Elvis started the culture wars

Here's a letter to the editor that will be of some interest to my Elvis-obsessed aunts:

The real reason Elvis Presley was thrust onto the world stage has been foretold in the Bible as the son of perdition. Almost everybody young and impressionable was eventually mesmerized by his stunning good looks, his smoldering sexuality, hinting alluringly at the forbidden, his feel-good music with its driving repetitive beat, accompanied by an almost irresistibly thrilling quality of voice combined with his freewheeling performing style. What more could you reasonably expect from such a fine young American? Most of us surrendered our reservations, telling ourselves that he could not be anything but a little fun for our restless youth who were becoming ferocious defenders of Elvis and we simply had no proof to the contrary. Not any the public was aware of anyway. He galvanized unwittingly the already simmering social/cultural unrest into an outright rebellion against the accepted social norms which until then were rooted in Judeo-Christian values. No one noticed the change we underwent in our thinking and embarked on a "me, me, me" binge which has permeated every facet of our society to this very day. He was so incredibly appealing on so many levels, it was impossible to denounce him effectively. This is how the sense-numbing party began and roared on for some 50 years, providing the climate for unprecedented changes in mainstream thinking, which up until then was determined by the Judeo-Christian value system of our forefathers. The promise of joy unspeakable in the holy word of the living God of Abraham and Jacob is just around the bend for every true believer who is born again through the power of the Holy Spirit.

Via Pandagon

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Which media outlets would Jesus bomb?

It appears that in 2004 "President Bush expressed interest in bombing the headquarters of the Arabic television network al-Jazeera during a White House conversation with Prime Minister Tony Blair."

Here's a sample of some of the right-wing reaction from the blogosphere:

There are far too many journalists, and most of them are worse than useless parasites. This world would be a better place without Al-Jazeera, BBC, Guardian and their ilk. ("grandma lausch," Crooked Timber)

My contribution to this war is to help counteract propaganda that attempts to weaken and undermine our efforts. Since this war will largely be decided on the basis of public morale, this is an important contribution.

This is also why the media are significant in the conflict. My stance is that if some media are more useful to the enemy than they are to us, they may be regarded as enemy combatants. Note that I am not singling out al-Jazeera as the worst offender here. ("Evil Pundit," Larvatus Prodeo--he thinks the ABC and SBS are worse)

Eww, while he's at it how bout, ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, MSNBC... ("Lancer_N3502A," Free Republic)

Nice. I guess it's time for Phillip Adams to "duck and cover" . . .

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Intelligent Design 101

The University of Kansas will be offering a course in Intelligent Design, but not in the way you might have expected.

The name of a new Kansas University religious studies course has infuriated conservatives in the state for referring to Intelligent Design as a myth.

The class, "Special Topics in Religion: Intelligent Design, Creationisms and other Religious Mythologies," incensed some conservatives to the point of suggesting the school should see a cut in funding, the Lawrence Journal-World reported Wednesday.

The course will explore intelligent design, the idea that life is too complex to have evolved without a "designer," presumably a god or other supernatural being.

The conservative response? "Maybe we [should] settle for some cuts in spending."

Via Panda's Thumb.

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Sign the petition

Here.

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Intelligent Medicine

I guess it was bound to happen eventually . . .

From Agape Press:

Surgeon's Book Exposes Flesh, Helps Believers Cut Out Deep-Rooted Sin

A Pennsylvania surgeon says the Apostle Paul was exactly right when he called humans' sinful nature "the flesh," because many sins actually do have physiological connections. Dr. Clark Gerhart, M.D., author of Say Goodbye to Stubborn Sin (Siloam Press, 2005), says he hopes the book will show Christians how thoroughly fleshly they are by helping them understand where their sins originate.

"I wouldn't worry too much about that rash, Mr. John Q. Fundamentalist Christian. It's just a product of your sinful nature."

Via Pandagon.

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Saw it on Saturday night. Two words: genius.

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Somewhere in Kansas . . .

Via Pharyngula.

