1. Dying of the Light

Comment #260898 by Edouard Pernod on October 6, 2008 at 6:53 am

It sounds like the author of the book has an untreated anxiety disorder.

Even Camus understood that while one may be inclined to despair at the fact that they are hurtling towards death, we are still unfathomably fortunate to have been born at all. Rather than complaining about how much death sucks, perhaps the author should devote attention to how much we have extended human life span since Mozart's requiem and Donatello. We haven't been at this whole life-extension thing very long, but we're getting better at it. We can either sit back and bemoan our mortality as the author does or we can actively do all we can to postpone it, all the while enjoying what we have now.

That sounds better to me than either believing in some fantasy or whining about the finality of mortality.

Then again maybe the author just wrote it for the purpose of personal catharsis and really isn't so miserable about his impending demise, in which case I withdraw my criticism.

2. Abortion bill's rights 'breach'

Comment #260885 by Edouard Pernod on October 6, 2008 at 6:38 am

I wouldn't have much confidence in the judgment of any doctor who believes a blob like embryo with with less neurological function than the chicken he ate for lunch is a "child".

I suppose these "conscientiously objecting" doctors would also happily go along with a Jehovah's Witness family who refuses a blood transfusion to their dying child on religious grounds?

And what on earth would these supposedly moral doctors do in the case of an ectopic pregnancy, which always necessitates an abortion, otherwise the mother will likely die?

They may still be a competent health care provider, but would you want a doctor who was prone to delusional thinking?

Medicine should be about applied biology, not about applied superstition.

3. Bill Maher's Religulous Opens Today

Comment #259422 by Edouard Pernod on October 3, 2008 at 10:48 am

I'm going to try and catch it this weekend. Maher is more funny than not. He seems to be a bit of a misogynist, but I agree with him 99% of the time on religion (he is agnostic, says atheism is too sure of itself).

All the criticism of his methods really doesn't matter anyway, it's not like he changed what the people said or is trying to intentionally misrepresent anyone. He's just asking questions to which they have either no answer or the most retarded answer you can possibly imagine.

4. Genes might not be so selfish after all

Comment #249170 by Edouard Pernod on September 17, 2008 at 3:56 pm

The article is just plain ignorant about biology. Environmental mutagens have been known about for quite some time. All sorts of things can influence gene expression, transcription factors, ribosomal translation of mRNA into proteins, etc ad infinitum. We're just scratching the tip of the iceberg of all the different ways external factors can screw with gene expression. The more we learn, the more we may even learn that environmental factors do not "alter" genes themselves, so much as they inhibit or alter how they are expressed, or simply obscures signs of genetic expression.

Besides, Dawkins never claimed that genes can't be influenced by their environment, so I don't even understand what the author is going on about. He seems to be creating a false controversy, hoping more people will read his ignorant musings if he says "Dawkins is wrong, I have proof!".

5. Bill Maher hates your (fill in the blank) religion

Comment #226990 by Edouard Pernod on August 9, 2008 at 6:27 am

Hellene makes a fantastic point.

I would also add that a key way to get others to say what they think is to make them believe you are sympathetic to their position. If they know from the outset you have an agenda, they themselves may respond dishonestly.

Sometimes deception can reveal the most naked truths.

There is nothing that Maher did which justifies the self-righteous indignation I am seeing in some of these posts. Oooh, Maher is so unethical for tricking people into responding honestly. Lighten up, people. What actual harm is coming from what Maher is doing? Is he lying about what these people think? Is he grossly exaggerating their positions? Are we so sanctimonious that we can't recognize the value of a funny fucking prank? Maher flat out admits he lied to get interviews, that's part of the joke. JOKE. J-O-K-E. Get it? It's a prank. Nobody is drafting international policy or basing a war or writing a PhD thesis on ethics in journalism here, it's an opinionated commentary film, mocking people who we have no reservations about mocking daily. I do recommend those of you who take such umbrage with Maher call into his show and tell him what you think though, I'd like to see how he skewers you for taking everything so damned seriously and making atheists look like a bunch of humorless uppity librarians.

For that matter, I don't think there is anything wrong with Expelled's makers mis-representing themselves to Dawkins either. What is wrong is them slicing up his words to make him sound like he was saying things he did not say and does not believe. Well, that, and the whole expelling PZ from their movie thing...

But Maher is taking a humorous approach, and people don't like their religion being made fun of, and so I suspect had he said "Hi, I'm Bill Maher and I'm going to make a movie about how retarded you are and how retarded your religion is", I don't think he would have been granted any interviews. I'm looking forward to seeing Religulous, because I like laughing at foolishness more than I like tempests in teacups on internet forums.

I must say I don't think I've seen people respond so humorlessly to something that was supposed to be a joke in quite some time. It's like someone walked into a Christian forum and said Q: "What were Jesus's last words on the cross?" A: "How am I going to shampoo my balls with holes in my hands?"

Lighten up people.

Oh, and somebody said they thought Penn & Teller didn't deceive people to get on their Bullshit show. That's not true, a friend of a friend of mine is one of the editors for that show, they have to deceive almost everyone that agrees to be on camera, and Penn & Teller are NEVER there for the interviews, it's always under the guise of some other program.

6. Camp Offers Training Ground For Little Skeptics

Comment #226734 by Edouard Pernod on August 8, 2008 at 2:52 pm

This is how most normal people the age of those kids would act had they not been indoctrinated to believe superstitious crap from an early age.

I'm beginning to understand why Dawkins says bringing up a child to be religious is child abuse, as it does put up a barrier against skeptical thinking in a developing mind which is naturally skeptical. Just as it would be abusive to tell a child they could never be an astronaut if they wanted to be one, so is it abusive to tell children that they are inherently bad and can only be rescued from their badness if they believe in a fantasy.

7. Camp Offers Training Ground For Little Skeptics

Comment #226631 by Edouard Pernod on August 8, 2008 at 12:50 pm

Man, I wish I had gone to a camp like that. All I got when I was at camp was being told that "Faith in God" is just as easy as trust-fall exercises, which is retarded because if you fall out of a tree, you're going to hit the ground and get hurt badly. No "faith" is going to catch you. I also got stung by 22 bees because the person in front of me stepped on a yellow jacket nest. Camp sucked.

If I had more free time I'd volunteer for that camp. It sounds great.
Kids are natural skeptics. The fact that they ask "Why" about everything indicates they don't just take things on faith. I'm glad that they're not indoctrinating the kids into atheism either. Inquiry is against indoctrination. It just so happens that skeptical inquiry often naturally leads to atheism or at least to Einstein's "God is the sum of all natural laws" philosophy.

