Daily Blend: Thursday, December 06, 2012

Anita Sarkeesian

My quest to reestablish a halfway-functional sleep schedule continues, so for now, enjoy these remedial links.

Awesome quote of the day: “The police department believes that, under state law, you may responsibly get baked, order some pizzas and enjoy a 'Lord of the Rings' marathon in the privacy of your own home, if you want to.”

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) walks back on his previous confusion about the Earth’s age, says “there is no scientific debate” that “it’s at least 4.5 billion years old”. He then blathers about reconciling science and theology, but then, that he’s said this much is already extraordinary.

Anita Sarkeesian ^[pictured] talks about overcoming the massive campaign of sexist hatred she received for wanting to talk about the portrayal of women in videogames. Good on her for making more asshatty heads explode.
(via Pharyngula)

And finally, here’s a trenchant representation of the archetypal sibling relationship as reenacted by puppies:
(via @EmergencyPuppy)

[full size (600×657)]

If you have any story suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments or send them in.

Daily Blend: Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Ex-Rep. Allen West (R-FL)

Sober Transgender Day of Remembrance, everyone.

Alex Knapp at Forbes thoroughly decorticates Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) for claiming the age of the Earth (which he doesn’t know) isn’t related to our economic and general welfare.
(via @BadAstronomer)

Now-former-Rep. Allen West (R-FL) ^[pictured] finally concedes.

PZ Myers shines some contextual light on the current kerfuffle over Sam Harris’s 2006-era comments about how “[i]f [he] could wave a magic wand to get rid of either rape or religion, [he] would not hesitate to get rid of religion”.

And finally, more awesomeness about the promise of stem cell research: Dogs with paralyzing spinal injuries learn to walk again.

If you have any story suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments or send them in.

Marco Rubio: Theologians still debating the age of the Earth

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL)

From current Republican darling and 2016 presidential hopeful (kill me now) Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), making it clear how much stock he puts in all that sciencey stuff:

GQ: How old do you think the Earth is?
Marco Rubio: I'm not a scientist, man. I can tell you what recorded history says, I can tell you what the Bible says, but I think that's a dispute amongst theologians and I think it has nothing to do with the gross domestic product or economic growth of the United States. I think the age of the universe has zero to do with how our economy is going to grow. I'm not a scientist. I don't think I'm qualified to answer a question like that. At the end of the day, I think there are multiple theories out there on how the universe was created and I think this is a country where people should have the opportunity to teach them all. I think parents should be able to teach their kids what their faith says, what science says. Whether the Earth was created in 7 days, or 7 actual eras, I'm not sure we'll ever be able to answer that. It's one of the great mysteries.

Except that, of course, there is absolutely no question that the Earth is exactly 4.54 billion years old (give or take a margin of error of about 1%), with a colossal (and continually growing) heap of hard evidence from a plethora of scientific fields settling this fact beyond any reasonable doubt whatsoever. The only people still trying to pretend otherwise are those too ignorant or delusional to be taken seriously, anyway … even though they’re apparently the kind of people whom Rubio would rather refer to over experts who actually know what they’re talking about.

This gem of a quote has been covered pretty much everywhere already, with Phil Plait in particular giving Rubio a royal scientific smackdown over his pretending that ignorance of the fundamentals about the world around us somehow doesn’t affect the nation’s (and the world’s) economic well-being. Really, the only mystery here is what this moron is doing on the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee – or, to a lesser (albeit more predictable) extent, why U.S. voters keep putting brainless clowns like him into elected office in the first place.

Daily Blend: Monday, October 01, 2012

Jack Wu [source]

The king always feels he is being wronged when the starving peasants rise up and oust him from his throne. #MaleDecline

Stephanie Coontz at The New York Times destroys the myth that men are being treated as inferior to women in this modern society. I wonder if I’ll receiving some more amusing anti-feminist attempts to refute established facts in my Twitter @mentions feed.
(via atheismplus | Reddit)

Massive earthquakes in Indonesia signal the impending break-up of the Indo-Australian tectonic plate … over the next few million years.
(via The Daily Grail)

“If you're mainstream, you're going to hell”: Westboro Baptist Church attendee ^[pictured] runs for Kansas Board of Education seat.
(via @BadAstronomer)

Australia’s ABC program Media Watch rips into WIN News’s false-balance-driven promulgation of “vaccines cause autism” garbage from Meryl Dorey from the antivax Australian Vaccination Network.
(via @BadAstronomer)

And finally, the Discovery Channel is set to embarrass itself again, this time with an ode to the U.S.’s gun craze hosted by reactionary flywheel Ted Nugent.

