Location: Surreality, Have Fun Will Travel, Past Midnight before a Workday
Master's Degree holder, telecommuting from the hot tub, proud Darwinian Dawkobot, and pirate librarian belly-dancer bohemian secret agent scribe on a mission to rescue bloggers from the wholesome clutches of the pious backstabbing girl fridays of the world.
Fossils, Bones and Primates: Enriching High School Teaching
I attended the science teachers' workshop at the American Association of Physical Anthropology Annual Meeting, and met educators, graduate students, and other colleagues from around the area and from the Smithsonian (for which I have a special place in my heart). The half-day workshop focused on equipping educators with training modules that incorporated the latest research and discoveries in human evolutionary biology, paleoanthropology, primatology, and forensics.
I hope to turn this into a published article, like my article about the presentation on the Brooklyn Public Library's Human Genome Project Community Conversations curriculum at last year's American Library Association conference (to be published soon).
Much of the information was old news to me, and some of it revealed gaps in my knowledge, but the session focused on effective means of communicating scientific nuance to high school students, who can come away from their science classes looking for a neat linear succession of fossils ("This evolved from this, and this evolved from this," etc.) and who could reinforce rather than question their own assumptions about skin color variation and "race," since a person's so-called "race" is so immediately apparent to us.
An important point that can get lost in teaching human evolution is that other primates are not "failed humans," but evolved creatures in their own right. Our cousins have their own place in the ecosystem and evolved alongside us. Your cousin is not "striving" to become you! Evolution is messy, not a straight-line process, and not aiming for us; Homo sapiens got lucky, and we are the one human species left over. We did not "win" anything; if anything, other species of humans lasted longer than we likely will.
The teachers expressed particular concern about their difficulties in getting teenagers in particular to see that race is a social construct, whereas skin color variation is not an accurate indicator of ethnicity. There is greater skin color variation within so-called "races" than between them. Laying down skin color tones in a line visually reinforces the fact that skin color exists on a continuum, even within families. Unlike eye and hair color, skin color is not determined by a simple gene pairing but by an array of genes, and it is not the case that lighter-skinned indigenous people were always found in the higher latitudes, whereas darker-skinned indigenous people were clustered around the equator. Different ethnicities co-evolved with their ability to absorb and retain certain vitamins, with their diet, with their ability or not to tolerate heat or cold, and these factor into skin color.
It was particularly instructive to me that most of the questions in the Q&A focused on practical needs, such as ways for teachers to collaborate, to communicate effectively to their students, to find sources of funding, and to keep up with the latest research. Creationism was brought up only at the very end, and most of the people in the room seemed to have the resources that they needed to deal with classroom disruptions or upset parents. Actually, one educator stated that her time at a science table during a fair in Iowa was boring; farmers especially accept evolution and do not find it to be "controversial."
If anything, I have long suspected that ID has made inroads with youth who are estranged from the land and from animals, who see food as something that comes from the grocery store rather than from the land, who do not get the chance to observe that each animal is a genetic individual, and who cannot imagine how heredity works. I am not inspired by the idea that nature was "manufactured" in the same manner that the Coca-Cola Company manufactures soda pop. The idea of children seeing themselves as commodities of a manufacturer deity strikes me as compatible with the corporate agenda to turn them into consumers, to make them see themselves as people who wear this or that corporate brand, who root for this or that corporate sports team, and who are easily swayed by this or that corporate scare tactic.
Food for thought: creationism/ID remains a concern, but it is not the biggest concern in teaching evolution today; and cultivating media literacy--seeing through the clever tactics of advertisers and anyone else with an agenda--in young people is related to teaching science effectively. Certainly this has become more evident to me as the proponents of ID try to adopt a "hip, now, new generation" style of marketing. (Could little sayings on cans of Faygo be far behind?)
UPDATED: Note the post name correction. *Uggghhh* Excuse me, I marvelously cannot type lately. (How I aced a recent typing test with 98 percent accuracy is beyond me.) --- Kent Hovind's diss--um, er, ertation, if you want to call it that, is now online. I loaded it onto my Kindle, which has new PDF-reading ability, and began the Text-to-Speech function.
When I read, "As an evangelist, God has given me..." (was God the evangelist?) I knew I was in for the long haul. My Kindle, in fact, started reading aloud in two ways: first in its normal voice, and then, in a silly high pitched whine.
Rather like that. Then, it let out a gasp and refused to read further unless I gave it some chocolate. Nobody else touches my chocolate!
I looked at the page (74) and read for myself (otherwise, I would never have believed it):
Bring back a Mars rock or a Jupiter rock, I'll eat it or lick it.
The best. Line. In a "dissertation." Ever! Bwahaha! My Kindle now demands pop-rocks.
Where can I find pop-rocks? I haven't seen those things in years. I offered to go to the Science Museum and pick up some freeze-dried ice cream, but Kindle won't hear of it.
page 87: "God created the plants on day three before he created the sun on day four. If you think plants are going to survive billions of years without the sun, you need to study more biology." Now, how can you argue with that? Bwahaha!
This is what I received in reply to a comment I made about PZ being expelled from the preview of Expelled last year. It from some nutjob in Sweden called talitha00cumi.
Amused Child [my YouTube moniker], you're lying through your false teeth, bro. NO ONE was thrown out. Not PZ, not anyone!
Do you need to lie to get attention? Were you neglected as a child and now crave any sort of attention you can get?
PZ was one of the childish, irresponsible ones, and he was warned that he'd be throw out if he didn't behave, but he was never thrown out.
Stop lying.
WTF? I told this creepy piece of work that I considered these comments defamation and that I wanted an apology. Holy shit, I'm totally going to hire a lawyer if that's what it takes! This person does seem to be confused between the preview of Expelled and the visit to the Creation Museum - except that this ding-dong has been corrected on that account several times! Nevertheless this person wrote back:
Not false [his/her statements]; true. Totally.
Offensive, perhaps, but true. This silliness NEVER HAPPENED! One person who filmed a private conversation was asked to stop. He wouldn't. He was asked to leave. PZ was warned many times for his bad behavior, and spread the rumor that he was "expelled." He wasn't.
The truth hurts - but only if you prefer lies.
Again, WTF? No one can be this confused. It seems to be the work of a Lone Stranger rather than any coordinated effort, but it certainly sets a new standard for revisionism. It's really surprising because this person is all over the internet and while s/he is religiously fanatical ("Catholics aren't Christians" and all that - I hate that shit), s/he doesn't get vicious, until s/he replied to me. And it pisses me off! I've called twice for an apology - I think that's the least I should get for being called a liar.
"wow. Funny. The guy must be a total jerk and was expected to disrupt the film. Dickie Dawkins can be a total jerk, but he's dignified enough to keep silent during a film, I'm sure.
Did anyone find out why the guy wasn't allowed in? Or are you all just guessing based on... knee-jerk reactions and empty heads?
Just a lil question."
I have a lil question, too. Where's my apology, you hypocritical wonder?
Kristine said... Rene, here's the kind of ugly, smug, ignoramous mentality you and your Creation Museum are turning out: Satan Created Evolution.Proud of yourself?
[The link is now broken - for reasons I'll give below - but it was to a video by VenomFangX entitled "Satan Created Evolution."]