8. Workers' Religious Freedom vs. Patients' Rights

Comment #223129 by Edouard Pernod on August 1, 2008 at 2:19 pm

Bush is an asshole, and the people who would support such despicable laws are idiots. I suppose I could use nicer language, but speaking concisely, that is the way to put it.

My grandfather, who was an ER doctor for nearly 40 years, is a Christian. One patient he saw was a Christian Scientist child who was in a car accident and was losing blood fast. His parents insisted the child not be given blood, as it was against their religion. My grandfather protested, woke up a judge in the middle of the night, and got the judge to issue an order granting an injunction against the parents, and proceeded to give the kid the much needed blood which saved his life. Had he not done so, in my book and his, the parents would have been murderers and my grandfather would have been an accomplice.

To pass a law which would allow idiotic parents to kill their children because of their delusional beliefs, whose children are not even of a proper age to make up their own mind about those beliefs, is abhorrent. I can think of no better example of religion being child abuse than this one.

9. Brain That Changes Itself: into the abyss

Comment #222121 by Edouard Pernod on July 30, 2008 at 5:03 pm

I'm in the beginning stages of doing pre-med, with a plan to focus on neurology in medical school. Ironically the person who got me on the path to pursuing it is a devout Christian pediatric Neurosurgeon at Johns Hopkins by the name of Ben Carson. He spoke at my Christian school when I was young, and told all these amazing stories about operations he had conducted on children with nasty tumors and in a few cases conjoined twins who were joined at the head. He mentioned their recovery being assisted by what he called "neuroplasticity" which I guess he assumed was happening because the child's brain is growing because they are young. That motivated me to do some volunteer work with this one local family whose daughter had some nasty mid-brain and brain stem infarcts when she was born due to lack of Oxygen. She couldn't move on her own, just flailed about and couldn't hold her head still or really control her eyes very well. We did something experimental at the time called "patterning", much like what Bach-Y-Ricta's brother did with his father who had suffered a stroke. We would spend an hour per day literally holding her on a table and moving her arms and legs in small crawling patterns, and would turn her head like a baby would turn theirs when they would crawl. Eventually she did regain limited control of some of her limbs, suggesting neuroplasticity was real. Unfortunately after a year of this she didn't have quite enough control, and managed to get ahold of her younger sister's blanket one night, got tangled up in it and suffocated. The family who I was helping was pretty religious, and they saw it as god's merciful way of alleviating their daughter's suffering. I thought that view was absolute rubbish, indicative that if God was so cruel as to create this brain damaged kid only to kill her once she started making noticeable progress, then I'd rather not believe in him at all. So ironically it was this pursuit of neuroplasticity which planted the seeds of both atheism and pursuit of neurology in my mind.

But enough about me, the work this Bach-Y-Ricta guy is doing sounds amazing. I've been reading about similar neuroplastic approaches in creating neural prosthetics which would allow amputees to "feel" sensation in long gone limbs, through electrical stimulation to certain facio-cranial nerves. How cool is it that we are figuring out how to fix or modify broken brains?

10. Islam subway ads cause stir in New York

Comment #216833 by Edouard Pernod on July 23, 2008 at 2:44 pm

I live in NYC and have seen the adverts the article is speaking of. Quite honestly nobody who rides the subway gives a shit. We get nutters on the train every day trying to convert you to Christianity. The advert at least isn't shouting over your headphones and lumbering past you acting like an escaped mental patient. Let the asshole advertise if he wishes. In fact I'd love for him to get more attention, as more and more people will run away from the nutter. I also support Klansman being able to openly wear their uniforms in public. It's like having people with a huge sign saying "Hi, I'm a degenerate moron, avoid me at all costs" sign over their heads. Free speech is wonderful.

11. How Anecdotal Evidence Can Undermine Scientific Results

Comment #216822 by Edouard Pernod on July 23, 2008 at 2:35 pm

Sorry Skyhook, I believe I misread your post. I thought you were saying it needed to be determined that Thimerasol did not cause autism. I get a bit defensive of the subject, as I am pursuing a medical career myself, and one of the greatest thwarters of effective treatment is the public perception that "natural is always better" and that anecdotal evidence is good enough to not take medicines prescribed to you by doctors or to not give them to children. I apologize and didn't intend to offend.
Cheers!

12. How Anecdotal Evidence Can Undermine Scientific Results

Comment #216787 by Edouard Pernod on July 23, 2008 at 2:12 pm

Skyhook,
There is no evidence indicating Thimerasol causes autism. In fact there is no evidence ANYTHING causes autism because the research is still being conducted. There is evidence that there may be a genetic origin to some spectrums of Autism, and that those genes may make the individual more sucseptible to environmental triggers that may turn them into the "cause autism" state, but there is no evidence of any ingested substance directly causing autism, and even the possible genetic/environmental links are very loose at this point. A good friend is an MD/PhD conducting research at Yale on Autism and he is an expert on the current status of autism research. Autism is such a huge range of disorders, and the genetic markers and variables relating to autistic children are so diverse that there is not yet compelling evidence about anything as a likely cause of autism.

Mental retardation, on the other hand, has some documented causes of individuals being made retarded by something they consumed. Tryptophan suppresses a key enzyme necessary for neurological development during the first 6-12 months of life, so it is wise to avoid any baby food with turkey in it. Ironically you never hear anything about that information, even though there is far more compelling evidence to avoid giving anything containing tryptophan to infants than there is against thimerosol causing autism.

This is what happens when you have a scientifically ignorant populace. Thankfully people like Schemer, Dawkins and others are out there exposing the hysteria for what it is. I recommend you read Carl Sagan's "Demon Haunted World". That will teach you many valuable lessons about how to skeptically think about things and save you from a great deal of deceptions. Also read The New England Journal of Medicine.

13. How Anecdotal Evidence Can Undermine Scientific Results

Comment #216762 by Edouard Pernod on July 23, 2008 at 1:43 pm

Jeanlaferriere, here is a chiropractic story for you. In at least 4 well documented instances, a fatal or permanently debilitating stroke has been induced by chiropractic manipulation of the cervical spine (the cervical artery was dissected by the manipulation as determined by medical examiners). That is beyond mere anecdotal evidence. And yet every time you go to a chiropractor, they crack your neck, even if you are not complaining of any head or neck pain. I see no difference between that and waving a magic crystal over your body to heal you, and the risk is very real.

