stupidity
pharyngula | October 1, 2011I'm afraid Ben Cochran is one of them. He's a nursing student who wrote a column in a newspaper because he was upset at the time it took for the emergency medical services at his local clinic to help him with his sneezy, phlegmy cold (which, I would have told him, is going to put a low priority on something they can't really treat anyway). He places the blame: the clinic offers women's reproductive services, and they were busy helping a "gaggle of preemie sluts [] get a free pass on harlotry" and treating their "cunt problems".
But he really doesn't have a problem with these women, he says.…
pharyngula | September 19, 2011There is a severe and disturbing disconnect in the minds of the fanatics behind the animal rights groups. First there's NIO, harassing and threatening students. Now look at what PETA is up to: they plan to launch a porn site to benefit their cause.
The nonprofit organization, whose controversial campaigns draw criticism from women's rights groups, said it hopes to raise awareness of veganism through a mix of pornography and graphic footage of animal suffering.
"We're hoping to reach a whole new audience of people, some of whom will be shocked by graphic images that maybe they didn't…
pharyngula | September 14, 2011There was another Republican debate (I skipped it; there are limits to the horrors I can endure), and apparently, many people think Michele Bachmann trumped Rick Perry by jumping on his 'liberal' endorsement of using the HPV vaccine to prevent cancers in women. Bachmann ranted about the federal government forcing innocent little girls to get mental retardation injections, and the teabaggers loved it. They loved it almost as much as they loved Rick Perry's record of executions.
Orac rips her apart. It's great fun, and informative, too.
As I've pointed out time and time again, Gardasil is…
pharyngula | September 14, 2011She's an up and coming scientist, a young biology student at the University of Florida, and she has been targeted by the animal rights radicals and human-hating monsters at NIO for harassment as a "career animal mutilator". They've posted links to her email address and facebook on a page that conveniently also provides a diagram on how to make a molotov cocktail. They also declare that "She has now forfeited all of the rights that she denies her victims". Her crime seems to be that she actually listened to NIO, thought about their position and hers, and disagreed with them:
Your website…
pharyngula | August 19, 2011Larry Moran is proudly Canadian, so this must have hurt a little bit: Canadian Blood Services is advertising with a load of codswallop about your blood type. This is complete nonsense:
Type A: So, you're an A. You already know that having type A blood suggests that you are reliable, a team player and may benefit from a vegetarian diet*. Did you also know that anthropologists believe that type A blood originated in Asia or the middle east between 25,000 and 15,000 BC?
Type B: So, you're a B. You already know that having type B blood suggests that you are independent, a self-starter and…
pharyngula | July 25, 2011I'm getting a clearer picture of Jennifer Fulwiler. She's very much a Catholic, she thinks she's an expert on atheists, and she likes things in fives. First it was five misconceptions atheists have about Catholics, and now she's written five Catholic teachings that make sense to atheists. As if she'd know. She claims to have been an atheist once, but her list of stuff that makes sense indicates that she was an awfully Catholic atheist.
Purgatory. Why? "it made sense to me because it explained how heaven can be a place of perfect love, and God can still be merciful to people who had some work…
pharyngula | July 24, 2011What has the world come to? Valley Park Middle School in Toronto has made a very special provision to make Muslim students happy: they allow them to use the cafeteria for private prayer (to which I have no objection), and then obligingly segregate the boys from the girls, and because it is so very important, also take the young girls who are menstruating and ostracize them in the back of the room, where they are not allowed to participate. OK, not making them join in a prayer is nice, but the implicit public shaming for their physiological state? Outrageous.
There's a petition. Let's add more…
pharyngula | July 23, 2011Christian knees are trembling, sensing imminent doom brought on by juvenile fantasy literature. Which is ironic, considering that they worship a big sloppy book that fits perfectly into the genre. Anyway, first there was the Harry Potter series, which turned all the teenagers into Wiccans (what?); then there was the Twilight series, that has led to an upsurge of teenagers drinking blood (I missed that one, too). What next?
Think carefully: What might happen if a "third wave" of popular entertainment inspires gullible teenagers to seek possession by demonic entities, thinking it's good for…
pharyngula | July 22, 2011"Little girl, would you like some candy?" Somebody didn't think things through when they decided that this was a good strategy for proselytizing.
An Edmonton mother is outraged after members of a local church approached her daughter on a playground - offering a Bible verse, candy and a promise that if she memorized the passage they would give her more treats.
Kathleen Crowe says her nine-year-old daughter Angeline was playing in MacEwan park last week when she was approached by a couple from the Victory Christian Center who gave her candy and a Bible verse. Angeline was also promised more…
pharyngula | July 20, 2011I've taken a few pokes at the bad science of Rhawn Joseph and the Journal of Cosmology over the years — for instance, in this post summarizing an article that was little more than a thinly threaded excuse to show off pictures of women in bikinis, or this post about their claim to have found bacteria in meteorites.
I think my criticism must have stung.
Check out the bikini post at the Journal of Cosmology now. It's been removed, with the disclaimer, "CENSORED This Article Has Been Censored and Removed Due to Threats and Complaints Received." I am amused. I wouldn't take all the credit, since I…
pharyngula | July 18, 2011A reader ran my name through one of those bible code programs — you know, those really silly exercises in goofy divination that juggles lines of the bible around to find some arrangement that reveals words and phrases — and it turns out I'm in there. See?
