Political Games - Where the fuck’s the reset button?

Not exactly news, except this time we’ve got the data to prove it. I recommend reading the whole post, but what jumps out at me are the charts.

As is explained in the report, the blue represents youth who had abstinence-only education, while the white represents those who had NO sex education. It really is nothing more than a colossal waste of resources in order to appease crazy anti-sex godbags.

UPDATE: I provide the rage, Jon Swift provides the ‘conservative’ viewpoint. It’s not satire if it’s true…

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I have some more news to cause you to lose faith in humanity! While the Bushies have hemmed and hawed about global warming [it’s real, we’re causing it], it seems even they must face the mounting reams of evidence [or at least the pressure from the public which is facing it] and are asking scientists for help to offset the rising temperatures. I know you’re thinking, “So they’re funding them to reduce emissions through a variety of means?” Well, no. Perhaps alternative fuel research? Also, no. At the least, they have to be doing a PR campaign for conservation? Nope. Think more half-assed, last-ditch, mind-bogglingly grandiose and moronic at the same time… and see if you guessed correctly below the flip!
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Well well, been a while since I’ve written. So let’s take the time to see what’s new.

The reason for my recent absence is 2-fold. First, I’ve been working, and it’s taken a lot out of me, mentally. Second, I was on vacation all last week. Huzzah! Myrtle Beach is very beautiful. And the water’s nice. Mmmmm beach.

The killing around the southern border of Lebanon has finally stopped; unfortunately the 2 Israeli soldiers are missing. Maybe Israel should have tried some diplomacy with Lebanon before bombing the entire country trying to get a terrorist group, but hey what do I know. Hopefully, the soldiers are released unharmed.

The killing in Iraq continues unabated. Is it a civil war yet? I only hope the violence ends soon, though I suspect it will continue long after we’re gone.

In video gaming news, Cody Miller made it into the Guinness Book of World Records for his no-death full-game legendary speedrun of Halo 2. Congratulations to him! It’s on page 154 if anyone wants to take a look.

The Wii will apparently be selling for $250… and have free online connectivity! Rejoice Nintendo fanboys; they’re back!

Microsoft will soon begin distributing the software necessary to create your own Xbox 360 games- for free. Yes, XNA Game Studio Express Beta will be released August 31st, so keep your eyes on that; it looks like Microsoft is starting to do things right! And not evil! Which is weird in and of itself, especially when juxtapositioned with our next item…

Apple is trying to get the trademark for and suing other small businesses for the use of the word “pod”. Initial response: what the fuck? But yes, it’s sadly true. Apple, why hath thou forsaken us?!

George Bush’s favorite Democrat, Joe Lieberman, lost the Democratic primary to challenger Ned Lamont. Lieberman has thrown a hissy-fit and is now running under an independent party named, wait for it…. Lieberman for Connecticut. Lieberman (CT- Lieberman). It gets worse. With record turnout [43% in an off-year primary?!] in the election and Lamont being the close but clear choice of the Democrats of Connecticut, local and national Dems are rallying behind Lamont to support him. After all, he’s the Democratic candidate. However, local and national Republicans, all the way up to the White House, are either supporting Joe Lieberman directly through statements and donations, or by refusing to support the Republican candidate for the seat; at the request of the Connecticut GOP! All of this, of course, validates the complaint many [myself included] made about Lieberman having turned into a Republican.

Bush’s poll numbers still suck; he’s in the mid-30s for every poll. The GOP in generic ballots are doing terribly. Even in a race-by-race case, they are being challenged in supposedly safe seats in Idaho, and even Wyoming! If the Dems have a big turnout, it will be a huge landslide. Assuming our votes don’t “disappear” in electronic voting machines…

Speaking of elections, the Green Party will have a candidate in the Senate race, thanks to the hard work of party members to raise funds and collect signatu-… wait, what’s that? All the money came from Republicans? The Republicans staffed the party’s effort to get signatures? The Republicans primarily signed on, and even forged signatures?! They were from the Santorum campaign, even?!?! My God, that’s corrupt!

