Happy Jihad's House of Pancakes

HJHOP Flashback: "Everything was beautiful, and nothing hurt"

noreply@blogger.com (Bing) — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 03:26:00 +0000

This is something that I wrote back when we lost Kurt Vonnegut. I reread it tonight, and it struck me as probably one of the better things that I have written at HJHOP. So, I inflict it upon you again.

When George Harrison died, I was surprised by how upset I was. During the inevitable retrospectives on the local oldies station, I was simply overwhelmed, when I listened to his solo work, by his contribution to the Beatles' sound. After John Lennon died (man, I'm glad I wasn't old enough to understand that when it happened), the job of being the smart one fell onto the quiet one's shoulders.

Yesterday, humanists lost a great friend and champion of the cause, Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007). We was from Indianapolis, the son of an architect and the brother of a meteorologist. (His brother, incidentally, once wrote a scientific paper about the possibility of determining the strength of a tornado by measuring the percentage of feathers ripped off of chickens. It could have come from a Vonnegut novel.) Born on Armistice Day, Vonnegut was a member of the 106th Infantry Division, a green unit that had just been sent up to the Ardennes, a relatively quiet part of the line in order to adjust to combat. Vonnegut was a scout, piddling about as close as he could to the enemy without getting killed and reporting what he heard and saw to Intelligence. His division took the brunt of the German attack in the Battle of the Bulge and was the only American Division wiped off of the Table of Organization during the war: there were not enough soldiers left to rebuild it. Vonnegut was captured and spent the rest of the war as a POW.

During this period, he was transferred to Dresden, the Florence of the Elbe, it was called, where in February 1945, Allied bombers armed with incendiaries triggered a firestorm. Tens of thousands of people were killed; most of these did not burn to death but suffocated when the fire consumed all of the oxygen. The only reason Vonnegut and his fellow prisoners survived was because he was sealed in an airtight underground meat locker of a slaughterhouse, which was the damnedest thing, really. Vonnegut emerged from that locker and to find that the world was simply gone. In his semi-autobiographical novel Timequake, he reports that "When I got home from [World War II], my uncle Dan clapped me on the back and bellowed, 'You're a man now!' I damn near killed my first German." He returned from the war deeply disillusioned: he had gone into the war with the understanding that the Germans were the bad guys who killed innocents without mercy.

Vonnegut wrote many books, many of them depopulated by global disasters: in Player Piano it's a bombing; in Galapagos, it's a pandemic; in Cat's Cradle it's Ice-9, a weapon of human devising; in Slaughterhouse-Five, the aliens from Tralfamadore have always and will always have destroyed the universe while testing a new energy source. So it goes.

I first encountered Vonnegut when I was in high school, when my English class read God Bless You, Mr Rosewater. It was the story of Eliot Rosewater, son of a senator and heir to the Rosewater fortune. Eliot came home from the war, where he had inadvertently killed a young fireman, and decided to spend his money helping people who were otherwise unlovable. Naturally, Rosewater's family thought that his concern for his fellow man was evidence of his insanity and threatened his status as heir to the family fortune. The irony appealed to me greatly as a teenager, as did his willingness to sprinkle his prose with phrases like "old fart" and "bitchy flibbertigibbet." Goddamn, I'm going to miss that.

Even if I had never read another Vonnegut novel, I would have remembered one line, which encapsulated for me so much of what it means to be a successful human. When I met my twin niece and nephew for the first time, I said what I consider to be a secular prayer over them, a benediction penned by Vonnegut in God Bless You, Mr Rosewater. "Hello, babies," I said. "Welcome to earth. It's round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you've got about a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies--God damn it, you've got to be kind." I later found out that my youngest brother had mumbled the same thing over the twins when he met them.

As I have pursued my doctorate, several of the authors whom I examine in my dissertation have died. Joseph Heller died during my M.A. program. William Manchester died during my Ph.D. coursework. Now Kurt Vonnegut, who I secretly hoped might one day get a peek of the dissertation, as I try to complete the damned thing. Chapter by chapter, I am killing off the greatest generation. Sorry. Norman Mailer better watch out!

In January 1991, the Weekend Guardian submitted a series of questions to Vonnegut which he answered. One of them was: "How would you like to die?" Vonnegut's answer: "In an airplane crash on the peak of Mount Kilimanjaro." No such luck. Vonnegut died from injuries he suffered in a fall at home. He was a tough bastard: a few years ago, he suffered serious burns in a fire at his apartment. I always thought that his Pall-Malls would do him in, honestly. I'm sort of glad that they didn't. He survived one of the greatest engineered conflagrations of the last century and he died from a bump on the head. Life is so strange. I think that fascinated Vonnegut.

Vonnegut, in his later years, long after his star figured prominently in the American Literary firmament, Vonnegut published a number of his essays and lectures in a series of collections. His latest was last year's A Man Without a Country, which is, according to Amazon.com, #106 in sales. Slaughterhouse-Five, published in 1968, is at #42.

So, Kurt is up in heaven now. I believe that the planet he leaves behind is a slightly better one for his having been here.

