I feel important now.

This seemed like a good occasion to dust off the blog.

Earlier this spring, I submitted an entry to the Stick Science Contest run by Florida Citizens for Science. The rules were simple: create a stick figure cartoon explaining a scientific concept, or debunking an antiscientific one. I chose a topic that was a bit of a pet peeve of mine: the idea that evolution by natural selection is a moral endorsement of social darwinism, or a might-makes-right morality. (Click for a larger version.)



Not only is this both fallacious and based on a poor understanding of evolution (as demonstrated in the cartoon), it's often used as the premise of an appeal to consequences by creationists arguing against evolution.

The top ten results from the contest are on the Florida Citizens for Science blog. As you can see, my entry received fourth place, the highest ranking that didn't receive a prize (sad face). I recommend checking out the other entries on the page as well.

Earlier today, I indulged in the vanity of Googling myself. Among the search results was the contest page linked to in the paragraph above - but two results below it was a link to a creationist website humorously attempting to debunk the arguments put forth in the entries. I take a small bit of personal pride in the fact that my entry received the most attention from the author of the page, one Tas Walker. Unfortunately, I can see straight away that Mr. Walker has completely missed the point of my argument. I am not trying to argue against the idea of, as they put it, a "moral vacuum" created by evolution. What my cartoon deals with is the specific claim that since natural selection works by "survival of the fittest", this is hereby an endorsement of eugenics and social darwinism. Nice try though, Tas.

Global Warming is Real, People

I knew that global warming deniers were idiots, but I've never seen an article that encapsulates that stupidity quite as well as this one.

First of all, Phil Plait, a professional astronomer with the Ph.D. to prove it, debunked the idea that the sun is causing global warming a long time ago.

Second of all, they're using the typical right-wing antiscience tactic of taking a legitimate, well-done study and twisting its claims to suit their own ends, when in fact the study says nothing of the sort. The study shows that the solar radiation levels vary and that the sun has an impact on Earth's climate; two facts that have been well-known for a long time. As far as I can tell, any relevance to the global warming "debate" is purely the product of the antiscientific right.

Thirdly, allow me to pull just this little snippet from the article.

Of course the planet is warming–we’re coming out of a cold spell! The Maunder Minimum period of diminished solar activity coincided with the Little Ice Age when Europe and North America experienced bitterly cold winters.

About 1,000 years ago, Greenland was warm enough for the Vikings to colonize and grow vineyards. Today Greenland is almost entirely covered in ice. Tell me: is the earth warmer today than it was 1,000 years ago? Did they have SUVs and coal power plants in the days of the Vikings? This isn’t tough to figure out, people.

So what they're saying is: The Earth is warming due to solar radiation, not carbon emissions! Except that it's actually cooling! Whatever! Global warming isn't happening!

Fourthly, don't most of these people believe that the Earth is 6,000 years old? If I were to debate creationism/evolution with them, they'd happily list all the reasons they think the scientific evidence for the ice age and global changes in climate over the past few million years is complete baloney, but when they're arguing against man-made global warming, they'll happily accept the scientific consensus on those subjects as a matter of course, under the delusion that it supports their preconceived notion of the world works. There is a term for this: cherry picking. It refers to going through the evidence and discarding what doesn't agree with your conclusion, while accepting the rest as fact. It is what conspiracy theories and antiscience of all kinds (from the right or the left) is built on. Remember that the next time you see a talking head on TV telling you that global warming isn't happening, or that vaccines cause autism.

Atheism makes perfect sense.

I found this while browsing a certain Conservative Christian message board.



Those poor, poor strawmen.

Now, let's see how many of his claims are accurate.

Everything in that image.

atheist: n. one who believes that there is no deity

Atheists believe that there are no gods. That's it. There is a significant overlap between atheists and people who accept scientific theories like evolution and the Big Bang, but claiming that atheists believe in anything except the nonexistence of gods is fallacious. I'll address his claims on the assumption that he's referring to naturalism.

There was nothing and nothing happened to nothing.

What existed prior to the event referred to as the Big Bang was a singularity of infinite mass and density. It was most definitely not made of "nothing".

Nothing magically exploded for no reason, creating everything.

