When Michael met David

The direct confrontation between Bérubé and Horowitz has been recorded for posterity at the CHE—I think Bérubé handled it perfectly, not taking the reactionary clown seriously, and getting a free lunch out of it.

Next, though, he’s going to be on the Dennis Prager radio show. I’m beginning to think he’s trawling very deep for the pallid, slimy worms that dwell in the abyssal darkness…but hey, whatever satisfies your appetite, I say.

Now we just need the Chronicle of Higher Ed to sponsor my free lunch with Deepak Chopra…or perhaps I could someday aspire to locking horns with Prager.

True Confessions Day at Scienceblogs!

Since Orac is confessing to a stupid thing, I thought I’d repeat my own public admission of stupidity.

Public Service Announcement: Things Not to Do

Don’t carry batteries in your pocket.

This evening, I was stretched out on my recliner, enjoying a little light reading, when I smelled something odd—an odor of burning, and a faint chemical reek. I looked around and saw nothing, but the odor was getting stronger. I set my book aside, looked down, and saw something no man likes to see: tendrils of smoke rising from my fly. Then, I felt searing pain from my thigh. I jumped up and danced around (to the amusement of my daughter), and frantically tried to fish all the loose change out of my pocket. The coins were flaming hot. I was caught in the dilemma of letting my leg burn, or burning my hands trying to get these things out. I ended up throwing sizzling bits of money around the room.

I had tossed a couple of spare NiMH AA batteries in my pocket earlier, when I was out doing some photography. A pair of them had apparently jostled into exactly the right configuration to short out against the coins in my pocket, leading to the surprisingly rapid and intense generation of heat.

I don’t think I’ll carry batteries that way anymore. I now have the imprint of a pair of quarters scorched into my palm, and feel a bit like Belzig, the fat sadistic Nazi from Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark. And my kids are laughing at me for dancing around with my pants on fire.

And now I tell you this cautionary tale, O Gentle Reader, to spare you the humiliation of repeating my error. See how much I care?

Whether I’m admitting this to make Orac feel a little less alone, or whether it’s because I have reason to worry that he might be about to do the same thing and needs a warning, is left to the interpretations of the reader. You may also argue among yourselves which of us is more foolish.

I posted that about two years ago, and I’m pleased to say that I haven’t carried batteries in my pockets since. See? I can still learn! It’s so much more sensible and safer to stick them up your nose.

A disturbing 12 year old…with brain rot

Ouch, this is painful to watch. It starts with pictures of kittens and Bambi and bagpipers (bagpipers?), and then this 12 year old kid comes on to declare evolution invalid. He throws up a list of objections to evolution culled from some creationist website somewhere—among them, for instance, is that there is no inheritance of acquired characters—and then he spends most of his time babbling incoherently about how evolution is impossible.

Warning: it also ends with a bagpiper.

The 8 year old atheist sounded much more intelligent.

(via DoubleViking)

A creationist engineer cracks a biology textbook! And doesn’t understand it!

All-too-common-dissent finds another crazy creationist engineer. This one opens a molecular biology and genetics text, discovers that it doesn’t talk about “Darwinism” (not surprising), and concludes that biology doesn’t need evolution.

My hypothesis is that the field of molecular biology is simply not understood by the majority of biologists and thus pretty secure from rational debate by laymen. By claiming that this discipline (which they probably don’t understand either) proves Darwinism and that Darwinism is vital to understanding molecular biology, the Creationists can be silenced, humiliated and put in their place by simply invoking superior knowledge.

This is a rather extravagant claim coming from someone who knows no biology and who’s impression of the field is derived from one specialist text that I suspect he didn’t understand. I’d argue the other way: that there’s a trend towards emphasizing molecular biology at the expense of other aspects of biology in undergraduate education. However, even so, it’s extremely silly to claim that molecular biology isn’t being driven in substantial part by evolutionary ideas, or that molecular biology isn’t providing huge amounts of new information in support of evolution.

I don’t need to say more—Doppelganger piles on.

Atheists and morality?

The Atheist Ethicist has written a book: A Better Place: Essays on Desire Utilitarianism.

When I was young I decided to try to leave the world better than it would have been if I had never lived. To do this, I had to know what ‘A Better Place’ actually was. Thus, I spent 12 years in college studying moral philosophy. This book contains a set of essays describing pieces of the answers I think I found. I argue that we cannot reliably find those answers in scripture, in subjective sentiment, or in evolved dispositions. In fact, those who look in these places for answers often leave the world worse than it would have otherwise been. Instead, I argue for ‘desire utilitarianism’ – the idea that morality involves using praise and condemnation to promote desires that tend to fulfill other desires, and to inhibit desires that tend to thwart other desires. The details and my defense of those answers can be found inside this book. I hope that what you find inside will also inspire and help you, too, to try to make the world a better place than it would have otherwise been.

You can find a more detailed summary of the contents here—it looks interesting, but I have this intimidating stack of books I have to finish first, and my own mountain of writing to do. It’s on my list now, though! If anyone else has read it, let us know more about it; a rebuttal to the theist claim that there is no morality without god always benefits from another counterexample.

Grounded in unreality

Oh, man: this is classic crank pseudoscience:

The heretofore unknown science of “earthing”, patented by Clint Ober, is that your body needs to be earthed so that you can have the earth’s antioxidizing flow of free electrons to go through your body and extinguish free radicals.

Earthing Axiom:

The earth’s infinite supply of free electrons will neutralize free radicals in your body and will thus help to stave off disease and aging. YOUR BODY WAS DESIGNED TO BE IN CONTACT WITH THE EARTH FOR MANY HOURS PER DAY.

Being connected via our barefeet to the earth appears destined to provide us with many far-reaching health benefits, which when coupled with modern medical prowess and optimum nutrition will offer mankind the best opportunity for health and longevity possible.

It’s an impressive web page. There’s just about everything you might want to see to persuade you that you’ve entered kookdom.

  • Sweeping claims of incredible health benefits from one simple mechanism.
  • All you need to “earth” yourself is a grounded pad—which they’ll sell you for the low, low price of $349.95.
  • Grain-of-truth biology (free radicals can cause cellular damage) coupled to extravagant and silly claims (the infinite flow of electrons from the earth will stop free radicals from hurting you).
  • Lots of repetitive, long-winded gobbledygook to justify freaky ideas.
  • Fond reminiscences of the good ol’ days, when people were always grounded and never, ever got sick…you know, like in the 19th century.
  • Random font size changes, and ALL CAPS SENTENCES.
  • Bizarre color schemes—brown and orange text, and dark purple text on a light purple background, all in the same paragraph.

It’s insane. It’s unbelievable. I sure couldn’t believe it. But then I saw the one thing that absolutely convince me that there had to be something to it. The one piece of awesomely professional evidence…

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