History
oracknows | December 22, 2006Heh (I can't resist one last tweek):
Poor old David Irving, he must be kicking himself after being released early by the Austrian authorities.
Had the discredited Holocaust denier been set free just a few days earlier, he would have been able to shoot off for a few days to sunny Iran, in the company of David Duke and an assorted rag-bag of other dangerously deranged Jew-haters.
Of course, whether the anti-semitic revisionist would have taken centre stage or would have been forced into the shadows by the arguably more abhorrent Aaron Cohen of the Neturei Karta is a moot point.
But don't worry…
clock | December 22, 2006So, why do Creationists and other quacks try so hard to sound all 'scienc-y'? (June 15, 2005)
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Check this guy out - Jim Pinkoski - in the posts AND in the comments here, here and here.
OK, he's a creationist, but he is not even trying to be consistently within ONE version of creationism. He freely switches between YEC and OEC and IDC and when asked ONLY for internal logical consistency, not even evidence, he starts using all caps and bold and calls everyone stupid and liars and exhibits all symptoms of a persecution complex. What gives? He appears…
oracknows | December 21, 2006With the impending release of David Irving, my mind turned to wondering about what he'll do when he gets out. His finances are a ruin. He's ticked off his fellow Holocaust deniers by saying that there were indeed homicidal gas chambers at Auschwitz. This discussion led to a question, which led to some prognosticating by me and others on a discussion board:
When will Irving show up in the U.S. to give speeches before far right wing groups to try to replenish his depleted bank account? Current favorites range from around two weeks after his release to around a month after his release. What do…
oracknows | December 20, 2006It's about time:
An Austrian appeals court has ruled that UK historian David Irving - jailed for denying the Holocaust - should be released on probation.
Irving is now being held in police detention and will be deported to the UK on Thursday, officials said.
Irving was convicted in February in a case that sparked international debate about the limits of freedom of speech.
In 1989 he spoke in Austria denying the existence of gas chambers at Auschwitz, though he later said he was "mistaken".
The appeals court in Vienna had heard calls for both a reduction and increase in his sentence.
Irving on…
clock | December 19, 2006The History Carnival's Annual Happy Holidays Party (as Reported by an Ignorant, Belligerent Lush) is up on Acephalous.
oracknows | December 17, 2006First, check out The Daily Show's take on the Holocaust denial conference, with goodies like Revision Quest and Just Say No. It's the show that characterizes the "question" being discussed at the conference as: Was the entire Holocaust an elaborate episode of Punk'd? Best line: David Duke, he's like the Flock of Seagulls of hate. Or maybe the one about the neo-Nazis who are publishing a book about the Holocaust entitled If We Did It...
But, believe it or not, I've found a take on the Holocaust denial convention, parts of which may be even funnier than The Daily Show, and it comes from a…
oracknows | December 16, 2006We often hear atheists like Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and P. Z. Myers castigating the excesses and irrationality of religion. (Heck, I'm often game for joining in when it comes to fundamentalist religion.) While discussing the recent Holocaust denial conference in Iran, Massimo Pigliucci makes a good point when he argues that focusing on just religion is missing the broader context:
The answer, I think, is similar to that of the other unnerving question raised by this week's events: how can some people deny one of the best documented (and recent) historical events of all times? I mean,…
razib | December 15, 2006Ali is talking about Andrew Sullivan using his "30 years War:Sunni vs. Shia, etc., in Iraq" analogy. All the talk is cool, but there's a serious problem with the analogy: no one knows anything about the 30 Years War! You heard me right. For an anology to work like so: X ⇒ Y, you need to know a about X to map inferences onto Y, for the nature of Y is unfamiliar and X is familiar. The idea is that the 30 Years War will convey information to those not in the know about the current conflicts in the Middle East which emerge from sectarianism. But again, the problem is that hardly anyone knows…
oracknows | December 14, 2006Given the interest in questions of religion, faith, and atheism among so many of my fellow ScienceBloggers, I'm a bit surprised that none of them picked up on this interesting tidbit of a story:
Pythons were probably the first idols to be worshipped by man, archaeologists said after unearthing evidence of a ritual dating back 70,000 years.
A rock shaped like an enormous python's head, discovered in a cave in the Tsodilo hills of Botswana, puts back the date of the first known human ritual by 30,000 years, they say.
Behind the rock, which was covered in man-made indentations, was a chamber…
oracknows | December 13, 2006Everyone else is jumping off the bridge; so I thought I would too. Take that, PZ, Joshua, and Afarensis! I'm a monarch, albeit a mad one:
Which Historical Lunatic Are You?From the fecund loins of Rum and Monkey.
You are Charles VI of France, also known as Charles the Mad or Charles the Well-Beloved!
