They were just at a charity walkathon.
They left you a message. Didn’t you get it?
Author: MarkH
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Al Jazeera's conspiracy-mongering
Has anyone else seen that Al Jazeera’s mainpage has a section devoted to conspiracy theories? It prominently features 9/11 conspiracy garbage about WTC7 which has been debunked.
This is something that is neglected about 9/11 conspiracy mongering. When 9/11 denialists like William Rodriguez encourage anti-American sentiments in foreign countries by suggesting Islamic radicals weren’t behind the attacks it doesn’t do anyone any good. I’m not supportive of the US occupation of Iraq, but that doesn’t mean that we should allow the religious radicals that attacked us off the hook. It is possible to be against the Iraq war without suggesting we ignore who actually attacked our country. Sadly, many prominent anti-war activists, including Cindy Sheehan now, are supporting 9/11 truthiness. Religious radicalism should not be given a pass for the murders that occurred in the name of opposing the war, or else we risk never confronting the real obstacles to peace in the world.
**Update** A clarification. A sharp commenter has pointed out that Al Jazeera magazine should not be confused with the satellite channel Al-Jazeera AlJazeera.net. They are independent companies. I think I’ll go email Jeff Goldberg at Slate about this as well who made the same mistake as I did, not being a regular reader of AlJazeera.
Aljazeera.com reads like 9/11 conspiracy site, while Aljazeera.net is considered a legitimate journalistic enterprise. Despite this confusion I think the point remains the same. The consequence of blaming 9/11 on Bush does have the effect of giving religious madmen a pass for the attacks.
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My question for Luskin again
With nothing of any substance to actually talk about, like bench research, original ideas etc., the evolution denialists continue to harp on Guillermo Gonzalez, the ISU professor who failed to get tenure.
However, my question for Casey Luskin remains unanswered. They have accused science of a conspiracy (surprise surprise) because we don’t accept ID as science (neither do the courts, anyone with a brain … ). DaveScot, never one interested in consistency, has even suggested they leverage Dover against the tenure decision, because if ID is religion, they can’t discriminate again Gonzalez for his religion!
I’m happy to see that DaveScot has finally accepted ID for what it actually is, religion, but I’d still like an answer to my original question.
Mr. Luskin, is it the considered opinion of the DI, UD etc., that it is never acceptable to discriminate against a professor in a tenure decision based on their ideas?
I’ll also forward MarkCC’s question while I’m at it. Would you agree with a proposal to make an evolutionary biologist who didn’t believe in intelligent design a Discovery Institute fellow?
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Who are the denialists? (Part III)
Who are the global Warming Denialists?
A tougher question is, in a discipline as complex as climate science, how do you tell who the legitimate skeptics (those that ignore the reporting at the Independent for instance) are versus who are the denialists?
Again, it’s simple, because denialism is about tactics. Which global warming critics are the ones alleging conspiracies, cherry-picking data, and incessantly moving the goalposts? Which organizations hire these hacks to denigrate legitimate science?
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I guess this was inevitable
“Heliocentrism is an Atheist Doctrine”.
I’ve just got to say, wow. I read it at first thinking, “hey, this is hysterical satire”, then I read the comments and thought, “wow, these guys are dedicated – this is pure performance art!” Finally, I started going through the archives with a sinking feeling, “holy crap, these guys are for real.”
I really think they’ve fallen for these cranks line about a fixed earth, and all I’ve got to say now is please, please, please tell everybody about this. If there ever was a better example of the universality of crank thinking, this is it, and of course they would support Brownback before any other candidate.
I’m sure if one of these guys was in line for tenure at ISU the DI would be screaming their heads off if the university wisely decided not to extend tenure. After all it’s academic freedom! We must teach the controversy over Copernicus!
Thanks Coturnix!
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How to write consistently boring scientific literature
As I sit here, trying to write a paper, I found this article entitled “How to write consistently boring scientific literature” very interesting. (via The Annals of Improbably Research”
I’m afraid it’s behind a paywall, so I’ll summarize their findings.
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Anne Coulter is a mole
There is no other explanation for her eulogy for Falwell entitled, I kid you not, “Jerry Falwell — Say Hello to Ronald Reagan!”
In her impassioned defense of Falwell’s most egregious statements, from blaming 9/11 on atheists and gays, to accusing Tinky Winky of being a gay recruiter, she proves she’s really a Democratic agent working to undermine the religious right. Here’s a couple of excerpts.
Falwell was a perfected Christian. He exuded Christian love for all men, hating sin while loving sinners. This is as opposed to liberals, who just love sinners. Like Christ ministering to prostitutes, Falwell regularly left the safe confines of his church to show up in such benighted venues as CNN.
Let me be the first to say: I ALWAYS agreed with the Rev. Falwell.
Actually, there was one small item I think Falwell got wrong regarding his statement after 9/11 that “the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians — who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle — the ACLU, People for the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America. I point the finger in their face and say, ‘You helped this happen.’”
First of all, I disagreed with that statement because Falwell neglected to specifically include Teddy Kennedy and “the Reverend” Barry Lynn.
There have always been gay people — even in the prelapsarian ’50s that Jerry Falwell and I would like to return to, when God protected America from everything but ourselves.
What Falwell was referring to are the gay activists — the ones who spit the Eucharist on the floor at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, blamed Reagan for AIDS, and keep trying to teach small schoolchildren about “fisting.”
I just laughed and laughed. Seriously, you’ll love it.
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A question for Luskin
Evolution news and views on me
That’s fascinating logic: apparently the widespread feeling that it is “sensible” to remove individuals of a particular viewpoint does not necessarily mean there’s a “conspiracy” to remove individuals with a particular viewpoint.
Mr. Luskin, is it the considered opinion of the DI, UD etc., that it is never acceptable to discriminate against a professor in a tenure decision based on their ideas?
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Suck it DI
PLoS has an intriguing article providing additional reasons why the thermodynamic arguments against evolution are more than silly. It’s called the maximum entropy production (MEP) hypothesis, and John Whitfield describes why life is actually may be favored by the second law of thermodynamics.
At first glance, life and the laws of thermodynamics seem to be at loggerheads. Most glaringly, the second law states that over time, any system will tend to the maximum level of entropy, meaning the minimum level of order and useful energy. Open a bottle of perfume in a closed room, and eventually the pool of scent will become a smelly cloud. Organisms do their damnedest to avoid the smelly cloud of equilibrium, otherwise known as death, and a common argument of anti-evolutionists is that the universe’s tendency toward disorder means that natural selection cannot make living things more complex.
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Who are the denialists? (Part II)
What kind of family value is lying? That’s the foremost question in my mind when I consider the family values organizations that use false research, lies and denialism to justify their agenda of disparaging contraception, sex education, homosexuality, and exaggerating the dangers of abortion.
In light of Falwell’s death, I thought it would be appropriate to advance the discussion of the use of denialist techniques to reinforce bigotry and an anti-feminist agenda in the name of family values.
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