Month: September 2007

More ID drivel

Michael KoppelmanLeave a comment

Some ‘tard that goes by bornagain77 over at Uncommon Descent said:

ID ONLY makes an inference to an intelligent agency when overwhelming complexity is found that can not be accounted for by chance in any way, shape, or fashion. ID makes NO inference to the exact nature of the designer and is Thus compatible with any of the other “Creator” centered religions besides Christianity. It is even, for the time being, compatible with alien beings being the creators.

I don’t know how they write that shit with a straight face.

First of all, natural selection is the OPPOSITE of chance. Dawkins explains this very well. In a complex biosphere, not all organisms are created equal. Some survive better, reproduce better and compete better. The world is filled with their descendants.

Second, any theory of Intelligent Design (ID) leads ultimately to a more complex being than is being explained by ID. So the IDiots say “this is too complex, it must have been designed”, apparently not realizing they are invoking a more complex thing in the process. It is logically bankrupt.

Do you think it is chance that this above mentioned ‘tard goes by bornagain77? Of course not — the ID movement is people with a conclusion (God is the benign creator of the universe) looking for science to back it up. That is the antithesis of science and it is why the belief in ID is a sure sign that you are an academic hack.

More ID drivel

Fox News, sleezy as ever

Michael KoppelmanLeave a comment

Brad points out someone else who pointed out that Fox News, during the recent hearings with Gen. Petraeus, cut away during questions by Democrats and put on Ann Coulter! After Coulter calls Democrats and the media treasonous the Fox-tards say she nicely punctuated the major themes.

Coulter is too stupid to discuss anymore. But Fox News should be fairly and accurately renamed to the Bush Can Do No Wrong News Network.

Fox News, sleezy as ever

Ireland Day 1

Michael Koppelman1 Comment

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I’m just outside of Cork, Ireland right now. I’ll be here for the next 10 days or so. Tonight we sat in a very crowded pub and watched Ireland play in the Rugby World Cup. I’ve never really watched rugby — it is a fun game to watch! Ireland got their asses kicked, though, unfortunately.

I’ll be posting more photos and travelogues as we go along. On Sunday night we are playing a gig in Myrtleville and then we are heading up to Clifden.

Ireland Day 1

Jesus and Kathy Griffin

Michael Koppelman3 Comments

This is hilarious:

Her point is valid and I’m surprised that the pious aren’t more offended by very rich people thanking Jesus for keeping them in money, blow and whores.

Muslims should have no reason to think that Mohammed will never be depicted in cartoons and Christians should have no reason to think that Jesus won’t ever be joked about. Welcome to Earth, a planet of 7 billion people, none of whom agree with you on everything or even most things. You can hope, but not expect, that everyone is going to be respectful of your wishes.

Says Fox News:

I want to actually show you that, in fact, Kathy Griffin is wrong. Jesus had everything to do with her winning that award. And here’s the reasoning.

Jesus died on a cross 2,000 years ago. His dying words were, “Forgive them Father for they know not what they do.” He died and they buried him in a rock cut tomb. Three days later, as the Bible says, he rose from the dead. That day is what Christians celebrate as Easter.

After the resurrection, Christianity began to take off like wildfire, spreading from the Middle East northward to Europe and westward into Ethiopia. In 300 A.D. Emperor Constantine accepted Christianity and it beccame the religion of Europe. Rome soon became the seat of the faith. After several years of human failings, the church went through conflicts and quite a few unbiblical years — the crusades and the inquisition to name just two. Out of that came the Reformation — the reforming of the Church, sort of a back-to-basics Bible and the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Out of the Reformation emerged a vision of law by Samuel Rutherford, called Lex is Rex, Law is King. From that, others devised a secular version that is used to help lay the foundation of government for a new land called America. Ninety-four percent of America’s founding era documents mention the Bible; 34 percent quote the Bible directly. The idea of bringing unity to the universal is a particularly Biblical concept.

The freedoms we enjoy in this country to speak freely and to live freely are directly related to that man who died on a cross 2,000 years ago.

So, you see, Kathy Griffin, Jesus has everything to do with you winning that award.

I rest my case.

Jesus and Kathy Griffin

Chasing the ghost of Osama bin laden

Michael KoppelmanLeave a comment

Meh.

In October of 2005, 2 years ago now, I did a podcast called Bush’s Iraq Exit Strategy (MP3, 19:42, 9.1MB) where I predicted exactly what is happening here. Bush’s Iraq exit strategy is to leave office. It’s always been his strategy, ever since the neo-Con boys got surprised by the fact that Dick Cheney doesn’t always lie and post-invasion Iraq is a hell of a lot harder than they thought it would be.

I understand their thinking. Keep things secure until the government can defend itself. They don’t know any other way to think. They can’t conceive of any other option than just staying the course. So, yet again, we are told to be patient.

In my opinion, we haven’t even proven that we are not making things worse, not to mention actually making things better. Many Iraqis believe that we will never leave; that we are permanent occupiers. Bush’s speech the other day would not give them any reason to think otherwise.

As I’ve said ten million times, Iraq is a mess and none of our options are good ones anymore. The notion that this option, this option that we’ve been trying for 4 years, with trillions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of dead bodies – the notion that this is the best option we have is completely daft.

Osama bin laden keeps beating these guys. He beats them at every step. He plays them like a fiddle. We are still chasing the ghost of Osama bin laden. Bush isn’t evil. He’s incompetent. Utterly incompetent.

That’s why he should be impeached, by the way, not because he “lied” but because he demonstrated extreme incompetence.

Chasing the ghost of Osama bin laden

Greenhouse gases

Michael KoppelmanLeave a comment

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Global warming deniers love to point out that, yes, the earth is warming but it is not related to human activity. They really, really want to believe that we can continue to pump shit into the atmosphere without bound and never suffer any ill effects from it. It is this belief, which is not backed up by any science whatsoever, that leads virtually all Right Wingers to reject the overwhelming consensus of the scientific community.

The image at right is taken from A report of Working Group I of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. It shows the atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases over the last 10,000 years. The ancient measurements are from ice cores.

What is crystal clear on this graph is the effect of the industrial revolution on the amount of these gases in the atmosphere. The graph steepens at about 1800 and then gets even steeper around 1960.

The rise in the concentration of global warming gases is correlated to the global average temperature and the global average sea level and is inversely correlated with the northern hemisphere snow cover. (See the link above for the plots.) This report is from an international body of climate scientists.

How can you look at this data and the correlation with global climate change and conclude that anthropogenic climate change is impossible?

You can’t. People that do so are swayed more by political or economic arguments than climate science. They pull out opinions from minority scientific views and claim it backs up their claim. They ignore the data because it is an inconvenient truth.

The facts here are common sense: more greenhouse gases means more greenhouse effect which means higher temperatures, a changing climate and a dangerous situation that may be beyond our ability to solve.

The conservative approach is to be cautious. I wonder why conservatives don’t see it that way?

Greenhouse gases