-they don’t want anyone to learn anything but the most strictly materialist and determinist biological ixtian view; and so we have our great debate.

P.S. Tristero had a fine post regarding the misuse of the word ‘materialism’ by these hypocrites and projection artistes.

Putting that shirt on the ape in the picture totally fooled me. I couldn’t tell one picture from the other!

However, I’m concerned about the way zoos are treating their inhabitants nowadays. That one is grossly overweight. Somebody should report them to the authorities.

I nominate the next commentator.

The chimp certainly has a more intelligent look in its eyes. I went to the Galileo link, and, while I didn’t have time to read it all, I didn’t see anything about the earth being flat.

OK, OK, so it didn’t have anything about the Earth being flat. It did have stuff about the sun going around the earth, though, which is close. Give me a minute and I’ll do some better research…

“I dunno guys… what do you think?”

1. I still think his chin looks like butt cheeks.

2. The chimp, on the other hand, is rather attractive, in a simian sort of way.

3. Ditto on the Tristero piece.

4. If you haven’t already had the pleasure, ya gotta meet the sharp thinker who is Sisyphus over at “Blogs4Brownback.” He even uses the number ‘4’ instead of the word ‘for,’ that’s how clever he is.

A small taste:

“The man who will be our Commander-in-Chief has done his part to discredit the outlandish, atheist claims of the Darwinists among us. The least the rest of us can do is echo his objections, defy the secularists and the scientists who trumpet the dishonest status quo, and carry this message of defiance and victory on to November 2008 and beyond, into our churches, our classrooms, our households, our government, and beyond!

Vote for America’s future! Vote for Brownback!”

That’s in a piece where Sis high fives Mad Sam for stickin’ it to the New York Times!

Make up your own minds –
http://blogs4brownback.wordpress.com/

Yes, much less stupid is the notion that a “guiding intelligence” created me, and a quasar hundreds of billions of miles away.

The chimp’s disdain for the creature to his immediate left is clearly evident in his facial expression. Like most primates, he has contempt for those who are not his intellectual equal.

Blogs4Brownback just has to be a parody of our friends Noonan & Margolis in the style of Jon Swift. Nobody (well maybe Fred Phelps) is that wacko and still walking the streets. Lithium was invented for a reason you know.

Please tell me it is.

There is no way that the obviously intelligent and attractive guy on the left up there could have evolved from something as primitive and unintelligent as the specimen on the right.

I keep looking for a snark hook, but Noonan is so looney there’s no beginning; an oroboros of stupidity, as it were.

“Church of the Holy Darwin”? “our great debate”? Sheesh.

And SWAG is *silly* wild-ass guess. But then in the Noonan family I suppose silly passes as sophisticated.

Have those creationists yet come up with any proven examples of “micro-miracles”, such as one species spontaneously and magically becoming another? Much less “macro-miracles”, such as the creation of dudes from dust?

On a slightly different topic…

http://publicadvocateusa.org/news/article.php?article=3179

So, they’re having a viral protest against a hate crimes bill? Teh Hellz??!?

The basic thrust of the attack against us is that if we don’t believe in Darwinism, then we’re just ignorant fools.

Mark, old bean, that’s just about precisely it, yes. Jolly good show.

I suppose Mr. Noonan will be foregoing the latest medical treatments should he contract, oh, well, any of the diseases one can contract these days. Afterall, the study of evolution is entirely about the past and nothing to do with the present.

Just to be clear, though, the Galileo affair had to do with the concept of a stationary Earth, not a flat one.

More here *cough*:

http://thevanitypress.blogspot.com/2007/05/flat-earth.html

[W]hile it is sometimes useful to ponder the past, it is best not to get hung up on it as it can’t be changed.…

We’re here, now, and our primary task is to do the right thing, today; not worry overmuch about how we got here.

That’s right. Forget evolutionary history, forget history in general. It’s all so esoteric and impractical. Such inquiries into the past are of no use when it comes to the great debate about where we come from.

That’s my Noonan!

At least he’s honest about his intellectual incuriosity, unlike others who try to play off theirs as some kind of cute rhetoric device.

I think this might be a more fitting photo comparison.

http://www.mammalogy.org/mil_images/images/mid/918.jpg

The throat sac is a dead giveaway.

D’Oh! Sorry, didn’t see Brad’s correction. My bad.

Separated at birth.

Is it just me, or is Noonan’s comparison of himself to a sperm whale just a little too uncomfortably close to being deadly accurate?

Get it? Sperm? Whale?

I’ll shut up now.

I love that headline. Apparently, some humans are descended from apes, but other humans are not. Mark, a single species can only really be created one way or the other. All or nothin’. Unless you’re telling us you’ve speciated, in which case–gah. Head hurts.

Can we get someone to put up guardrails around the various Noonans? That kind of crazy is a public safety issue.

Remind me again which picture is of the guy that has no idea about science & which is the guy that spends his days shrieking for food and flingging his shit against the walls?

He looks like the offspring of Daniel Johnston and Mr. Bean.

Two thoughts:
More importantly, there is no reason for anyone to have a heart attack over this subject – none of us were there at the beginning, however that went, and while it is sometimes useful to ponder the past, it is best not to get hung up on it as it can’t be changed.

So can we stop talking about Jesus already? That was so 2000 years ago!

The basic thrust of the attack against us is that if we don’t believe in Darwinism, then we’re just ignorant fools.

Me thinks someone has latent issues he’s afraid to address.

My rockefeller republican parents still get completely mortified when someone on the right starts talking about creationism. I’ve been trying for a long time to use this as a hook to make them realize they’re in political bed with nincompoops and slope-heads, but they just loves them some tax cuts too much.

Nooners, you don’t even realize you’re embarassing other conservatives, do you?

Man, someone‘s gonna feel awfully foolish when he gets to Heaven and finds out “God” is a chimpanzee.

Canard #1: “Darwinism.” The only people who use this term are creationists. Seriously. Evolutionary biology, evolutionary science, evolutionary theory — whatever you want to call it, these days it has not nearly as much to do with Darwin as it did in the beginning. But by referring to it as “Darwinism,” the creationists can (a) point to the aspects of Darwin’s writings that have not proven out and thus generate the fog of ambiguity they seem to think invalidates all of evolution; and (b) make an implicit connection to the “Social Darwinists” of the past who tried to apply evolutionary language and concepts to justify racism, eugenics and other unsavory social policies. Don’t fall into the trap of allowing these twerps to define the terminology of this discussion. (I don’t call it a “debate,” because it isn’t one, except when it rises to the level of policy-setting for educational systems. And even then, it’s not so much a “debate” as a “complete waste of time and energy.”)

Canard #2: So-called “Darwinists” accuse creationists of being flat-earthers. It is possible this is true, that someone, somewhere, suggested that these morons actually believe the Earth is flat. More likely — and reasonably — people who know what they are talking about have suggested that propounding “intelligent design” (i.e. creationism) is as stupid as claiming the Earth is flat.

