God speaks to the Idiot-in-Chief

If you’ve got a high tolerance for nonsense, you might want to check out 50 religious insights from George W. Bush. The man is a regular mullah, full of deep insights. I rather like juxtaposing these two:

I’m also mindful that man should never try to put words in God’s mouth. I mean, we should never ascribe natural disasters or anything else to God. We are in no way, shape, or form should a human being, play God. Washington, D.C., Jan. 14, 2005

I am driven with a mission from God. God would tell me, ‘George go and fight these terrorists in Afghanistan’. And I did. And then God would tell me ‘George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq’. And I did. Sharm el-Sheikh August 2003

There are 48 more. Also useful as an emetic.

I might believe god is actually talking to George, but he’s been looking in all the wrong places and getting all the wrong messages. Look to the skies, W, look to the skies! God has something to say to you!

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(Hat tip to the irregulars at After the Bar Closes, and to Denis for the appropriate photo)

Learn how not to answer science questions

This might be one of those “framing” exercises: Science Creative Quarterly wants your science questions. The catch is that they’ll be answered by Bill Hick the Science Prick (Ooo-eee, late-night Pharyngula is on an off-color roll, isn’t it?). There’s a prize, though! The humiliation and abuse might be worth it when you give the children’s book you win for it to some little boy or girl.

Just don’t tell them how you won it. You want them to look up to you, you know.

Peeking inside Nature

Attila takes a tour of Nature headquarters — it looks like they’re doing some cool, progressive, net-friendly innovation there. I was jealous of one thing: they’re using an internal corporate blog instead of email. It’s an easy and obvious solution, and I wish there were a way to implement that kind of thing at my university — we use godawful mailing lists for everything, which means notices about campus assembly meetings and student issues get all clogged up in my inbox with staff putting lawn furniture up for sale or disposable nonsense about football games.

We really should have a discussion about the future of intra-campus communication here sometime…or maybe about the ten-years ago of communication.

That persistent conflict

I don’t even know what Wilkins is complaining about anymore, but he’s got some kind of objection (or agreement? I don’t know) to things I’ve said before or didn’t say. This is the danger of getting into discussions with philosophers — they’re saying something with great erudition, but sometimes you don’t quite see the point, except that they must say something.

Anyway, it’s something about the conflict between science and religion this time. At least I can try to say what I mean. I’m not going to worry about whether it answers what he asks, whatever it is.

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Bill Dembski ‘apologizes’!

After his recent rampage against the Baylor administration, Bill Dembski now claims to be offering an apology to Baylor…only not really. I don’t think he knows what ‘apology’ means — a statement loaded with reservations like “I mean in no way to mitigate the gravity of Baylor’s wrong in censoring the research of Robert Marks and his Evolutionary Informatics Lab” and “I hurt my family and lost about three weeks of productive work by being consumed with anger about the injustice against Robert Marks” is not an apology — it’s an opportunity to reiterate your grievances. And closing with the injunction to “leave justice in the hands of a God” is just a standard Christian passive-aggressive threat.

This wasn’t an apology. It was an opportunity for Dembski to flush several embarrassing posts down the UD Memory Hole™.

Larry Craig’s real crime

I wrote of my fondness for salmon the other day, and now I learn of a strange and rather satisfying coincidence: Larry Craig was an enemy of the salmon.

The surprising fall of Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, removes a longtime obstacle to efforts by Democrats and environmentalists to promote salmon recovery on Northwest rivers.

Craig, who was removed from leadership posts on the Senate Appropriations and Energy committees after a sex scandal, is known as one the most powerful voices in Congress on behalf of the timber and power industries. Environmentalists have fought him for years on issues from endangered salmon to public land grazing.

I don’t think he should have resigned over stupid sexual behavior, but that he was one of those rats who fought to destroy the environment…that ought to be a hanging offense. It’s not an entirely happy story, though. I find myself a bit peeved that in this country you can lose your job for waving your hand under a toilet stall divider, but accepting money from industry to allow them to poison the land and circumvent reasonable ecological restrictions…pish. That’s nothin’.