Link Salad
Irradiated by LabRat
Insert lame excuse here, although if I don’t get eaten by a grue I should have something good for you tomorrow.
This Is A News Website Article About A Scientific Finding. And it is both hysterically funny and bitingly accurate.
Worst Life Ever: The Story of Kazuyuki Fujita’s Skull made us laugh until important organs hurt. Do watch the video where available, though most of the later fights have apparently been yanked off Youtube due to copyright complaints. What elevates it from merely very good snark to comedy gold is that the writer is not exaggerating nearly as much as you’d think. The upshot is it’s the career of a mixed martial artist whose sole skill was to get hit in the face repeatedly without evident impact.
The British could keep rabies out of the isles indefinitely, but it took less than a decade for them to be infected with a Law and Order series. I’d apologize on behalf of my country, but seriously, if the total takeover of American cable networks with judgmental percussion wasn’t hint enough about the epidemic nature, then this is a straightforward case of natural selection. There is a small bright side in that it may be used to employ otherwise idle artists.
Bill Maher gets Christine O’Donnell to rant in gobsmackingly ignorant fashion about the “myth of evolution”, which includes one of my favorite creationist arguments for “does not get it” material, which is “if people evolved from monkeys, why are monkeys still around”. This would not be worth mentioning other than filling in a bit about her reputation as a crazy fundie if it weren’t for the fact that it’s Bill Maher, whose gotcha at the end is to crow over what an idiot she is because she thinks monkeys could evolve quickly enough to turn into humans while we observed. Icing on the cake is that Maher thinks the fucking germ theory of disease is a myth. I’m going to go drink heavily now, because these two really do represent the political class that we get to elect.
What, you thought I was joking? I’m going to go drink heavily now. Come back tomorrow.
September 28th, 2010 at 8:06 pm
As a Christian, I find anti-evolution young-earthers crushingly embarrassing. Even so, I still think public school education might improve with the teaching of creationism. At least then students might learn what evolution ISN’T.
September 28th, 2010 at 11:00 pm
Mousie762… the only place creationism belongs in schools is alongside the scarab that rolls the sun about, or in a segment on pernicious threats to rational thought.
Anything else just gives credence to the moonbat set’s various lines of malarky.
September 28th, 2010 at 11:16 pm
Under religion, philosophy, or even literature, sure. “Teach the controversy” so long as it’s a debunking of arguments like “if people evolved from monkeys, why are monkeys still around” and more.
Given the state of the educational system in general, the former would be edifying in good schools and probably accomplish exactly what Mousie has in mind.
Under the practical state of schooling, I greatly fear people who are convinced dinosaurs evolved in seven days.
September 29th, 2010 at 12:55 am
As I just commented on someone else’s blog, these are the kinds of things which inspire me to drink heavily. I don’t remember which blog; I’ve been drinking heavily.
September 29th, 2010 at 4:56 am
Yes, that’s what I have in mind, LabRat. Frequently creationist arguments revolve around errors about the nature of evolution, which are actually common perceptions in people who believe the name evolution but don’t know what it is. An example would be a Star Trek Voyager episode, where a couple of characters are exposed to a chemical that “accelerates evolution”, and undergo a series of transformations. If you have even the most basic understanding of what evolution is, you know this makes no sense; however they can still write it into the show despite the fact everyone involved, and the audience, were supposedly taught evolution in school.
On a more dangerous note, I heard a caller to a radio show arguing for various new entitlement spending on the grounds that we had evolved “to the point where we take care of our weakest members.”
Both of these views, that evolution is a transformation of individuals and that evolution is a moral improvement, are attacked by creationists (and, ignoring the fact that those aren’t evolution at all, successfully debunked.) Creationist attacks could make a good springboard for teaching what evolution is and isn’t; I could go on and on with examples. Hopefully it would expose students to some techniques of critical thinking as well.
This is not so much a serious proposal, as an elaborate complaint about the quality of education we are forced to pay so much for.
September 29th, 2010 at 9:24 am
But you know we only export our WORST things… KFC, Pizza Hut, Baskin-Robbins, so why shouldn’t it carry over to TV series???
October 1st, 2010 at 5:40 pm
if people evolved from monkeys, why are monkeys still around
Um, some of us leave Massachusetts to move to Georgia. Why is Massachusetts still around?
That said, her opponent really was a Marxist. Voting for her is a double win - it pisses off two groups in desperate need of it:
1. Lefties, as they see their (maybe-ex) Marxist lose.
2. The Republican Establishment, who see that we’ll vote for the Village Idiot rather than their candidate.
October 19th, 2010 at 3:18 pm
Given that it’s an “argument” that major creationist organisations state should never be used it appears O’Donnell is as ignorant about creation as she is about evolution.
If I recall correctly, they did actually try discussing creation in religion classes, in the UK I think, the evolutionary wingnuts wouldn’t have a bar of it there either.