ID vs. Bill Nye

I had to laugh at this:

While most Bill Nye-fans — myself included — enjoyed his wacky experiments and corny jokes, few if any realized there was another side to Bill, one that he didn’t start unveiling until just the past few years: Nye advocates a hardline, intolerant, and divisive atheistic worldview view that stands diametrically opposed to the values shared by most Americans.

That’s from Casey Luskin at Real Science vs. Bill Nye the “Science” Guy.

I guess Casey doesn’t like it, that Bill Nye is honest and describes science as it is, even when that science is incompatible with the wacky ideas of creationists and ID proponents.

From a fundamentalist blog

[posted as humor]

From here:

Not only did our traitor Congress have an imam as “guest chaplain” yesterday, which ought to be impeachable as treason, but the Pope they invited some time back has now confirmed that he plans to visit the country next year, and Congress is on his itinerary. According to the Constitution Congress decides the punishment for treason, apparently not anticipating that Congress itself would be guilty of it. I’m quite serious. This should be a treasonable offense, both these violations of our governing body, because it puts the nation under God’s wrath.

You can’t make this stuff up.

ID thinking

I’m posting this as humor.

There’s a truly bizarre post at Uncommon Descent, by johnnyb:

• Do Darwinists Think that Women are Closer to Chimps than Men?

Yes, that title is already weird.

In that post, johnnyb asks a series of questions.  I shall list the questions and give my own answers.  Johnnyb did ask that we write down our answers immediately, before reading the entire post.  I will be giving what were my immediate answers, though I did not actually write them down.

Quick question – do you think that women are closer to apes than men? Do you think that Darwinian evolution (i.e. common ancestry by happenstance mutation and selection) is consistent or inconsistent with your answer?

My answers are “no” and “yes”.

If you are a Darwinist, you think that humans and chimps evolved from a common ancestor, correct?

Seen on the Internet

I have just noticed this comment at another site:

Mildly interestingly, when I typed “average size of a woman” into Google I got height and weight answers. When I typed “average size of a man” I got penis size data.

I have not attempted to experimentally confirm that.  But I did think it was amusing.

Coming out of the woodworks

The title refers to creationists.

Checking the comment moderation queue today, I found a message waiting for approval.  It was a comment on an older post about Newton.  The comment seemed off topic.  But, to be fair, there was another comment rating Darwin as more important than Newton.  So I suppose the creationist comment was a reaction to that.

I thought it was worth a laugh.  But, I wouldn’t want to have all the fun myself, so I decided to share that comment.  So here it is:

DARWIN WAS A DAMNED FOOL! HE HAD FAIR ABILITIES AS A NATURAL SCIENTIST IN OBSERVING AND NOTING DETAILS CONCERNING PLANT AND ANIMAL LIFE FORMS. HIS DEVELOPMENT OF THE THEORY OF NATURAL SELECTION, AKA EVOLUTION, WAS A TOTALLY MISGUIDED JUDGEMENT OF HIS DATA. DARWIN TO THIS DAY IS THE GREAT PROPONENT OF “BOGUS SCIENCE”, BS FOR SHORT. DARWIN DOES NOT EVEN BELONG ON THE LIST OF THE TEN THOUSAND GREATEST SCIENTISTS WHO EVER LIVED. HIS FOOLISH CONJECTURES HAVE HELD TRUE SCIENCE BACK EVER SINCE HE FIRST PRESUMED TO PUBLISH HIS ABSURD NONSENSE. – XXXX XXXXXXX / 6443

I “X”ed out the name, though you can find it at the actual comment.

So there we have it.  All capitals, and pretty much fact free.

DOMA ruled unconstitutional; therefore evolution is false

Well, okay, Cornelius Hunter did not say what is in my title.  However, he did manage to find a way of connecting the DOMA decision with evolution.  I suggest you  take a look at his post.

• DOMA and Evolution’s Dangerous Cocktail

I’m sure Hunter was quite serious.  However, I cannot help but laugh at it.

Posted as humor.

 

Obese legislation

Richard Posner, in a post about the proposed immigration reform, writes:

It is an unreadable 880 pages in length (legislation has become obese in tandem with the increasing obesity of the population).

Emphasis added, to highlight the part that I found both amusing and true.

The silliness of free will denial

Over at his blog – website – Jerry Coyne has proposed a thought experment:

• A Gedankenexperiment on free will

He starts by asserting that we have no free will.  And then Coyne asks his readers which of two options they would choose.

Then Coyne goes ahead and exercises his own free will, by choosing the first of those options.  Some of the commenters do likewise.  Other commenters exercise their free will to point out that the whole idea of making a choice is contrary to free will.

I guess I still have that quaint old fashioned idea that scientists are supposed to go by evidence.  And the evidence is that people spend much of their time making choices.

 

Today’s weather report

Looking at today’s report for Geneva, IL on Yahoo, I see it reporting:

Current temperature 13F

High for the day 26F

Low for the day 24F

A desktop weather applet (in KDE, using data from NOAA at DuPage airport) says about the same, though it gives a little more precision (12.9F for the current temperature).

Perhaps this is the “new math” version of weather reporting.

Best wishes for the new year, everybody.

World views

• conservative: things were better back in the good old days;
• progressive: for all of our problems, life today is better than it ever was;
• centrist: the more things change, the more they stay the same.