evil
awild | August 13, 2009As if we systematists didn't have enough to worry about with the worldwide extinction crisis and the dwindling presence of taxonomists in academia, now we've got the vultures lawyers laying claim to the primary tools for our science.
Microsoft is trying to patent phylogenetics. No, seriously. Read the patent application.
I doubt that this particular application will survive. After all, Microsoft will have a hard time demonstrating the originality of their "invention" considering the thousands of published phylogenetic studies that predate their claim.
All the same, systematists should…
pharyngula | August 5, 2009As I'm sure you've all heard by now, a deranged gunman went on a shooting spree in a fitness club in LA, killing 3 women and injuring 10 before blowing his own scabrous, rotting brains out. The guy was just plain nuts (in a fairly common sort of way, unfortunately), but he also left behind an online diary.
Maybe soon, I will see God and Jesus. At least that is what I was told. Eternal life does NOT depend on works. If it did, we will all be in hell. Christ paid for EVERY sin, so how can I or you be judged BY GOD for a sin when the penalty was ALREADY paid. People judge but that does not…
pharyngula | August 5, 2009One of the many disgraceful acts of brigandage our country committed in Iraq was the hiring of mercenary thugs through a company called Blackwater. Unwilling to risk the political fallout from openly discussing and recruiting the number of soldiers necessary to actually carry out their grand plans for invading another country, the previous administration instead threw buckets of money at Halliburton-KBR and outsourced the military to profit-seeking, murderous killers-for-hire who did more to harm than help the war effort. As we ought to have expected, the Blackwater unsavoriness is getting…
pharyngula | July 18, 2009Several months ago, we witnessed a tragic spectacle in the news: a nine-year old Brazilian girl was raped, became pregnant, and got an abortion…and the Brazilian Catholic church responded by excommunicating all the participants. One cleric in Rome, Monsignor Rino Fisichella, said the church had been insensitive, but no one in the hierarchy stepped forward to outright condemn the heartlessness of the church's stance and the unfairness of the policy.
We now have an official document from the Catholic church clearly stating their position. Anyone involved in an abortion for any reason is to be…
pharyngula | June 17, 2009The murder of George Tiller has brought some vile people creeping out from under the woodwork…especially the kinds of nasty minds that like to dress up in clerical collars. Looking for a good emetic? Look no further than this sermon by a Presbyterian minister for a great example of deploring a murder while praising the murderer's motives.
A notorious murderer met what is certain to become a notorious end. By the goodness of God the witness of the Church was not entirely silenced in Dr. Tiller's life. He had been excommunicated by his previous congregation, a church of the Missouri Synod…
pharyngula | June 5, 2009Cheyenne Cherry has a very pretty name. It's too bad that the person isn't quite so pretty a human being.
She and an unidentified juvenile allegedly broke into Valerie Hernandez's Tinton Ave. apartment on May 6 and trashed the place.
Then in a shocking act of animal abuse, they tossed the woman's kitten, Tiger Lily, into the stove and cranked up the temperature, ASPCA assistant director Joe Pentangelo said.
Cherry told authorities that she and her accomplice "thought we would play a joke on Valerie and mess up her apartment."
The duo bolted from the apartment with DVDs and packages of…
pharyngula | June 2, 2009Don't follow this link if you are at all sensitive. Gingi Edmonds has weighed in on the killing of George Tiller. She compares him to Lee Harvey Oswald, Ted Bundy, and Jeffrey Dahmer, and concludes with some really twisted logic.
Tiller was killed by a pro-choice act. Pro-lifers need make no apologies.Â
I hope the police have an eye on this evil monster…if she doesn't have a gun in her hand herself, she's busily inciting others to go kill in the name of her fetal gods.
pharyngula | May 31, 2009Dr George Tiller, a Kansas doctor who has long provided abortion services (including late-term abortions) was gunned down this morning. He has been the target of anti-choice fanatics for years: his clinic has been vandalized, he was shot and wounded by one of these monsters years ago, and there has been ongoing legal harassment to shut him down.
One of these self-righteous and hypocritical creatures apparently shot him to death…as he was attending church services, ironically enough.
The culprit has not been caught, but probably will be soon. I'm sure whoever it is is very proud of him or…
pharyngula | April 25, 2009But I thought religion helped people live a moral life! We're going to have to really struggle to find an ethical rationale for this pastor's monstrous behavior.
A Baltimore pastor who worked with developmentally disabled people was charged Friday with befriending a blind and disabled man in his care, then paying a hit man $50,000 in church funds for an execution so he could collect life insurance money.
Police say Kevin Jerome Pushia, 32, who worked for four months as an operations manager for the Arc of Baltimore before abruptly quitting in January, confessed to plotting to kill Lemuel…
amillikan | April 21, 2009
With news headlines prompting readers to question if Twitter causes a decay in one's moral fabric, ScienceBloggers are attempting to set the record straight. As Jessica Palmer from Bioephemera explains, the mainstream media got wind of a press release from the University of Southern California, the author of which jumped to conclusions based on hypothetical speculations in the 'future applications' section of a neuroscience paper unrelated to Twitter. The press release claimed the networking tool "might reduce the frequency of full experience of such emotions, with potentially negative…
bioephemera | April 19, 2009We all know Twitter can be annoying, but is it really evil? During the past week, you may have heard that there is brand-new neuroscientific evidence proving exactly that. But the hype turns out to be just that: hype.
