Please, O Mighty Press, heed our prayer

Revere and Tara make fun of a silly guest commentary from a very silly man who thinks them evilutionists are cheating by using the term “mutation”—that changes in the virulence of a disease are examples of a “population shift,” which has nothing to do with evolution.

Just a note to any journalists or newspaper editors who might read this: the Panda’s Thumb has a useful list of scientists and other defenders of evolution who are willing—no, overjoyed—to vet these kinds of strange anti-scientific tirades. We’re also willing to help with any pro-science articles you might be moved to write. It’s kind of sad that this list is sitting there, and we rarely hear from any responsible journalists; I think I’ve had 3 calls in a year and a half. What’s the problem, is it just easier to take the press releases the Discovery Institute pushes at you, without bothering with that difficult job of actually questioning any of it?

The Original Home of the Giant Flatulent Raccoon

The guilty party has stepped forward and confessed: Carl Zimmer was the inspiration for Coulter’s Giant Flatulent Raccoon.

Of course, he uses that little factlet to drive home another nail in Coulter’s coffin. It seems she completely mangled a Zimmer story in the NY Times, and it was her ignorant misunderstanding that triggered her invention of the Giant Flatulent Raccoon. Are you surprised?

We all know the phrase “Garbage In, Garbage Out”…creationists are instances of “Information In, Garbage Out.”

Priorities, people!

OK, many people seem to be picking up on Coulter’s plagiarism, Karl Mogel picks up on the overt sexism of Coulter’s remarks*, but there’s far too little discussion of the fact that Coulter’s book is a tissue thin collection of lies. Her understanding of science is negligible, and she’s simply parroting old creationist nonsense, but almost no one is pointing out that fact. Is science just too hard for the media? Shouldn’t the fact that she plagiarizes be a lesser sin than the fact that she is making stuff up?

Although, actually, I do feel that the fact that she dismisses over half the population as too stupid to do good science, and doesn’t even think biology is a science, is probably more serious.

*One bothersome thing I need to point out about Karl’s analysis: The Panda’s Thumb would also do very poorly, with women grossly underrepresented on the list of contributors. There is no shortage of XX science bloggers, though, as the list at scienceblogs shows.

John McKay tells me that Media Matters has a thorough content-based criticism of Coulter’s book. Excellent!

Creationist email: I have a new friend!

I posted a little sample of my creationist junkmail yesterday, and I’ve finally figured something out. The first mailing said, “Original Theory By Perry Marshall, Edited in part by D. Donohew”—what that meant was that D. Donohew had found this crap by Perry Marshall on the web, and was simply doing a copy&paste and sending it to me. How did I figure this out? Because Mr Donohew is now regularly sending me crap that he has written himself. You may be surprised to learn, given that that first email was a pile of spluttering nonsense, that Mr Marshall is a paragon of lucidity and insight compared to his plagiarist.

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Creationist email to the fraternity

One more piece of creationist email for you: this one was addressed to me and all of my fraternity of Godless Atheists, which I think means you readers here. Never mind protesting that some of you are Christian—get used to it, to these guys you will never be truly Christian.

Anyway, it’s not a very entertaining letter. It was, as usual, amusingly formatted (Outlook Express is evil software), but I’ve stripped all that gunky Microsoft html out of it to simplify posting it. It’s your usual argument from poorly understood physics: the Big Bang is evidence of Jesus, really tiny numbers prove Jesus, mangled information theory proves Jesus. It does have one novel argument I haven’t seen before, that a kitchen spray bottle proves Jesus, but I don’t think it’s going to get much traction in the scientific community. I haven’t bothered to reply to it, but if anyone wants to shred the nonsense in the comments, maybe the authors will find it online.

Oh, and welcome to the Atheist Fraternity! Remember, we’re getting together with the Atheist Sorority on Friday night for a Toga Party!

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Creationist e-mail

I’m going to go fire up the grill in a little while, so here’s something for those of you not yet doing the traditional Fourth of July thing to chew on…a tasty scrap of the kind of email I get.

