Chez Watt Vote June 7, 2006

This time we have a bumper crop. It seems the champions of Nashty and
McClueless are being challenged by a committee of radioactivity. Under
normal circumstances, the IQ of a committee is equal to the IQ of the
smartest individual divided by the number of individuals, so this must
be a very large group.

Vote early, or the wrong Chez Watt will get into office.

Jason Harvestdancer

====

In the "Is that the reason it looked so familiar?" dept.

Yet there are no very old, widely expanded (stage 3) SNRs
in our galaxy and only a few moderately old ones (stage 2) in the
Milky Way...

Uh... our galaxy *is* the Milky Way Galaxy.

====

In the "Ron Wyatt found a rock shaped like a chuck key" category:

I think Noah's was smart
enough to devise a power drill if he didn't need to purchase it from
the local store.

====

In the 'No I don't check my posts for logical inconsistencies, why do
you ask?' category;

your legal training excludes you from
even pretending that you know what you're talking about.

====

In the: "Its bleedin' obvious, innit?" category,

Hmm, I wonder if Evolution has an address.

Yep. www.talkorigins.org

====

Has anyone nominated this one yet?

How many of the technical reports about climate change
have you bothered to look at yet?

None. I presume they're biased.

====

In the "giving credit where it's due" category:

You can't simply blame everything on wood.

True. Many things are the fault of Repulicans, for example.

====

In the category: Lecturing another fundie creationist with egg on his
face

We know you're laboring under the yolk of difficult choices, trying to
resolve some life-altering incommensurable premises.

====

Openly arguing for the naturalistic evolution.

Evolution is not sufficient. I can't believe I still to this day have to
lay these tired old canards to rest.

Anyone refusing to believe Occam's Razor (i.e, Macro evolution requires the
hand of G_d) totally has issues with acceptance.

Accept it! Accept the answer that's staring you plain in the face!

====

But nothing else...

The talks center primarily around evolutionary biology, in all of its
aspects: cosmology, astronomy, planetology, geology, astrobiology,
ecology, ethology, biogeography, phylogenetics and evolutionary biology
itself....

====

If you're going to reinvent Intelligent Design into an intelligent
designer, then it must be okay to reinvent the theory of Evolution into
a theory of an Evolutioner.

Chez Watt?

The "theory" of ID asserts that an Intelligent Designer is responsible
for life. It needs no "reinventing" to do that. And the "IDesigner"
(not to be confused with "IDer" which I use to mean "ID advocate") can
very well be an "evolutioner," as ID "theory" has taken pains to state.

So all that "evolutioner"-speak is moot.

And what exactly is the point, anyway? Judge Jones has already stopped
any public ID developement by declaring it, "Creationism".

Public development?? Another Chez Watt.

Science does not progress by "public development" (in 9th grade science

class), but by R&D. All Judge Jones stopped - and only in Dover, PA -
was *public* schools' misrepresenting evolution. Any student anywhere
who wants to misrepresent evolution - even fantasize about being on the

forefront of "public development" of a new "theory" - can still do so.

====

From the "black is white ... prove me wrong" category:

...fact is debatable.

====

Since I dont accept evolution even at the most basic, molecular level I
certainly dont accept its claims of common ancestry between two later
species.

Now that's a non-sequitur if I ever heard one. Ever hear of
Goldschmidt?

I believe he's a fellow who believed in a special kind of macromutation
or variation, which are called the Goldschmidt Variations. Is that it?
Glenn Gould wrote about them in The Well-Tempered Panda.

Under the category "It's music to my ears."

====

- so good it was nominated twice -

I don't believe in easy seduction of girls. They're inseducibly
complex.

In the "Jana Dembski" category

====

Pascal's other wager:

I am a Christian and I reject Darwinian selection, as a matter of fact
I dont even know what Darwinian selection is, but to be on the safe
side, I reject it.

====

Baby needs a new pair of shoes.