Rene' said... All, If you had no vitriol in your heart for religion or Christianity in particular, you would have reported only that --in your opinion Mr. ham is wrong -- and not used such harsh terms that make you the intolerant crowd. You know the type, the ones who ridiculed Mr. Darwin for his theory. Apparently, Mr. Ham is in the same boat as Darwin, he has committed sacrilege against your god -- you. There is not and never will be any conclusive proof that would prove evolution it is nothing more than a theory, requiring faith. Conversely, I will never convince you that God is real and He sent His Son to die on the cross for our sins so that we may spend eternity with Him. God would never use categorical proof, for there would be no faith, God, for whatever reason, needs us to be faithful not convinced. I envy you --- in my opinion -- yours is the greater faith. To believe that life sprang from nothing -- without the help of the Creator, that requires more faith than I could ever possess. I know that your god, you, should be very pleased with yourselves. Rene
Her name was Asia McGowan and she was an aspiring dancer and actress.
Anthony Powell was a bully who posted videos on You Tube about how "evolution is a lie" and "women should be submissive to their man."
Then there is the Sunday School teacher who killed Sandra Cantu (her grandfather had the nerve to bitch about what the investigation was doing to the "image" of his church, and now she's up for a rape charge, too - yuck!).
Rene, anything to say? Michael Ruse, do you have something to add? Being ignorant is romantic - right? Salt of the earth. Kind of like how being poor is "exciting."
Ken Ham is not only wrong, he is dangerous. VenomFangX is not only wrong, he is dangerous. Anthony Powell was not only wrong - he was tragically dangerous, because he didn't have to take an innocent woman along with him - and he is also living proof that a belief in hell doesn't prevent anyone from committing evil.
That's why Jerry Falwell was dangerous. And why Pat Robertson is dangerous. And why Peter Popoff - who James Randi unmasked nearly three decades ago - is back (as Randi resignedly admitted in his speech at the CFI World Conference) on the BET Channel doing fake healings, causing people to avoid medical treatment en masse, and he is still dangerous. Michael Ruse, are you paying attention?
As for "me, my god, me," I simply don't believe in something that does not exist. So I don't believe in "my god, me," but just in me. The way that you should simply believe in yourself. Each person should.
High dingbat quotient today. I just can't let this one go: Someone named Tom Frame has written in the Sydney Morning Herald that Darwinists should be "honest" with everyone:
The problem I face is weariness with science-based dialogue partners like Richard Dawkins. It surprises me he is not chided for his innate scientific conservatism and metaphysical complacency. He won't take his depiction of Darwinism to logical conclusions. A dedicated Darwinian would welcome imperialism, genocide, mass deportation, ethnic cleansing, eugenics, euthanasia, forced sterilisations and infanticide. Publicly, he advocates none of them.
Okay, I'll give in and also admit that, as a dedicated Newtonian (I even named my cat after him), I also advocate everyone jumping off of a cliff! But Tom Frame first.
Honestly, how stupid can a person be? There is nothing that is not evolution. You can't "violate" evolution with your socio-political views any more than you can "violate" gravity. Does Frame think that airplane pilots are violating gravity by flying planes? (Sadly, he probably does. He's probably that confused.) If you care for the sick and the weak, you create an environment in which they get better and stronger. Duh. For pity's sake, the Neanderthals cared for and fed their elderly and infirm. Evolution tends toward ecological coexistence and equilibrium, not savagery. (Remember the Galapagos.)
Should beavers also embrace genocide, because after thousands of years of building beaver dams they are incapable of surviving without their structures, and have thus become soft and lazy and "unfit"? Should deer own up to the fact that, well, they've become dependent on their antlers, and are letting into the gene pool "unfit" members would could not have survived without those pointed, technologically advanced weapons? Should bees admit that they've become pansies, toiling on a hive all day instead of being wild and free like the badass, biker drones? I mean, how ridiculous!
If I were to own up to the fact that I do consider some people to be "superior" to others, I think creationists would be surprised to find people with autism spectrum and mental retardation - who are also avid library users - at the top of my hierarchy, and "normal" spoiled brats with fast cars, early acne prevention/nose jobs/breast augmentation, princessy attitudes, spray-on tans, nonexistent belly fat, and daily tantrums due to entitlement syndrome decidedly on my "unfit" list.
(Bwahaha! My one and only car was blue! Of course, it was a 1976 Buick station wagon.)
It's my personal belief that social "Darwinism" sprang up to hold back the implications of evolutionary theory, precisely because it suggested that the poor and the nonwhite had better survival skills than the fragile elite of the Victorian Age, and rich throwaways like our little MacKenzie above. But anyway.
More idiot news: Alan Keyes has a blog. Yes, that Alan Keyes.
*Suppresses major nacho urge*
In fact, Jesus Christ wouldn't even create Barack Obama! Because he's the anti-Christ, you know. *groan*
I'm not linking to Keyes's blaahhhg - you can get there via Ed's site. Just be aware - viewing Alan Keyes' literary glossolalia is painful for more reasons than one. The seizure-inducing colors alone might actually make you want to jump off a cliff.
"Someday a Place for Us" - the History of Creationism
Happy Darwin Day! In the interests of inclusiveness, let's give a history of the "controversy," shall we?
The effectiveness of a doctrine does not come from its meaning but from its certitude. No doctrine however profound and sublime will be effective unless it is presented as the embodiment of the one and only truth… If a doctrine is not unintelligible, it has to be vague; and if neither unintelligible nor vague, it has to be unverifiable. One has to get to heaven or the distant future to determine the truth of an effective doctrine. When some part of a doctrine is relatively simple, there is a tendency among the faithful to complicate and obscure it. Simple words are made pregnant with meaning and made to look like symbols in a secret message. There is thus an illiterate air about the most literate true believer. He seems to use words as if he were ignorant of their true meaning. Hence, too, his taste for quibbling, hair-splitting and scholastic tortuousness. -Eric Hoffer, The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements, pp. 80-81, 1951
The Long History of the Demise of Evolution 1825: We are going to overthrow physical philosophy and the old earth concept. (Granville Penn) 1840: We are going to overthrow physical philosophy and the old earth concept. (John Murray)
22 November 1859: Origin of Species goes on sale and is a best-seller
1860: Charles Darwin’s book will be forgotten in a few years. (Richard Owen)
1866: Gregor Mendel’s seminal paper on heredity, “Experiments on Plant Hybridization,” is published in Proceedings of the Natural History Society of Brünn. Unfortunately, Darwin never sees this paper and despairs of finding the actual mechanism of heredity and natural selection. Mendel’s work languishes largely unknown, cited only three times in the next 35 years.
1871: We will overthrow astronomy, evolution, and the old earth concept. (Patrick M’Farlane) 1878: We will overthrow evolution once it “whimsically” concludes that man was actually descended from a dog. (Thomas Cooper)
1882: Charles Darwin dies. 1884: Gregor Mendel dies.
