April 16, 2008
Sir Charles has a Question for the Class:
Do you think if Barack Obama had left his seriously ill wife after having had multiple affairs, had been a member of the "Keating Five," had had a relationship with a much younger lobbyist that his staff felt the need to try and block, had intervened on…
April 14, 2008
ExpelledExposed.com, your one-stop-shop for rebuttals of Ben Stein's creationist hackery, is live, baby! Learn the dirty truth behind Expelled!
And it features NCSE's first foray onto Youtube!
April 14, 2008
Tomorrow, NCSE is putting out a comprehensive response to the crockumentary called "Expelled: No Intelligence..." We're putting the finishing touches on now, despite the browbeating of Rob Crowther and Denyse O'Leary.
There will be more to say anon. I may even address "bittergate," a leading…
April 10, 2008
The more that the producers of Expelled talk, the more they demonstrate their abject idiocy. Chris Heard transcribes part of producer Mark Mathis's discussion with Scientific American:
[SciAm editor] Mirsky: Why not also include comments from somebody like Ken Miller—
Mathis: Uh—
Mirsky: who is…
April 10, 2008
My birthday is mere months away, and Stephanie Metz's beautiful art would be a lovely gift for me or anyone else whose opinion you respect.
I happen to think the teddy bear skulls are a bit twee, but this is badass:
Yes, children, I said a dirty word, but no other word can accurately describe any…
April 9, 2008
The braintrust at conservative blog RedState is fed up with people complaining about John McCain's enthusiasm for a century more of our awesome Iraqi adventure. Sure, when McCain was asked if he minded 50 more years in Iraq, he responded "make it 100," and sure that'd mean 20 times the devastation…
April 8, 2008
How pleasant to know Mr. [Crowther]
Who has written such volumes of stuff
Some think him ill-tempered and queer
But a few think him pleasant enough.
I can't say I know who those would be, though Mr. Lear would undoubtedly have been worth knowing.
Mr. Crowther, flack for the Disco. Inst., is not…
April 7, 2008
Daigoro is a bipedal alligator, and according to the Mainichi (Japan) Daily News, has "walk[ed] into the hearts of aquarium visitors" at the Marine Plaza Miyajima in Hatsukaichi, Hiroshima Prefecture. The dwarf caiman alligator has been standing on its hind legs occasionally for a couple of years…
April 4, 2008
In honor of National Poetry Month, ten random songs from iTunes:
"By the Moon and Stars" by Louise Johnson from the album Mississippi Blues Vol. 1 (1928-1937) (1930, 2:51).
"Po' Boy" by Bob Dylan from the album Love and theft (2001, 3:05).
"God Don't Never Change" by Blind Willie Johnson from the…
April 3, 2008
April being National Poetry Month, I'll let you entertain yourself with this poem by Robert Frost:
War Thoughts at Home
On the back side of the house
Where it wears no paint to the weather
And so shows most its age,
Suddenly blue jays rage
And flash in blue feather.
It is late in an afternoon
More…
April 2, 2008
I've been skipping the framing wars lately. I think Matt Nisbet was wrong to criticize PZ Myers for talking up his expulsion from the Expelled showing in Minneapolis. I think PZ is wrong to blithely dismiss framing. I think both of those parties, and a number of other players in this persistent…
April 1, 2008
Billy Dembski complains about Dinesh D’Souza's handling of ID, then adds:
I encourage anyone who has personal contact with him to provide him with better information. A point of leverage is that D’Souza presumably wants Christians, many of whom support ID, to buy his book.
To be clear, then,…
April 1, 2008
Mike Dunford has a great rundown of the ruling in ASCI v. Stearns, a lawsuit in which Christian schools attempted to force the University of California system to rework its admissions standards to accommodate some atrocious textbooks. The court dismissed all of the motions for summary judgment by…
April 1, 2008
I hope this happens. Truly, the people of San Francisco deserve a way to remember George W. Bush's presidency, and as ideas go, this is top-notch:
The Presidential Memorial Commission is proposing an ordinance initiative for the November 2008 San Francisco ballot, to rename the Oceanside…
April 1, 2008
Oy.:
The Council of Economic Advisers is down to one adviser.
