stupidity
tlambert | April 17, 2007Back in 2004, Glenn Reynolds declared that the election here in Australia was in no small part a referendum on the Iraq war. This was wrong, as anyone who was here at the time could tell you. So, I posted a roundup of comments from news stories, pundits and bloggers, left and right, pro- and anti-war. Everyone agreed that the war was only a minor issue. Reynolds' sole support for his position, Tim Blair, showed up in comments to deny that he was saying that the war was a major issue.
Since not one person in Australia now supported his position Reynolds concluded that he was right and that…
pharyngula | April 13, 2007Everyone's talking about Kos, so in one sense he's done something smart, and he's going to rake in some more ad dollars over all this attention — but in another Kos has blown it, big time. He has dismissed the death threats against Kathy Sierra as a) same old story that he sees all the time, b) nothing to worry about, and c) reason to suggest that the victim ought to give up blogging, which, of course, is music to the ears of the "psycho losers" who carry out that kind of attempted intimidation. Is Kos really so tone-deaf that he doesn't realize he has just sided with people who threatened to…
pharyngula | April 10, 2007I hesitate to mention this, but I seem to be the target of creationist humor. It's not being targeted that I mind, but that the 'humor' is so lame and the photoshopping is so bad. I would have thought that I'd be an excellent subject for lampooning, being easily caricatured and having views outside the mainstream, so why are they so pathetic at it?
Never mind, I looked around the site a little more — it's all that bad, a kind of ham-fisted exaggeration of creationist misconceptions that really only makes the creationists look foolish, on a par with Dembski's clumsy attempts at a joke. Don't…
tlambert | April 6, 2007Commentator 1: Hello, and welcome to a special Good Friday edition of INTELLECTUAL CAGE MATCH. Today we have a great match up for you. The topic is Global Warming and it's the collective wisdom of Tim Blair's commenters against Ryan Gwin, who is six.
Commentator 2: Ooh, that's not fair.
Commentator 1: I know, but we couldn't find any four year olds who wanted to take them on. But Team Blair has been training hard so we may have a contest here. Here's hollingshead on their training program:
Hence why I stock up on Tim Ball videos.
C2: Ooh, they might sue Ryan if they lose. I remember…
pharyngula | April 5, 2007If I see Francis Collins' pious, simpering facade one more time, I'm going to get really pissed off. Can someone please give that man a Templeton Prize and let him retire to the Cascades, where he can stare at waterfalls to his heart's content? CNN has an article on "Why this scientist believes in God", and it's just more vapid crap distilled from his vapid book.
But OK, let's take him at his word. He claims to be presenting reasons to believe … what are they? Do they meet any kind of scientific standard?
I've thrown out most of his essay, and pulled out just those parts that actually address…
retrospectacle | March 29, 2007When my family moved to South Carolina from Florida, we looked at houses in the cities of Simpsonville and Clinton. We, looks like it was a good thing we settled in Simpsonville. Just take a look at whats going on in Clinton....
Now, what I remembered of Clinton was beautiful old antebellum houses and nice neighborhoods (we were only looking at houses for sale). I never saw this side, which is much uglier.
pharyngula | March 26, 2007The oppression begins at home, and we can't just blame the men.
I work at a bookstore. I was cashiering today when a woman and her two kids (a boy and a girl, both somewhere between 13-15) came up to the register. The mom was buying 2 celeb gossip magazines, and the boy put down a book. The girl then walked up and set down the newest volume of the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series.
The mom says "You can't buy that."
Girl: Why?
Mom: Because it's too big.
Girl: [Brother] is buying a book that big. It's not very expensive.
Mom: [Brother] is a boy. You're a girl. And girls shouldn't read…
pharyngula | March 26, 2007Chuck Norris convinced me before that the bruised and jellied blob bobbing about in his cranium isn't working so well anymore, but this video of Norris advocating a bible-based public school curriculum is the final kicker.
He's fronting for an organization that's trying to smuggle bogus history and religious propaganda into our schools. It's a shame—after playing a hero for so many years on TV, he's fading away in the real world as one of the bad guys.
