Kooks
pharyngula | September 15, 2008I have just read the Conservapædia article on me. It is a marvel. Let me single out one jewel of misdirection among many.
In January 2008, Myers participated in a debate with Discovery Institute fellow Geoffrey Simmons on KMMS. He was unable to counter criticisms of the fossil record, in particular the absence of transitional forms in the whale fossil record. Geoffrey was invited back for an hour long talk the next week. PZ Myers now refuses to debate creation scientists.
The first sentence is harmlessly wrong: the station call letters are KKMS. It's a nice indicator of their quality control…
pharyngula | September 13, 2008Andy Schlafly, the blinkered pudyanker at Conservapædia, has been on an impotent crusade against Richard Lenski for some time, and to his own routine self-humiliation. A while back, Schlafly wrote a petty, silly demand to Lenski that he turn over all of his data to the Conservapædians…Lenski wrote back and scorched him. Schlafly kept whining, mewling, and carping for the data (which he wouldn't know what to do with if he got it, anyway), Lenski slammed him again.
Schlafly, demonstrating the causal relationship between arrogance and incompetence, has done it once more. He wrote to the…
pharyngula | September 13, 2008I'm always tickled and disturbed when I hear news about JZ Knight. Knight, as some of you may already know, is a New Age charlatan who claims to "channel" a 35,000 year old Atlantean warrior, and dispenses ludicrous advice in a growly voice and gets paid big bucks by the gullible. However, now one of her former students dared to turn around and use moldy wisdom she learned from a hokey old invisible friend, and fleece some rubes of her own. So what does Knight do? Sue, of course.
The only thing that could make the trial sillier is if the court put Ramtha on the witness stand.
Ooops, it's…
pharyngula | September 12, 2008Ay yi yi
Minnesota's very own Michele Bachmann starts praising science, but I don't think that word means what she thinks it means, since she concludes with "science ultimately conforms to god's truth".
Pity us. This raving fruitbat is our 6th district congresscreature.
pharyngula | September 10, 2008I quiver in fear that my number is up, now that Dinesh has caught on. With great trepidation, I read his screed, certain that such a brilliant mind would demolish my godless ways with his deep insight.
Well, no. He's indignant, but he's got nothing to say. Oh, well, I'm sure there might be someone out there with greater wit than him who will teach me a lesson.
pharyngula | September 9, 2008After a pleasant period of my mailbox cooling down a bit, I've recently seen a significant surge of howling mad Catholics shrieking at me. I was wondering what prompted the resurgence, and here it is: apparently I made the cover of the Catholic League's newsletter, The Catalyst, and am even the subject of a frothing mad editorial by Billy Donohue, a complete timeline of the Great Desecration, and various requests for the faithful to howl for my job.
It's kind of cool, in a perverse way. Cry, babies, cry.
pharyngula | September 8, 2008That's a quote from Lou Engle in this video — and it's actually kind of true. He thinks it will be a wonderful thing when people see this, and there probably are a lot of Americans who think the events portrayed are perfectly ordinary, and even commendable.
I see nothing but madness.
By picking Sarah Palin for a running mate, John McCain has turned over a rock to expose a festering, primitive insanity in our country. Look on the squirming horror, world, and learn that it does exist!
A further indictment: Juan Cole sees Palin through the lens of his expertise on the Islamic world.
John…
pharyngula | September 8, 2008One of the weirder religiot freakaloons recently was the fellow whose electoral strategy was to pray for a McCain/Palin victory, and then pray for McCain's "speedy death". Well, that kook has since gone back and revised his post to be a little less blatant: "Pray for John McCain's salvation and pray specific imprecatory prayers if he fails to pro-actively defend the sanctity of human life". Isn't that ever so much better?
By the way, if you follow that link, you really must watch the video of Holy Ghost Power Encounters. Thoom shaka laka nonny-nonny ding-dong, yabba dabba doo.
pharyngula | September 7, 2008Raving creationist nutbags get shredded pretty thoroughly when they make comments here, I know. Still, that doesn't excuse the efforts of the craven lackwit to hide from criticism by scuttling over to my daughter's blog and whining that I'm a wicked parent who has condemned his own daughter to hell.
It's awfully stupid, too, since Skatje and her friends are having all the fun of using their claws and sharp, sharp teeth on him. If anyone wants to join in the evisceration, go on over. Ask for Gustaf.
pharyngula | September 6, 2008It's true, I cannot overcome this poll on WorldNutDaily. They are 'reporting' on the Large Hadron Collider and the weird fact that people are fretting over whether the Swiss will annihilate the word, so they ask their readers about why they're worried.
The first way they stumped me was by not giving any good answers (the seventh and eighth are probably closest to what I think). Then they threw in so many possible answers, which contain a lot of insane answers, which I thought at first were intended to be jokes…until I looked and saw that several of the crazy answers were leading in votes.
So…
pharyngula | September 4, 2008Some guy up in Moorehead wrote a letter to the local paper explaining why we don't have to worry about global warming. You can just picture the gears jerking haltingly around in his head as he tries to explain how a planet works while he doesn't even understand why Australians don't fall off the earth.
