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. Happy 150th Birthday, Origin of Species! - That’s right. The little book that changed the world, single-handedly rendered even a deist god unnecessary, and made it truly possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist has just turned the Big 1-5-0! CNN’s published a brief retrospective from Richard Dawkins. Suck it, Kirk Cameron!
Then again, CNN also published some creationist nonsense from Stephen Meyer. In his bio, they claim the Discovery Institute “supports research challenging ‘neo-Darwinian theory’ and supports work on the theory of ‘intelligent design.’ “ Of course this isn’t actually wrong because it never says the D.I. actually DOES any research; it just supports the idea of research. Of course cdesign proponentsists have yet to ever present a means of properly testing their claims or of showing any practical applications of their “research.” And of course if you limit your “research” to a taking a specific position on a scientific argument, you’ve already exposed your bias. But let’s not quibble over small details like that.
2. LHC creates its first collisions - They grow up so fast, don’t they. It seems like only a year ago that people were freaking out that it’s going to destroy the world and now our boy’s all grown up and smashing shit. Before you know it, it’ll be married and having its own baby colliders.
4. Iraq bribes citizens to get married – American conservative Christians pay attention. THAT’S TRADITIONAL MARRIAGE. But it’s not just any marriage. The Iraqi government is trying to promote interreligious marriage specifically, which is almost kinda progressive when you think about it, as ill-conceived as the overall plan seems to be.
About a dozen mixed couples will take part in a mass wedding Friday and will receive their $2,000 gifts, Mohammed said. An additional 375 same-sect couples will join the celebration, but they’ll receive $750, Mohammed said. The government wants to help those cash-strapped couples in getting their start, he said.
Did they say “same-sex” couples? Oops, my mistake. I misread it. But at least the government sees value in encouraging hetero-sect-ual relationships in an effort to heal tensions.
5. Michael Jackson’s trapped in someone’s womb! – That’s what expecting parents Dawn Kelley and William Hickman see in Dawn’s latest ultrasound. But even though you don’t think it looks like Michael Jackson, they’re not crazy. Even their six-year-old daughter agrees that it looks like Michael Jackson. And who’d know Michael Jackson better than a small child (That’s right. I went there)? But I guess we won’t know for sure until Dawn starts to feel the baby moon-walking.
To improve science and mathematics education for American children, the White House is recruiting Elmo and Big Bird, video game programmers and thousands of scientists.
I think we all know that The Count was born for this job.
1. Cancer Boy is now cancer-free – As Carl Sagan once wrote, science delivers the goods. Many months ago, I blogged about the continuing saga of Daniel Hauser, the boy with Hodgkin’s lymphoma whose crazy anti-medical mother kidnapped to keep him from being poisoned by his court-ordered chemotherapy, but who later returned home with him. Unfortunately, while the boy was receiving real medical care, he was also being given bogus “alternative” medicine” products, which pretty much guarantees that the medicine denialists won’t give science the credit its due. But what’s most important is that Daniel Hauser is cancer-free and the chemotherapy didn’t poison him to death like the medicine deniers predicted.
2. An economic collapse didn’t occur today, so the world won’t end on Wednesday! – Cause I know you were all worried that it would. Ever since September, I’d been blogging about the constantly moving doomsday goalpost of one really delusional website. First, it predicted the world would end on September 21st. Then that turned into October 21st. Then October 23rd. But now whoever’s running it is wising up and adding conditions. Yesterday, the prediction was that if an economic collapse occured on November 9th, The Rapture would come on November 11th. Well, the Dow Jones went up over 200 points today, so I guess we’re all safe. Phew! That was a close one.
Habibollah Latifi, Ehsan (Esma’il) Fattahian and Sherko Moarefi have all been sentenced to death for “enmity against God” in unconnected cases over the last two years. They are believed to be on death row in a prison in Sanandaj, the provincial capital of Kordestan.
4. Christopher Hitchens and Stephen Fry definitively and demonstrably defeat the Catholic Church in debate – At the start of the debate, 678 people in the audience thought that the Catholic Church was a force for good in the world while 1102 disagreed and 346 were undecided. But by the end, only 268 thought the Catholic Church was a force for good in the world while 1876 disagreed with only 34 left undecided.
1. Walt Disney refunds parents for not making their kids geniuses – Disney is refunding parents for all those “Baby Einstein” videos. Come to think of it, my niece watched them. I wasn’t aware that these videos promised to make kids smart anymore than I was aware Baby Van Gogh promised to turn kids into great artists.
2. The zombie apocalypse has been prevented. . .for now – An Iowa man accused another man of being a zombie, and then punched him…twice. I can only imagine this was because he was following Rule #4, which calls for a “double tap”:
3. Felicia Day does a NASA PSA – Felicia Day, best known for her role in Joss Whedon’s hit internet musical Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog and less known for her starring role in the never-aired episode of Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse (and possibly the show’s best episode), has now she’s managed to somehow up her geek cred even more:
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.
Spokesman Steve Orlando said late last week that the university removed a link to a disaster recovery exercise, which detailed how the school could respond to an outbreak of the undead.
Orlando said officials felt the joke “didn’t really belong” on the site, which also included plans for dealing with hurricanes and pandemics.
Am I the only one who thinks this is some sort of government coverup to leave the public vulnerable to zombie attack in an elaborate plot to reduce the population of the Earth? Wake up, people! The zombie apocalypse is an inside job!!!!
The other day, I read an amusing article in The Onion describing a supposed press conference where Neil Armstrong, first man on the moon, announced that he believed that the Apollo 11 moon landing (the very mission he flew) was a hoax. Of course I found the article rather hilarious because it quoted Armstrong as admitting that he believed it was real until being convinced by conspiracy theorist videos on YouTube and of course, because The Onion is not a real newspaper. It’s a satire on mainstream news.
The other day, I blogged about the latest “purity ring” iPhone app. Well, according to fellow blogger Crispian Jago, there are more woo-centric iPhone apps out there. . .a lot more:
1. Happy 150th Birthday, Origin of Species! - That’s right. The little book that changed the world, single-handedly rendered even a deist god unnecessary, and made it truly possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist has just turned the Big 1-5-0! CNN’s published a brief retrospective from Richard Dawkins. Suck it, Kirk Cameron!
2. LHC creates its first collisions - They grow up so fast, don’t they. It seems like only a year ago that people were freaking out that it’s going to destroy the world and now our boy’s all grown up and smashing shit. Before you know it, it’ll be married and having its own baby colliders.
3. Study finds cannabis little more than placebo in cancer patients – This will no doubt come as an even bigger disappointment to the 4/20 crowd.
4. Iraq bribes citizens to get married – American conservative Christians pay attention. THAT’S TRADITIONAL MARRIAGE. But it’s not just any marriage. The Iraqi government is trying to promote interreligious marriage specifically, which is almost kinda progressive when you think about it, as ill-conceived as the overall plan seems to be.
5. Michael Jackson’s trapped in someone’s womb! – That’s what expecting parents Dawn Kelley and William Hickman see in Dawn’s latest ultrasound. But even though you don’t think it looks like Michael Jackson, they’re not crazy. Even their six-year-old daughter agrees that it looks like Michael Jackson. And who’d know Michael Jackson better than a small child (That’s right. I went there)? But I guess we won’t know for sure until Dawn starts to feel the baby moon-walking.
6. Pennsylvania Avenue turns to Sesame Street to promote math and science -
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