Culture Wars
tfk | January 18, 2007Local radio host Steve Forman quotes the World Nut Daily:
In the wake of reports of unidentified objects flying over Chicago's O'Hare Airport, a retired Air Force pilot has his own mystery with a rash of bright, colorful lights he photographed hovering in skies over western Arkansas last week.
"I believe these lights were not of this world, and I feel a duty and responsibility to come forward," Col. Brian Fields told WND. "I have no idea what they were."
Fields, 61, was cooking chicken at his Van Buren, Ark., home Jan. 9 when just before 7 p.m., he observed two intensely bright lights as he…
tfk | January 18, 2007Thanks to Framing Science for pointing me to a debate between Sam Harris and Andrew Sullivan about religion and religious moderation.
Shorter Sam Harris: If only religious people understood religion as well as atheists do, they'd be atheists like I am.
Honestly, Harris writes "Moderate doubt—which I agree is an improvement over fundamentalist certitude in most respects—often blinds its host to the reality and consequences of full-tilt religious lunacy." While his own absolute rejection of faith gives him what insight into "full-tilt religious" … what, exactly?
When Andrew Sullivan, of all…
tfk | January 15, 2007Lawrence has made an important step towards true equality by taking up the possibility of a local registry of domestic partnerships. This would allow a centralized place where companies that choose to provide partnership benefits to check the status of their employees, and would allow hospitals and other institutions to verify the relationships between people.
The city is limited in what it can do with this registry, since state law forbids granting anyone but one man and one woman the right to marry or even "the rights or incidents of
marriage." No one seems quite sure how far that…
tfk | January 13, 2007Billy Dembski writes:
We are often told that “there is no ID research published in peer reviewed journals“. I receive Nature E-Alerts in a number of biological research fields. Almost every time I read the abstracts and even the titles, or spend more time delving into the detail, I hear “Intelligent Design” silently screamed from the pages. Am I deluded, or do others hear it too?
Yes and no, respectively.
Bonus stupidity: look at what the Isaac Newton of Information considers evidence of ID. Once he would have claimed you had to calculate something called specified complexity (though he…
tfk | January 9, 2007
At the DI's official blog, DI associate director/vice-president John West asks Why Does National Center for Science Education (NCSE) Spokesman Think "Mocking Traditional Religion" is OK?
Set aside that the spokesman in question doesn't defend the act of mocking traditional religion. He responded to the DI's whining about the Noodly One by asking a very good question: "Why would mocking traditional religion be of concern to a purely scientific organization?" This can be readily taken as a response to Casey Luskin insistence (on Christmas Day) that "it's … clear that the FSM images are…
omnibrain | January 9, 2007Ohh boy...here we go. From the New Scientist Blog:
An ongoing US experiment to turn "homosexual" rams straight by altering their hormone levels has sparked the ire of both gay activists and animal rights groups. The work is reportedly being carried out at Oregon State University in the city of Corvallis and at the Oregon Health and Science University in Portland.
I can imagine what groups like Love in action are going to do when they get their hands on this. From wikipedia (this article also highlights other groups like this):
Love in Action, or LIA, was founded in 1973 by John Evans and the…
tfk | January 9, 2007School Board Moves Quicker Than Expected to Rewrite Science Standards:
A new majority on the Kansas school board is moving faster than anticipated to rewrite anti-evolution science standards adopted less than two years ago.
The board decided Tuesday to put the science standards on its agenda later in the day, a move that would allow the board to take a final vote next month.
Elections really do matter. The people of Kansas sent a clear signal, and the Board is making haste to carry out our bidding.
sb admin | January 8, 2007
Rejection letters always hurt a little, even for Dr. Phil. I'm sure he'll work through it.
Thank you for submitting your application for the director's position at the National Institutes of Health. As the N.I.H. is the principal force guiding America's efforts in medical research, we have strived to consider every candidate's application seriously.
Our first impression was not a good one. You have a loud and exuberant manner that is an oddity in our network of colleagues, and for the duration of the interview process, you were physically sitting on top of Dr. James Watson (a man…
sb admin | January 8, 2007
From We Have Pie Charts, via David Ng at Science Creative Quarterly (look there for my short story Neuroerotica) and ScienceBlog .
tfk | January 6, 2007One of the various labels variously applied to the group of people who don't believe in the supernatural is "secular humanist." This emphasizes the importance of ethical behavior by and toward other humans. Indeed, you'll sometimes see "secular humanist" and "atheist" used interchangeably. Richard Dawkins seems determined to clarify the difference.