If you have any story suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments or send them in.

Tags: Stephanie Coontz • men • women • male decline • tectonic plates • Indo-Australian plate • earthquakes • Jack Wu • Westboro Baptist Church • Topeka, KS • Kansas State Board of Education • ABC News • Media Watch • WIN News • Meryl Dorey • Australian Vaccination Network • AVN • Discovery Channel • Ted Nugent • Ted Nugent's Gun Country

Adopt an Atheist: Stan Johnson – Round 1

I’ll admit, I had little expectations when I put myself up for Christian adoption two weeks back in response to Bill Donohue’s “adopt an atheist” initiative. But lo and behold, I’ve received a challenge!

Taker: Stan Johnson (Protestant Christian)

Rules —

• The format is a free exchange (no jury or “winners”/“losers”).
• Each round starts with Stan’s argument(s) (A = Argument)) and concludes with my counter-argument(s) (R = Rebuttal).
• Subject matter is limited to arguments of logic and evidence to support the existence of God(s) and/or the validity of Christianity.
• Any other topics or tangents may be ignored.
• Any and all rhetoric, tactics and content is acceptable, so long as all participants adhere to the blog rules.
• Arguments can be as many and lengthy as desired (though conciseness is appreciated).
• Participants may choose to ignore any argument(s) that they feel have been sufficiently addressed (as to avoid beating a dead horse).
• Rounds will continue indefinitely until any participant(s) choose(s) to end the debate for any reason.

Note: Challengers’ arguments may be paraphrased/edited for clarity/formatting reasons.

---

ARGUMENT(S): Stan Johnson

A1: The natural world (specifically the biology of organisms) doesn’t seem random, and instead appears to have been designed. This is a thought even shared by some very well known atheists. Richard Dawkins in his book The Blind Watchmaker even said "Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose." Yet, non like Christians, who follow the implications of what they study (in this case that it is designed), atheists throw out the notion because it doesn't follow their worldview. Francis Crick was once cited as saying "Biologists must constantly keep in mind what they see was not designed, rather evolved."

A2: The Earth has to have been designed because it doesn't make sense for the earth to be able to exist unless there was a plan going into making it. The earth would have destroyed itself as soon as one minute thing was off. Also, a lot of things would happen at the same time because there are instances where one thing could not happen before or after other events for it to have come into being.

Daily Blend: Saturday, September 25, 2010

USAF Maj. Margaret Witt [source]

• The Earth’s volcanic pulse.
  (via The Daily Grail)

• The Titanic sank as a result of numerous human errors (including forgetting to equip the lookouts with binoculars, ignoring ice warnings and steaming too fast in dangerous waters, reversing the engines upon spitting the ’berg and thus preventing the ship from turning effectively, etc.). This is common knowledge, has been ever since the time of the disaster. So why is it now being treated as some grand shocking revelation?

• Titanium foam for your bones.
  (via The Daily Grail)

• Fox News host Brian Kilmeade spreads more lies in claiming that President Obama didn’t mention North Korea in his UN speech – despite him clearly and explicitly singling NK out as an example of “tyranny” as a “regime that enslaves its own people”.

• Scientific American’s new poll results showing that scientists are the most trusted authority figures (and religious authorities, the least) would be more heartening if they hadn’t taken these results from their own, much-more-informed-than-the-hoi-polloi readers.
  (via Pharyngula)

• Very weird report: Process server tries to hand divorce papers to a woman, woman runs him over and severely injures him, he gets charged with “harassment” and “criminal mischief”.
  (via The Agitator)

• Libertarians get all hot & bothered thinking about British governmental reform.