HJ

My life, a series of revisions...

noreply@blogger.com (Bing) — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 23:55:00 +0000

That's what my world has devolved into, a long series of revisions.

When I am writing here on the blog, I just let 'er rip. Who knows what I'm going to say? Not even me. I mean, did anyone know that I was going to end this sentence with a reference to clitoral orgasms? I sure didn't! And there is a beauty to this method of writing, and that is that it is quick, effortless and poorly punctuated. Sure, I could spend extra time revising here, but that would mean literally minutes wasted reading what I have written. There is no pressure here and I can say, well, whatever the hell strikes me.

When I am writing academic work, however, I become an insufferable bore, a pedant, a neurotic worry-wart and nutjob par excellence. My style, should I be said to have one, is to go out and read absolutely everything that I can possibly get my hands on, for instance, on the texture and consistency of grebe vomit, and I make copious lists of quotes I want to use and points I want to make, and then one of two things happens. It either sits there in my head for months percolating and building pressure until it bursts out, fully formed:

BING HAS AN IDEA

...or it gets written in list form, and the list gets revised and revised and revised and revised and botched and reworked and revised and revised. It's compulsive and unproductive, and what comes out the other end is the academic equivalent of hot dogs, nothing but earlobes and anus meat.

I have entered the latter type of work cycle on this paper I'm giving next week. It's a frustrating hodge-podge of ideas currently called, "The Cyclical Nature of Time in the Works of Dr. Seuss." (Of course, it isn't.) But I'm having a hard time focusing. A really hard time. Since I am on a panel of four, I only have to put together about 7 or 8 pages worth of material, and, honestly, if I wanted to, I could probably just get up there and speak extemporaneously and just refer to note cards, that is, if I have spelled "extemporaneously" right. It is such a short paper. I mean, hell, this post is already half as long as anything that I need to produce!

Why can't I just get up there and make clitoral orgasm jokes?

HJ

...Tom's a-cold,--O, do
de, do de, do de. Bless thee from whirlwinds,
star-blasting, and taking! Do poor Tom some
charity, whom the foul fiend vexes ...-R.I.P., TMW

Where are they now?---El DeBarge

noreply@blogger.com (Bing) — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 19:41:00 +0000

Turns out that El Debarge, whose only contribution to mankind was to write a song so annoying that only Weird Al could fix it, recently got out of prison after serving a year for possession of crack.

Check out that hair. "Turn on your SOUL GLOOOOOOOOOO!!!" (OK, maybe not, but, damn, that's some bad '80s hair.)

Suddenly, this video seems...almost prophetic, while still staggeringly irritating.

Here's the last known photo of El. God, I can't imagine anything worse than being El DeBarge in jail jonesing for crack.

So, El DeBarge. Not dead. Still can't grow a respectable mustache. Get that man a reality show!

HJ

When stuffed animals attack

noreply@blogger.com (Bing) — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 21:24:00 +0000

BIll Donohue: A Sparrowfart Away from Endorsing Genocide

noreply@blogger.com (Bing) — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 02:19:00 +0000

He is such a nut. Thank Christ nobody takes this asshat seriously. Well, nobody whose opinion is worth hearing, anyway. This came in a press release today, and, surprise, surprise, the least pleasant person in the world, with the exception of perhaps Dave Daubenmire, had an opinion.

CHRISTMAS TREE RETURNS IN KENTUCKY

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments as follows:

On November 3, we noted that the “War on Christmas” had begun. One piece of evidence that was offered was the decision to have a “Holiday Tree,” instead of a “Christmas Tree,” in Frankfort, Kentucky. But after getting pounded by outraged Christians, Gov. Steve Beshear has reversed himself: both he, and the state government, have now chosen to call the Christmas Tree the “Christmas Tree.”

Christians have every right to be insulted when agents of government refuse to acknowledge their holiday, and it matters not a whit if the stated purpose is inclusion. Indeed, the politics of inclusion is a malignant cultural cancer that needs to be wiped out, along with its parent ideology, multiculturalism.

Yay! Another almost completely meaningless victory by the Master Race! But did you see what he wrote?

"The politics of inclusion is a malignant cultural cancer that needs to be wiped out."

Inclusion is bad. In this case, not-Christians are bad. Not-Christians should not be here, you know, in America. You remember, of course, that your people were at one point the American Untermenschen. Bill, you are a bad person. Seriously. Just horrid. Of course, this is the same pigfucker who is going to have an inclusive beer with Christopher Hitchens. At least that's what he told me in his other press release today:

DONOHUE-HITCHENS SETTLE DISPUTE

Catholic League president Bill Donohue says that he and Christopher Hitchens have settled their recent dispute:

On November 2, I criticized Christopher Hitchens for saying that Mother Teresa was “a fanatic and a fundamentalist and a fraud, and millions of people are much worse off because of her life, and it’s a shame there is no hell for your bitch to go to.”