So, yeah, I’m pretty pissed about that. I’ll be changing my voter registration and publicly shaming the Greens for such corrupt, overreaching aims. That’s not how you build a legitimate third party; it’s how you become the leather slave of one of the two major ones.

Lastly, I hear Jake’s working on a new piece. Aren’t we all thrilled. Or not. Hopefully you won’t see it anytime soon.

[Links added]

p.s. “Senior administration officials have acknowledged to me that they are considering alternatives other than democracy,” said one military affairs expert who received an Iraq briefing at the White House last month and agreed to speak only on condition of anonymity. Wow, I’m shocked. This really is becoming Vietnam…

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Normally when discussing the Theory of Evolution, scientists are put on the defensive with misguided critiques regarding probability, thermodynamics, or some such. Rarely, however, are we asked to actually discuss the evidence for evolution. Since I was asked by a passerby in comments in The Eye, I will now gladly do so.

Evidence for Evolution.

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Keep this link handy the next time some dumbass creationist asks about the eye [irreducible complexity is the pseudoscientific term they like to throw out]: PZ talks about the compound eye. Very interesting read.

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Haha, this is hilarious. What if Creationists wrote our textbooks?

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This coming from the man who bans stem-cell research, supports creationism, disbelieves scientists on global warming, refuses to release the morning-after pill as an otc medicine, wants to ban abortion, silences scientists on the environment… the list goes on. So when last night he said… well, here:

Tonight I ask you to pass legislation to prohibit the most egregious abuses of medical research, human cloning in all its forms, creating or implanting embryos for experiments, creating human-animal hybrids, and buying, selling or patenting human embryos.

Firstly, there he goes again, banning the use of embryos for research. Fucktard. And wait, wouldn’t banning “buying/selling embryos” ban in vitro, under some interpretations of the law [from, say, Alito]? Hmm… But I know what part jumped out at you… the part about human-animal hybrids. Whaaa? Since when are people doing that? Of course, when we think hybrids, we think The Fly, or half-women, half-sharks that won’t even sleep with me. Thanks for nothing God! [ok sorry for the rvb reference… I’m done]. But as PZ Myers points out, this has some very real consequences.

But guess what? Creating chimeras is legitimate and useful scientific research; it’s really happening. Of course, it isn’t with the intent of creating monstrous half-animal/half-human slaves or something evil like that, and scientists are well aware (or should be well aware) of the ethical concerns, and it’s the topic of ongoing debate. Let’s consider one recent example of such an experiment.Down syndrome is a very common genetic disorder caused by the presence of an extra chromosome 21. That kind of genetic insult causes a constellation of problems: mild to moderate mental retardation, heart defects, and weakened immune systems, and various superficial abnormalities. It’s also a viable defect, and produces walking, talking, interacting human beings who are loved by their friends and families, who would really like to be able to do something about those lifespan-reducing health problems. We would love to have an animal model of Down syndrome, so that, for example, we could figure out exactly what gene overdose is causing the immune system problems or the heart defects, and develop better treatments for them.

So what scientists have been doing is inserting human genes into mice, to produce similar genetic overdoses in their development. As I reported before, there have been partial insertions, but now a team of researchers has inserted a complete human chromosome 21 into mouse embryonic stem cells, and from those generated a line of aneuploid mice that have many of the symptoms of Down syndrome, including the heart defects. They also have problems in spatial learning and memory that have been traced back to defects in long-term potentiation in the central nervous system.

These mice are a tool to help us understand a debilitating human problem.

George W. Bush would like to make them illegal.

He’s trusting that everyone will think he is banning monstrous crimes against nature, but what he’s really doing is targeting the weak and the ill, blocking useful avenues of research that are specifically designed to help us understand human afflictions. His message isn’t “We aren’t going to let the mad scientists make monsters!”, it’s “We aren’t going to let the doctors help those ‘retards.’”

