To quote Michael Shermer, I “investigate paranormal claims, pseudoscience and fringe groups, and cults and claims of all kinds between science and pseudoscience, and non-science, and junk science, voodoo science, pathological science, bad science, non-science, and plain old nonsense.”
1. Is god protecting Florida from hurricanes? – Florida Governor Charlie Crist is claiming that the reason there haven’t been any major hurricanes in Florida in the last few years is because he put a prayer in the Western Wall. But of course, how does one define a “major” hurricane? Doesn’t Hurricane Gustov, which caused widespread damage and killed 4 people count as a major hurricane? Plus there have been other tropical storms that have caused great harm as well. And do I really need to point out what a prick Crist’s god must be to make him travel all that way when he could have stopped hurricanes long before then?
At their national convention in Minneapolis, the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America voted to permit gay pastors. This marks one more step towards gay acceptance in a year that brought the legalization of gay marriage to numerous states in the union. See other Christians. You can accept the homosexuality of others and the sky won’t fall. It’s okay. Though why a gay person would want to preach a book that so blatantly condemns them and their behavior is beyond me. Guys, nobody has been more accepting of gays than the atheist community. And we could always use more people on our team, especially those who know the Bible inside and out.
First, even though admitting that she launched an aggressive email campaign where she complained about Mehta to his boss and all of his colleagues (pretty much everyone at the school except Mehta himself), she claims to have never called for him to be fired:
I have never in any context suggested that you should be fired or that you should resign. In fact, I don’t believe the school has any legal right to fire you. You should have fact-checked before you posted that inaccurate statement.
In addition, I have repeatedly stated that you have a First Amendment right to make whatever public statements you want on any topic. I have also made it abundantly clear that my goal is to provide information to District 204 parents–particularly IFI readers-about the nature of the ideas you express and endorse on your public blog so that they can make informed decisions as to whether they want their children to spend a school year under your tutelage.
In my first brief email to your administrators and school board, I did not, as one of your blog commenters suggested, call for you to be fired. I notified them that you made the public, vindictive, irresponsible, and unprofessional suggestion that the Kiss-In would be even better if it took place in front of my home.
True. I can indeed find no actual direct statement calling for the school to fire Mehta, but this is like spreading malicious rumors about a guy to their girlfriend that claim the guy cheated on her and then when confronted about trying to break the couple up, claiming that you never actually suggested she break up with him. It’s moot and the Higgins’ agenda is transparent. If not to have him technically fired, she is clearly suggesting that parents be informed of his communist activ–err, I mean that parents be informed of his atheist activities, that they then be free to have their children pulled out of his classes if they so choose, and that he be effectively blacklisted. And then she again has the audacity to suggest she respects the freedom of speech and expression granted under the First Amendment.
She then goes on to correct his apparent misrepresentation of her position by saying:
You fail to acknowledge a central point that I addressed in my two articles, which is that many teens are unduly influenced by emotion or the cult of personality and are therefore predisposed to look favorably on the ideas of teachers whom they find cool or charismatic or funny or kind or iconoclastic.
If students search your name and come upon your blog, they will be exposed to your endorsement and promotion of ideas that some parents may find deeply troubling. If students have you as their teacher, like you, and develop a relationship with you–as happens often in high school–they will be more likely to look favorably on and be influenced by your ideas than those students who have little or no personal connection to you. This is the reason that many parents care deeply about role models.
It’s the reason there were some recent stories about parents being upset that a high school cheerleading coach posed in her private life for Playboy magazine, and why some parents would not want their children in the class of a teacher who in their free time on a public forum promotes racist views or denies the historicity of the Holocaust.
So because one teacher was unfairly penalized because of a nude photo she posed for in an adult magazine decades earlier in her youth, Higgins wants to that incident to set precedent. But for what? It seems almost as if she’s suggesting that if a teacher does anything, anything at all either in their spare time or in the distant past that might offend anybody at all, the school has some responsibility to air that individual’s dirty laundry at parent/teacher conferences so that parents can decide whether or not the teacher should be forever condemned for opinions and behaviors that the parents don’t agree with.
But no, that’s not what she’s saying at all. As Mehta points out, she’s not condemning any Christians who share her particular point of view even if they lack Mehta’s professionalism and allow those beliefs to spill over into the classroom. She’s only interested in blacklisting those who express different opinions than her. Where was she when everyone else was outraged over the appalling behavior Matthew LaClair observed in his high school History class?
And then of course she points out her own hypocrisy while seeming to be oblivious to it:
It’s probably the same reason that three years ago a well-known homosexual blogger informed my former superintendent that I had been interviewed on Moody Radio on the topic of homosexuality. During my last three years at Deerfield High School, there were more than a few supporters of the normalization of homosexuality who wrote publicly and contacted my administration about what they believed was my unfitness as a role model for students–and I worked in the writing center where I had no classes.
