Kooks
pharyngula | March 26, 2007One sure way to get your Important Message to me is to use the good old US Mail (although my email is much snappier now, thanks to previous suggestions), and sometimes I do get the strangest stuff. This time, it was a formal looking letter from an organization called "Campaign for the Children." How can you possibly turn away a letter from someone who is for the children? You can't, of course. Then once I started reading … well, this doesn't seem to be a campaign for children after all.
The letter opens by explaining that it was prompted by my comments on homosexuality and Albert Mohler, and…
pharyngula | March 19, 2007Ann Coulter is coming out with a new book: If Democrats Had Any Brains, They'd Be Republicans. I read Coulter's last book, Godless, and I can tell you that having Ann Coulter call anyone else stupid is like seeing cockroaches complaining about vermin, or a pig farmer turning up their nose at someone else's stink. It's just not right.
Speaking of that Godless tripe, my challenge to her fans still stands. I still get email now and then from supporters whining that I dare to criticize her, but not one has ever plainly pointed to one single paragraph in the evolution chapters that they will…
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 18, 2007Avoid Las Vegas between May 17th and 20th. There's a conference going on there that will be like a black hole of stupid, with both Sylvia Browne and Deepak Chopra and a host of low-wattage luminaries of woo in attendance, and there may be a kind of intelligence implosion going on. Your brain may get sucked into the dark pit of delusional dimness if you're too close.
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 6, 2007I was wondering why Vox Day, that lunatic, was asking me my definition of science—it turns out that that same day he posted the request, he was publishing a screed against science in WorldNutDaily. His lack of an adequate definition doesn't seem to have stopped him from condemning science, whatever he thinks it is.
For if all knowledge is inherently good, then it is a moral imperative to scientifically determine the relative intelligence of Asians and Zulus once and for all. But is everyone really comfortable with the possibility of determining that men are, in scientific fact,…
pharyngula | March 5, 2007I received a strange letter in the mail (the kind with paper and stamps, not the electronic kind) today. It was nicely and formally printed, and looked like something professional…but as soon as I read the first sentence I knew it was junk.
Evolution is defined by the Encyclopædia Britannica (CD Rom Version, 2002) as the process of continuous change from a lower, simpler, or worse to a higher, more complex, or better state [this process is also called growth].
That's a humdinger of an opening line; it's completely wrong, of course. The silly book seems to have confused "evolution" with "…
pharyngula | February 27, 2007Because cell phones are godless, evil tools of Satan and the secular world. It makes me want to run out and buy 3 or 4.
(via Improbable Research)
pharyngula | February 26, 2007At least, that's how Andy Schlafly characterizes Conservapedia in a New Scientist article. I called it "shallow and useless or downright wrong," if you're interested in an alternative position on it.
Josh Rosenau wasn't any more charitable.
They are re-defining their own truth and seem to think facts are malleable.
Strictly speaking, I guess Schlafly was correct: if you're redefining facts and making up nonsense as you go along, you certainly are presenting a new way of learning.
pharyngula | February 23, 2007We knew this was going to happen. Our Crazy Jesus Lady now claims to have the inside scoop on the Iranian secret plan to take over the northern half of Iraq, name it the Iraq State of Islam, and use it for a terrorist training ground. She didn't say how she knows this. My money is on some god whispering it in her ear one night, along with the gay secret plan to put spy cameras in her bathroom.
pharyngula | February 20, 2007It's not looking good for the authors of a study that evaluated the efficacy of prayer. The authors were Rogerio A. Lobo, Daniel P. Wirth, and Kwang Y. Cha, and now look at what has happened to them (link may not work if you don't have a subscription to the CHE).
Doctors were flummoxed in 2001, when Columbia University researchers published a study in The Journal of Reproductive Medicine that found that strangers' prayers could double the chances that a woman would get pregnant using in-vitro fertilization. In the years that followed, however, the lead author removed his name from the paper…
pharyngula | February 20, 2007DaveScot, the anti-science slug from UncommonDescent, is doing an experiment: he's got a friend who is taking dichloroacetate (DCA) to treat his cancer. DaveScot thinks this is wonderful and useful, but quite the contrary: a one-person uncontrolled trial is pretty much a perfect example of bad science.
One funny (funny weird, because it's also actually kind of evil) point from the post: he's shilling for a quack commercial site that is selling DCA—purportedly for animal use. They sell doses for 150 pound animals. That'll come in handy if my pet kangaroo gets cancer.
Anyway, nice to see that…
pharyngula | February 19, 2007Somebody shoot me now. The Washington Post tallies up congressional votes, and in an astounding display of technological mastery, allows you to sort and display them by the congressperson's astrological sign. If you've ever wondered whether Scorpios were more likely to vote for highway appropriations than are Virgos, now you can find out.
I really want to know what the conversations the editors or publishers had about this decision were like. I'm thinking they were getting worried about how idiotic and cowardly the press has been looking lately, so someone decided to do something bold and…
pharyngula | February 18, 2007Blake Stacey just asked me to pick on Scott Adams and the Dilbert blog some more—he wants practice taking potshots at fools. Well, Blake, I did a quick browse through the latest entries at the Dilbert blog, and I had a hard time finding anything with even a tiny germ of substance to attack. He spits up a lot of froth, you know, and there has to be at least a hint that he's taking a stand on something in order to have an argument.
I did see that he is now calling what he does "philosotainment", which I translate to mean "really stupid philosophy for the feeble-minded." You might have more luck…
pharyngula | February 16, 2007Deepak Chopra is at it again, babbling about evolutionary biology. It's obvious at this point that he's an idiot who has found a niche in making a fool of himself on this topic; I'm disgusted with the Huffington Post for continuing to give this fraud a platform.
I'm not going to dissect it. I'll let Norm Doering do the job this time.
There's also more at Liberal Values.
pharyngula | February 14, 2007I earlier accused Vox Day of arguing that "murdering toddlers in the name of Jesus is defensible."
He has since informed me that I have misinterpreted him.
Vox answers that offing two-year olds at the direct and 100-percent confirmed command of the Almighty is the moral act. Jesus never entered into it one way or another, let alone a self-motivated or (presumably) delusional act justified post facto by an exculpatory invocation of Jesus Christ's name.
I had no idea that Vox was an adherent of the Arian heresy, but OK. It makes, of course, a huge difference in the moral status of the butchery…
pharyngula | February 14, 2007Can any Texan reading this explain how these lunatic yahoos get elected? I've read Molly Ivins, but she hasn't explained how normal, ordinary folk can walk into a voting booth and pull a lever for some macho pseudo-cowboy with slicked back hair and a belief that the earth doesn't rotate, and that all atheists are actually Jews in disguise. Read it and weep.
The second most powerful member of the Texas House has circulated a Georgia lawmaker's call for a broad assault on teaching of evolution.
House Appropriations Committee Chairman Warren Chisum, R-Pampa, used House operations Tuesday to…
pharyngula | February 13, 2007Lynch finds a strange argument against climate change.
My biggest argument against putting the primary blame on humans for climate change is that it completely takes God out of the picture. It must have slipped these people's minds that God created the heavens and the earth and has control over what's going on. (Dear Lord Jesus...did I just open a new pandora's box?) Yeah, I said it. Do you honestly believe God would allow humans to destroy the earth He created?
Well, actually…let's think this through. At least the guy has made a discrete argument, that there are certain phenomena that are…
pharyngula | February 12, 2007Charming. Good Christian Vox Day argues that murdering toddlers in the name of Jesus is defensible.
(I'm hoping ol' Vox will make another post calling me "Pharyngurl". It's pathetic that he thinks femininity is an insult, isn't it?)