I have to laugh whenever I hear Fox News personalities carrying on about how 'fair and balanced' they are.
It is almost as if the pundits conflate actual news reporting - such as one might get with Shepard Smith (the one Fox News personality that retains some integrity) - with all of the propagandizing and agenda-pushing they do for the other 22 hours a day.
Here for example.
You can see 'anchor' Megyn Kelly getting indignant that Bill Burton states the truth - that their recent anti-Obama gibberish (such as the "B girl" hoax, which unfortunately was not mentioned) was a Fox embellishment/concoction.
She mentions that only 36% of news stories on other networks are positive for McCain.
As if there is some reason that all stations should have an exactly equal number of positive and negative stories about all political figures (this, let us remember, is the network that runs Obama=terrorist nonsense around the clock).
Let us consider this possibility - other networks report only 36% favorable stories on McCain because, I don't know, maybe the McCain campaign is 64% crap and lies and nonsense?
These people are just plain insane, and anyone that thinks Fox News really is "Fair and Balanced" should have their little pinheads examined.
Curious - Megyn didn't mention this poll, also done by Pew, showing that Fox news viewers are basically idiots.
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Collin B., yet again....
Collin the photographer had posted a reply (presented below in toto) to an exchange we had earlier (our initial exchanges on this blog are here).
I took a bit of a blogging break, and actually forgot about his histrionics, but now have gotten around ot this stuff.
My replies interspersed with Collin's claims:
***************************************************************************
Well, not quite. Yes, you posed a 'question', but the question was exceptionally wrong-headed. When I pointed this out, you asked MORE wrong-headed questions, then got indignant. Open to correction? Hardly.
Yes, it is just a 'claim.' Must be. I remain semi-anonymous so I don't have mouth-breathing lunatics harrass my colleagues and superiors, like what happens to folks like PZ Myers.
Of course, the fact is that I corrected your misconceptions and answered you as was warranted. You didn't like the answers, so you insult me and ignore them. That is what creatinists do.
No you don't. I showed you how and why you were wrong. You just kept rambling on with the same erroneous tripe. One can follow the links to see the exchanges, but I will offer but 1 example from our exchanges after my May 10 blog post. You had initially written that you felt there were millions of 'trait changes' between humans and chimps. I asked you to name 1000 of these millions. Your response was to claim that you thought there were more than 1000 trait changes!
You apparently cannot even understand the words written in response to your claims, how do you expect to be able to understand technical responses?
Ah yes, it is always the 'civility' issue. If only I were so civil, Collin would have admitted that his claims and 'questions' were bogus and accepted the informaiton I gave him.
Details? Details on all of the genetic changes that occurred between modern humans and the 'rodent' stage - and this is supposed to be a rational, reasonable 'question'?
Imagine - I was actually providinng tentative answers! How horrible! I guess Collin is more used to absolutist proclamations that the standard tentative nature of a scientific answer was interpreted as ignorance. Poor Collin, so confused and out of his league...
Of course, what Collin the creationist has done is set up a perfect little win-win scenario - he pretends to have produced a reasonable, rational 'question'. If I try to answer it, he will reject the answer by asking more. If I don't answer it, he will claim victory. Of course, none of this negates the fact that his request is silly - we do not and cannot know what the genome of the 'rodent stage' was.
The best we can do is compare a modern human with a modern rodent. That would produce an approximation of the changes that have occurred in BOTH lineages since they last shared a common ancestor. But since that woul dnot specifically address Collin's 'question', he will reject it.
As a commenter on Collin's blog prsented, he asked for the impossible, and I add, that he doesn't even know why it is impossible.
But I have to wonder - if I produce a pairwise DNA sequence alignment for a mouse gene and it's human homologue, point out the differences, and deduce what the 'original' sequence might have been, would Collin accept that?
I took a bit of a blogging break, and actually forgot about his histrionics, but now have gotten around ot this stuff.
