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. Man ran down “too Westernized” daughter – An Iraqi man alleged ran down his daughter and her friend with a car because he believed she’d become “too Westernized.” The man, Faleh Hassan Almaleki, was last seen in a gray or silver Jeep Grand Cherokee, which I assume was the same car used to run down his daughter, so apparently it still drives. Now if that doesn’t raise sales, I don’t know what will. Too bad the Cash For Clunkers program ended.
She is the executive director for the Charles Simonyi Fund for the arts and sciences which among other things, supports the work of atheist Richard Dawkins. She’s also served on the board of the Discovery Institute, which promotes the idea of intelligent design…
6. Holocaust denier Bishop Richard Williamson faces possible charges – I always hate when I have to defend the rights of Holocaust deniers, expecially ones who are also religious authorities, but sometimes protecting freedom of speech means having to defend horrible people. Even though not about his arrest, I highly recommend Chris Hitchens’ superb defense of David Irving’s work being published because of his passionate defense of even the worst kind of speech.
No, seriously. He actually defended Hitler. He explained that Hitler didn’t want to even get into a war and simply was pushed into it by the Allies because they had the audacity to not give into his commands. And what perfect timing to make such absurd claims given that September 1, was the seventieth anniversary of the German army under Hitler crossing into Poland. A few days later, some of my own family made it out on the last train out of Poland.
But I’m sure Hitler didn’t mean to invade Poland. It’s just one of those things that happens like when you ask a bank teller to give you all their money and when they refuse, you’re forced into pulling out a gun.
Buchanan goes even further and I really don’t have the patience for it, so I’ll just link to Orac’s excellent response and provide a great video of The Young Turks responding to this nonsense:
Today is the seventieth anniversery of the official start of World War II, when the armies of the Third Reich crossed the Polish border. W.H. Auden famously wrote about that day, September 1, 1939. By then the Holocaust had already begun.
Fafarman insists that the Nazis had no viable way to identify Jews from the rest of the population except to say that somebody simply looks Jewish and thus, according to him, no mass hunting down and extermination of Jews could take place. Now even if that were true (just for the sake of argument), is the alleged inability to definitively identify Jews really a deal-breaker when one considers similar behaviors in human history like the Salem Witch Hunts or the witch hunts that continue today in Africa? No. But as the science and skeptical blogger Orac explains, the Nazis did indeed have more efficient ways of identifying Jews:
Apparently, Larry hasn’t heard of the mobile killing units, the Einsatzgruppen, mobile killing units who rounded up Jews and shot them by the hundreds and even thousands. Or how Jews like Ann Frank did indeed hide in the houses of gentiles willing to protect them from the Germans and were indeed found.
. . .
He clearly does not know that the Nazis expended an enormous amount of thought, resources, and effort on disinguishing Jews from non-Jews. In fact, the Nazis did not decide who was and was not a Jew by whether or not they “looked Jewish,” although it is true that Nazi racial hygienists did try to come up with measurements that would allow them to distinguish Jew from non-Jew. Rather, the Nazis enacted the Nuremberg Laws in 1935 in the first place. The first purpose of these laws was to strip Jews of virtually all rights. However, the second purpose was to define who was a Jew and who was Mischling (having Jewish ancestry but not enough to be considered Jewish under Nazi law).In effect the Nuremberg laws systematized the identification of Jews and tried to make it as objective as the Nazis could. Under these laws, a Jew was defined as (1) anyone having three or more Jewish grandparents regardless of whether he self-identified as a Jew or practiced the Jewish religion or (2) anyone having two Jewish grandparents who either:
Practiced the Jewish religion
Were married to a Jew
Had a Jewish parent, even if illegitimate
This latter category of Jews were known as Geltungsjude (“Jews by legal validity”). People who didn’t fall under any of the above conditions but had two Jewish grandparents were Mischling of the first degree, while anyone with only one Jewish grandparent was Mischling of the second degree, “Mischling” meaning “crossbreed” or “mixed.” In any case, the point is that the Nazis had a fairly straightforward definition of who was and was not a Jew based on their defining Jews as a race rather than a religion. In essence, they tried to define Jews by genetics rather than than self-identification or practicing the Jewish religion. True, there may have been gray areas, and there were even legal cases in Nazi Germany over who would and would not be considered a Jew, but it was very, very systematic, and, yes, about as “objective” as such a process could be made. It is also true that the basis of the systematized and objective standards of the Nuremberg Laws were based on a dubious conception of Jews as a race, but they were very systematic.
