stupidity
pharyngula | December 21, 2006Thanks to Hilzoy, I've learned that our dearly beloved president has enunciated an important principle.
Bush said that despite declarations of piety from Muslim radicals now fighting the United States, he doubted that they believed in God.
"'Terrorists' can't be God-believing people,'" Richard Joel, president of Yeshiva University, quoted Bush as saying.
Before you run off and dismiss this as the ravings of an incompetent, deluded boob, think it through. It means that if someone does something wicked, we get to declare that they must not really believe in God — true faith only belongs to…
pharyngula | December 13, 2006Deepak Chopra is still blathering on. I'm afraid that while he can't shut up, I can ignore him, and this will be my last response to his drivel; it's also the last time I'll be linking to the Huffington Post. Arianna Huffington's exercise in indiscriminate narcissism is not the direction I want to see liberals taking, and while my voice isn't a significant one, I can at least deny the kook wing of the Left my tiny bit of support.
This time the obsessive small-minded mystic is still whining against science and reason, still railing against his own idiotic imaginings.
But how can anyone…
pharyngula | December 12, 2006Ah, the pleasures of living in a small town in Red America: the high schools are fertile fields for fostering hate, and now it's facilitated by technology, like Facebook, that allows them to sow it far and wide. My daughter is on a rampage right now, upset because her erstwhile peers at the high school have been putting their bigotry proudly on display. There is currently some ferocious babble going on in a Morris Area High School facebook site, and here's one of the more outrageous comments:
Okay this is really random but it has to deal with the comment about homosexuality issue that Sibley…
retrospectacle | December 11, 2006I have perhaps found the most annoying device ever You know how irritating it is when your smoke detector needs new batteries and just beeps every now and then? Like the telltale heart, it drives you slowly bonkers. Now, imagine a gadget that did that intentionally, forever, and it was hidden!
With its thin design and embedded magnet for easy hiding, the Annoy-a-tron can be placed in a variety of locations. Select one of the three sound choices (2 kHz, 12 kHz, or alternating) and push the switch to the on position. Place it in a proper hiding spot and let the "fun" begin.
The Annoy-a-tron…
pharyngula | December 9, 2006This has been really tiresome. Deepak Chopra's endless string of ignorance is simply wearing me down, but he has declared that he has made his last post on The God Delusion. I'm sure, though, that he'll find other things to babble about.
In this one, he claims he's going to deal with objections that people have brought up to his previous inanity; he doesn't, really, and the few things he does choose to highlight expose the fact that he hasn't been listening to the criticisms. He only makes four rather incoherent points.
Chopra has claimed that Dawkins believes in a purely random universe,…
pharyngula | December 5, 2006Since Orac is confessing to a stupid thing, I thought I'd repeat my own public admission of stupidity.
Public Service Announcement: Things Not to Do
Don’t carry batteries in your pocket.
This evening, I was stretched out on my recliner, enjoying a little light reading, when I smelled something odd—an odor of burning, and a faint chemical reek. I looked around and saw nothing, but the odor was getting stronger. I set my book aside, looked down, and saw something no man likes to see: tendrils of smoke rising from my fly. Then, I felt searing pain from my thigh. I jumped up and danced around (to…
retrospectacle | December 5, 2006My oh my oh my, parrots really are the cause of so much human suffering aren't they? I couldn't wait to post this until Friday Grey Matters, well, because Irene Pepperberg's interview will be featured this week (a long time coming, but we finally had a little chat Sunday night). So stay tuned for that, good stuff from an exceptionally smart and kind person.
Anyway, back to parrot-induced bank robberies:
A Murfreesboro [Tennessee] man told authorities he robbed MidSouth Bank on East College Street Monday because he "lost his job, tried for another and didn't get it, and his dog ate his parrot…
pharyngula | November 29, 2006Microsoft has added everything to a search engine that you've missed in Google: long load times, half of the screen space dedicated to flash animation and another quarter just empty charcoal grey, results that are shown 3 at a time and displayed in a light gray font on a distracting pale graphic, and most importantly, the most annoying librarian in the universe, Ms. Dewey, who seems to be there to nag you to type faster and mock you if she doesn't understand your request.
Is there a prize for the most idiotic abuse of web technology? This deserves a nomination. Unless, of course, it's…
retrospectacle | November 28, 2006Thanks to Mustafa Mond, FCD for bringing this to my attention. The notorious peace wreath (reported on below) which was garnering a $25/day fine from the owner's homeowner association will stay put. According to the committee chairman, who was backpedaling so fast that it made it hard to hear him, the threatened fine was a "misunderstanding." Also, the owner of the wreath, Lisa Jensen, said that hundreds of strangers offered to pay the fine for her to keep up the wreath!
The story had a happy ending after all.
retrospectacle | November 27, 2006
No? Me either. But the owner is getting fined $25/day until they take it down. Some hogwash about hating troops and loving the Debil.
Its sad when peace and tolerance have become un-American.
retrospectacle | November 22, 2006
Its on my wishlist.