1894: Evolution’s influence is “ebbing.” (J. William Dawson) 1895: We will overthrow “flippancy” about the Flood. (F. R. Wegg-Prosser)
1900: Mendel’s work is rediscovered and the ensuing new field of genetics finally yields genotypic insights into natural selection
1903: “[T]he beginning of the end [of evolution] is at hand.” (Prof. Zockler) 1904: We will overthrow evolution. (Eberhard Dennert and Luther Tracy Townsend) 1912: We will overthrow “flippancy” about the Flood. (George Frederick Wright) 1924: We will overthrow evolution, the old earth concept, and this “flippancy” about the Flood. (George McCready Price) 1929 We will overthrow evolution. (Harold W. Clark)
1935: We will overthrow evolution and all the evidence for it. (Harry Rimmer) 1940: Evolution and all “false science” is in decline. We will overthrow evolution, the old earth concept, and this “flippancy” about the Flood. (L. Allen Higley)
1961: “I concede micro-evolution, of course.” (Evan Shute) 1963: We will overthrow the Modern Synthesis, the old earth concept, and this “flippancy” about the Flood. (Henry Morris)
1968: Epperson v. Arkansas – the prohibition against teaching of evolution in Arkansas schools violates the Fourteenth Amendment
1971: Niles Eldridge and Stephen Jay Gould present their paper on evolution via Punctuated Equilibrium (P.E.) at the Annual Meeting of the Geological Society of America. Creationists attempt to seize on P.E. as “proof against evolution”
1975: “There are many and varied theories of evolution today, but scientists who reject divine creation are beset with serious problems and these are being increasingly recognized.” (Clifford Wilson) 1976: We will overthrow the Modern Synthesis, the old earth concept, and this “flippancy” about the Flood. (Duane T. Gish)
1977: Stephen Jay Gould summarizes P.E. in Natural History magazine
1980: We will overthrow the Modern Synthesis. (Scott M. Huse)
1982: McLean v. Arkansas Board of Education – “equal time” for “creation science” is an attempt by a small group to “foist its religious beliefs on others” in violation of the the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.
1984: We will overthrow the Modern Synthesis, the old earth concept, and this “flippancy” about the Flood. (Henry M. Morris) 1987: “Every major pillar of Evolution has crumbled in the decade of the ‘80’s. (D. James Kennedy)
1987: Unfortunately for Mr. Kennedy, Edward v. Aguillard put the last nail in the coffin of “creation science” in schools – Louisiana’s “Balanced Treatment for Creation-Science and Evolution-Science in Public School Instruction” violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.
1988: More and more scientists are flocking to “abandon” evolution! (Luther D. Sunderland) 1989: More and more scientists are flocking to “abandon” the Modern Synthesis, geology (the old earth concept), and this “flippancy” about the Flood! (Henry M. Morris, not to be outdone)
1990: More and more scientists are flocking to “abandon” evolution! (Mark Looy) 1991: We will overthrow the Big Bang Theory, the Modern Synthesis, the old earth concept, and this “flippancy” about the Flood. (Duane T. Gish) 1993: Intelligent Design will replace natural selection. But “[t]his not an argument against Darwinian evolution.” (Percival Davis and Dean H. Kenyon) 1993: “Evolution theory itself has now collapsed under scientific scrutiny!” (T. V. Varughese) 1994: We will overthrow the Modern Synthesis and the old earth concept. (John D. Morris) 1994: We will overthrow the Big Bang Theory, the Modern Synthesis, the old earth concept, and this “flippancy” about the Flood. (Don Boys) 1995: We will overthrow the Big Bang Theory, the Modern Synthesis, the old earth concept, and this “flippancy” about the Flood. (Henry M. Morris) 1995: We will overthrow “Darwinism.” (Philip E. Johnson (not the architect)) 1996: We will scientifically prove God’s ability to transcend science (Hugh Ross) 1996: Behe’s works will overthrow “Darwinism.” (Philip E. Johnson)
December 20, 1996: Carl Sagan dies.
1997: “In the not-so-distant future, when someone of the stature of a Stephen Jay Gould or the late Carl Sagan holds a press conference to announce he has finally reached the conclusion that evolution is scientifically bankrupt, other scientists will quickly follow suit. It’ll resemble rats deserting a sinking ship.” (David Buckna)
1997: We will overthrow the Big Bang Theory, the Modern Synthesis, geology (the old earth concept), and this “flippancy” about the Flood. (poor Henry Morris again)
1998: “Darwin gave us a creation story, one in which God was absent and undirected natural processes did all the work. That creation story has held sway for more than a hundred years. It is now on the way out. When it goes, so will all the edifices that have been built on its foundation.” (William A. Dembski)
1998: Evolution, once “impregnable,” is “sinking.”. (Philip Johnson, apparently unaware that he’s setting a bad precedent by affirming, as no other creationist did (as you can see from the above), the enduring strength of evolutionary theory)
1999: “’Yes,’ their teachers will be obliged to inform them, ‘a lot of people back in those unfortunate days had gotten it into their silly heads that the whole world and everything in it had somehow evolved by accident, you see. It was all rather strange.’” (The silly head of Patrick Henry Reardon)
1999: The Discovery Institute’s Wedge Document is leaked and reveals the DI’s five-year strategy, which includes various publicity campaigns but no scientific research.
2000: More and more scientists are flocking to “abandon” evolution! (Ray Bohlin) 2001: Shifting the emphasis from the evidence in the fossil record to the evidence in DNA and genetics shows that more and more scientists are flocking to “abandon” evolution! (the tragic Henry Morris, trying to keep up) 2001: The Discovery Institute initiates its “Scientific Dissent from Darwin” petition to gather signatures of legitimate scientists who oppose evolution 2001: “Intellectual honesty will soon force many scientists to abandon Darwin’s theory of the evolution of species in exchange for intelligent design or outright Biblical creation.” (Gregory J. Brewer)
2002: “Creation scientists may be in the minority so far [emphasis mine], but their number is growing, and most of them (like this writer) were evolutionists at one time, having changed to creationism at least in part because of what they decided was the weight of scientific evidence.” (Henry Morris, conceding a previous acceptance of evolutionary theory which he had heretofore not claimed) 2002: More and more scientists are flocking to “abandon” evolution! (Ralph O. Muncaster) 2002: “Here’s a prediction. Universal CD [common descent] will be gasping for breath in two or three years, if not sooner.” (Paul Nelson, setting a bad precedent in departing from vagueness and unverifiability)
2002: Stephen Jay Gould dies
2003: “In fact, the common presupposition that evolution is right may soon be behind us.” (Ralph O. Muncaster) 2003: I think there is some probability that the entire paradigm may come crashing down at some time in the future [emphasis mine].” (Henry F. Schaefer) 2003: “The only thing holding the tattered theory of evolution together is the powerful desire of millions of people to hold on to the notion of evolution regardless of its scientific weakness, because the alternative is unthinkable to its practitioners.” (Grant R. Jeffrey)
February 16, 2003 - “Project Steve” is launched as a tongue-in-cheek parody of the creationist petition, and gathers more than 700 scientists named “Steve” in support of teaching evolution in science classes
2004: “In the next five years, molecular Darwinism – the idea that Darwinian processes can produce complex molecular structures at the subcellular level – will be dead [emphasis mine].” (William A. Dembski, stupidly making a specific prediction and in the process, contradicting his previous claim that he is not anti-evolution)
2004: Michael Zimmerman initiates the Clergy Letter Project rejecting creationism and intelligent design. As of September 26, 2008, the Clergy Letter Project had collected 11,685 signatures of U.S. Christian clergy.
December 21, 2005: In Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School Board, Judge John E. Jones III rules: “The overwhelming evidence is that Intelligent Design is a religious view, a mere re-labeling of creationism and not a scientific theory. It is an extension of the Fundamentalists’ view that one must either accept the literal interpretation of Genesis or else believe in the godless system of evolution.”
The court case is hereafter known as “Kitzmass!”
“Those who disagree with our holding will likely mark it as the product of an activist judge. If so, they will have erred as this is manifestly not an activist Court. Rather, this case came to us as the result of the activism of an ill-informed faction on a school board, aided by a national public interest law firm eager to find a constitutional test case on ID, who in combination drove the Board to adopt an imprudent and ultimately unconstitutional policy. The breathtaking inanity of the Board’s decision is evident when considered against the factual backdrop which has now been fully revealed through this trial. The students, parents, and teachers of the Dover Area School District deserved better than to be dragged into this legal maelstrom, with its resulting utter waste of monetary and personal resources.”