Further, even if repeating parts were found, the biologists may not
necessarily do much with them. Randomness alone will produce repeating
patterns.

====

- so good it was nominated twice -

In the Category of Declaring an Absolute Truth!!

ID theory
was NEVER formulated to answer the "who," "what," "when," "where,"
"why," and "how" questions.

====

A little salty

Folks, Im not here to troll, Im not here to hate. Im going to back to
school in August for a degree in MArine Biology/Oceanography.
Things like this make baby Cousteau cry.

====

Two out of three ain't bad

A person can only be two of the three on this list:

1. Honest.
2. Informed.
3. A Young-Earth Creationist.

====

In the "you have nothing to lose but your chain stores" category:

When Marx came up with that quote I don't think he paid much attention
to the effect that Capitalism tends to have on the price of luxury
goods over time.

====

This bit in the "what about the rest of them?" category:

many atheists xpost to tis ng and many atheists believe that there
is no such thing as a God.

====

In the 'I've been there, done that' category.

Hey fucknuts, you are confusing evolution with pokemon.

Yep. Years ago I was Hippiemon, but since then I've evolved into
Geezermon.

====

There is an article in the Daily Princetonian discussing the
"Student Bill of Rights" campaign of David Horowitz against
leftism in American universities.

What the *** is "leftism?"

An album by Leftfield, arguably the loudest band in England.

who, according to wikipedia, are pioneers in the fields of intelligent
dance music (IDM).

The steps are governed by neither law nor chance? The dances are
irreducibly complex, so that once you start you can't stop until it's
over?

====

Once, our great public schools and
universities concentrated on the core curricula: readin', ritin', rithmatic.
Now they are awash in Neo-liberal, secularist and Darwinist mumbo-jumbo,
teaching about compassion for terrorists who want to kill your mother and
want to pretend there is no scientific debate about evolution.

I would have said, "you just can't make this stuff up", but I suspect
I'd be wrong in this case.

====

In the 'it's only an ad hom if someone else says it' category:

I can just hear the evo-cheerleaders grinding their axes and embarking
on the war path of ad homs and off-hand comparisons of creationism with
the Taliban. A few will probably boast about their IQ and others will
accuse me of being scientifically wanting, in spite of the fact that
they couldn't tell a gene from a lysosome.

====

Have they explicitly considered the sorts of situations that arise
in resistance to pathogens?

Nah. These people are really, really stupid experts on evolutionary
theory. They probably never heard of pathogens. Too bad. I'm sure
they'd love to know that the problem has been solved. :-)

Maybe you could write to them and let them know? :-)

On the plus side, my cable connection has turned into a superconductor.


On the minus side, his rejoinder has lowered the temperature in my
place so much, my poor cucumber seedlings just gave up the ghost and
keeled over.

====

In the "Preaching to the choir" category:

Can someone please explain how the ToE explains sexual reproduction.
Actually, don't bother.

Just ignore them.

====

Tonsils used to be considered proof of unintelligent design. They are
now known to be a very important part of cheek cell production. Their
antigens are a very important in dissolving food caught between a
person's teeth.

<sobs>

<pulls self together>

Right. Tonsils are the lymph nodes found in the mouth and throat. There

are in fact several, but the better known are the 'adenoids' which are
sometimes removed if they obstruct nasal breathing, and the palatine
tonsils which are easily visible in the back of the throat. They are
organs of the immune system which contain (amongst other types of cell)

lymphocytes which have been presented with an antigen from an invading
micro-organism, and are now proliferating rapidly for deployment round
the body and production of antibodies.

Having introduced you to your tonsils, let's go over what you stated:

1. There is no evidence that tonsils were designed, either badly or
well. But they can be used as *evidence against* the existence of ID.
Enlarged tonsils can obstruct nasal breathing or drainage of the middle

ear; and believe me, you do not want a peritonsillar abscess
('quinsy'). In addition, bacteria grow so well in the tonsillar crypts
(mucous-filled channels on the tonsil surface) that they can lead to
bacterial plugs ('tonsilloliths') causing persistent halitosis.