pharyngula | March 25, 2007My opinion of Wired magazine just dropped a couple of notches. They've got Gregg Easterbrook pontificating on a science issue, the origin of life. Easterbrook is a sports writer with absolutely no clue about science—I've commented on his incompetence a few times before (OK, more than a few times). This time he's soberly stating that no one has done any research on abiogenesis since Miller/Urey, or what they've done is a series of failed experiments, and that there are no hints in nature about the chemical origins of life, therefore, maybe a god did it … while completely oblivious to the fact…
pharyngula | March 24, 2007
The pop culture hysteria is getting ridiculous. The movie 300, based on a graphic novel treatment of the sacrifice of the Spartans in the battle of Thermopylae, has become a political palimpsest with everyone trying to find support for their agenda in it—but get serious, it's a comic book on the big screen. Similarly, a few have tried to see omens in the death of comic book hero Captain America recently. Again, it's a comic book — superheroes die all the time, and they bounce back like Jesus or get replaced by someone else willing to look ridiculous in public wearing garish Spandex. For the…
retrospectacle | March 23, 2007 I'm going to take a bit of a departure for parrot-related news this week to focus on owls, which are solitary, nocturnal birds of prey. Recently a very rare species of owl, the long-whiskered owlet, was observed in the wild in Peru by an American ornithological team. The owlet, first discovered in 1976, is tiny, no bigger than a fist. The amber-eyed owl's facial feathers extend out past its head, making it appear to have wispy whiskers. It is also conjectured that the owl is nearly flightless
The American Bird Conservancy said the sighting "is considered a holy grail of South American…
pharyngula | March 22, 2007What a shock—that awesome "Left Behind" video game in which you get to convert the infidel and slaughter the heathen has tanked, big time. They sunk $27 million into it, the stock had a peak of $18.70 $7.44, and now it's worth 18 cents.
I guess they didn't pray hard enough.
pharyngula | March 19, 2007What are we going to do with Michael Egnor? He seems to be coming up with a new bit of foolishness every day, and babbling on and on. Should we ignore him (there really isn't any substance there), or should we criticize him every time (although he's probably capable of generating idiocy at a phenomenal rate—he's got a real talent for it)?
I'm not going to link to the awful "Evolution News & Views" site, and I'll make this brief. His latest gripe is with the recent Newsweek cover story (that I had some problems with, too), but his argument is silly.
This is your assignment. You are to read…
pharyngula | March 17, 2007If a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, the insignificant, minute information Adams has on evolution must be exceedingly risky—it's like the atom bomb of ignorance. In this case, it's not entirely his fault, though. He read the recent Newsweek cover story on evolution, which fed his biases and readily led him smack into the epicenter of his own blind spots, and kerblooiee, he exploded.
This is a case where the flaws in a popular science article neatly synergize with an evolution-denialist's misconceptions to produce a perfect storm of stupidity.
I'm not really impressed with the Newsweek…
pharyngula | March 15, 2007Garrison Keillor has done it again: he's written another insipid article loaded with casual bigotry, this time against gays. I'm pleased to see that Dan Savage has savaged him, so I don't need to go on at length.
However, this really isn't the first time Keillor has done this—he has a history of unthinking stereotyping and rejection of gays and atheists. He's an excellent example of why, when I see the Religious Right and the Religious Left, I don't think the problem is the Right or Left…it's the Religious.
My criticism of Keillor from 2005 is below the fold. Not only does he reject atheism…
pharyngula | March 12, 2007Why not slaughter snakes? The bible says it is their fate to be ground under our heel, after all. Laelaps has a story about a town in Texas that turns butchery into a fun family event — warning, there is a photo, and if you decapitate enough snakes, you can get a lot of blood spattered around.
I was most disgusted at the rationale; I heard this kind of stupid excuse a lot when I was a young fellow, in the country around Eastern Washington:
According to Yahoo!News, some justify the atrocities by claiming that it keeps livestock safe from the dangerous snakes, and although I haven't seen any…
pharyngula | March 10, 2007Perhaps your curiosity was aroused by Richard Dawkins' apology:
I am distressed to find myself reported as participating in a "literary spat", and as "pouring scorn" on an individual, comedian Peter Kay, for whom I actually feel nothing but goodwill (Heard the one about the atheist who scorned a comedian for his belief in a comforting God? March 8). The explanation is as follows. I am one of those whom reporters regularly telephone for a soundbite. Last week, I was fed a quotation from somebody, previously unknown to me, who said he believed in God because he found it comforting. Assuming I…
pharyngula | March 9, 2007Darwin Dating
Ready for another perversion of Darwin's ideas? Take a look at Darwin Dating.
Sick of dating websites filled with ugly, unattractive, desperate fatsos? We are.
Darwin Dating was created exclusively for beautiful, desirable people. Our strict rules and natural selection process ensures all our members have winning looks.
It's not at all original — it's a rehash of the "hot or not" formula, where people submit pictures and readers can click through and rank them — and all they've added is this inane association with evolution. Well, that and perhaps the most smugly egotistical,…
pharyngula | March 8, 2007Three girls have been suspended from school because, during a reading of an excerpt from the Vagina Monologues, they used the word—get ready to be shocked—"vagina".
Obviously, the girls should have consulted this list for a euphemism.