I like El Cid’s comment a lot. Time to get these feebs to put their money where their mouth is on “intelligent design.” You want to teach this crap as science? Then show me some science about it. Claiming that evolutionary theory doesn’t explain X is not an experiment. It’s not even a hypothesis that can form the basis of an experiment. Design and perform a replicable experiment that shows a species arising from nothing via divine or suprahuman agency. Then we can talk about the science of your position.

to these intellectual chimpanzees, a “Sophisticated Guess” is better than a totally wild guess?

It’s truly sad that “sophisticated” has turned into such a pejorative term under modern wingnut punditry.

isn’t better*

…but to leap from the bare bones of the fossil record to the concept that lifeless, primordial soup spontaneously generated self-replicating life…

I’d suggest that the author consult his “scientist” father on the difference between “Dawinisn” and evolution and abiogenesis. And maybe ask daddy why there really is no “leap” from fossils to the hypothesis, what some non-scientists might refer to as a “SWAGâ€?, of abiogenesis. Germ theory, gravity, relativity, the atom, electricity and venturing that there was more to life than hanging out in caves paralyzed in the fear of the wrath of the gods was once someone’s SWAG. But then again, he really doesn’t want to know.

Of course the way it always seems to go with these poo pooers of empirical rationality and dreamers of a savior daddy, his biological father is probably bestowed the elevated honorific of “scientist” because he once had a subscription to Scientific American.

At least he’s honest about his intellectual incuriosity…

It goes well beyond a lack of curiosity, it’s a flat out seek-and-destroy scorched earth policy.

I disagree, in part, with tristero (linked above). I don’t think “materialism” as used by Sam Brownback and other creationists is meant to invoke Paris Hilton. I think it’s an old creationist tic that’s meant to invoke Karl Marx. It’s a terrible argument, but it’s not the sort of bait-and-switch that tristero claims it is.

Shorter Mark Noonan:

“A magic man who came from nothing and no-time obviously poofed everything into existence in less than a week; to propose any other scenario would be childish and silly.”

Reading too much of this creationist claptrap at any one time makes me wish my eponymous razor was of the non-metaphorical variety, and that it could be used to trim away the arguer along with his strawmen, ad homs, and tired old bullshit lines.

None of these creationists bother to address that we have another very strong line of evidence for evolution – the genome. Genomes do not look designed – they look like cluttered hard drives, full of broken genes, workaround splices, viral remnants, all kinds of crap that any intelligent designer wouldn’t have put in there. Patterns of gene expression in developing embryos also show quite a lot of commonalities and differences, which is NOT the same as the old ontogeny recapitualtes phylogeny idea. It is far more sophisticated, and goes down to the molecular level.

Also, when 2 life forms diverge, they don’t start out looking that much different from each other. The split between what would later become arthropods and vertebrates was likely two wormy looking thing, one that oriented itself with it’s nerve cord oriented down, the other up. Fast forward a few hundred million years, and, yeah, a lobster does look a lot fuckin’ different from a gibbon, but waaay back in the pre-Cambrian when the split occured, the 2 ancestors didn’t look that different from each other.

These people really have no concept of how long, how many generations, a million, ten million, or a hundren million years is. It’s a LOOOONG time.

Oh – dammit – I left out – about genomes – they look OLD. really old, scarred, fucked up – it’s a wonder they even work at all.

Sigh… what a maroon…

If macro-evolution means anything, then there was once a creature of some sort which, by an extraordinary long sequence of accidents, evolved into me typing on this computer, and a sperm whale swimming out there in the ocean.

It wasn’t a long sequence of accidents. And that isn’t what macro-evolution means.

We have overwhelming, irrefutable evidence. That’s why the only way that creationists can support their theory is to deny not just the science, but science itself. The scientific method. During the Dover trial Behe actually admitted that he used a different definition of the Scientific Method, under which astrology would also be considered science. He also agreed that his definition of “Theory” was much closer to the scientific definition of “Hypothesis”…

mikey

This Conservative Was Created by the Lord, Our God, in His Divine Image

So then, God, i must assume, looks like a doughy, short-bus-riding, self-important fuckwit?

Because most of the people i’ve known who so proudly profess to be made in His image seem to have that in common.

No wonder i gave up my religion.

But then in the Noonan family I suppose silly passes as sophisticated.

Well, one of the previous times Noonan made a complete joke out of himself on this topic, he claimed that his scientician daddy has mathematical proof of the existence of a “designer” (aka God):

Actually, yes, ID has been studied by a mathematician….my father, for one: He worked it out as impossible for there not to have been a designer. I can’t pretend to understand the math, but as my father is an honorable man, I’m more than willing to take his word for it.

And then later:

What Dad did was prove that it was impossible to have life generate spontaneously from lifelessness – which, if there is no God, is how life must have started, ergo, we’re not here right now unless God exists.

This is not a man who is playing with a full deck. Hell, he’s not even playing with the right deck–he’s trying to play blackjack with Uno cards.

All that being said, I like it when Nooners gets to ranting about creationism. He makes himself look dumber than usual (no small feat), and he further alienates non-idiotic Republicans.

The comments to Noonan’s post are fun. I’ve pulled this one by the Noonan his bad self (at June 1, 2007 01:31 AM) as it complements nicely mikey’s comment above:

And, finally, the problem with disallowing Design in the science classroom is that if you exclude the very mention of it, then you are automatically asserted the materialist and determinist view point – a very arguable viewpoint, but certainly not the only arguable viewpoint and, at all events, the purpose of education is to expose pupils to ideas.

Of all the stupid, batshit things that creationists always say, “The Earth is 6,000 years old” is my favorite. To believe this, you must truly reject ALL of science.

Oh, and just because I want to see this thing make the rounds as much as possible, a bumper sticker for Nooners.

i never understood the winger logic on creationism/evolution…

If you want to try to disprove evolution, there is a perfectly rational way to attempt this. The theory of evolution predicts a natural history. We have some actual records of this history–fossils.

Why not find me a rabbit skeleton that predates the first rat? Find me a bird that predates the first dinosaur? Doing so would disprove–or call into question–evolution. Why don’t these creationists at least attempt to do this?

Oh right, using evidence is just too “materialistic”.

From Wikipedia:

According to a 2006 Gallup poll, about 46% of Americans believe in strict creationism, concurring with the statement that “God created man pretty much in his present form at one time within the last 10,000 years,”

I’m a pretty open-minded guy, but anyone who agrees with that statement is a fucking ignorant fool. 46%!

And great point Dave. I can’t remember the exact number, but something like 90% of our DNA is just junk that doesn’t do anything. It is certainly not how an intelligent designer 6,000 years ago would have done it.

no educated Christian ever believed the world to be flat

Noooo! Perish the thought! None of them would ever say that!

Now, saying the world does not move and the sun orbits around it, that’s a horse of a different color:

http://www.fixedearth.com

noonan’s father’s “proof” is called the watchmaker something-or-other. it posits that if you found a watch on the beach and didn’t know what it was, you would ultimately have to conclude it had an intelligent designer because it’s so complex. something about the ocular relating to this…the point is, you need to believe that a creature whose own explanation for existence you can’t explain decided to create things from a void. so where did he come from?

no one knows. because it’s evidently self-contradictory. and also stupid. stupid stupid poo flinging stupid.

also, sadly! no has blanket permission to use any of my wife’s monkey images (i think you can pull them as jpegs from her site) http://www.manipulator.com whenever you need a reference for noonan. or goldberg. or podhoretz, the younger. or ben virgin. or mark steyn. or the other noonan.