So she was herself the victim of harassment by someone like her who tried to get her blacklisted because of her views! You’d think then that she’d know more than anyone how unfair it is to be judged not by your own merits but by others’ perceptions of your opinions and legal behaviors expressed outside the classroom. But she doesn’t getit. She doesn’t get it AT ALL.
1. Now New Zealand is reporting a 7-times higher rate of measles than last year – The reason is not enough people are getting immunizations to reach herd immunity even though vaccines are absolutely free and readily available in New Zealand. This makes me realize just one more benefit to public healthcare. Antivaccinations will no longer be able to make the stupid claim that vaccines are made and promoted merely to make money. Once vaccines are free to all, what incentive would there be to push vaccination other than legitimate health reasons? Oh, that’s right. They’ll just continue to claim vaccines are poisoning us as part of a mass eugenics plot.
2. WebMD: Medical advice for dummies by dummies – It’s basically what you’re likely to find in Cosmopolitan or Glamour, except packaged as a medical publication with complimentary copies put in doctors office waiting rooms.
3. Croatia bus ad removed after a whole day – The ad reading “No Gods, No Masters” was removed after only being up a day because it allegedly wasn’t in accordance with marketing policy of that city owned company. Then why did they put it up in the first place? And what rule in the marketing policy did the ad exactly violate anyway? Oh, that’s right none. By the company’s own admission, it was taken down because people complained. Yeah, free speech is great as long as it doesn’t offend anyone. Otherwise it must be censored.
Oprah & Dr. Oz against quacks? Well, this is a new one. For once, instead of pushing more woo on people, Beavis & Butthead actually did something right. After discovering that many quacks try to cash in on the legendary influence of the dynamic duo of dumb by falsely claiming endorsements by the Double O’s. Some websites even use voiceovers from actors who sound like Oprah. But a statement released on Wednesday refers to a federal lawsuit:
These defendants are willfully capitalizing on plaintiffs’ valuable reputation and intellectual property rights to lure consumers into ordering their infringing products on the false premise that they have been tested or recommended by Ms Winfrey and/or Dr Oz when they have not. The suit claims the actions had “gravely injured” their reputations.
I kinda got to laugh at that last part about their reputations being “gravely injured.” Obviously these 2 have endorsed products just as absurd as those that Fake Oprah and Fake Oz have endorsed. As promoters of alternative “medicine” and pseudo-science their reputations can’t get any lower than they already are. Real Oprah endorses The Secret.
The other day, I blogged about the mis-named Illinois Family Institute’s Director Laurie Higgins’ insane attempts to get The Friendly Atheist Hemant Mehta fired from his job as a math teacher because he blogs about atheism in his spare time.
“… parents really should spend some time perusing… math teacher, Hemant Mehta’s website to determine whether he is the kind of man with whom they want their children to spend a school year. He absolutely has a First Amendment right to promote any feckless, destructive, offensive, and immoral ideas he wants via his blog, but, as I mentioned in my earlier article, parents have the right not to have him as a teacher and a role model for their children. I want to be very clear about what I’m suggesting: I am suggesting that parents who have serious concerns about Mr. Mehta’s potential influence on their children’s beliefs politely insist that their children be placed in another teacher’s class.”
She seriously wants to empower parents to blacklist any teacher they don’t like for any reason they want. But the best part of her recent attack is here:
“Some parents fail to understand the adolescent mind: they fail to understand that teens are often predisposed to affirm the ideas of adults whom they find cool or personable or funny or iconoclastic. Those parents, no matter what their personal beliefs, will likely be comfortable with their children in Mr. Mehta’s class.
Some parents may be ideological kindred spirits with Mr. Mehta. Those parents may relish the idea of their children being impressed by Mr. Mehta and influenced by his subversive ideas.
But those parents who are troublied by the ideas Mr. Mehta expresses, posts on his blog, and endorses, and who recognize that their teens may be predisposed to look favorably on his ideas merely because they like him, may want to ensure their teens have another math teacher.
It’s all about diversity and choice.”
She’s already conceded that she can find not a single instance of Mehta pushing his atheistic non-beliefs in his classroom and yet now she implies that he is influencing his students with “his subversive ideas.” But she herself has previously said that she admits he is doing no such thing. So WHAT THE FUCK is she talking about?
Would it be out of line to make the race comparison here? Fuck it! I’ll go with the McCarthyist comparison. This is like trying to get a gym teacher fired because in his spare time, I writes harsh criticisms of capitalism and then claiming that it’s because students might look on him as a role model and embrace his communist values even though he never discusses them with his students.
Well, you know what, Ms. Higgins? There are lots of teachers out there, all with their own unique politics, religions, and ideologies. And the mere facts that they have their own opinions about the world, that those opinions aren’t the same as your own, and that they choose to express them in their own spare time does not in any way reflect poorly on their character or on their ability to do their jobs.
So if you really want your child taught in a fascist society, I recommend you move to North Korea. And that you have the audacity to end by saying “It’s all about diversity and choice” shows just what a deluded, hypocritical loony you are.
Posted by mjr256 
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