When God sent the rain on this Earth for 40 days and nights, all this water had to go someplace so the Earth would be dry again.
Remember, God is the Creator and controls the universe.
God tilted the Earth from its original position and caused all the excess water to rush to the poles, and…
pharyngula | September 3, 2008You think you're tired of these? Boy, am I tired of them. The irony is relentless, the cluelessness indefatigable, the obliviousness all-encompassing. Fortunately, I'm down to only 5-10 emails and an average of less than 1 written letter from outraged Catholics now…but still, they're just so looney. Here's one from Richard Riley of Oregon who does an exceptional job of hitting several common themes all in one place.
Professor Myers: Your intentional desecration of the Eucharist is the most dispicable act that i have ever witnessed or learned of in my 70 years. You act is far more…
pharyngula | September 3, 2008Some of the right-wing loons are speaking their minds, and it certainly is an ugly pit of frothing, foaming sludge sloshing about in their crania. Archy finds a frightening example of insanity out there; this is the blog of an anti-choice Christian Reconstructionist who is just thrilled to pieces about Sarah Palin, but can't stand John McCain. After demonstrating his ignorance rather painfully in giving his reasons why Palin should be elected, ("There is more untapped oil in Alaska than in Saudi Arabia"), he offers his plan for fundies to win the election.
Vote Constitution Party. (I vote my…
pharyngula | September 3, 2008Harper Collins is about to release a children's book called The Daring Book for Girls(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll) in Australia. It contains a very short section on how to play a didgeridoo — and wouldn't you know it, someone is offended.
But the general manager of the Victorian Aboriginal Education Association, Dr Mark Rose, says the publishers have committed a major faux pas by including a didgeridoo lesson for girls.
Dr Rose says the didgeridoo is a man's instrument and touching it could make girls infertile, and has called for the book to be pulped.
I think Dr Rose has confused aboriginal…
pharyngula | September 2, 2008Somebody took offense again. An art museum in England is exhibiting some controversial statues, and of course some kook can't just stay away, they have to make sure no one else gets to see them.
A Christian group is taking an art centre to court, claiming it displayed an indecent statue of Jesus Christ.
The artwork was part of an exhibition at Gateshead's Baltic Centre featuring several plaster figures with erections, including ET, Mickey Mouse and Jesus.
Lawyers for Christian Emily Mapfuwa, 40, of Essex, are bringing a civil case for outraging public decency.
It seems a little unkind to…
pharyngula | August 25, 2008It's true — the cracker incident is still dribbling on in my mailbox. The email is down in volume considerably — only a few dozen angry letters a day. I'm still getting a handful of actual letters every day, and those are both comical and pathetic. Usually, they're an announcement of some ceremony that was carried out to rescue me from evil. I've also got lots of pamphlets and even a couple of books about 'eucharistic miracles', which aren't having the effect the senders intend, I'm sure — all they do is demonstrate a greater depth of insanity than I had previously imagined.
I've tossed a few…
pharyngula | August 23, 2008When last we heard from Tom Willis, big-wig in the Creation Science Association for Mid-America, he was pondering whether evolutionists should be allowed to vote. Since Tom Willis is batshit insane, he decided that no, they should not, because they're wicked godless atheists with no moral sense (you theistic evolutionists aren't spared — you're even worse).
Now he has upped the ante and is wondering,
Should Evolutionists Be Allowed to Roam Free in the Land?. I wonder what his answer will be?
After declaring evolutionists incompetent, unproductive, dangerous, at war with Christianity, and to…
pharyngula | August 22, 2008Even the lovely island of Malta is infested with creationists…who have somehow acquired positions of authority in private schools.
Far from becoming extinct 65 million years ago, the dinosaurs actually co-existed with early humans, and even helped in the construction of the pyramids.
This is the word of Vince Fenech, Evangelist pastor and director of a fully licensed, State-approved Creationist institution which admits children aged between four and 18.
I have to wonder what the point of licensing schools is when the process is so porous that flaming incompetents like Fenech can run them.
pharyngula | August 20, 2008In the reality based community, when you've got a problem, you call an expert with some skills and training to deal with it. In the rest of the world, you call a priest to blame evil spirits and do nothing for a small pile of money. How else to explain asking a wizened old Catholic priest to explain 'perversions' and STDs?
Promiscuity, as well as homosexuality and pornography, says 73 year-old Fr. Jeremy Davies, is a form of sexual perversion and can lead to demonic possession. Offering what may be an explanation for the explosion of homosexuality in recent years, Fr. Davies said, "Among the…
pharyngula | August 19, 2008One of the chores I got done this afternoon, after a much needed nap, was to go through the mail that accumulated during our long absence. Part of that job is sorting out the pile of magazines that I did not subscribe to, but that some people out there think they can sign me up for and annoy me — but which, since I did not authorize any payment, and which are usually sent to me under some sloppy permutation of my name, I simply never pay for, and eventually the publisher gets tired of sending me without recompense and the subscription fades away.
It's a weird mix: lots of conservative…