I actually looked at the site pushing that Ben Stein-led anti-evolution movie today for the first time, and checked out its blog. My first reaction was to laugh — it’s so flagrantly ham-handed in its “debunking” of evolution (think WorldNut Daily for retread summer-school creationists) that it could appear credible only to the scientifically ignorant, the ideologically brainwashed, and those too drunk, crazy, or apathetic to do anything besides yammer and screech with their faces scrunched up and pointed at the sky like jungle birds in response to pretty much anything they see on TV, with “thinking” too bold a venture to consider. I mean, trying to paint Richard Dawkins as unwittingly inimical to evolution and friendly to “designers” even while complaining about his “vocal atheism”? Like no one can spot the inconsistency?
Then I realized that I had just envisaged 94% of the U.S. adult population, and that the movie is going to be a headache, another waste of rhetorical time for the grim minority that will undertake explaining the seemingly obvious to and around the seedy and oblivious.
As a character actor Stein’s demeanor made him memorable and somewhat amusing in an ironic, vaguely pitiful way. As a game-show host his droll monotone became annoying after a short time. As a shill for shit-shat, he now looks like the prevaricating, myxedematous old man that he is.

I actually looked at the site pushing that Ben Stein-led anti-evolution movie today for the first time, and checked out its blog. My first reaction was to laugh — it’s so flagrantly ham-handed in its “debunking” of evolution (think WorldNut Daily for retread summer-school creationists) that it could appear credible only to the scientifically ignorant, the ideologically brainwashed, and those too drunk, crazy, or apathetic to do anything besides yammer and screech with their faces scrunched up and pointed at the sky like jungle birds in response to pretty much anything they see on TV, with “thinking” too bold a venture to consider. I mean, trying to paint Richard Dawkins as unwittingly inimical to evolution and friendly to “designers” even while complaining about his “vocal atheism”? Like no one can spot the inconsistency?
Then I realized that I had just envisaged 94% of the U.S. adult population, and that the movie is going to be a headache, another waste of rhetorical time for the grim minority that will undertake explaining the seemingly obvious to and around the seedy and oblivious.
As a character actor Stein’s demeanor made him memorable and somewhat amusing in an ironic, vaguely pitiful way. As a game-show host his droll monotone became annoying after a short time. As a shill for shit-shat, he now looks like the prevaricating, myxedematous old man that he is.

The subject of torture — or if you prefer, “enhanced interrogation techniques” — is a fond one among undereducated “conservatives” who cloak their ignorance and hatred within
a political affiliation, because nothing gets them more aroused than the idea of harming Evil Ones, both foreign and domestic.
Naturally, such insatiable consumers of violence at any cost dismiss all talk of questionable treatment of political detainees — that some of it may be inhumane, ineffective, or both — as evidence of supporting or coddling terrorists and a general unwillingness to do what is “obviously” necessary to stamp out Al Queda.
“Gribbit,” a porky shut-in with a history making violent threats whom I mention here often, recently wrote about a familiar form of forced confessions, “waterboarding,” on a blog run by his girlfriend, wife, mother, female alter ego, or whatever “Mrs. Gribbit” is. He quotes an article by Jonah Goldberg at Townhall.com (which I won’t link to because Townhall is beshitted by pop-up ads as well as stupidity) that champions the effectiveness of the technique by providing three examples of men who cracked under its pressure. Goldberg claims that one of the three had something useful to offer, quoting a CIA official who told ABC that “information [the detainee] he provided disrupted a number of attacks, maybe dozens of attacks,” and is silent on the other two.
Apparently the fact that all three detainees started talking means that the procedure is effective. To an extent this is trivially true: If, say, you want to stop your dog from pissing on the rug, one effective means of doing this is to prevent it from drinking fluids for several days; another is to sew its urethra shut, and yet another is to not let it come in the house at all. Remember: the word is effective, but the sentiment is revenge.
An December WaPo article discusses what can charitably be termed the limits on the utility of torture. But for now, never mind whether waterboarding has done any demonstrable good and hence a debate as to its legitimacy. Gribbit says it’s not even a big deal:

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Once again, Daylight Savings Time is upon us, and this year it’s arrived earlier than ever. Undoubtedly, you’ll hear someone mention the supposed energy savings due to the earlier switch-over, but I’ll counter that with an item from The Chimp Refuge’s closet of past goodies: Don’t Bank on This Savings.

Once again, Daylight Savings Time is upon us, and this year it’s arrived earlier than ever. Undoubtedly, you’ll hear someone mention the supposed energy savings due to the earlier switch-over, but I’ll counter that with an item from The Chimp Refuge’s closet of past goodies: Don’t Bank on This Savings.

Two things you can almost always count on from unusually dishonest Christian bloggers like Nathan Bradfield are unintentional irony (e.g., post titles that are intended to be sarcastic, but are actually on the money) and a wholesale abandonment of even the slightest pretense at honesty, usually in his penultimate paragraph.
In a post titled “Parents Don’t Know What’s Best for Their Kids,” Nathan complains about a California federal appellate court’s decision to not allow parents without proper teaching credentials to home-school their children. Nathan labels this “absolute constitutional blasphemy” (the mirror image, I suppose, of “utter Ten Commandments amending”) and says that with the court’s overturning of a previous ruling, “Any remaining cover concealing the blatant, liberal agenda of the education elite in this country has just been blown.”
Yes, it’s a well-kept secret that those concerned with the ramshackle state of education in certain segments of the population are, despite God’s will as revealed to us all through a lumbering cavalcade of Baptards and other righteous swampheads, trying to do something about it.

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Two things you can almost always count on from unusually dishonest Christian bloggers like Nathan Bradfield are unintentional irony (e.g., post titles that are intended to be sarcastic, but are actually on the money) and a wholesale abandonment of even the slightest pretense at honesty, usually in his penultimate paragraph.
In a post titled “Parents Don’t Know What’s Best for Their Kids,” Nathan complains about a California federal appellate court’s decision to not allow parents without proper teaching credentials to home-school their children. Nathan labels this “absolute constitutional blasphemy” (the mirror image, I suppose, of “utter Ten Commandments amending”) and says that with the court’s overturning of a previous ruling, “Any remaining cover concealing the blatant, liberal agenda of the education elite in this country has just been blown.”
Yes, it’s a well-kept secret that those concerned with the ramshackle state of education in certain segments of the population are, despite God’s will as revealed to us all through a lumbering cavalcade of Baptards and other righteous swampheads, trying to do something about it.

Read the rest of this entry »