That’s a pretty solid refutation that’s far better than I could have given, but what puzzles me most of all is Fafarman’s comment regarding two of the film’s characters:
It was very sad about Shosanna and Frederick (pictured) — in different circumstances, they could have had a very good relationship.
Really? Now for those who haven’t seen the movie, this will be pretty meaningless to you. But I very strongly feel that the two characters refered to above could never have had “a very good relationship” under virtually any other circumstances unless history unfolded dramatically different from how it did. Shosanna and Frederick legitimately together? I don’t see it.
Now perhaps for dramatic purposes, Orac treats this Holocaust denier’s blog as particularly delusional compared to much of the other nonsense he regularly encounters. And I have to disagree. Sadly, this blogger strikes me as no more delusional than the typical evolution denier, anti-vaccinationist, moon landing denier, or any other denialist crank. It shows the same unwillingness to do proper research and accept findings that might disconfirm one’s own beliefs.
Okay, so I’m late in talking about the Holocaust Museum attack and everyone already knows. But as Orac has done already, I just wanted to take a moment to emphasize that while the shooter, James W. von Brunn, was a racist, he was also a denialist and grand conspiracy theorist who was convinced that the Holocaust was nothing but propaganda from the big “Jew Conspiracy” and was motivated to take violent action only after he became convinced that nefarious parties were going to take his guns. He described his website, Holy Western Empire (not responding now but available at Archive.org), as. . .
“A new, hard-hitting exposé of the JEW CONSPIRACY to destroy the White gene-pool”
The site is full of some of the most vitriolic anti-Jewish accusations you’ll find anywhere. And Mark Hoofnagle points out that the shooter was also a 9/11 Denialist. As I’ve mentioned before on this blog, it’s textbook denialism/conspiracism to buy into not just one of the many popular grand conspiracy beliefs but many. And although there’s really nothing original about this blog entry anyway, I thought I’d include Hoofnagle’s conclusion, which I totally agree with:
This type of thinking isn’t just unscientific, historically bankrupt, irrational, and just plain crazy, it also leads to extremism as it feeds into persecutory delusions, and as people become more disenfranchised due to their insane beliefs, it eventually will cause violence. This violence, evidenced by shootings loosely directed at liberals and gays like at the Knoxville Unitarian Church, is likely being ratcheted up by the increasingly unhinged conspiracy-mongering coming from the right. Liberals are being described as destroying America, major right-wing media moguls like Andrew Breitbart are spreading conspiracies about the liberal intent to destroy the country, Glenn Beck is spouting off total gibberish about how his country is being destroyed by liberals, etc. This is only going to get worse and the paranoid conspiracy-mongering from the right is stoking the flames.
So while some conspiracists may be fairly benign, von Brunn illustrates the potential danger in such beliefs. There’s no “Jew Conspiracy.” The Holocaust really happened. And nobody was coming to take his guns away. But because he believed that nonsense with such absolute certainty, it led to him becoming a danger to society and to his own undoing as well.
It’s stories like this that remind me why I do what I do. While I express my opinions freely on this blog, I’m not out to make everyone necessarily believe what I believe. What I care about is promoting critical thinking tools that will hopefully help prevent people from devoting their lives to delusional beliefs and from becoming dangerous fanatics like von Brunn.
4/20 is known for many things: Hitlers birthday, the day annoying hippies come out and if they don’t see their shadows, start smoking up, the anniversary of the Columbine tragedy–a trifecta of evil.