2. Tonsils have nothing to do with the production of cheek cells. These

are produced, not surprisingly, in the basal layer of the cheek
epidermis.

3. Tonsils do *not* produce antigens. An antigen is any substance which

stimulate the immune response: a bacterial protein, pollen, nickel in
plated jewellery, or even your own thyroid stimulating hormone receptor

if you have Graves' disease.

4. Antigens do not dissolve food caught between teeth. You are probably

thinking of the *enzyme* amylase which is secreted by the salivary
glands, and breaks down starch. In any case, most foods do not
*dissolve*. They are usually chewed, swallowed, then broken down by
enzymes.

I can't imagine where you read or heard all this, but whatever the
source, I wouldn't trust it as far as I could throw it.

====

In the category: OK, so the Intellgent Designer muffed the pop quiz,
but he's hoping his midterm grades bring up his average:

Further, even if one were to augment the experiment and compare the two
mutation rates, and if one were to find no difference, the only
implication is that the particular intelligent agency of that strain of
bacteria isn't equipped to deal with that particular challenge. This
would be the same phenomenon as an unprepared student taking a multiple
choice test and doing no perceptibly better than chance (within some
convention for error margins). The same student may do quite well on
some other test.
The absence of evidence for a phenomenon in small fraction of instances
is no evidence of absence of phenomenon in all instances. The LD
experiment didn't even get to the point to demonstrate the absence of
evidence (for different rates of mutations, since it didn't compare the
two mutation rates) in that single instance, much less show the
evidence of absence (of such difference generally).

====

Evolution is "playing with FIRE."

Under the category "Hoisted by one's own metaphor."

====

Nominated in the "Ultimate please do my homework for me category":

Well, can you point some of this research out and show how it supports
ID rather than evolution? It's rather hard to have a discussion with
no topic.

You can do that for yourself by adopting a "self-service" attitude
rather than a "I should be catered to" one.

You can do a literature search for many particular investigative
efforts, and then you could apply sound principles of
scientific/logical inference to these efforts and discover it for
yourself.

====

A friend is thinking of doing a Philosophy of the Disworld. I am just *full*
of ideas...

Disworld is *stupid*! And its momma so stupid she need George W. to
think for her! She think "Voltaire" mean "Ionic Breeze"!

Disworld the *stupidest* of all possible worlds.

I have to leave the category for the guy that tallies the vote. It
took
me a full minute to get the joke.

====

In the "I Stay Rude By Practice At Every Chance" category:

I also have a lot of interest in human breeding experimentation.

====

I was curious.
There's been an assertion that one of the unique charactaristics about
mammals is that they have hair.
On its face value it sounded right, but then after some thought - with
my limited knowledge it doesn't jive.
What about the tarantula for example? The hair on it's rump is referred
to just that - hair.
Someone might call it quills - but then when it comes to porcupines and
their quills - is that acknowledged to be hair? Or the horn of a rhino
- is in fact hair correct?

What about catterpillars?

What about butterflys and moths. I took a macro picture of a butterfly
with a 100mm lens - crystal clear and at least on the basis of
appearances - it's absolutely hair.

What what characteristic of hair - makes it hair and not something
else? Why is the hair on various insects not considered hair, but the
horn of a rhino is?

10 seconds with Google reveals to me that spider hair is part of their
exoskeleton, and that they contain nerves that are used for feeling the
vibrations of your screams as they scurry across your naked helpless
body.

I nominate. So many strong EEWWEW! reactions in such a short time.

====

''It is the personal attacks I find incredibly offensive," wrote Nannina
Gilder, 19, painting her dad as an ''idealist" who occasionally gets lost
inside his ideals.

Chez Watt nominee in the 'Failure to result with intent' category. If
it weren't a quote that is.