By the way, vaccines certainly do not cause autism, and it's not because an astounding majority of individuals who are vaccinated do not become autistic. It is because there has been no causal link established between anything in the vaccine and autism (which BTW has a huge spectrum of disorders and a plethora of causes which are still being uncovered). There is however plenty of causal evidence showing what happens to people exposed to the bacteria clostridium tetani if they are not given a tetanus shot, and plenty of causal evidence indicating what happens to people exposed to the German Measles virus if they do not receive Rubella vaccine. Furthermore, if a mother is not vaccinated for Rubella she can pass the virus on to the unborn infant which results in the horrific congenital rubella syndrome. It is just plain stupid to not vaccinate a child because somebody somewhere says it may cause autism. It's like not eating Broccoli because someone you know who ate Broccoli got cancer. There is literally no more evidence supporting a link between autism and vaccination than there is a link between Broccoli and cancer.

It is foolish to take the word of chiropractors over the word of actual causal scientific evidence, and chiropractic medicine is barely "medicine", it really only is medicine when it provides short-term pain management after an injury resulting in some sort of nerve compression, the rest of it is highly profitable and scientifically unsupported nonsense.

Please think about these things before you believe in anecdotal epidemiological hearsay.

14. Anti-Darwinists turned away by Israeli academia

Comment #212617 by Edouard Pernod on July 17, 2008 at 12:47 pm

Turkey is going through a dark period, there's no question about that. But honestly I think the past 50 years of history in that country are more inspiring than some of the rubbish that has gone on in America. I'm not one for martial law, but each time the Turkish military has overthrown fundie leaders, they have helped the populace, made the country peaceful, put into place constitutions granting more rights, and even helped economic growth, all while ceding power back to the public within a year to two years. Of course I wouldn't trust our military to do that, right now it's too close to being an evangelical military, which is down right scary. I'm not just making this up either, my cousin is a cadet in the air force and she's already seen more than her share of state-sponsored Bible thumping.

In the 1980 Turkish coup, the military overthrew the government because the government seemed powerless to stop an Islamic radical party who insisted upon Sharia law and a leftist-extremist party that supported violent action. Those parties weren't even official government parties, the military just tossed the government recognizing that the threat of Sharia or leftist violence was beyond the government's capacity to stop. Furthermore all of the extremist jerks who caused the problme were permanently banned from participating in politics! Now that's what I call principles. Imagine if the military overthrew Bush's administration, and prohibited fundies like Ashcroft from ever participating in politics again? At the same time that would technically violate free speech, so I'm against it, but it's a nice concept, basically a zero-tolerance stance towards those who have proven themselves as desiring to legislate religion.

15. Anti-Darwinists turned away by Israeli academia

Comment #212599 by Edouard Pernod on July 17, 2008 at 12:22 pm

Actually Turkey had an impressive history of resisting Islamic influence in government up until the most recent jackasses got elected. It used to be if a religious fundamentalist tried to run the government, the Turkish military, which is staunchly secular (far more secular than the US military), would overthrow the government. They seem to have a coup there about every 10-15 years. My friend from Istanbul's grandfather was a General in the army's 1960 coup against the government which had passed laws allowing the government to legislate Islamic law.

Imagine if in the US, the military was so devoted to the constitution that if an elected leader tried to legislate Christianity, the military would overthrow the government and allow the populace to put someone else into power? We would have had to have a coup from 1980 until 1992, and then from 2000 until now.

Turkey is also highly civilized compared with other places in the middle east. It's a sad country though, it has a bloody history of all sorts of people fucking the country up, and when you visit Ephesus and think of what could have been, it inspires nausea.

16. PLEASE WRITE IN SUPPORT OF PZ MYERS

Comment #208184 by Edouard Pernod on July 10, 2008 at 5:16 pm

FWIW Meyer's job wouldn't even remotely be in jeopardy. No University could legally fire a tenured professor because of complaints filed by people who aren't even students or faculty, especially when they remarks are neither bigoted nor racist but merely rational. Even complaints from faculty and students would require addressing by a tenure review board before any action could even be considered. I suspect any reasonable college President would also realize that the attention drawn to this might even increase the enrollment of the college, as it does increase Meyer's internet celebrity status.

Furthermore, I doubt it would harm their enrollment from catholics, since the University of St. Scholastica is where the devout catholics choose to go to school in Minnesota. (As a side note, St. Scholastica puts out fantastic podcast lectures on anatomy and physiology for anyone interested, pretty much the best lectures on the subject I've heard, and no, neither God nor catholicism is ever mentioned in the classroom).

17. Susskind Quashes Hawking in Quarrel Over Quantum Quandary

Comment #208018 by Edouard Pernod on July 10, 2008 at 1:52 pm

Maybe it's just the aspiring biologist/MD in me talking, but I find "theoretical" physics on the level they are talking about more "hypothesis" than theory, but perhaps that's just due to the limits of our abilities to comprehend the very strange things they are describing. There appears to me to be less observational data to support their "theory" than there is for the RNA world "hypothesis" (and since when are those sorts of incredibly important details exclusive to his book, shouldn't it be smattered all over peer-reviewed journals?). RNA world is getting closer to theory status, but these theoretical physicists are postulating things which do not seem to have nearly as much data conformation of their existence as things in biology which are still labeled "Hypothesis". But maybe biology is messier, as he says, and so the standards of supportive evidence are higher? Sorry, don't mean to step on any physicists' toes...

18. A trip to the Creation Museum

Comment #206611 by Edouard Pernod on July 8, 2008 at 2:43 pm

Is this the same Museum of Creation that was forced to sell a rare and very well preserved T-Rex fossil because they couldn't afford to stay open otherwise?

Or was that one in Texas?

After spending so much time at the wonderful Museum of Natural History here in NYC, I think if I visited the Creation museum the janitor would be really busy cleaning my vomit off of the floors.

19. [UPDATED] Venomous Snakes, Slippery Eels and Harun Yahya

Comment #205637 by Edouard Pernod on July 7, 2008 at 2:52 pm

I like the part where he has a picture of a live Tiktalik next to a fossilized one, and a live Archaeopteryx next to a fossilized one... oh wait, he doesn't. Wow, that was easily falsifiable.

All he needs is a picture of himself standing next to a Neanderthal fossil and the circle of fucking moronitude will be complete.

20. Obama Wants to Expand Role of Religious Groups

Comment #204085 by Edouard Pernod on July 4, 2008 at 5:37 am

Is everyone here so gullible that they actually expect a candidate to agree with them on everything? Furthermore, Obama is being a masterful and very sly diplomat in this proposal. He's waiving the bait in front of the noses of the religious, but also throwing a bone to secularists for mandating that any group that proselytizes won't get money. Even though I think religion is dumb, stupid, dumb, dumb, and stupid stupid, there really are some altruistic groups out there that provide useful services. There is a Lutheran church in my neighborhood run by a gay minister who feeds and offers assistance to the homeless twice a week, and they never proselytize. I even made a remark about annoying Bible thumpers to the pastor once (our dogs play together in the dog park) forgetting that he was the pastor, and rather than taking offense, he actually agreed with me. You can't paint all Christian charities with the same brush.

