Holocaust
oracknows | March 24, 2008I really didn't want to get involved with the whole "framing" debate again. For whatever reason (and they are reasons that I've failed to understand), the very mention of the word seems to set certain members of the ScienceBlogs collective into rabid fits of vicious invective that leave rational discourse behind. And, yes, I know that by saying that I risk setting myself up as a target of said invective, but I don't care. It must be the natural cantankerousness that my low level death crud is inducing in me or maybe it's a lack of judgment brought on by large doses decongestants and…
oracknows | March 22, 2008The other night, I wrote about how the painfully inept and just plain dumb actions of the producer of Expelled!, the neuron-apoptosing movie that's basically an extended argumentum ad Nazium against the dreaded "Darwinism" that blames Hitler, Stalin, and, apparently, puppy hatred on Charles Darwin himself. Basically, the producers were having one of their private screenings (although how one can call a screening for which almost anyone can sign up on the web "private" is beyond me), and, by serendipity, the screening happened to be in the Mall of America on the Thursday before a large atheist…
oracknows | March 20, 2008...to see Expelled!
In perhaps the funniest incident I can recall involving a fellow ScienceBlogger since there has been ScienceBlogs, earlier this evening scourges of "intelligent design" creationism P. Z. Myers and Richard Dawkins went to see a screening of the antievolution pro-ID creationism movie Expelled! in the Minneapolis area. The guards recognized P.Z. and wouldn't let them in the movie.
They apparently didn't recognize Richard Dawkins and did let him in to see the movie.
Let's get this straight. The producers scheduled a screening in the Minneapolis area on the same weekend that…
oracknows | March 18, 2008You be the judge.
Words fail me (an incredibly rare thing, I know). Obviously, "Dr." Walid Al-Rashudi's brain failed him when he uttered the words above, and somehow I get the impression that that is not a rare thing at all.
oracknows | February 20, 2008Deep underneath the brick and steel of a nondescript building somewhere in Manhattan, within the very bowels of the city itself, not far from the Seed mothership, Orac waited. After over a year's absence, the monster had returned to consume the most unpalatable brain of a former Nixon speechwriter who had decided that he knew more about biology than biologists and that calling pseudoscience pseudoscience was akin to that tactics of Hitler and Stalin in suppressing dissent. Since then, Orac had noted an uptick in the monster's activity. Hooked into the primitive human computer network known as…
oracknows | January 30, 2008Like most people, I have my limits. Actually, I have a pretty high tolerance for tastelessness. It's a necessity in a world like this, where tastelessness increasingly goes beyond the pale. But even I am not above finding something like this so tasteless and offensive that I can only shake my head:
RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) - A Carnival float with a pile of model dead bodies commemorating the Holocaust is causing unease before the lavish parades in Rio de Janeiro this weekend.
The Viradouro samba organization, or school, plans to feature the grim display when it marches in the Sambadrome…
oracknows | January 17, 2008Things are crazy now for me, both at home and at work. I mean really, really crazy. So crazy that even I, one of the most verbose bloggers out there, am forced to take two or three days off from my little addiction--I mean habit. Consequently, having foreseen that this time would come around these dates, I, Orac, your benevolent (and, above all verbose) blogger have thought of you, my readers. I realize the cries and lamentations that the lack of fresh material inevitably causes. That, I cannot completely obviate. However, I can ease the pain somewhat, and I can do this by continuing my…
oracknows | January 17, 2008Things are crazy now for me, both at home and at work. I mean really, really crazy. So crazy that even I, one of the most verbose bloggers out there, am forced to take two or three days off from my little addiction--I mean habit. Consequently, having foreseen that this time would come around these dates, I, Orac, your benevolent (and, above all verbose) blogger have thought of you, my readers. I realize the cries and lamentations that the lack of fresh material inevitably causes. That, I cannot completely obviate. However, I can ease the pain somewhat, and I can do this by continuing my…
oracknows | January 17, 2008Things are crazy now for me, both at home and at work. I mean really, really crazy. So crazy that even I, one of the most verbose bloggers out there, am forced to take two or three days off from my little addiction--I mean habit. Consequently, having foreseen that this time would come around these dates, I, Orac, your benevolent (and, above all verbose) blogger have thought of you, my readers. I realize the cries and lamentations that the lack of fresh material inevitably causes. That, I cannot completely obviate. However, I can ease the pain somewhat, and I can do this by continuing my…
oracknows | December 30, 2007The other day, I posted about how quacks and pseudoscientists seem to find Ron Paul's promise of "health freedom" as irresistible as moths do flame. Now it seems that Ron Paul has another most excellent endorsement to add to that of Stormfront, Dr. Mercola, and Mike Adams, not to mention to the support of the likes of David Duke and 9/11 Truthers.
Yes, indeed, it's Hutton Gibson:
(Hat tip: Orcinus and VoteRonPaul.com.)