====

Can we put Gilder's quote either in a quote mine showing the weaknesses
in
ID, or perhaps as a Chez Watt?

This is an interesting article and defuses the evolutionist caricature
of ID being a religious movement:

So, when Gilder says "Intelligent design itself does not have any
content," you feel that this is sufficient to demonstrate that ID is not
religious in nature?

<snip>

''I'm not pushing to have [ID] taught as an 'alternative' to Darwin, and
neither are they," he says in response to one question about Discovery's
agenda. ''What's being pushed is to have Darwinism critiqued, to teach
there's a controversy. Intelligent design itself does not have any
content."

====

In the "hoisted by ur own petard" category.

i know that what u speak of is budist philosophy but u need to know
that it is just another path to hell 4 wide is the road 2 destruction
but narrow is the path 2 eternal life u need 2 turn from budism &
except the lord jesus christ & u will be save & thy house

"Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not
understand one another's speech".
(Gen. 11:7)

====

Are they mutually exclusive?

"This is a disease that's sexually transmitted," said Linda Klepacki,
spokeswoman for Focus on the Family.

<ROFL!> Is this woman profoundly insane or just Christian?

====

Hey sunshine

Planetary heliocentric motions are seen directly from the orbitally
moving Earth -

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0112/JuSa2000_tezel.gif

Do you not like to see the Newtonian mutation exposed by using actual
images in motion to affirm what Kepler and Galileo knew.

Try Galileo -

"Now what is said here of Jupiter is to be understood of Saturn and
Mars also. In Saturn these retrogressions are somewhat more frequent
than in Jupiter, because its motion is slower than Jupiter's, so that
the Earth overtakes it in a shorter time. In Mars they are rarer, its
motion being faster than that of Jupiter, so that the Earth spends more
time in catching up with it. Next, as to Venus and Mercury, whose
circles are included within that of the Earth, stoppings and retrograde
motions appear in them also, due not to any motion that really exists
in them, but to the annual motion of the Earth. This is acutely
demonstrated by Copernicus . . .

You see, gentlemen, with what ease and simplicity the annual motion --
if made by the Earth -- lends itself to supplying reasons for the
apparent anomalies which are observed in the movements of the five
planets. . . . It removes them all and reduces these movements to
equable and regular motions; and it was Nicholas Copernicus who first
clarified for us the reasons for this marvelous effect." 1632, Dialogue
Concerning the Two Chief World Systems

You see gentlemen indeed,the Pope was offended because Galileo put
geocentric words in the papal mouth but at least the Pope undertood the
Copernican reasoning.You are not offended by the Newtonian mutation
based on framehopping to the Sun but then again,that is what makes you
empiricists,a step below creationists.

Chez Watt?

====

In the 'Assical-ca Anguages-la uck-sa' catagory:

"O Sybilli, si ergo
Fortibus es in ero
O Nobili! Themis trux
Sivat sinem? Causen Dux"

Latin is a dead language. Are you impenetrably stupid?

This is an incredible gem. I think it must be memorialized. It works on

so many levels.

Well, actually only on one level. But it works very, very well on that
level.

====

What all evolutionists should keep in mind is that evolution isn't
over, it's a continuation and we're not at the end of anything.

Chez Watt??

"Evolutionists" know this, and say it as often as possible to correct
the *anti-evolutionists* who don't know it or pretend not to know it.

====

Under the category, "Who says science and religion are incompatible?"

I'm considering stripping alt.atheism from the Newsgroups: line of posts to talk.origins.
You could post here, but it wouldn't show
there.

I might do it for a week as a test.

God's approach is the best. He killfiles my prayers, but let's me crosspost to other gods.

====

I'm considering stripping alt.atheism from the Newsgroups: line of
posts to talk.origins. You could post here, but it wouldn't show
there.

I don't think that is a god idea
^^^

====

In the amazingly honest self-assessment category?