2006: Phyllis Schlafly lambasts Judge Jones for refusing to “hit one for our team.” Jones also receives death threats. 2006: Dembski predicts: “Evolution will be dead in ten years.” His foolhardiness garners a shimmy. As of July 2007, the Discovery Institute’s list of “Scientific Dissent from Darwin” gathers eight “Steves” and as of August 2008, garners 761 names, many of whom are not active scientists, with some who have never worked as scientists. Also, visiting scholars at prestigious institutions are listed as affiliated with that institution rather than their true affiliation.
2008: Ben Stein makes and promotes the film Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. Stein redefines intelligent design as “the fact that God made everything” and “Darwinism” as everything from evolution to the Big Bang to galaxy formation to plate tectonics to chaos theory to abiogenesis to a conspiracy by “Darwinists” to stifle dissent. In essence, Stein went even farther than Henry Morris ever did and claimed: We’re going to overthrow evolution, geology, astronomy, paleontology, chemistry, physics, ecology, climate science, the university application process, the scholarly peer-review process, public relations, and who knows, even economics itself. Good luck with that.
The Discovery Institute tries to contain the damage done to intelligent design by Ben Stein.
2009: Creationism, as it was in 1988, is in disarray: Ben Stein won’t join Michael Moore as an Oscar nominee, the ID advocates quarrel on their own blog about their FAQ page (I call it their FAUX or FAUQ page), and try to redefine so-called “intelligent agency” as non-supernatural. Yeah, right. Here’s what I had to say about an Intelligent Designer who is not supernatural. Then I had a change of heart and admitted that animal agency could be supernatural. However, I don't think the Judeo-Christian intelligent design advocates would be too thrilled to have animals as gods.
(By the way, does that appeal to anyone who believes in God? That the Intelligent Designer is not supernatural? Just asking.)
Such is the bizarre, twisted evolution of creationism: from a story of a 6-day creation of a Creator God to an Intelligent Agent who sometimes “acts stupidly” and is not supernatural. Gee, you may as well accept unguided natural selection. At least it doesn't act stupidly.
Stupid design? What’s next? Senior Moment design? Unconscious design by an unconscious agency? Brahman born from the cosmic egg and dreaming our reality? Well, at least that would be more palatable than religious fundamentalism; after all, the Hindus hold many creation myths simultaneously and take none literally.
So why do I pay so much attention to creationists? Well, why does anybody watch any soap opera? ;-) It's fun.
Who believed this would happen? Me, for one, and Peter Schiff. (However, if Schiff envisioned a time frame for the collapse, I had no clue about such a steep slide happening so quickly. However, by the time that I received the news that my hours were to be cut, I was not surprised at all.)
Who didn't believe it? Ben Stein, naturally (or supernaturally), and his conservative friends at Faux News. Ben Stein was and is as wrong on the economy as he is on evolution and science. My evidence? This video from August 2006-2007. It's an amazing document:
Ben Stein: "The financials, as I keep saying, are just super-bargains [unintelligible] I predict with Merril Lynch, which is an astonishingly well-run company..." Holy crap, can you believe that he said that?
Also: "Subprime is a tiny, tiny, blip [in the market]." Look at these weasles laugh at Schiff! Who's crying now, Stein?
Did you follow Ben Stein's and Charles Payne's advice and eschewed Canadian for "patriotic" American stocks? Then I'm sorry for you. Maybe you should sue.
If you had $100 million or $100,000 a year ago and now you have a lot less [yeah, it's rough losing $100 million or $100,000 in overvalued stocks, isn't it, my fellow Americans? Most people have investments like that, right?], you are still the same person. You are not a balance sheet, at least not one denominated in money, as was explained to me recently. Losing and making money are not moral issues so long as you are being honest. [emphasis mine - we'll get to Stein's honesty in a moment] You may have a lot less money as this year ends than you did two years ago. But you are just as good or bad a person as you were then. It is a myth that money determines who you are, and if you have gotten over that myth by now, then 2008 will have been a very good year.
Awww, isn't that sweet, America? Money doesn't determine how good a person you are! Aren't you so glad that a privileged, whiny rich guy told you that?
That's a fine and dandy sentiment, Ben, but whoever your intended audience is, they sure as hell don't bill themselves as financial geniuses/prophets and dispense terrible financial advice just before a crash, and just after accusing the scientific and academic communities of this nation of trying to gas en masse Jewish babies. Yes, I'm sure the average Joe or Jane really appreciates believing your shitty advice above, Stein, and losing his or her life's savings only to see you patronize them that just because you're a fucking failure, they're not bad people!
And as for the rest of this pompous and self-stroking little column in the New York Times, well, I'm sorry, but I don't believe one word of your story, Ben Stein! I think this is a ridiculous tale:
ABOUT two years ago, a little delegation from a major investment bank arrived at my home in Beverly Hills. These nice young people were from the bank’s “wealth management division.” I told them straight away that I didn’t have anywhere near enough wealth to make their trip worth their time, but they smilingly insisted that we could help each other.
They told me that if I invested a certain sum with them, they would make sure that a large chunk of it was managed by a money manager of stupendous acumen. This genius, so they said, never lost money. He did better in up markets than in down markets, but even in down markets he did well. They said he used a strategy of buying stocks and hedging with options.
I protested that a perfect hedge would not allow making any money, because money made on the one side would be lost on the other. They assured me that this genius had found a way to spot market inefficiencies and, indeed, to make money off a perfect hedge.
I thanked them for their time and promptly looked up Bernard Madoff online. Nothing I saw was even a bit convincing that he had made a breakthrough in financial theory. Besides, this large financial firm was going to charge me roughly 2 percent to put my money with Mr. Madoff’s firm. I could invest my few shekels with Warren Buffett for no management fee at all.
I checked with my investment gurus, Phil DeMuth, Raymond J. Lucia and Kevin Hanley. None of us could see how Mr. Madoff could do what his friends said he could do. I politely passed and went on my way, finding my own inventive ways to lose money on a colossal scale during these last 15 months.
My point is not that I was so smart. I am not and I was not. Mistakes are a big part of my life. [No shit.] My point is that, as humans, we seem unable to learn from our mistakes very well.
Speak for yourself about mistakes. (And no, Ben Stein, I don't think your racism* is very cute.) But I call bullshit.
For one thing, no major investment bank - such as Goldman Sachs, which Stein defamed last year - has been touched by the Madoff scandal. This is the first anyone is hearing of that - but Stein's not naming names. Why not name this "investment bank?" (UBS? Nomura? Even they wouldn't make sense.)
Secondly, why would this unnamed "delegation" go to Ben Stein's house - his residence, mind you - and pitch essentially an Amway scam to him when surely they knew Stein is an author of economic books (such as they are), and a celebrity (of sorts)?
Then, even more unbelievably, Stein invites them in, listens to their pitch, and then researches it - the West's Greatest Champion of the Triumph of Puppy Dogs over the Evil Darwinists allegedly takes this crap seriously enough to look online and consult friends about a metaphorical piece of swampland managed for only a 2 percent annual fee. Sure! And I'm the Wizard of Oz.
Why, I didn't even research another blatant plea from Chase to make zero-interest cash withdrawals on my paid-off credit cards before throwing the checks into the fireplace and laughing this weekend - and those deals are much, much more honest than the one Stein recounts! A true financial guru would have slammed the door in the faces of this supposed "delegation from a major investment bank." But I don't think they ever came to his door.
