Archive for the ‘All’ Category
Pseudo-Science & Schools
Some things just make you want to throw your hands up in the air, or scream and punch a brick wall or something. Somebody kindly pointed out this transcript of a report on yesterday's Newshour with Jim Lehrer called "Creation Conflict in Schools", reported by Jeffrey Brown. Here were a few comments made by students […]
In: All, It's Only Rocket Science, Raised Eyebrows Dept., Splenetics
How Could They Be So Stupid?
The following exhilarating exchange was reported by Media Matters as taking place "On the March 28 edition of MSNBC's Scarborough Country, host Joe Scarborough interviewed Dr. Ronald Cranford, one of the two neurologists selected by Michael Schiavo to examine Terri Schiavo pursuant to an October 2001 appellate court mandate." [Lisa] DANIELS: Doctor, was a CAT […]
In: All, Raised Eyebrows Dept., Splenetics
Key-Word-Based Science
I was reading an interesting article at Science Blog, "Changes in Earth's tilt control when glacial cycles end", about a new report (written by "Peter Huybers, a postdoctoral fellow in the WHOI Geology and Geophysics Department, and coauthor Carl Wunsch of MIT") suggesting that changes in the tilt of the earth's axis may indeed be […]
In: All, It's Only Rocket Science, Raised Eyebrows Dept.
Melting Pyjamas
I just love reading The Scotsman. Get me to hospital, my pyjamas are melting Nicola Stow MELTING pyjamas and a brush with an alligator were among accidents which put almost a million Britons in hospital last year, figures revealed today. A host of bizarre incidents were littered in the statistics of accident and emergency admissions […]
In: All, Common-Place Book, Raised Eyebrows Dept.
To Win at Any Cost
They may not have the votes to make this happen. Many of the wisest Republicans are well aware that their leaders are playing a dangerous game and that they are doing it for frivolous reasons. The judicial nominees can easily be replaced. But the sense that there are certain rules that all must play by, […]
Doilies & Chaos Theory
Kriston, at Grammar.police posted a fantastic picture of a crocheted sculpture in yarn: "Crocheted Model of Hyperbolic Plane" (1970s) by Daina Taimina. (He references this original article: "Crocheting the Hyperbolic Plane: An Interview with David Henderson and Daina Taimina") His reaction: When I saw the images of Taimina's crocheted hyperbolic figures, I was immediately struck […]
In: All, Hermeneutics, It's Only Rocket Science
Cow State Hallucinations
Yet the media’s response to all of this nonsense [in the Left Behind books] has been remarkably polite. In America, of course, with commercial success comes a degree of cultural respectability. If millions of consumers succumb to a childish revenge fantasy that takes the Christ out of Christianity and treats the Bible as a cosmic […]
Good-News Recruiting
One notes, in passing, that these are the people who [erroneously] believe that homosexuals recruit (evidently proven by the fact that we "cannnot reproduce"): Good News Clubs are sponsored by the Child Evangelism Fellowship, a national group that seeks to convert young children to fundamentalist Christianity. At the weekly meetings, children are divided into groups […]
To Be Gay Every Day
Looking into the Schiavo affair, Arthur Silber (in "Necrophiliac Spiritualism") discovers the hidden (alas, not unexpected) homophobia, and then quotes Dick Cheney: You want to know something? Bush and the Religious Krazies brigade that he’s unleashed have made gay-bashing so common—and so “respectable”—in America that my day is never complete until I feel I’ve been […]
Trading Places
I think the Democratic campaign philosophy in the next few elections should be obvious: smaller government. A government that is more responsible, less intrusive, more humble. Under the Bush administration, the national debt has escalated alarmingly; we have become aggressively unilateralist abroad, alienating people worldwide; protections of the privacy and human rights of citizens have […]
A Federal Case
If it weren't that the issues are rather serious, as are their implications, one could almost chortle with a gleeful sense of schadenfreude at the way some Republicans are revealing so clearly that their sanctimonious rhetoric is just so much hot air. This past week, against the backdrop of the attempted emotional exploitation in the […]
The Homosexual Agenda
I have, for more years than I can remember, been part of the Homosexual Agenda; I can even remember back more than 20 years when it was the militant homosexual agenda. I don't think we were ever very clear at the time just what was on the homosexual agenda — lists have surfaced from time […]
In: All, Eureka!, Splenetics
Cliches Fell
By late Sunday, when the debate [on the Terri Schiavo bill] had reached the House of Representatives, Barney Frank stood almost alone in opposing the bill. Cliches suffered. Here was an openly gay Democrat, the Massachusetts liberal of all Massachusetts liberals, defending the Founding Fathers, federalism and the American tradition of keeping the government's nose […]
Fat Hairy Tinkerbelles
PZ Myers writes a fabulous blog called "Pharyngula". One day, he wrote an enthusiastic critique of a rather stupid opinion piece in the Washington Post: "Uncritical journalism from the WaPo". This isn't about that at all. This is entirely about an off-hand comment that he made in the piece: Intelligent Design creationism is a fat […]
Erring for Future Life
This past weekend, I've heard the phrase "culture of life" quite a bit more than before, not to mention quite a bit more than I'd like. We've also seen the introduction of the Bush Doctrine of Erring: with tough questions, one should err on the "side of life" (which is all for the best in […]
In: All, Eureka!, Splenetics
Mythical Monsters
[–> "Maryland Mythical Monster" people, please see below.] I have just discovered that I'm not the only one (I hadn't really expected to be, either) who has in interested in seeing the search strings that people use to get to my blog. (My earlier remarks about some unusual search strings are here.) Richard Rockley of […]
Herring Farts
Some people know that I am an old fart, and have therefore an abiding interest in farts, but I have not yet mastered using the fart for communication, except as it might be construed as some sort of anti-social, vaguely aggressive statement. Through a chain of links that is now lost to me, I arrived […]
In: All, Raised Eyebrows Dept.
"Ethical Lapses"
The thing that strikes me as odd, as I read the mushrooming stories about Tom DeLay, is that these stories keep using the phrase "ethical lapses" to describe his syndrome; given the phrase's currency, it must have originated at some point and then been parroted since. Usually, we associate the word "lapse" with a brief […]
In: All, Raised Eyebrows Dept., Such Language!
Special Marriage
Another Eureka! moment, thanks to the NYTimes via the International Herald Tribune ("Exploiting Terry Schaivo"). …supporters of Schiavo's parents, particularly members of the religious right, leaned heavily on Congress and the White House to step in. They did so on Monday with the new law, which gives "any parent of Theresa Marie Schiavo" standing to […]
In: All, Eureka!, Splenetics
A Simple Test
I propose that every Republican politician be asked this simple question: Do you believe that the earth was created less than 10,000 years ago? In other words, is everything we have learned about the age of the universe, our planet, and the life thereon nothing but an elaborate hoax? They'll have two choices. First, they […]