Blogs / Bad Astronomy

Chris is a friend of mine and all, but sometimes, y’know, I worry about him a little.

Then I see this and I worry about him a lot.

Works for me.

Tip o’ the fishing cap to Jokermage.

With the recent hullaballoo over my foray, once again, into showing how ridiculous young-Earth creationism is, and the sheer flood of comments from people who have completely and utterly missed the point of what I wrote, I thought it would be fun to hand out a little more smackdown.

This time, I have help! It’s from Shane Killian, a fellow skeptic who has posted some YouTube videos about various and sundry aspects of twisting reality. He’s done an excellent job of debunking creationism in his series called "Bogosity". In Part 2, he takes on creationism versus real astronomy. Full disclosure: he has some help in this part by someone you may recognize (hint: look at the very upper right part of this blog page).

And I suppose to avoid a bunch of comments from people who still don’t get it: in these posts (and in this video) I am not attacking religion in general or even Christianity specifically. I am attacking creationism, because it’s wrong, and because so many of its propagators are liars, and so many of them are very, very eager to tear down the separation between Church and State.

Got it? Great! Now watch us destroy creationism. Enjoy.

In case you weren’t sure that U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez was a pandering lackey, you might want to read this article in the Seattle Times where they say he is giving a talk sponsored by the evil liars at The Discovery Institute, the group that promotes the religion of Intelligent Design. Gonzalez won’t be speaking on religious or scientific matters (he’ll discussing "efforts to protect intellectual property and combat cybercrime", which I find richly ironic given both his history and that of the DI). Still, the DI is a slimy group of liars, and having them sponsor this talk doesn’t move Gonzalez up in my book at all. I’d even say it moves him down a notch, but he’s already so low he could walk under snake’s belly without having to duck.

Tip o’ the mortarboard to DefConBlog.

Don’t get me wrong. I love Rebecca. But then she does something like this, and I hate her. Why? Because this is brilliant and I wish I had thought of it myself!

There are lots of smart, creative, sciencey BABloggees out there, so think up something and send it in to her!

I was interviewed on the EZHelp radio show yesterday, and the interview is now online. I had a fun time. It was a little odd knowing that my mom was listening in on her computer, but also kinda fun too. Hi Mom!

It’s not often I get to post a good news follow-up to an earlier story. Regular BABloggees will no doubt remember the saga of Shannon Malloy, a young woman who was in a nasty car accident which nearly killed her. Her harrowing story was written up in a local newspaper, and I took some exception to the article’s reliance on superstition.

A relatively nasty dust-up followed as peoples’ emotions flared. Shannon herself as well as her friends and family got involved. I took some time to think through the situation, and decided to apologize, post a followup (which got a modicum of attention), and then, in an effort to turn a negative into a positive, set up a donation button on the blog here to collect money for Shannon’s extremely expensive recuperation.

This all happened in May, but with my move to Colorado, I couldn’t pursue this until my bank account got set up, I got PayPal to acknowledge I had moved, blah blah blah. But anyway, it’s now all done. I tallied up the donations, and I am very, very pleased to announce that $2250 has been sent to the Shannon Malloy Recovery Fund!

I’m still a little embarrassed about the whole situation, but I’m also incredibly uplifted to see so many people take the time to toss in a few bucks to help Shannon out. I’m very proud of my readers. Ya done good.

I just discovered Shannon has a blog, where we can all keep track of her progress, too.