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So a few weeks back I emailed some loony Christian organisation in the US as part of a protest, basically to tell them to stop being such total wankers (they were advocating a boycott of Hallmark because Hallmark, horror of horrors, were selling cards that acknowledged that not everybody is heterosexual, or something).
Their revenge, apparently, was to sign me up for their newsletter. Curses!
(Except not, ‘cause I had the sense to add "nospampleasefundiewankers" to the address, so I can filter it no problem…)
http://www.badscience.net/2008/06/all-time-classic-creationist-pwnage/
Biologist Richard Lenski recently published a paper describing the emergence of new traits in bacteria (they evolved the ability to metabolise new food sources when kept in an environment without food they could already metabolise). Andrew Schlafly, founder of that paragon of scientific endeavour Conservapedia [1] [2], got very upset by this and demanded to see the evidence. Lenski responded quite politely, but after further demands, threats, and insults, replies with an impressively snotty letter.
| [1] | He’s also, apparently, teacher of "one of the largest homeschool classes in the country"; isn’t that a contradiction of terms? When you’re teaching 58 kids, that’s not homeschool; that’s actual school; presumably, the claim to be "homeschool" is to avoid the necessity of teaching the kids actual science. |
| [2] | Because we wouldn’t want people to actually correct Conservapedia, it’s actually very difficult to get to edit a page, despite the fact that it’s a wiki; for example, the page on Phyllis Schlafly, mother of Andrew, is locked, preventing people changing the statement from the (true but inaccurate) "a fraction of people present protested her honorary doctorate" to the more-accurate "a third of people present, etc."; this despite that the numbers in question are in a news report cited elsewhere in the article. Hurray for selective blindness to the facts! |
In reply to my last post, Rich points out that the "wizardry" wasn’t the only reason he was fired, but also things like failing to stick to a lesson plan, and so on. While that’s fair enough, and completely justifiable, that’s really not the point I was trying to make.
These people, in complete seriousness, described a simple conjouring trick as "wizardry". They are demonstrating serious craziness, of the "shouldn’t be allowed out in public" variety. When your religious strictures against "magic" and "witchcraft" and "wizardry" lead you to burn childrens’ books, ban conjuring tricks, and denounce Easter eggs as "satanism", then there’s really no help for you.
(Also, quite frankly, if he’s a crap teacher then fire him for that. Don’t blame it on "wizardry", it makes you look even more stupid than you already do.)
On a lighter note, a comment from Julian Elson made me grin:
Even if Piculas is a wizard, the toothpick trick described is probably, like, a cantrip at most. Maybe prestidigitation or something. Surely it’s not all that worth getting worked up about. It’s not as if he baleful polymorph‘ed a disruptive student or anything.
Apparently, a substitute teacher in America was fired for – wait for it – wizardry. Seriously. The exact word, "wizardry", was used. Apparently he’d shown the kids a magic trick where he made a toothpick disappear and reappear.
I’m really very scared right now.
TermiSoc’s annual general meeting was Tuesday; against my better judgement, I put myself forward for the position of president. Showing a lack of common sense that’s astounding even to people with experience of TermiSoc, they actually voted for me. So basically, I’m screwed.
I’ve been teaching myself Haskell; I found a tutorial that doesn’t assume you already get functional programming, and it’s really quite a nice language; I was going to try learning Scheme, after Dan’s tutorial on Monday, but the parentheses were driving me insane. The main problem I’m having with Haskell is dealing with its type system and the IO monad; I keep getting told that I can’t do things because my variables are IO strings or whatever, instead of normal ones. Other than that, it’s a really nice language; maybe I’ll do a tutorial on it next year.
Smalltalk and C++ are still on my <span class="createlink"><a href="http://subvert.org.uk/~bma/wiki.cgi?page=about%2Flanguages%2Fcomputer&from=journal%2Fentries%2F2008%2F03%2Fmisc-updates&do=create" rel="nofollow">?</a>list</span>, since they’re mandatory for the final-year course I want to take (Plymouth has a system whereby you can get a "Computing and Such-And-Such" degree instead of plain Computing, if you choose from a specific subset of the normally-allowed final-year modules; I’m going for Computing and Software Development). I’ll spend some time on both of them over the summer, if all goes to plan.
Just for kicks, the latest psychotic dribble from the Roman Catholic Church: apparently, abortion offends "the dignity and rights of women". They’d be more credible if pro-choicers hadn’t been saying for years that banning abortion does exactly that. Bishop Girotti, you fail.
(From an article about a teen girl who got pregnant, had a baby, and carried on at school and did well despite that; her classmates wanted to write an article about her for the yearbook, but the school administration refused, saying that it was "glamorizing teen pregnancy". Yay America.)