stupidity
pharyngula | October 18, 2006What the hell? How can the BBC News publish this tripe?
But in the nearer future, humans will evolve in 1,000 years into giants between 6ft and 7ft tall, he predicts, while life-spans will have extended to 120 years, Dr Curry claims.
Physical appearance, driven by indicators of health, youth and fertility, will improve, he says, while men will exhibit symmetrical facial features, look athletic, and have squarer jaws, deeper voices and bigger penises.
Women, on the other hand, will develop lighter, smooth, hairless skin, large clear eyes, pert breasts, glossy hair, and even features, he…
tlambert | October 14, 2006
Lindsay Beyerstein spanks Tim Blair:
Having dismissed statistical reasoning, Tim Blair goes on to reject peer review.
It's amazing the lengths some folks will go to avoid believing that the invasion of Iraq killed hundreds of thousands of people. I would have thought the big tough war bloggers would be telling the rest of us to suck up the hard truth and press onwards to the Glorious Outcome (whatever it is now). It is worth it, isn't it guys?
Instead, they're pulling the covers over their heads and saying, "What dead people?"
Blair fights back with his leet proofreading skills: Beyerstein…
tlambert | October 12, 2006
Latest Tim Blair attempt to refute the Lancet study:
Lancet's number of documented deaths in Iraq, upon which the respected medical journal based its Iraqi mortality study, is but a mere 0.0835% of Lancet's estimated post-invasion death total.
The "estimate" part of Lancet's equation is 99.9%.
Well, I guess that's it for the entire field of statistics.
retrospectacle | October 10, 2006
I must take issue with the 'bird' muffin, although Sylvester might like it.
Fibroblast muffins?
Tinnitus muffins?
What would a Retrospectacle muffin look like?
pharyngula | September 20, 2006How can Gregg Easterbrook be publishing a science column in Slate? Brad DeLong explains it all.
The fact that Easterbook's writing is "lively" and "provocative" and that he is a member of the appropriate social networks is sufficient reason to publish him as a "science writer."
I can see where "lively" and "provocative" are necessary pre-conditions for getting a column in a popular magazine, but are they sufficient? No. Would they hire someone for a gossip column who had never heard of Scarlet Johansson or Brad Pitt? There is this phenomenon called "expertise" that ought to be part of the…
pharyngula | September 19, 2006Hey, papal apologists (papalologists?), stop reading this! You won't like it. It's nothing but a couple of links to religion-bashing, prompted by the naked sectarian stupidity of one bizarre religious leader.
Christopher Hitchens takes the pope to task for pissing off Islam (a triviality, as always) and criticizing the application of reason.
It is often said--and was said by Ratzinger when he was an underling of the last Roman prelate--that Islam is not capable of a Reformation. We would not even have this word in our language if the Roman Catholic Church had been able to have its own way.…
pharyngula | September 17, 2006How about them boobies? I was traveling yesterday, and missed most of the astonishing uproar over being photographed while bearing breasts—so I won't add much to the thrashing except to point out the bright side.
You see, the real resentment is over the fact that Jessica happens to be young and attractive, a couple of fortuitous and irrelevant features that don't matter to the assessment of her writing. There are a lot of people like that in the blogosphere, like Amanda and Lindsay, and it's not just the ladies—look at Ezra and Chris. They're the competition. If we old and homely people can…
pharyngula | September 15, 2006What the heck is wrong with the people at Slate? I simply do not understand why any magazine would put in a science column, and have Jackie Harvey, I mean Gregg Easterbrook write it. It's an astonishing decision, and I'm stunned into silence…so I'll let others do the snark and abuse.
pharyngula | September 14, 2006Maybe I was wrong. Maybe Republicans are capable of thinking long term—really long term. After a recent hearing, Rep. Don Young (Reprehensible, Alaska) enlightened us with a Deep Thought:
Before he left the hearing, Young, noting the presence of network TV crews, took a moment to reflect on his thoughts regarding climate change, citing the benefit of global warming -- not caused by man -- in another eon to an area that today is frozen much of the year. "We're dealing with the most northern part of the United States of America, and a most hostile climate, and we're pumping oil, and I'd just…
pharyngula | September 13, 2006True confession: I try to watch the medical drama House when I can. It's lead character is an acerbic and brilliant atheist M.D. (played by Hugh Laurie, a comedic actor—which was a smart casting decision), and the humor is snarky and dark. That's just the kind of thing I enjoy. It's been going downhill, I think, because the episodes have gotten far too predictable—there's always a weird illness which is handled via increasingly wild semi-random diagnoses that always, and I definitely mean always, ends with the complete cure of the patient. The infallibility is wearing a little thin.