Ahh, the old micro-evolution vs. macro-evolution psedo-debate.

Creationist: Evolution doesn’t exist! Nobodies seen it happen!
Scientist: But look, we can see bacteria evolve before our eyes!
Creationist: Oh, but that’s just micro-evolution. Of course that exists. But the macro-evolution doesn’t exist.
Scientist: Why shouldn’t the same processes of nature apply to sperm whales and chimps as it does bacteria?
Creationist: Um, God said so! Stop persecuting me! Mom!

If macro-evolution means anything, then there was once a creature of some sort which, by an extraordinary long sequence of accidents, evolved into me typing on this computer, and a sperm whale swimming out there in the ocean. This, in my view, is an unreasonable idea – bluntly, its rather stupid.

And yet everything in the Universe coming into being in less than a week 6,000 years ago, that isn’t stupid or unreasonable. Ooooookay, then.

Seriously, isn’t this the twenty-first fucking century? Whatever it is, these guys make a good case for de-evolution.

Why not find me a rabbit skeleton that predates the first rat? Find me a bird that predates the first dinosaur? Doing so would disprove–or call into question–evolution. Why don’t these creationists at least attempt to do this?

Well, that’s easy. They just say Carbon 14 dating is a lie.

as usual, I think the Onion had the definitive word on the subject:

Evangelical Scientists Refute Gravity With New ‘Intelligent Falling’ Theory

Intelligent design, as explained by Troy McClure in an educational film.

Robert Green,
You mean Noonan’s paw made a mathematical proof out of the old “Watchmaker argument” first put forth almost 200 years ago? Cutting edge work there, boy.

Anyone who uses “Darwinism”, as Dan Someone points out above, is good evidence said person either doesn’t know enough about the topic to open his big yap or is peddling bullshit. I’m a pretty easy-going guy, but I must admit…the IDists, creationists and Dilbert-esque uber “skeptics” (anything they can’t understand is scientific hooey, essentially), I just can’t bring myself to pay them folks any attention. It’s like a tell, let’s you know not to waste your time with such a clown.

How many times do I have to tell you that I work in mysterious ways? Wouldn’t be so mysterious if you figured it all out, now, would it? Christ.

My favorite part, even given the elaborate castle of incredibly stupid arguments, is Nooner’s (and ilk’s) astonishing arrogance: thousands of bright, dedicated, trained scientists over centuries of work, research and discourse posit evolution; but it doesn’t make sense to me, so godidit.

I’ll believe in Creationism the day its adherants start an “Appendix and Tonsil Donor List”. Because, in their world, God’s plan for those body parts is going to kick in any day now.

My favorite part, even given the elaborate castle of incredibly stupid arguments, is Nooner’s (and ilk’s) astonishing arrogance: thousands of bright, dedicated, trained scientists over centuries of work, research and discourse posit evolution; but it doesn’t make sense to me, so godidit.

Idiots: Stephen Hawking, Albert Einstein, Edwin Hubble, Max Planck
Geniuses: Mark Noonan, Sam Brownback

And as if by design—not intelligent design, but rather materialist, determinist, and secularist design—Incontinentia Buttocks’ point (above at 18:35) is borne out by the Noonan his bad self, commenting June 1, 2007 01:56 PM:

A set of people, most of whom are social elites, have determined that there is no God – or, at least, no God which makes a difference in the human life – and is insistent that the instruments of instruction propagate their views; Darwinism is the foundation of their belief, while Marx and Freud provide the refinements in the economic and social sphere; an unholy trinity to battle the Holy Trinity.

Try to believe he said it:

“its high time we started instructing people that they don’t have a right to a world constructed just to please them.”

– Mark Noonan, June 1, 2007

Oh, sweet irony.

Sometimes an ass-chin is just an ass-chin, and sometimes it’s on a real monkey. Jumpin’ Jehosaphat, I’ve been discredited for decades. I even wrote paeans to cocaine, for Heaven’s sake, and was hardly a feminist, what with penis envy and all that.

Ugh, the Watchmaker argument ticks me off!

Why? Because the original premise is nothing like our world. They suppose you find a lone watch in a forest, and conclude there must be a designer. In the real world, we find a swarm of ‘watches’ that we can see reproduce. And see variation over the course of generations. And find fossil ‘watches’ that are even more different. And similar ‘clocks’, ‘timepieces’, ‘toasters’. A whole ecosystem of these devices, all interacting, doing stuff. Then the top it off with the non-sequitor “The first life is completely improbably, so there is no such thing as evolution from the first life to the present.” Can they see that they are speaking nonsense?

And if they can’t even understand that they are conflating abiogenesis with evolution, they clearly need to shut up and read a couple books…

mikey

” It seems much more reasonable to me that there is a Creator who made things a certain way because He wanted them to be such – and that He has a plan for it all.”

Does he also believe that it’s so much easier to understand mountains and volcanoes as the work of god, rather then trying to understand complex and boring geological explanations about plate tectonics and such?

Or that ducks fly because the lord loves them, and not because of aerodynamics?

Or that nuclear bombs exist because god knew that some day we would need some seriously powerful shit to kill each other with, so he created atoms to be splittable?

Beyond, how can you look at the human body and just say, “ahhh, nothing needs improving on THAT.”?

Can they see that they are speaking nonsense?

No. Look, these people believe that the fossil record is proof of Noah’s flood. A story that if taken literally, makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.

And sorry guys, but the ID crowd is distinctly disinterested in doing actual science. Their primal concern is to bypass science and use politics to decide what is taught in the classroom. It is akin to saying that mathematicians are wrong to say that 2 + 2 = 4 by drawing all sorts of dark inferences that 2 + 2 = 3 – e^(i*Pi) and claiming that this is somehow a controversy. Thus they essentially want to put the answer of what is 2 + 2 to a vote.

When I saw the first line of the article, I thought it was a ‘Shorter Mark Noonan’ effort. Then I find it’s what Noonan has proudly said himself. I think he’s trying to put you guys out of business – you need to up your game.

It’s as if the second half of the nineteenth century never happened for Noonan, let alone the twentieth. Has he never heard of Bishop ‘Soapy Sam’ Wilberforce making a fool of himself in 1860 with a similar argument?