Once again, the ignorance and the bigotry of the religious right wins out over reason and humanitarianism. I think I know who the real pig-men are.

Screw you Bush. Let’s hope this legislation gets blocked.

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So says the judge on the Dover case. It’s about time this faux-science got tossed out. Here’s the best part.

To be sure, Darwin’s theory of evolution is imperfect. However, the fact that a scientific theory cannot yet render an explanation on every point should not be used as a pretext to thrust an untestable alternative hypothesis grounded in religion into the science classroom or to misrepresent well-established scientific propositions.

[snip]

Those who disagree with our holding will likely mark it as the product of an activist judge. If so, they will have erred as this is manifestly not an activist Court. Rather, this case came to us as the result of the activism of an ill-informed faction on a school board, aided by a national public interest law firm eager to find a constitutional test case on ID, who in combination drove the Board to adopt an imprudent and ultimately unconstitutional policy. The breathtaking inanity of the Board’s decision is evident when considered against the factual backdrop which has now been fully revealed through this trial. The students, parents, and teachers of the Dover Area School District deserved better than to be dragged into this legal maelstrom, with its resulting utter waste of monetary and personal resources. [emphasis mine]

Pwn3d!

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So this is just a quick update while I’m at Heather’s on break [yaaaay], but I’ll be posting more over the coming weeks. Today, we just have a quick link to a pretend conversation between God, the “Intelligent” Designer, and his good friend Stan. As we can see, humans aren’t so intelligently designed.

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Ahh, I love PZ Myers. He’s hilarious, just at a time when I need some humor… here’s his post on why he got into science:

You’d have to be a freakin’ idiot to do this work for the salary. Fortunately, I’m not doing it for the money—it’s all about the groupies and the esteem of the general public, who respect science so much.

Haha! So very, very true…

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Or as some men like to call it, nature’s rubix cube. Anyway, you may be wondering why I’m writing a post on this. The first thing that probably popped into your head was “oh god he’s going to talk about his sex life”, but look! It’s not filed under personal, or heather-related; it’s under Science. Yes, I decided to add a new category. Yay science! So I’m browsing PZ Myers blog, as always, and he had an entry up regarding a book which explores the evolutionary origins of the female orgasm. The book examined the many different hypotheses on the subject, analyzed them, and came to the conclusion that one fit the evidence more. This hypothesis holds that the female orgasm developed primarily as a counterpart to the male orgasm, or as the book describes it, a “byproduct” of it. Apparently people don’t understand what this means [they think that she’s either arguing that the female orgasm is worthless, or that a male orgasming causes a female to orgasm]. So she’s come up with an alternative term:

Lloyd is not arguing that the virtue of orgasms lies in their ability to promote pregnancy in women (although that is exactly the idea the adaptive hypotheses for it are promoting)—she’s demonstrating that many androcentric assumptions about female orgasm, such as that it promotes pair-bonding with the male, or assists sperm to enter the reproductive tract, or encourages women to lie about in a puddle of semen, are just not credible or supported by any good evidence. She suggests that maybe she should change the label from “byproduct” to “fantastic bonus” to get around this naturalistic bias, but I don’t know that I agree. I suspect that a great many human features we like are byproducts (OK, “fantastic bonuses”), and people need to get used to that fact. That a specific feature has been the target of selection does not necessarily mean it is “better” in social terms.

If you don’t want to read the book—which would be unfortunate, it’s an excellent read—at least go read the briefer explanation at Philosophy of Biology. And, ladies, have orgasms because they’re fun, not because you think they will help your partner get you pregnant with his child. [all emphasis mine]

Heh yes ladies, enjoy orgasms for their own sake, regardless of the evolutionary history that develeoped them. Have fun

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You really should read the whole entry, but this little excerpt all by itself is really absolutely brilliant.

