I love it when fundamentalists do this…

March 29th, 2008 • chatter, idiocy

The hate speech alone ought to give any rational American pause. We don’t tolerate such talk against minorities on the basis of race or sexual preference, so I have to ask why we would tolerate it against Darwin skeptics?

From The ID Report. Yep, us Americans are devoid of racism now thanks to Rosa Parks (erroneously pulled into this op-ed). Nevermind the fact that people are still calling black Americans “niggers” and there’s at least one piece on racism in America on one of the big box news channels everyday. Or that gays are continually discriminated against to this day. I thought they all got liberated from intolerance back in the 70s when disco was still big! No, there are no hate crimes perpetrated against gays today, none at all. I’d make a remark about this author but then I’d get lumped into the “bigoted” group of people who read PZ Myers’s blog. I mean the fact that he states Americans don’t tolerate racism is stuff of pure comedy alone, I don’t even have to make up a punchline, he already did. If you believe Americans don’t tolerate racism or hate on gays, I’m not sure if you know what “rational” means. Or if you actually watch the news. Or talk to anyone.

I do like how the author points out that even if you question evolution based on non-religious rationale, you’re a target for the pro-Darwinist hate machine. I find this incredibly funny seeing as there are people in my Human Evolution class who are agnostic and don’t fully swallow evolution as a viable theory but they’re not being brow-beaten or singled out in class for this. They’re students like the rest of us. My teacher, a staunch Darwinist with a doctorate in primatology, surely isn’t taking these kids out back and beating them up. Americans “don’t tolerate racism” but we sure as hell tolerate a lot of ignorance.

All of this is about the pro-Intelligent Design anti-rationalism (and everything else) movie Expelled. Long story short, it premiered in Minnesota and PZ signed up to attend on a publicly available form and got booted from the movie theater. But his guest, long arm of atheism Richard Dawkins, got in without issue. People supporting Expelled keep saying that PZ was not invited to an “invite only” (was Googlebot invited since it crawled the site?) that was not invite only or that he crashed a private screening to which he was allowed to come since he signed up to do so. But the producer of the movie, who actually singled out both Myers and Dawkins to be interviewed in the movie, “allowed” (read (presumably): “didn’t see the white-haired, tall Doctor whom I hand picked to be in this movie”) Dr. Dawkins to stay. Well, as someone pointed out, if PZ wasn’t invited then weren’t his guests even less invited? Since it’s a private theater (since you pay to go there, it’s technically private property even though it’s open to the public) why weren’t he and his guests wrangled up and sent off to the hoosegow for trespassing? Smells fishy to me if no one was actually invited but only one person was kicked out but a bunch of other non-invited attendees got to stay and hang out.

I think I’ll sign up for a screening here in Boca so I can not get thrown out and then bash the movie because I plan on seeing it anyway for belly laughs. From the sound of all of the Hitler and Nazi propaganda footage, I think these guys are either trying to promote neo-Nazism or have a man-crush on Adolph. “Hitler was a strict Darwinist” is the popular phrase being used right now. No, he actually wasn’t but he was incredibly high on illegal drugs a lot. Hey, that sounds like G.W. Bush except he doesn’t understand Darwinism. Parallels?

I can’t believe I’ve wasted the last hour or so reading this diatribe, as unamazingly biased as it is. For someone who’s “spent the last quarter century investigating and studying this issue [of anti-Darwinist elitism]” (author’s words, not mine) in respects to academia, they’ve apparently never stepped foot inside of a collegiate classroom in those twenty-five years. Surprised? Yeah, neither am I. According to the author, the movie wholly states “freedom of expression is under attack” but of course does not acknowledge the fact that there are schools in America — both secular and religious — that disallow any discussion of evolution and Darwinism. Not only colleges but primary and secondary schools. So if freedom of expression is under attack, why is the counter argument to your eye-opening movie being actively disregarded and decried in states such as Kansas and Texas? Freedom of expression isn’t under attack at all nor was it ever in this regard. Since the antithesis of ID is actively being stifled in the Bible Belt (“under attack” if you will, to use the parlance of the author), how Darwinist elitism is attacking proponents of ID is beyond me. There are portions of the US population that believe in Intelligent Design so how is their freedom of expression (since they can openly express whatever they want) “under attack”? I know the article is biased and entirely one-sided but seeing “arguments” like this really makes one wonder just what did happen to reasoning to allow unresearched and factually incorrect stuff such as this get put out.

The internet happened.

Self pull junkyards to the rescue!

March 29th, 2008 • chatter

A few months ago, we found out the thermostat housing on my girlfriend’s Focus was cracked and needed to be replaced. Laziness set in — along with some thinning of the pockets — and we didn’t replace it. But now we have to, her car is leaking like a sieve. So sieve-like is the leak that the gallon of water I put in her overfill reservoir at 9PM is now all over the parking lot. Took about 5 minutes flat. We would’ve replaced this at the dealer when we found out except for their great pricing structure and ridiculously low mark-up. I could pay some mechanic ~$60 for the part plus roughly $150 in labour (maybe $225 if they want a standard 3 hour labour charge) and be done with it one in afternoon and $200+ later. Nah, I’m driving to Davie for a $15 used part to install tomorrow if the yard has it. $15, about two gallons of gas, and the cost a T25 drive is below the reasonably priced dealer offer. Wonder which my checkbook will appreciate more?

I also got some new teas today. Rishi Tea Ancient Tree Pu-erh Maiden and Ancient Tree Pu-erh Tou Cha. I won’t do a review here yet but one thing none of the other reviews said, that I read, was that this stuff smells like a rotting body. I swear it smells like something died and they just rolled up the skin and popped it in a can. In no way does this describe the taste but it’s got a nose you can’t miss. I’ll write something up soon after I enjoy another cup or two and take some pretty pictures.