Too bad there's not a Flying Spaghetti Monster one, praise pasta.
retrospectacle | November 21, 2006Some fantastic morning reading from a USA Today opinion article entitled '"When Religion Loses Its Credibility," critiques the current religious stance on homosexuality---and wonders, what if religion is yet again proven wrong? This was written by a well-spoken, pro-science Baptist Minister (yes, they do exist.)
Religion's only real commodity, after all, is its moral authority. Lose that, and we lose our credibility. Lose credibility, and we might as well close up shop.
It's happened to Christianity before, most famously when we dug in our heels over Galileo's challenge to the biblical view…
pharyngula | November 17, 2006Chopra's latest attempt to critique Dawkins is as lame as his first. I summarized that first one as "Well, you can't see love in your fancy microscope, now can you, Dr Smarty Pants?"; this one is the Incredibly Agile Evasive God trick. He's going to play a game and try to define his god and religion into a kind of vague god he's going to conveniently pull of out his pocket, one fuzzy enough that no one can criticize it, and he's also going to engage in some blatant projection:
But Dawkins has pulled the same trick that he resorts to over and over. This is the us-versus-them trick. Either you…
retrospectacle | November 17, 2006These stories are true, however names and a few details have been changed to hide the identity of parties involved.
Anecdote #1:
Let's just say a college professor and science-blogger, we'll call him Dr. Bob, assigns a term paper on ecology to his class. The semester is winding to a close, and this paper will constitute a fair amount of the students' class grade. Upon reading the papers, one catches his eye. It is well-written, informative, possess both depth and clarity.......why, its almost as if Dr. Bob had written it himself.
In fact, he did write it himself. As a blog post--and one he…
retrospectacle | November 14, 2006Today seems to be the day of weird religious-blogging.
A toy company called one2believe in Los Angeles offered to donate 4,000 bible-quotin' Jesus dolls to Toys for Tots, but was told "thanks, but no thanks." The reason was that children from all faiths (and lack thereof) participate in the program, and the gifts are given randomly without knowing the child's background.
Michael La Roe, director of business development for both companies, said the charity's decision left him "surprised and disappointed."
"The idea was for them to be three-dimensional teaching tools for kids," La Roe said. "I…
retrospectacle | November 14, 2006The Flying Spaghetti Monster would not be pleased to learn that the world's first (and I desperately hope, only) Creationist museum will soon open in a bustling part of backwood Kentucky. This $25 million Disney-fied, anamatronic monstrosity is dedicated to presenting the biblical creation story as factually accurate.
The Creation Museum - motto: "Prepare to Believe!" - will be the first institution in the world whose contents [editor's note: and ideas].... are entirely fake.
This museum is the brainchild (and I use the word 'brain' loosely) of one Patrick Marsh, an ex-employee of Universal…
pharyngula | November 6, 2006My university doesn't subscribe to the journal, but I'd really be interested in reading this paper by Satoshi Kanazawa of the London School of Economics. Even better would be if someone else would critique it so I wouldn't have to waste my time on it.
Mind the gap...in intelligence: Re-examining the relationship between inequality and health.
Kanazawa S.
Interdisciplinary Institute of Management, London School of Economics and Political Science, UK.
Wilkinson contends that economic inequality reduces the health and life expectancy of the whole population but his argument does not make sense…
pharyngula | October 30, 2006Promise me, O Readers of Pharyngula, that you don't write emails as stupid as the ones below the fold.
The email has been piling up today in response to Mike S. Adams' recent column. Fortunately, the ones too stupid to spell my name correctly in my email address bounce, or there'd be lots more (the ones sent to my pharyngula.org address, at which I have access to the server logs, show about a 2:1 misaddressed rate…and those are the ones that managed to spell 'pharyngula' correctly!). Anyway, just for your enjoyment, and as an example of how not to think or write, here's a subset.
Thrilling to…
pharyngula | October 28, 2006The Republicans have a secret weapon, one that is going to be unstoppable, and probably means they are going to dominate both houses of Congress. Phil has discovered (via Randi, who also has another useful item) the most potent electoral tool in the Republican arsenal—better than fear and hate, even more powerful than Diebold—I'm telling you, this thing exceeds the awe-inspiring awesome awesomeness of magnetic "support the troops" ribbons for your car. It's the Presidential Prayer Team. Sign up, and you will get specific instructions on exactly what to tell God. After all, if we can get a…
retrospectacle | October 23, 2006I've been trying to convince my friends for years that salvation could be found at Taco Bell. Now, I have irrefutable proof.
Valencia Phillips said she's not crazy, not so religious either. But even though Phillips was quite hungry one evening, she didn't dare bite into what she calls the "holy burrito."
"Right here, I see an emblazoned image of Jesus Christ on a burrito," Phillips said, pointing to the blackened image near the top right corner of the burrito she cooked for dinner. "It was amazing."
Um, so your saying you're *not* crazy. Huh.
(Hat tip somilista, FCD)