MikeGene has publicly retracted his support for Forrest Mims' hysterical accusation that Eric Pianka is encouraging bioterrorism at Telic Thoughts. That should be applauded. The transcript of his speech, being played up hugely by Mims and Dembski's crew, simply doesn't support that charge. Yes, Pianka is a radical environmentalist. I think his views are far too extreme to be taken seriously. But they're not felonious, for crying out loud, and they certainly don't amount to fomenting terrorism as Mims is so ridiculously claiming (along with almost unanimous support from the ID crowd, for some strange reason). Mims is a buffoon and a drama queen, and his attempts to silence criticism of his hyperbolic exaggerations are every bit as ridiculous as what prompted them. Naturally DaveScot, Chief Sycophant, thinks MikeGene is a "wuss" (for crying out loud, who outside of a junior high school playground still uses that term?).
Now if we could just one person on the other side with enough integrity to admit that the current attack on the new Dover school board by Manzari, Cooper and Francisco is a shameless attempt to defame them with no basis in fact.
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And amazingly, his original posts attacking Dr. Pianka are ... still there, edited only by adding a header pointing readers to the retraction. It's nice to see there's at least one honest character on the ID side of the equation. (Or not, I suppose. If they were all lying manipulators, it might be easier to just ignore the whole thing.)
The transcript represents less than 10 minutes of a 45 minute speech; it would be helpful to have the entire transcript (which I note starts out with Pianka talking about an airborne virus wiping out 90% of humanity - kinda sounds like exactly what Mims was talking about, doesn't it?). The given portion of the transcriptd contains things that are even scarier than Mims referred to: forced sterilization of everyone on earth, with an antidote administered to those "willing to work for it"? "Money is debt"?
Pianka is a whackjob.
Ed Minchau wrote:
No, it sounds like exactly what Pianka talks about regularly. He absolutely does make the prediction that if the ebola virus becomes airborne, it will wipe out 90% of the human race. That is very different from saying we should engage in bioterrorism to make sure it happens, which is what Mims claims he said. By the way, Pianka is wrong about that and as an accomplished scientist, he ought to know that he's wrong about it. You cannot take the mortality rate of a disease and simply extrapolate it out and say that because 90% of those who get it currently die that therefore it would kill 90% of the human race. It's a ridiculously simplistic mistake and he really ought to know better. Joseph O'Donnell has an excellent post on the subject that shows the myriad flaws in his prediction.
Yep, I agree, forced sterilization is a terrible idea and his comment about money was pretty stupid. But that doesn't make him a terrorist and it doesn't change the fact that Mims is a drama queen engaging in hysterical exaggeration.
I really wonder why UD still has all its posts up? Telic Thoughts made a good move, changing their position and annotating the previous posts rather than deleting them. I noticed that Dembski dropped out of making posts, and its all DaveScot now. I would have thought that they'd recognize that the ship is sinking. Why are the rats still on board?
IIRC, the same day you posted this, Dave "Mudcat" Saunders was on some Tim Russert program, using that very word. Perhaps he was just avoiding the word, "pussy".
But, what will Forrest Mims say when the Bush Administration joins Pianka?
From Utah's #2 newspaper:
'Pandemics are a fact of life,' Leavitt warns
By Suzanne Struglinski
Deseret Morning News
WASHINGTON -- Pandemic illnesses are not just something out of a Stephen King novel but a real possibility for which local communities need to prepare and plan, Health and Human Service Secretary Mike Leavitt said Tuesday.
Leavitt spoke at the U.S. News and World Report Health Summit, which focused on emergency preparedness and planning at the National Press Club.
"We don't know what the next one will be, and we don't know when it will be," he said. "What we do now will be dramatically important if it occurs."
Leavitt said pandemic diseases are difficult to discuss because anything said prior to an outbreak can be considered "alarmist" and anything said after "seems inadequate," so his job is to find a balance between the two. He said the country is "overdue and underprepared" for a serious outbreak and reminded an audience made up of many in the health industry professionals.
"Pandemics are a fact of life," Leavitt said. "Any community that fails to prepare with the expectation that the state or federal government can come to their aid will be tragically wrong. There is no way you can respond to every hometown at the same time."
Leavitt, a former three-term Utah governor, used research from his hometown of Cedar City during the 1918 flu outbreak that killed millions across the country, to illustrate that pandemics are just not about people getting sick but how it alters everyday living.
He said he found old news clippings about the banning of all public gatherings and people being forced to wear gauze masks to help control the spread of the illness.
"It touched every hometown in America," he said. Leavitt encouraged people to put "Spanish Flu" and their hometown name into an Internet search engine to see how it was affected.
"We learned powerful lessons from (Hurricane) Katrina, that what you do in advance is more important," he said. "Even if it does not happen soon we will be a healthier and stronger nation."
The White House issued a federal plan for a pandemic flu last November, and Leavitt said it continues to work on communication plans, international and domestic monitoring, and ways to develop and store vaccines.
Within the coming weeks, the White House will be making an implementation plan public about how the U.S. government will operate in case of a pandemic public, according to the press office. The plan will be an overview of the roles the U.S. government agencies will have in the event of an outbreak as well as what business and individuals can do to stop the spread of disease.
The latest information on the government's plans for a pandemic can be found at www.pandemicflu.gov.
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E-mail: suzanne@desnews.com