Sounds like someone heard the words "Big Bang" and didn't bother to actually research the idea. The theory explains the early history of the universe, not the creation or "beginning" of said universe. The term Big Bang itself refers to the breakdown of the singularity. There is no current scientific theory regarding what caused this event. There was also no "creation" of any matter involved.

A bunch of everything magically rearranged itself into self replicating bits.

No magic involved.


That's one theory, at least. Here's a couple more for your reading pleasure.

Which then turned into dinosaurs.

After about 4 billion years of evolution, yes.


Now that I've demonstrated everything in the image to be patently false, I invite him (or any Chrisitan*) to try and demonstrate that this (far more stylish) image is also a strawman.



*Who believes in prayer, original sin, and the literal Genesis creation story. I know there are some out there who don't.

Republicans want 2010 to be "Year of the Bible"

Copied from Eric at Standing on the Shoulders of Giant Midgets. (Cool blog name, by the way.)

Dear Christians: the next time you want to ask what we atheists get so angry about, take a nice long look at incidents of political grandstanding like H. Con. Res. 121. You’ll have politicians wasting everybody’s time on a showy, meaningless, offensive gesture calculated to show off their self-righteousness and religious prejudice and draw irate responses that will allow them to act all faux offended. “Oh,” they can whine, “this is an example of how we Christians are persecuted all the time.”

*snip*

American Muslims are people of faith underwhelmed by your “Holy Scripture,” and American Jews only believe half of it. There are American Hindus and American Buddhists. Dare we even mention American Wiccans? American Scientologists? And, oh yeah–all the atheists and agnostics.

Tell ya’ what, pals–I give, you win. America is a Christian nation–it’s the official State religion now. So Washington gets to decide what your church is like. There will be statutes defining what a church is and who God is and what the sacraments are and resolving all former disparities in doctrine about the Trinity, the Mother Of God, whether declaration of faith in Christ is sufficient for salvation or it must be joined with works…. No, no–this is what you people wanted, you wanted us to be a Christian nation, so let’s make it official. Religious doctrine will be decided by the Secretary Of The American Faith, who as a cabinet position will be appointed by the President with the advice and consent of the Senate. Hearings start as soon as Mr. Obama narrows his short list down. All churches shall be Christian churches, Christianity being defined by a bunch of career bureaucrats in D.C.

No, shut up. You won, didn’t you hear me? We’re going to give you exactly what you fucking want and see how long ’til you choke on it.

Who has a stopwatch?

Rick Perry on Secession

Rick Perry talks about seceding from the Union.
Rick Perry asks for federal assistance with H1N1/2009.

(Image copyright Bill Watterson 1987 yadda yadda yadda.)

Republicans and Civil Rights

It seems that, on the night of November 4th, 2008, something miraculous happened: conservatives suddenly started caring about civil rights and the threat of oppressive government. After eight years of being the staunchest defenders of "necessary" suspension of civil rights, the Patriot Act, torture, increased executive power, and mindless patriotism, they suddenly embraced the ideas of basic civil liberties and dissent being the highest form of patriotism. Even more mysteriously, this all happened for no apparent reason. Republicans wouldn't really be so petty and two-faced as to change their entire stance on government just because the Democrats control it now, would they?

They even put together a list of "Signs you might be living in a tyranny". Bad grammar aside, let's go through it and see what our 43rd President was guilty of.

1. Control of public information and opinion: It begins with withholding information, and leads to putting out false or misleading information. A government can develop ministries of propaganda under many guises. They typically call it “public information” or “marketing”.

Withholding information? Check. False information? Pretty much everything he said about Iraq and the torture policy.

2. Vote fraud used to prevent the election of reformers: It doesn’t matter which of the two major party candidates are elected if no real reformer can get nominated, and when news services start knowing the outcomes of elections before it is possible for them to know, then the votes are not being honestly counted.

2000 election? Bush v. Gore? Florida Recount? Fox News reporting that Bush had won before anyone could possibly have known which way Florida had gone? Is any of this getting through?

3. Undue official influence on trials and juries: Nonrandom selection of jury panels, exclusion of those opposed to the law, exclusion of the jury from hearing argument on the law, exclusion of private prosecutors from access to the grand jury, and prevention of parties and their counsels from making effective arguments or challenging the government.

Denial of Habeas Corpus? Secret prisons? Anyone?

