Oh, no. I’ve wasted my life prepping students for med school.
(via Skeptico)
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
Be astounded: there was actually one astrologer who, in 2000, published a book of advice that specifically said, “Avoid terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001.” She didn’t fake it, there wasn’t any post-event modification of a prediction going on, she actually did it. Can you guess how?
Atrios finds it odd that, since 31% of Americans believe in astrology and it qualifies as a mainstream belief, that “people are falling all over themselves to mock someone who had a perfectly mainstream belief apparently shared by millions and millions of Americans.”
I just have to say that in my case it’s not odd at all. I’m being consistent.
Well, I’ve never followed this “Jerome” fellow’s stuff at MyDD, with the recent accusations that he may have done some dubious things in the stock market and was a promoter of astrology, but the Commissar thinks I’m going easy on him because the Left thinks astrology is an acceptable pseudo-science, so I’ll take a moment to disabuse that silly notion.
We wouldn’t want to leave everyone with the feeling that YearlyKos was heaven made manifest on earth, so I’ll just mention that Socratic Gadfly is blogging up a whirlwind of anti-Kos sentiment. I think it’s a bit overdone, but there is a germ of truth to some of his complaints.
I’d worry a little bit about an excess of Kos idolatry, but it was less in evidence than you might think from the name of the conference, and what you might read in dKos diaries. Firedoglake, MyDD, Glenn Greenwald, Atrios, and AmericaBlog were all big players here, and the attendees were highly egalitarian, more so than a list of panel members would indicate (this was a real problem, I think; way too many panels had the same people showing up on them, and a little more outreach to respected but low traffic blogs would be a good idea.) Gadfly thinks there is too much groupthink and narrow channeling of accepted views at dKos, but as long as a wide range of other bloggers are accepted at the convention, that shouldn’t be a big concern to the online activist community. I think it’s also good to have bona fide liberal skeptics like the Gadfly barking at their heels to keep them honest.
This silly noise about tomorrow being 06/06/06 and therefore tying in to Christian End Times malarkey is all numerological nonsense. There’s not going to be anything particularly memorably evil about tomorrow, I suspect.
Except perhaps one little thing.
I’ll mention it at 06:06:06am on 06/06/06.
This is an X-ray of a sick duck with something unusual in its gut.
Aaaaah! It’s an alien! Or a demon! Or a run-of-the-mill instance of apophenia. The bird rescue center that discovered it is playing it up as an alien for PR purposes (hey, it’s California), but we know better, right?
Read and discuss:
Or talk about anything you want. The pope’s presence annihilates ice cream and tampons. Bill Frist really needs to take a shower before working in the Senate. What kind of penalties would be appropriate for Kenny Boy? I’m sure you can all think of something to talk about—I’m buckling down for a few hours to finish reviewing a paper.
It seems that Skeptico has a copy cat—a guy who goes around posting under the name Skeptico, and who has started a blog of his own at skeptico.blogspot.com—but I don’t think anyone will confuse the two. This new Skeptico is an evolution denier and global warming denier, and is your typical run-of-the-mill dumbass reactionary. He’s more of an anti-Skeptico…no, a mini-anti-Skeptico.
I took a look at the work of the pseudo-Skeptico, and was surprised at his ignorance.
Well, it so happens that I am quite new to the ID-EVO debate, indeed to ID literature itself (although the controversy has intrigued me for many years). I’ve just only recently finished Behe’s “Darwin’s Black Box.” This whole intriguing field of microbiological complexity, replete with innumerable individual irreducible complexities, is very fascinating. And I am sure that not a few level-headed people, upon reading that book, must have thought it nothing short of a succinct and irrefutable refutation of neo-Darwinism. For, indeed, that is precisely what it is.
Nevertheless, how many hardcore Darwinists will change their positions as a result? Few, I daresay. Very few. Because, at the end of the day, to relinquish this cherished theory requires an act of will that unavoidably involves a whole phalanx of personal vested interests with philosophical, moral, religious, teleological, and most emphatically social ramifications (friends could be lost, you see, or maybe even a mentor). “Science”–howsoever many times that encumbered shiboleth be invoked, howsoever sanctimoniously, howsoever shrilly and desperately–is not the issue here. Not for them. Not for the believer. Not now. Not ever.
There’s an admission that he’s new to the debate, and has only just now read Behe’s crappy little book, and now he thinks the debate is all over. He expects, though, that scientists will refuse to give up their tired old ideas because, unlike him, they aren’t open-minded and are tied up in the establishment. Everything he says is wrong. The book is not irrefutable; quite the contrary, I know a few biologists who have read it (not many, though, since the book’s cheesy reputation precedes it), and they remain unconverted because the science in the book is badly done. Irreducible complexity is a crock. Behe’s testimony in Dover was a farce. His attempts to ‘disprove’ evolution since have been laughable.
The science is against him, which makes that last paragraph I quoted above a fascinating example of creationist projection.
Just wait—I have an inside scoop on amazing insights into biology that will definitely win me a Nobel prize. I have to thank Eve for leading me to this incredible prophetic knowledge.
