Denialism

Month: May 2007

  • What Sam Brownback thinks about evolution

    —

    by

    MarkH
    in

    In today’s NYT It’s softer than the outright denial of evolution that was assumed when he raised his hand at the debate, and certainly doesn’t sound like young-earth creationism. It seems to be intelligent design creationism without explicitly mentioning intelligent design – although some keywords are present. He, of course, uses many of the classic…

  • Badscience takes on the Independent

    —

    by

    MarkH
    in

    Apparently, I’m not the only one who thinks the Independent is a joke when it comes to science reporting. The latest idiocy is the idea of “electrosmog”, which I think results from having watched The Ring too many times (just that first scene with the two girls talking about radio signals). It results in a…

  • Crank HOWTO

    —

    by

    MarkH
    in ,

    Who wants to know how to be an effective crank? Well, I’ve outlined what I think are the critical components of successful crankiness. Ideally, this will serve as a guide to those of you who want to come up with a stupid idea, and then defend it against all evidence to the contrary. Here’s how…

  • Denialists’ Deck of Cards: The Queen of Diamonds, “We Need Regulatory Relief”

    —

    by

    Chris
    in

    Sometimes the success of a consumer intervention will create “blowback,” and allow the industry to not only win but also demand other concessions. An excellent recent example of regulatory blowback came with the creation of the federal Do-Not-Call Registry. In creating the registry, the Federal Communications Commission also tried to tighten regulations on “junk faxes,”…

  • A question for Luskin III

    —

    by

    MarkH
    in

    Gosh, they just can’t accept that no reputable science department wants an IDer around. They continue to push this academic freedom issue, when it’s perfectly acceptable to consider an applicant’s ideas when they are pursued intramurally, and can’t quite decide whether they want to make it a religious discrimination issue – risking admitting that ID…

  • Colony Collapse Disorder Update

    —

    by

    MarkH
    in

    From Salon. Conspiracy Factory has a good overview. Sounds like it wasn’t anything sinister other than weird winter weather.

  • 9/11 with office supplies

    —

    by

    MarkH
    in

    You remember when that creationist thought a can of peanut butter disproved evolution? If you thought that was funny, you got to start watching some troofer videos. Screw Loose Change found this wonderful entry: I realize this is low hanging fruit. But it was too funny to ignore.

  • Denialists’ Deck of Cards: The Sixth Hand, The Gloves Come Off

    —

    by

    Chris
    in

    If the denialist is on the brink of losing, a number of high stakes arguments can be made. The bear/bull market argument is one of my favorites. Just look at tax policy–no matter what the economy is doing, tax cuts are the solution. And in privacy, if the economy’s weak, there shouldn’t be interventions to…

  • Egnor vs. Bell

    —

    by

    MarkH
    in

    The latest entry in the Darwinism = eugenics nonsense comes from the crank Michael Egnor. Once again, as a Charlottesvillian I feel the cranks are invading my home turf. About a mile away from me is this sign: It reads:

  • One month of denialism

    —

    by

    MarkH
    in

    We’ve been on for one month now. It was a pretty good start. We got about 110k pageviews, about 54k visitors, 100 entries and 1050 comments on those entries. We’ve gone through what makes a denialist argument, what makes a crank, 3 major categories of denialists (there are many more) and almost a whole deck…