stupidity
pharyngula | October 27, 2010These are the words of Clint McCance, a school board member in the Midland school district of Arkansas. He was a little bit annoyed that people in his school were wearing purple in remembrance of students who had been bullied into suicide.
Being a fag doesn't give you the right to ruin the rest of our lives. If you get easily offended by being called a fag then don't tell anyone you are a fag. Keep that shit to yourself. It pisses me off though that we make a special purple fag day for them. I like that fags cant procreate. I also enjoy the fact that they often give each other aids and die.…
pharyngula | October 27, 2010This is a very poor quality recording of a group of fraternity pledges marching about the Yale campus chanting. You should be able to make out what they're chanting, though: "No means yes, yes means anal."
These privileged man-children made it a point to march past various sororities letting the women know exactly what to expect from the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity; the president of the frat has since apologized, calling it a "lapse in judgment".
I don't think so. I think it goes deeper than that: this was a lifelong failure, the result of a poor upbringing that generates bully-boys who…
stoat | October 12, 2010Well, the yanks did. Or maybe not, it really isn't clear. But what *is* clear is that initial reports that Linda Norgrove was killed by the Taliban were at best unreliable and probably made up. Apparently Cameroon still insists that the reports were "in good faith" which I think is code for "inexplicably wrong but we don't want to criticise the US in public". And indeed the entire rescue may have been pointless. That nice Mr Obama says he'll find out what happened, though.
pharyngula | October 9, 2010They've come out. They've revealed that all along, the Insane Clown Posse were evangelical Christians making Christian rap. Isn't it obvious with hindsight now?
It's a hilarious interview. The reporter gets them to spill the beans about exactly what they were thinking in some of their notorious lyrics. I love how he bonds with them.
"I don't know how magnets work," I say, to put him at his ease.
"Nobody does, man!" he replies, relieved. "Magnetic force, man. What else is similar to that on this Earth? Nothing! Magnetic force is fascinating to us. It's right there, in your fucking face. You…
pharyngula | September 23, 2010How can you simultaneously be such leaders of advancing secularism and pandering cowards to the demands of religion? The police have arrested 6 people who posted a video of a Koran-burning. They did not break into a mosque and steal somebody else's book, they had their own copy and destroyed it … they did nothing illegal. But they're still arrested, and the police are making excuses.
In a joint statement, Northumbria Police and Gateshead Council said: "The kind of behaviour displayed in this video is not representative of our community as a whole.
Our community is one of mutual respect and we…
pharyngula | September 21, 2010California has had zero deaths from whooping cough in the last 55 years.
The toll this year: 9 babies dead of whooping cough. So far.
There is something about that link above that makes me angry. The source given for the terrible statistic is the Huffington Post — a site which has done far more than its share to promulgate lies and fear about vaccination, and which should bear a portion of the guilt for those dead children.
pharyngula | September 19, 2010Oy, what a cringeworthy production. It's Christmas with a Capital C, a ghastly little movie to pander to the Christian persecution complex at Christmas time.
I've seen enough — I think I'll skip it. Not that I'm likely to have much chance of seeing it: I don't frequent church basements, and I don't watch the Trinity Broadcast Network, and I don't plan on getting pithed any time in the near future.
pharyngula | September 7, 2010Two children are missing in Belize, and no one knows what happened to them. So a helpful 'psychic' declared that they had been fed to the crocodiles in a nearby sanctuary. The results were predictable.
Reports are that the mob shot and killed some of the 17 crocs held in captivity at the sanctuary. Also destroyed were the Rose's two story home that included a laboratory and nursery for baby crocs. One baby American Crocodile was to be flown to Chicago to the Wildlife Discovery Center in Lake Forest, Ill. USA for the first ever animal exchange program between Belize and the USA. Over $2,500 in…
pharyngula | September 6, 2010What are they thinking? The protesters complaining about that violent, militant religion of Islam building a mosque/community center in New York are now towing about a pair of deactivated missiles at their rallies. I guess Christians are trying to send a message that they're friendly and non-threatening.
I've been doing it wrong for so many years. When I was protesting the Iraq war, maybe it would have been a more effective demonstration if we'd rented a tank and put a sign on it, "Honk if you hate war". When we protested that biological warfare work going on at the Dugway Proving Grounds,…
pharyngula | September 1, 2010Already, deranged Discovery Institute shill David Klinghoffer is blaming the hostage-taking nut James Lee's actions on Darwinism.
Witness the recent examples of Holocaust Memorial Museum shooter James von Brunn, Columbine High School shooter Eric Harris, Jokela High School shooter Pekka Eric Auvinen. Historical figures who drew inspiration, if indirectly, from Darwinian theory include Charles Manson, Mao Tse-tung, Joseph Stalin, Josef Mengele, and of course Adolf Hitler. I've written about this many times before and received much abuse for it, not least when I took up the theme on the…
pharyngula | July 30, 2010That would be tough. She's written a diatribe in the NY Times on the Pepsico debacle, and it isn't just that she doesn't like many of the scienceblogs (including yours truly), but that she gets the facts wrong.