“Christopher Flickinger is a conservative columnist from Pittsburgh, PA (or as he likes to call it, “The People’s Republic of Pittsburgh: a cesspool of unionized liberalism”). He is co-founder and President of the Center For Conservative Thought. Mr. Flickinger’s columns can be found periodically at Human Events Online, The Rant, and other websites that hold lifetime memberships to the “vast right-wing conspiracy.” Although his columns are usually mild-mannered and anything but blunt, this six-foot-two, two-hundred and twenty pound Goliath doesn’t back down from liberal instigators, and he’s just waiting for a left-winger to throw a pie in his direction.”

So he’s a giant who likes pie. That’s sufficient qualifications for a conservative to claim he’s expert in everything! Perhaps I should fear him, and maybe send a few pies to him as an act of appeasement. Or perhaps I should ask him to debate pies with Fafblog.

At least I should be safe from the unstoppable pygmies + dwarfs argument.

Hilarious. Absolutely hilarious.

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At least, I hope it’s satire… via Pharyngula, we “learn” that, indeed, gravity is “only” a theory! Read the whole thing, but here’s a couple great parts.

“Things fall not because they are acted upon by some gravitational force, but because a higher intelligence, ‘God’ if you will, is pushing them down,” said Gabriel Burdett, who holds degrees in education, applied Scripture, and physics from Oral Roberts University.

[snip]

Founded in 1987, the ECFR is the world’s leading institution of evangelical physics, a branch of physics based on literal interpretation of the Bible.

According to the ECFR paper published simultaneously this week in the International Journal Of Science and the adolescent magazine God’s Word For Teens!, there are many phenomena that cannot be explained by secular gravity alone, including such mysteries as how angels fly, how Jesus ascended into Heaven, and how Satan fell when cast out of Paradise.

[snip]

Proponents of Intelligent Falling assert that the different theories used by secular physicists to explain gravity are not internally consistent. Even critics of Intelligent Falling admit that Einstein’s ideas about gravity are mathematically irreconcilable with quantum mechanics. This fact, Intelligent Falling proponents say, proves that gravity is a theory in crisis.

[snip]

“Traditional scientists admit that they cannot explain how gravitation is supposed to work,” Carson said. “What the gravity-agenda scientists need to realize is that ‘gravity waves’ and ‘gravitons’ are just secular words for ‘God can do whatever He wants.’”

Some evangelical physicists propose that Intelligent Falling provides an elegant solution to the central problem of modern physics.

“Anti-falling physicists have been theorizing for decades about the ‘electromagnetic force,’ the ‘weak nuclear force,’ the ’strong nuclear force,’ and so-called ‘force of gravity,’” Burdett said. “And they tilt their findings toward trying to unite them into one force. But readers of the Bible have already known for millennia what this one, unified force is: His name is Jesus.”

The most frightening part about this is that it sounds EXACTLY like Intelligent Design. And, to someone with an untrained eye, it might actually fool them. There actually are a few holes in the gravitational theory; we actually don’t know what causes the force of attraction, and Einstein’s theory does not agree with quantum physics. This doesn’t invalidate the entire theory of gravity of course; and neither do the holes in the theory of evolution. That’s why ID is bullshit, and why it shouldn’t ever be taught as a valid theory. I have no problem with teachers discussing the flaws in current scientific theories; but to bring non-scientific theories into the mix only makes things worse.

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Now I don’t remember if Mike wrote about this on his own blog or in comments in our discussions on science, but he was discussing some of the discrepancies in global warming theory; particularly that some data shows no atmospheric temperature change or even cooling. Well, after going through the data and conducting research on it, scientists just announced that they have discovered why: Their data-collecting instruments weren’t working correctly! Irregular Times has a good summary here:

The beauty of the scientific process is that scientists actually listened to the critiques of these lobbyists and Fox News pundits. They asked themselves if the critique could be valid. They looked at the numbers. They engaged in a professional examination of the data, which did indeed seem to point to significant patches of global cooling in the atmosphere.

