ERVs superpower prevails again!

predicting what creationists will say is about as hard as running faster than a fish.

PREDICTING WHAT CREATIONISTS ARE GOING TO SAY IS VERY DIFFICULT. I HAVE SUPERPOWERS GODDAMMIT!

GET OFF MY BLAG!

BANNED! YOURE BANNED!!

John are you suggesting that Abbie walks on water??

There is nothing too antisocial or depraved for creationists. They're ghouls.

1. She's a biochem professor: Check

2. She manhandled an armed assailant, despite being unarmed herself: Check.

3. She has the same last name as one of literature's most celebrated villains: Check

Conclusion: Badass lady, we salute your!

I half-predicted this on Twitter too. I figured that it was going to be Answers in Genesis or the Discovery Institute that did it first though. Maybe they are actually learn from their past mistakes.

Your old buddy Vox Day had a disgusting post about it too: http://voxday.blogspot.com/2010/02/science-self-corrects.html

"I can predict what creationists ..."

"Thanks to the numerous vaccines I have received ..."

So, logic is a vaccine? Makes sense.

(Superpower, though? Super to whom?) *ducks*

Creationists, making PeTA look good since 1985!

...well, almost!

I would have loved to have taken a biochemistry class from Professor Moriarty.

I just hope the engineering department has someone with the last name Fate so they can meet for coffee....and fall in love.

My only superpower is telling people what they already know but won't admit until they own it.

It is a spell called "Sometimes the baby is just ugly."

Oh yea..

I can also make people throw up who want to throw up and can't.

I have a nudie picher of Michael Behe.

Nitpick: Holmes's nemesis is named Moriarty; the good professor's name is Moriarity.

Prometheus @ #9:

I would have loved to have taken a biochemistry class from Professor Moriarty.

I think Dr. Moreau would be more interesting :)

The ghoulishness of the DI/creationism crowd is never going to go away. Any time this sort of thing happens they trot it right out.

The gun issue is separate, of course; I would merely note that declaring campuses to be weapons free zones has never stopped anyone from committing murders on campus. Unless you're willing to have searches and metal detectors, they never will.

I would prefer that Professor Deborah Moriarity had had a gun, and not had to try to stop a lunatic with her bare hands. Though it worked out in this case, her chances of success would have been much higher with less danger to herself. Not to mention that Amy Bishop might not be alive to kill again and again.

In fact, I will volunteer to attend each and every faculty meeting to which Deborah Moriarity comes armed.

I find it quite reassuring to see once again that ordinary people are capable of acts of considerable bravery in these situations.

Kevin W. Parker@#10

"Nitpick: Holmes's nemesis is named Moriarty; the good professor's name is Moriarity."

He misdirected you with a simple gender reassignment and a vowel.

So simple, so brilliant, soooo evil.

Thank you for recognizing the hero(s) in this tragic event.

As for Creationists, it seems that there is no depth to which they can sink and not report it as a dignified experience.

Enormous kudos to Professor Moriarity. There are no words for that kind of courage.

@12: if people routinely walk around the campuses armed, you're going to get escalations. Say you have a gun. You hear shots. You turn around. Two people are shooting at each other. Guess _immediately_ which one is the crazed shooter and which is a hero trying to stop the shooter. Guess before one of them shoots you. Guess before somebody _else_ sees you draw your gun and shoots _you_.

Saliva Cordova is wrong, Bishop's killing spree was not motivated by Darwinism but by Dungeons & Dragons

I have said it befor and I will always stick to it. A gun is not usefull for self defence (unless of course "good" guys wear one shirt and "bad" guys wear a different shirt but when you get that artillery is usualy involved).

Professor Moriarity claims there was no heroism involved on her part. She says she pleaded with the shooter to spare her and ran out into the hall, followed by the shooter (who attempted to shoot her, but ran out of ammunition), and then ran back into the room and slammed the door on the shooter. She said further that perhaps 20 seconds elapsed between the first shot and the survivors locking the door and piling stuff against it.

The common characteristic in events like this and Columbine is that the bad guy(s) are the only ones armed. In similar situations where a plain-clothes police officer or armed civilian is present, the usual result is a much lower body count of innocent victims, with the bad guy usually not surviving the incident. Common sense says that if there's going to be a shoot-out, it's better to have as many as possible armed good guys present.

Who gets to pick the good guys, Robert?

You?

Okay. I didn't see a predicton for what we "creationists" would say. Oh well, rantings usually turn out that way.

The rantings of this post is probably the result of:

1) too much soidum flouride intake making you stupid and more suceptible to believe whatever some leftwing nut professor told you in collge

2)too much mercury from vaccines causing severe dementia

3) too mush MSNBC

If you wish to gobble and cackle, then please at least lay an egg afterwards. People like this definitely deserve a turd in their desk drawer early on a Monday morning.

@Stephen Wells:if people routinely walk around the campuses armed, you're going to get escalations. Say you have a gun. You hear shots. You turn around. Two people are shooting at each other. Guess _immediately_ which one is the crazed shooter and which is a hero trying to stop the shooter. Guess before one of them shoots you. Guess before somebody _else_ sees you draw your gun and shoots _you_.

There are many, many incidents of bad guys killing unarmed people in "weapons-free zones". Can you name even one incident like this one you have decscribed?

Common sense says that if there's going to be a shoot-out, it's better to have as many as possible armed good guys present.

'kay. When does common sense tell you there will be a shootout during a faculty meeting? I have attended many over the years, and have yet to run into that chain of events.

I think Dr. Moreau would be more interesting :)

At least she'd have her own island. Maybe she'd let the class visit.

(Yes, I'm ignoring the 'give everyone guns so they can shoot each other for having their guns drawn' dumbosity. Well, no, I guess I'm not. Whoops)

Gabriel Hanna: "Can you name even one incident like this one you have decscribed?"

In the article linked below, a NY cop shot and killed an off-duty cop who was chasing a suspect who had broken into his car:

"The officer who was killed, Omar J. Edwards, 25, a two-year veteran who was assigned to patrol housing projects and was wearing plain clothes, was shot in the arm and chest after a team of three other plainclothes officers in a car came upon him chasing a man on East 125th Street between First and Second Avenues with his gun drawn, Mr. Kelly said."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/29/nyregion/29cop.html

And the NY Times story says there were two other recent instances of off-duty cops being shot by police officers.

"In January 2008, a Mount Vernon officer, Christopher A. Ridley, 23, was killed by Westchester County police officers in downtown White Plains as he tried to restrain a homeless man whom he had seen assault another person.

And in February 2006, a New York City officer, Eric Hernandez, 24, was fatally shot by a fellow officer while responding to a 911 call about a fight at a White Castle restaurant in the Bronx."

So if cops, who you'd think would be trained about how to handle these situations, manage to kill their colleagues by mistake, what are the odds that the average college professor or student would do any better?

I have developed the same superpower as you. Except mine was a gradual buildup over a 47 year span.

Maybe I should try a vaccine or two... :-)

Gabriel, @22, wrote:

There are many, many incidents of bad guys killing unarmed people in "weapons-free zones". Can you name even one incident like this one you have decscribed?

These "many, many" incidents, of course, pale in comparison to the many, many, many such incidents outside of "weapons-free zones." This, much like Gabriel's original statement, proves nothing whatsoever.

I don't suppose it matters to anyone here that all of the mistaken shootings listed above were shootings of out-of-uniform police by police officers. They were also in places like New York, where lawfully-armed civilians are effectively non-existent.

The logical conclusion is that the police are one of the biggest dangers both to the public and themselves.