Kooks
pharyngula | March 30, 2009…Houston Friend, a student at ASU who got a bad grade on a paper and wrote in to blame the whole culture for it.
Last week, I got back a graded essay, which happened to be worth a significant portion of my grade. I got a C and was immediately upset because I had been somewhat proud of my work when I was writing it.
I soon perused the plethora of red marks throughout the paper and began to notice generally why I did poorly.
The principle reason I got a C was because I didn't have enough "evidence," as this particular paper required a certain amount of references to sources read throughout…
pharyngula | March 27, 2009The Kwok has been mailing all over the place. He has complained to facebook, and to the Panda's Thumb. He has written to CFI-Michigan in advance of my visit here, telling them to throw a pie in my face. I have heard from quite a few friends in the scientific community that Kwok has written to them, as well, telling them what an awful jerk I am and how they should not ever associate with me. He has now cc'ed to me a message he sent to several of my colleagues at UMM, with an incredibly ironic title.
Internet stalking by your colleague, Professor Paul Z. Myers
Dear Professor [redacted]:…
pharyngula | March 23, 2009I'm not the only one who gets crazy email: Pam Spaulding got an excellent example of grade A wackaloonery, and at first I was a little jealous, until I looked more closely. It's the same mail I got back in February! I'm still the champ!
It looks like somebody taught the poor fellow about paragraphs in the past month, which helps. It's not in Comic Sans, either — I may have to give Pam a few suggestions.
pharyngula | March 21, 2009The John Kwok saga is getting very serious. He threatened to decimate my facebook friends, and has now gloated that the number of mutual friends of Kwok and Myers has now diminished by…3 (out of my current total of 4,793, which is actually a net gain of about 350 since yesterday).
You can imagine my shock and dismay. No, you don't have to imagine — I had the computer record my reaction on hearing the news.
The pain I will feel when he publishes his book that features me as an Irish terrorist who murders people will be incomprehensible. I shall have to practice shouting "KWOOOOOK!" with an…
pharyngula | March 19, 2009Who knows? Maybe they're right. They're planning a program for "Nightline" (which, I seem to recall, at least used to be a pretty good news program) which will probably get them some decent ratings.
They're going to have a debate on the existence of Satan.
Yeah, you heard that right…on a so-called news program. But it gets worse! They have 4 people coming on to yell at each other.
On the "Satan exists!" side, they have Pastor Mark Driscoll, head of a megachurch in Seattle, and Annie Lobert, former prostitute and founder of a group called Hookers for Jesus. Sensationalism is already rearing…
pharyngula | March 17, 2009Today, we have to assess whether any of our contestants have met the immunity challenge. Very few have tried; I'm afraid this is very much like Monty Python's Upper Class Twit of the Year contest, in which the competitors are lucky to stumble onto the field at all. Here are all the attempts to answer this question:
In a comment that isn't longer than about 200 words, that is grammatically correct and logically coherent, and that does not cite the Bible or other religious authorities (and does not rely on tales about who you went to high school with, or tortured analogies involving…
pharyngula | March 16, 2009I mentioned before that we're a bit full up on commenting kooks, and it's time to purge a few. Here's a short list of our contestants this week, a few of the obnoxious people who are lurking about in the comments right now. We're going to get rid of some of them, one at a time.
Barb
Alan Clarke
Facilis
John Kwok
Pete Rooke
RogerS
Simon
Everyone gets to vote them off the blog — just leave a comment with the name of the competitor you like least, and I'll tally them up on Wednesday morning, and the winner gets evicted.
But wait! There's more! We have to have an immunity challenge, don't we?…
pharyngula | March 16, 2009Pat Boone had a dream. He dreamed that he was president. It would be our nightmare; after going on and on about the usual far right anti-tax tripe and militaristic fantasies, he gets to education.
As a man who intended to be a teacher myself, I issued an ultimatum to the teachers' unions: They would return to basic math, including arithmetic, and basic English (the mandated official language), and basic science devoid of unproven theories like evolution, sticking instead to factual evidence and not discounting "intelligent design" as the more scientific basis for life and existence. All…
pharyngula | March 9, 2009I thought Canadians were supposed to be nice. It's rather strange — I'm used to getting one or two death threats in my mailbox a week, but lately I've been getting several a day…and it's not as if I've done anything particularly dramatic lately. Or have I? Are my horns showing?
From: thanatos_4u@hotmail.com
Subject: Greetings from Vancouver, Canada
Date: March 9, 2009 3:53:21 PM CDT
To: pzmeyers@gmail.com
Delivered-To: pzmyers@gmail.com
Delivered-To: pzmeyers@gmail.com
Received: by 10.224.20.81 with SMTP id e17cs322009qab; Mon, 9 Mar 2009 13:54:23 -0700 (PDT)
Received: by 10.142.180.10 with…
pharyngula | March 9, 2009Mr James M. Baker is really lashing out, cluelessly. He has sent me a few other emails (which I just trashed on sight), and now someone at the IP address 67.177.100.132 (which traces back to Shelbyville…Hi, Jim!) has attempted to subscribe me to a large body of gay and fetish porn. Who knew there were sites dedicated to just pictures of young boys' feet?