At the end of the news release, we published his e-mail address, and he was roundly condemned, sometimes maliciously, by angry Catholics (he forwarded some of the e-mails to me). I subsequently e-mailed him, saying, “Seems like you’ve heard from the faithful.” I also took the opportunity to invite him for drinks the next time he is in New York. Why? Although we’ve had it out several times in the past—in person and on TV—and although I strongly disagree with him, the man is no phony, and that means a great deal to me. Unlike most of those whom I do battle with, Hitchens is intellectually honest.

Christopher wrote back to me today, saying, “The first thing to say is that I felt remorse for employing the word ‘bitch’ as soon as it was out of my mouth.” Forgiven. As I have always said, when someone apologizes, Christians have no choice but to accept it. Besides, anyone who fights for a cause, myself included, occasionally lets his emotions get the best of him. The difference is, Christopher admits it.

Y0ur word means nothing, Bill. You are a hateful man-shrew. If I ever meet you, I will probably vomit on your shoes.

HJ

Bob Jones Library FAIL!

noreply@blogger.com (Bing) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 21:16:00 +0000

I ordered a book for a friend through my new home library's Interlibrary Loan, and the book, it turns out, originally came from Bob Jones University. Inside the front cover was the following sticker:

They stock their library with evil books so that they can stay accredited? Big time academic integrity FAIL!

HJ

Fast-acting MegaBummer

noreply@blogger.com (Bing) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 20:54:00 +0000

Ah, a crummy couple of days over here at Chez McGhandi, I think you could safely say. First of all someone who is related to someone who lives here had a bad diagnosis. I must remember that next to this that my problems seem piffling.

Actually, that puts it into perspective.

Anyway, a few days ago, I wrote about how I did not know whether or not my article had been selected by Big Deal Journal. Well, the decision was a pass and a tepid offer that I rewrite, but they could not really recommend it. Indeed the editor suggested another journal.

Damn it.

Now, I'm an academic. I am used to getting rejected. I get more rejection letters in a week than most people get in their entire lives, but this one hurt because they seemed so interested in it the first time I submitted it, I had put-near bust my ass to get it ready for the reviewers the second time, and then they did not like what they had suggested. I dared to think about this being a very, very strong publication on my CV that would set me apart from many of my peers. Never get your hopes up. Things routinely suck.

The night when I got home, I had a strange bout of despair. The prospect of re-revising and facing that fucking article again makes me want to puke. Let's just say I felt like a person with fewer prospects or promise than I was when I woke up.

I'm giving myself two weeks before I look at the goddamned paper. I am working on a conference paper right now called "Freudian Zoology: Do Kitties Pounce Birdies Because They Want to Sleep With Their Mothers?" I can't even imagine being at all interested in presenting this paper, which I still have to write. I figure about 12 pages double spaced will suffice for the conference. I am merely dipping my hand into the dank, fetid pool of stagnant water that is my dissertation and will present whatever I happen to pull out.

HJ

The 123rd Skeptics' Circle is up!

noreply@blogger.com (Bing) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 20:14:00 +0000

It's over at Blue Genes. Do it because your parents would disapprove.

HJ

Defacing Darwin (also, bananas)

noreply@blogger.com (Bing) — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 14:13:00 +0000

The first 40 seconds or so are great.

Also, I would like to point out Eugenie Scott's article about Ray in USA Today, which ends on an inside joke. (Eugenie, call me!)

Both of these come from Skepchick. The video via Rebecca, the second via Jen.

HJ (off to class to piss on Oprah's reputation!)

Bingeth returneth to St. Louiseth

noreply@blogger.com (Bing) — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 11:17:00 +0000

Conference in town next week. Gonna be in St. Louis. There seems to be a growing group of skeptical types there. Wanna party?

HJ

End of the day...

noreply@blogger.com (Bing) — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 04:11:00 +0000

I am five papers away from being officially caught up. Just a few days before student podcasts are due. And I have some serious writing to do for a few days. I would normally just take a section of my dissertation, The Mating Habits of the Lesser Red Squirrel (With Illustrations!), and rework some of it for my upcoming conference, but I'm not happy with anything that I wrote in the relevant chapter. An important reason to go to this conference is that I will be able to catch up with a lot of people who are attending, including my mentor and some chums who graduated a year or two ahead of me.

OK, I can snip some of the dissertation and put it in the paper. But I am still so fucking sick and tired of the Red Squirrel that I can't bring myself to even look at the illustrations.

And that's the thing. I have a variable and obsessive nature, which means that for an intense but brief period of time, I completely immerse myself in a subject and get everything I have to say out of my system. I think that the dissertation was just such a purgative. I can't bear to even think about it anymore, and it has been nearly two years since I looked at it. Damned thing.

Since I completed the dissertation, my publications/articles have been tangents, things that I was not able to work into the dissertation, but thought were interesting anyway.

