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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
tristero
Published Letters: 18
There is no rational reason I can think of for the fellatiotic article on Thompson. It wasn't until halfway into the second page that the sheer nonsense of this man's views were made apparent.
Clearly, the reporter thinks Thompson is just some colorful character who makes great press. He is not and he doesn't. Gordy Slack needs to understand that articles like this are precisely what projects a bogus sense of legitimacy around the idiocy that is "intelligent design." Slack also needs to get an education on exactly what the issues are. This is not cutesy, folksy, Americana. This is a bald-faced attempt to establish a cheap, ugly religion as the law of the land.
It is utterly irresponsible, if you care about truth in reporting, to give a man like Thompson so much space, and to wait so long before disputing his views. Slack should know better. So should Salon.
Let me see if I have this straight. Our author doesn't know a thing about any relevant science. That makes her the perfect person to evaluate scientific claims of the paranormal.
Makes total sense to me.
Stacey Earle thinks this is funny. No doubt, the book is written in a charming style, and all the different characters come across as essentially silly harmless eccentrics, and we, the readers feel soooooo good about ourselves because we're not eccentric, are we?
Well, I used to like books like this. But then these nutjobs started to be taken seriously. Did you know that a recent president of the United States used an astrologer to aid in his decision making? Do you know that the present president of the United States thinks it's ok to teach outright lies in science class?
These people stopped being harmeless eccentrics a long time ago for me. These people are bloody dangerous. Sooner or later, one of them gets it in their head that God is calling him to invade a country he can't locate on a map and free the people from tyranny. Haha! How charmingly quaint!!
Hear, hear! I couldn't agree more. As the letters on this and on the disgraceful puff piece on "id" proponent Thompson demonstrate, a decent chunk of Salon's most passionate readers love and understand science with enough sophistication to recognize hoo-hah when they read it.
Yes to a science editor. But I'd respectfully disagree about such a person exhibiting "basic understanding" of science. What's wrong with someone who really gets science? Who can seek out and present stuff to Salon readers that's hard to find elsewhere?
The only decent science reporting in the mainstream, and they are just barely large enough to be called mainstream, is in The Economist (peace, friends, it's not their politics, it's their science reporting that's stellar). Salon would do everyone a huge favor if they could find someone of genuine talent and knowledge to report on the amazing science being done today in an original and sensible manner.
"Today the media is far more interested in killing our idols -- or at least pointing out that they too go grocery shopping and get cold sores! -- than supporting them."
Oh, if only that were true!
Sure, the pop music press might be scandal-driven, and the sports press utterly unblinkered. But the naive fools responsible for our political reporting spent over five years infatuated with George W. Bush. They lied about Gore and ignored the stories of Bush's cocaine abuse, his deserting his post in the military during wartime, and his sheer mediocrity. Peggy Noonan wrote about Bush two years ago, "More and more this presidency is feeling like a gift." (Some gift.)
I'll gladly accept an entertainment press that portrays the next Beatles as four adorable, sassy moptops if the political press would simply do its job again.
Oh, one more thing. A little after the Beatles hit the US, it was common knowledge that John was married. It didn't take "years" for people to find out, it simply was mentioned in passing.
And that's about the best that can be said about Mr. Horgan's article. Now, Horgan may be absolutely right. This may be a genuine Lord Kelvin moment as opposed to Lord Kelvin's mistaken one. But just as any knowledge can be interpreted as providing us freedom, genuine knowledge can also be thought to erect constraints. To be frank, this is not exactly a new or original insight.
The only limitation to science, therefore, seems to be human imagination, in particular our ability to pose intelligent questions about reality and find ways to probe them. I see no practical limits to science even if I won't ever be able to travel 1 mph faster than c.
Gordy Slack is very wrong when he writes, "Whether I.D.'s scientific core is "impressive and sophisticated," as West says, is debatable."
There's no debate. There is no scientific core to "intelligent design" creationism. It is inexcusably sloppy for Mr. Slack to write that it might be open to dispute. Conversely, if he believes that there actually may be a substantial "scientific core" to "intelligent design" creationism, he has absolutely no business writing for Salon or any other reputable venue.
Mr. Slack found a lecture on real science quite dull. So what? Isaac Newton apparently was the world's worst lecturer. The substance is what matters and when it comes to creationism of any stripe, there is no there there, scientifically speaking.
And it is dubious theology to boot, something the judge's opinion and the testimony of John Haught makes abundantly clear.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
