Tool of heretics

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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.

Orson Scott Card, Intelligent Design advocate

Echoed on the Panda's Thumb

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.

[Read more…]

Lies, all lies

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.

Friday Random Ten: Inflicting My Musical Taste on the Houseguest edition

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

Letting others speak for me

James Wolcott:

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 enemy—all 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.

Molly Ivins:

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.