Oh! Publication news! I still have not heard back from the folks I most recently submitted to. When I submitted this article, a real humdinger, which the reviewers said the first time around said was "potentially seminal" (shows what they know), I was living in St. Louis. I was recently told by my department chair that my CV looks "skimpy" (sorry, maybe someone could give me a course release?), so I emailed the journal I'm waiting to hear from about my revisions. The person I contacted said that editorial decisions had been made, and that letters would be going out soon. Within a few weeks, she said. But she can't tell me, because that is what the editor does.
Damn it.

Basically, that means that at this moment, my heavily researched and extensively revised (and thereby vastly improved) article is either sitting in a good pile or a bad pile. Right now. I totally want to cat-burgle the offices of this particular journal and sneak a peak at the manuscripts.

To distract myself, I watched the NOVA episode on human ancestry. I can't wait to hear what Ken Ham has to say. I bet he bitches.

HJ

Dave Daubenmire: Horse's Pizzle

noreply@blogger.com (Bing) — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 17:53:00 +0000

I have received my first commission here. It's a special request going out Richard. It has to do with Dave Daubenmire. You know, former coach, current useless self-promoting media whore? Well, Daubenmire testified in the hearing of John "I Actually Branded Crosses into My Students" Freshwater, an Ohio science teacher that Daubenmire is helping get banned from teaching ever again. Thanks, Dave!

I should mention that this is not because Daubenmire has had a moment of clarity or anything, but because he is loud, impolitic and as thick as a concrete elephant. I caught the familiar whiff of ex-Coach Daubenmire (WD40 and B.O.) downwind from Panda's Thumb, which is remotely monitoring the end of Freshwater's ill-advised career. According to the Mount Vernon News:

[Daubenmire] said Freshwater had called him early that morning to say that school officials were asking him to remove the Bible from his desk, and speculated that Freshwater contacted him because of his teaching the religion in the classroom class.
Referencing the text, Daubenmire said he told Freshwater, “No, you don’t have to take your personal Bible off your desk. ... When I told him ‘I am not going to let this happen,’ John [Freshwater] was hesitant. ... It was my press conference. It was my press release.”

Daubenmire also testified it is his opinion that it is not only all right for teachers to talk about Easter and Good Friday in class, but it is their obligation to do so. He referred to the social, cultural and historical impact Christianity has had on the world, and said there is a difference between teaching about religion and actually teaching religion.

“The foundation of our country is Christian,” Daubenmire said. “It is a religion, but atheism is a religion and secular humanism is a religion and they are taught in school.”

In a science classroom? How the hell is this science, Dave? Thank you for seeing that another cross-burning Christian never teaches in public school again, Dave! First you, then your son, and now Freshwater.

I must go. I just got some bad news and I must go. (No worries, all. Updates much later.)

HJ

Yes, it's the morning of quickie posts

noreply@blogger.com (Bing) — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 12:15:00 +0000

A student sent me this, and I love it.

http://www.quantumjumping.com/lp/esp-intuition-1?sr=1

Now get out there and manifest endless abundance, sucker! Thanks for visiting, and happy jumping!

HJ

Dick Cheney catches Reagan's Disease

noreply@blogger.com (Bing) — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 12:09:00 +0000

"Well, I don't know."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091102/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/us_cheney_cia_leak

Ah, it's like Iran-Contra all over again!

By the way, when did Ollie North become a sought after speaker?

HJ

My students will love this...

noreply@blogger.com (Bing) — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 11:39:00 +0000

I'm sorry, but this is the damnest thing that I have seen in a long time.

I love how some halfwits are answering her questions. The same slackjaws were with me this last week at the World of Coca-Cola.

Also, homeopathy is a bomb. What the hell was that? I had to look away, this was so bad. This woman should really do the honorable thing and apologize in her suicide note.

HJ

The gods have taken the daylight! How shall we convince them to give it back?!

noreply@blogger.com (Bing) — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 03:35:00 +0000

I understand the whole "daylight savings time thing," more or less, but I have an atomic internal clock, and when the clock springs forward in April, I will only just have gotten used to the extra hour. It totally messes with my brain.

Anyway, I have been hiking the city. I meant to get a little lost, you know, so I could explore a little bit, but my one spontaneous right turn toward what I thought was generally a homeward direction took me on an hour detour into confusion. While I was crossing over the highway, I thought, "At no point did I cross over a highway while getting here. I'm going in the wrong direction." And I'm glad I had that thought, too, because I would have been in Buckhead by now. (I don't know where Buckhead is either.)

I usually take a walk in the evening, poking around this big, strange, generally unwalkable city. My apartment is at the intersection of two major streets in Midtown Atlanta. Going south takes me toward, uh, the part of Midtown that is high-rises and pretentious restaurants as far as the eye can see. The northern road takes me to strip clubs and pawn shops. Going east takes me to some shopping areas and then, should I ever decide I want to go farther, into a neighborhood I'm not too sure about. Going west, I shit you not, takes me back to the road going north. This is just the type of thing that happens when you have MC Escher as a public planner.

Tonight I went south, followed a bend west on Piedmont and then decided to turn up Peachtree, which was my "novel turn" for the evening. There are dozens of streets named Peachtree, and I think at one point I was at the intersection of Peachtree and Peachtree. Really.