The nice thing about April Fool's day is that most people go back to being smart at the end of the day.
March 31, 2008
I haven't written a lot here about Expelled: No Intelligence. It'll be a crappy movie, and all the PR in the world won't change that. All the whining about PZ Myers, and criticism of his desire to see the movie he's featured in won't make the movie any better. Plus, I'm helping develop NCSE's…
March 31, 2008
The York Daily Record (known for its coverage of the Dover ID trial) interviews Barack Obama:
Q: York County was recently in the news for a lawsuit involving the teaching of intelligent design. What's your attitude regarding the teaching of evolution in public schools?
A: "I'm a Christian, and I…
March 28, 2008
It's been a long Friday, so it's time to kick back with some tunes:
"Viva Las Vegas" by Elvis Presley from the album Viva Las Vegas / Roustabout (1997, 2:22).
"Bad, Wicked World" by Frank Black from the album Teenager of the Year (1994, 1:58).
"Dead Horse" by Guns N' Roses from the album Use Your…
March 27, 2008
Drew Ryun, twin brother of equally clueless Ned Ryun, discusses:
the feeling that a vast majority of Americans share. The Democrats are not good on national defense.
Hmmm. "Next, please tell me if you think the Republican Party or the DEMOCRATIC Party could do a better job in each of the following…
March 27, 2008
Ned Ryun, former White House staffer and son of fmr. Rep. Jim Ryun, thinks Iraq is just like Germany:
The Dems think they’re going to really nail McCain on his 100 years of war in Iraq comment. Can I just say Germany, Korea . . . still there, folks. I would question why we’re still in Germany, but…
March 26, 2008
The Washington Post digs in an finds interesting parallels:
Sen. Barack Obama offers himself as a post-partisan uniter who will solve the country's problems by reaching across the aisle and beyond the framework of liberal and conservative labels he rejects as useless and outdated.
But as Obama…
March 25, 2008
Regular readers know why I'm fairly sure that the decline in coalition fatalities recently can be attributed to the unilateral ceasefire by Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army. He announced it in August, deaths were way down in September, and have remained at a low level since October. The announcement…
March 25, 2008
Forest Service May Move to Interior - washingtonpost.com:
Among some lawmakers who hold the purse strings, there is a belief that the U.S. Forest Service is out of place.
The 103-year-old agency, which manages 193 million acres of forests and grasslands, is part of the Department of Agriculture.…
March 24, 2008
Gun Goes Off Midflight:
A US Airways pilot accidentally discharged his gun in the cockpit during a flight from Denver to Charlotte, N.C., according to the Transportation Safety Administration.
The round was discharged by the pilot in the left seat and did not result in depressurization, according…
March 21, 2008
Congratulations to Dakota Abbot, this year's champion muskrat skinner, and the new Miss Outdoors:
"Oh my God!" a boy in the audience yelled, at the sight of a woman in perfect makeup with her hand inside a muskrat.
Then, from another part of the crowd: an older woman's voice: "She's good."
I wish…
March 20, 2008
Someone at the same screening of Expelled: No Intelligence that PZ Myers was tossed out of has two very contradictory things to say about the movie:
the entire audience, minus Dawkins’ posse, agreed that that the film’s main point was that Intelligent Design should be taught in conjunction with…
March 20, 2008
If you make a movie that falsely claims there's a massive conspiracy to expel dissenting voices, it's probably unwise to then expel dissenting voices.
And if you are going to pass photographs around to security guards and instruct them that certain people are threats to your movie, and must be…
March 20, 2008
Jerome Armstrong sez:
Pull off the blinders that have you supporting a particular candidate, while being blind to the bigger issue. If progressives are not going to have the guts to call out those who foster divisive talk, and demand their renouncement, no matter where it comes from, it's a bigger…
March 20, 2008
After 5 years of pointless war in Iraq, you'd think that John McCain would have picked up a few things about who we are supposed to be fighting over there.