The scientific process worked. This week, scientists announced that they had discovered the source of the discrepancy in the data on global warming temperatures. It appears that the satellite that had been taking atmospheric temperatures over all those years had drifted off course. As a result, as the years passed, what the satellite was recording as daytime temperatures were actually nighttime temperatures. Now, as everyone knows, the atmosphere cools off at night. So, the satellite was comparing old daytime temperatures with new nighttime temperatures. It is no wonder that the satellite data appeared to find global atmospheric cooling over time.

With the data corrected for the satellite’s drift over time, the observations are now shown to confirm global warming instead of to contradict it. So, thank you to all the corporate and Republican naysayers for pointing out this discrepancy. A critical examination of the issue has brought a greater understanding of global atmospheric measurements to the scientific community, and in the end, confirmed the very global warming theory that you were seeking to discredit.

Science: 2; Crazy Republican-Voting Groups: 0

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So, on the topic we’ve been discussing below, the AFA has a poll up. It’s not a fair poll. It’s bullshit. The options suck. Option 1 is “children should be exposed to ID”, while Option 2 is “Only evolution should be taught“. That’s not fair wording. I don’t have any problem with Id [or hell, even freaking creationism] being mentioned in a bio class, thus exposing children to it [as Eugene mentioned below], IN GENERAL. However, ID is not science. I’m sorry, but it’s not. Why? It starts with a preconceived idea: God created the universe. ID-ers argue: “No! We think life and the evidence show intelligent design!” At which case I like to reference my own Neo-Pagan friend who has a Genesis story of his own, and ask if we should include that in the course. A variation of “Hell no!” is the typical response, which just marks them as hypocrites.

But back to the poll. What are they really asking? They’re asking “Should ID be taught alongside evolution as an equal scientific theory?” That’s what ID-ers want. They want labels on textbooks saying evolution is “only” a theory, not truth [so’s gravity, and the idea that the earth revolves around the sun; should we put that on freaking physics textbooks, too?]. No shit it’s only a theory: that’s what all science is. Sure, some theories have more piles of evidence than others, but the piles for evolution are very very high.

Eugene, you also threw up a small strawman argument [even though you were mostly agreeing]: you stated that the best we can do is say that life probably occured by chance. As you [should] know, evolutionary theory does not simply deal with how life occured: it deals with how the lifeforms on this planet have changed and are changing. ID-ers don’t just reject the idea that life began by chance [side note: evolutionary theory doesn’t rule out some [set of] being[s] creating life on this planet… through evolution! argh! sorry, pet peeve…]; they reject the idea entire idea of life changing and evolving over time. This is what really irks me the most, because they have observed this [particularly microevolution]. Sorry to pick on you, Euge, I was gonna bring it up anyway, but your comment gave me some context.

Now, if I was doing a poll with only 2 options [shudder], they’d be:

Option A: Alternative theories to accepted modern science should be taught with equal emphasis given to alternative and accepted scientific theories.

Option B: While alternative ideas and proposals may/should be mentioned in class, only accepted scientific theories should be taught and fully covered.

This is a fair poll, as it expresses the real debate here. Almost every evolutionist I’ve read/talked to, whule completely rejecting ID and creationism or whatever else they want to try naming it as legitimate scientific theories, have no problem with Option B. Why? It’s fair, and it keeps the science in science class.

So go vote on the poll; I obviously want you to vote for the 2nd option, cause the AFA is a bunch of spin-sters, but if you really think ID should be given equal time in science class… by all means, vote for option 1.

p.s. Euge: Roger is a good friend. One of the Brains. You know.
p.p.s. I completely disagree with you that only those going into a technical field should have an understanding of the science. For a scientific reference, see Feynman. Furthermore, by shortchanging those not going into a technical field, we only contribute to the ignorance of society. It’s not that they have to believe in evolution: but hell, they should understand it so they can at least argue against it without throwing up strawman and misconception after strawman and misconception.

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