History
razib | June 20, 2006EurekAlert obviously doesn't have quality control, as of right now their top press release in the Biology category is Graham Hancock, international expert on lost civilizations. If you don't know, Hancock is a pseudoarcheologist. Basically he is just Robert E. Howard with a little more world-creation talent and more literary panache. Hancock reminds us of an important point: quackish beliefs are not the monopoly of religous fundamentalists. In fact, I would argue that religious fundamentalism, for whatever reason, reinforces quackish beliefs, but those beliefs are somewhat innate in most…
evolvingthoughts | June 16, 2006I recently [some time back now - this being a repost] received this question in email. I hope the correspondent doesn't mind my posting it anonymously.
I notice from www.dictionary.com that the word "Devolution" is a term in biology which means "degeneration". Is it an antonym of the word "Evolution" (which is the most likely reason why creation "scientists" state tiresome statements like "evolution would argue for improvements all the time")? Or does the word "devolution" touch on stuff that may or may not be related to evolutionary biology?
Traditionally, degeneration meant simply change…
oracknows | June 16, 2006Yesterday, I wrote a bit about Michael Savage's attack on George Soros, in which he stated that "people like you give Jews a bad name, Soros. It's people like you who brought about the Holocaust, Soros. I stand by those words."
Admittedly, at the time I wrote my little rant, I didn't know that Michael Savage is, in fact, Jewish himself. My bad. I should have checked and was a bit embarrassed to have to have it pointed out to me by a reader. In actuality, after it was pointed out to me I did remember that I had heard somewhere that Savage's real name is Michael Alan Weiner. Sadly, the fact…
evolvingthoughts | June 13, 2006[This is another repost from my old blog. I am sitting at home suffering with a hole in my jaw where a tooth, or its remnants was extracted with extreme prejudice, so I don't feel much like blogging.]
The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones;
So let it be with Caesar.
After a decent period to mourn the death of one of the greatest biologists of the century on any measure, perhaps it is time now to reassess how Mayr's legacy is to be presented. I have no competence to debate his scientific ideas - if speciation is mostly allopatric, or if it is…
oracknows | June 6, 2006Today is another anniversary besides my wedding anniversary and a silly day that happens, if you twist numbers enough, to coincide with the Number of the Beast (6/6/06).
It's also the 62nd anniversary of D-Day, the invasion of Normandy, the beginning of the end for the tyrrany of the Third Reich. It was a day when against terrible odds and despite many setbacks, the Allies finally opened a Western front against the Nazis at a great cost in blood. For all the jokes and frivolity about going to hell today, the men hitting the Normandy beaches 62 years ago experienced real hell.
John Cole has a…
oracknows | June 2, 2006Back in October, Jamie McCarthy and I castigated Bill O'Reilly for implying that at Malmedy in December 1944 during the Battle of the Bulge U.S. Airborne troops had massacred Nazis soldiers who had surrendered when in fact the Malmedy massacre was perpetrated by SS troops to whom U.S. soldiers had surrendered. Naturally, after ragging on him a bit, we wrote it off as yet another example of Bill O'Reilly's self-confident ignorance. I figured O'Reilly had simply mixed up historical facts in his eagerness to defend the abuses at Abu Ghraib by pointing to supposed atrocities committed by U.S.…
oracknows | May 30, 2006Watch how a Holocaust denier (in this case, the President of Iran) dances around the question "Did the Holocaust happen?" You can see the very same techniques when a denier like David Irving or Ernst Zundel is questioned about the Holocaust:
SPIEGEL: It concerned your remarks about the Holocaust. It was inevitable that the Iranian president's denial of the systematic murder of the Jews by the Germans would trigger outrage.
Ahmadinejad: I don't exactly understand the connection.
SPIEGEL: First you make your remarks about the Holocaust. Then comes the news that you may travel to Germany -- this…
oracknows | May 29, 2006In the U.S., today is Memorial Day.
Although we often forget about it in our rush to head out to the beach or relax over the course of a three day weekend, it is the day set aside to remember those who have died fighting for our nation in its wars. I was debating about what to post today, when I remembered that, last year, I happened to be in Bethesda for a conference sponsored by the NIH. Because of my interest in World War II history and because I had a few hours and hadn't seen the new World War II Memorial before (which had been dedicated on Memorial Day weekend 2004), I decided to take…
stcynic | May 24, 2006I was busy yesterday with other things, so I sent this post to Jon Rowe to give it the good fisking it deserves. He obliged. In short, Dembski attempted, weakly. to answer Judge Jones' statements about the founding fathers making reason the arbiter of religious claims. His answer didn't really answer that assertion, but he appeared to think that it did. Jon rightly points out that Judge Jones' statements were quite accurate. He quoted one long passage from Adams, but could have chosen many others. The one that comes to mind immediately is Jefferson's advice to his nephew:
Fix reason firmly in…
stcynic | May 22, 2006The more I see from this guy, the more I like him. Over the weekend, he gave the commencement address at his alma mater, Dickinson College. I like much of what he had to say:
"The founders believed that true religion was not something handed down by a church or contained in a Bible, but was to be found through free, rational inquiry," said Jones, who was thrust into the national spotlight by last year's court fight over the teaching of evolution in the Dover school district.
The founding fathers - from school namesake John Dickinson to Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson - were products…
oracknows | May 22, 2006Geez, who could have seen this one coming?