As for “no educated Christian ever believed the world to be flat” – may I introduce everyone to my great great grandfather, who wrote a book in the 20th century ‘proving’ the earth is flat? Still available from the Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge, if you’d care to click the link (sadly, I don’t get any royalties) – so they think it’s still a good Christian book. After training as a missionary (he left after theological disagreements with the college head), he was a shipping broker, and then a Congregational minister. An idea of the contents:

Similar sentiments were expressed by flat-earther David Wardlaw Scott, who wrote,

“It [Scripture] never contradicts facts, and, to the true Christian student, it teaches more real science than all the schools and colleges in the world.” (1901, p. 284)

Elsewhere, Scott said of his book,

“It may be that these pages will meet the need of some, who have not altogether been misled by unprovable fancies, and who will rejoice to find that the Biblical account of Creation is, after all, the only one which can be depended upon, and that Modern Astronomy, like its kindred theory of Evolution….is nothing but ‘a mockery, a delusion, and a snare’.” (1901, p. iii)

Lemme get this straight. Noonan’s daddy was a scienticianist, and a mathematicalist? I know there are areas where theses two fields overlap, but if Noondaddy was making mathematicalized proofs of sweet Jebus’s golden penis, ummmmm, I’m guessing he wasn’t a theoretical physicist?
Has Noonan ever given a reason why anyone should take anything he says at all seriously, besides scamming startup funds from Netvocates?

In my mind, this whole kerfluffle can be sorted out rather easily.
Intelligent Design is not science and should not be taught as such. It falls into the realm of philosophy and therein should be relegated.

’nuff said.

I can’t believe that nobody’s coined Noonanity.

I have a serious problem. I have a creationist, anti-choice nutcake I can’t ignore, because she’s my brand new US Government teacher. We started with the bill of rights and the constitution, which is, of course, normal. However, she wasted no time talking about the lack of a mention of right to privacy and made sure to let us know that she doesn’t believe in abortion, even in cases of rape or incest, or to save the life of the mother.. She described the theory of evolution as “the theory that humans are descended from monkeys”. I’m afraid. I’m very afraid. I can’t drop this class, it will put me two credits short of full time status which will fuck with my financial aid. What the hell am I gonna do? She already knows I’m a card carrying ACLU member. I think I’m fucked.

Well, right now I’m going to take a shower and go get drunk. Thinking about this problem makes me want to vomit.

Yesterday, she showed us, her captive audience, sketches of third trimester abortion, complete with incorrect statistics, which she did say she couldn’t vouch for, since she got them from Agape or some other anti choice loonies. She volunteers at Agape.

This woman has a master’s degree. Jesus fuckin’ X on a pony!

Beer. “Put the beer in the coconut and throw the can away….. ” Homer!

The fact is that the liberal establishment is extremely biased towards slanting the table towards the “theory of Evolution”. I think there’s as much evidence against evolution than for evolution.

But the left thinks that belief in divine creation is bad and that belief in 9/11 conspiracy theories is good.

The left is doomed, because they will be crushed in 2008. The Democrat congress has been proven to be inept, run by a scatterbrained ditz, Nancy Pelosi, and other leftists.

Our next President will be a true leader who will win the War on Terror, his name is Fred D. Thompson of Tennessee, an outsider with Conservative credentials and solid values.

As well, Obama will be exposed as being someone who is dumber than Bush, and someone who wouldn’t have made it this far if not for his skin color.

Granted, Bush is smarter than Kerry and smarter than the average person.

Obama, on the other hand, is a moron.

Duros, hell fucking no.
Intelligent design is no more philosophy than the Matrix is.
It is sad you’re so dismissive of one of humanity’s greatest achievements, tho.
(Philosophy, not ID.)

Candy, go to the Dean of Students, or whichever office handles such affairs at your school, and get your objections on record. The class itself is a write-off, but you should cover yourself now if she tries to fail you or something similarly shitty.
Dealing with bad profs is like dealing with stalkers, sort of, only harder. It’s still best to document it as much as possible, and have records.
Tape her lectures, if you can get a handheld recorder. Find others in the class with similar concerns to go to the Dean’s with you. Ask around as to whether she grades ideologically.

Y’know, considering I find evolution a perfectly fine idea, have a political love-in for Marxism, and find neo-Freudian psychoanalysis the most interesting of all psychological theories…

I should be like the guy who hides under Mark Noonan’s bed every night, waiting to grab his ankle if he steps off it in the middle of the night.

Though I’d probably have to convert to Islam in order to scare the absolute willies out of him.

That might have been the real Gary. Good effort, if not. Stupidity and misogyny bases quickly n effectively covered.

My favorite bit is :

“If macro-evolution means anything, then there was once a creature of some sort which, by an extraordinary long sequence of accidents, evolved into me typing on this computer, and a sperm whale swimming out there in the ocean. This, in my view, is an unreasonable idea – bluntly, its rather stupid.”

Ah yes…the old Argument from Personal Incredulity…which has some serious heft coming from the highly trained geneticist, Senor Noonan.

Reminds me of Richard Dawkins’ takedown of the Bishop of Birmingham, who had said: “As for camouflage, this is not always explicable on neo-Darwinian premises. If polar bears are dominant in the Arctic, then there would seem to have been no need to evolve a white-coloured form of camouflage”.

Translation by Dawkins: “I personally, off the top of my head sitting in my study, never having visited the Arctic, never having seen a polar bear in the wild, and having been educated in classical literature and theology, have not so far managed to think of a reason why polar bears might benefit from being white”.

Or, in our case here: “I personally, as I type this with my little pink paws, dropping Cheetos crumbs between the keys of my laptop, never having seen a sperm whale turn into a blogger, have not so far managed to conceive of how I might be related to a chimpanzee”.

Hey Gary! How’d you get back here? Thought your buddies built a fence. Well, glad your coyote didn’t leave you in the desert.

Shorter Gary:

Global Scientific Establishment = Teh American Political Left

Women = Inept, scatterbrained, ditzes

An outsider with Conservative credentials and solid values = Lying, bigoted, misogynist racist war loving cracker

Thanks for clearing that up, Senor Ruppert…

mikey

As always, Noonan’s head is up his ass all the way to his dewlap.

How can you call anybody a bigot when you claim that i’m an illegal immigrant?

As well, I was not referring to Pelosi as a scatterbrained ditz. I was referring to Harry Reid as a scatterbrained ditz.

Harry Reid is one of the most corrupt people ever in the Senate and he’s also dumb as a rock.

As well, while the President is making a mistake with his amnesty proposal, if it becomes law, it will hurt the Democrats more, since the voters will blame them for passing the law.

Fred D. Thompson of Tennessee, an outsider

Such an outsider, he was a Senator. A lousy Senator, granted, but a Senator nonetheless. Of course, wingnuts actually bought the Dubya-is-an-outsider line (not to mention the Dubya-is-just-a-regular-ol’-good-‘ol’-boy-from-Texas line), so we know they’ll believe damn near anything they’re told to believe by fellow wingnuts.

Candy:

I agree, document this teacher as much as you can. If you feel like having a little fun, report her to David Horowitz and see how he dodges having to be what he claims to be: a righteous crusader for depoliticizing the classroom. Sure, he’s clearly just a right-wing crackpot, but the cognitive dissonance could prove funny.

Wait, so we have a horrible professor inflicting her ideology on her helpless students? Someone call David Horowitz immediately! He’ll… uhhhh… do… something…

Candy, you have my sympathies, although those are worth their weight in gold. I agree with adb, get your objections on record so that you have as much of a paper trail as possible. I may be wrong in this, and I certainly am not familiar with your faculty code of conduct, but unfortunately being a right wing crank does not forbid her from opining on controversial issues. If she clearly is marking you badly for liberal views, or being a liberal that is another case entirely. In such an eventuality, having fellow students with similar problems helps your case immensely.

