derivative work

So at the end of this long post about Expelled and copyright infringement, I appended some rewritten lyrics to the tune of “Spirit in the Sky” : When I copy and they tell me “desist”, Gonna go to the place that’s the best When I get caught in a lie, Goin’ up to Designers in [...]

Scientific American‘s reviews of “Expelled”, the creationist movie with Ben Stein, are the best yet: the one by John Rennie is particularly helpful. It dissects the rhetorical tricks, and fills in the facts that were left out of the film’s assertions about punitive action taken towards experts. Expelled Exposed, from the NCSE, is developing point-by-point [...]

“Intelligent Design” advocates lost in Ohio, and the League of Conservation Voters reports that most of their 2006 Dirty “Dozen” lost, and most of their 2006 Environmental Champions won. Ha.

Love this quote on the right-wing frothing about Prof. Mirecki’s email [from The Panda's Thumb]: [T]hey hate “Hate Crime” legislation, driven to rabid frothing at the mere mention of “politically correct” language. They are such fierce opponents (they say) of limits to free speech intended particularly to block racist speech; the term “PC” in the [...]

questionable authority reviews a pro-’intelligent design theory’ entry that describes a future history of the fabulous medical and scientific breakthroughs generated by ‘intelligent design theory’ and the abandonment of ‘Darwinism’. While the whole post is highly recommended, it was one of the commentors who really tickled my fancy. Responding to the future history’s assertion that [...]

Yahoo!’s historically less-than-stellar track record of protecting user privacy is made much, much worse by this news: Yahoo! turned over a user’s identity information to the Chinese government, and now journalist Shi Tao has been sentenced to ten years for “e-mailing a government’s plan to restrict media coverage around the 15th anniversary of the Tiananmen [...]

Up early for my spouse who caught a red-eye. Now she’s resting peacefully and I of course can’t get back to sleep. But that’s okay, because there’s the Internet! Positive outcomes of BlogHer: Mary Hodder at Napsterization is establishing a Speakers’ Wiki. In response to publisher anxieties & thinly-veiled threats of litigation, Google is implementing [...]

”I’m not pushing to have [ID] taught as an ‘alternative’ to Darwin, and neither are they,” he says in response to one question about Discovery’s agenda. ”What’s being pushed is to have Darwinism critiqued, to teach there’s a controversy. Intelligent design itself does not have any content.” The evolution of George Gilder Boston Globe, 7/27 [...]

two great tastes that taste great together: (critiquing) intelligent design, and derivative works. Ernie Miller rewrote Pastor Niemöller’s classic work for the modern era of attacks on science: First they came after biology and I did not speak out because I was not a biologist Then they came after geology and I did not speak [...]

The New Yorker has an article evaluating the <cough cough> science of intelligent design. Most amusing (and insightful) quote (from discussion of Behe’s “irreducible complexity” argument): It’s true that when you confront biologists with a particular complex structure like the flagellum they sometimes have a hard time saying which part appeared before which other parts. [...]

I’m just so sorry for the kids in Kansas, because their education is being screwed up by a bunch of not-quite-as-fully-evolved-as-the-rest-of-us folks with their heads up their nether regions. [The Kansas state board of education is holding hearings again on whether & how evolution should be taught in schools, and to what extent the religious [...]