Finally, of course, Stein expects us to believe that he kept his "I-turned-down-Bernie-Madoff" story secret (and stories like his are whipping around Wall Street like pasties on an aging stripper desperate for tips from an indifferent crowd) for two years.
Two years. That drama queen, keeping his mouth shut for two years? Not likely. The man is so desperate for attention, he even wrote an autobiography in which he hinted at an open marriage with his wife** and claimed to spend more time with "a variety of pubescent assistants and his beloved trio of dogs" than with her.*** This is a man who, before he suspiciously "got creationism," bragged about such things.
Incidentally, the reviewer of said autobiography described Ben Stein as "thick in a bout of self-delusion."***
Open the book of Ben Stein's life to almost any page and try not to hate or envy the things that drive him nuts. His catalog of constant complaints includes a Porsche 928, a thing of beauty perpetually in need of repair; the stupidity of pretty teen-age girls whose attention he covets [ick!]; and the illogical business dealings of studio executives, whose favor he finds it impossible to curry and maintain.
More recently, in a vomitingly self-important commentary in Newsweek entitled "Clinton on the Couch" (thanks for that image, BTW), Ben Stein is quoted thus: "He is remedying an early deficit in female attention. Like all childhood deficits, it can never be filled."
I laughed aloud at such a transparent example of Ben Stein's neurotic projection, describing himself while taking an envious jab at diagnosing Clinton (the true problem with William Jefferson Clinton is that the sleek, self-satisfied cat has never been without female companionship, a problem with which Ben Stein cannot and never will empathize) whereas columnist Peter Carlson**** exploded:
Who was this psychological savant? Alter identified him as "Ben Stein, the writer-actor-armchair shrink." Good Lord, I thought, he means Ben Stein, the guy who played the soporific teacher in "Ferris Bueller's Day Off," the guy who hosts a game show called "Win Ben Stein's Money," the guy who writes a hideously narcissistic column for the American Spectator. Who died and made him Freud?
Two which I posit: Well, who died and make him God? Because that's what Expelled was really all about. In his nihilistic pretense of bestowing a sense of "purpose" upon the world that he himself does not have, Ben Stein tries on identities the way some dandies try on suits - one day he's a sex god, gallivanting around with young beauties (who, it seems, still rejected him sexually), next he's an outraged father (he claimed that Monica Lewinsky was "barely legal"), then he's a financial wizard tossing out advice like gold coins to the proles, then he's a sad sack, weeping that What Really Matters is how nice we are to each other as we cut back on dinners at Spago's and buy fewer rolodexes. (As I said, I cannot imagine who the hell Ben Stein writes his column for.) But I digress.
I recommend that everyone save whatever he or she can and invest it, not put it into Treasury notes or money market funds as Ben Stein is now doing. Now is the time to buy stocks - August 2007 wasn't, although you should contribute to a 401k/Roth IRA no matter how the economy is doing. Everyone should have some investments to leave alone until the economy improves, as it eventually will, probably years from now. If you have Treasury notes and/or money market funds, fine - just put something into indexes. But don't listen to Ben Stein. Listen to this guy. He's next on my reading list, along with Michael Shermer's The Mind of the Market.
And just remember - much of what I know about finances I learned from evolution. And evolution "is the result of accumulated small change." Ben Stein told America that so-called microevolution cannot lead to speciation - ironically undermining his one valid message that pennies turn into dollars. You're right, Ben: honesty much more than money determines who we are - but too bad you didn't take your own advice.
UPDATED: "On the subject of his personal life, Stein makes the most of his middle-aged Angst. He hangs out with the kids at Birmingham High School in the San Fernando Valley. While he deplores the materialism of students, he can't get enough of their youth and innocence."***
Do the parents of these teen-age girls know that Ben Stein "hangs out" with them? The more I think about it, the more that it creeps me out. --- *"'Should I be worried about the Crips and the Bloods up here?'These were the first words out of the mouth of Ben Stein as he entered my office at Skeptic magazine, located in the racially mixed neighborhood of Altadena, Calif. I cringed and hoped that the two African-American women in my employ were out of earshot..." **Stein, Ben. Hollywood Days, Hollywood Nights: The Diary of a Mad Screenwriter. Bantam. ***Russell, Candice. "Screenwriter's Whining Mars Otherwise Insightful Memoir. Sun Sentinel. October 30, 1988: 8.F. ****Carlson, Peter. "Monthly Cure for a Scandal Overdose." The Washington Post. Feb. 3, 1998: B.02.
Go to the Sandwalk for details. Regular UD commenter Mats shows up!
Also see this discussion, which followed from this one in which Answers in Genesis fans complain that scientists are defining science as science, and won't let creationists publish biblical allusions in science journals. Therefore, scientists are elitist meanies.
UPDATED: I'm not sure if these are trolls, but commenters are congratulating Ben Stein for "leading people back to Christ" with his film. Awkward! Ben Stein is Jewish! Hello!
This is just like what happened during Shabbos, when some lil’ telemarker from Missouri (I didn’t mean to eavesdrop but I could hear her all the way from the living room) called and fell silent when my friend informed her of the Sabbath and said he didn’t want to talk right now. "Oh, she's never heard of it," he informed me with a dismissive wave of his hand. Yeah, we atheists sure are close-minded. *eyeroll*
-----
At dinner with friends over the weekend (my first Shabbos), I told them about Ben Stein’s upcoming “documentary,” Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. Their jaws dropped. (Yeah, I still can’t get over it, either.)
I have since learned that in the 1990s Ben Stein penned an introduction to one of those lurid “Bill Clinton had people killed in Arkanasa” screeds. My jaw dropped again.
Maybe he penned it as a joke, giving absurd rein to his well-known hatred of Bill Clinton but counting on the fact that it would never be widely read?
I have been searching for that book, without success so far. But while searching I’ve found a lot of other pieces penned by Ben Stein. And my jaw dropped again again.
Q: The post-election spirit of bipartisanship is vanishing fast. How bad will things get? Do you see President Clinton leaving office under a cloud of scandal?
A: No, I worry about whether he will leave office when he's supposed to. He has shown such extraordinary contempt for the Constitution that I question whether he believes it applies to him. Q: Seriously? How would Clinton extend his term? A: He'd start by convening a task force to study repeal of the 22d Amendment. I don't consider that far-fetched in the slightest, because after Nixon was re-elected in 1972, he convened an informal group to study the issue. Q: Whom might Clinton appoint to tell him, ''Hey, good idea''? A: The President has a lot of friends. Now that he's won, he has even more on CNBC.
Har-de-har, must be a joke.
Ben Stein on the Mark Foley scandal: “Misguided” Republican with thing for boys – who cares? What about Bill Clinton having consentual sex with an adult female? *Gasp*
If there were an Academy Award for Hypocrisy, the surefire favorite for 2006 would be the Democratic Party. Just two recent items make the decision a virtual certainty:
The Representative Foley "scandal" is really worthy of a whole book on hypocrisy. On the one hand, we have a poor misguided Republican man who had a romantic thing for young boys. He sent them suggestive e-mail. I agree, that's not great. On the other hand, we have a Democratic party that worships ( not likes, WORSHIPS ) a man named Bill Clinton who did not send suggestive e-mails as far as we know, but who had a barely legal intern give him oral sex kneeling under his desk in the Oval Office while he talked on the phone to a Congressional Committee Chairman, took great pleasure in putting a cigar in her orifice and then smelling it and tasting it, and having her fellate him when in the sacred seat of power of the world's leading Republic. And the Democrats cheer themselves hoarse for him. His wife has a great shot at being our next President.
