Courtesy of Alan Keyes:

(via)

As Keyes himself says: “This is insantiy”

I’m still subscribed to the RSS feed from FactCheck.org. Now that the election is over, it’s more focused on dispelling email rumors and other misinformation. Seeing some of the stuff they have to debunk is pretty funny. Here’s a recent one:

Title: Is Leon Panetta’s daughter a “radical anti-American” who posed with Venezuela’s Chavez?
Summary: Actually, President Obama’s nominee to head the CIA doesn’t even have a daughter. The woman pictured in a false viral e-mail message is a Philadelphia-based photographer who says she’s never met Leon Panetta.

I’m glad that I’m not on the email list of anyone who sends this stuff out anymore.

I’m just waiting for Andy to parody this…

I’m not sure why anyone would need a new president in order to start shutting their lights off…

A six-part video in which Derren Brown and Richard Dawkins discuss psychics. The techniques used in cold reading are especially interesting:

(via Boing Boing)

From Burger King: “Flame Body Spray: The scent of seduction with a hint of flame-broiled meat”. I can’t think of anyone who shouldn’t get this for Christmas.

A little while ago, in the spirit of challenging my own views, I sat down and watched the movie Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. Intelligence being a reference to Intelligent Design (irony not intentional). In this review, I won’t really delve into the core issue of evolution itself, but instead will judge how well it stands up as a documentary and discuss some of the arguments made. If you’re interested in the scientific aspects, Scientific American has a thorough analysis.

I watch a lot of documentaries, and ignoring the intellectual merits for a moment, this was a terrible documentary. Famously-boring former Nixon speechwriter Ben Stein is the narrator and protagonist, which is annoying to begin with, but it only got worse. The film is stuffed full of random stock footage of old TV shows, Nazis, and lots of other irrelevant things. It has so much of this that it quickly becomes distracting and hard to watch. I watched the whole thing, but after 30 minutes I was already checking if it was almost over.

The film mixes some of its more serious arguments (a generous statement on my part) with some blatantly intellectually bankrupt ideas. I call this the Michael Moore effect, as the few parts where they go far beyond what is reasonable cheapens the whole thing.

First, Nazis! Stein says:

What other societies have used Darwinism to trump all other authorities, including religion? As a Jew, my mind left to one regime in particular.

Stein claims that acceptance of evolution leads to social darwinism which leads to genocide. There are two reasons why this is a terrible argument. First, social darwinism and the rationales for genocide provided by Nazis do not require acceptance of an evolutionary origin of species. Even creationists will admit that natural selection and some biological variation occur, in addition to many traits being hereditary. Admitting this isn’t the same as saying that all species have a common ancestor, but these are the only parts needed if someone wanted to abuse science to justify genocide. Second, even if acceptance of evolution helped create a foundation for Nazi beliefs, how does that make evolution less plausible? It seems completely orthogonal to me.

Similarly, Stein makes an argument that acceptance of evolution leads to atheism. Regardless of whether or not this is true, this has no effect on whether or not evolutionary theory can explain the origin of species. Our desires for things to be true have no effect on how true they are. Stein said in an interview:

“When we just saw that man, I think it was Mr. Myers [i.e. biologist P.Z. Myers], talking about how great scientists were, I was thinking to myself the last time any of my relatives saw scientists telling them what to do they were telling them to go to the showers to get gassed … that was horrifying beyond words, and that’s where science — in my opinion, this is just an opinion — that’s where science leads you. [...] Love of God and compassion and empathy leads you to a very glorious place, and science leads you to killing people.”

Yeah…

The creationism v. evolution question is deserving of its own post.. I’ll try to get that later.

Check out his website!

You can join his site for $14.95/year, plus his book (“Joe the Plumber: Fighting for the American Dream”) will be out Dec 1.

And yes, the site has blinking and scrolling text all over it.

I know it’s too easy, but let’s take a moment to consider a few choice quotes from a report of the “John McCain! Not Hussein!” at some Palin rallies.

After the rally in Florida ended, two of the people leading the chant explained why they did so. “Because it rhymes,” said Shirley Mitten

No, it’s used to stir up anti-Arab bigotry and channel it toward their opponent.

She said she does not know if Mr. Obama is a Muslim. “He says he’s not, but we have no way of knowing,” Ms. Mitten said.

How would you find something like this out? It sounds like they’re looking for something like a witchcraft test. Maybe Obama should eat some bacon on national TV.

Finally, my personal favorite:

The middle name Hussein, he said, added to the suspicion. “I guess Obama was named after Saddam Hussein,” he said.

No comment.

From Ohio:

This, of course, isn’t typical of Ohioans, nor McCain supporters (the guy who put it there said it wasn’t political!). One thing that got me thinking, though, was his assertion that “this is a white, Christian nation”. The “Christian nation” thing has become popular for a while now, as I’m sure you know. When people make arguments for why this is a Christian nation, I don’t really see why the same (fallacious) arguments wouldn’t apply to “white”. I mean, Tom Jefferson was more white than Christian, and the constitution was more bigoted against blacks than any non-Christian religion…