Click to embiggen.

So, tonight I ended up discovering a museum and a bookstore, which I imagine are not too far away by car. So, I'm excited about that. But I was gone for almost two hours--Hey! I totally lost the extra hour today to being lost! Big time shaft!

HJ

Wanna see something completely batshit?

noreply@blogger.com (Bing) — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 05:12:00 +0000

I mean, really, primo lunacy!

Pat Robertson jumps the undead shark!

My favorite is the one about vampires. They can't say they don't exist...so pathetic.

HJ

"I know what I heard. I know how I felt."

noreply@blogger.com (Bing) — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 01:06:00 +0000

Last night, I was at a charming Halloween party talking up Uhura with silver-foil on my head. We were talking about ghosts.

"I was in the bathroom at some friends' new house," she said, "And they went out to get carry-out, and while I was, you know, going, there were three hard knocks on the door. 'I'M IN HERE!' I yelled. I thought that they were back. When I was done, I was washing my hands at the sink, right next to the door, and it happened again--three hard, solid knocks. This time I was close enough to open it and yell at them. And there was nobody there. I was so scared I ran out to the porch and freaked out until my friends came home. They said that I was not the first person to experience that."

"Well, there are any number of ways--I'd have to be there---but there are any number of ways that the door could be rattled."

"No, not rattled. Three solid knocks."

"A train or..."

"I know what I heard. I know how I felt."

And there's the problem. You know how you feel, and how you feel changes how you perceive things. I was having fun, you know, so I dropped it, and told her I had no idea what had happened to her, but I would be really interested in seeing it if I could. She was smart though, and she was well aware that she had been "primed" (she used that word) by media to entertain the idea that it was a haunting.

Next was an older member of my new department:

"I was on the road to San Juan, where I taught English for 20 years, and I was driving down into a valley, and then I saw this vast dark triangle in the sky. It was moving and it stopped."

"Was it at night?"

"Yes, and without prompting, I pulled over and I asked my kids if they saw something in the sky and they said yes." (I pointed out that the way she phrased it she was prompting them.) "To this day they don't talk about it, but if you ask them, they'll tell you they saw it."

"Did it stop when you stopped?"

"No, it stopped before. And down there they know that there are a lot of countries...you would be surprised at how much secret stuff is underwater off the coast there."

"I really wouldn't. There are all sorts of things out there from all sorts of countries."

Another person who was in on the conversation asked, "I think that Bing...Bing were you leading up to something when you asked about it stopping?"

"No, nothing in particular," I asked the woman telling the story. "What type of things are they testing out there? Could you give me an example?"

"Lots of things." I kid you not. That was her response. Not an example. I don't know. Maybe living off of the coast and in the shadow of the US breeds conspiracism. I think that is possible. But my coworker was adamant that she did not know what it was, and she thought it might have been a government project. I told her that was more likely than aliens. But I did not know what it was.

Then there was the Christian. "Do you believe that there is a dark side?"

I may have blinked. "Well, I know... I know that I live in an envelope, and the envelope is the real world. I'm inside it, it's all around me and I can't see outside of it. I am limited to knowing what is in the envelope."

"Well, God can be anything. He can be an overweight black woman who likes cooking."

"So, God's the Oracle in The Matrix."

Uhura started laughing, and so did Animala, who was also festooned in a silver cap and was going as "Jiffy Pop." "I was just thinking the same thing!" Uhura said.

"But the devil," the Christian said, "He can be anywhere, in the darkness, in the doubt and what we don't know."

"But doubt is a perfectly respectable position. I think it is OK to not know things. It gives us something to look at and think about."

"Oh, I agree we can't know what's on the other side of the envelope. I'm a Christian, you see." ("NO!" I thought) "And the Bible says that there is a devil."

"Yeah, but do you see what you just did. You said that we can't see what's outside of the envelope, but in the same breath you said that the Bible allows you to see outside of the envelope. It can't be both ways."

I'm a lot of fun at parties. No, really. Read my "about me" section.

HJ

Worldview Weekend publishes joke: Sean McDowell Reviewing Dawkins

noreply@blogger.com (Bing) — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 02:53:00 +0000

Sean McDowell has an almost boundless capacity to humiliate himself and not realize it. It's a comic golden goose! Anyway, showing his typical lack of discernment, Brannon Howse ran McDowell's review of The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution. (Warning: do not drink milk while reading the review, unless you want to make cheese in your keyboard.)

I love a good challenge.

Remember that line, folks.

I would much rather read a difficult book that makes me think deeply about my convictions than one that provokes little thought. This is why I eagerly anticipated the release of The Greatest Show on Earth, by Richard Dawkins.

With The Blind Watchmaker, Climbing Mount Improbable, River Out of Eden, and many more, Dawkins has established himself as one of the foremost contemporary defenders of Darwinian evolution. As soon as a copy of his book arrived at my doorstep, I enthusiastically opened the Amazon.com box and jumped right into the book, hoping to be challenged to take another hard look at the evidence for evolution.