“Just briefly remember: today is the 120th anniversary of the birth of the man whose mighty armies ultimately saved Western Europe – and the world – from Bolshevism. Let us never forget.”
Who would have the cajones to make such a statement? Why that would be none other than Holocaust Denie–err, I mean “Holocaust Revisionist” David Irving, a man who has been imprisoned in Germany for “revisionist” views of the Holocaust and who has flat-out denied accusations that he admired Hitler.
Now I’ve blogged about Irving before here and here, when I discussed how I actually supported Christopher Hitchens’ criticisms of the publishers who backed out after initially agreeing to publish Irving’s nonsense. Just because I defend the man’s right to spout out his utter nonsense, it doesn’t mean he’s not a repulsive embarrassment to the entire human race.
Bishop Richard Williamson, who is now in England, issued a statement Thursday saying he regretted making the remarks. But he did not retract them or say he had changed his mind about the Holocaust.
You must have thought the Catholic Church was stupid, but I’ll have you know that just because the Catholic Church employs individuals to perform actual exorcisms and to investigate to determine if the face of Jesus on a taco is a legitimate miracle, that doesn’t make them–wait, where was I going with that again? I kinda lost my train of thought after the whole exorcism thing.
Now for those who forgot what Williamson had actually said,
In the Swedish interview, which was broadcast in January but apparently recorded earlier, Williamson said, “I believe that the historical evidence is strongly against — is hugely against — 6 million Jews having been deliberately gassed in gas chambers as a deliberate policy of Adolf Hitler. I believe there were no gas chambers.”
Not Mississippi too? – The state is introducing yet another textbook disclaimer bill warning children of the dangerous learning contained inside. NOOOOOOOOO!!! Protect the children!!
But Texas on the other hand might soon be safe again from creationists – The final proposed science standards for the state actually strengthen science and deprive creationists of their favorite tool, language manipulation. Way to go y’all in Texas! I am slightly less afraid of your state.
Bus ath-vertising spreads to Italy and Spain – I just posted the other day about how godless Spain has become but now we’re entering even into Pope-territory. Speaking of which, wouldn’t it be awesome if the Pope-mobile broke down and he was spotted on a bus with an atheist advertisement along the side?
“If you’re not Christian, you’re going to die” – Okay, obviously very few religious people in the U.S. are this nuts but some lunatic stormed a ski resort in Colorado and killed 1 person. He’s alleged to have shouted the above quotation. Make of it what you will.
AUTISM NEWS:
Autism test could “hit maths skills” – BBC reports that prenatal testing for autism is being developed and with that comes a possibility for prenatal treatment. But this could result in less math geniuses.
ABC trying to make up for the awful first episode of Eli Stone? – Last year, ABC introduced a new show called Eli Stone. Sadly the premiere episode promoted all sorts of woo including the myth that vaccines cause autism. ABC’s only response to the many critics who wrote the network prior to the airing of the episode was to include a little disclaimer at the end of the episode. Well a show on ABC that’d I’d never watched until tonight, Private Practice, addressed this issue from the medical perspective. And although the show wasn’t nearly as preachy as the Eli Stone episode, they definitely came out in favor of vaccines and didn’t pander to the kooks. For that I commend those who worked on this show for taking a position that without doubt will lead to tons of hate mail.
RANDOM WOO:
Glastonbury, England is actually afraid of Wi-Fi - Oh no, internet without a wire! Run for your lives! Give me a break. I wonder if they also think the voices on the other end of their telephones are trapped evil spirits.
CNN promoting the CAM Scam? – Afraid so, thanks to the network’s senior medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen
It turns out only about 58% of black voters supported the ban.
AND NOW FOR A MOMENT OF SCIENCE:
‘Tetris’ May Help Reduce Traumatic Flashbacks – “Playing ‘Tetris’ after traumatic events could reduce the flashbacks experienced in post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), preliminary research by Oxford University psychologists suggests.”