I’d try and be as professional as possible in this situation. It may not help with the professor, but if there is a problem, the worst thing that can happen is it being seen as some sort of political shouting match.

Fred Thompson was only a Senator for long enough to be established as an experienced leader. He choose to not make a career out of being a Senator.

He’s not someone who has been a Senator for 2 and a half years like Barack Obama.

Thanks, Diff Brad. I also have an old friend on the faculty, so I think I’ll sound him out.

It’s very creepy. She was (is) so nice. It’s like taking a bite of a chocolate and finding out it has a shit center. The first class was very fun, even though i was getting that ‘vibe’ a little, even at the outset. Yesterday’s class, man, suspicions more than confirmed.

I’m not sure that’s the real Gary. Damn close, though! And as I recall “real” gary was a Fred Thompson fan too.

And now, good Mexican food and beer, here I come! I’ll drink a XX for you, senor Gary.

Candy: In addition to tape recorders, if you, or a friend go to class with a laptop, a dollar-store mic and the wonderful freeware “Audacity” make recording lectures (and jezus-juiced profs) a simple matter.

Audacity: Free, open source audio editor and recorder
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

I was glad to have my laptop/audacity handy last year when I had a prof who was nowheres near as seriously crazy as yours. I recorded the lectures and kept them on file, just in case he tried to fuck my on my marks because he didn’t like my outspoken atheism and defence of the CBC (as a conservative chrisian, this prof thought the goddless and gov’t subsidized news net was ‘da debil’). I think he may have dickered me a few percent on my final presentation, but my marks were sufficently high that I didn’t have to bother going to the faculty office over it.

Always record, always cover your ass.

I’d start complaining about your nightmare prof now if I were you.

If you use a laptop, make sure you know how many megabites your audio files will eat.

Well, I record as .wav, and compress to 22kbs mp3 when I get home. For lectures, 22kps is fine, though you wouldn’t want to hear music that compressed.

Heh, storing a semester’s worth of lectures in .wav would eat a harddrive pretty quickly.

Off topic- Here’s the topic of ace’s next post.
Biotech vaginas.

He choose to not make a career out of being a Senator.

True! He found that lobbying just cut out the middleman.

He’s been in DC almost his entire adult life, but whatever. He’s an outsider!

He looks like a mortician and can’t smile to save his life. Ronny Reagan is rolling over in his grave thinking that there are Republicans out there who would compare this guy to him.

Or you can burn the files onto cd or dvd, of course.

Candy, a bit of advice from the perspective of a prof who occasionally deals with complaints from students who think I’ve dinged their grades because of their political stances:

First off, I wouldn’t go to the Dean (or whoever) right away, unless your intent is to get the prof in trouble for expressing her views — and this approach would likely be a nonstarter anyway, given that colleges like to uphold faculty’s academic freedom. It would also, in my view, be awfully close to what Horowitz’ flying monkeys do, and I really do believe that if it’s not OK for them to do it, it’s not OK for us to do it.

I would, however, maintain a very complete file of all written assignments, grading criteria, etc. in the event that you get slammed for refusing to agree with her in a paper or exam. Since she can’t have grading criteria involving students parroting her opinions (or at least she won’t have her job much longer if she does), you’d have a very solid case if your grade turns out to be lower than what all non-ideological criteria would indicate.

The reason that no student complaint about bias in my grading has ever been upheld is that they can’t demonstrate that they met the criteria any better than I’ve said they did (clear thesis? credible support? use of inductive/deductive reasoning? etc.). I have, in fact, had plenty of students with opinions I find highly objectionable earn high grades because they have managed to build their arguments according to “the rules” even though their entire point is based on a faulty premise.

It’s possible that your prof, while looney-tunes in terms of her opinions and her judgment about what’s a valid topic for lecture, still has some ethics in grading. That would be nice. But if it’s not the case, you’ve created the paper trail that goes to the Dean.

Good luck, and sorry about the wasted tuition. Well, maybe not wasted. Perhaps you’ll open the eyes of a few of your classmates . . .

Candy: I see two issues: one, potentially questionable or inappropriate content, and two, unfair treatment/grading. The first you have already experienced; the second you fear will come soon. Let’s see what happens with the first course assignment. If the instructor gives oral instructions to clarify or elaborate on the written assignment, take very good notes on these. Do this so that you have, as others have stressed, documentation, in this case of what she expects of the students, and so that as you do the assignment, you can keep track of these expectations and make sure you fulfill them.

He looks like a mortician

Hey now, Jay B. Was that nice?

This woman has a master’s degree. Jesus fuckin’ X on a pony!

Unfortunately, being educated doesn’t stop people from being idiots.

Candy, I am really sorry to hear about your predicament. His Grace has some good points, I think. Paper trails are helpful in cases like this. One good route to look at, can you transfer to another professor of the same class? Or even transfer to a completely different class for this semester? I don’t know your situation, or what the rules are at your college- but maybe that would be a good place to start, with some kind of counselor. Depending on your college, there could be resources to help you in this situation. The fact that it is apparently the start of the class may give you some flexibility.

Do you think that this woman is the type who would find a way to fail you, even if you are professional and do not engage her? And do you think that you would be able to keep from engaging her?

Fred Thompson looks like a friendly grandfather, as opposed to looking like an arrogant fool like Obama or Edwards, or looking like the Wicked Witch of the East (like Hillary).

Fred Thompson reminds me of my grandfather. You know, the one who got my grandmother pregnant in highschool so her married her. Later he divorced her for someone 25 years his younger. Gramps always had a smile on his face though, a nice, friendly smile. That alone makes him the bestest candidate for Prezinent evah!!!

SFW, Gare?

Thanks to all of you for your excellent suggestions. I intend to document, and I do intend to wait and see what happens with the first paper. I could do the laptop thing; it might keep her honest if I did.

In fairness, as Smiling Mortician mentioned, I’m giving her all the benefit of the doubt, for the sake of academic freedom. I’ll document, and wait and see.

atheist, I’m going to look into switching, but the way things are set up, it’s going to be hard to do it. Hopefully, things will go well, she’ll be fair, and I’ll get a decent grade. If not, well, we’ll see. I’m not very good about keeping my mouth shut, but will try not to be confrontational.

On the plus side, my Legal Research & Writing prof is a noted attorney who helped a lot of poor families during the farm crisis. Haven’t had my Intro to Law yet…

Now I’m going to really go eat. (We always have false starts around here.)

Gary must have been lost alone in the desert for a long time. He really needs someone to talk to…

mikey

Mortician adds some good advice. Just for the record, I suggested going to the Dean now just so as to generate record of her concerns, not to narc on a ideological opponent. That way it doesn’t look like sour grapes if she gives Candy an undeserved crappy grade and she challenges it.
Personally, I’d have sought out that prof, just so as to make her life miserable with my big, loud mouth. (And to maybe save a poor sod or two from her influence.)