A fine, amiable and dreamy young man, skilled in horsemanship and archery, you were also from a long line of dribbling madmen. King at 12 and quickly married to your sweetheart, Bavarian Princess Isabeau, you enjoyed many happy months together before either of you could speak anything of the…
oracknows | December 12, 2006
Regular readers of this blog know that I couldn't leave this one alone.
Yesterday, the Holocaust-denying President of Iran Mahmoud realized his promised dream of holding an "academic" conference to "debate" the Holocaust. Not surprisingly, it's a lovefest for Holocaust deniers. Indeed, many of the most "prominent" Holocaust deniers in the world are now gathered in Iran to spew their lies:
TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran opened a conference on Monday to examine the Holocaust and question whether Nazi Germany used gas chambers to kill Jews, drawing condemnation in the West and criticism from Iran's…
clock | December 10, 2006From QOTD:
The Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel died at San Remo, Italy on this day in 1896. Under the terms of his will, his estate was arranged so as to grant prizes in Chemistry, Physics, Medicine or Physiology, Literature, and Peace, these five prizes were first awarded on the fifth anniversary of his death. In 1969 the Bank of Sweden joined the festivities and established a prize for Economics that is awarded at the same ceremony, erroneously called the Nobel Prize for Economics. The prize for Peace is awarded at the Oslo City Hall in the capital of Norway, the others are awarded at the…
oracknows | December 8, 2006Ever since I started Your Friday Dose of Woo (YFDoW) back in June, I had always intended that someday I wanted to expand this loving deconstruction of various forms of woo beyond just medical woo and quackery. True, having a little fun with woo that claims to treat disease or restore health is something that I've gotten pretty good at. You may wonder why I would want to move beyond medicine occasionally. After all, there's no shortage of medical woo to deal with every Friday, and I'll almost certainly return to it next week.
Sometimes a skeptic needs a change of pace, and this is one of…
oracknows | December 7, 2006
Sixty-five years ago today, the 1st Air Fleet of the Imperial Japanese Navy launched a devastating surprise attack on Pearl Harbor on Oahu, Hawaii, plunging the United States into World War II. Four days later, hoping that the Japanese would attack the Soviet Union (a hope that the Japanese did not fulfill, having previously signed a nonaggression pact with Stalin), Hitler declared war on the United States.
Every year, more and more of the generation that fought and lived through World War II is dying off. A sailor who was 18 years old in 1941 would be 83 years old now, and the youngest…
clock | December 5, 2006This post (from May 10, 2005) was deliberately written to provoke, by asserting that the "victors write history" rule gets into trouble when there are too many victors writing too many histories. Thus, it was written deliberately as an opposite extreme to what kids learn in school in the USA, as well as a report on what many Europeans think and say over beer in a bar (I have heard it many times), not a report of yet another "Truth" that I actually believe in. So, I also re-posted the comments and hope that some real WWII experts chime in this time around (Orac? Archy?) and straighten-up the…
pharyngula | December 5, 2006Now you can take
tour of Darwin's sandwalk, too, by way of a video from the AMNH. Don't expect high drama, though—it's a series of shots of a path, trees, and brush—but look for restfulness and contemplation.
(via the Sandwalk, of course)
oracknows | December 4, 2006Note: If you're not familiar with the Hitler Zombie, here are two posts to introduce you to the creature, with the most recent installment of his terror here, in which Orac narrowly escaped the creature.
And, now, the adventures (if you can call them that) continue....
PRELUDE: SEVERAL MONTHS AGO
It was a dreary, overcast day, as so many days were there, with the clouds seeming to reach down to engulf everything with a wet chill that went straight to the bone.
An eminent professor sat in his study typing. Gray-haired, bright-eyed, and very professorial in appearance and bearing right down…
oracknows | November 30, 2006More carnival-ly goodness! The History Carnival XLIV has been posted over at Barista. Enjoy!
oracknows | November 30, 2006When I wrote a post about how Richard Dawkins was being unjustly smeared as supporting Hitler-style eugenics by the religious blogosphere, I figured I might provoke some criticism, particularly since I didn't just stop there. No, in a bit of what some may consider blogging hubris, I couldn't resist trying to discuss under what circumstances eugenics might be morally justifiable and under what form. (Of course hubris is almost a job requirement to be a blogger; so none of this should be surprising.) In any case, not surprisingly Vox Day wasn't all that happy about what I wrote. (If you're…
clock | November 30, 2006From today's Quotes Of The Day:
Jonathan Swift was born at Dublin, Ireland on this day in 1667, seven months after his father's death, and was raised primarily by an uncle. He received his B.A. from Trinity College, Dublin but political events forced him to England before completing his Masters. He became secretary to an English diplomat, and spent most of his life serving as a political liaison of sorts, although he was also a priest of the Church of Ireland and was, on at least a couple of occasions, a parish priest. We know him as possible the greatest satirist in the English language,…