Human Antibodies Take ‘Evolutionary Leaps’ – “With cold and flu season in full swing, the fact that viruses and bacteria rapidly evolve is apparent with every sneeze, sniffle, and cough. A new report explains for the first time how humans keep up with microbes by rearranging the genes that make antibodies to foreign invaders. This research fills a significant gap in our understanding of how the immune system helps us survive.”
TV watching possibly linked to autism - “Cornell University researchers are reporting what appears to be a statistically significant relationship between autism rates and television watching by children under the age of 3.” This is the kind of thing you get when you confuse correlation with causation. You could make the same claim about the rise of the internet correlation with the rise of autism except for the fact that there is no proven rise in autism at all. We’ve broadened the definition of autism and made it more visible, but there still is no proof that autism is on the rise or that it is “an epidemic.”
NASA turns 50 Today! – On this day in 1958, President Dwight Eisenhower signed into law legislation creating the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. This is another example of why it’s important for a president to have an understanding of science. Just like presidential administrations have foreign policies, they have science policies. Presidents often make major decisions that have lasting effects on the direction of science.
City Workers in Birmingham are not reading this right now -The Birmingham City Council has installed blocking software on their computers that block out atheist websites. And atheist content isn’t alone on the blocked list. The following subjects are blocked: “witchcraft or Satanism” and “occult practices, atheistic views, voodoo rituals or any other form of mysticism”.
How YOU can put evolution back into museums -Colin Purrington provides a list of helpful ideas on how the average person can help promote further emphasis on evolution in museums. Remember: only you can prevent creationist nonsense! (Note: This is less likely to work in art museums)
An English Holocaust Denier In New York -Infamous Holocaust David Irving after being released from Austrian jail for the crime of “trivializing the Holocaust” (that for the record, is something I don’t think should be a crime), is touring the U.S. to spread his unique brand of nonsense and Anti-Semitism. Along for the ride is his friend and partner in crime, Michael Santamauro (owner of the New York-based roommate service roommatefinders.com), who specifically aided Irving in tricking a church’s priest into hosting the lecture by claiming the speaker was the leader of an anodyne “book club.” This news even managed to get The Huffington Post to take time away from their busy anti-vaccine propaganda, usually provided by David Kirby to publish an article by Max Blumenthal about David Irving’s recent visit.
Another important part that’s necessary to comment on is the role Christopher Hitchens plays in the story. Hitchens had in the past published what some have called a favorable article on Irving and Irving has himself claimed that he and Hitchens are friends. Apparently though, nobody told Hitchens this, as he’s written an essay where he rips Irving apart.
And now a moment of science:
Amazon Insect Diversity Due To Ice Age? -”Ice age climate change and ancient flooding–but not barriers created by rivers–may have promoted the evolution of new insect species in the Amazon region of South America, a new study suggests.”
1. Man ran down “too Westernized” daughter – An Iraqi man alleged ran down his daughter and her friend with a car because he believed she’d become “too Westernized.” The man, Faleh Hassan Almaleki, was last seen in a gray or silver Jeep Grand Cherokee, which I assume was the same car used to run down his daughter, so apparently it still drives. Now if that doesn’t raise sales, I don’t know what will. Too bad the Cash For Clunkers program ended.
2. Can a Japanese algorithm predict when you’re going to die? – I wouldn’t bet on it, but you gotta love the headline.
6. Holocaust denier Bishop Richard Williamson faces possible charges – I always hate when I have to defend the rights of Holocaust deniers, expecially ones who are also religious authorities, but sometimes protecting freedom of speech means having to defend horrible people. Even though not about his arrest, I highly recommend Chris Hitchens’ superb defense of David Irving’s work being published because of his passionate defense of even the worst kind of speech.
Posted by mjr256 
Posted by mjr256 
Posted by mjr256 
Not Mississippi too?
8 reasons you should keep Coke away from your vagina