With this background information in mind, it's difficult to express how disappointed I was at the demeaning rhetoric and lack of substance that characterizes The Greatest Show on Earth.

Lack of substance? Were you reading the same book that I was?

First off, Dawkins utterly refuses to engage with any serious evolution skeptics.

Oh, I see. By "substance" you mean "wallowing in my own personal intellectual cesspool." That's the thing. This was not a book about you or your weird, intellectually bankrupt religious movement. If you had read and understood the book, you might have encountered the explanation of how the book got its title. A reader sent Dawkins a T-shirt that says: "Evolution: The Greatest Show on Earth, The Only Game in Town." You are not playing that game, and therefore do not reside in said town, by which I mean his book. Your side has amply failed to contribute to the accumulation of knowledge. Do you really think that a social historian of Germany in the 20th Century should refer to Holocaust deniers or take them at all seriously? That's the magnitude of the concession you seem to be demanding from the onset. Or to use Dawkins' example, should a teacher of classics seriously have to consider the opinion of someone who says that the Roman Empire never existed? Heck no.

He ignores the work of Jonathan Wells (Ph.D. from UC Berkeley)

Your first superstar is the guy who said this at the Kansas monkey trial?

I became convinced that the Darwinian theory is false because it conflicts with the evidence...I think the earth is probably four-and-a-half billion or so years old. ... But the truth is I have not looked at the evidence. And I have become increasingly suspicious of the evidence that is presented to me and that's why at this point I would say probably it's four-and-a-half billion years old, but I haven't looked at the evidence...There are already scientists-- respected scientists in this country who do experiments on things that most people consider supernatural, such as prayer. When Newton proposed the theory of gravitation it was dismissed as supernaturalism because it was action at a distance. What constitutes supernaturalism in today's science may very well not be supernatural in tomorrow's science.

It turns out that Wells is the bozo who came up with the weird syllogism identified by Jerry Coyne (who McDowell cites favorably below) in his review of Wells's book:

Wells's book rests entirely on a flawed syllogism: hence, textbooks illustrate evolution with examples; these examples are sometimes presented in incorrect or misleading ways; therefore evolution is a fiction. The second premise is not generally true, and even if it were, the conclusion would not follow.

Now where did I first hear about this particularly weird idea that evolutionary biologists teaching from examples is evidence of evolution's fabrication? DAWKINS' BOOK! The example he gives is the "ascent of man" series, and while I can't find it right now, it's the only evolution thing I've been reading for the last week or so. That's where it came from. So he doesn't cite Wells by name. So what? I don't name the pig that became my bacon.

Stephen Meyer (Ph.D. from Cambridge)

The only person to publish Meyer's asinine "information theory" article lost his job after it was published because this editor had circumvented his journal's standards of review. Also, the paper was retracted by the journal. Strike two.

and William Dembski (double Ph.D. in math and philosophy).

Dembski? The guy who has no published research in peer-reviewed biology journals? None? None? None? The guy who stole Harvard's animations and redubbed the voice-over? Go for it. Dembski garners no respect from any biologist.

They have raised substantive questions for the mechanism of Darwinian evolution. Rather than responding to their critiques, Dawkins sets up countless straw man arguments and focuses solely on young-earth creationists (and not even the leaders among them!).

Why would you say that he sets up straw men (presumably about the intelligent design advocates, about whom he has been speaking) and then, in the same breath, say that he focuses only on young-earthers? (Anyway, they are mostly the same people--two words: cdesign proponentsists".)

Now, either Dawkins is unaware of their work, or he chooses to ignore it. The charitable response would be to assume he's simply unaware of the revolution in Christian philosophy, and the intelligent design movement. But this is hard to believe. Dawkins has refused to debate William Lane Craig, Stephen Meyer and many other leading Protestant thinkers.

Oh, that's just because it would look better on their resume than on his. They can go to any of his talks and ask a question, just like everyone else.

Dawkins is content to pick on arguments from decades ago rather than dealing with the current state of the debate. He is banking that most of his readers will not catch on. Sadly, he's probably right.

Are you going to talk about the book, the variety of arguments that he lays out, backed by evidence and the research of numerous scholars? Heck, are you going to cite even a single example in support of the point that you think you are making?

This is especially ironic since he castigates evolution skeptics for not fully understanding evolutionary theory: "It would be so nice if those who oppose evolution would take a tiny bit of trouble to learn the merest rudiments of what it is that they are opposing" (155). It's a shame Dawkins ignores his own advice.

Dawkins claims the evidence is so strong for evolution that doubters are "ignoramuses" that can be compared to Holocaust-deniers. On page 9, Dawkins says, "No reputable scientist disputes it." How can he say this? Since 2001, over 800 Ph.D. scientists have signed the "Dissent from Darwin" list, agreeing with the following statement: "We are skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life. Careful examination of the evidence for Darwinian theory should be encouraged." Why don't these scientists count?

Read carefully. No reputable scientist disputes it. These, Sean, must not be reputable scientists, at least not in the evolutionary field.