EVOLUTION IS ENTIRELY
FALLACIOUS.

MEIOSIS CASTRATES
EVOLUTION.KARYOTYPES DISPROVE
EVOLUTION. THE
BASIC MECHANISMS SAID TO BE DRIVING EVOLUTION ARE ENTIRELY INADEQUATE,UTTERLY
INCAPABLE OF PRODUCING NOVEL KARYOTYPES,NOVEL FEATURES,NOVEL
FUNCTIONS.
1)EVOLUTION’S
PHYLOGENIES ARE TOTALLY INCOMPATIBLE WITH
KARYOTYPES;
2)THERE IS NO MECHANISM TO GENERATE NOVEL
KARYOTYPES THAT ARE FERTILE(meiosis,homology,synapsis,centromeres etc.); MEIOSIS
CASTRATES EVOLUTION BY FAILING TO PROCEED IF ANY CHROMOSOMES FAIL TO PAIR
UP WITH HOMOLOGOUS PARTNERS.SEXUALLY REPRODUCIBLE KARYOTYPES THEREBY
FIXED!EVOLUTIONARY PROGRESSION OF CHROMOSOME NUMBERS IS TOTALLY INCOMPATIBLE
WITH THE MECHANISMS OF MEIOSIS.

“Wha…,” you may be saying as you taste that little sample. He goes on and on, though, in some of the most ghastly html ever. I’ve stripped out quite a bit here; if you really want to see the whole incredible indigestible thing, I’ve sequestered it and put it in a separate file you can view (no way am I pasting it intact here—the formatting would almost certainly scramble the page. I know for sure there are unbalanced div tags in it.)
Click on this link to see the whole crazy rant in a new window.

My eyes glazed over and I scrolled quickly through the whole mess—although the section where alternate letters of his screed were in different colors did briefly catch my eye—to his closing babble.

In the beginning was the LOGOS and the LOGOS was
with the THEOS.All things came into being through him and without him not even
one thing came into being.
Evolutionism is a pseudo-religion masquerading as
science.The science of evolution is defective
EVOLUTION HAS BEEN UNEQUIVOCALLY DISPROVEN BY
FACTS!
THE ONLY LOGICAL CONCLUSION IS THAT SPECIES DID NOT
ORIGINATE BY EVOLUTION.
“BLUNDER”-of Scandinavian
origin,compare Old Norse blunda ‘to close one’s eyes’ ,Norwegian
dialect  blundra ; see BLIND

P.S.if you have noticed any factual errors in
this presentation please inform me of them

Well. Factual errors? Sure, I noticed a few. So I sent him a one-liner back that said his whole premise was in error, and included a link that shows karyotype variation occurs all the time.

It was a mistake, as you’ll all tell me now. He’s since sent me two more letters insisting that I’m all wrong and that I’m trying to “intimidate” him “with typical evolutionary bluster.”

I’m not going to bother with him, but since he’s feeling like he now has permission to pester me, I’m going to let you have fun with him instead. You can email him at [email protected]. Be nice, but show no mercy. Watch out, though…he throws a mean word salad, and he won’t shut up.

I think I’d rather go fix some steaks and chicken breasts and corn on the cob.

By the way, he claims to be a “medical practitioner.” I’m guessing, oh, chiropractor. Or maybe an iridologist or reflexologist.

If it weren’t for those feminists, maybe Gilder would be on our side (thank you, feminism!)

You know, I really can’t stand George Gilder. He’s one of those pompous poseurs who pretends to be a fan of science and technology, yet whenever he opens his mouth you discover that he doesn’t know jack about the subject. I’ve excoriated Gilder before (a whuppin’ so cruel that Gilder’s daughter and then Gilder himself showed up in the comments to complain, and he was still publicly complaining about his brutal mistreatment a year later), but now he’s back with yet another rambling whimper about evolution.

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