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Animal House

I suppose Rush Limbaugh would call this kind of thing "hazing" . . .

From ABC News:

Iraqi officials are investigating more claims of prisoner abuse, after 200 prisoners were found locked in an Interior Ministry bunker in Baghdad.

US soldiers found the mostly Sunni Muslim detainees in an Iraqi Interior Ministry building in Baghdad suffering from brutal beatings and other forms of torture.

. . .

Suspicion has fallen on a major Shiite muslim militia allied to one of the most influential Shiite groups in the Government.

The abuse will damage efforts to ease the Sunni Muslim based insurgency ahead of national elections due next month.

More at the Times.

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Set your irony meter to "stun"

Janet Albrechtsen (yawn) predictably (yawn) sings from the Federal Government's hymn sheet on yesterday's IR rallies.

She derides Labor--apparently only a handful of Labor Party members and "militant unionists" turned up, with the remainder of the Australian population to a man wholeheartedly supporting the IR reforms that will lead us all into a glorious capitalist utopia--as being "wedded to groupthink and group action," in an article echoing the views of the Workplace Relations Minister, her editor, the ACCI, the AIG, etc . . .

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Postmodernism and ID

On his Sydney Morning Herald-hosted blog "The Contrarian," Andrew West draws a tendentious (though not unfamiliar) comparison between Intelligent Design and postmodernism:

The main thrust of the attack on intelligent design appears to be that it denies "rational science" -- that it sets up an alternative explanation for the origin of humanity and the world; that it offers an alternative version of natural history.

But doesn't this approach capture the whole postmodernist project? If postmodernism is supposed to encourage students to question the established record of human history, why should we accept the assumed "facts" about nature?

West is responding to the news that 3000 schools across Australia have been issued with free copies of the antievolution DVD Unlocking the Mystery of Life by the Campus Crusade for Christ. West claims to detect the faintest whiff of hypocrisy in the debate over Intelligent Design, insofar as

It deliberately contests conventional wisdom -- in this case Darwin's theory of evolution -- and isn't that what the post-modernists, who have been circling our education system for a generation, want?

As many a respondent to his post points out, West's attempt at a "gotcha!" argument falls wide of the mark. On the one hand, as the Sokal affair demonstrates, the mainstream science community has never had a great fondness for postmodernism. West either seems to have forgotten that scientists have been leading the charge against intelligent design, or he has simply decided to lump scientists into his rogue's gallery of postmodernist bogeymen who threaten our children. On the other hand--and science commentators can sometimes be just as guilty of this--the postmodernism West denigrates is a crude caricature: postmodernism as "extreme relativism." (Perhaps out of economic necessity, given that the label "postmodernism" covers a wide and diverse range of ideas and arguments. Who is he attacking? Lyotard? Rorty? Baudrillard? Deleuze and Guattari? Does he know?). Postmodernism is supposed to give oxygen to ID, so the strawman goes, because in the eyes of the postmodernists everything is "just a theory," and all theories are up for grabs--a position that would surely undermine the legitimacy of ID as much as it does anything else. Conventional wisdom and its underpinnings deserve to be subjected to the harshest scrutiny, of course, and those nasty postmodernists are doing nothing wrong, IMHO, if that is all they can be accused of. But this is not "extreme relativism." And it is not meant to be a replacement for the scientific method (which, in its own way, subjects received wisdom--as far as the physical/natural universe is concerned--to severe scrutiny).

. . .

On the news that intelligent design is currently being taught in at least 100 Australian schools, the Greens are calling for federal funding to be denied to schools that dress up pseudoscience as science in their science classrooms. Brendan Nelson should take such action out of consistency--given that he has made flag-waving faux-patriotism a condition of federal funding--but none of us should hold our breath.

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Devolution in Kansas: the Triumph of an IDeology

I take it that Kansas isn't exactly known as the "Athens of the Midwest":

Kansas education board downplays evolution
State school board OKs standards casting doubt on Darwin

TOPEKA, Kan. - Risking the kind of nationwide ridicule it faced six years ago, the Kansas Board of Education approved new public-school science standards Tuesday that cast doubt on the theory of evolution.