Last…
retrospectacle | September 5, 2006Nick called it first: Flags and Lollipops has "calculated" the hottest science bloggers on the Net using a "Hot ot Not" type algorithm. (If such a thing could be called an algorithm).
Well yours truly was voted the hottest blogger by a jury of her peers. Ego stroked? Check! No Date Tonight? Check! Still a Broke Grad Student? Check! Totally Nerdelicious? DOUBLE CHECK!
(Dear World Domination Diary: Phase 1 of Operation: Hearts, Minds, and Loins complete. Soon to move on to Phase 2, deploy talking parrot army with friggin' lasers on their heads.)
pharyngula | September 3, 2006At least, that is, it's new to me. Austin Cline summarizes a report in The Philosophers' Magazine by Michael La Bossier:
[R]ecent studies of cloned animals reveal that current cloning techniques produce animals that are as distinct in their personalities as animals produced by Ânatural means of reproduction. Texas A&M, which has been on the forefront of animal cloning, has found that cloned pigs differ from each other in, among other things, their food preferences and degree of friendliness towards human beings.…
Given that the clones are genetically the same and are typically raised in…
pharyngula | August 30, 2006Maybe it would have been more sensible to start with the water-and-wine trick, and later work up to the walking-on-water finale.
A priest has died after trying to demonstrate how Jesus walked on water. Evangelist preacher Franck Kabele, 35, told his congregation he could repeat the biblical miracle. But he drowned after walking out to sea from a beach in the capital Libreville in Gabon, west Africa. One eyewitness said: "He told churchgoers he'd had a revelation that if he had enough faith, he could walk on water like Jesus. "He took his congregation to the beach saying he would walk across…
tlambert | August 28, 2006
Robyn Williams has written a book debunking Intelligent Design.
Tim Blair's reaction (endorsed by Glenn Reynolds): He doesn't see anything wrong with Intelligent Design, but why didn't Williams write a book on the flaws in Fundamentalist Islam?.
Similarly Blair thinks people shouldn't write about global warming, but should write about the threat from global terrorism instead. And you shouldn't write about the danger of obesity, but about the danger of Islamic extremism.
I think that if Blair had his way, this is what it would be like at breakfast:
"What's in the paper this morning?"
"Well,…
retrospectacle | August 28, 2006Uh-uh girrrrllll, I know you didn't! This just makes me downright ashamed of America:
U.S. Rep. Katherine Harris told a religious journal that separation of church and state is "a lie" and God and the nation's founding fathers did not intend the country be "a nation of secular laws."
The Republican candidate for U.S. Senate also said that if Christians are not elected, politicians will "legislate sin," including abortion and gay marriage.
Harris made the comments -- which she clarified Saturday -- in the Florida Baptist Witness, the weekly journal of the Florida Baptist State Convention,…
pharyngula | August 26, 2006Perhaps this is redundant, since Jon Swift has already taken care of it, but how could I possibly resist an article titled "The Death of Science," posted on a "Blogs for Bush" site? It's got wingnuts, it's got irony, it's got dizzyingly inane interpretations of science. It's like everything that's wrong with the Bush approach to science, all in one short article.
What reasons could a blinkered Bush supporter with a petrified brain and no background in science possibly advance to support the claim that science is dead?
A lot of different factors - but the main thing was that science could…
pharyngula | August 24, 2006In a surprising discovery, reading the Wall Street Journal opinion pages will make you 57% dumber, will kill 8,945,562,241 neurons, and will force you to invent ridiculous statistics. Don't follow that link! The article will make you cry as you go through a Flowers for Algernon experience.
You could read it through the Echidne filter for a little protection (she's a goddess, she was safe in reading it.) Arthur Brooks, billed as a professor at Syracuse University's Maxwell School of Public Affairs, has written an incredibly stupid article, arguing that because Republican parents outbreed…
retrospectacle | August 23, 2006Ok, this isn't much of a post at all, except to direct you all over to Dr. Bushwell's abode to read this bit of unmitigated hilarity.
Some people should just be denied internet access. Although, how would we bloggers stay entertained?
I also just noticed that I've made two unabashed references to Kevin Costner movies today. I don't think I deserve internet access either.
tlambert | August 22, 2006
There is the "Anti (this) War (now)" position. And there is the "Anti-Most Wars Most of the Time" position. And there is Tim Blair's "Pro War All the Time" position:
now right-wing monks are launching themselves at Sri Lankan peaceniks:
A scuffle broke out Thursday between saffron-robed monks and anti-war demonstrators at peace rally in Sri Lankan capital.
About six or seven monks from a right-wing Buddhist faction had stormed the stage during a peace rally attended by about 1,000 people in the capital, Colombo, shouting pro-war slogans, an AP reporter at the scene said.
It's as though…