After all, some are from institutions such as MIT, Cambridge, Princeton, UCLA and many more.

What is with your academic name-dropping? It's sad. Lots of morons graduate from everywhere. Your assertion only means anything if you can say, "Everyone who graduates from X University is smart or capable of producing useful scholarship." Having been at some of these institutions for the last decade and a half, I can say without the slightest possibility of contradiction that this is total balls. I'm perpetually surrounded by idiots. In my new, top ranked institution, for instance, a new friend of mine was indignant when I pointed out that homeopathic medicine has no possible therapeutic effect besides placebo and no plausible mechanism by which to have any sort of effect. The fact that the day before I had taken 60 homeopathic sleeping pills in front of my class and made it to my meeting for him to be indignant at me seems to have made no impact on his perspective of the whole argument.

But let's pretend that every good school is populated by good students and excellent instructors, none of whom hold aberrant beliefs, and that everyone's boneheaded assertions must be given equal consideration, no matter how frequently or thoroughly they have been debunked. Have you heard of Project Steve? Do you see the people who are on there? Vets? Dentists? Professors of aviation? Philosophers of psychology? 800 people was all you could muster? The NCSE has almost 1200 scientists named Steve who agree that evolution is the best explanation and Project Steve has a higher proportion of people in the biological sciences than the Discovery Insitute has on their list! Your appeals to false authority are daft and pathetic. When you consider that Steves are about 1 percent of the scientific community, the degree of marginalization you enjoy is vast, yet you would have Dawkins waste time looking at the opinion of this insignificant sample of non-expert weirdos?

This example is indicative of what seems to be Dawkins approach in the book: state your views as strongly as you can and completely ignore substantive challenges.

What are they, Sean? Seriously. Name one that is substantive. Seriously.

My second criticism of Dawkins book is that he fails to advance any new evidence for evolution. He points to poor design (dysteleology), biogeography, vestigial structures, the fossil record, homology, and more of the same old arguments evolutionists have been proclaiming for years (William Dembski and I respond to most of these in our book Understanding Intelligent Design). I realize this may not be his point, since he is aiming for a lay audience, but it needs to be pointed out, especially in light of how strong he says the evidence for evolution really is. Consider one example of how his case is remarkably one-sided.

Dawkins approvingly cites Jerry Coyne (author of Why Evolution is True), who says that the evidence for biogeography so strongly favors evolution that he has never even seen a creationist attempt to answer it (p. 283). He obviously hasn't actually read many creationist books.

Of course not. His time is worth something. But do you honestly doubt that he has not heard every tired alternative explanation presented from religious folks in the crowds of people who have heard him speak over the decades?

As always, there is another side to the story. The biogeographical evidence does seem to indicate that organisms (finches, mockingbirds, etc.) have adapted to their unique environments. But this provides little substantive proof for Darwin's grand claim that ALL organisms trace back to a common ancestor through a process of natural selection acting on random mutation. Most evolution skeptics accept the biogeographical evidence; they just question its significance.

The biogeographical evidence indicates that organisms experience a loss of genetic mutation from populations that were isolated through migration or some other natural circumstance. Thus, the biogeographical distribution of species is not the result of new biological information appearing in a particular species (which is what macroevolution requires), but the shuffling or elimination of pre-existing genetic information. While Darwin's theory can explain minor biological adaptations within existing organisms, it cannot explain how mockingbirds-or any other organism-first appeared.

You miss the point and don't understand mutation. This is why he calls you evolution deniers. You refuse to recognize that novel mutations arise. This just misses...all biology. Just saying that additive mutations don't occur, or that somehow they don't accumulate over time as they are passed down from generation to generation, doesn't make them not occur or make anyone take you seriously at all! You are looking away from the glaring larger patterns and the genetic evidence. For instance, why are all the monotremes, all of them, including platypuses and echidnae, in Australia and New Guinea? These are mammals with multipurpose bird-like vents, through which eggs and waste are passed. Did Noah drop them off there? You have to resort to, "Well, it's just like that," which is not good enough. Common descent explains it. Are you saying that the monotremes are an example of "microevolution" (which is not really any different from evolution proper, but you folks somehow fail to see that lots of what you call microevolution directly results in what you call macroevolution--it's all evolution to us).

Much more could be said about The Greatest Show on Earth. Overall, it felt like Dawkins could have cut the book (437 pages) down by about two-thirds without losing any key material. He goes on multiple tangents that, at times, made it hard to follow his reasoning. Overall, I can't really recommend his book to anyone.

So, you didn't understand it? Or your criteria for a good book is that it is not challenging? This would go far to explain why your side has not made any headway or, indeed, shown any capacity to learn. Real science is hard, Sean.

Look, you address none of his arguments, just bitch about how your crackpot theory is treated. Tough, leathery ta-tas. You don't challenge a single point about the various methods by which the age of the universe has been determined, the many and diverse ways in which evolution has been demonstrated. The genetics, for crying out loud! Which had the potential to deep-six the whole evolutionary project and only confirmed it spectacularly! You fail to engage with a single piece of evidence or line of argument. I thought you liked a challenge?

