Culture Wars
tfk | June 17, 2008Disco. vocalist Rob Crowther wonders What Part of "shall not be construed to promote any religious doctrine" do his opponents not understand? Writing about SB 733, a creationist bill winging its way to Governor Bobby "The Exorcist II" Jindal, Crowther points out that:
Section 1D of the bill clearly states that it "shall not be construed to promote any religious doctrine, promote discrimination for or against a particular set of religious beliefs, or promote discrimination for or against religion or non-religion."
Why is it, then, that "a slew of articles have been running in which activists…
tfk | June 16, 2008In a press release from the Louisiana Coalition for Science, Governor Bobby Jindal's college genetics professor asks him not to "hold back the next generation of Louisiana's doctors." The press release introduces an open letter from the group calling for Jindal to veto SB 733, a bill which opens the door to creationism in the classroom,
Professor Arthur Landy, University Professor at Brown University who teaches in the medical school, taught the then-premed. Landy says "Without evolution, modern biology, including medicine and biotechnology, wouldn't make sense. In order for today's…
tfk | June 11, 2008SB 733, a creationist bill in the Louisiana legislature, was approved on a lopsided vote in the Louisiana House of Representatives today. It now moves back to the Senate, where small differences between this bill and the Senate version must be reconciled before it can go to Governor Jindal. Jindal is a leading contender for John McCain's vice presidential nomination.
In response to this and other attacks on the teaching of evolution in Louisiana, the indefatigable Barbara Forrest (author of Creationism's Trojan Horse: The Wedge of Intelligent Design) and other activists in the Pelican State…
tfk | May 30, 2008Remember this?:
Michael Medved, nationally syndicated talk radio host and bestselling author, has joined the Discovery Institute in the role of senior fellow. The position cements a longstanding friendship and recognizes a commonality of values and projects across a spectrum of issues.
“Michael Medved is an intellectual entrepreneur, a political and cultural polymath with great insights, judgment and wit. We are delighted to have this new relationship with him,” said Discovery Institute president Bruce Chapman. …
Chapman saluted Medved “as the national radio host–make that ‘media host’–who is…
tfk | May 19, 2008Neal Desai took first place in the contest. Desai is a 10th grader in Kansas City, MO's Pembroke High School, but clearly identifies as a Kansan, and the Alliance for Science assures me he lives in the Sunflower state.
The contest allowed students to address either of two topics: Agriculture and Evolution or Climate and Evolution. Desai's essay addresses agriculture, and especially the complex moral, economic and social consequences of plant breeding and the use of evolutionary biology to engineer lines of crops. "Because we, as farmers and scientists, were looking to create plants with '…
tfk | May 19, 2008Who wrote:
A manifestly unsound system like that of Darwin exercises a much more powerful influence than the deepest speculations, just because of its “practicability.“ And so we have seen the idea of evolution develop itself till it spread from biology and geology to all spheres of thought and investigation, and, intoxicated by its success, exercised such a tyranny that any one who did not swear by it was to be looked upon as a simpleton.
No, not Ben Stein in Expelled, nor Denyse O'Leary's latest crush.
For extra credit: Why should modern IDolators be very worried about quotes like that?…
tfk | May 12, 2008Hilzoy quotes Steve Benen, quoting Roll Call:
After months working behind the scenes, House Republican leaders this week will finally start rolling out their rebranding effort aimed at rallying the party around a comprehensive policy and message agenda.
Titled “Reasons to Believe,” the plan is meant to provide House Republicans with a sales pitch to voters by focusing on four issue areas: the economy, energy, health care and security.
And already we've got a list of 8 myths about it.
Yes, the Republican party has named its brilliant new plan after a crackpot creationist group, but at least…
tfk | May 8, 2008NCSE wants your help:
The National Center for Science Education, a non-profit organization that defends the teaching of evolution in the public schools, seeks candidates for a position in its Public Information Project.
Staff members in the Public Information Project provide advice and support to local activists faced with threats to evolution education in their communities. They also provide information on evolution, evolution education, and related issues to the general public, the press, and allied organizations, and contribute as needed to NCSE's publications, both in print and on-line.…
tfk | May 6, 2008
This is the third of four videos NCSE commissioned to help explain how evolution works, and to help people understand the threats posed to accurate science education. It's remarkable what you can fit into a brief video.
It's also worth noting that a lot won't fit into a video. If the issue of eye evolution is of interest, check out this recent article from LifeScientist. The Nature Reviews Neuroscience paper they discuss is more technical, but is a really good review.
tfk | May 2, 2008I'm used to creationists. Every day, I get up, check my email, and get questions straight from the Index of Creationist Claims. Drawings of dinosaurs that prove people lived with dinosaurs, the young sun would have been too cold, the ocean has too much salt, etc. It's fun. I point people toward resources to clarify their scientific claims, then start digging into the real issue: their misunderstanding of the relation between science and religion. "No," I explain, "you don't have to give up your religious faith in order to accept the scientific evidence." And that sometimes leads to…
tfk | April 29, 2008It's not just the science groups who are upset with Expelled's misuse of the Holocaust for petty political advantage. The venerable Anti-Defamation League says that the anti-evolution film misappropriates the Holocaust:
New York, NY, April 29, 2008 … The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) today issued the following statement regarding the controversial film Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed.
