Conservapedia bare pawned
Jun 25 2008 21:08
For reals, Conservapedia has pissed-off science again so science is all 'GTFO Conservapedia'
Bad Science has some coverage
The scientist getting pissed off is a dude who has been working on e-coli cultures for the last 20 yrs - anyways - basically, it's more proof that evolution CAN be observed in the here-and-now (in Lenski et al's paper, the e-coli evolved an entirely novel, for them, ability to digest a food (citrate) previously 'inedible' by them), not that spazzy "oh noes but we cants see teh evolutionz hapnins" shit the creationists go on about.
Conservapedia, well one dude from it, start bitching, "oh well where iz ur evidenz?!?", so Lenski is all, "it's in the fuckin paper like", and right-wing christian is still, "but where iz teh reel evidenz?" and Lenski is, "right just STFU stupid prick" and then uses the bible to pawn lying creationist twat.
Probably no-one else interested in this but I think it's funny as fuck.
Jun 25 2008 21:38
#2
the link to the explanation of allusion - oh, how I laughed.
Jun 25 2008 21:43
#3
Quote:
It is my impression that you seem to think we have only paper and electronic records of having seen some unusual E. coli. If we made serious errors or misrepresentations, you would surely like to find them in those records. If we did not, then – as some of your acolytes have suggested – you might assert that our records are themselves untrustworthy because, well, because you said so, I guess. But perhaps because you did not bother even to read our paper, or perhaps because you aren’t very bright, you seem not to understand that we have the actual, living bacteria that exhibit the properties reported in our paper, including both the ancestral strain used to start this long-term experiment and its evolved citrate-using descendants. In other words, it’s not that we claim to have glimpsed “a unicorn in the garden” – we have a whole population of them living in my lab!
Classic!
Jun 25 2008 21:59
#4
Yeah, but you can prove anything with facts.
Jun 25 2008 22:03
#5
My all time favorite conservapedia cluelessness. From their entry on jazz (yeah, they have one)
Quote:
It combines African American music, ragtime, and the blues
In other words, it combines African American music, African American music and, wait for it....... African American music......... 
Jun 25 2008 22:07
#6
you know they want to say 'nigger music'
Jun 25 2008 23:32
#7
I won''t post the link, it's easy to find on conservapedia, but i just read that thread. Schlafly's co-editors are kicking his ass, and getting banned left and right.
Jun 26 2008 00:14
#8
xConorx wrote:
you know they want to say 'nigger music'
I went to a record fair once and one stall had a section just called 'Black Music'. But it also had a rock 'n' roll section with Elvis and Jerry Lee Lewis in it.
Jun 26 2008 17:26
#9
the latest:
Quote:
Scientists unearthed a skull of the most primitive four-legged creature in Earth's history, which should help them better understand the evolution of fish to advanced animals that walk on land.The 365 million-year-old fossil skull, shoulders and part of the pelvis of the water-dweller, Ventastega curonica, were found in Latvia, researchers report in a study published in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature.
Even though Ventastega is likely an evolutionary dead-end, the finding sheds new details on the evolutionary transition from fish to tetrapods. Tetrapods are animals with four limbs and include such descendants as amphibians, birds and mammals.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/06/26/tech/main4210989.shtml
Jun 27 2008 00:56
#10
Conor
Re the last bit of your OP, of course we are interested. You should have more faith in your ability to entertain and amuse. 
Anyhoo have just posted the Guide and am excited at the showing of an old courtroom classic i am yet to see. It is on on Saturday on BBC4. Have you seen it? "Inherit the Wind" starring Spencer Tracy and made in 1960 and based closely on the "Scopes Monkey" trial in 1925 in Tennesse when a teacher was prosecuted for teaching Darwinism.
Bit depressing i thought this was sorted back then 
but at least it will be an awesome film.. Anyone else seen it?
Love
LW XX
Jun 27 2008 01:31
#11
The movie is great and Scopes was a classic trial in American history. William Jennings Bryan, who led the prosecution, was a three time presidential candidate.The defense was led by Clarence Darrow, played by Tracy, the "attorney for the damned", who'd defended Bill Haywood and Eugene Debs. It was one of the first major separation of church and state cases the American Civil Liberties Union took on.
Here's a site about Darrow
http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/darrow.htm
Jun 27 2008 07:16
#12
Lone Wolf wrote:
ConorRe the last bit of your OP, of course we are interested. You should have more faith in your ability to entertain and amuse.
Anyhoo have just posted the Guide and am excited at the showing of an old courtroom classic i am yet to see. It is on on Saturday on BBC4. Have you seen it? "Inherit the Wind" starring Spencer Tracy and made in 1960 and based closely on the "Scopes Monkey" trial in 1925 in Tennesse when a teacher was prosecuted for teaching Darwinism.
Bit depressing i thought this was sorted back thenLove
LW XX
I've seen it. It's good until the crappy ending.
Jun 27 2008 15:02
#13
Hell yes I've seen that film 
Good laugh.
SJ Gould has a nice chapter on Dayton in 'hen's teeth and horses toes' - worth a read
Jun 27 2008 15:26
#14
David in Atlanta wrote:
The movie is great and Scopes was a classic trial in American history. William Jennings Bryan, who led the prosecution, was a three time presidential candidate.The defense was led by Clarence Darrow, played by Tracy, the "attorney for the damned", who'd defended Bill Haywood and Eugene Debs. It was one of the first major separation of church and state cases the American Civil Liberties Union took on.Here's a site about Darrow
http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/darrow.htm
"Attorney for the damned" has to be one of the coolest monikers ever.