This was just bizarre.
I was nonplussed by the high dudgeon of the so-called SciBlings. The bloggers evidently write often enough for ad-free academic journals that they still fume about adjacencies, advertorial and infomercials. Most writers for "legacy" media like newspapers, magazines and TV see brush fires over business-editorial crossings as an occupational hazard. They don't…
pharyngula | July 9, 2010I've got a little inside information on Premise Media, makers of Expelled — despite all the bragging about what a successful movie they had, they still haven't fully paid contractors they'd hired, and the company appears to be dead. It was a kind of zombie company anyway, with a fake website filled with fake projects to trick people into taking it seriously, and now it's simply decaying. All that's left is a collection of clips.
However, the writer, Kevin Miller, has found employment working on something even schlockier — the poor guy's career is sinking so fast, he's going to end up writing…
pharyngula | July 8, 2010It's easy. Bait your hook with stupid.
It's true, we're a sucker for that stuff, although it does have a downside. We'll come up, swallow the bait, follow the line to its source, devour the poor fool holding the pole, and then waddle off, all fat and smug. It's our nature, we can't help it.
So, for instance, an Indiana politician who is considered a potential presidential candidate, Mitch Daniels, talks about atheism.
People who reject the idea of a God — who think that we're just accidental protoplasm — have always been with us. What bothers me is the implications — which not all such folks…
pharyngula | July 4, 2010Glenn Beck really is certifiable. He's now pushing his own "university", staffed by a trio of right wing incompetents, with a tuition of $9.95 per month.
His introductory curriculum is Faith 101, Hope 101, and Charity 101, titles which don't seem to have much to do with their contents. I look forward to the first student to show up my university with a transcript and ask for transfer credits — normally, we just give no credit for inappropriate or bad coursework, but this is one case where I think negative credits are warranted.
stoat | June 27, 2010This post is about the ridiculous "hide the decline" video. I watched it when it first came out. It wasn't funny, it was dull. Apparently it has now been pulled from YouTube, but who cares?
But... because the thing is anti-science, the std.anti-science septics on wiki feel inclined to have an article on it. Sigh. There enough real subjects to create articles about without wasting time on vapour. I really ought to point you to the current version, and the current edit war: should this edit be included - viz, is the fact that some guy with a blog thinks the video is funny worth noting? I don't…
pharyngula | May 26, 2010I've been receiving a lot of mail lately urging me to pharyngulate the America Speaking Out site, but when I saw what it was about, I held off…I could tell what kind of self-screwing it was going to be. Here's the premise: the Republicans saw, in their remote and confused sort of way, that the internet (aka "series of tubes") had some real potential, and looked really smart, and maybe if they took advantage of it, they could look a little less yokely and rubish. Seriously. You can't make this stuff up.
Lest you think Republicans are just discovering the Internet, Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (…
pharyngula | May 25, 2010We really hurt the true believers of Islam with Draw Mohammed Day. They are angry and frustrated, and they want to strike back against secularists equally well, in ways that will also infuriate us. To their credit, though, some realize that threatening to decapitate heretics isn't exactly smart and civilized…they need something that will illustrate to us how hurtful violating their religious precepts was.
What to do, what to do…
One Muslim genius has come up with the answer: EVERYBODY RESEARCH HOLOCAUST DAY. On 30 June, he is encouraging everyone to engage in "critical study" of "the…
pharyngula | May 20, 2010It's that day when everyone should draw Mohammed. You can just do the traditional stick figure, or you can get fancy — I like this one, a kind of Mohammed transitional series in which you have to draw the line where blasphemy occurs.
I can't draw. The only thing I could think of was to sketch out this picture of a hybrid cow-pig.
It's Moo-ham-ed. Get it? OK, you're allowed to groan and close the page.
Would it add to the verisimilitude if I said he was mooing/squealing excitedly at the prospect of raping a 9 year old girl (not shown)? Sharp-eyed observers will also note that Moo-ham-ed is a…
pharyngula | May 18, 2010I don't know what to say. This is a Christian's idea of an argument against abortion — not just exaggerating abortion into murder, but also by trivializing rape.
Atheists always use rape as an argument for justifying killing because they want to justify abortion. But is rape really that bad? It's a horrible experience but you get over it with time. If you use it to justify murder you're never going to get over it. Imagine you have a painful divorce. Would you murder your children after because they remind you of your ex husband? Of course not. I think any woman would easily tell you that a…
pharyngula | May 17, 2010I'm glad someone occasionally looks into the other side of the net to see what they're talking about — I can't bear to read religious forums, myself. Here's why: take a look at what they're saying on BaptistBoard.
I believe women in politics have done a great disservice to the sovereignty and resolve of a our great Republic. Many issues that face our nation, from without and within, need to be decided from a place of strength instead of weakness. Women are gifted from God with a lot of skills that are good in the home, but not in the Government. They tend to base their decisions from a…