I don't like religion, and I don't want my tax dollars going to any of it, but I also realize that the religious base Obama is pandering to is very different from the religious base McCain is going after. Obama isn't cozying up to the hard core gay-hating anti-choice legislate-morality creationist evangelicals like McCain is. He's going after the gentle-Jesus type religious people, of which there are plenty in this country but they are far less vocal and politically active than the right-wing evangelicals. As much as I dislike religion, I'll take those gentle Jesus liberal Christians any day of the week over the fundamentalist Christian assholes to which McCain is trying to pander.

I'm surprised more people here can't see the distinction between those two groups. Neither should get money, it's flat out un-Constitutional, but since I'm a realist, I'd far prefer it to go to Lutherans and Episcopalians(Anglicans) over Southern Baptists. We're not going to get most of the country to give up believing in religious fantasy overnight, so we may as well come to terms with those religious individuals who are the least hostile and overbearing to us non-believers. The people McCain is pandering to believe atheism is evil and creationism is true and want the laws of the land to reflect that crap. The people Obama is pandering to take a much more even-keeled "to each their own" approach, and tend to not push politicians to legislate overtly religious agendas.

21. Science is thrilling - except in our schools

Comment #203636 by Edouard Pernod on July 3, 2008 at 9:24 am

For an example of fantastic science teaching, everyone should watch Eric Lander's lectures on MIT's open course ware site (they're part of Biology 7.012). He's constantly making the students figure out HOW scientists discovered what they discovered, whereas most teachers merely focus only on what the discoveries were. Everybody is usually taught only what Mendel discovered, almost never are they taught how to think like Mendel and how to design rigorous and error-resistant experiments. The Physics lectures on MIT's site are also fantastic, if you fell asleep during those you'd have to be dead.

Of course science is a lot more than just listening to and comprehending a lecture. Hands on lab work is key to really understanding and retaining the stuff, but without the excellent lectures to explain how to think like a scientist, the lab work would be impossible, all you'd end up doing in lab is just following instructions, you wouldn't learn anything. Science teachers should all really be actual practitioners of science. MIT's staff are mostly highly accomplished researchers. Lander was a key part of the human genome project, and Eric Weinberg has done a lot of work in cancer research. If your science teacher hasn't ever actually done Science, then they probably can't teach it very well, since applied science is far more dependent upon discipline, attention to detail and an ability to design experiments than it has anything to do with memorizing information in a textbook. Anybody can memorize that Kinesin transports ATP across microtubules. Very few can tell you HOW that was discovered or the significance of that information.

22. Science is thrilling - except in our schools

Comment #203571 by Edouard Pernod on July 3, 2008 at 7:18 am

Science is taught backwards in the US. It should start with Newtonian Mechanics based physics, as that has easily observable real world macro aspects. Then go from that to macro-level biology, and teach chemistry last ( which is the tiny parts that make biology happen).

That being said, I think it is foolish to represent science as easy or entertaining. Science is really hard, and kids should know it is hard, and that the work ethic involved in making big discoveries is tremendous, but the values of the discoveries help the entire planet.

Science is war against ignorance. I think if it were framed as a battle against our own limitations and a battle against misconceptins about reality, I think kids would love it. I think shows like Mythbusters are showing kids how cool and illuminating even really simple science can be.

23. The End of Theory: The Data Deluge Makes the Scientific Method Obsolete

Comment #199803 by Edouard Pernod on June 26, 2008 at 11:24 am

Wired is dumb.

24. Creationist critics get their comeuppance

Comment #199789 by Edouard Pernod on June 26, 2008 at 11:04 am

All hail Lenski! Doing groundbreaking science and stomping ignorant ignoramuses under foot at the same time. The man is multi-talented.

25. Pastors Challenge Law, Endorse Candidates From Pulpit

Comment #196782 by Edouard Pernod on June 20, 2008 at 12:35 pm

For the 2006 congressional elections, my father (who is left leaning) staged a walkout of his church service when the pastor brought in a guest speaker who was so anti-abortion that they told the congregation it would be a sin to vote for a Democrat. My dad and the members who walked out with him wrote the pastor a letter threatening to contact the IRS if it happened again, and the pastor apologized vehemently the next week and promised not to invite the guest speaker back. Churches have in fact lost tax-exempt status (WHICH THEY SHOULD NEVER HAVE IN THE FIRST PLACE!) for endorsing or condemning political candidates in the past, and it has been happening with increasing frequency, so I'd love to see these pastors be asinine and use the pulpit for politics and watch them lose their tax exempt status.

These churches are pretty corrupt with how they end up showing their "charitable non-profit" status anyway. They'll repave the parking lot twice a year and buy hundreds of youth group T-shirts and spend money on "retreats" which are just fancy church vacations to condos to "commune with nature as God made it", so that way it looks like the church isn't making a profit.

I'm all in favor of real non-profit organizations not paying taxes, religious or not, but just because something is religious does not mean it should be non-profit. The Church of Scientology is extraordinarily wealthy, owning a tremendous amount of top dollar real estate, and tax exempt thanks to the IRS granting them that status in 1993. Being a "religion" should not grant anyone any special tax-exempt privileges. If they can't prove that they do real material charity work (no "saving souls" is not charity), then fuck them, they should pay taxes on their income just like everyone else has to.

Pretty crazy story...
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/Cowen/essays/nytimes.html

26. We Urgently Need Your Help Now!!

Comment #196157 by Edouard Pernod on June 19, 2008 at 11:22 am

Does anybody else think Jindal is trying to cozy up to the Republican religulous base, thereby boosting his chances for the VP nomination?

I wouldn't be one bit surprised if McCain picked him precisely to get out the conservative vote.

27. We Urgently Need Your Help Now!!

Comment #195558 by Edouard Pernod on June 18, 2008 at 1:11 pm

I say let it pass. Then we'll see you in court Mr. Jindal! No LA court would overturn the precedent set by Dover, and if they did it would be undone on appeal.

I say let's give the IDiots another high profile loss.

28. Kenneth Miller on Colbert Report

Comment #195421 by Edouard Pernod on June 18, 2008 at 7:39 am

Atheist Jon,
Who cares if it's "liberal"? Are you really so rigid that you insist upon compartmentalizing the world into either "liberal" or "conservative"? What goes on in a laboratory? Does a scientist say "oh no, that research is too liberal for me, can't do it" or "I can't find any value in that theory because it was proposed by a conservative"? I like to approach life as if it were a laboratory, "liberal" and "conservative" are just stupid labels that change with the times. In the 1860s I would have been a staunch conservative Republican, whereas now I am a Liberal democrat, and yet my values are the same. The only thing that has changed is fickle politics, malleable public opinion and shoddy uninvestigative journalism, which all contribute to the defining of your "liberal" or "conservative" of the moment.

