton and Looy are simply pointing out that Tiktaalik has attributes of a fish, but doing nothing to dispute the observed similarities with tetrapods. Has it ever dawned on them that an animal somewhere between fishes and tetrapods might actually have some attributes of a fish? What makes me wonder is why AiG didn’t post a picture of the specimen. There are, by now, tons of pictures on media websites all over the place. A Google image search for “tiktaalik” turns out four pages of results. Here’s why: they’re scared, deathly scared. The implications of Tiktaalik are so bloody obvious that they have a lot of work to do in order to deal with this one.

Give ’em time. They’ll figure out yet another dishonest line of patter to babble out while keeping their eyes clamped tightly shut.

The Discovery Institute on Tiktaalik

The poor babies in Seattle are in a state of denial.

These fish are not intermediates, explain Discovery Institute scientists I queried about the find. Tiktaalik roseae is one of a set of lobe-finned fishes that include very curious mosaics–these fishes have advanced characteristics of several different groups. They are not intermediates in the sense that they are half-fish/half-tetrapod. Rather, they have some tetrapod-like features. The anatomical characters of Tiktaalik and similar taxa were “coded” and analyzed by a computer program. Because of the presence of some advanced characters, the analysis placed Tiktaalik next to a group of tetrapod-like fishes. What is clear is that forms like Tiktaalik are a melange of primitive and more developed features.

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