It all started with a press release from USC about an upcoming PNAS paper by Mary Helen Immordino-Yang and Antonio Damasio, entitled "Neural Correlates of Admiration and Compassion." The USC press release, which was picked up by EurekAlert and other outlets, says:
The finding, contained in one of the first brain studies of inspirational emotions in a field dominated by a focus…
pharyngula | April 13, 2009Oh, wait — I got the headline backwards. The real story is that a mentally disturbed, fanatical Christian/creationist and misogynist, went nuts, killed a young woman on a community college campus, and then killed himself. It's a tragedy, but not at all exceptional, I'm afraid — the man was delusional and depressed, apparently frustrated that women weren't obedient to him, and he decided to erupt into hateful violence.
The disturbing twist this time, though, is that the killer was a youtuber — and a big fan of VenomFangX, the infamously vapid creationist. You can see some of his pre-suicidal…
pharyngula | March 24, 2009There was an appalling and tragic plane crash in Montana: 14 people were killed, 7 of them children.
Tom Hagler, a mechanic at the Oroville airport, told The Sacramento Bee that he allowed several children ages 6 to 10 to use the airport bathroom before they boarded the doomed plane.
"There were a lot of kids in the group," he said, "a lot of really cute kids."
Nine of them were members of one family. This was a horrifying and genuinely horrible accident; I can't begin to imagine the grief felt by the survivors, who lost children and grandchildren.
I can feel great anger, though. Here is…
pharyngula | February 17, 2009Muzzammil Hassan had a great idea: he established a television station to run programming that would counter stereotypes about Muslims. That sounds like a fine plan…but then his wife asked for a divorce, and his response was to murder and decapitate her, which rather confirms a particularly nasty stereotype.
Unless, perhaps, it's not a stereotype, but simply a fact that Islam is a patriarchal religion of misogyny.
pharyngula | February 8, 2009Italy is experiencing its own version of the Terry Schiavo case. A woman, Eluana Englaro, was in a car crash 17 years ago that caused catastrophic brain damage — she's been in a vegetative state ever since, and the family has been engaged in a legal fight for many years to pull the plug and allow her to die with a little dignity. They finally won that battle recently, and are easing her off life support and a feeding tube.
Cue the right wing. Silvio Berlusconi, Bush-like Prime Minister of Italy, has rushed to impose an emergency decree blocking the suspension of life support, a decision made…
pharyngula | February 3, 2009This is Samira Jassam. She is not a nice lady.
She was responsible for sending men out to rape women, so that in their despair and shame she'd be able to recruit them as suicide bombers. She's a monster. The cowards who would do her bidding and assault innocent women are also creatures of contempt.
This is where a pathologically religious culture can end up: with parasites like this who exploit the fear and hatred to create more fear and hatred.
pharyngula | January 11, 2009I've been hiding from the horrible news in the Middle East, but this story induced me to poke my head out of my tortoise shell…so I can puke. A rabbi consulted his holy books to see what God had to say about the vicious violence going on right now, and you can guess what God's word might be:
Eliyahu ruled that there was absolutely no moral prohibition against the indiscriminate killing of civilians during a potential massive military offensive on Gaza aimed at stopping the rocket launchings.
Of course. Did we expect anything else? No moral prohibition against the indiscriminate killing of…
pharyngula | December 15, 2008America is kind of a land of thugs, isn't it? Here's the latest sordid story: two Ecuadorian brothers are walking down the street, an SUV full of morons mistakes them for a gay couple, and they jump out and beat one of them to death.
[Jose] Sucuzhanay (suh-KOO-chen-eye) and his brother Romel, 38, were walking arm-in-arm after a night out when a sport utility vehicle pulled up near them at a Brooklyn stoplight, police said.
Witnesses said they heard the men in the car shouting anti-gay and anti-Hispanic slurs at the brothers. The attackers jumped out of the car and smashed a beer bottle over…
pharyngula | November 6, 2008Imagine yourself in this situation. A young girl is accused of a heinous crime — use your imagination here, too, and think of the most horrible thing a person can do — and she is trapped in front of you, helpless. You have a rock in your hands. People around you are urging you to kill her; they say that you are justified in taking her life. What would you do?
Let's say you don't have a rock, but are just part of the large crowd of spectators, witnessing a small group of men killing this girl. What would you do then?
Be honest now.
I wouldn't be able to do kill anyone, and I would try to stop…
pharyngula | October 27, 2008I'm sure everyone has already heard about the plot to murder Obama and many others:
Two white supremacists allegedly plotted to go on a national killing spree, shooting and decapitating black people and ultimately targeting Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, federal authorities said Monday.
In all, the two men whom officials described as neo-Nazi skinheads planned to kill 88 people - 14 by beheading, according to documents unsealed in U.S. District Court in Jackson, Tenn.
It's a horrible and sordid story of idiots with guns, but in scanning the various news sources, there is…