Because nothing adds to the credibility of a candidacy with overwhelming support among pseudoscientists like the endorsement of a Holocaust denying conspiracy theorist, who…
oracknows | December 28, 2007Over at A Blog Around the Clock, the mother of fellow ScienceBlogger Bora's is guest blogging. I mention this because she's blogging about a trip to Israel she took in November to attend a conference of Holocaust Child Survivors. I had no idea. So far, there are four parts:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
The series is well worth checking out.
oracknows | December 2, 2007I'm always loathe to criticize a fellow ScienceBlogger, but, as the resident World War II buff and tireless debunker of Holocaust denial, I couldn't let this one pass.
While perusing the Last 24 Hours feed yesterday, I came across a most curious statement in a slapdown by Greg Laden of an attempt by Bruce Chapman to spin an appearance of John West at the University of Minnesota as anything other than an utter disaster. The debate was over who were the true advocates of eugenics, Christians or scientists, the argument being made that more advocates of eugenics in the U.S. in the early part of…
oracknows | November 28, 2007Max Hastings apparently disagrees with the disgust that I and many others expressed over Holocaust denier David Irving's recent appearance at the Oxford Union.
I'd almost agree with him, except that (1) I highly doubt, from reading the accounts, that any real "debate" occurred and (2) I don't think the Oxford Union exercise did anything to show students that there are "dangerous people" out there. If anything, Irving may have succeeded in making himself look like less of a threat to many. Actually, Hastings was correct to liken the Irving/Griffin appearance to that of Iranian President…
oracknows | November 27, 2007If you've been a regular reader here, one thing you know about me is just how much I detest Holocaust denial. What I detest even more, however, is when a Holocaust denier wraps his Nazi apologia and anti-Semitism in the cloak of free speech, particularly when he tries to claim martyr status while doing it. The ever-odious David Irving is particularly good at this, particularly when he flaunts the law of another country and enters it, knowing that there is a warrant for his arrest for denying the Holocaust, and then is shocked--shocked, I say!--that the police actually arrested him and that…
oracknows | October 22, 2007A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned how Holocaust denier extraordinaire David Irving had gotten into some trouble with his former fellow travelers in the world of Holocaust denial. Apparently they didn't like the fact that he now concedes that the mass slaughter of Jews "may have" occurred. Of course he still denies that Auschwitz was a death camp (actually, it was both a work camp and a death camp) or that Hitler knew anything about the killings, but he's conceded more than his fellow Holocaust deniers would have liked him to concede, namely that as many as 2.4 million Jews may have been…
oracknows | October 4, 2007Given my post yesterday about the strange things people like to stick up their nether regions, it makes perfect sense to revisit a man who has his head up his ass: David Irving. It's pretty funny to see that his former comrades are none too happy with some of his recent statements:
A famed Holocaust denier is revising his revisionist thinking -- and the move is opening up a rift among his fellow travelers.
David Irving, who was released from prison last December in Austria after being convicted of Holocaust denial, recently announced that he is rethinking his position on the fate of European…
oracknows | October 2, 2007I knew it!
I knew it was just a matter of time until arch-Holocaust denier David Irving emerged from whatever rock he's been hiding under ever since he was released after his prison term in Austria for having denied the Holocaust, decided he wanted to be in the limelight again. Back in December, I made a little bet about just how long it would take Irving to mount a comeback tour. I guessed weeks. I was wrong. I'll give Irving credit; he held out nine months before making a play for vindication:
Ten months ago he was languishing in an Austrian jail, less than halfway through a three-year…
oracknows | September 25, 2007
While I happen to have found myself back on the subject of the Holocaust and Holocaust denial again today, I thought I'd mention this, something I've been meaning to blog about since I found out about it last week.
Beginning this week, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum will start featuring a display that, to me at least, is almost as disturbing as the usual pictures of the horrors of Auschwitz and other Nazi camps with which we've become so familiar and to whose horrors we have perhaps become inured. Basically, it's a recently discovered scrapbook with photos depicting the daily life of…
oracknows | September 25, 2007Andrew Mathis gives his perspective.
And an excellent analysis it is, too. One brief excerpt:
...I have to wonder exactly where a man who runs a police state gets off asking a question like this. The Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran does not allow religious freedoms outside those recognized by the Qur'an. People are thrown in jail -- routinely -- for opposing the government. When government opponents visit the country, they are jailed. I say this without qualification: Every single country that has a law against Holocaust denial is a more free country that Iran. EVERY LAST ONE.…
oracknows | September 25, 2007Iranian President (and Holocaust denier) Mahmoud Ahmadinejad showed up at Columbia University yesterday to give a speech. Given my interest in Holocaust history and Holocaust denial I had debated whether to comment on it before it happened. Given my contempt for him, his anti-Semitism, and his Holocaust denial, I was rather torn by the whole affair. On the one hand, I am very much in favor of free speech, and having this loon speak can in one way be argued to be evidence of what is great about this country (although it would have been more convincing if Columbia had a better record on this…