Republican: Now a bad word.

Posted by Pathogen on 6th October , 2008

Serves them right for defaming decent words like liberal or peace. Your record can and will come back to bite you in the ass. Just ask John McCain. He’s tried desperately to act like he’s been a “maverick” within his own party when it’s clear his record says otherwise.

So run, you pieces of crap. You’ve helped support and propagate a failed policy that has gotten all of us in a world of shit. I hope every one of you turds loses your seats. If you’re a true conservative, your party left you years ago. You just failed to jump off a train steaming to an ignominious end. I’m glad I saw the handwriting on the wall in 2003.

Got time? Waste it here.

Posted by Pathogen on 6th October , 2008

No, not here here.  But here: Hubble Gallery. And feast your eyes on a galaxy beyond your wildest imagination.

Here’s a taste…

Supernova 1994D in Galaxy NGC 4526

Nucleus of

Go get the rest on your own. You better grab a Snickers, though. You’re gonna be there a while.

Congratulations, Palin. You didn’t shit yourself on live national television.

Posted by Pathogen on 3rd October , 2008

Surely you’re ready to face off against Putin and Ahmadinejad (not that he really holds the power in Iran).

Look, we know you’re not retarded.  Hell, you’re not even really stupid.  But you do come off as someone that’s gotten by mostly on your charms and looks.  So don’t be surprised if I don’t completely take you seriously as a national leader.  I just can’t.  Perhaps the standards are a bit lower up in Alaska.  Perhaps you’re exactly what they need up there.  But I doubt someone like you would rise to power even in my backwater of a state, Michigan.

We’ve got a female governor, too.  And she’s having a rough go of it.  You see, unlike you, she actually has some real budgetary problems to deal with.  Michigan isn’t a welfare queen like Alaska.  We don’t get a ton of federal dollars and aren’t rich with natural resources.  No, we can’t sell water from the Great Lakes.  No yet, anyway.  And Granholm is getting absolutely skeward here.  Some of it is her fault, but a lot of it has to do with shit that started three or four decades ago.  Still, it’s on her to try and find a solution to the auto industry hemorraging jobs worse that a stuck pig in a slaughter house.

So enjoy your victory over mediocrity.  You did a helluva job casting aside the burden of lowered expectations to recite your talking points, questions be damned, with lockstep efficiency.  I think stumblin’, bumblin’ Joe was even impressed with your small town eloquence.  Yes, I’m making fun of that goddamn accent of yours.  It’s awful and no more “real” “authentic” American than my plain, nondescript Midwestern accent.  I’m tired you touting small town values, too.  I’ve been to every part of the U.S.  We’re all genuine, and packed to the rafters with values.

And for godsake, keep that damn baby in bed.  He’s not a prop to be dragged out to show what a great mom you are.  You’ve managed to have five kids and still make a successful run in life.  Bully for you.  That pretty much puts you on equal footing with over 80% of America.  You having brats doesn’t give you any more cred than every parent on my kid’s soccer team.  Although, I’m pretty sure every one of them could tell me what papers or magazines they read if I asked them.

Anyway, you’ve managed to bump your qualifications back up to passable, but no where near presidential.  Your “folksiness” may fly back in Wasilla, but the vast majority of Americas are on to your silly ass.  It’s not going to fly no matter how many brain dead syncophants on the right tout your credentials on TV and radio.

Personally? I’ve never touched the stuff.

Posted by Pathogen on 2nd October , 2008

But I’m getting tired of telling people less knowledgeable than me that cigarettes and alcohol, both widely available and completely legal, cause far more harm than marijuana.  The numbers bear this out.

Do I abstain from using either of the legal controlled substances?  No.  I like beer, whiskey, and the occasional cigar.  I’ve never touched marijuana.  I don’t necessarily plan on trying it, either.  But I completely understand why those that do, do.  I’ve offered a couple of times, but I turned it down.  The closest I ever came to being a user was a slight contact buzz I got at a Rolling Stones’ concert years ago when I was 13.  Don’t ask why I was there; I think my mom thought I would like the experience.   The best part of that night was Living Color opening for the Stones.

Regardless, the studies and data are starting to pile on.  And it is getting tiresome every time I have to argue the facts with people still under the impression that marijuana users are a bunch of slackers wasting their lives away.

God, I can’t believe I’m defending potheads.

‘Cannabis Is Safer Than Alcohol’

The Beckley Foundation’s Global Cannabis Commission document said the cannabis ban had backfired and called for a “serious rethink” of drugs policy.

The ban has had little or no impact on supply and has turned users into criminals, it said.

“Although cannabis can have a negative impact on health, including mental health, in terms of relative harms, it is considerably less harmful than alcohol or tobacco,” the report claimed.

