I realize that Dr. Jackson's talent, grace-under-pressure, uber-coolness, and bespecled sexiness can inspire resentment in lesser individuals but come on, let's not be so catty about it.  It only makes YOU look small.

Instead, why don't you go out, get yourself a team of professional writers, a mittful of advanced degrees in esotaric subjects, and fantastic make-up artistry and lighting.  Then you wouldn't have to feel so jealous.

Oh, and by the way, Daniel Jackson speaks 26 languages.

So there.

And just so we're clear, this is an example of who I AM talking about when I referr to "Wacky Fundies".

http://www.madison.com/wsj/mad/breaking_news/285609

<shudder>

(Hat tip:  Pharyngula)

This begs the question:  Do I think religion MAKES people crazy?  No, not necessarily.  But I think, in too many cases, people allow their religion to make an end run around a little custom of the human race called "the reality check".  And this allows the crazy to grow.

Religion is given a free pass in our society, and there's nothing we can really do about that because laws compelling the concience should be kept to the essential minimum, and that includes religion.

But my God people, when denial of reality becomes an article of faith, things can get downright dangerous.

And when you combine that with a political agenda, it's monstrous.

It makes people capable of things that they later have to work really hard to ammend history and try to blame on atheists, because they can't accept that religion had any part in it.

I'd like to call your attention to a few new blogs in the blogroll.

I've added some religious blogs, as examples of who I am NOT talking about in my "wacky fundies" posts.

Erudite Redneck    - wacky (in a good way) not fundie.

God & Life            - Fundie - not wacky

Monastic Mumbligs - Not fundie, not wacky (yet strangely, still interesting)

The Watering Hole  -also not fundie, and not wacky

Ya know, It frightens me a little bit, but for some reason, I just totally relate to this scene.

Yesterday I had to run up to the Home Despot to meet my Sifu and hand off some sashes that he needed to give to some students of mine who are transferring over to his class due to a scheduling conflict.

The Home Despot is near his work, and I had to pick up some mulch.

After handing off the sashes, I wandered into the Home Despot and found the piles of cedar mulch.  Naturally, the brand I wanted was behind a pile of other stuff, so it was awkward, but I was managing just fine.  I was loading the two cu.ft. bags onto a flat-bed push-cart when I heard:

 “Hey!  Can I give you a hand with that?”

I looked up, and there was a guy with a silver ear-hoop, a buzz cut, and one of the most spectacular tattoos I’ve seen in a while.  The tat was a reproduced photograph of a little Chinese kid surrounded by wood grain, and illuminated by gothic script, which I couldn’t read, ‘cause the guy’s arm kept moving while he ignored my assertion that I was doing fine on my own, and pushed past me to begin loading the bags.

“Nice tat”, I said, “Is that of anyone in particular?”

“Yes.  It’s a kid I met while I was on a mission trip to China helping out a missionary running an orphanage over there.”

“Oh.  He must be pretty special.”

“Yeah, he was.  You know, all those kids were damaged some way.  I wasn’t comfortable around them.  I’m not proud to say it, but I wondered, ‘where are all the normal kids, why can’t I work with them?  This kid just came up to me the first day and plopped himself down on my lap, and I was like ‘OK, little dude, you’re cool.  He was my little buddy the whole time I was there.  I just loved him so much.”

“That’s really great,” I said…figuring the story was over.

He continued, “Before we left, the missionary went through and told me about the kids, told me their stories, and why they were at the orphanage.  Then he got to my kid, and told me that he’d been born with both male and female parts.  Wow, that was tough, you know, dealing with that.  But God had already worked in my heart by that point, and it didn’t matter.”

“That’s a cool story, thanks for telling me.”

“Yeah, that’s why the Bible verse here.”  He pointed to the script, which I still couldn’t read.

I thought it was a great story.  You know, a lot of people don’t believe that they need God to work in their heart to avoid judgment and express compassion for others.  But a lot of people do.  And my feeling is, if you feel that's what you need to make yourself better personally, you go with your bad self.  Do what you have to do, just get there.  I don't care if you think you need to wear a watermelon on your head to help you be a better human being.  If it works for you, great.  I will bring you fresh watermelons every day to help you.  Just don't try to force one onto my head, and don't turn the term "watermelonless" into a slur.  We'll be cool.

And this man was great, he wasn’t telling me that without religion, I was going to hell.  He wasn’t telling me that without religion I’m incapable of love and compassion (or that while I might be able to have love and compassion, it is meaningless without a “foundation”.)

He was telling me about his personal and meaningful story about how he personally won a victory over judgment, narrow-mindedness, and bigotry…and how the reward was a richer, more loving life.

And it made my day, and quite possibly my life better.

