1. Decades Later, Still Asking: Would I Pull That Switch?

Comment #204856 by Cairnarvon on July 6, 2008 at 12:53 am

Speaking of institutions doing things to people, are any of you aware of the hundreds of consentration camps being built in the United States under FEMA and Homeland Security? Just do an easy search with Google.

Facepalm. This conspiracy theory is old and tired, and RD.net is the last place I'd expect to find someone who believes it.
Take your own advice and do a Google search, and actually look at the results that aren't batshit conspiracy nuts too this time.

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

Comment #188188 by Cairnarvon on June 3, 2008 at 10:20 am

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?

At best it looks as though it might have broken even. I suspect they hope to make money on the DVD release.

Considering that they were paying people to go see it (not sure if they're still doing that), I doubt they even broke even.
As for DVDs, I predict most DVDs that wind up in the wild will be "promotional copies" the Expelled gang hands out themselves, so there won't be much in the way of profit there either.

As for the Yoko Ono lawsuit, though, I feel compelled to side with Expelled here. It sounds like it was indeed fair (if retarded) use, and by rights Imagine should have been out of copyright for years anyway.

3. Girl, 17, killed in Iraq for loving a British soldier

Comment #172162 by Cairnarvon on April 29, 2008 at 9:33 am

al-rawandi:
Well then you can drop the superiority act. Women get shit in every culture, America and UK included. True they live better, without a doubt, but what is true is that women are subjected to abuse in the west. It is simply justified on different grounds.

(...)

The people in the free world have done some nasty things to people too. Perhaps the sanctions on Iraq which killed 4,500 children per month might count. Is that the kind of repect for human rights you were speaking of, or is there some other standard?

So, the fact our own civilisations aren't perfect means we aren't allowed to point out injustices in others? This is such a basic fallacy I'm surprised a grown man could fall for it.

Fun fact: most people here will also condemn sexism in the West, and crimes against humanity when they're committed by "our side", and their existence does not absolve everyone else from blame for their own actions.

4. Girl, 17, killed in Iraq for loving a British soldier

Comment #171526 by Cairnarvon on April 28, 2008 at 2:34 pm

headcold:
We should pull out the troops and turn that fucking country into a sea of glass.

What, kill the innocents ourselves before anyone else can? What the fuck is wrong with you? If anything, you're even more disgusting than this father is.

al-rawandi:
Most Muslims in the world treat their wives just fine.

Bullshit.
Most Muslims aren't as insane as this guy, and most Muslim women go their whole life without being murdered by their husbands, that's true, but there can be no doubt that on the whole, Muslim women have far fewer rights and freedoms than Western women, even if they're living in Western societies.

Denying a very real problem exists just because someone else exaggerates isn't going to earn you tolerance points. It's only going to perpetuate it.

5. What would Darwin have made of the Human Genome Project?

Comment #125443 by Cairnarvon on February 11, 2008 at 11:28 am

This is the neutralist view of evolution - lucky genes, not selfish genes.

That's not even coherent. I wish people would at least read the work they think they're criticising.

6. The Passion of 'Anonymous'

Comment #124541 by Cairnarvon on February 9, 2008 at 6:55 pm

I'm a little standoffish about reading anything written by somebody whose name is that close to "wooter".

Wouter is a very common name in Dutch-speaking countries.

7. The Passion of 'Anonymous'

Comment #124411 by Cairnarvon on February 9, 2008 at 11:36 am

Anonymous has stopped doing illegal stuff for a long time now, they did the illegal stuff only for the first week or so. Then they started to reform it and changed plans. Now its to the point that if anyone does anything illegal Anonymous disowns them.

I don't think you understand the nature of Anonymous. The owners of the websites they're centered around most certainly do not speak for the group as a whole (Moot certainly doesn't). Nobody does.
Hell, it doesn't even make sense to speak of "the group as a whole".

8. Is Infant Male Circumcision An Abuse Of The Rights Of The Child?

Comment #96262 by Cairnarvon on December 10, 2007 at 8:47 am

#48

How so? Considering

1)America has always been predominately Christian and it is not a Christian concept to circumcise infants.

Circumcision in the US was originally introduced to discourage masturbation. It's origins are most certainly religious, though they aren't Jewish.


#79

It's not just a Jewish practice, even in origin. Muslims are also circumcised.

You realise Jewish circumcision predates the existence of Muslims, right? Muslim circumcision most certainly is inspired by the Jewish practice.


#84

try telling that to someone who suffers from the aforementioned list of afflictions (and i'll add cervical cancer to the list).

Yeah, the number of uncircumcised men suffering from cervical cancer is enormous. Obvious troll is obvious.

Even if men did have a cervix, though, as has already been said in this thread, male circumcision for "health reasons" is akin to removing three of your toes to prevent athlete's foot. The benefits are very nearly non-existent, and the disadvantages are considerable.

9. Artificial Life Likely in 3 to 10 Years

Comment #64389 by Cairnarvon on August 19, 2007 at 10:56 pm

I assume the implication here is that once we have DESIGNED artificial life, then we have solved the mystery as to how life could have arisen in the first place. (...)

If they actually designed the life they're trying to create in the sense that they map out every atom in advance, you might have a point in saying this isn't very relevant to abiogenesis.
However, it's looking like they're just adding simple organic molecules (and you don't need pre-existing life to get those) together in the hopes that that life will kick-start itself, making some educated guesses as to what those molecules would have to be, so you don't.

And, as people have pointed out, nobody's looking to this as the final word on abiogenesis. You're attacking a straw man.

And also:

Natural selection involves the manipulation of a species genome

That's bullshit.
It's not the only thing about your comments here that is (by far), but that in particular is a pet peeve of mine.
You don't need a fully developed modern genome to be subject to natural selection, as would be obvious to anyone who's actually bothered to think about it.

