Where Ideas Come From, Part MXXIII

Yesterday, I had to take the cat to the vet. She's fine, generally, doing well, although she now has very high blood pressure as a result of her ongoing kidney failure. So we had to give her a new medicine.

She's not incontinent (thank Bast), but she apparently chose to show her dislike of the transport box by letting go and urinating on me. She's never done that before, but it was an instant story idea: "Whew," Muse said, "I bet you smell just like a homeless catboy."

Yeah, you go make a note in the Yowlers wiki, Muse. Have fun with that. Oh, hey, after the Meg Ryan chickflick plot, do yourself a favor and make it a tragedy.

Let's Hear It For Wikipedia Vandalism!

Today is May Day. Among all the other things that we celebrate on May Day listed on Wikipedia's May 1st entry (and somehow they missed that today is the "National Day of Prayer", which pisses me off as much as the Evangelical's trying to hijack Valentine's day for the "National day of Purity") someone sneaked in this entry: "Worldwide - National Outdoor Intercourse Day."

The usual suspects will be out in force today. Anti-war, immigrant's rights, and union workers will all be blocking traffic and tying up the city of Seattle today. This should be fun.

Conservative writer John Derbyshire explains Expelled better than anyone else yet.

( Background material )

Ben Stein's demonstrated vileness, wherein he says "Love of God and compassion and empathy leads you to a very glorious place, and science leads you to killing people," which completely ignores the reality that science is more adept at saving lives than prayer, and Love of God has often led people to very inglorious fates, has been noticed by none other than conservative (we're talking National Review Online!) writer John Derbyshire.

Derb calls Stein's accusations "a blood libel on our civilization," which is probably the most concise damnation of Stein's activities I've yet seen. But Derb also goes one step further and completely and totally nails what's wrong with the entire sordid enterprise:

The creationists have been morally corrupted by the constant effort of pretending not to be what they are. What they are, as is amply documented, is a pressure group for religious teaching in public schools.

Now, there is nothing wrong with that. We are a nation of pressure groups, and one more would hardly notice. However, since parents who want their kids religiously educated already have plenty of private and parochial schools to choose from, and since current jurisprudence regards tax-funded religious instruction as unconstitutional, creationists are a pressure group without hope, if they campaign openly for the thing they want.

Understanding this, the creationists took the morally fatal decision to campaign clandestinely. They overhauled creationism as "intelligent design," roped in a handful of eccentric non-Christian cranks keen for a well-funded vehicle to help them push their own flat-earth theories, and set about presenting themselves to the public as "alternative science" engaged in a "controversy" with a closed-minded, reactionary "science establishment" fearful of new ideas. (Ignoring the fact that without a constant supply of new ideas, there would be nothing for scientists to do.) Nothing to do with religion at all!

I think this willful act of deception has corrupted creationism irredeemably. Hence the dishonesty and sheer nastiness, even down to plain bad manners, that you keep encountering in ID circles. It's by no means all of them, but it's enough to corrupt and poison the creationist enterprise, which might otherwise have added something worthwhile to our national life, if only by way of entertainment value.

Really, read it all.

The Etiology Of An Expelled Side-Show

A reader (who didn't give me permission to give out his name) pointed me to an interesting article about the video Beware the Believers, a funny little cartoon featuring caricatured views of the pro-evolution scientists at the forefront of the intelligent design debate rapping that Richard Dawkins is "The dick to the dawk to the PHD / He's smarter than you, he's got a science degree."

It was hard to say if the video was pro- or anti-science, but the amount of effort put into it showed it had some money behind it. As it turned out, the Expelled people paid for it. But the creator may have been playing fast and loose with both sides. Its ambiguity has made it a much bigger hit with the pro-science than anti-science side. And the anti-scientists can't say "Fooled you!"

A follow-up short (like 15 seconds) depicts Ben Stein wearing a t-shirt reading "Poe's Law." Poe's Law says that "It is impossible to distinguish between true fundamentalism and its parodies, because both often sound equally ridiculous to non-fundamentalists."