4. Usurpation of undelegated powers: This is usually done with popular support for solving some problem, or to redistribute wealth to the advantage of the supporters of the dominant faction, but it soon leads to the deprivation of rights of minorities and individuals.

Patriot Act? Expanding the power of the executive branch?

5. Seeking a government monopoly on the capability and use of armed force: The first signs are efforts to register or restrict the possession and use of firearms, initially under the guise of “protecting” the public, which, when it actually results in increased crime, provides a basis for further disarmament efforts affecting more people and more weapons.

Four out of five so far.

6. Militarization of law enforcement: Declaring a “war on crime” that becomes a war on civil liberties. Preparation of military forces for internal policing duties.

I'm thinking that if you replace "crime" with a certain other word...

7. Infiltration and subversion of citizen groups that could be forces for reform: Internal spying and surveillance is the beginning. A sign is false prosecutions of their leaders.

Ever seen Fahrenheit 9/11?

8. Suppression of investigators and whistleblowers: When people who try to uncover high level wrongdoing are threatened, that is a sign the system is not only riddled with corruption, but that the corruption has passed the threshold into active tyranny.

Judith Miller: imprisoned for refusing to name the person who leaked the Valerie Plame scandal.

9. Use of the law for competition suppression: It begins with the dominant faction winning support by paying off their supporters and suppressing their supporters’ competitors, but leads to public officials themselves engaging in illegal activities and using the law to suppress independent competitors. A good example of this is narcotics trafficking.

Do no-bid contracts for Haliburton (which Cheney owned stock in and formerly served on the board of) and Blackwater count?

10. Subversion of internal checks and balances: This involves the appointment to key positions of persons who can be controlled by their sponsors, and who are then induced to do illegal things. The worst way in which this occurs is in the appointment of judges that will go along with unconstitutional acts by the other branches.

Jay Bybee? The firing of attorneys who refused to go along with Bush's interpretation of the law?

11. Creation of a class of officials who are above the law: This is indicated by dismissal of charges for wrongdoing against persons who are “following orders”.

Has anyone involved in the torture scandal been prosecuted for it? I didn't think so.

12. Increasing dependency of the people on government: The classic approach to domination of the people is to first take everything they have away from them, then make them compliant with the demands of the rulers to get anything back again.

Can't think of any specific instances. Ten for twelve.

13. Increasing public ignorance of their civic duties and reluctance to perform them: When the people avoid doing things like voting and serving in militias and juries, tyranny is not far behind.

Certainly true, but hardly Bush's fault. Still ten for twelve.

14. Use of staged events to produce popular support: Acts of terrorism, blamed on political opponents, followed immediately with well-prepared proposals for increased powers and budgets for suppressive agencies. Sometimes called a Reichstag plot.

9/11 wasn't staged, and the proposals for "increased powers and budgets for suppressive agencies" were anything but well-prepared. I think it's close enough, but I'll be generous and say nine for thirteen.

15. Conversion of rights into privileges: Requiring licenses and permits for doing things that the government does not have the delegated power to restrict, except by due process in which the burden of proof is on the petitioner.

Considering everything civil rights groups went through just to send the Guantanamo prisoners their right to speedy and fair trial...

16. Political correctness: Many if not most people are susceptible to being recruited to engage in repressive actions against disfavored views or behaviors, and led to pave the way for the dominance of tyrannical government.

"My country, right or wrong?" "America, love it or leave it?"

So there you go. Bush is guilty of three-quarters of what's on that list, but you'll never hear a conservative say his policies on civil rights were anything but divinely inspired. Interestingly, they never really seemed to care about basic human dignity and personal privacy until they were no longer in power.

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So, to all the conservatives who are now adding their voices to the fight for civil rights:* thanks for the support, but I'd appreciate it more if you'd all just go die in a fire. Perhaps as a form of protest, like those monks in Vietnam.



*Civil rights for Americans, anyway. They still don't give a shit about anyone else.

Urgent Transmission from Planet Wingnuttia!

Michelle Bachmann is crazy. And stupid.

Also, voting the pandemic prevention provisions (Alliteration AND assonance. I win life.) out of the stimulus was all cool because they didn't know this would happen. Kind of like a child deciding not to wear a helmet and then crying because he didn't think he'd fall off his bike. So go ahead and do whatever you want--it's not your fault as long as you didn't bother to think about the potential consequences of your actions.