In 1987, Ben Stein said that all Presidental candidates should be asked if they are homosexuals. In 1988, Ben Stein said that any Republican Vice-President chasing tail was no one’s business.
Long before he became a Comedy Central game show host, Ben Stein was a prominent conservative media critic. On CNN's Crossfire in 1987, Stein praised the news media's exposure of extramarital activity involving then-Democratic presidential frontrunner Gary Hart as "one of the highest moments of the press's utility."
CROSSFIRE HOST: "How far would you have the press go? Would you say that a candidate should be asked if he's ever had a homosexual experience?"
BEN STEIN: "Absolutely, as far as I'm concerned. Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely."
Stein appeared again on Crossfire a year later, as reporters were pursuing an alleged dalliance between vice-presidential candidate Dan Quayle and a female lobbyist. With a Republican being probed, Stein remained "absolute" in his convictions, only they'd rotated precisely180 degrees.
CROSSFIRE HOST: Do you think the media was fair in going after Senator Quayle on the subject of Paula Parkinson?
BEN STEIN: Absolutely not. I think that if they started going after all the presidential candidates on the subject of their sex lives, they could really talk about very little else. I think it's a very dangerous subject for the Democrats to open, or for anyone to open, and it's a complete irrelevancy as well.
Ben Stein gives Arianna Huffington the finger. (But I get damned tired of the "Great role model!" riposte, I must say. Does everything an adult does have to be a role model for children? Lock me up, then!)
BS: Because... Well, I can't just say "most," because there are so many things. He's a liar. He lied repeatedly and set a very bad example for truth-telling for children. It's just become a joke among my son and friends of his generation that when you lie, you can say, "Why? The president does it; why can't we do it?" It's become commonplace for them to do that. I see it and hear it all the time. Second, he has disgraced the office, which is a great and noble office. Third, he has not accomplished anything. Nixon, you might say, did many of the same bad things Clinton did, and I guess that's true. He did. But he also did many great things, and you can't point to any great things that Clinton has done. Also, and this is going to be in my column in The Spectator but I'll let you in on it, I think he's a murderer. I think he murdered those people in Iraq to divert attention from his political problems. I don't think that all those people in Iraq needed to die. At least, certainly not when they did. He just killed them to distract people from the impeachment, and that's murder. If he'd really meant to go in there and take out Saddam Hussein and create a safer Middle East, a peaceful Middle East, that's one thing. But it was all just cosmetics to show off his toughness. Everyone says, "Oh, it's Wag The Dog." It isn't Wag The Dog, because nobody got killed in Wag The Dog. In this sad story, a lot of people got killed. Those Iraqi soldiers who were there, they don't necessarily deserve to die just because they're wearing an Iraqi uniform. They're not wearing it voluntarily.
I guess they are now.
Ben Stein on MSNBC: “Horrible, Stalinesque persecution, not prosecution, of Scooter Libby,” and Patrick Fitzgerald is a “thug.” (With video.) In the words of Dan Quayle, he doesn't look like a happy camper who thinks, "What a waste it is to lose one's mind." He doesn't seem to be joking. In fact, he seems to be losing his mind. (And did he say the word "Stalinesque" again? Let's play that video back.)
Ben Stein plays Freud:
I was reading Newsweek when I hit bottom. Bug-eyed and salivating with unseemly cravings, I was devouring last week's issue. I'd plowed through six major articles and five sidebars on the scandal and then I started reading a 12th piece -- "Clinton on the Couch" by Jonathan Alter. It was the kind of idiotic journalistic psychoanalysis that rational readers instinctively avoid, but I was no longer rational. I got to the third paragraph, where Alter theorized that Clinton's alleged womanizing stems from his childhood pudginess. To buttress this dubious claim, Alter quoted an expert. "He is remedying an early deficit in female attention," the expert said. "Like all childhood deficits, it can never be filled."
Who was this psychological savant? Alter identified him as "Ben Stein, the writer-actor-armchair shrink." Good Lord, I thought, he means Ben Stein, the guy who played the soporific teacher in "Ferris Bueller's Day Off," the guy who hosts a game show called "Win Ben Stein's Money," the guy who writes a hideously narcissistic column for the American Spectator. Who died and made him Freud?
Peter Carlson, “Monthly Cure for a Scandal Overdose,” The Washington Post, 2/3/1998.
It seems so innocent now, all that crap about Bill Clinton in the 1990s. Today, Ben Stein thinks he's John the Baptist and that he's found God in Godwin's Law.
Straight propaganda, to be sure. But again, if Michael Moore or Robert Greenwald can do it, why not Ben Stein? It's a movie that uses animation, archival documentary footage, interviews with outraged people of science who want ID on the table, and "atheists" who see that as a step backward to make its case.
It just isn't particularly funny. Or the least bit convincing. I lost track of the number of times Stalin's image hit the screen, and in the ways the movie equated science with Darwinism with atheism with Hitler or Stalin. Subtle, it's not. Stein (he co-wrote it) builds his movie on classic Big Tobacco Tactics. Create just a sliver of doubt about evolution by pitching this argument in terms of academic freedom. "Legitimate" learned scientists are being silenced by the Darwinian cabal of thought police. Says Stein.
He uses anecdotes from a few Fox-over-publicized cases of people who claim to have lost tenure/their jobs/their position in the scientific world for daring to suggest the hand of a supernatural being in the creation of life. He hasn't a scintilla of proof of, well, anything. Then he has the audacity to whine, "Where's the data" when questioning cellular biologists and other real scientists who build their lives around doubt, and finding testable, legitimate answers to those doubts. Where's YOUR data, Ben?
Speaking of which, I am trying to independently confirm these another story – a rumor, basically, that when Ben Stein’s sister died, he received a letter of sympathy from Bill Clinton and reacted with venom, calling Clinton a "rapist." Actually, I don't know if this is true, but Stein has called Tom Delay "morally probably the highest level public servant I have ever met."
It's amazing how often a misconception gets repeated in the face of facts.
Ben Stein, hyperactively promoting his forthcoming (likely straight-to-DVD) film Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, keeps harping that the theory of evolution states that species (he says "life," but he means species) arose by chance. Nothing could be further from the truth. (The origin of life is the study of abiogenesis, and that is the field of chemists.)
Mutations arise by chance, yes. But natural selection, the engine that powers evolution, is a series of causal events. The problem seems to be that there are multiple (in fact, seemingly endless) causes, rather than natural selection being a singular force. However, this should not that difficult to understand - an election, for example, or better yet, the marketplace is also a complex, decentralized interaction with multiple causal events.
Natural selection is not random.
Bay of Fundie has an excellent takedown of Ben Stein's talking points here. I must say that Stein himself is his own worst public relations for his own film, as he seems bound and determined to make an ass of himself even when writing about about subject he should know about, namely, the market.
I think it’s a fundamental (as opposed to fundamentalist) truth that conspiracies cause very few of the world’s events, whereas the old adage “The road to hell is paved with good intentions” continuously proves to be the case. Ironically, creationism itself is a good example of this.
Creationists like William Dembski, Jonathan Wells, Philip Johnson, et al. of the Discovery Institute devised a strategy, called the Wedge Strategy, to force creationist teachings into our public schools by undermining the public’s confidence in science. A conspiracy, yes? I think it qualifies as a conspiracy – which is why it’s gone so badly.
However, the American public largely prefers creationism over evolution anyway, and so the push to get creationism in the public schools is actually a decentralized, multi-causal, organic process. In other words, it is largely a grassroots effort – now bolstered by the Discover Institute. The result has been a disaster for creationism.