10. Church and State: Divided we stand

Comment #63548 by Cairnarvon on August 14, 2007 at 6:56 pm

It's worth noting that one often-unnoticed result of the US constitutional separation of church and state is that the state doesn't control the church either, as, say, the state at one time did in England.

That's why most people went along with it in the first place, and almost certainly what most of the Founding Fathers had in mind. The church influencing the state didn't bother them nearly as much as the state influencing the church.
That's still what most religious people think separation of church and state means, I'm pretty sure.

How the nation that's praised for formally separating church and state in this way ended up being one of the most religious and home to the most fundamentalist believers is a fascinating question.

To be honest, most of the praising has always come from Americans themselves. Most of Europe, on the other hand, just took care of their own separation without patting themselves on the back too much.
It's an interesting question, but I think it's been answered in this very thread already.

11. Scientific Savvy? In U.S., Not Much

Comment #54641 by Cairnarvon on July 8, 2007 at 10:07 am

But I wasn't 'fucking kidding' either. The 'start-stop-maybe start again-keep it going a bit-completely axe it' application of DDT in malarial countries appears to have led to literally millions of preventable human deaths over the last few decades.

And that's the meme I was talking about. It's just not true.

It's true people have a history of jumping on bandwagons that later turned out to be bad ideas, but a better example than the banning of DDT is the use of DDT in the first place.

For a minute there I was a very nervous titmouse. Nice to know at least one human's got me back.

My main concern isn't titmice (hilarious though they may be), but humans. Mosquito resistance aside, prolonged exposure to DDT, even in miniscule doses, kills humans just as dead as it does titmice.

The only thing Live Earth demonstrate is the fanatics among all of us. If they really want a day set aside to promote conservation, they should put up informative shows like those made by Carl Sagan, not holding a rock concert.

Science shows reach one audience. Rock concerts reach another. The point is to raise awareness.

12. Scientific Savvy? In U.S., Not Much

Comment #54576 by Cairnarvon on July 7, 2007 at 9:53 pm

As a species, we have a track record for jumping wholesale onto scientifically questionable bandwagons and later wishing we hadn't (Banning DDT, anyone?)

Are you fucking kidding me?
Between its indiscriminate and persistent toxicity, bioaccumulation, and the danger of building resistance in mosquito populations, banning DDT for all but the most controlled purposes has overwhelmingly been a good move.

The right-wing "Rachel Carson killed millions" meme is one that should have died decades ago. It's complete and total bullshit.

13. I believe that there is no God.

Comment #52939 by Cairnarvon on June 28, 2007 at 3:03 pm

Also, why do you capitalize the name of a deity you don't believe in?

Because it's a proper noun. We also capitalise Santa Claus, don't we?

"No God means the possibility of less suffering in the future."

Oh, if only that were true... there is no god now, and there's still plenty of suffering.

But at least it's not preordained by a higher power, so there's the possibility of less suffering in the future.

14. I believe that there is no God.

Comment #52895 by Cairnarvon on June 28, 2007 at 12:36 pm

Can I just point something out? Not every intelligent, freethinking person is a bleeding-heart liberal. One side-effect of the alliance between the Republicans and the Evangelicals in the U.S. has been that liberals tend to think all conservatives are backward, inbred clods. I'm no conservative, but I'm not so self-righteous that I can't respect someone's right to political freedom.

No shit. That's not at all what I was saying.

I have no problems with libertarianism as such, I have specific problems with the Cato Institute, and the fact that a self-proclaimed skeptic would associate with them.
The Cato Institute has been pumping out laughable pieces on, among other things, second-hand smoke (which they believe to be harmless) and global warming (which they don't believe exists), and Penn & Teller have been blindly repeating this on Bullshit.

This doesn't have anything to do with the fact that they're right-wingers, it's about the fact that they let their politics guide their "skepticism" and lead them to ignore actual science. I'd be just as disgusted by it if a liberal or a socialist did it.

15. I believe that there is no God.

Comment #52688 by Cairnarvon on June 27, 2007 at 6:38 pm

I really, really want to like Penn Jillette. He's right about most things, and has a great way with words. His association with the Cato institute, and the various talking points he's parroted over the years, though, have almost completely destroyed my respect for him. He's rather selective about the things he wants to be sceptical about.

Still, he's completely right about religion, of course.

16. Your favorite book in the last 25 years?

Comment #37303 by Cairnarvon on May 4, 2007 at 3:30 am

Why is everyone mentioning Gödel, Escher, Bach? It's a great book, but it came out in 1980.
I agree with most of the other books mentioned here, and I'd like to add John Allen Paulos' Innumeracy to the pile.

17. New Noah's Ark ready to sail

Comment #35759 by Cairnarvon on April 28, 2007 at 7:42 pm

Huh. And Schagen isn't even anywhere near the Dutch Bible Belt.
Between this and their recent wave of creationism, the Netherlands scare me.

18. Biology teacher fired for referring to Bible

Comment #26567 by Cairnarvon on March 20, 2007 at 1:39 pm

"Referring to Bible" is a gross understatement of what actually happened, but the story itself is a good sign.
If it actually stays at this, that is. Something tells me someone's going to sue.

19. Atheists Take On Religion

Comment #24171 by Cairnarvon on March 5, 2007 at 6:14 am

MIND_REBEL, that's exactly as stupid as saying that atheists are evil because most Stalinists were atheists.
The fact that they were deists had nothing to do with the fact that they owned slaves.

Which isn't to say that deism is an intellectually tenable position any more than theism is, of course. Just don't make the same kind of bullshit mistakes we would criticise religious people for.