John West of the Discovery Institute is fuming at those wascawwy Wepubwicans in the Florida legislature for introducing a fatal poison pill into the DI’s model “Academic Freedom” bill.
May 5th, 2008 by EmmaPeel | 1 Comment »
Apr 29th, 2008 by EmmaPeel | 2 Comments »
The Florida House of Representatives voted yesterday to protect the right of high school teachers to teach their students Discovery Institute’s talking points, er, I mean “the growing scientific controversy over evolution”. It was almost a straight party line vote, with the Republicans voting 71-2 in favor of gibberish.
Two Republicans voted in favor of sanity & reason. And one of these, former majority whip Carl Domino, (R)-Jupiter, wasn’t afraid to speak up against the science-deniers…
Apr 17th, 2008 by EmmaPeel | 3 Comments »
Ben Stein’s “documentary”, Expelled, opens with an effective scene where he passionately addresses an audience of enthusiastic college students about how those evil evolutionary scientists are suppressing free speech in academia. In today’s eSkeptic, Michael Shermer reveals why those “college students” looked just a little too much like they had stepped in from Central Casting:
Dec 19th, 2007 by EmmaPeel | Comments Off
For years now, we’ve been pleading for intelligent design advocates to tell us something – anything – about this Intelligent Designer, the existence of whom they are so sure is implied by the facts of biology. But for years now, they’ve adamantly denied that they have any interest in speculating about the Designer, His identity, His motives, or His methods.
Granted, in the beginning they were loudly proclaiming that the study of ID would help pull society back from the brink of destruction caused by our rampant belief in godless evolution, but when challenged by scientists on ID as science, they insisted that they were only interested in “design-centric” research programmes, not “designer-centric” ones.
But that mask of studied disinterest in the Designer Himself may have slipped. Casey Luskin of the Discovery Institute thinks that a study of skull shapes of St. Bernards, released in late October, actually helps make the case for ID instead of for evolution as the study authors claim, and his reasoning is, er, disturbing…
Continue Reading »
Dec 7th, 2006 by EmmaPeel | 3 Comments »
On this, the 65th anniversary of Pearl Harbor, let’s pause a moment for this poem, which has been circulating in email and blogs for a couple years now. As long as we’re at war, this is only going to be passed along more and more, and might even become a new Christmas classic.
Most versions that are making the rounds on the Internet don’t include the author’s name – but it really deserves to be there. The poem is by Michael Marks. The closest thing I could find to an “official” webpage for him is at the International War Veterans’ Poetry Archives.
Nov 25th, 2006 by EmmaPeel | 2 Comments »
Earlier this year when Popular Mechanics published their book, Debunking 9/11 Myths: Why Conspiracy Theories Can’t Stand Up to the Facts, their editor-in-chief, James Miegs, described the aggressive sloppiness in the way conspiracists marshall their “facts” to build their theories and then defend them against the ever-growing body of contrary facts that mainstream researchers & reporters compile.
Those of us who’ve been debating hard-core creationists know these behaviors all too well: Relying on selective, out of context quotes of mainstream experts to bolster the opposite conclusion. Trumpeting early, inaccurate reports while ignoring or explaining away the later corrections. Focusing on holes & anomalies in the consensus theory, no matter how trivial, as proof that it’s a house of cards that’s about to come falling down Any Day Now, just as soon as the public learns about the vast conspiracy of evil scientists or other authority figures who are brutally suppressing the truth, which is nevertheless Out There.
Aug 20th, 2006 by EmmaPeel | 2 Comments »
AS YOU’VE PROBABLY ALREADY SEEN, the New York Dolls came out last month with a cute song, Dance Like a Monkey, complete with matching video. In it, the lead monkey seduces a prim & proper woman carrying an “Intelligent Design” picket sign into freeing her inner simian and accepting evolution.
This inspired Rob Crowther, PR specialist at the Discovery Institute, to pen a desperately hopeful item, eagerly pointing at the fact that the “chorus … proclaim[s] evolution is so obsolete”.