The film Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed misappropriates the Holocaust and its imagery as a part of its political effort to discredit the scientific community which rejects so-called intelligent design…
tfk | April 29, 2008Expelled is a really, truly, awful movie. Even setting aside its errors and its Holocaust nigh-denial, it's just a badly assembled bit of cinema. It's offensive and absurd to compare the events of the Cold War to the treatment of the supposed martyrs: the folks who variously were called bad names, didn't get tenure because they didn't publish research or get grants, the one who didn't get a new contract after failing to live up to the previous one, etc. People starved behind the Berlin Wall. They were sent to Siberia, and not in any figurative sense.
It's doubly offensive for Stein to…
tfk | April 24, 2008Orac doesn't think Expelled's Nazi claims are a form of Holocaust denial. I disagree.
Orac has some good points, and "denial" may be a strong word. Orac gives the basic criteria of Holocaust denial as rejecting at least one of these statements:
1. The Holocaust was the intentional murder of European Jews by the Nazi government of Germany during World War II as a matter of state policy
2. This mass murder employed gas chambers, among other methods, as a method of killing
3. The death toll of European Jews by the end of World War II was roughly 6 million.
Expelled is either silent on or in…
tfk | April 23, 2008The video at ExpelledExposed.com highlighting Chris Comer's story was one of last week's most viewed and most discussed on YouTube. In a week, it basically tied the YouTube trailer for Expelled, and exceeded the viewership of the Dick-to-the-Dawk viral video put out by the producers of Expelled.
We don't know if the next three videos we're rolling out over the next few weeks will get the same response, but I'm very fond of the one we're highlighting this week:
tfk | April 23, 2008Yoko sues Expelled filmmakers over Imagine | Entertainment | Reuters:
John Lennon's widow, Yoko Ono, and his sons are suing the filmmakers of "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed" for using the song "Imagine" in the documentary without permission. …
Yoko Ono, son, Sean Ono Lennon, and Julian Lennon, John Lennon's son from his first marriage, along with privately held publisher EMI Blackwood Music Inc filed suit in U.S. District Court in Manhattan seeking to bar the filmmakers and their distributors from continuing to use "Imagine" in the movie.
They are also seeking unspecified damages.…
tfk | April 22, 2008I'm still digging out of the post-Expelled craziness. Our video about Chris Comer has gotten more views than the Expelled trailer on Youtube or the rapping Dawkins video, and traffic keeps streaming in to ExpelledExposed.com.
If you haven't done so already, there's still time to locate a stupid statement by Ben Stein (from anywhere, not the movie) and refute it as part of NCSE's "Set Ben Straight" contest. Fabulous prizes!
Now get out there and enjoy this amazing planet of ours.
tfk | April 20, 2008On Saturday night, we celebrated the first night of Passover. It's a day on which Jews have, since time immemorial, celebrated out freedom, and greater freedom to come. The seder is a profound and moving ceremony, and its form connects us through the generations, back to the ancestors who laid the groundwork for modern Jewish religion and culture.
It is especially disturbing, then that Disco. Inst.'s David Klinghoffer emerged from whatever dank cesspool he lives in, and on the day before Passover, announced:
Hitler understood something about Judaism that even many Jews today don’t grasp…
tfk | April 18, 2008Here's the New York Times on porn actress/producer Jenna Jameson's new movie, Zombie Strippers:
Strewn with some surprisingly decent effects, this unevenly paced film delivers, if nothing else, on the promise of its title: lots of surgically enhanced nude dead women strutting their stuff. …
Though not nearly as clever as it aims to be, the film at least tries. In addition to drawing inspiration from Eugène Ionesco’s ever-relevant absurdist play “Rhinoceros,” it’s full of jabs at the Bush administration and philosophy references — for starters, Jenna Jameson, as the first stripper to…
tfk | April 17, 2008Expelled apparently features "Imagine" by John Lennon , and the Lennon estate is not pleased.
But according to a lawyer for Ms. Ono, the filmmakers did not have permission to use the song [Imagine], for any amount of money.
Ms. Ono's lawyer, Jonas Herbsman, of Shukat, Arrow, Hafer, Weber & Herbsman, said in an interview Wednesday: "It was not licensed." With respect to the filmmakers, he says: "We are exploring all options." It is not clear what remedies if any may be available to Ms. Ono.
In a written statement, the film's three producers -- Walt Ruloff, John Sullivan and Logan Craft…
tfk | April 14, 2008ExpelledExposed.com, your one-stop-shop for rebuttals of Ben Stein's creationist hackery, is live, baby! Learn the dirty truth behind Expelled!
And it features NCSE's first foray onto Youtube!