Rain….and more entertaining stupidity…

Workout notes 5 mile walk on the treadmill in 1:02, then 8 slow miles outside in hiking boots (about 1 hour; slightly more than 8). Some slush is still there; it was in the 40’s and raining (5 C with rain). So the first case of stupidity is yours truly.

I did have to worry about the front part of my right hip/leg connection; it whined a bit when I went downhill. I am afraid that I probably need that “bad” yoga class after all.

Entertaining Stupidity

I grew up around people who thought this way:

You know, if there were any justice, this person would be ineligible to receive any modern medical treatment that derived from the principle of evolution. Ok, not really, but I guess such total ignorance bothers me as I grew up around it.

But the creationists will provide even more entertainment, as Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub shows:

Example 2: McLeroy’s Islamist partner, Adnan Oktar ( aka “Harun Yahya”), is a continuing embarrassment. This isn’t news, but I stumbled across the actual images he pirated — and they are impressive.

The Atlas of Creation purports to show that no evolution has occurred between a few fossil forms and modern forms of animals — therefore, Oktar concludes in his book, evolution could not have occurred at all. Oktar couldn’t sell the book, so he sent copies of the thing to school libraries across Europe, and then to selected people and school libraries across North America.

The book is beautifully printed and bound, with hundreds of full color plates — it must have cost a fortune to produce.

And so, Oktar had to make economies somewhere. He chose to plagiarize photos and not bother with lawyers to procure rights to print the photos. He also chose to abandon the use of fact checkers, it appears.

And so we get embarrassments, like Oktar comparing this caddis fly, below, to one caught in amber, and concluding there’s been no evolution. The problem, as you can plainly see from the photo I borrow from Forbidden Music, is that the “living” example is actually a fishing lure; Oktar has plagiarized a photograph of one of Graham Owen’s wonderul fishing lures.

Go to the link to see the photos. This evolutionist will stipulate that the metal fishhook in the lure was designed.

Contrast…

Draw your own conclusions.

Odds, Wisconsin Obama Ralley, and Breathtakingly Stupid Candidate Supporters

Non Politics 3-quarks Daily directs us to an interesting article in Psychology Today which talks about how we make stuff worse while attempting to make it better. They list 10 ways we “get the odds” wrong; her is one of my favorites:

I. We Fear Snakes, Not Cars

Risk and emotion are inseparable.

Fear feels like anything but a cool and detached computation of the odds. But that’s precisely what it is, a lightning-fast risk assessment performed by your reptilian brain, which is ever on the lookout for danger. The amygdala flags perceptions, sends out an alarm message, and—before you have a chance to think—your system gets flooded with adrenaline. “This is the way our ancestors evaluated risk before we had statistics,” says Paul Slovic, president of Decision Research. Emotions are decision-making shortcuts.

As a result of these evolved emotional algorithms, ancient threats like spiders and snakes cause fear out of proportion to the real danger they pose, while experiences that should frighten us—like fast driving—don’t. Dangers like speedy motorized vehicles are newcomers on the landscape of life. The instinctive response to being approached rapidly is to freeze. In the ancestral environment, this reduced a predator’s ability to see you—but that doesn’t help when what’s speeding toward you is a car.

Uncooperative evolution.

Obama: a report from a disinterested observer who attended a Wisconsin event.

He says:

Great crowd, but not overwhelming. There was some empty space on the floor, some empty seats in the stands, lots of standing room. I’ve heard that initial ticket distribution was awkward — people who asked for one ticket got four, meaning that not all of those four would get used. So far as I know, the overflow space wasn’t necessary. Everything was efficient, organized, the Obama campaign folks were upbeat and helpful, including the guy handing out the stacks of homemade signs… Hm. [...]

But even the Governor was there and all he got was a quick nod from Obama at the beginning of the speech (thank the heavens — Doyle’s not the most stirring speaker, to put it mildly).

He spoke for about an hour, casually, no notes, no prompter. It was his standard stump speech with a few modifications for the crowd and circumstances: in a little riff on honesty, he said “You wouldn’t want me coming in here claiming to be a Packers fan when I really wasn’t, would you?” Cute. Necessary, I guess. No soaring night-of-the-New-Hampshire-Primary rhetoric, no deafening roars of approval — but it wasn’t that kind of crowd. It wasn’t going to be that kind of crowd. He knew where he could take it, how far he could take it, and if he tried to take it too far he’d have a few thousand people just kinda staring at him.

The guy is good. I mean, all politicians do this to some extent or another, but this guy is really, really good. The crowd was enthusiastic, the crowd was with him, but not with the kind of unbridled enthusiasm stereotypically associated with his events…[...]

When he first came out he was working a line of spectators. A mother who’d lost a son in Iraq buttonholed him for a while, and he listened intently. Later during his speech, he mentioned her by name, mentioned she’d given him a bracelet with her son’s name on it, and said he was honored by the gift. Then he went into his Iraq riff, and in a very subtle move slipped the bracelet onto his wrist. It looked like he was just adjusting his cuff or something. I almost missed it. The people I was with completely missed it. I’ll guarantee you the mother didn’t. [...]

Breathtaking Stupidity Check this out

Obama said this:

“I understand that Senator Clinton, periodically when she’s feeling down, launches attacks as a way of trying to boost her appeal.”

Ok, so what? Clinton gets down in the polls and then goes negative. Right. But notice, Obama used the word, gasp, periodically. So what you say? You see, that is a….slur against women!!!!!!

No, I am not kidding you:

Hillary launches attacks when she’s feeling down? Periodically? Okay, I get it. Other candidates may criticize their opponents, or launch attacks, because that’s what you do in presidential politics, but when Hillary criticizes or attacks Obama, it’s because her emotions have gotten the best of her. It’s because she’s feeling down. She’s PMS-ing.
[...]
Gawd. The boys would laugh him out of the club. This is only the number one sexist stereotype, the number one reason throughout all time why a woman could never ever be president of these United States of America. Cause in cowboy country, everybody knows that women are ruled by emotions. We’re hormonal. The superior menz are rational. Or so the philosopher kings have told us throughout the ages.

It is an interesting world that that people like them live in. If they see something as “sexist”, well, it is, no matter how moronic or idiotic their conclusion might appear to others. If others disagree, it is because they are “blind” to it or somehow less enlightened.

But it would be a mistake to assume that most feminists are like this; every movement, no matter how worthy, has its share of morons and idiots.

At this site, you’ll see comments about how they might “vote for McCain out of spite” if Obama wins. Frankly, I’d love to see these idiots leave the Democratic fold; of course the Republicans would send them right back!

Speaking of McCain, a Kossak has made some interesting images to be used.