Month: May 2007
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Denialists’ Deck of Cards: State and Federal Issues
Okay industry lobbyists in training, you’ve started just making up arguments to confuse everyone. That’s a method of confusing issues. Now you should start confusing individuals’ roles in the policy process. It’s time to start playing government officials off each other. If you don’t like what the federal government is doing, say that it is…
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The 4th Largest Religion: No Religion
Next week’s New Yorker makes a point that I hadn’t considered, perhaps because there is so much religiosity in America. In a review of recently-published books on atheism, Anthony Gottlieb writes: …one can venture conservative estimates of the number of unbelievers in the world today. Reviewing a large number of studies among some fifty countries,…
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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…
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Denialists’ Deck of Cards: The Fourth Hand, Spread Confusion!
Now, the debate starts to get fun. This group of Denialists’ cards are all about spreading confusion. The more that one muddies the waters, the harder it is for anyone to do anything. And so, the place to start is with the Red Herring. The “red herring” argument is a frequently-employed and efficacious tool to…
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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…
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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…
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Old Timey Conspiracy Theories
WaPo shows us how a good conspiracy theory can never die. It’s depressing. We’re probably going to be hearing from 9/11 troofers for the rest of our lives. The new evidence that Kennedy was killed by someone on a grassy-knoll or the Cubans or whatever is that the metallurgical analysis that was used to prove…
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John Gravois on Oprah and the Secret
A must read from Slate on Oprah, the Secret, and the American excess of wishful thinking – starting with a lovely story about a woman who stopped taking her cancer meds because of the secret. I find the Secret to be pretty typical idiotic woo, that taken to its logical conclusions becomes dangerous, nasty and…
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Flies disprove evolution!
Or at least “Darwinism” whatever the hell that means these days. I guess they couldn’t keep quiet all day. UD’s new argument is an easily dismissed straw man. It goes like this. Scientists discover fruit flies put in a sensory-deprivation chamber,instead of flying around randomly, or in a rigid pattern, fly in a pattern with…
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Speaking of 9/11
You know the most obnoxious thing about 9/11 conspiracy theorists? They make idiots like Jonah Goldberg look right about something. Goldberg, who as far as I can tell has never made an accurate prediction, finally has figured out a great way to make Democrats look bad rather than just embarrass himself and the Republicans. He…