In a piece written for the Los Angeles Times, he writes Saddam should have been studied, not executed, and argues in particular that:
Hussein is not in the same league as Hitler, but, nevertheless, in a small way his execution represents a…
omnibrain | January 5, 2007As I'm sure many of you know, Colorado has been completely wrecked with snow - stranding thousands and thousands of cattle out in the fields leaving them to starve or wander off. One radio station, in an effort to help, called the most famous group for 'helping' animals in danger - PETA. Instead of PETA offering their assistance they came off as just a bunch of pricks instead. See below for some more details - or read the original article here.
As many as 340,000 cows and steers have been left stranded by southeastern Colorado's most recent snowstorm, and National Guard units are helping…
tfk | December 22, 2006Within hours of Phill Kline's last attempt to intimidate Wichita-area doctor George Tiller, a state judge tossed out 30 misdemeanor charges.
Judge Paul Clark agreed to local district attorney Nola Foulston's request, finding that Kline had filed those indictments "without invitation, request or acquiescence of the duly elected and authorized District Attorney."
And so Phill Kline will end his term in office the way he always operated: violating the law to burnish his culture warrior credentials. Maybe Operation Rescue will name him Man of the Year next year also.
The charges were dismissed…
tfk | December 22, 2006Having been demoted to a county district attorney in no small part because of his panty-sniffing obsession with patient records from family planning clinics, Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline has decided that one of his final official acts will be charging Dr. George Tiller with 30 misdemeanor charges. The allegations involve whether Tiller properly filed forms explaining the reasons why women needed abortions in the third trimester.
Kansas law allows third trimester abortions only if the woman faces injury to a "major bodily function." Tiller's attorney denies any wrongdoing, and says…
tfk | December 20, 2006Thanks to Ed Brayton for revealing the existence of Anomalos Publishing. This new Christian publisher is excited to announce:
We are working on a project right now with an author who has written a phenomenal piece of fiction that will blow the lid off the creationism/intelligent design vs evolution debate.
I've gotten my hopes up so often that I'm going to wait to see. While authors like Denton, Johnson, Dembski, Behe, Brown and Wells all do well at creating their fictional premise, the actual storytelling gets a bit convoluted and too conceptual. I like the idea of a novel written as if…
omnibrain | December 18, 2006Got an hour or two? Check out the 2 part documentary, The God Delusion with Richard Dawkins
Part 2 is below the fold, as are the results of the Omni Brain user survey on religion (well it's really a single question).
Would you call yourself religious?
yes 13.6%
no 86.4%
omnibrain | December 15, 2006It seems warning labels might be popping up in a few more places - one of which is on the inside of clothing for larger people? I wonder if they're going to put pictures on the label? I can't see a warning label doing much good there.
Check out their other recommendations:
Clothes made in larger sizes should carry a tag with an obesity helpline number, health specialists have suggested. Sweets and snacks should not be permitted near checkouts, new roads should not be built unless they include cycle lanes and food likely to make people fat should be taxed, they say in a checklist of what we…
tfk | December 14, 2006If only we had some sort of way to detect design. It would be so handy.
The DI complaints blog is up in arms over a claim of plagiarism against Judge Jones. Not for his use of proposed findings of fact and law in his ruling in the Dover trial, but over this passage from his Dickinson College Commencement Address:
As has been often written, our Founding Fathers were children of The Enlightenment. So influenced, they possessed a great confidence in an individual's ability to understand the world and its most fundamental laws through the exercise of his or her reason. And that reason was…
tfk | December 14, 2006After New Republic writer Michael Crowley criticized Crichton's claims about climate change a character with the same name and biography showed up in his latest novel. The same biography plus one other thing, the MIck Crowley in Next by Michael Crichton is a child rapist, an heir to a pharmaceutical fortune, and a "dickhead." (Whether the real Crowley has the "small penis" of the fictional character is unknown.)
I enjoyed Crichton's early work – The Andromeda Strain is a lot of fun, as is Jurassic Park. But he's clearly gone off the deep end a little bit.