As far as I can tell, a Christian was on a popular TV program promoting evolution and bashing intelligent design. How could you possibly find anything wrong with that?!? That same Christian was singlehandedly responsible for demolishing ID in Dover and handing a victory to science and true intelligence, helping to set a very important legal precedent and greatly damaging the reputation of ID and its advocates. I think everyone here owes the man a debt of gratitude regardless of our disagreement over religion, and regardless of whether we're too set in our ideology to recognize that there is value in Miller going on a "liberal" spoof news commentary show.

We can be myopic and arrogant and piss on Miller and piss on Colbert, but Miller has done very important research not only into evolution, but has contributed a great amount of research in the functioning/creation of phospholipid bi-layers in cells, and Colbert has given much needed attention to people whom we idolize such as Dawkins and Harris, so perhaps we should get off our self-righteous high horses and recognize the contributions to our cause by Miller and Colbert, even if we don't agree with their politics or personal religious beliefs.

29. Reverse Engineering The Brain To Model Mind-body Interactions

Comment #192603 by Edouard Pernod on June 13, 2008 at 2:38 pm

It's great the lady made it to 115 with very little neural degeneration, but she is an anomaly. I suspect the reasons for her resilient neurological state would be genetic.

I think mental exercises and avoidance of neurotoxic substances is the way to go in order to prevent neural degradation with age, although ones' genetic makeup would largely determine how their brain fares in late age.

Interestingly there have been studies indicating that people who experienced near-starvation at a young age or at least famine tend to have activated Sirtuin receptors which have been demonstrated to delay age associated deterioration. I had one great-to-the-nth power grandfather live to 113 (1791-1904), name was Ware Long and lived in Wales. I'm going to have my dad do research and figure out where exactly he lived and if there were famine conditions in that area in the late 17-early 1800s, as it seems really unusual that somebody would live that long at a time when medicine was ignorant of practically everything.

30. Reverse Engineering The Brain To Model Mind-body Interactions

Comment #192558 by Edouard Pernod on June 13, 2008 at 11:32 am

I think in about 80 years that will be possible. The biggest challenge in life extension will be preservation of the central nervous system. We know less about the CNS and the physiology of it than any other body system, and the WHO estimates that neurological disease will be the #1 cause of death by 2040. Diseases that affect other portions of the body will largely be treatable by then, but as of now it looks like protecting the central and peripheral nervous systems from deterioration will be the biggest challenge.

Stem cells provide the potential for growing transplant organs in a lab, and things like IGF1 and Thymosin Beta 4 hold promise as ways to get the body to regenerate damaged tissues, but the brain isn't a machine, it's essentially a very complex computer network that can't just be "repaired" or "replaced". While deep brain stimulation has led to interesting results and may even stimulate neuronal growth (which was previously assumed impossible), it currently appears extremely difficult to reverse brain deterioration. There's also the matter of what happens if diseased Neurons can be replaced with new ones. Do you lose part of your identity if they are replaced?

31. Report: Troubling texts at Va. Islamic school

Comment #192133 by Edouard Pernod on June 12, 2008 at 1:32 pm

This is unfortunate, as I do believe the Saudi school, however repugnant I find their vile teachings, would have their right to free speech violated if they are shut down, though I'm not entirely sure if the first amendment extends to teaching children to break the laws of the land and to commit murder.

Teaching children anti-semitism and that murder in God's name is permissible is child abuse, just as Dawkins has made the case for previously. Should that be protected speech?

That being said, if we are going to shut down the Saudi school then we should shut down all those Jesus Camps that teach children to hate, and those fundamentalist churches which say it's OK to kill abortion doctors. I'm not sure if I'm OK with the state mandating the closing down of any place that makes offensive speech, though, no matter how offensive I may find that speech.

My 6th grade teacher in a Seventh Day Adventist school told us all that black people were inferior because they bore the mark of Cain (the "dark mark" the bible refers to as Cain's punishment for slaughtering Abel). Based on what they taught, should that school have been shut down? I'll admit, they preached hate but they didn't tell us to break the laws of the land and to kill.

32. Ben Stein 1, Yoko Ono 0 in 'Expelled' copyright spat

Comment #188595 by Edouard Pernod on June 4, 2008 at 8:35 am

19. Comment #188162 by epeeist on June 3, 2008 at 9:36 am
Comment #188155 by Dhamma
According to Wikipedia, the budget was $3.5 million. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expelled

If it did cost $3.5 million and it took $7.6 million then how much would be left over to pay the film makers after the distributors and theatres took their cut?

While $7.6 million would normally be considered very profitable for a documentary, the listed budget would not include P&A (prints and advertising). They pushed Expelled pretty hard on TV, even in hostile markets like NYC and SF, so my guess is the whole shebang probably cost about $10 million. They'll make it back on DVD sales, though it's possible they've already made a profit if they sold foreign distribution rights (though I do not imagine this movie having a significant audience anywhere other than America).

But we already knew dumb Christian enterprise is profitable.

I hadn't seen the film, and have no intention of seeing it, but the judge is correct that if the use of the song was to criticize the content of the song, then it is fair use. I assumed the song was just being used as soundtrack because it's an iconic tune that people like, based on how it was described, but if they were directly commenting on the lyrics then that is fair use.

33. Senate bill allows display of Lord's Prayer, 10 Commandments

Comment #186532 by Edouard Pernod on May 30, 2008 at 2:03 pm

These incredibly astute nobel laureates in SC don't even know their OWN history. Remember the popular effort to stick the Confederate battle flag atop the South Carolina capitol building? They didn't even know the difference between the Battle flag and the actual flag of the Confederacy. I bet those legislators would tell you the civil war was over "State's Rights" if you asked them, not knowing that the whole "State's Rights" lie is itself historical revisionism that wasn't promoted as the reason to secede in any pro-confederacy literature or newspaper editorials until AFTER the Civil War. My boss lives down there and my grandma is from there, and I know first hand how most people in SC believe the Civil War was "a war for state's rights against Northern Aggression".

Thank goodness we have these people to tell us all about what is and isn't History and what sort of "History" belongs on the walls in public buildings. I would love to hear the pearls of wisdom that fall from their legislator's lips about science! Perhaps they can tell us about how God caused the flood because man was interbreeding animals, and how God made us all special on the 6th day of creation (you know, before the 7th day Sabbath mentioned in the 4th commandment, which they probably disobey all the time)?