(disclaimer:  please realize that this conversation is recounted from memory, so the words in quotes are not direct quotes, but my best recollection of the conversation)

For the team I'd like to call "consensual reality".

Robert Beal has been sentanced to ten years in prison.

My next question is:  What do we call someone who self-identifies as a "Christian Libertarian"?

YOU tell 'em Daniel!

Now, if they could just spend that ten years getting him the help he so richly needs, rather than merely punishing him for it.

(Hat Tip: Pharyngula)

I got the following forwarded to me in an e-mail from an older relative.  All I can think of when I read it, is that the person who wrote it thinks that the way to get a better world is to beat our children, teach them that the only reason to participate in community events is to avoid coercive violence, and that they have no choice in when an how to exercise generosity, but must exercise it not out of the goodness of their hearts, but at the end of a belt-strap...and that somehow, this will make them immune to the lure of drugs. Unfortuanly, my children are doomed to end up as skid-row drug feinds because of my selfish obsession with teaching them to reason, encouraging them to think of others and exercise their empathy, and allowing them to explore the rewards of altruism on their own terms.  Oh, and rely on proper socialization to teach them not to casually engage in profanity. 'course...I had the upbringing described below...and I turned out OK...right?  Right?         The Moms (and Dad's) who Drugged Us               The other day, someone at a store in our town read that a Methamphetamine lab Had been found in an old farmhouse in the adjoining county. He asked me a rhetorical question. "Why didn't we have a drug problem when you and I were growing up?" I replied, I did have a drug problem when I was young: I was drug to church on Sunday morning. I was drug to weddings and funerals. I was drug to family reunions and community socials---no matter the weather. I was drug by my ears when I was disrespectful to adults. I was also drug to the woodshed when I disobeyed my parents, told a lie, brought home a bad report card, did not speak with respect to others, spoke ill of the teacher or the Preacher or if I didn't put forth my best effort in everything that was asked of me. I was drug to the kitchen sink to have my mouth washed out with soap, if I uttered a profanity, I was drug out to pull weeds in mom's garden and flower beds or cockleburs out of dad's lawn or fields. I was drug to the homes of family, friends,  and neighbors to help out some poor soul who had no one--- to mow the yard, repair the clothesline, or chop some firewood; and

if my mother had ever known that I took a single dime as a tip for

this kindness, she would have drug me back to the woodshed.

Those drugs are still in my veins and they affect my behavior in everything I do, say, or think. They are stronger than cocaine, crack, or heroin; and, If today's children had this kind of drug problem, America would be a better place.                                      God bless the parents who drugged us!

Jason Bock put this on his blog, and then I saw it, and now I am powerless before the stupid.

Mandrake roots look just like the human form, so eating them must be good for the whole body, right?

blah.

We held a fundraiser at my house last night.  Just a little get-to-gether to celebrate my friend Sue completing her cancer treatment, and to raise money for our 3-day walk to raise money for research.

In the middle of the chaos, someone asked me, "Is {Grasshopper} your son?"

Me:  "Uh....yeah?" (you never sure what you are agreeing to take responsibility for with answering this question)

Lady:  "He's soooo sweet!  He came to my son and said 'There's nobody downstairs playing video games, would you like to come down and play with me?'"

Me:  "Oh.  That's nice..."  (Not particularly impressed, being a somewhat observant host is the minimum I expect from my kids in a situation like that)

Lady:  "And then he turned to me and asked 'What is his rating limit?'"

LOL!  Now THAT'S pretty cool!

Remember how the Mayor of Birmingham (Larry Langford; D)was praying in sackcloth and ashes for God to reduce the crime rate of his fair city?

Well, it looks like Birmingham might soon be less one alleged criminal already...the Mayor of Birmingham! (don't forget, innocent until proven guilty)

(Hat tip and link:  Pharyngula)

Speaking of “Bat-shit insane” – someone left this bit of creo-spam-droppings on my “Expelled Exposed” post.  It is far too scattered, unfocused, and densely populated with historical misrepresentations, logical fallacies, and downright random batshit for one mere human to address it in her spare time.

I could delete it as spam…, but that’s no fun, and would only be called “censorship”.

  So.

We’re going to have another “play-along at home”

Here is the format:  pick a paragraph, any paragraph, and pick it apart.  Show the lack of knowledge, the errors, and the lunacy in every possible way you can imagine.  Being funny is a plus.  Then, post it (saying which paragraph you are responding to).  I will then go through and sort them out, and re-post it with your rebuttals on a point-by-point basis.

If we don’t get enough participation, this won’t work.  So if you don’t have a lot of time, just pick an easy one, and leave the heavy lifting to those with more ready specialized knowledge, who type faster, or who have more free time.

