According to an account published by the alleged victim of the attack, he was assaulted and arrested by a group of Miami, Florida cops because they did not appreciate him photographing an arrest of some other unrelated person.
This sort of thing seems to be happening with increased regularity in the USA, however there are times and places in the UK where it has become impossible to take photographs on public property without incurring the wrath of police.
The other day a WPC told me that I could not take photos at London’s Liverpool St. station because of unspecifiable “Terrorist Reasons”. Of course, that’s not in the same league as getting physically attacked by a gang of angry police, but it still shows that police in the UK are strongly opposed to any kind of citizen photography in a land overwhelmed by security cameras.
Update: Apparently this is one of the pre-attack photos.
The latest pro-creationist campaign run by the Discovery Institute seeks to establish credibility for the Intelligent Design movement by publishing a list of “reputable scientists” who are willing to endorse ID as an alternative to the theory of Evolution. None of the names listed have any particular relevance to evolutionary development or have published any peer-reviewed papers explaining the expert reasons for their dissent.
According to Time magazine, none of the 600 odd names listed by the discovery institute are Evolutionary biologists, however a number of the DI’s names are people who really should know better than to get involved with this debate. For example one is an Emeritus professor of Geology who believes in young earth creationism, and a neurosurgeon who denies common-descent of life.
If you are a scientist who works for a reputable institution and you allow yourself to endorse this medievalist nonsense, people are going to ask questions. Mostly, fellow scientists and the media are going to ask you to justify your belief, and if you respond by parroting the fragile rhetoric of the Discovery Institute you will be branded as a credulous nit-wit. This is not a conspiracy, this is the way that science detects frauds and nincompoops.
And this is exactly what has happened to Dr. Michael Egnor, a consultant and professor of neuro-surgey and pediatrics. He was called to account for his odd beliefs in a short article published in Time Magazine. The good doctor responded, but in the opinion of most observers he merely demonstrated that he is spectacularly ignorant of high-school level science topics.
The wing-nuts at Overwhelming Evidence are already accusing the rest of the world of being involved in a conspiracy theory to scare scientists like Michael Egnor back into line. This fits in very well with their martyrdom complex, and a desire to be seen as the lone voice of sanity in a world that overwhelmingly rejects their theories. They would very much like to make a martyr of Egnor so that they can show the world just how hard done-by they are. They would like us to think that a nameless legion of enemies lead by Richard Dawkins has a grudge against Dr. Egnor, however the truth is much simpler.
It is not Dawkins or a conspiracy of “scientists” who have hurt Egnor’s reputation. It is Egnor’s own folly that he allows the Discovery Institute to sell him as an expert in evolutionary development when in actual fact he is an expert in brain physiology. This naturally creates an impression of a man who does not know his own limits.
According to the almighty Internet Dr Michael Egnor is a trusted surgeon, but would you trust a man to perform brain surgery on your child if you knew that he could not tell the difference between science and the kind of pseudo-scientific mysticism pedaled by the Discovery Institute.
I just cannot let this go: I’ve become an obsessive freak spotter, currently I am obsessed by the ongoing madness at OverwhelmingEvidence.com, the cool site for teen scientists to discuss the exciting and important theory of Intelligent Design. The growing consensus is that this site is populated by approximately 50% trolls, 25% ID opponents leaving a measly 25% remaining for the earnest ID supporters for whom the site was allegedly created.
Today’s was a very exciting day for OE afficianardos. A user was banned from the forums for being a “troll”, his crime was drawing readers’ attention to a very well researched study about the way that ID proponents have been mis-representing the Haeckel’s Embryo Drawing controversy. The study demonstrated that not only is it today’s EvoDevo consensus that Haeckel’s observations were false, but this has been documented explicitly in the every text book that mentioned his infamous drawings, and this has been the case since at the latest 1939.
Naturally this post had to be deleted, and the author’s comments removed from public view. Unfortunately the blogging software that OE use has the nasty habit of deleting entire threads if the editor attempts to delete just one comment. “Patrick”, one of the OE moderators diligently re-posted the deleted comments under his own user-id, including the very latest one by a newly registered user upon which they posted an explanation of what they had just done (please see the screenshot).
I’m certain that some of our British readers my recognise the name BobMort. Just click through to his profile if you want to have a guess at who he might be (or pretends to be):
And I should also point out that a few hours before BobMort registered I spotted another new user called “ViCreeves“. I do hope that they start posting together, they were a great double-act.
I’m not the only blogger to have noticed how uber-zany Overwhelming Evidence has become; If you were to take something that is insane, and then add additional nuttiness, plus a dash of loopyness, and then view the whole thing through the distorted lens of a fractured mind - only then will you get an inkling of how barking mad that site is.