Ben Stein makes a “documentary” touting the teaching of intelligent design. The Discovery Institute applauds. Ben Stein goes on Bill O’Reilly’s The Factor and calls intelligent design “the idea that a deity created life.” The Discovery Institute gets pissed off and sends out a press release correcting Ben Stein.
(Shhhhh! They’re trying to keep that under wraps! Because, ahem, teaching creationism as science is unconstitutional, remember? So the Designer still could be space aliens, you know. *Wink*)
Oops.
The Dover, Pennsylvania school board votes to include a disclaimer about evolution to be read to students before science classes. The Discovery Institute applauds. The Dover, Pennsylvania school board votes to include a book about intelligent design, Of Pandas and People, in the school library. The Discovery Institute applauds. Pro-science parents, most of them devout Christians, sue the school board. The Discovery Institute applauds. William Dembski gets ready to testify on behalf of intelligent design in a trial that puts evolutionary scientists on the stand, as he’s always dreamed of doing. The Discovery Institute applauds.
It comes out in the press that one of the school board members, Bill Buckingham, had made a statement at a public meeting: “Two thousands years ago, someone died on a cross. Can’t anybody stand up for him?” Oops – intelligent design is only supposed to be about science. In fact, the Designer could be anyone – space aliens, a time-traveling biologist, etc., not just God – and certainly not just the Christian God! Big tent, gotta appeal to people of various faiths, etc.
Oops.
Bill Buckingham goes on camera and advocates the teaching of “creationism” alongside evolution in schools. Oops. The Discovery Institute gets pissed off and sends out a press release correcting Bill Buckingham. William Dembski walks away from testifying in the Dover courtroom, leaving these freelance creationists in Dover with only one expert witness.
Oops.
Bill Buckingham gets on the stand and has to answer for why, instead of one or two copies of the scientifically discredited Of Pandas and People for the school library, dozens have been purchased, apparently for their inclusion in the science classroom despite all that the school board has promised. Bill Buckingham says he doesn’t know anything about it. Then he says that maybe he does, but didn’t handle the money. The judge gets pissed off and takes over the cross-examining himself. Bill Buckingham admits that he took up a collection in church to buy 80 copies of Of Pandas and People. Judge Jones III, himself a devout Christian and a Bush appointee to the bench, is royally pissed off now.
Yipes.
And as we all know, Kitzmiller v. Dover, Pennsylvania School District is now history, with Judge Jones issuing a (sorry) damning ruling against the defendants, and intelligent design is now extinct in Dover science classes, and the school board responsible for these shenanigans (costing the taxpayers in Dover, Pennsylvania one million dollars in damages) was voted off the board.
So you see, evolution doesn't happen by chance, whereas it sure seems that real-life conspiracies, themselves the opposite of random events, mushroom out of control. It's a hard lesson that the fellows at the Discovery Institute have yet to learn.
Oh my shimmies, I just took a gander at the Answers in Genesis pew-reviewed journal. Ohhhh, dear me. I think I said something earlier about unintentional humor from sincere but pretentious dorks?
By all means, check out the abstract from “Catastrophic Granite Formation: Rapid Melting of Source Rocks, and Rapid Magma Intrusion and Cooling.” For more than one reason, it’s hot stuff:
“Rapid segregation, ascent, and emplacement now understood to only take days via dikes would have been aided by the tectonic ‘squeezing’ and ‘pumping’ during the catastrophic plate tectonics driving the global Genesis Flood cataclysm.”
Bwahaha – “squeezing” and “pumping,” eh? Translation: In other words, in a consummation that lasted for days (like that of some rodents), the earth thrust and ejaculated a cosmic “flood” of sacred magma after having received the, er, sacred shower.
*Leans forhead into hand*
Oh, the unintentional porn written by repressed prudes!
UPDATED: Bing from Happy Jihad's House of Pancakes stopped by to remind everyone about the Answers in Genesis Contest! Why do real science when you can make up your own? Why follow sound methodology when you can just pull nonsense out of your ass and pretend to be a real scientist? Go on over to Happy Jihad's House of Pancakes and read the writers' guidelines for Answers in Genesis, and submit your own crap!
Think how happy the folks at AiG will be, to see that they're not alone in do-it-yourself crackpottery! Imagine their joy at seeing heaps of submissions that sound sciency and use a lot of big words. We're stickin' it to the man, brother! Take that, National Academy of Sciences! Then the good folks at Answers in Genesis can sit back, turn on the Home Shopping Network, enjoy a homemade heaping of Lime Jello Marshmallow Cottage Cheese Surprise, and wash it all down with a nice hot cup of Now-Shut-the-Hell-Up.
(Face it, that's precisely how William Dembski's "Overwhelming Evidence" website has lasted as long as it has. And now that the evolutionary trolls have been kicked out, it looks like that playground is going to collapse soon. Oh well - another evolutionary dead end for the anti-evolutionary Dr. Dembski. You'd think he'd figure it out...)
Does anybody remember Plan Nine from Outer Space? That hilarious cult film by Ed Wood which tries so hard to scare its audience, but collapses under its own unintentional hilarity and absurdity? Well, that's precisely what I think about creationists - trying so hard to be someone they're not, trying to look like scientists and making fools of themselves, inspiring laughter (of the wrong kind), yet enabled by breathless, credulous reporters and cable news show talking heads employed by a mass media market that itself is increasingly clueless and oafish in this era of blogs and YouTube.
Plan Nine from Outer Space had as its special guest star the Amazing Criswell, a radio announcer who delivers these gems of wisdom at the beginning of the film:
Greetings, my friend. We are all interested in the future, for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives. And remember my friend, future events such as these will affect you in the future.
Man, that's deep! But deeper still is Dembski's crystal balls - I mean, his courageous call for scientific predictions of intelligent design theory!
In the meantime, here are my perfectly hum-drum predictions for intelligent design theory and beyond:
1. "Darwinism" predicts that intelligent design will be put out to pasture and that the upcoming gaggle of (truly young instead of faux-young) creationists will continue to start from scratch and cite only contemporary "Darwinists" and each other for their crackpot ideas, just as this group at UD does, with little or no citation of Gish, Henry Morris, Muncaster, Buckna, John Klotz, and all the other "dignitaries" of creationism that few people remember because they make no lasting contribution.
2. The names above will only be remembered by the "Darwinists" in their books and papers for the same reason. (Who remembers Immanuel Velikovsky today?)
4. Future creationists will blame "global warming denial" on "Darwinists," just as they do today with eugenics.
The Great Criswell has spoken. Who was that veiled man? Where?
What color is his/her underwear?
UPDATED: If you want to see refrigerator repairmen (they're always men, creationism is a good old boys club) pretending to be scientists, follow this link.
"[Richard] Owen says my book will be forgotten in ten years." -Darwin to J. D. Hooker, 1860.
You're driving me nuts! All over the internet you are confusing Information Science with Information Theory, and using the two interchangeably. Hello, these are two completely different areas of research and study. Do you think you have a right to confuse yellow with purple? Would you please stop it?
This is my future field, Information Science. (It is not William Dembski's field. It is mine.)
And this is Information Theory. (And though he claims to be an expert in it, this is not William Dembski's field, either. Selling William Dembski's books to people taken in by William Dembski is William Dembski's field.)
Okay? Can we at least get our definitions straight?
If you want a really good introduction to Information Theory, check out Mark Chu-Carroll's post on the matter. As he concludes, the argument of the "impossibility" of the creation of new information becomes transparently fallacious.