Overall, I can't really recommend your review to anyone.

HJ

And now for something completely useless...

noreply@blogger.com (Bing) — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 14:32:00 +0000

This is least new-like thing that I have ever encountered.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2009/10/ghost_in_the_brain_an_appariti.html

Resist the urge to dumb it down, NPR!

HJ

Antivaccine bullies...

noreply@blogger.com (Bing) — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 14:01:00 +0000

Amy Wallace has written an article about the antivaccine movement, "An Epidemic of Fear: How Panicked Parents Skipping Shots Endangers Us All," and by listening to the NPR interview with her, one of the most popular stories run on NPR yesterday, she has received a torrent of hate mail, aiming low and demeaning her, furthering research into the actual causes of childhood diseases not at all, and saving not a single child. Way to go, antivaxxers! If all you have is emotion, you are not going to be able to contribute to the solution.

HJ

This is not my first goat-fuck...

noreply@blogger.com (Bing) — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 02:43:00 +0000

I've been on the web since I was knee high to a pole cat, but today was one of the dumbest damned computer training sessions that I ever had. I swear. My department wants me to make a professional web page, which is totally cool. I get that. But this afternoon, I spent a lot of time with a fellow who was really unprepared to teach a class of cranky, tired PhDs. There were cascading link-thingies, and CSS widgets and what not that all these kids are using today, and I don't know what all else. The dumbest thing was trying to get us to, as a group, photoshop a picture of ourselves for the web. I could have had kittens, I was so frustrated. Also, since I only learned about the class today, I did not have a photo ready, and they did not have a picture for me either. So I pasted Evil Burt into a picture with the dean and called it a night. What else was I supposed to do?

So, I farted about with generating a website. I told the instructor that I recognized all of the words that he used, but just not in that order. The other thing that was kind of goofy was that there were a number of changes that we were supposed to make to the entire website (depending on how deep it was--one page deep or more, and you'd have to make the changes) of the underlying source code. I mean, really, is this worth it? I will have an entry page and host a professional page elsewhere.

Anyway, this morning I encountered an ant mound. Ok, in the early morning light, I thought it was moss and pushed it over with my toe, and the sudden swarming was impressive. They weren't after me or anything; they were just concerned that a large section of their earthworks (which must have been built since yesterday's storm) had just jumped about 4 inches to the right, and that makes sense--I'm with the ants on this one. But it did give me a (dim) look into their little lair. What was most interesting, I thought, was the debris and shell husks and bits of leaves that they were carrying down and apparently burying. These caught my eye because they were the pale moving things that I could see. I will go back tomorrow morning when the sun is up and take a peek.

So, html mayhem and a science excursion.

I'm going to go read my EO Wilson book that I bought several months ago. Superorganism. He's a swell writer. I'll enjoy it, I'm sure. Just have not yet had the time.

HJ

2009 Golden Crockoduck Award

noreply@blogger.com (Bing) — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 17:48:00 +0000

Pretty funny stuff. Thanks to Animala. (attaboy, Bananaman!)

HJ

Let us pray...

noreply@blogger.com (Bing) — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 11:18:00 +0000

From Not the 9 O'Clock News:

and...

Not from Not the 9 O'Clock News

Here endeth the lesson!

HJ

Waiting for the front room...

noreply@blogger.com (Bing) — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 02:19:00 +0000

I am waiting for my roommate to clear out so I can finish looking at my students' annotated bibliographies. It's the damnedest thing, Ghost Lab. 10 seconds into the show and they have already fucking ruined any objectivity by telling every single person on the team exactly what they hope to find. That and they don't even consider alternative explanations. They are looking for the ghost of a tattoo artist at his place of employment; he died recently; all of his friends, who clearly miss him, see him everywhere. Clearly, they are grieving. This is what grieving looks like. Instead of saying, "Guys, I'm very sorry, but this wound is too fresh. There is too much emotion here for you to be objective. Something would be wrong if you didn't think that you were seeing him. It's a normal part of grieving," they throw gas on the fire and then say, "Look at the thermal cam! It just got really hot!"

These pudgy motherfuckers deserve a cockpunch.

HOLY SHIT THEY JUST DISCOVERED THE CAMERA GUY!!!

Now they are looking at the sine wave displays of EVPs on the wall of the Douche Van. Class B? A class B EVP? Categorizing your delusions doesn't make them any more real, asshole. Discovery Channel, you suck. I think the ghost who is saying, "God damn you," is addressing the Discovery Channel.

Mike Rowe, seriously, buddy, isn't there some sort of conflict of interest in being on two ghost hunting shows? And besides, you already have a show of your own! An interesting, occasionally nauseating one. Why do you feel compelled not only to enable lesser shows, but put other voice actors out of work?

The only thing that I can say is that at least they aren't talking on the cell phone while driving, like the Ghost Hunters. That's like driving drunk! However, I have a suspicious feeling that the Ghost Lab Rats are eating while driving. Entire roasted pigs.

HJ