The 6-4 vote was a victory for “intelligent design” advocates who helped draft the standards. Intelligent design holds that the universe is so complex that it must have been created by a higher power.

Critics of the new language charged that it was an attempt to inject God and creationism into public schools, in violation of the constitutional ban on state establishment of religion.

All six of those who voted for the new standards were Republicans. Two Republicans and two Democrats voted no.

“This is a sad day. We’re becoming a laughingstock of not only the nation, but of the world, and I hate that,” said board member Janet Waugh, a Kansas City Democrat.

Eugenie Scott, executive director of the National Center for Science Education, said the decision would encourage school districts in Kansas and elsewhere to make similar moves, distracting and confusing teachers and students.

“It will be marketed by the religious right ... as a huge victory for their side,” she said. “We can expect more efforts to get creationism in.”

All six who voted in favour were Republicans? Heavens, no!

Just to get things nice and sparkling clear, in most of the rest of the world science is defined (in a nutshell) thus: the search for natural explanations for natural phenomena (the supernatural being outside its purview). Not so, any longer, in Kansas, where a new definition of science has been formulated by the Board of Education in red ink, declaring that

Science is a systematic method of continuing investigation that uses observations, hypothesis testing, measurement, experimentation, logical argument and theory building, to lead to more adequate explanations of natural phenomena (emphasis added).

What, pray tell, might constitute a "more adequate" explanation of natural phenomena? For Scientific American's John Rennie:

Any sort of explanation, apparently. Pixies, ghosts, telekinesis, auras, ancient astronauts, excesses of choleric humor, they all seem to be fair game in the interest of "academic freedom." Oh, and God, of course.

You can keep up with all the fun and games at Panda's Thumb.

And before we cry "Only in America," let's not forget that this kind of bullshit has been mandated by no less august a personage than our Federal Education Minister.

Update: Via Panda's Thumb:

You can now bid for your very own handmade Flying Spaghetti Monster plush doll on eBay!

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Remind me again why the USA is the most powerful country on Earth?

For Harper's editor Lewis Lapham, it's because "ignorance is viewed as a natural resource, far more valuable to the prosperity of America than oil or timber."

As broadcast recently on Radio National, Lapham gave a speech to the Sydney Writers Festival in May this year, opening with a series of excerpts from the History papers of American high school and university students:

This is a history of civilisation as told in a collection of college and high level high school students:

Civilisation woozed out of the Nile about 300,000 years ago. Flooding was erotic.

David was a fictional character in the Bible who pleased the people with his many erections and saved them from a tax by the Philippines.

Religion was polyphonic. Featured were gods such as Herod, Mars and Juice.

The Greeks invented three kinds of columns: Corinthian, Doric and Ironic. They also had myths. A myth is a female moth.

Plato invented reality. Pythagasaurus fathered the triangle. Archimedes made the first steamboat and power drill.

Rome was founded sometime by Uncle Remus and Wolf.

Neoplatonists celebrated the joys of self-abuse.

A German soldier put Rome in a sack. During the Dark Ages it was mostly dark.

Machiavelli who was often unemployed wrote The Prince to get a job with Richard Nixon.

Ivan the Terrible started life as a child, a fact that troubled his later personality.

The government of England was a limited mockery. When Queen Elizabeth exposed herself before her troops, they all shouted, Hurrah! Then her Navy went out and defeated the Spanish Armadillo.

When the Davey Jones index crashed in 1929, many people were left to political incineration.

The USSR and the USA became global in power, but Europe remained incontinent.

We in all humidity are the people of current times. This concept grinds our critical seething minds to a halt.

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"There is no condom that can protect a child's heart."

. . . and weasels don't get sucked into jet engines. Tee-hee: Xtians are funny!

(Via Pandagon.)

P.S. What the fuck is "mental virginity?" Does anyone know?

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