So - what happens if I take a string in very non-compressed format (like, say, an uncompressed digitized voice) and send it over a noisy phone line? Am I gaining information, or losing information?
The answer is: gaining information. Introducing randomness into the string is adding information.
"AAAABBBB" contains less information than "AAAABxBB".
The way this is used to refute bozos who claim things like "You can't create information" should be obvious.
Now comes the news that the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library cannot account for 80,000 items, or 80% of its collection.
(Okay, let's get the Alzheimer jokes and the giggling over with.)
Most thefts from libraries and archives (and presidential libraries really are archives rather than libraries) are the result of an inside job, unfortunately. Lax security, understaffing, and poor recordkeeping procedures are usually the culprits, as they seem to be in this case. And certainly, bad cataloging practices can plague any library (as it does the Goddard Space Flight Center library, which misshelved the original film footage of the moon landing).
However, much as I wanted to avoid puerile snickering, I could not help but remember this comment on the AOL News website from “olsen1000” (11:28:02 AM Nov 08 2007):
Who cares?
The concept of presidential libraries probably originated in the days when there were men of education and culture running the country. Reagan? Bushes? What are they going to put in their libraries? Comic books? Or, in the case of GWB, the straw he snorted coke with?
Be damn reasonable for Christ's sake. Reagan's head was empty for a large part of his presidency, and so is his library.
(“Look on Ebay,” sneers another commenter, “OJ has them!” crows another, along with the requisite “Liberals hate freedom” and a debate on Reagan's legacy as President - and the inevitable Alzheimer jokes.)
I must say I find the concept of the presidential library a silly holdover from a time when there were few public or academic libraries or historical societies. I would rather that we invest in those. (And yes, I say the same about the Clinton Library and any other devoted to a Democrat.)
But I leave you with that thought and move on to the article in the current Museum News on Ken Ham’s Creation Museum.
The institution’s status as a museum is, by itself, likely to aid its cause. A national study published by AAM (American Association of Museums) in 2001 found that “Almost 9 our of 10 Americans (87%) find museums to be one of the most trustworthy or a trustworthy source of information among a wide range of choices.” (I shall try to provide a link to this study.) Books were a distant second at 61 percent, and a majority found print and broadcast media and the Internet not to be trustworthy. Schools were viewed as the most important educational source for children, but museums and libraries were next in line. The International Council of Museums (ICOM), for example, identifies a museum simply as “A non-profit-making, permanent institution in the service of society and of its development, open to the public, which acquires, conserves, researches, communicates and exhibits, for purposes of study, education and enjoyment, material evidence of people and their environment." The museum profession has not formally addressed the issue of what a museum exhibits.
“What would we do if someone built a museum syaing the Holocaust didn't happen?' asked Gene Kritsky (professor of biology at the College of Mount St. Joseph), ‘that slavery was a right of the early colonists?’”
…The Creation museum is not alone in its mission: The website www.creationism.org lists 12 other “creation centers and museum” in the United States (as well as one in Alberta, Canada), and the 2007 Official Museum Directory adds four more.
I definitely see Ken Ham’s “museum” and the creation of others like it as a grab for credibility and legitimacy in building this parody of a legitimate institution (which is an ongoing attempt to build a parallel Christian society, with “universities” like Regent and Liberty, and Christianized “degree programs"). However, credibility and legitimacy have to be earned—through time, through contribution to the profession via legitimate and demonstrable research, through publishing in refereed journals. (Of course there are a slew of creationist “journals” lauding "research.”) I doubt that Ham is an AAM member; I doubt he even knows what that organization is.
And of course, any museum must sustain its staff, and building, and its collection through valid processes, such as cataloging and conservation. Ken Ham’s Creation Museum has had a good year, with 400,000 visitors so far. But only time will tell its true success – and (being that they seems to always have so little of it, between a 6,000 year old earth and an immanent Rapture) time has never been on the side of the creationists.
Something that Tara mentions reminds me of that hideous "Shreck" thingie that John and I went to at Universal Studios:
We were told by the employees that it was a satirical look at evolution. All I have to say is, if they think that was satire, they really need to read some Twain or Swift.
The premise was that the angels Michael and Gabriel were talking to a lost and wandering camper--a frustrated soul who was looking for meaning in the world, but didn't want people to "think she's stupid" by believing that science was wrong about evolution. The whole movie, while slick, was like an extended Chick tract (Big Daddy comes to mind, as part of it consisted of "Mike" and "Gabe" harassing a science teacher...."duuuuude, like, evolution is sooooo bogus").
And special effects were out in full force. The chairs vibrated with thunder, or when the angels "whooshed" away, and the chair backs squirted water during the rainstorm. (This was SUPREMELY annoying).
Yes, it is. It also creeps me totally out because it reminds me of those "feelies" in Brave New World.
My brother noted that these distractions occurred frequently when they made a really astounding claim that might make a person think--"let's distract them by spraying water in their face!" An interesting theory...
This theme presented itself throughout the museum. I guess my one main surprise was that despite hailing themselves as an alternative science museum, there really was fairly little science there. Sure, there were videos to watch and many of the exhibits had narration, but just based on the displays, they really half-assed (hell, more like quarter-assed) the "scientific objections to an old universe and evolution" part of the "museum." Instead, the focus was more typically on "why Christianity is good for you" and "why human reason is wrong".
As if! Look, I don't know how to say this nicely - but this shit it not about science at all. It never has been. It's about making people as boring as possible.
(What if you started talking about a particularly exciting football game and I cut you off with, "Do you actually think that those two teams are creating the game through their meaningless struggle, like two amphibians on a beach? Don't you know that IT IS JESUS WHO PLAYS THE GAME? The players aren't sufficient in themselves to make football happen! There has to be a Master Player controlling everything! You tell me who won, and I'll tell you that that's just how God plays with Himself." Would that make me sound like a person interested in sports, and curious at all about the rules, plays, players, and strategies? Well, that's how I feel when people tell me, "You tell me how life evolved, and I'll just say that's how Goddidit." Gee, thanks for your sermon. Now I'll just go find some people to talk to who are curious about what I'm curious about. Bye.)
What this doggerel is about is a running grist mill of mediocrity - making everyone into everyone else. No sparkle, no disobedience, no real curiosity - all reactions, no deep thoughts (though plenty of cherry-picking, emotional arguments, appeals to authority, and other such logical fallacies). I get tired of the Hitler allusions to the right wing but I must tell you, the photos of this sideshow's "exhibits" reminds me of those putrid art exhibitions of banal paintings that Hitler held. And the dire warnings of evilutionism's "corruption" - straight out of Goebbel's exhibition of "Degenerate Art."
And don't get me started on the megachurch - Nuremburg rallies parallels, because Richard Dawkins hit the nail on the head with that one.
I attended the science teachers' workshop at the American Association of Physical Anthropology Annual Meeting, and met educators, graduate students, and other colleagues from around the area and from the Smithsonian (for which I have a special place in my heart). The half-day workshop focused on equipping educators with training modules that incorporated the latest research and discoveries in human evolutionary biology, paleoanthropology, primatology, and forensics.
linear succession of fossils ("This evolved from this, and this evolved from this," etc.) and who could reinforce rather than question their own assumptions about skin color variation and "race," since a person's so-called "race" is so immediately apparent to us.
but by an array of genes, and it is not the case that lighter-skinned indigenous people were always found in the higher latitudes, whereas darker-skinned indigenous people were clustered around the equator. Different ethnicities co-evolved with their ability to absorb and retain certain vitamins, with their diet, with their ability or not to tolerate heat or cold, and these factor into skin color.