1.              Ben(jamin) Stein is under heavy artillery for 'exaggerating' or 'going easy' on the influence of evolutionism behind Nazism and Stalinism (super evolution of Lysenkoism in the Soviet Russia). But the monstrous Haeckelian type of vulgar evolutionism drove not only the 'Politics-is-applied-biology' Nazi takeover in the continental Europe, but even the nationalistic collision at the World War I. It was Charles Darwin himself, who praised and raised the monstrous German Ernst Haeckel with his still recycled embryo drawing frauds etc. in the spotlight as the greatest authority in the field of human evolution, even in the preface to his Descent of man in 1871. If Thomas Henry Huxley with his concept of 'agnostism' was Darwins bulldog in England, Haeckel was his Rotweiler in Germany.

2.             'Kampf' was a direct translation of 'struggle' from On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life (1859). Seinen Kampf. His application.

3.             Catch 22: Haeckel's 140 years old fake embryo drawings have been mindlessly recycled for the 'public understanding of science' (PUS) in most biology text books until this millennium. Despite factum est that Haeckel's crackpot raging Recapitulation/Biogenetic Law and functioning gill slits of human embryos have been at the ethical tangent race hygiene/eugenics/genocide, infanticide, and Freudian psychoanalysis (subconscious atavisms). Dawkins is the Oxford professor for PUS - and should gather the courage of Stephen Jay Gould who could feel ashamed about it.

4.             Some edited quotes from my conference posters and articles defended and published in the field of bioethics and history of biology (and underline/edit them a 'bit'):
http://www.helsinki.fi/~pjojala/Asian_Bioethics.pdf
http://www.helsinki.fi/~pjojala/Haeckelianlegacy_ABC5.pdf

5.             The marriage laws were once erected not only in the Nazi Germany but also in the multicultural states of America upon the speculation that the mulatto was a relatively sterile and shortlived hybrid. The absence of blood transfusion between "white" and "colored races" was self evident (Hailer 1963, p. 52).

6.             The first law on sterilization in US had been established in 1907 in Indiana, and 23 similar laws had been passed in 15 States and sterilization was practiced in 124 institutions in 1921 (Mattila 1996; Hietala 1985 p. 133; these were the times of IQ-tests under Gould's scrutiny in his Mismeasure of Man 1981). By 1931 thirty states had passed sterization laws in the US (Reilly 1991, p. 87). Typically, the operations hit blacks the most in the US, poor women in the Europe, and often the victims were never even told they had been sterilized.

7.             Mendelism outweighed recapitulation (embryos climbing up their evolutionary tree through fish-, amphibian- and reptilian stages), but that merely smoothened the way for the brutal 1930’s biolegislation - that quickly penetrated practically all Western countries. The laws were copied from country to country. The A-B-O blood groups, haemophilia, eye colours etc. were found to be inherited in a Mendelian fashion by 1910. So also the complex traits and social (mis)behaviour such as alcoholism, schizophrenia, manic depression, criminality, rebelliousness, artistic sense, pauperism, racial differences, inherited scholarship (and its converse, feeble-mindedness) were all thought to be determined by one or two genes. Mendelism was "experimental" and quantitative, and its exaggeration outweighed the more cautious biometry operating on smaller variations, not discontinuous leaps. Its advocates boldly claimed that these problems could be done away within a few generations through selection, persisted (although most biologists must have known that defective genes could not be eliminated, even with the most intense forced sterilizations and marriage restrictions due to recessive genes and synergism. Nevertheless, these laws were held until 1970's and were typically changed only when the abortion legislation were released (1973).

8.             So the American laws were pioneering endeavours. In Europe Denmark passed the first sterilization legislation in Europe (1929). Denmark was followed by Switzerland, Germany that had felt to the hands of Hitler and Gobineu, and other Nordic countries: Norway (1934), Sweden (1935), Finland (1935), and Iceland (1938 ) (Haller 1963, pp 21-57; 135-9; Proctor 1988, p. 97; Reilly 1991, p. 109). Seldom is it mentioned in the popular media, that the first outright race biological institution in the world was not established in Germany but in 1921 in Uppsala, Sweden (Hietala 1985, pp. 109). (I am not aware of the ethymology of the 'Up' of the ancient city from Plinius' Ultima Thule, however.) In 1907 the Society for Racial Hygiene in Germany had changed its name to the Internationale Gesellschaft für Rassenhygiene, and in 1910 Swedish Society for Eugenics (Sällskap för Rashygien) had become its first foreign affiliate (Proctor 1988, p. 17). Today, Swedish state church is definitely the most liberal in the face of the world.