34. Senate bill allows display of Lord's Prayer, 10 Commandments

Comment #186467 by Edouard Pernod on May 30, 2008 at 10:17 am

Since they're so desperately inclined to post "historical" documents, I suggest they post ones that are more directly relevant to the history of this country and the origin of our justice system, like, I don't know, how about Thomas Paine's "Rights of Man"?!?! I think George Washington's Treaty of Tripoli should also be included, especially the bit where he assures them "the US is by no means a Christian nation".

I'll bet you none of these dipshits could recite the 10 commandments back to you from memory if you asked them what they were, and I can guarantee you none of them keep the 4th commandment unless they are Jewish.

35. Louisiana's latest creationism bill moves to House floor

Comment #185978 by Edouard Pernod on May 29, 2008 at 9:40 am

Correction: I mistakenly referred to chemical evolution in my previous post as "chemical evolution theory" when it is actually the "chemical evolution hypothesis", not a theory, but it still has far more evidence to support it than the zero evidence there is to support the ID hypothesis. There is still a bit of work to be done on this front to make chemical evolution a theory, but it looks very promising as an explanation as to how organic "life" formed from organic compounds, specifically from RNA, and accurately dubbed the RNA world hypothesis. Pretty much what needs to be done to make it a theory is to demonstrate how an RNA Ribozyme could have naturally occurred in pre-biotic conditions, which would have allowed RNA to copy itself (being self-copying = life), and that ribonucleases (enzymes that break down RNA) were not prevalent, or that there was some mechanism that prevented ribonucleases from breaking down RNA before ribozymes could catalyze self-copying reactions.

It's sad that I know more about this than Jindal, who was a bio major. What a dumbass. I was a literature/audio engineering major and all I do is study biology as a hobby.

36. Louisiana's latest creationism bill moves to House floor

Comment #185938 by Edouard Pernod on May 29, 2008 at 6:59 am

Jindal [nodding]: "Sure, and let's talk about intelligent design. I'm a biology major. That's my degree. The reality is there are a lot of things that we don't understand. There's no theory in science that could explain how, contrary to the laws of entropy, you could create order out of chaos. There's no scientific theory that explains how you can create organic life out of inorganic matter. I think we owe it to our children to teach them the best possible modern scientific facts and theories. Teach them what different theories are out there for the things that aren't answerable by science, that aren't answered by science. "

Holy shit, this guy is a fool and knows nothing about biology, which is patently obvious since he doesn't have a career in his major but is instead a politician.

Firstly, the dumbass doesn't understand entropy at all. Entropy doesn't say natural complexity is impossible, and it doesn't say it's impossible to create complexity from less complex things, it says that within a CLOSED SYSTEM, things tend towards disorder. Evolution did not happen within a closed system.

Then the dumbass says "There's no scientific theory that explains how you can create organic life out of inorganic matter". He couldn't be more wrong, and doesn't even understand what he's talking about. I suspect he's lying about his biology degree, since the man knows nothing about chemistry or the theory of chemical evolution. "Inorganic matter" is solid state chemistry, the study of chemistry relating to non-carbon containing molecules. Nobody EVER has claimed "organic life came from inorganic matter". Organic matter is carbon containing matter, and it has been demonstrated in a lab by multiple scientists how carbon based compounds combined with early-earth conditions could have eventually lead to the formation of organic life. What a dumbass.

He's right though that we do owe it to our children to teach them the best possible science, and the best possible science is the theory of evolution and the theory of chemical evolution. We do not owe it to our children to teach them phony science that isn't even a "theory" by any definition of the term.

What a dumbass.

37. That's it. Texas really is doomed.

Comment #185930 by Edouard Pernod on May 29, 2008 at 6:38 am

Oh, I see, you're a Libertarian, and you think taxes are the only thing that stands between people and pursuit of their dreams.
Having spent some time in those "welfare states" and having friends who live there, I have been hard pressed to find anyone who felt like they weren't free or would really have their dreams by now if it weren't for that damn meddling government.

I genuinely appreciate the freedoms that I do have here, but I also recognize that cultural attitudes hugely influence how free a given location is. I also realize that freedom is a lot more than just keeping all the money you earn. Ask my friend who happened to have an ovarian cyst rupture just before she became eligible for health care at here job. She had to file for bankruptcy. Had she been in one of those evil scary bad big brother Scandinavian welfare states that have a higher standard of living than America, her credit wouldn't have been ruined and she wouldn't have been forced to choose between health or fiscal stability. But I guess she's more free here because the government doesn't spy on her as much or tax her as much. I guess I'm more free here than other places because I can own a gun too.

I certainly appreciate all the free speech I have here, it's in fact I think the best thing about America, and that one aspect of America is superior to most other nations, but there's a lot more to freedom than what's written in the constitution. It's of utmost importance to have those freedoms put into law, but when a company can pollute your air or water and get away with it, and you can literally die because you can't afford to see a doctor, then I wouldn't call that "freedom".

38. That's it. Texas really is doomed.

Comment #185856 by Edouard Pernod on May 28, 2008 at 9:02 pm

I've been to Asbury Park. If hell were real, that would be its entry gate. Couldn't even get decent Fried Clams there. Coming from there would give one a tremendous amount of things to write about. I'm not knocking The Boss at all, I think he's a brilliant lyricist, and what he wrote was clearly a product of what he saw. I'm a fan and where he grew up made him a very wise man who never lost sight of his origins and his connections with regular people.

What I don't get is all this hypersensitivity over "knocking" a state or the country or a portion of the people who live there. Why should any of those things be immune from criticism or ridicule, especially if they are dragging us in an anti-progressive direction? Does anybody here really want Elizabeth New Jersey to smell like burning Acetone? Does anybody here really want Jersey to be flush with suburban housewives driving huge SUVs (the same can be said for many states, so don't throw a conniption fit over me singling out Jersey). Does anybody here really want public schools in Texas to preach abstinence? Does anybody here really want Texas to elect any more Tom Delays, GW Bushes or other corrupt anti-science Bible thumpers? Of course not, so nobody should get all self-righteous and take umbrage over me or anyone else poking people from those locales in the ribs when they actively consent or passively assent to such crap.

To get all uptight about dissing a place is no more intelligent than the Nationalist "patriots" who want to punish people for burning a flag. Reason is a hell of a lot more useful to everyone than Nationalism, and Ben Franklin and Thomas Paine (you know, the guys who birthed our nation and our constitution) would agree. You guys can be proud because of the lines somebody redrew on a map over what was originally Native American land, or because of a piece of paper that says we have freedoms even though it originally only gave white men those freedoms, but the fact that countries which don't have our constitution are in many ways more free than we are should give you pause. Do you think a gay couple has it easier in Dallas or in Malmo Sweden? Do you think a stem-cell researcher has an easier time getting their work supported in Louisville Kentucy or in Geneva, Switzerland? Do you think an Atheist faces more discrimination in Chattanooga, TN or in Frankfurt, Germany? Do you think a single mom who doesn't go to church is judged more harshly in Laramie, Wyoming or Marseilles, France? Do you think a black man dating a white woman has an easier time in Montgomery, Alabama or Toronto, Canada? Do you think someone who has cancer and wants to smoke pot so they can crave food in spite of the nausea brought on by chemotherapy has an easier time in the Netherlands or here? Just how free are we, exactly?

