Category FFS

Fundamentalist Math

(Update, Aug. 6, 2007: Hey, this post appears in the 51st Philosophers’ Carnival. And I didn’t even submit it. How cool is that?)

I didn’t think it was possible to write a Christian math textbook. I mean, math is math, right? But this comment at Pharyngula pointed to an article in Harpers that purports to give excerpts from just such a book, Precalculus for Christian Schools, published by Bob Jones University Press.

I don’t normally read Harpers, so I don’t know whether they publish humor. And the excerpts they quoted seemed just too wacky to be true. Or would be, if it weren’t for Poe’s Law.

So I decided to be a good skeptic and check it out. One Amazon reviewer quoted the Harpers excerpts, which most likely meant he was copying from them. Then I found that BJU Press has a sample chapter online.

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The Long D’oh! Man

If you’ve read Terry Pratchett’s Lords and Ladies, you may remember the Long Man, a figure cut into a hillside, inspired by the Cerne Abbas Giant in Dorset, in England.

To promote the new Simpsons movie, a new figure, of Homer Simpson in tighty-whities and holding a doughnut, has been painted on a neighboring field (in water-soluble paint, so it should wash off when it rains).

What’s funnier, though, is the reaction of the local Pagan community:

Ann Bryn-Evans, joint Wessex district manager for The Pagan Federation, said: “It’s very disrespectful and not at all aesthetically pleasing.

“We were hoping for some dry weather but I think I have changed my mind. We’ll be doing some rain magic to bring the rain and wash it away.”

Point 1: Lighten up, dudes. Bitching about this being “disrespectful” makes you look as wacky and unhinged as the Christian nutjobs protesting The Life of Brian and The Last Temptation of Christ.

Point 2: Rain magic? Rain magic?! In case you hadn’t noticed, this is the 21st century. We know what causes rain, and it ain’t rain fairies or however you think it works.

Point 3: The oldest written references to the Cerne Abbas Giant only date back to the 17th century. In a country that’s been continuously inhabited since long before there was even such a thing as the English language, this is the equivalent of last week’s graffiti in the subway. So either this “symbol of ancient spirituality” went unnoticed for thousands of years (including by medieval Christians, not known for their tolerance of pagan symbols), or else this is really an 18th century farmer’s way of telling his neighbor, “I’m gonna beat your skull in, then make you squeal like a pig.”

So please cut out the drama. And next time you’re at Marks & Spencer, pick up a sense of humor.

Debbie Schlussel Tests Poe’s Law

Pop quiz: read the following and try to figure out whether it’s serious, or a parody of right-wing conservatives:

Yale researchers found that male Congressmen with daughters are more likely to vote for “reproductive rights”–the sanitized phrase for abortion: […]

The conclusion they want you to get from this is that pro-life Congressmen are insensitive to women and don’t have contact with any.

But I’d draw a different conclusion: Congressmen who are liberal are more likely to have slutty daughters. And therefore, they are more likely to support abortion for selfish, personal reasons.

Answer: it’s from Debbie Schlussel. I think she’s serious, though obviously it’s really hard to tell.

(HT FSTDT)

Islamic Bicycles

This is for real, as far as I can tell:

Iran plans to make special bicycles designed for women that will be compatible with Islamic regulations and not expose their body movements while riding.

The new bicycle would have a cabin to cover half of a rider’s body, the newspaper Iran quoted project manager Elaheh Sofali as saying.

Jesus and Mo has the perfect T-shirt for this:
Thank you for not provoking my uncontrollable lust

Seriously, what’s these people’s hangup about sex? The cynic in me thinks that if you take a bunch of normal young males and try to get them to suppress the sexual urges bequeathed them by half a billion years’ worth of evolution, of course they’re going to become neurotic and pliant.

These people really need to have a glass of wine, get laid, and just chill out.

If You Could Never Leave the Milky Way, Would You Call it Imprisonment?

Frank Pastore has a rather moronic column over at Clownhall. If you’ve got your anti-stupid goggles on, you can read the whole thing, but one paragraph isn’t addressed in the comments. Here, he is ostensibly reading from the atheist playbook:

Avoid the pesky problem of freewill. If atheism is true, if all that exists is mere matter and energy, then I don’t have a brain, I am my brain. But if the brain is exhaustively physical, then it is just as incapable of acting freely as a computer or any other machine. Which is why the idea of Artificial Intelligence makes for such fun science fiction – the more peo-ple believe that a computer can become a person, the less likely they will have need to believe they were created in God’s image. Thus, more AI, less theism – that’s the game plan. Same with the search for ET. Find life elsewhere so we can dismiss Genesis.