9.             Hitler's formulation of the differences between the human races was affected by the brilliant sky-blue eyed Ernst Haeckel (Gasman 1971, p. xxii), praised and raised by Darwin. At the top of the unilinear progression were usually the "Nordics", a tall race of blue-eyed blonds. Haeckel's position on the 'Judenfrage' was assimilation and Expelled-command from their university chairs, not yet an open elimination. But was it different only in degree, rather than kind?

10.           In 1917 the immigration of "defective" groups was forbidden even in the United States by a law. In 1921 the European immigration was diminished to 3% based on the 1910 census. Eventually, in the strategical year of 1924 the finest hour of eugenics had come and the fatal law was passed by Congress. It diminished immigration to 2% of the foreign-born from each country based on the 1890 census in order to preserve the "nordic" balance in population, and was hold through World War II until 1965 (Hietala 1985, p. 132).

11.            Richard Lewontin writes:“The leading American idealogue of the innate mental inferiority of the working class was, however, H.H. Goddard, a pioneer of the mental testing movement, the discoverer of the Kallikak family,
and the administrant of IQ-tests to immigrants that found 83 % of the Jews, 80% of the Hungarians, 79% of the Italians, and 87% of the the Russians to be feebleminded.” (1977, p. 13.) Regarding us Finns, Finnish emmigrants put the cross on the box reserved for the "yellow" group (Kemiläinen 1993, p. 1930), until 1965.

12.           Germany was the most scientifically and culturally advanced nation of the world upon opening the riddles at the close of the nineteenth century. And she went Full Monty.

13.           Today, developmental biologists are anticipating legislation of laws that would define the do’s and dont’s. In England, they are fertilizing human embryos for research purposes and pipetting chimera embryos of humans and monkeys, 'legally'. The legislation should not distract individual researchers from their personal awareness of responsibility. A permissive law merely defines the ethical minimum. The lesson is that a law is no substitute for morals and that dissidents should not be intimidated.

14.           I am suspicious over the burial of the Kampf (Struggle). The idea of competition is innate in the modern society. It is the the opposite view in a 180 degree angle to the Judaeo-Christian ideal of agapee (contra epithumia, eros, filia & storge) (ahava in Hebrew), that I personally cheriss. The latter sees free giving, altruism, benevolence and self sacrificing love as the beginning, motivation, and sustainer of the reality.

pauli.ojala@gmail.com
Biochemist, drop-out (Master of Sciing)
http://www.helsinki.fi/~pjojala/Expelled-ID.htm

http://www.commonlawvenue.net/

Have fun kiddies!

I was out running with the dog today.  It was nice.

We were loping along, not really pushing it; sort of trotting, really.  The sun was finally shining again, and the air was just the right temperature;  not too warm, not too cold.

I was feeling pretty good.  Not running to work out, just running to save time.  The dog's gotta cover a certain amount of ground in a day, or he gets neurotic.  If I run, this takes less time.

He was behaving very well, running roughly at "heel".  A Fed Ex driver came out from a house and smiled broadly at him as she got into her truck to make notes on her little clipboard. 

Half a block later, it happened.  My toe caught on a raised bit of side-walk, and I tripped.

My Kung-fu reflexes fired, and I thought that - just for a moment there, mind you - I thought that I had avoided a fall.

Unfortunately, my high-strung puppy-dog had much less faith in my alacrity.  He startled, then he jumped.  Then he dashed forward and side-ways all at the same time with his tail between his legs, and he didn't stop until he had hit the end of the leash with a *snap*.

I was done for; fell to the ground like a fifty pound bag of rice.

The Fed Ex lady was staring at me, yelling "You all right?"

Some twiggy little trophy wives out for a stroll were giggling.  The dog looked like he expected the world to cave in on him, and I tried to jump to my feet with as much dignity as I could muster.  My knee was scraped and bloody, but that was it.  I tried to be as cool as possible as I walked away...

...until the Fed Ex lady pulled up, beeped the horn, and yelled "Your cell phone and your keys are laying on the sidewalk back there!"

Doh!  Self-respect elimination, complete...your work here is done, Murphy.

Here's some more reading on the "Common Law Court" movement and related stuff.

http://www.patriotnetwork.info/anti-gov-guidebook.htm

http://www.adl.org/Learn/ext_us/SCM.asp?LEARN_Cat=Extremism&LEARN_SubCat=Extremism_in_America&xpicked=4&item=sov

http://www.adl.org/poisoning_web/militias.asp

http://rfexposed.tripod.com/clcusa2.html  (Hubert H. Humphry III opinion characterizes “common Law courts” as bogus)

http://www.worldfreeinternet.net/news/nws74.htm

http://www.westom.com/coolsite/pat_claw.htm

People from this movement recently in the news:

http://www.startribune.com/local/17984759.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddie_Ray_Kahn (this is the guy who “advised” Wesley Snipes)

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9503E6DB1539F93BA15750C0A960958260