The Constitution is awesome, I particularly love the Church/State separation bit, which was a brilliant foresight, but there's a lot more to freedom and how to enable it than what was written on that piece of paper a few hundred years ago by people who were the products of a far more conservative era. Sorry America, but you're not the embodiment of pure freedom just because your constitution was progressive for its time. Progress is a cultural phenomena, and legal documents are usually the last to catch up with that progress.

39. Louisiana's latest creationism bill moves to House floor

Comment #185796 by Edouard Pernod on May 28, 2008 at 2:57 pm

I think ID should be taught in schools and exposed as the inept fraud it is by professors who know better. It's a fantastic example of how NOT to conduct research and experiments, and fits exactly the practice of "cherry picking", the practice which would lead any peer-review board not affiliated with the Discovery Institute to reject the supposed science as biased quackery.

Let's use this to our advantage. Let's write to science teachers in Louisiana opposed to this bill and point out that if the bill passes they can just use these silly ID materials as a way to teach students how to NOT do science.

40. That's it. Texas really is doomed.

Comment #185771 by Edouard Pernod on May 28, 2008 at 1:27 pm

Didn't realize you were from Jersey, Falcon, you spoke as if you were taking personal offense on behalf of all of Texas, especially with you calling me an "ignorant bigot" over a joke. Usually personal attacks are dealt out because someone took personal offense.

Having lived in Bayonne, Jersey City, Montvale and Hoboken, I can say I have a pretty negative view of the North-Eastern part of the state (Texas is way more aesthetically pleasing than Eastern Jersey, probably less SUVs and pollution too!), but western Jersey is really pretty and I've been to some great farms out there.

BTW, who gives a shit where someone is from on a map? I think it's better to have pride in personal accomplishments, as opposed to some random location you were born in and had no say over. You like Jersey? Great, fucking congratulations, let's give you a trophy. I like NYC. Let's give me a trophy too.

I think it's better to focus on problems within certain locations in the US wherever they are, and dispense with all this taking offense because of the borders in which one was born or because you think it's ignorant and bigoted to make joking generalizations about a certain region of the country.

41. That's it. Texas really is doomed.

Comment #185665 by Edouard Pernod on May 28, 2008 at 9:30 am

It is plainly apparent that regardless of the nice things I said about Austin and the praise I laid on Howard Hughes' legacy, you're just going to keep right on assuming I'm an ignorant bigot, all because I made a joking generalization about Texas. When I said "All" it was within the context of a joke, and as incomprehensible as that may be to you, I don't really believe what I said in the joke is "ALL" that Texas has ever done. I was intentionally exaggerating to make a point, the point being that Texas does have a record of electing theocratic legislators, does have a record of lousy race relations, does have a record of being hostile towards evolution, and does have a record of trying to shove religious ideals into public schools... but that point is obviously completely lost on you.

Perhaps your hypersensitivity to criticism of your home state is preventing you from acknowledging that I don't actually think that everyone in Texas is exactly the same. You're clearly more interested in lines on a map that tell you the location of your precious state that nobody is allowed to say bad things about, than you are interested in the difference between a joke and what I actually believe, so let's just leave it at that, cowboy.

42. That's it. Texas really is doomed.

Comment #185592 by Edouard Pernod on May 28, 2008 at 6:47 am

OH noooo. Now that I messed with Texas Mr. Falcon has rightly put me in my place as the clearly ignorant bigot that I am. All that volunteer work I have done at inner-city public schools in Brooklyn was for nought, and all that work I have done for progressive organizations who preach tolerance was also for nought, as I am in fact an "ignorant bigot". Thanks for showing me the light Mr. Falcon. Apparently most people in Texas are not belligerent Christians, nor do they have racists tendencies, and most of them welcome immigrants with open arms, and Texas does not execute more people than anywhere else in America, and most of the politicians their populace elects are in fact really progressive. Who knew? I can tell you who knew. It's Mr. Bad Ass Fighting Falcon, Defender of Texas.

Note to everyone here:
No jokes about Texas are allowed, and any observations about Texas's tendencies to elect right wing theocrats, and any observations about the racist tendencies of some of Texas's population mean it is in fact YOU who are the ignorant bigot.

The best way to combat the ignorant attitudes prevalent in the South is in fact to take umbrage at all jokes about the South as Mr. Falcon has done. This should be a lesson to all you elitist arrogant Atheists: Don't Mess With Texas.

43. That's it. Texas really is doomed.

Comment #185405 by Edouard Pernod on May 27, 2008 at 6:21 pm

Jack, your pictures represent the reality of most of the South. Along the highway in TN and Texas and Georgia and Arkansas and Mississippi and Alabama and Kentucky and South Carolina are planted enormous crosses for all to see, many are lit with spotlights so you can see them at night too. Yes, it's all part of free speech, and I will defend free speech regardless of who is making the speech, but that continuous barrage of Christian imagery everywhere you look and its infiltration of the public schools indicates that the South tends to be belligerent with their faith. What happens when one side monopolizes most of the speech? The other side and their ideas become marginalized. Do we want to be marginalized? Is that the way forward?

Most of us here agree that Christianity is a product of ignorance, so this parading about of symbols of ignorance is cause for concern, and the relentless attempts to saturate the public schools with fundamentalist administrators and Christian ideologies are also cause for concern.

44. That's it. Texas really is doomed.

Comment #185371 by Edouard Pernod on May 27, 2008 at 4:21 pm

Mintcheerios, you make some good points about positive contributions from Texas. Howard Hughes was from Texas, and while he was an insane megalomaniac, he also left a fantastic legacy that will probably benefit all of us: The Howard Hughes Medial Institute.

I do not think (nor do I believe anyone else here really thinks) that Texas has been nothing but bad for us. But those from Texas who are bad for us have contributed more than I think any of us would like to the "let's legislate Christian morality/theology" campaign that is still quite popular in the US.

The same is true not just for Texas, but for my state of origin, Tennessee, and many other Southern states that have a majority of people who are anti-progressive and devoutly Christian, and who are behind the rest of the country in terms of promoting the teaching of accurate science in public schools. This is not me being "bigoted" as Fighting Falcon would like to misconstrue, but rather a problem in the South that needs to be rectified. Just as France has many many xenophobes who discriminate against Moroccans, so Texas and a lot of the south have many many Christians who continue to try and flood public schools with religious ideology, whether it is abstinence nonsense or refusal to teach evolution or whatever. This is not bigotry or gross-generalization, it is reality.

