Its all about Science Envy – The Pandas Thumb

Keep this article in mind when faced with Climate change deniers, creationists, IDiots, and the like.

http://pandasthumb.org/archives/2009/07/its-all-about-s.html

Art responds to Ky. museum | Kentucky Enquirer | nky.com

via Art responds to Ky. museum | Kentucky Enquirer | nky.com

Something amusing.

When creationists talk about dinosaurs on the ark, I doubt this is what they had in mind…

IDiots – only 30 years late

It appears that Denise O’Leary and the IDiots at the Disco institute have finally discovered Fred Hoyle (an astronomer, not a biologist) and panspermia…thirty years after Evolution from Space was published.

This is fast for the Disco ‘tute.

What does Denise say…

Hoyle was ignored because most people preferred to believe in the Shazzam! origin of life in a warm little test tube somewhere. Most people believe in miracles.

No Denise…that’s not why he was ignored.  The problem with his idea is that it merely pushed the origin of life somewhere else.  It didn’t really add anything because it pushed the origin of life out into space. 

And if this theory was accepted , Denise and the IDiots would still disparage it because it would still require a “Shazzam! origin of life in a warm little test tube somewhere.” 

I suppose it would help at this point that Hoyle’s co-author really disliked creationism (to which I include ID).  Chandra Wickramasinghe was a witness on the creationist side.  However, this didn’t stop him from stating that a person would have to be crazy to believe the universe was only around 10,000 years old, and that creationism was claptrap.

Why do O’Leary and the Disco ‘tute claim that these people claim that “In other words, they require intelligent design”?  Well, not to put a too fine a point on it, their grasping at straws.  Panspermia still would require abiogenesis, but it does not require a so-called “Intelligent designer”.  Panspermia, especially Hoylian Panspermia, is based on his flawed understanding of the probabilities involved.  See here for a brief explanation.

Of course this is all a one way street.  Denise’s cohort, Dave Scot, has a problem when people ask who designed the “Intelligent Designer”.  He claims these questions are “trite, easily addressed, and if you read the moderation rules you’ll find that comments using this and other trite arguments are deleted“.  If these questions are easily answered, where are the answers, beyond the ID dodge of “they’re trite”?  It would appear that Scotty and the IDiots know that they cannot answer this, so they prefer to hide their heads in the sand.

IDiotic Fantasies

Over on the comment board of Pharyngula one NoB has an interesting fantasy about the Canadian weekend  Box Office of the Movie Expelled…

Let’s get a few things in perspective, PZ. Expelled only opened on 36 screens in Canada, which is a fraction of what it opened on in the US. At $24,374, that’s a per screen average of $677 for the weekend, which isn’t too bad for a platform release. If it had opened on as many screens in Canada as it did in the US, it would have done just over 700k. So it’s not nearly as laughable as you make it out to be.

Actually…it’s quite a bit more laughable.  Consider…in Canada on 36 screens Expelled took in $24,374.  In the States that piece of dreck took in $2,970,848 on 1052 screens.

So in Canada, the take per screen is approx. $677 for the weekend, while in the States the take was $2,824 per screen.  Quite the difference.

Nob problem comes from believeing that if Expelled opened on as many screen in Canada as it did in the States, then it would have had a respectable draw (this considering that if one actually worked out the figures this comes to about 8-10 people per showing over the weekend).

Lets flip this around…what happens if Expelled in the States had a draw similar to Canada.   Well, multiply 1052 screens by $677/screen, we get ~ $712,000 for an opening weekend.

Comparing $712,000 to its actual US opening weekend draw of $2,970,848 shows the fallaciousness of NoB’s argument.  The movie is a spectacular failure.  No amount of IDiocy will alter that.

Creationist is a bit full of herself

Creationist Denyse O’leary was obviously looking forward to picketers when the creationist propoganda piece EXPELLED opened in Toronto.  Needless to say…news out of Toronto shows that no pickets appeared.

On a Lighter note TRIBUTE Magazine shows the weekend gross for EXPELLED the movie to be $24,374.  This amount divided by, what 37 theatres….gives us $658.76 dollars a theatre over the weekend.  So if the theatre she went too was half-full (follow link in her post)…well…looks like Expelled will soon be…EXPELLED from the theatres.

And not a moment too soon.