I seem to have become Art—I’ve been rendered by Nemo Ramjet at a fascinating site that contains much strange and alien art, and (warning!) some of a rather sexual nature. Somehow, it does seem fitting, with this nice picture of yours truly bearing a corona of larvae and in the embrace of a cephalopod.
Thanks, Nemo!
The Koufax voting closes at midnight tonight, so this is your last chance: click through the links below and vote. Or, you can just copy and paste the list below and mail it to wampum @ nic-naa.net, with the subject “Koufax”.
And really, it’s encouraged to make an informed vote for the best candidate here, so I will not be at all chagrined if you vote for some other worthy blog. If I lose, though, the orgy* is cancelled and you might as well tear up your invitation.
*And you ought to see the other attendees…va-va-va-voom.
Here’s another bunch who don’t understand science: an article on research on prayer. You know, the creationists are always complaining that all those scientists out there (waves hand vaguely towards the nearest university) are biased and reject supernatural phenomena out of hand, and that their weird metaphysical research program can’t get any funding. Can we just face the fact that there are plenty of crackpot scientists and sloppy bureaucrats in the world, and that lots of nonsense gets funded and studied?
(More below the fold)
Sometimes, I feel very sorry for Paul Nelson. He’s one of the few creationists who actually tries to engage his critics, and I think there’s a very good reason for that: when creationists try to emerge from the hothouse environment of their “think-tanks” and institutions of ignorance, when they stand before audiences that weren’t bussed in from the local fundamentalist church, they tend to get bopped hard. There is a good reason for that, of course —it’s because they say such remarkably silly things. The exceptional thing about Nelson is that he keeps on saying such silly things.
And he’s done it again, in an article full of misconceptions and half-truths about how science works. It’s a sincere attempt to express his beliefs, I will grant him that, but dang if it isn’t astoundingly wrong from top to bottom. Jason Rosenhouse has already flensed it once, so I’m left with little but a few bones to crack, but hey, that’s fun, too.
I’ve been at my local DFL convention all morning, and I think I need some caffeine to scour my brain out a little bit. I don’t think I’m temperamentally suited to politics—too much nitpicking and finagling. But I’m very glad to see we’ve got people here who are willing to do the hard work.
Jesus. Everyone is sending me their local manifestations of Jesus…here’s another one, imbedded in a plank in a deck. And it’s for sale!
It’s a real bargain, too—this Jesus is not your ordinary dime-a-dozen clumsily scrawled Jesus, but is clearly rendered by the ghost of Picasso.
Really…I was only joking about the war on Easter. The wingnuts didn’t have to take it seriously.
What’s worse is that Minnesota may be Ground Zero: this is a real fake sign, so I’m a little concerned that someone is going to find a reason to blame me. While a little plagiarism gets one fired, I’m not sure what the penalty is for starting a culture war.
In related news, property values in St. Paul have just shot upwards.
Ben Domenech has imploded.
That didn’t take long.
Domenech has posted his excuses. Basically, he’s claiming that the plagiarism didn’t count because it happened when he was younger, that the WaPo editors “are convinced by my arguments on many of these issues”, and that he’s only resigning because of the “firestorm”. As is typical, he’s making rationalizations to avoid simply taking responsibility. And then there’s this nonsense:
But all these specifics are beside the point. Considering that all of this happened almost eight years ago, and that there are no files or notes that I’ve kept from that brief stint, it is simply my word against the liberal blogosphere on these examples. It becomes a matter of who you believe.
But for a really gagworthy comment, try this:
To my enemies: I take enormous solace in the fact that you spent this week bashing me, instead of America.
Oh, yeah. He took a bullet…for America!
Scumbag.
Hey, now he’s got something else (besides exhibiting excessive hubris that gets him fired from a job he acquired through Rethuglican connections) in common with George Deutsch: he never graduated from his college. Isn’t it symptomatic of a movement in trouble that they are scraping the bottom of the barrel, grabbing young, unseasoned incompetents and stuffing them into positions for which they are unsuited and unprepared, except perhaps by their ideological leanings?
I worry that these are just the ones who are getting caught. How many young wingnut incompetents are settling into positions of power right now?
Hey, who thinks torture is never justified?
| Catholics | 26% |
| White Protestant | 31% |
| White evangelical | 31% |
| Secular | 41% |
| Total | 32% |
I won’t chew out all the Christians this time (because I take it for granted that religion, especially a death cult, is not a moralizing influence). Instead, I want to know what the hell is wrong with the 59% of my fellow non-religious people who think torture is sometimes acceptable!
I was also mildly amused by this quote at the National Catholic Reporter article:
During Lent especially, he [David Robinson of Pax Christi] says, the image of Jesus, who was tortured to death, should be powerful for Catholics, reminding them that “Christ is being crucified today through the practice of torture.”
After all, if it was good enough for Jesus…
(I was pointed to a post on this survey at Andrew Sullivan, who also has some pithy comments on it.)