My replies interspersed with Collin's claims:
***************************************************************************
Questions
on Evolutionary Theory, part II
In the first part I raised a question. In the follow-up I tried to clarify the question. In both instances the question was open to correction.
Well, not quite. Yes, you posed a 'question', but the question was exceptionally wrong-headed. When I pointed this out, you asked MORE wrong-headed questions, then got indignant. Open to correction? Hardly.
But so far no intelligent responses have been gleaned from the posts. It's sad because Doppelganger claims to be a PhD in the field yet remains anonymous to the world.
Yes, it is just a 'claim.' Must be. I remain semi-anonymous so I don't have mouth-breathing lunatics harrass my colleagues and superiors, like what happens to folks like PZ Myers.
Of course, the fact is that I corrected your misconceptions and answered you as was warranted. You didn't like the answers, so you insult me and ignore them. That is what creatinists do.
I think there is cause to question this in light of unanswered questions. I
don't mind being wrong. In fact, if I am wrong, I want to be shown precisely how
I am wrong.
No you don't. I showed you how and why you were wrong. You just kept rambling on with the same erroneous tripe. One can follow the links to see the exchanges, but I will offer but 1 example from our exchanges after my May 10 blog post. You had initially written that you felt there were millions of 'trait changes' between humans and chimps. I asked you to name 1000 of these millions. Your response was to claim that you thought there were more than 1000 trait changes!
You apparently cannot even understand the words written in response to your claims, how do you expect to be able to understand technical responses?
One would hope for civility, but alas Doppelganger would rather insult the
questioner than construct a meaningful and substantive response.
Ah yes, it is always the 'civility' issue. If only I were so civil, Collin would have admitted that his claims and 'questions' were bogus and accepted the informaiton I gave him.
So let's revisit the second post and change the question to something more
precise:
Give me the genetic changes in reverse that would take humans back
to the rodent stage, per the current model? (re: To the Yucatan impact of 65mya
fromhumans today.)It's a simple enough question -- what precisely happened? Not
what might have happened or what could have happened (which, when you read the
posts that came before, is all I got -- possibility, but neither probability nor
historical fact.) Don't give me a model. I've read that stuff. Give me the
detail? Is it there or not? Or is your "proof" a workable model but not a
working history?
Details? Details on all of the genetic changes that occurred between modern humans and the 'rodent' stage - and this is supposed to be a rational, reasonable 'question'?
Imagine - I was actually providinng tentative answers! How horrible! I guess Collin is more used to absolutist proclamations that the standard tentative nature of a scientific answer was interpreted as ignorance. Poor Collin, so confused and out of his league...
Of course, what Collin the creationist has done is set up a perfect little win-win scenario - he pretends to have produced a reasonable, rational 'question'. If I try to answer it, he will reject the answer by asking more. If I don't answer it, he will claim victory. Of course, none of this negates the fact that his request is silly - we do not and cannot know what the genome of the 'rodent stage' was.
The best we can do is compare a modern human with a modern rodent. That would produce an approximation of the changes that have occurred in BOTH lineages since they last shared a common ancestor. But since that woul dnot specifically address Collin's 'question', he will reject it.
As a commenter on Collin's blog prsented, he asked for the impossible, and I add, that he doesn't even know why it is impossible.
But I have to wonder - if I produce a pairwise DNA sequence alignment for a mouse gene and it's human homologue, point out the differences, and deduce what the 'original' sequence might have been, would Collin accept that?
Friday, October 03, 2008
The word is NUC-LE-AR!!!!
Amazing...
Caught some of the vice presidential debate last night and Palin pronounces the word nuclear incorrectly just like moron Bush does - nuculer.
Is being stupid the new requisite for being a NeoCon politician?
Caught some of the vice presidential debate last night and Palin pronounces the word nuclear incorrectly just like moron Bush does - nuculer.
Is being stupid the new requisite for being a NeoCon politician?
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