jlynch
Posts by this author
March 29, 2008
Seed has been running an interview with the British author Will Self whom I first encountered by reading his wonderful Great Apes, the cover of which - a mash-up of a human and ape - is above. Every time I see this picture, I can only think of one person ...
And ironically, Duane Gish says there…
March 29, 2008
If it wasn’t enough that PZ is wondering why Ben Stein doesn’t have it in for Newton (what with his clear connection to Nazism), Orac now wonders:
The above principles for eliminating the Jew from Nazi territory are clearly those of Pasteur and Koch, not Charles Darwin, and Hitler repeated this…
March 29, 2008
Troy Britain has done some poking around regarding the RSVP system that Expelled is using:
I go through this to show that they apparently have a system (at least now) to distinguish between truly private screenings with, I would imagine, an actual predetermine guest list, and other screenings that…
March 28, 2008
PZ linked to this earlier, but it’s just too good not to be posted here. Enjoy!
One of PZ’s minions has transcribed the lyrics here.
March 28, 2008
Christianity Today has published a review of Behe’s The Edge of Evolution. The reviewer is Stephen Webb, a professor of religion and philosophy at Wabash College, and Jason Rosenhouse wonders:
Why would a serious magazine like Christianity Today ask someone so obviously unqualified to review so…
March 28, 2008
Well it makes as much sense at the Darwin/Hitler claptrap the cdesign proponentsists over at the Discovery Institute spout:
How many have died due to the tyranny of the gravity Newton put into the hands of conscienceless materialist scientists? Examine Hitler’s record, for instance. He was an…
March 28, 2008
Hilariously, Myers does it again and invades an Expelled event only to get expelled again. This time it was a conference call.
There was some mad rustling and flustering about on the other side of the phone some complaints, etc., and then one of them asked me to do the honorable thing and hang up…
March 28, 2008
Never one who is afraid to paint with a very broad brush, Ben Stein gives us this gem (from a Christianity Today interview):
I believe God created the heavens and the earth, and it doesn’t scare me when scientists say that can’t be proved. I couldn’t give a [profanity] whether a person calls…
March 28, 2008
A report released today by the National Resources Defense Council and the Rocky Mountain Climate Organization shows that while the globe warmed by an average of one degree between 2003 and 2007, eleven western states warmed by 1.7 degrees and Arizona by 2.2 degrees for the last five years (2003…
March 28, 2008
Finding the Tracks
Along the river, under trees - jumbled tracks! Thick fragrant woods, is this the way? Though the ox wanders far in the hills, His nose touches the sky. He cannot hide.
K’uo-an (trans. Stanley Lombardo)
[image source]
March 28, 2008
Caroline Crocker is one of the ID martyrs for the faith featured in Expelled (and in now Executive Director of IDEA). The bogus nature of her case has been well known for a while, but over at Tiny Frog there is a useful "mash-up" of the available information about Crocker.
March 27, 2008
"Researcher in Astronomy:" ... "When you stand on the beach and look into the distance, everything you see is in the visible distance. In the blurred distance, you cannot see a thing. Later on as the ship gets closer to the shore or the harbor, you see the upper part. How do you see it? The eye,…
March 27, 2008
Jim Lippard has a good post on Expelled and the fact that its distributor (Rocky Mountain Pictures) is know for pushing movies such as Megiddo: The Omega Code 2 and Carman: The Champion (above; for more on Carman see here). As Jim notes:
The two partners in Rocky Mountain Pictures are Ronald C.…
March 27, 2008
"Once, for a class called Creative Nonfiction, I swam down to Scammon’s Lagoon during winter mating season and transcribed the simultaneous chatter of every gray whale, all in one continuous stream of unpunctuated prose: "Oh my God oh my click-click-click oh my (inaudibly low drone) God I love you…
March 26, 2008
The nation’s first case of West Nile Virus of 2008 has been reported here in the Southeast valley, starting the WNV season four to six weeks early. Everybody PANIC!
March 25, 2008
At 2:00pm today someone (in Alabama, no less) came here via a Google search for "sex with a sea cucumber". I'm speechless.
March 25, 2008
It seems the producers of Expelled have gone back to the drawing board regarding their screenings. Last week I signed up for the April 3rd screening in Tempe. It now turns out that it has been canceled:
Due to unavoidable changes in the travel plans of the producers of "Expelled", several of our…
March 24, 2008
Julia Sweeney on Ben Stein:
Ben Stein once did a Groundling show, an improv show, that I was a part of. I found him to be spectacularly ill-informed and narcissistic and weirdly devoted to his schtick and worst of all, hacky. He didn’t listen to his fellow performers and played everything outward…
March 23, 2008
Speckle-throated otter, Hydrictis (Lutra) maculicollis Lichtenstein 1835
[photo source]
March 23, 2008
Dawkins on Ben Stein:
The narrator is somebody called Ben Stein. I had not heard of him, but apparently he is well known to Americans, for it is hard to see why else he would have been chosen to front the film. He certainly can’t have been chosen for his knowledge of science, nor his powers of…
March 23, 2008
Apparently Nisbet thinks we should desist from pointing out what a fiasco this whole affair has been for the supporters of Expelled. Apparently he thinks this is helping the enemy. He also thinks Dawkins and Myers should return to their seat at the back of the bus. Perhaps that might be true about…
March 23, 2008
This
freaks Phil Plait out. I think it’s cool. Source with biggie here.
March 22, 2008
The Expelled boyos seem to be tightening up their act. Now you can’t RSVP for future events all of which have been removed from the list. Compare this (yesterday) with this.
There’s a screening scheduled for Harkins Arizona Mills at 7pm on April 3rd. I RSVPed last night and got the following in…
March 21, 2008
Phil Plait on the reductio ad Hitlerum that is central to Expelled!:
For the producers of this movie to continue this Big Lie tying evolution and Nazis together is an irony almost too big to comprehend, given that this is precisely how Nazi propaganda worked. In a rich field of creationist ironies…
March 21, 2008
Truth:
This was a private screening with no admission charge, and you had to reserve seats ahead of time; you also had to sign a promise that you wouldn’t record the movie while you were there, and they were checking ID. Everyone in my family reserved seats under our own names, myself included.…
March 21, 2008
I have only one student completing an honors thesis with me this semester. Congratulations are due to Jes Joganic for successfully defending her thesis (An examination of the factors contributing to the development of posterior plagiocephaly in infants) this afternoon, a thesis that one colleague…
March 20, 2008
Looking for the Ox
Searching through tall endless grass,Rivers, mountain ranges, the path trails off.Weary, exhausted, no place left to hunt:Maples rustle, evening, the cicada’s song.
K’uo-an (trans. Stanley Lombardo)
[image source]
March 20, 2008
This is absolutely hilarious.
After all, who is more famous?
This guy ....
or this guy
March 18, 2008
Ben Stein recently met with Ken Ham, prompting Mark Looy (an Answers in Genesis drone) to effusively declare:
the brilliant Ben Stein, actor/economist/lawyer/presidential speechwriter/science observer-a 21st-century Einsteinian figure ... told Ken that he was aware of the "wonderful" facility near…