Anyway, the people who run these porn sites are not stupid, and they know they'll be abused by homophobes who think they are a weapon. Before they send me a pile of glossy magazines and DVDs they verify by sending an email, with the IP…
pharyngula | March 5, 2009Uh-oh. She opened her mouth again.
BACHMANN: If you want to look at economic history over the last 100 years. I call it punctuated equilibrium. If you look at FDR, LBJ, and Barack Obama, this is really the final leap to socialism. ... But we all know that we could turn this around and we can turn this around fairly quickly. We're still a free country.
And as the Democrats are about to institutionalize cartels -- that's what they're very good at -- they're trying to consolidate power, so we need to do everything we can to thwart them at every turn to make sure that they aren't able to, for…
pharyngula | March 3, 2009Richard Dawkins lectured in Michigan yesterday, and apparently, some silly Christian group was handing out a flyer beforehand, "Five Topics to Consider During Tonight's Lecture". It contained a small set of yawningly familiar arguments. I haven't heard of these brave Christians actually attended the lecture or tried to ask these in the Q&A (I would be surprised if they did — I had someone try this stunt at one of my talks, and not only did they run away without listening, but everyone who saw the questions on the handout just laughed at them), but I thought I'd take a quick stab at how I'…
pharyngula | March 3, 2009I am no fan of Stanley Fish — I thought he was a blinkered lackwit before, but now, with his latest appalling column in they NY Times, I see that he is a gospel-thumping charlatan on a par with Pat Robertson. He looks at our faltering economy like we all do, with great concern, and then, unlike the kinds of rational people we need making decisions, claims that the answer lies in the Christian Bible. Seriously, read that article and you'll see nothing that wouldn't have come out of a cheap Bible college stocked with pseudo-scholarly theologians. It's so stupid it hurt to read it.
The Bible,…
pharyngula | February 28, 2009Tap, tap. Can you hear me?
You sure? I heard that International Authorities were going to disappear me.
If you hadn't heard that, you missed one of the most hilarious comment threads ever. After we made light of a pointless poll about the afterlife, various fans of that site were so horrified that many complaints were launched…and of course, the owner was so deeply committed to free speech that he simply deleted our contribution. One fellow was so indignant that he charged off to the Richard Dawkins forums to complain. He lists his grievances, and, boy, are you readers wicked people. You use…
pharyngula | February 28, 2009The blogs have talked about Bobby Jindal's credentials as an exorcist for some time, and now, finally, after Jindal's comical performance on national TV the other night, the mainstream media is taking notice. His dalliance with exorcism gets a write-up in the NY Times, where one of the more depressing questions I've run across is asked.
"That's incredible. But is it politically problematic?"
It's discouraging that we even need to ask this. A potential presidential candidate believes that a woman grappling with cancer and depression might have been literally possessed by a demon, and that…
pharyngula | February 27, 2009I got a package in the mail today! It was from the Catholic League! It included a personal, signed note from Bill Donohue! It also said "SWAK" and all the 'i's were dotted with hearts! (Oh, OK, I made up that last bit. A boy can dream, you know.)
It was their 2008 Report on Anti-Catholicism, a 74-page exercise in institutional paranoia, and I am featured on pages 26-30! Oh, joy! You know what that means: I can expect another uptick in sad letters from nuns and pious little old ladies in Waukegan.
One curious thing about those letters: they are all the same, and they all come in neatly…
pharyngula | February 25, 2009Oh, boy! Ray Comfort and Bill Donohue are arguing! The issue is evolution, of course; Comfort says that Christianity and evolution are incompatible, and Donohue is claiming otherwise. They deserve each other, and I don't really care what either of them says, but I have to point out one glaring inconsistency in Donohue's position. Here's what he says:
Comfort is wrong. The fact is that in the 1950s, Pope Pius XII said there was no conflict between evolution and the doctrine of faith, as long as God was not excluded. Pope John Paul II affirmed this teaching in the mid-1990s.
In other words,…
pharyngula | February 20, 2009The other day, I briefly mentioned this ridiculous "Faith of Britain" site that was full of woo-woo nonsense. Well, unsurprisingly, it turns out they're also cheap and unoriginal. Alongside a section that says this:
Faith of Britain Day will help us all overcome whatever obstacles and difficulties we may face as a country, an economy and as individuals. With over 80 million people concentrating their mental energies at the same time on the same day, we will unleash an irresistible psychic force that will, quite literally, make our dreams come true.
Faith of Britain recognizes that Britain is…
pharyngula | February 19, 2009I don't recommend reading Comfort's book, but I can whole-heartedly recommend the reviews of You Can Lead an Atheist to Evidence, But You Can't Make Him Think: Answers to Questions from Angry Skeptics as worthy and entertaining. As you might guess, they aren't kind.
The best review, though, gives the book five stars. But then, what else would you expect from General JC Christian, Patriot?
pharyngula | February 19, 2009This is a real letter from Muskegon, Michigan.
On the Feb. 8 "60 Minutes" program, we were captivated while viewing the Katie Couric interview of the crew and passengers of Flight 1549.
However, we were struck there was not one mention of God, who directs pilots of planes and secures the safety of passengers.
We have written CBS and asked them for more realistic programming. Help protect our freedoms. Write CBS about this.
It was fine right up through "not one mention of God", then swoooosh, it plummets off the cliff of insanity into the sucking sludge-pit of unreality. God keeps planes…