Creationists are griping about not getting equal time to respond to the new science series on Fox, a remake of Carl Sagan's original
Cosmos. One anonymous email I received complained that the program came out swinging hard in episode two. Sure, if "swinging hard" means a lucid, engaging explanation of the core principle of selection and its central role in biological evolution. The National Center for Science Education posted a concise
rebuttal here:
But through the relentless efforts of its champion, Seth MacFarlane, the show was funded and produced ...
It’s remarkable that so many creationists evangelize the virtues of the competitive “free market” except when it comes to what someone else creates, in which case they demand a “tax” of equal time. Expend your effort and risk your fortune to create a science show, and there’s a creationist with his hand in your pocket demanding his share.
The mind reels with satire, how absurdly fun it would be, if everything got equal time for free! Why in some revisions, the Confederacy could finally prevail, assuming the British still let us
win the earlier Revolutionary War ...
- If you're starting a garden this Spring, consider weeding the old fashion way: by pulling them out, before using popular products containing bee-killing ingredients.
- Speaking of equal time, we talked a little about the scientific implausibility of a recent global flood last week. It turns out Glenn Beck also objected to the film Noah, saying it was disinformation. Others worry this particular Noah, played by Russel Crowe, is portrayed as caring too much about the planet and animals, but not enough about the millions of people condemned to death by drowning.
- A new study by the CDC finds about one child in 68 exhibit some signs potentially placing them somewhere on the Autism spectrum. Oy vey, Donald Trump weighs in on vaccines ...
- Speaking of wrong ideas, a recent paper examining conspiracy theorists stirred up a ruckus when it reported an overabundance of Libertarians among the sampled CT crowd. You know what happened next:
Oh, how they howled. Even libertarians seem to be embarrassed at being affiliated with libertarians, I guess. And conspiracy theorists, too? Why, the accusation itself is clearly evidence that there’s a conspiracy out to get them. They protested that because the respondents to the survey all found it through mainstream science blogs, all the responses were false flag operations put out by Big Climate.