So you have abandoned the contention that scientists don't use the term,
and are back to your previous contention that scientists are just
stupid. Why can't you keep your own story straight?

Linguistically stupid. Idiotic, actually.

====

Trying too hard to make a point:

Rubbish, of course language can change.

If the vernacular users perceive a need, then labguage changes.

====

Jurassic Park IV: The attack of the magpies?:

Archaeopteryx is closer to T. Rex. than any sparrow.

====

Forget 'birds are dinosaurs', perhaps the 'birds and bees' talk is
required.

It is NOT a "matter of fact" that birds are not dinosaurs, it's a
matter of language, just as "boys are not girls" is a matter of
language, not of fact.

====

- so good it got nominated twice -

In the dogged insistence category:


Dogs are no closer to wolves than penguins are to elephants, so long as
we are using the vernacular terms.

====

In the "It Makes Sense to Me" category

Isn't it wonderful that we have such a flexible language? We can use
the same sentence format to express different thoughts and yet be
understood perfectly.

No, we can easily become confused by the similarity in form, due to
ambiguity.

====

In the "Is verbing a noun responsible?" catagory:

I am a kind of person who believes in trying to dialog responsibly,

====

As a negative variant of the "first they..." mantra -

First they deny that it's happening,
Then they deny that we're causing it,
Then they deny that we can do anything about it,
Then they call you a Nazi.

====

Nomination:

My view is rather simple: I really want it to be true so it probably
isn't. A true, if illogical argument.

====

As it happens, I'm not a professor. I am a scientist, though. That's why
I seem knowledgeable -- you learn to fake that in your second or third
year of graduate school.

I predict that this will be quote-mined by a creationist trying to
disprove evilution.

====

In the "with two you get eggroll" category.

Robertson's "prophecies" read like horoscopes.

Plus, they are funnier when you add "in bed" to the end of each
sentence.

====

Dept. of "Well, that would be more consistent...":

yeah i can see how you applied yourself. you became a christianist
religious fanatic unable to accept modern civilization.

I suppose I'm posting this via smoke signals?

====

I object. My parents are not monkeys, they are apes. No tail.

Someone got tail, or you wouldn't be here.

And proud to admit that all of my ancestors got lucky too!

====

In the category: "The real thing"

Billions of years ago, a big bang produced a large rock. As the rock
cooled, sweet brown liquid formed on its surface. As time passed,
aluminum formed itself into a can, a lid, and a tab. Millions of years
later, red and white paint fell from the sky, and formed itself into
the words "Coca Cola 12 fluid ounces."

====

Brought to you by the Department of Nasal Ontology:

God is said to be everywhere, therefore it's not necessary to
search the universe. It is enough, then, to observe that he's
not up my nose. And I'm glad of that because, from all I've
heard of him, he's not the sort of deity I'd pick.

====

God is said to be everywhere, therefore it's not necessary to
search the universe. It is enough, then, to observe that he's
not up my nose. And I'm glad of that because, from all I've
heard of him, he's not the sort of deity I'd pick.

Please someone somewhere accept my "second" for this nomination (if it
is a nomination). I was even picking my nose [1] when I read it!

[1] Goddamned sage here at the ranch is busting out all over in
allergens.

The sage was damned by who now?

====

From the Zen Bhuddist school of Biblical scholarship:

None of the writers of the Gospels
actually saw Jesus rise from the dead.

All of them did. Once again, I don't know where your getting your
information...Noone saw Him rise from the dead..

====

Nominated:

Here's the story about him that
will forever taint my view of Mensa...

The phone was in his name, so we split the basic
charge three ways: between me, him, and our third
housemate. He really hated the third housemate,
so one day he said he wasn't willing to share the
phone with him. I stood up for the other guy,
and the "Mensan"'s reply was "OK, but you and
I are going to split the bill two ways. If you want to
split your half with him, that's up to you.". I
"grudgingly" agreed.

====

.