Stupid Quote of the Day: The Earth, she can’t be moved, see

Responding (in his usual sleazy way) to a skeptic who points out how the Bible proclaims that the Earth is “firm” and “immovable” and is therefore at fault as it implies the planet is fixed in space (ever heard of orbit?), Ray “Bananaman/Crocoduck” Comfort spouts more hilarious blogging fodder:

So let’s look closely at what the above verses actually say:

"He has fixed the earth firm, immovable."
"Thou hast fixed the earth immovable ..."
"He has fixed the earth firm, immovable ..."

The Bible says that the earth is immovable. It cannot be moved. So now is your chance to prove your point. Run outside and move the earth. Perhaps you and your friends could jump on it, or find a rocky outcrop and push it together.

Maybe after that little experiment you will concede that the earth is immovable.

You know, sometimes I really, honestly, wonder if he truly is being intentionally thick. Because a small part of my brain simply refuses to believe that anyone can really be that stupid. But, hope wanes.

It’s rather obvious that when the Bible refers to the Earth, it’s not talking about some rock, or a piece or part of the land, but “Earth” itself. Which, thanks to modern knowledge, we now know is a planet. So, the Bible is referring to planet Earth itself, that blue-and-white marble floating around in space on its elliptical orbit. Comfort’s derisory deflection about “pushing on a rocky outcrop” and whatever is pure willful dumbassery. It just has to be.

That, and, apparently, Comfort has never heard of such things as earthquakes, volcanoes, sinkholes, landslides, and so on – you know, all those natural (ie. “God-made”, surely) geological events that demonstrate, with rather chilling clarity, how the Earth is anything but “firm” and “immovable”. (I’d mention plate tectonics, but then, Creationists don’t believe in those, do they? Even though we can precisely calculate the ongoing separation between plates, a process that shifts entire continents by anything from 1 to 10 centimeters per year.)

Ray Comfort fails at exposing a lie, again

The mustachio’d buffoon evidently thinks he uncovered a major flaw in the discovery of “Ardi” (Ardipithecus ramidus), currently hailed as being our oldest known ancestor.

When I watched a documentary on the discovery of the famous fossil, I was amazed that they didn’t date the bones at 4.4 million years old. They instead dated the soil in which they were found. My immediate thought was, "How do they know that Ardi’s age was the same as what they perceive as the soil’s age, and how do we know that the dating system is accurate?"

Let’s say I died next week and I’m buried in soil that geologists say is 2.6 million years old. One hundred thousand years pass and new geologists dig up my bones. They want to know how old my bones are, but instead of testing them, they test the compacted now rock strata in which I was buried, and conclude that they are 2.6 million years old.

This seems like a good argument on the surface, and his explanation and example would be correct … unless he actually takes the nature of the soil itself, and the manner in which Ardi’s fossils were located in it, into account. From the National Geographic report:

The Ardipithecus ramidus fossils were discovered in Ethiopia's harsh Afar desert at a site called Aramis in the Middle Awash region, just 46 miles (74 kilometers) from where Lucy's species, Australopithecus afarensis, was found in 1974. Radiometric dating of two layers of volcanic ash that tightly sandwiched the fossil deposits revealed that Ardi lived 4.4 million years ago. [My emphasis]

Did you get that? Ardi was discovered buried within layers of volcanic ash. Now, I’m not an expert, but unless her corpse was somehow deposited upon a preexisting layer of solidified ash (which would already need to be thousands, if not millions, of years old), and a later eruption buried her remains (which would have needed to remain perfectly exposed until then), the only thing this could indicate is that Ardi and the volcanic layers around her were of the exact same age (or at least, so close that any discrepancy would be so low as to be negligible). Her burial wouldn’t have been a long, drawn-out process spanning thousands of years, which would skew the results. Volcanic eruptions are short and violent events (on a geologic timescale, anyway), so the ash would’ve entombed her nearly immediately where she fell.

Put it this way: it’s the difference between dropping a bone on the ground and waiting for the winds to throw enough dirt over it to cover it and eventually have it fossilize, and plunging said bone into a mudflow, which would quickly solidify around it, preserving it. In this latter case, the earth and the bone would naturally be of a very close age, if not the exact same down to a few months or years. Which, at a timescale of thousands and millions of years, wouldn’t exactly matter all that much.

So, sorry, Ray, but once again, your words come off as false rubbish with a minimum of thought and logical reasoning.