Straight from the Discovery Institute's blog regarding atheist and Holocaust denier Larry Darby in reference to his activities against ID in Alabama, Casey Luskin bloviates:
An outspoken opponent of the bill has been activist Larry Darby. Mr. Darby's vehement opposition to the Alabama Academic Freedom Bill was on full display at a House Education hearing back on April 29, 2004. According to reports I have received, committee chair, Rep. Yvonne Kennedy (D), did not allow citizens to testify for the bill. But for some reason she let Mr. Darby alone…
oracknows | May 19, 2006I've written a lot before about the current President of Iran and his anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial, as well as the religious fanaticism of the regime he leads. Here's more evidence of where theocracy can lead:
While the Iranian economy appears to be heading for recession, one sector may have some reason for optimism. That sector is the garment industry and the reason for hopefulness is a law passed by the Islamic Majlis (parliament) on Monday.
The law mandates the government to make sure that all Iranians wear "standard Islamic garments" designed to remove ethnic and class distinctions…
oracknows | May 19, 2006It looks like Orac has acquired a new fan.
You see, yesterday I wrote a rather long fisking of Vox Day. (Don't worry, I'm not going to continue it yet again; this dead horse has clearly been beaten enough). In it, I happened to make a brief mention of and link to an apparent admirer of Vox's who goes by the 'nym of MikeT, who defended Vox's idiotic Holocaust analogy while calling him a "devilishly clever bastard." I found his comments while doing a Technorati search to see what others were saying about Vox's article, and my mention of MikeT was very brief.
This morning, out of curiosity, I…
oracknows | May 18, 2006I'm sorry to do this to you again, kind readers, to subject you to Vox Day a second time in the same week. However, I just couldn't let this pass. Hopefully my traffic won't fall precipitously as people turn away in disgust at being subjected to too much Vox, but I have to take that chance. Besides, it is about bad historical analogies regarding the Holocaust and Nazi Germany, which I have a hard time resisting replying to when they're bad enough. In retrospect, I almost wish I had sicced the Hitler Zombie on Vox a couple of days ago, because Vox is showing more and more signs of having had…
oracknows | May 17, 2006Dang it all. I'm not a political blogger by nature, but this week I just can't seem to help myself, and getting this e-mailed to me didn't help. I suppose that I can console myself by reminding myself that this is about academic misconduct. I may not be in the social sciences, but certain practices just aren't right regardless of academic specialty.
It turns out that University of Colorado's investigation of allegations of academic misconduct by Ward Churchill (famous for his referring to those in the World Trade Center as "little Eichmanns") has been published, and it's way more scathing…
oracknows | May 16, 2006NOTE (7/27/2016): People have been telling me, based on this post written over ten years ago, how Donald Trump sounds just like Vox Day. It's true. He does. It's also true that the thought of exporting 11-12 million people in 4-8 years is just as ridiculous now as it was ten years ago. I weep that so many in the Republican Party not only take this nonsense seriously but voted for Donald Trump based on a promise very much like what Vox Day described, so many that Donald Trump is now the Republican Party nominee for President. So I added this note. I also note that some of the links are dead…
stcynic | May 2, 2006I'm finding it rather amusing that so many blogs, particularly of the conservative variety, are making a huge deal out of Mark Steyn's article in the Chicago Sun-Times about a fake Jefferson quote. The quote, which we've all heard attributed to Jefferson repeatedly, goes like this:
"Dissent is the highest form of patriotism."
Steyn makes sure to point out that John Kerry, Ted Kennedy and Nadine Strossen of the ACLU have all used that quote, and he points out that, according to the Jefferson library, the quote is a fake. Fair enough, I'm all for historical accuracy and always happy to see fake…
pharyngula | May 1, 2006Lisa Jardine is a historian who clearly understands how science works:
The thought uppermost in my mind was how odd it is that non-scientists think of science as being about certainties and absolute truth. Whereas scientists are actually quite tentative—they simply try to arrive at the best fit between the experimental findings so far and a general principle.
Read the rest. She ties together the ideals of how science should be carried out with a story from Pepys and an unscrupulous sea captain and modern day creationists—excellent stuff!
oracknows | April 30, 2006Today is Führerstodestag or "Death of the Führer Day," I join my friend Andrew in wishing Holocaust deniers out there a very happy Führerstodestag! If there is indeed a hell, Adolf Hitler must surely be rotting in it.
In commemoration of Führerstodestag, I'm resurrecting a blast from the past, my post about this topic from my old blog published one year ago today. It's my way of wishing Holocaust deniers and Hitler-admiring Nazis everywhere a happy Führerstodestag!
60 years ago today: The end of the Führer
Sixty years ago today, the capital of the thousand year Reich, Berlin, was in…
oracknows | April 25, 2006Today, April 25, 2006 is Holocaust Heroes and Martyrs Remembrance Day. In commemoration, here's a list of almost everything I've written regarding the Holocaust, Holocaust denial, and anti-Semitism since the beginning:
60 years ago today: The evacuation of Auschwitz and start of the death march
The 60th Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz: How I discovered Holocaust denial
60 years ago today: The liberation of Buchenwald
Sunday afternoon history lesson
60 years ago today: The liberation of Bergen-Belsen
60 years ago today: The liberation of Dachau
60 years ago today: The end of the…