Jun 27 2008 17:07
#15
Wikipedia very helpfully lists how the play and film depart from the historical record of the trial http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inherit_the_Wind#Specific_differences
Jun 27 2008 17:25
#16
Yeah Scopes wasn't even a biology teacher - he was PE and physics, but did subst. biology.
Jun 27 2008 17:42
#17
New Scientist got in on this too
Jun 27 2008 18:13
#18
xConorx wrote:
Yeah Scopes wasn't even a biology teacher - he was PE and physics, but did subst. biology.
What was really funny about the whole situation was that the state mandated bio textbook taught evolution as a fact, thereby making every teacher in the state a criminal one way or another.
Jun 27 2008 18:28
#19
Quote:
In conclusion, it is difficult to imagine a course of action more incredibly, enormously, staggeringly counter-productive to his cause than that undertaken by Mr Schlafly.
Jun 27 2008 18:39
#20
Well yeah, the whole case was basically to put Dayton on the map from what I gather from Gould's account. The governor, Peay, who signed the Butler Act (the one that got evolution banned originally) didn't really give a shit, he thought it'd be fairly inconsequential and biology would continue to be taught as-is, but ACLU basically wanted a test-case and town-boosters though the whole shebang would be good for the town. Scopes volunteered to be the test-case. He didn't even actively teach evolution, merely directed student to a standard evolutionary account as part of exam-preparation.Gould sees a number of misconceptions about the whole case
1 - that Scopes was persecuted - it sounds like ACLU basically made it worse as legislators had no intention of enforcing Butler act and even Bryan urged no penalty for non-compliance. there is of course the principalled objection that the Act is nonsense.
2 - that Darrow vanquished Bryan during the trial. Thing is, Scopes HAD violated law so technically WAS guilty, ACLU wanted a quick conviction so they could appeal in a higher court. The conviction was over-turned on a technicality, so the higher-court appeal was never pursuable so the Act itself remained unchallenged til the 60s. Basically it was the Cold War that saw yanks starting to throw out creationist shite from their science education programmes.
It was Bryan's own leaning to day-age creationism (that the 6 days of Genesis are metaphorical days, that could last an age), and so abandoning of traditional literal account that made him lose public face, not Darrow's questionning per-se.
Of course, Bryan died 5 days after trial ended and so actually had his name restored and a college built in his name!
3 - that anti-evolutionism dwindled - not so. Because Scopes got off on a technicality, the Butler Act was never challenged, and in effect, evolution-education was diminished/diluted in light of the Act's persistence. Copverage of evolution in US secondary-level textbooks became noticeably scant in the years followingthe Scopes Trial. "No arm of the industry is as cowardly as the publishers of public school texts - markets of millions are not easily ignored" (Gould, in Hen's Teeth...)
Jun 27 2008 19:20
#21
Bryan was a decent enough guy, a well-intentioned bourgeois reformist who was just wrong about almost everything.
Jun 28 2008 00:13
#22
Scopes was convicted. The trial was appealed to the Tenn. supreme court, who chose to overturn on a technicality rather than rule on the constitutionality of the law, which was of course the whole point of the charade. By that point I would imagine everyone except the ACLU wanted the whole thing to go away.
Jun 28 2008 01:52
#23
Aye it wasa cos the fine set was 100$ and they shouldn't have set anything over $50 that it was overturned.
Jun 28 2008 02:25
#24
The law stated
Quote:
Section 2. Be it further enacted, That any teacher found guilty of the violation of this Act, Shall be guilty of a misdemeanor and upon conviction, shall be fined not less than One Hundred $ (100.00) Dollars nor more than Five Hundred ($ 500.00) Dollars for each offense.
You're kinda right. Here's the directly relevant part of the state supreme court decision:
Quote:
This record disclosed that the jury found the defendant below guilty, but did not assess the fine. The trial judge himself undertook to impose the minimum fine of $ 100 authorized by the Statute. This was error. Under section 14 of article 6 of the Constitution of Tennessee, a fine in excess of $ 50 must be assessed by a jury. The Statute before us does not permit the imposition of a smaller fine than $ 100.Since a jury alone can impose the penalty this Act requires, and as a matter of course no different penalty can be inflicted, the trial judge exceeded his jurisdiction in levying this fine, and we are without power to correct his error. The judgment must accordingly be reversed. Upchurch v. State, 153 Tenn. 198.
The Court is informed that the plaintiff in error is no longer in the service of the State. We see nothing to be gained by prolonging the life of this bizarre case. On the contrary, we think the peace and dignity of the State, which all criminal prosecutions are brought to redress, will be better conserved by the entry of a nolle prosequi herein. Such a course is suggested to the Attorney-General.
Jun 30 2008 00:41
#25
Am watching the film now. Didn't recognise Frederic March as the prosecutor, he was well fit when he was younger.
Jun 30 2008 01:20
#26
original or remake Jess?
Jun 30 2008 01:26
#27
ah, orig
Jun 30 2008 13:50
#28
Didn't know there was a remake...
Jun 30 2008 13:59
#29
Yeah early 90s I think?
Jun 30 2008 14:03
#30
Just googled it - 1999 actually and ooh quite a cast .. Jack Lemmon and George C. Scott. - prolly a pretty unnecessary remake but i will def see it when i get the chance...Lemmon is great in serious roles..
most excellent