No one’s arguing that smoking pot doesn’t cause health problems. After all, you are taking smoke into your lungs. But it’s preposterous to suggest that the social impact is more severe than alcohol use. Drug driving statistics strongly suggest otherwise.

I love internet purse fights…about Intelligent Design.

Posted by Pathogen on 2nd October , 2008

This most certainly beats any rivalry forum slapfest, however.  You practically need a dictionary, access to Encyclopedia Britannica, and a pass to the Library of Congress to understand half of what Grayling and Fuller are arguing about.  Well, maybe not you per se.  But I certainly needed to look some things up.  And I consider myself fairly well read and well versed on the subjects of Atheism, Christianity, Intelligent Design, Creationism, and science.  But these guys take it to a whole new academic level.  I found all three responses and the subsequent forum exchange thoroughly enjoyable and well worth the read.  Hopefully your head doesn’t implode from the extreme leaps in logic that Fuller attempts.  Chinese gymnasts couldn’t compete with the sure athleticism of his brain’s ability to contort at will.  It’s truly breathtaking.  Enjoy.

Origin of the specious

It is sometimes hard to know whether books that strike one as silly and irresponsible, like Dissent over Descent, the latest book from Steve Fuller, are the product of a desire to strike a pose and appear outrageous (the John Gray syndrome), or really do represent that cancer of the contemporary intellect, post-modernism. I suppose putatively sincere extrusions of the post-modern sensibility might henceforth deserve to be known as “the Steve Fuller syndrome”. For this offering by the American-born sociologist is a classic case of the absurdity to which that sensibility leads.


Against the faith

I wish I could repay AC Grayling’s compliment by naming an exotic mental pathology after him, but regrettably his review of Dissent over Descent displays disorders of a much more mundane kind: he has merely failed to read the book properly and does not know what he is talking about. Other than a sense of the chapter titles, the reader of his review will learn nothing about the contents of the book. My only difficulty in responding to Grayling is that he connects so little with what I actually say – for example, his longest quote from me is eight words. However, based on what Grayling himself says in the review, my guess is that he cooked it up using this five-part recipe:

1. Flip book’s pages to find names of philosophers. (Hint: index may prove helpful.)

2. Note that author positions these philosophers in unfamiliar ways that seem to make Intelligent Design (ID) look good.

3. Condemn immediately by applying A-level intellectual history boilerplate.

4. Appease readers whose own knowledge is also at this level and whose prejudices are like those of the reviewer.

5. Repeat as necessary.

Bolus of nonsense

Steve Fuller complains, as do all authors whose books are panned, that I did not read his book properly (or at all). Alas, I did. And as I did so I naturally thought (again as all authors are apt to do) that I wish he had read the two books I’d previously written on the history of the relation of religious thought to scientific and ethical thinking, in the modern period as regards the former and from classical antiquity as regards the latter. Had he done so he might not - if he had understood them, he could not - have written as he has done in the course of trying to defend the dressed-up version of creationism which calls itself “Intelligent Design theory”.


And the good times continue to roll….in the forum

Be honest; you had to look up “Bolus” didn’t you? I did. And I’m not sure how he’s a applying it.

Look, Fuller can claim that he’s an expert of religious upbringing because he was schooled by the Jesuits. But history is strewn with people that could, at best, be described as highly educated idiots. George Bush, anyone? Hell, I was raised Mormon. That doesn’t mean I’m an expert on the Mormon faith. Sadly, I learned more about that particular religion after I left that church.

But Fuller falls into the same trap as the rest of ID’ers or Creationists: you can’t start with the answer and then find the evidence. That’s the number one failure of any attempt to inject religion into science. Science is only concerned with what’s observable and factual. What ID and Creationism purport to do is fill in the knowledge gaps as they currently exist. But one could argue that their aims are far more nefarious in that they’re attempting to cast doubt on time tested scientific procedures such as radiometric dating. Who’s really playing loose with science when one side of the argument wishes you to believe that accepting the speed of light as variable over time is not only okay, but a foundation for believing that it has always been constant as an assumption in doubt? That’s only acceptable if you have no foundational understanding of the conservation of energy.

Personally, I think any attempt to “prove” your god in crude, physical terms, cheapens its existence. If he/she/it is truly the alpha and omega, beginning and end, omnipotent, omnipresent, all knowing, and all powerful, then why is there this insistence on making it a logical conclusion of the physical world we observe around us. To me, it seems like a natural response to prove how right they are as science, real science, continues to progress towards the natural conclusion: there is no need for a god. And frankly, that’s okay. Once you can accept that, you can start seeing the world as it is in all its glory and, sometimes, horror.