The Northeast of course (where I live now) has its own set of problems, but in public schools promotion of religious doctrines is strongly discouraged and can cost teachers and administrators their jobs. In my biology class in a public high school in Tennessee, the teacher refused to teach evolution because "we know man didn't come from no monkey", in his exact words. If a teacher were to do that up here, they'd be fired, or at bare minimum reprimanded and put on administrative leave. There is a cultural difference in the south that allows that kind of stuff to happen that would not be tolerated in much of the rest of the country. I think the best way to fight it is of course to aggressively promote church/state separation and for more thorough oversight of classroom tendencies of science teachers and administrators, but that isn't going to get accomplished if those from the South shrug off the sort of thing featured in this article as no big deal and no real threat to anything.

Think about the anti-science attitude the administration has held over the last 7 years and ask yourself if that has held back our country in any way. Isn't the same retardation possible given the attitudes in Texas and the rest of the south, and shouldn't we criticize that as much as possible? I don't think taking offense because I'm making fun of Texas for some serious problems there is going to help anybody. I think it's worthwhile to find out more about the situation and if it is as bad as it sounds, then it's worthwhile to make sure McElroy and his cronies know they're going to face a lot of opposition and that people don't want their theocracy, which is what it seems Fighting Falcon is taking steps towards doing.

45. That's it. Texas really is doomed.

Comment #185348 by Edouard Pernod on May 27, 2008 at 3:04 pm

Fighting Falcon sez: "Xenophobia and racism is bad but so is bigoted ignorance. Go live in TX and then feel free to spout your ignorant views. "

Mr. Falcon, if you genuinely think I'm serious that we should give Texas back to Mexico, then you are a moron. I made what is called a joke. I have spent some time in Texas, in Dallas, in Houston, in Austin, and I thought most people I met seemed to have an attitude that placed a much higher value on chutzpa than on education. Texas is not alone in that attitude, plenty of America has that attitude. What I also learned is that most people that live in Texas can't take a fucking joke about Texas. The same goes for Tennessee, and I was born and raised in Tennessee.

That being said, I thought Austin was a very cool town, and seemed to be a genuine open-minded refuge from the gay-hating racist xenophobic ignorant attitudes popular in the rest of the state. While of course I am making some generalizations, based on both my experience and the experience of friends and co-workers who are from there or who have lived there at some point, it is no more of a horribly inaccurate generalization than it is to say that plastic surgery is very popular in Hollywood. I haven't conducted any peer-reviewed study on the matter, but since I was making a fucking joke about Texas, I didn't feel the need to.

If you have any workable solutions for changing Texas from the consistently right-wing immigrant bashing evolution hating execution-loving bad-president producing state that it is, let's hear it. In the meantime, I'm going to continue to rightfully criticize them and the rest of the south for the majority of them that push their ignorance on others.

46. That's it. Texas really is doomed.

Comment #185012 by Edouard Pernod on May 26, 2008 at 5:05 pm

Because I am never going to run for public office, I can say this without getting into too much trouble:

Give Texas back to Mexico. It belonged to them in the first place, and all Texas has done since we stole it was to give America (and the world) multiple shitty Presidents, and racist xenophobic rednecks who hate Mexicans but go on and on about how much they love Mexican food, and are so dumb they think people from Puerto Rico are immigrants.

My brother-in-law's girlfriend is from Dallas. She keeps telling us how she has friends who are skinheads, and they're not actually racist, they just fight for rights for white people, and all the KKK really stood for was "state's rights". Education took a back seat to willful ignorance and idiocy in Texas a long time ago. Please Mexico, please take Texas back, pretty pretty please?

47. Childish superstition: Einstein's letter makes view of religion relatively clear

Comment #180038 by Edouard Pernod on May 14, 2008 at 6:14 am

It is argumentatively worthless to say Einstein is on either side, unless one is intending to make a fallacious argument by association, saying that because Einstein either was religious or not, then you are right and the people you are arguing with are wrong. It's silly to invoke his opinion on the matter when there is already a stupefying amount of evidence indicating that the God of religious mythology is a fantasy. All this letter does is confirm what we already knew: Einstein was indeed an iconoclast and a man who didn't compartmentalize his mind in order to keep cherished preconceptions safe from evidence.

48. Trouble ahead for science

Comment #176925 by Edouard Pernod on May 8, 2008 at 10:52 am

I don't care what Ken Miller believes personally. Nobody's perfect. He has done more to expose ID as the total fraud it is than anyone else on the planet. He was the chief witness at the Dover trial and made Behe and the "Discovery" institute look like ignorant hacks, and he helped bring to light the Chromosomal smoking gun proving apes and humans share a common ancestor.

Most of my family are staunchly anti-evolution, but I recently referred my uncle to Ken Miller's work, and while it may not have changed his mind, it certainly has caused him to shut up about how great ID is and how evolution is wrong. Of course that was before Ben Stein's lying piece of crap movie came out, which I'm sure he has seen. Conversations over Thanksgiving dinner this year are not going to be fun...

49. Yoko Ono, Filmmakers Caught in 'Expelled' Flap

Comment #164722 by Edouard Pernod on April 20, 2008 at 3:36 pm

Does it strike anyone else as slightly ironic that the song they used without permission encourages people to "Imagine a world without heaven" and to "Imagine no religion"?

As if expelling PZ from the Expelled screening wasn't already the pinnacle of stupidity, they have also risked losing a tremendous amount of money by insisting on stealing a song which says the world would be a better place without the ideologies these jackasses hold dear. I'm surprised these people know how to tie their own shoelaces.

50. Yoko Ono, Filmmakers Caught in 'Expelled' Flap

Comment #164378 by Edouard Pernod on April 20, 2008 at 6:49 am

It doesn't matter what we think is the correct "strategy" in this instance. Our work has already been done for us by he boneheads who made this puny and insignificant film. It doesn't matter if they feel persecuted or not. These foolish people feel persecuted anytime anyone disagrees with them.

I hope Yoko sues them for everything they are worth, and I hope Dawkins, Schermer, PZ Meyers and The Killers sue them for misrepresentation too (that would be well within their legal rights and there is legal precedent for it). Then the sole purpose of their bungled and unethical movie will be to serve as
a warning sign to others, and that trying to shove Creationist propaganda onto the big screen is destined for failure (except of course for The Passion, which was successful but only because Mel Gibson didn't out himself as a Nazi until after the film's release).

These nutters are their own worst enemy. We shouldn't underestimate them, but they do help us out by ignoring the law and behaving like idiots.