On the other hand, tho, inaccurate propoganda on any topic, let alone something so charged as abortion, has no place in a classroom. That alone would lead me to the Dean to complain. Presenting her POV is fine, lying isn’t, her craven caveat aside.

I’m not very good about keeping my mouth shut, but will try not to be confrontational.

Oh, hey, I totally understand, I’m not any good at it either. And I have never really been in a situation like yours, so perhaps I should not say that.

I haven’t ever been a professor, but I have taught classes as a TA, and I have to say that a complaint to your dean wouldn’t be out of place. While American government may encompass issues of current concern in politics, pushing (probably baseless) sketches of aborted fetuses in order to gross you out into compliance with her views is very clearly beyond the bounds of professional standards. I would say it creates what is, in the jargon of contemporary codes of conduct, a “hostile learning environment”.

Also, if the opportunity to review the professor comes up, with student evaluations, then I wouldn’t stint on the details. I don’t generally like them, either as a student or TA, but in this case they’re certainly a tool worth using.

While American government may encompass issues of current concern in politics, pushing (probably baseless) sketches of aborted fetuses in order to gross you out into compliance with her views is very clearly beyond the bounds of professional standards.

Yeah, but see, this is what worries me. If those of us on the left decide that a professor is out of bounds for pushing students’ buttons on political issues in a government class, then we have absolutely no right to complain when Horowitz and his Shrieking Eels agitate against professors who use, say, photos of the dead and injured in Iraq to make a point in an ethics class.

Education is often about students being presented with ideas or images that contradict their values. I think the prof crosses the line when she actually does shut down discussion or dissent (by attacking students who comment) or when she punishes students who disagree by grading them unethically. Short of those infractions, this prof is just doing to lefties what a lot of leftie profs do to rightwing students — although in my experience, the leftie profs tend to have significantly more reliable evidence to present. (And this is college we’re talking about — the students are adults and presumed to be able to think for themselves. My views would be quite different if this were about a K-12 situation).

The best solution to ugly or stupid free speech is intelligent, reasoned free speech, not censorship.

Ok, here’s my 2 cents, adjusted for inflation, Ms. Candy. I never went to college, and I only have this idea of what a college “lecture hall” looks like from movies and tv (mostly, when I think about it, Buffy), but I’m not going to let my utter lack of experience and actual knowledge prevent me from suggesting what you should do. Ready? Here we go.

At the larger sporting goods stores in your area you can buy something called a “Wrist Rocket”. Essentially, it’s an advanced, state of the art slingshot. It is optimized to use .32 steel or lead balls.

The next time your prof goes on an extended wingnut rant, set up with a clear line of fire and a solid background. Wait for her to turn to face a different direction, then drop to one knee and let fly. There are no possible bad outcomes. Either your aim is true and she drops like a poleaxed steer, or you miss and the sound of that ball going through the desk or whiteboard is enough to make her realize she is not among friends and there might be a compelling reason to stick to the subject at hand.

Thanks. Glad to help. I like to consider it “thinking outside the box”….

mikey

“Wrist Rocket�.

God, I still remember the ecstasy of being in the third grade and launching a hard-boiled egg out at the street. It shattered and the yolk rolled off like a cartoon punchline. We were agog like Israelites with a split sea in front of us.

Moving on to launching chunks of metal wound up being less fun for obvious reasons.

If those were dating service pics, I’d choose the chimp.

Such a topic calls for poesy:

They tell us that
We lost our tails
Evolving up
From little snails
I say its all
Just wind in sails
Are we not men?
We are devo!

Oh dear. Can we now assume that all conservatives are idiots like this guy seems to be? I think we can, my hippie friends!

Hippies rock. And know best.

Culture war 101

1) Promulgate bone-headed message appealing to willful ignorance.

2) Await inevitable liberal condemnation and mockery.

3) Utilise inevitable liberal condemnation and mockery to entrench and reinforce willful ignorance.

4) Go to step 1).

Hippies are cool!

Shorter so-and-so: blah blah blah.

HAHAH! Wasn’t that funny?

“3) Utilise inevitable liberal condemnation and mockery to entrench and reinforce willful ignorance.”

Can we just stick with #3, winged-rat?

‘Cept I’d say ‘utilize’ since I’m American. And I’d go for willful knowledge. But that’s just me! Even though you are a fan of ignorance, and I’m a fan of knowledge, I bet we can come to an agreement!

Call me!

You’re still boring, Kevin.

*slap*

Kevin, my man, you are the living example of step 1).

Sooner or later you’re going to have to realise that politically incorrect irreverence and acting like a complete asshole are two entirely different things.

“Sooner or later you’re going to have to realise [sic. be American! But don’t do so illegally of course] that politically incorrect irreverence and acting like a complete asshole are two entirely different things.”

Holy cow, rat-who-flies! I already do! Is there yet another level to my ‘enlightenment’? Or is this as good as it gets for the progressives?

More importantly, there is no reason for anyone to have a heart attack over this subject

Unless of course your genetic screening has revealed a predisposition to heart disease. Then, you’d be dead without Darwin.

Meanwhile, getting a genetic screening in a society based on for-profit health insurance is suicidal

Too coherent for the real Gary. He’s actually responding to context and irony.

“I dunno guys… what do you think?” – Gavin’s alter ego.

I’m thinkin’ the one on the left is Gavin, and the one on the right is the creationist. Did I get it right?

I would like to object, in the strongest possible terms, to the next comment.

Love.

Object away, my friend :).

Rasp, rasp, slurp, rasp.

Flying Rodent, please, don’t feed the troll. We ignored it and it went away, and we had a jolly old conversation free of crap.

This expresses my opinion of our eager little troll. There’s a version that was done just last month or so, but I can’t get the linky to work. Just google devo and mongoloid and you’ll find it: a lovely piece, with just Gerald V Casales singing and someone on piano.

And if you fancy further Devo goodness, here’s Beautiful World for your delectation. Love those guys: groovy music and progressive politics, all from the middle of Ohio and the depths of the 70s/80s. Bless their little cotton socks.

What can you do, Candy? In practice, probably exactly jack bumpkiss.
Unless you’re going to to a very high-profile school, colleges care more about getting your money then providing a good learning environment.

From my off and on experience, left leaning profs tend to leave their issues at home, unless someone outright asks about something. The more conservative ones are much more likely to bring them out of left field and force the issue in class.

For my money, a Gov 101* class isn’t the forum to give current events serious debate. ie, one shouldn’t be debating (or bringing in photographic props) abortion nor the Iraq war, but rather, you know, teaching how the government works and functions.

Irregardless**, creationists are stupid. However, if it would shut them up, I agree that the concept (not theory, as theories require some semblance oh proof and there is none except the self-full filing kind.) of ID should be taught. I vote Scientology. With Xanadu and nuclear bombs and midichlorians and that shit.

Oh! Or that episode of Star Trek, where they find out that the reason all the aliens are humanoid is because millions of years ago. there was only one species in the universe, and they got really depressed with that concept, so they seeded thousands of worlds with their DNA in hopes that their genetic “children” will have something to do? That fits the category of “Intelligent Design”, let’s teach that.

