OK, I told you people that I would try to keep up with this thing...
And, I intend to keep that promise.
I don't know if anyone has noticed, but I haven't made many comments about the whole Goth scene in a long while. That is mostly because it began to bore me so badly that I thought I might go blind, which I did the other day*... Anyway, I figure, the whole scene is just a big re-run of stasis and imminent demise of people's small egos, and I really don't see much use for it any longer... It is still a lot of fun at times, but... I haven't really seem much in the way of a life from most of the people in it... That is such a pity.
Anyway... Expelled Ben Stein's new movie that is the laughing stock of the rational world. He is one who really fell off the deep end. It is a movie that is about the "Conspiracy" to keep Intelligent Design out of the Schools as a "Serious Science"...
Well, Ben, that is because ID isn't a serious science. It is a contrived belief system from a bunch of froot-loops who think that you can carve the grand canyon with a few lakes in a couple of years (That theory was actually put to test at so many different universities that it is funny). They ran enough water over a piece of sandstone, that was supposed to represent the Granite of the Grand Canyon, (Notice that Sandstone is significantly softer than Granite - it was supposed to be for a scaled down experiment that represented compressed time - so they needed a softer base for the experiment) to have emptied both the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, and it still did not show enough erosion to account for something as deep as the Grand Canyon (nor as elaborate, if it has been from just ONE source, the Canyon would have been straight with no side canyons).
But, never let the truth get in the way of a bad idea (or a religion). There is actually a logical fallacy that describes the desperate attempts by people to hold onto irrational beliefs. It is called the Ad Hoc fallacy (or Conflation, take your pick, they are both symptoms of people whose irrational world view has been battered by reality).
Expelled Also decided that it wanted to Rip-Off a pretty famous piece of Harvard Animation:
One of the "actors" in Expelled had already been smacked-down by Harvard Univ. pretty hard for using the video in Intelligent Design Lectures with a "Creationist" voice-over.
He then went and decided to tell Ben Stein about the Video. Ben Stein claims that their team created their own identical piece that happened to use the same music (unfortunately for him, the music was done for XVIVO for their video and the creator of the music says "No such fucking thing happened" about Ben's movie getting the rights to the music).
You can read some more about it at Richard Dawkin's Web Site
*Hysterical Blindness my Dr. says. I had spent more than a day at my new place in Oakland, and had to go back to my old place (where I still have to keep an "official" residence" for a while). Well, when I got off BART at 16th street and was walking towards the MUNI 22 stop, I began to notice that my lips were numb (That happens when you have been hyperventilating - especially when you don't notice that you have been hyperventilating), and that I was really dizzy (again - hyperventilating)... I stopped for a second to lean again the railing at the top of the BART escalators next to the Bus Stop and BAM B-L-I-N-D... I couldn't see anything. I knew that I should probably panic or something like that, as it seemed to be the "Sensible" thing to do when you suddenly go blind, but for some reason I just stood there and thought "You know - I wonder if I should call 911 about this? Maybe tell someone? No... Considering where I am, that would be an invitation to a mugging - mine..." My thoughts wandered aimlessly for a while, as I stood there, seemingly completely calm. After a few seconds I thought "Maybe I should wait to go by the p[lace on Haight Street."... Almost as soon as I thought that, my vision began to return. I called my Dr. Immediately with an emergency, and resisted going to the emergency room. She said that was probably OK to do as it sounded like a textbook case of hysterical physiological paralysis/defect. She said that one of the more noticeable symptoms is the apparent calm of the "victim"
I don't know if anyone has noticed, but I haven't made many comments about the whole Goth scene in a long while. That is mostly because it began to bore me so badly that I thought I might go blind, which I did the other day*... Anyway, I figure, the whole scene is just a big re-run of stasis and imminent demise of people's small egos, and I really don't see much use for it any longer... It is still a lot of fun at times, but... I haven't really seem much in the way of a life from most of the people in it... That is such a pity.
Anyway... Expelled Ben Stein's new movie that is the laughing stock of the rational world. He is one who really fell off the deep end. It is a movie that is about the "Conspiracy" to keep Intelligent Design out of the Schools as a "Serious Science"...
Well, Ben, that is because ID isn't a serious science. It is a contrived belief system from a bunch of froot-loops who think that you can carve the grand canyon with a few lakes in a couple of years (That theory was actually put to test at so many different universities that it is funny). They ran enough water over a piece of sandstone, that was supposed to represent the Granite of the Grand Canyon, (Notice that Sandstone is significantly softer than Granite - it was supposed to be for a scaled down experiment that represented compressed time - so they needed a softer base for the experiment) to have emptied both the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, and it still did not show enough erosion to account for something as deep as the Grand Canyon (nor as elaborate, if it has been from just ONE source, the Canyon would have been straight with no side canyons).
But, never let the truth get in the way of a bad idea (or a religion). There is actually a logical fallacy that describes the desperate attempts by people to hold onto irrational beliefs. It is called the Ad Hoc fallacy (or Conflation, take your pick, they are both symptoms of people whose irrational world view has been battered by reality).
Expelled Also decided that it wanted to Rip-Off a pretty famous piece of Harvard Animation:
Click to viewOne of the "actors" in Expelled had already been smacked-down by Harvard Univ. pretty hard for using the video in Intelligent Design Lectures with a "Creationist" voice-over.
He then went and decided to tell Ben Stein about the Video. Ben Stein claims that their team created their own identical piece that happened to use the same music (unfortunately for him, the music was done for XVIVO for their video and the creator of the music says "No such fucking thing happened" about Ben's movie getting the rights to the music).
You can read some more about it at Richard Dawkin's Web Site
*Hysterical Blindness my Dr. says. I had spent more than a day at my new place in Oakland, and had to go back to my old place (where I still have to keep an "official" residence" for a while). Well, when I got off BART at 16th street and was walking towards the MUNI 22 stop, I began to notice that my lips were numb (That happens when you have been hyperventilating - especially when you don't notice that you have been hyperventilating), and that I was really dizzy (again - hyperventilating)... I stopped for a second to lean again the railing at the top of the BART escalators next to the Bus Stop and BAM B-L-I-N-D... I couldn't see anything. I knew that I should probably panic or something like that, as it seemed to be the "Sensible" thing to do when you suddenly go blind, but for some reason I just stood there and thought "You know - I wonder if I should call 911 about this? Maybe tell someone? No... Considering where I am, that would be an invitation to a mugging - mine..." My thoughts wandered aimlessly for a while, as I stood there, seemingly completely calm. After a few seconds I thought "Maybe I should wait to go by the p[lace on Haight Street."... Almost as soon as I thought that, my vision began to return. I called my Dr. Immediately with an emergency, and resisted going to the emergency room. She said that was probably OK to do as it sounded like a textbook case of hysterical physiological paralysis/defect. She said that one of the more noticeable symptoms is the apparent calm of the "victim"