Alison, Pooflinger and The DesignInterference all seem to take issue with OE.com’s “quizzlestick”. She wrote an article that is utter nonsense, even by the low standards of OE.com. I am pretty sure that rebuttals like this are not needed, the whole site seems to have been taken over by pranksters. The best thing we can do is laugh along with them.
I think I’ll catch a pigeon
To teach it how to dance
I’ll keep it in the wardrobe
And feed it bread from France
My pigeon will be stubborn
And steadfastly refuse
To switch off Silent Witness
So I can watch the news
My pigeon will make gravy
With string and twigs and dirt.
Our guests will smile indulgently
But leave before dessert.
(with thanks to wetwebwork for the pigeon photo)
The fundamentalist Christian “creationist” website “OverwhelmingEvidence.com” is a little bit crazier than usual these days: When it first set-up by conservative theologian and part-time mathematiian William Dembski, it was intended to be a debating forum where teen creationists (i.e. more ignorant than the standard Internet creationists) could jaw about the latest exciting theories from the “Discovery Institute”, the American pseudo-science organisation dedicated to destroying materialst science and Darwin’s theory of Evolution.
OE.com is notable amongst “Creation Science” blogs in that it eschewes any form of editorial control. You can sign up and start blogging immediatly. This has resulted in a unique opportunity: Imagine a group of ignorant non-scientists witrh a grudge against established biology pretending to know better than the people with genuine scientific qualifications. What is the possbility that a satirist or three might slip in and post articles that send up the whole thing?
Commentators on the site “Panda’s Thumb” and “90% True” have recently started observing out that a number of posts on OE seem ludicrous even by creationist standards. It’s as if the creationists suddenly stray off-message and have started saying what they really think. The ID movement is not usually noted for it’s honesty and openness.
For example, this utter nonsense has sparked a debate of over 150 comments. I did not find a single one from the ID apologists dismissing the original article worthless work of mystical puff. The article in question argues that “materialism” has failed science, and the only way for science to make any progress is to abandon “nihilism” and embrace Jesus.
I can only assume that the ID crowd are so paranoid about their failing theories that they are prepared to embrace just about anybody who agrees with them regardless of how absurd their proposition.
Here is an article that purports to advocate a “scientist” called Kazmer Ujavorsy who claims that ID theory has enabled him to cure cancer by the means of orally ingested semen. He could just try paying for sex - I’m sure it would be easier. And how about an article that intends to settle this time-old debate by the means of an animated flash game.
I can no longer distinguish the genuine cranks from the crank impersonators who seem to be just as active on the board. For example I’ve noticed that posts by authors “HaEris” and “Quizzlestick” have also appeared on the possibly satirical conservative website “Shelley The Republican“.
Some of these names might be clues about their author’s intent: HaEris may be a contraction of “Hail Eris”, the greeting given by Robert Anton Wilson’s fictional “Dischordians”, in his anarchic sci-fi novel Illuminatus. The Dischordans are a secret society dedicated to spreading chaos in a society which they believe has become overwhelemd by forces of control and order and stupidity. Is a “dischordian” the sort of person who might enjoy making fun of these creationists in denial? Possibly.
My lesson from this is that genunine proponents cannot distingusih between genuine ID articles and the fake satirical ID articles. If the hard-core IDers are prepared to accept stuff that is intended to be nonsense on an equal footing with their own earnest pseudo-science babble, then I think we can safely conclude that there is no practical difference between the two.
This is one of my favourites from Stuart Lee’s 2005 set. I saw him perform this live in the more intimate setting of Crouch End’s “Downstairs at the Kings Head”, however I think it works just as well in front of a big audience:
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According to the OLPC project (One Laptop Per Child), the people who are building a sub $100 laptop so that kids in developing countries can become 3lit3 hackers too, the new device will come pre-loaded with a visual smalltalk based development studio called Squeak, and a fun animation / programming toy called Scratch.
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I found the video mostly very annoying, once you skip past the beginning they get into a demo of the environment. Basically it’s a drag & drop scripting environment with an emphasis on animation and sound.
You can program flash-style animations and drag and drop the scripts in real-time - the animation changes in real-time as a consequence. I guess that the individual modules are objects written in Smalltalk, which can easily be extended.
I also like the idea that these laptops will present new users with a whole bunch of new programming languages and VB is not one of them.
I just discovered that the art-group known as Paperrad have a blog. In case you have trouble picking out text through the hyper-saturated backgrounds they love, they have an RSS feed which is here: RSS
Gumby and his clones put on an exciting concert:
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