*I’m assuming this was one of those required-level courses, and not something specialized for a government degree. I could be wrong.

**It’s a perfectly crombulent word.

Hey you stoopid faggots, I gotta go mow my mom’s lawn…If ya know what I mean! Man, you stoopid hippies can’t never know how sweet it is to suck mom’s twat.

Stoopid friggin’ hippies.

Mmmm, flaky crust filled with delicious academic freedom. Love these discussions. Horowitz v. Berube, 16 rounds. *ding*

It sounds to me like this professor is being provocative, and should be obliged. This is an opportunity, not a problem.

I had to respectfully smack down an accounting prof once just to get the class back on the topic of accountancy. It was a very satisfying moment, and I don’t even remember what my grade was.

Beyond, how can you look at the human body and just say, “ahhh, nothing needs improving on THAT.�?

Snerk! I have been known to tell a particularly pestulant monotheist “An omnipotent god decided to build the crown of creation and the best he could come up with was — you?”

But only if they refuse to take my subtler hints, like me saying that I’m not a xtian, signaling broadly to people standing behind them, or setting the tablecloth on fire and using their drink to extinguish it.

As for Fred Thompson, the first time I saw him, I thought Jabba the Hutt’s cousin had moved to the city and gotten some work done. Then Fred opened his mouth, and confirmed that Jabba got the brains in that family…

Liberals May Be Descended From Apes, But This Conservative Was Created by the Lord, Our God, in His Divine Image

Huh. The LORD does shoddy work, don’t He?

6,000 years old…

Oil
Coal
Diamonds

Your ”Theory” is FUCKED!!!

OK, I’m only about halfway through the comments, but I gotta respond to the ones like this one:

And if they can’t even understand that they are conflating abiogenesis with evolution, they clearly need to shut up and read a couple books…

Problem is, folks–they just don’t care that they don’t understand this stuff. They don’t care that they don’t know that the scientific method is, orr what a scientific theory is as opposed to a rhetorical one. They don’t care that they can’t explain anything about-even in layman’s terms-physics, astronomy, geology, chemistry, biology, or any *other* field of science. They just don’t care.
And, here’s the thing–all this “unknowledge” is reinforced for them through the endless repetition by their religion that there are “unknowable mysteries” and the “mysterious mind of God” and “things Man was just *not* meant to know!” Their willful stupidity is maddening!

Candy, FWIW if you want to tape a few of those lectures, I would be more than happy to transcribe them for you as part of your document trail- it’s what I’ve done professionally for the past 5+ years, both in class and recorded lectures. I do most of my work for students with various kinds of disabilitiies. Believe me, in all that time (and that is a LOT of classes people) I’ve never heard a professor trot out that kind of claptrap (even at an Catholic uni I worked for). The other work I do is audio transcription for folks like Crooks and Liars.

Seriously. I’d love to help you out with this – just say the word. All you need to do is send me the audio file as an email attachment and I send you back a transcript. People use digital recorders this way in classes all the time (just say your learning style requires you to use both audio and written sources for review when you study).

Let me know…

Also, if the prof spots the recorder and puts up a big fuss, that ought to tell you a lot – she knows she’s fucked up. I have had profs (only on about two occasions) claim intellectual property for lecture content – but they were overruled because my student had a documented disability and had a right to this form of information. Again, I would bat your eyelashes sweetly and tell her you need an audio review along with your notes to study due to your learning style. I doubt she can refuse you on those grounds.

they don’t want anyone to learn anything but the most strictly materialist and determinist biological view; and so we have our great debate.
Any translation from the original Gibberish loses a lot of Noonan’s special character, but here goes: “Not enough spirituality and sky-fairy-belief-system is being taught in science classes. The current science curricula involve too much materialism, determinism and science.”
Sounds like he represents quite a large constituency in the US. There really isn’t any hope for you people, is there?

If Noonan’s pappy thinks he’s proven the existence of Jeebus’ pappy by mathematics, then I’m Queen Zenobia.

Sheesh, what a total knobhead.

Thanks, celticgirl, I really appreciate the offer. I’ll let you know how it goes.

I believe what I’m going to do is run it by my old friend on the faculty, first.

I didn’t have a problem with her expressing her views; however, I fail to see what showing pictures of abortions and describing procedures has to do with a government class. She also trotted out the old “girls come in and say they want abortions, but when you say they should have the baby and put it up for adoption, they say, what, give away my baby?” argument. I had a splitting migraine, one of the kind where you feel you may vomit at any minute, and I wasn’t on my toes, so I really regret that I didn’t respond. I was stunned. This argument makes me so angry.

She also plans to have a military recruiter come in and talk to the class so people can hear the “good things” that the media doesn’t tell us about. Hardly an unbiased observer. She has a letter from an Iraqi interpreter to this recruiter saying how good it is that the US removed Saddam and is occupying Iraq. He too is not much of an unbiased observer, someone who has a vested interest in keeping the US there so he won’t be murdered as a collaborator.

Interestingly enough, how many kids do you think she’s adopted? You guessed it – zero! How many kids do you think she’s had from fertility treatments? Why, she’s had twins! Why is it god’s will that a pregnant woman have a baby, but not god’s will that a woman is infertile? I don’t get that.

Mikey, I actually like the wrist rocket idea the best! I laughed so hard and so long… Unfortunately, I think campus security might take a dim view of that solution… Spoilsports!

It’s good to see Gary back, if, indeed, it is Gary. The troll quality on this site has been in such decline over the last few months.

Candy, here are a couple of thoughts from a college professor:

There may be college-level (or even state-level) rules about whether you’re allowed to record lectures without the consent of the instructor. If it’s hard to find out whether it’s allowed and you record lectures anyway, it might be useful to keep the existence of the records quiet unless they’re really needed.

Depending on where you’re going to school, there may be someone acting as undergraduate program director whose job it is to keep track of this sort of thing; this may be your dean, but if not, it’s someone else you should consider talking to. Also, again depending on your school, you may find that there’s an office that deals with harassment and discrimination. Policies are usually specific to different types of discrimination (race, sex, sexual orientation, etc.) but you may find a generic anti-harassment policy that could be applied.

My general advice is to keep a paper/electronic trail just in case; it’s not critical that you talk to someone higher up right now, as long as you have documentation for everything.

All hail, Queen Zenobia!

Herr Doktor, no hope at all, I’m afraid. And I do mean afraid. I’m beginning to be very scared for this country.

It’s so nice for me to have found this blog of yours, it’s so interesting. I sure hope and wish that you take courage enough to pay me a visit in my PALAVROSSAVRVS REX!, and plus get some surprise. My blog is also so cool!

Feel free off course to comment as you wish and remember: don’t take it wrong, don’t think that this visitation I make is a matter of more audiences for my own blogg. No. It’s a matter of making universal, realy universal, all this question of bloggs, all the essential causes that bring us all together.

I think it’s to UNITE MANKIND that we became bloggers! Don’t see language as an obstacle. That’s not the point. Pictures talk also. Open your heart and come along!!!!!