Gosh, I guess the Bible must be true then.
Then the next step in this program is that it extracts a numerically related verse, somehow, that tells you deep things about the word in question. This is me:
Respect my biblical authoritah! My very, very tired biblical authoritah…we got home from TAM at 4am, which means my brain is almost…
pharyngula | July 12, 2011I've never heard of Alex Beam before, which is a good thing — he seems to be some kind of journalist at the Boston Globe, and that's about all I know about him, other than that he seems to be an oblivious idiot. He has a column up in which he rages about the phrase "knowledge-based", apparently because he doesn't understand it. His first target is to fulminate against that expression, "reality based", which many on the left adopted after the lunacy of the Bush presidency, a phrase invented by the Bushies to describe us:
The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based…
pharyngula | July 11, 2011They're just not very bright and don't know much about them.
Richard Ruelas, a reporter for The Arizona Republic, found himself staring down the barrel of Republican state Sen. Lori Klein's raspberry-pink firearm during a recent interview at the Capitol.
"Oh, it's so cute," Klein said of the .380 Ruger that she carries in purse at all times.
While the loaded pistol had no safety and the laser pointer was centered on the reporter's chest, Klein explained that there was no need to worry.
"I just didn't have my hand on the trigger," she said.
I think there's good cause to revoke her…
pharyngula | July 10, 2011They keep dragging me back in. I try to drop it, but my inbox is full of people still arguing this point, and it's getting ridiculous. The thing is, they keep throwing godawfully bad arguments at me, as if they're trying to hit me in the head with a brick enough times to make me stupid enough to believe them. It's not going to work. Here are a few of the worst of the bad arguments.
Let's stop the shouting that Richard Dawkins is some kind of raving misogynist. What's happened here is that he is at some remove from all of the details, and this issue got blown up by lunatics who felt their…
pharyngula | June 24, 2011It's demons. The whole state is infested with 'em.
There was a big conference on exorcism offered by the Catholic church in Texas; it was apparently well-attended by an enthusiastic crowd who were anxious to learn how to purge the state of evil invisible magic beings. Bishop Pfeifer had this to say:
Pfeifer said he believes there is demonic influence in West Texas manifested through cults…
Oh, sure, he went on to say the demons were secular and on the internet, but I think he would have been better served looking at the wackaloons babbling at his conference.
pharyngula | June 23, 2011After the public scorn Scott Adams received in response to his appalling "pegs and holes" post that tried to play the self-pity card — Adams is so disadvantaged by being a man — he sent out an invitation to various magazines to engage in a public dialog.
I'd like to offer an opportunity to one of the writers at Salon, Huffington Post, Jezebel, Mediate, or Mediabistro. Allow me to interview you, by email, for this blog, on the topic of why you so vehemently disagree with your hallucination of my opinion. (Fair warning: It won't work out well for you.)
Salon took him up on it. It isn't working…
pharyngula | June 22, 2011I patiently explained all that was wrong with Be Scofield's characterization of atheists; now he has written back and saidI am wrong, wrong, wrong. I'm just going to focus on his first weird point, because the whole thing is disposable, but I feel like making a token effort anyway.
A good part of his argument was an analogy run amuck. He tried to argue that criticizing liberal religion for extremist religious actions must mean I don't like liberal politics (that is, I must be an anarchist!) or I am a hypocrite. I explained yesterday that this wasn't the case, I have no problem with the…
pharyngula | June 22, 2011This email is different than the usual rants and threats and claims about creationism disproving evolution — instead, my correspondent claims that the Catholic church knew about evolution all along. All I learned from the letter, though, is that he doesn't have a clue about what evolution is.
Dear Professor Myers,
I am very confused [Ah, if only he'd stopped there, the letter would have been perfect] as to why you think evolution is incompatible with Christianity. Since its earliest days, Catholics have maintained the mutability of species. For example:
1) Saint Jerome commented on Jeremiah…
pharyngula | June 20, 2011Some team in Canada won the Stanley Cup, which prompted happy revelers to…riot and destroy public property? I have never understood that behavior; when something good happens in my life, I've just never felt the slightest desire to celebrate by setting a police car on fire.
I shall now embarrass all the good Canadians by showing a video of Canadians behaving very, very badly.
All honor is not lost, however: one reporter documented the Vancouver riots, and then found refuge in a bar full of sensible atheists.
I walked to the back toward windows looking down on the street and met a posse of…
pharyngula | June 18, 2011Religion really does make people crazy. Here's a story about a dog who walked into a Jewish court.
The dog entered the Jerusalem financial court several weeks ago and would not leave, reports Israeli website Ynet.
It reminded a judge of a curse passed on a now deceased secular lawyer about 20 years ago, when judges bid his spirit to enter the body of a dog.
So, obviously, this stray mutt must contain the displaced, reincarnated soul of a dead lawyer. At least, that's what somebody steeped in magical thinking would assume.
If you have an animal possessed by the soul of a lawyer (what?…