(emphasis added)

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“But It’s Still Just an X!”

I realize that “DaveScot says something incredibly boneheaded” is about as newsworthy as “dog bites man”, “Pope is Catholic”, and “Hollywood remake not as good as original”, but this time I couldn’t resist.

Every time someone tries to demonstrate evolution by pointing to one of the numerous instances when new species have arisen through evolution, e.g., fruit flies speciating into two distinct species in the lab, you can bet that the creationists will say, “but they’re still fruit flies!” This raises the question of just how much change creationists will accept as microevolution.

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And This Is Why the First Amendment Is a Good Thing ™

One more thing to be grateful for
if you live in a country with freedom of speech:

CAIRO, Egypt (Reuters) — An Alexandria court convicted an Egyptian blogger on Thursday for insulting both Islam and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and sentenced him to four years in jail over his writings on the Internet.
…

One of Suleiman’s articles said that al-Azhar in Cairo, one of the most prominent seats of Sunni Muslim learning, was promoting extreme ideas. Another article, headlined “The Naked Truth of Islam as I Saw it”, accused Muslims of savagery during clashes between Muslims and Christians in Alexandria in 2005.

He has also described some of the companions of the Muslim prophet Mohammad as “terrorists”, and has likened Mubarak to dictatorial pharaohs who ruled ancient Egypt.

“I was hoping that he would get a harsher sentence because he presented to the world a bad image of Egypt. There are things that one should not talk about, like religion and politics. He should have got a 10-year sentence,” said lawyer Nizar Habib, who attended the trial as a member of the public.

Point duh-one: freedom of speech is not there to protect popular speech. It’s for unpopular speech.

Point duh-two: an idea that needs legislative protection from criticism is one that can’t stand on its own. I’m sorry Mr. Habib doesn’t like the fact that Suleiman aired Egypt’s dirty laundry in public (any more than I like it when an American makes the US look bad in the eyes of the world), but frankly, the way to deal with this is to fix the problem, not shoot the messenger.

And if there needs to be a law against criticism of Islam, doesn’t that pretty much mean that there’s no rational reason to believe in Islam? What kind of god needs to be protected, like an endangered species?

Let’s Hire A Grizzly as a Babysitter, While We’re at It

Brad Blog reports that someone managed to make a key that opens Diebold voting machines… by copying it off of an image on Diebold’s web site.

Can you imagine what would happen if an individual, rather than a company, had screwed up this way? If you answered “that person would be awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom”, pat yourself on the back. Unfortunately, we can’t give medals to corporations, but this comes close:

NORTH CANTON, Ohio– Diebold, Incorporated, one of the nation’s largest security integrators with expertise in the government, commercial, financial and retail markets, has solidified its homeland security presence. The company recently earned certification from the General Services Administration (GSA) to deliver security integration services that meet the requirements of the Homeland Security Presidential Directive 12 (HSPD-12).

I tried to come up with a better subject line. Really, I did. But all I could come up with was “It’s like letting Bush & Co. run the country” or “Like letting Halliburton handle the post-Katrina reconstruction”.

Gonzales to Judges: Don’t Worry Your Pretty Little Heads About the Law

From the Associated Press:

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales says federal judges are unqualified to make rulings affecting national security policy, ramping up his criticism of how they handle terrorism cases.

In remarks prepared for delivery Wednesday, Gonzales says judges generally should defer to the will of the president and Congress when deciding national security cases.

People have been saying for years that someone needs to give Bush a blow job so he can be impeached. I think we’ve just found the man to do it.

Soapboxes of Morality

Americans United
reports
that Jerry Falwell’s
Liberty Council
has nothing better to do than to go around checking which retailers have the word “Christmas” on their websites. (HT
UTI
and
[info]mcoletti.)

[info]curvemudgeon
said it best, a long time ago:

Why don’t all the people with too much time on their hands get off their soapboxes of morality and start sending me envelopes stuffed with money?

In this spirit, I’m starting my own naughty/nice list:

Naughty Nice
Jerry Falwell
Bill O’Reilly
John Gibson		 (No one yet)

People on the “Naughty” list are the ones who have too much free time, and no better way to fill it than by agitating against a fictitious “war on Christmas”. The way for these people to move to the “Nice” list is to send me an envelope stuffed with money.