RSA, that’s exactly the approach I plan to take, which is basically my life’s philosophy: Hope for teh best, prepare for the worst.

In all fairness, the woman does have a sense of humor and admits that her position is extreme, both VERY hopeful signs. And above all, i want to be fair. And I don’t want to be a Horowitzian, either. We shall see.

Interestingly, we’ve got the ID debate going full-throttle now at Moo U, because a prof from the ID camp was denied tenure, and is appealing. From what I’ve seen of the debate, it doesn’t look like he has a leg to stand on, but the predictable furor has broken out in the press, both pro and con.

Ah, time to go to the farmers market. Local wine, vegetables, bread and pie. (Yes, PIE! I like pie!) Mmmmmmm…….

Yeah, but see, this is what worries me. If those of us on the left decide that a professor is out of bounds for pushing students’ buttons on political issues in a government class, then we have absolutely no right to complain when Horowitz and his Shrieking Eels agitate against professors who use, say, photos of the dead and injured in Iraq to make a point in an ethics class.

There is a difference between pushing students’ buttons and saying “I’m going to gross you out repeatedly until you submit to me and my views.” Using grisly Iraq War photos, abortion photos, scenes of serial killings to push some pro-death penalty view, or any other example one can think of is emotional blackmail and it’s unfit for any university classroom. Not only is it against every standard of conduct I’ve ever seen for professors, it short-circuits rational thought, and encourages sloppy argumentation. If grossing people out is going to become the new standard of good argumentation, then, in the case of those abortion pictures, no abortions at all would be allowable because they “gross us out”. No wars nor revolutions would be allowable, even in self-defense (which I’m certainly not saying the Iraq or even Afghanistan War is–they’re neo-imperialist wars), because the consequences might “gross us out”. It’s a prescription for lazy, reactionary thinking.

If Horowitz were going after a professor who was using photos of the dead and injured in Iraq to proselytize for a pacifistic position, then Horowitz would be right. One simply cannot throw out standards of behavior simply because “our” ox may be gored in turn. However, it’s a credit to left-leaning college and university professors that Horowitz hasn’t found anything so egregious and has to clutch at straws in order to forward his political agenda.

However, kudos for a great Princess Bride film reference. 😉

Interestingly, we’ve got the ID debate going full-throttle now at Moo U, because a prof from the ID camp was denied tenure, and is appealing.

Pretty interesting. It’s tough to evaluate a tenure decision from the outside, but not everyone realizes that a lot of weight is given to the judgment of external referees (i.e. letters of recommendation from impartial evaluators, usually professors at other universities who have no connection with the tenure candidate). If I had to guess, I’d bet he went down in flames there.

What’s funny/sad is that lots of good assistant professors don’t get tenure, for lots of reasons. There’s no way to tell if ID played a role in this case. To be honest, I doubt it.

They tell us that
We lost our tails
Evolving up
From little snails
I say its all
Just wind in sails
Are we not men?
We are devo!

God Made Man, but he used the monkey to do it….

Abortions are no grosser than, say, srugery to remove peritoneal tumors (warning: gross image at link). That doesn’t mean we don’t do surgery to remove tumors, though.

Any surgical procedure will be gross. That’s because there’s lots and lots of gross looking stuff inside the human body. I’ve never understood the idea that abortion is somehow uniquely gross. Ever seen a stomach? Now, that’s disgusting.

#a different brad said,
June 2, 2007 at 0:15

Duros, hell fucking no.
Intelligent design is no more philosophy than the Matrix is.
It is sad you’re so dismissive of one of humanity’s greatest achievements, tho.
(Philosophy, not ID.)

Dude, whoa. I’m not at all dismissive of philosophy. I didn’t say it was good philosophy, I just know it ain’t science. And if people are going to insist on talking about it, then I just think philosophically is preferable to scientifically. Even philosophically, ID gets it’s ass smacked. Shit, if L. Ron Hubbard can get taken seriously, anything’s possible.
Sorry, man, I didn’t mean to offend.

“Ever seen a stomach? Now, that’s disgusting.”

Or someone undergoing brain surgery, where they’re screwed into that giant vise, and their scull has literally been taken off, leaving their brain sitting out there, exposed. And, of course they have to be awake during the procedure, to help prevent against accidental brain damage, so they’re aware of everything that’s going on around them.

But, yeah, no, abortions are icky.

Sounds like he represents quite a large constituency in the US. There really isn’t any hope for you people, is there?

Bird flu. Nothing like a really fierce pandemic to thin the herd. Since the Noonans of the world expect their God to protect them, presumably they won’t pay any attention when the ‘librul meedya’ starts talking about voluntary quarantines and mass death. Haven’t reached the point of thinking that a 30-to-65% across-the-board population reduction might be a good idea, but if I ever do, it’ll be people like Noonan who get me there.

shorter Sam Brownback:

Reason, logic and currently available evidence are unable to answer all questions and therefore, the shit we made up to fill in the blanks has equal value.

Duros, it’s a pet peeve of mine. I know philosophy has a general and a specific sense as a word, but it still pissed me off when I see the various “philosophy of…” books, which have nothing whatsoever to do with philosophy. There is no such thing as philosophy of science, it’s a meaningless combo of words. There’s theories of science, and there’s philosophy. The two can and do interact, but are distinct.
It’s like someone saying there’s a science to a recipe they’re cooking. Doesn’t make it scientific.
I know this is a pointless gripe ultimately, but that’s what pet peeves are.
Regardless, ID has no role in a philosophy class, unless you mean a high school level, let’s pretend things like the various useless proofs of God are philosophical taught by a priest type class.
Maybe in a logic class as an example of a faulty argument.

Getting here late, on my elderly parents’ computer (ie, dialup), but two things:

1. I like Sam Harris’s comment in The End of Faith that, among other things, when God made the world and all creation, He created 316,000 species of beetles.

2. It’s not that these creationist imbeciles don’t like science. They don’t like anything that doesn’t support their received ideas. Intelligent people (never mind actual scientists) go into most experience with an intellectual availability to WHAT’S OUT THERE. These cretins start and end with an unbudging allegiance to what’s already in their heads (“faith”), and react to the entire universe accordingly. The idea of “proof” is literally meaningless to them, either in the service of evolution or the service of the existence of God. Discussing the very concept of “proof” with these idiots is like discussing baby back ribs with a vegan.

Marcos said:

“Kevin (no longer hiding behind faggiest hippijism) said,

June 2, 2007 at 6:37

Hey you stoopid faggots, I gotta go mow my mom’s lawn…If ya know what I mean! Man, you stoopid hippies can’t never know how sweet it is to suck mom’s twat.

Stoopid friggin’ hippies.”

You guys allow people to steal other’s identities? How progressive!

You guys allow people to steal other’s identities? How progressive!

That wasn’t you?

Evolution explains species,
individuals are a combination of genes and experience.
Just trying to be serious for a change.

I actually think it improves the comedy when you have some “straight men”, and straight conversations. I know I have often played that role here. Just so long as we don’t dominate every conversation.

“You guys allow people to steal other’s identities? How progressive!

That wasn’t you?”

Nope. You couldn’t tell?