View the Bankruptcy Court Bids for “Expelled”

We learned about this bidding information link from the comments section of this Panda’s Thumb thread: Help TalkOrigins Bid for “Expelled”.

You can see the bids online here: Premise Media Distribution, LP. When you get there, click on VIEW or BID ITEMS BEING SOLD.

At that point, scroll down to about the fifth item. The description starts out with:

That certain feature-length motion picture (“Picture”) entitled “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed” …

There you’ll see a clickable number, which is the number of bids received. If you click on that you can see what’s come in so far.

At the moment there have been 15 bids, and the price is up to $1,600. That’s a lot for this schlocky movie, but the bidding has just begun.

If you want to contribute to TalkOrigins to help them bid for it, details are in the Panda’s Thumb article. Or make your own bid. If you lose, you can tell your grandchildren that you were part of the action, and if you win … well, then you’re on your own.

Copyright © 2011. The Sensuous Curmudgeon. All rights reserved.

• • • • • • • • • • •

. . Permalink for this article

Darwin’s Marginal Notes Are Now Online

This is of interest to Darwin scholars. The Yorkshire Post reports: Online notes offer insight into evolution of Darwin’s big idea. Here are some excerpts, with bold font added by us:

Notes and comments scribbled by Charles Darwin on the pages and in the margins of his own personal library have been made available online for the first time.

Darwin’s library amounted to 1,480 books, of which 730 contain a wealth of scrawled notes, providing an insight into his thought processes and struggles as he wrote On The Origin Of Species.

Scrawled notes? Why do we care? Let’s read on:

For example, his friend Charles Lyell wrote in his famous Principles Of Geology that there were definite limits to the variation of species. Darwin wrote alongside this: “If this were true adios theory.”

Wait until the quote-miners find out about that! One more excerpt:

The majority of the collection in Cambridge University library and has now been digitised in an effort involving Cambridge, the Darwin Manuscripts Project at the American Museum of Natural History, the Natural History Museum and the Biodiversity Heritage Library.

That’s nice, but the newspaper doesn’t give us a link to the collection. Never fear, we have it: Charles Darwin’s Library. That site says:

Charles Darwin’s Library is a digital edition and virtual reconstruction of the surviving books owned by Charles Darwin. This BHL [Biodiversity Heritage Library] special collection draws on original copies and surrogates from other libraries. It also provides full transcriptions of his annotations and marks. In this first release (2011) we provide 330 of the 1480 titles in his library, concentrating on the most heavily annotated books.

We haven’t looked at the collection yet, but we probably will. It’s good to have this resource available.

Copyright © 2011. The Sensuous Curmudgeon. All rights reserved.

• • • • • • • • • • •

. . Permalink for this article

Louisiana Creationism & Flat-Earth Bill — Dead!

Creationist bill, road kill

We’ve written a few times about the latest bit of creationist madness in the Louisiana legislature — which adjourned on Thursday, 23 June. The bill we’ve been concerned about is HOUSE BILL NO. 580 (10-page pdf file). It was sponsored in the House by Frank Hoffmann.

Opponents have referred to it as a “stealth creationism” bill, which would allow local public schools to decide on their own to use state money for purchasing any textbooks they want — without state supervision. We’ve been exaggerating a bit by calling it the Flat-Earth Option bill because it would allow local schools to opt for flat-earth textbooks (which is not unthinkable in Louisiana). But of course it’s a creationism bill, and it sailed through the House on 08 June by a vote of 87-5. After that, all the action has been in the state Senate, where it was sponsored by Mike Walsworth.

Our last post about this was Louisiana’s HB 580: The Flat-Earth Option, #4. Today’s post is #5 in that mini-series, but we felt like a more celebratory title. Our last report informed you that the bill had suffered a procedural setback in the Senate but it was still alive — needing a two-thirds majority vote to be passed in the final days of the legislative session. The bill’s backers were still hoping for victory.

That was the situation when we ended our post two days ago, so we had an old-fashioned cliff-hanger going on.

Now we can tell the rest of the story. Or rather, since there are as yet no newspaper accounts of the affair this morning, we refer you to the ultimate source of information about The Controversy in Louisiana — Barbara Forrest, philosophy professor at Southeastern Louisiana University, co-author of Creationism’s Trojan Horse, a founder of the Louisiana Coalition for Science, and a star witness for the winning side in Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District.

Barbara already had the full story at her blog before any of the newspapers were out, so we refer you to her account of victory in the creationism (and flat-earth) affair: Announcement: Louisiana HB 580 is dead.

Barbara singles out a few people for credit in defeating this legislative horror. Among them are Zack Kopplin and state Senator Karen Carter Peterson. Peterson had worked with Zack in the earlier Campaign to Repeal Louisiana’s Creationism Law — a noble effort which, alas, Failed in a Senate Committee.

But this time the good guys won. And although Barbara doesn’t mention her own efforts, we imagine that they were considerable, so we’ll thank her for all that she has done.

Okay, dear reader, now click over to Barbara Forrest’s Coalition for Louisiana Progress and read the good news. Reason can prevail — even in Louisiana.

Copyright © 2011. The Sensuous Curmudgeon. All rights reserved.

• • • • • • • • • • •

. . Permalink for this article

Ken Ham Disciple Exposes NASA’s Godless Lies

We found an absolutely glorious article by Ken Ham (ol’ Hambo), the Australian entrepreneur who has become the ayatollah of Appalachia. He runs the online creationist ministry, Answers in Genesis (AIG), and he also created the infamous, mind-boggling Creation Museum.

The title of ol’ Hambo’s latest is Nine Year Old Challenges NASA. We’ll give you some excerpts, with bold font added by us, but first you need to see what Hambo wrote near the end:

Each time I give examples in my blog posts of children who have been influenced by AiG, the atheists go ballistic on their blogs.

We don’t know what the atheist blogs will do, but we’re going to play this straight. He begins like this:

I received a letter from a nine-year-old girl who has been brought up on AiG resources. She the following wrote to me:

“She the following wrote to me”? That’s what Hambo said. Anyway, we know you can’t wait for the little girl’s letter, so here it is:

I went to a NASA display of a moon rock and a lady said, “This Moon-rock is 3.75 billion years old!” Guess what I asked for the first time ever?

“Um, may I ask a question?”

And she said, “Of course.”

I said, in my most polite voice, “Were you there?”

Love, Emma B

Stunning, huh? NASA is undoubtedly reeling in chaos. Let’s read on from Hambo’s article:

Emma’s Mom wrote a letter to us with more information:

[From the kid's mother:] Actually, Emma, age 9, asked a bit more, but I just copied what she typed for you. She was VERY excited to share it with you, since she’s been blessed to hear your teachings through your kids DVDs and Kids Answers.

[...]

Emma proceeded to answer that she thought the moon rock was probably around 6,000 years old, after the presenter asked her how old she thought it was then since she didn’t believe it was 3.75 billion years old? Then the rep asked Emma how she came up with that? Emma answered, “The Bible. If the earth was made around the same time as the moon, wouldn’t they be the same age?” Emma answered.

There’s more in Hambo’s article, including photos. The little kid is proud of herself, the kid’s mother is very proud of her child, and ol’ Hambo is thrilled. He wraps it up with this:

Praise the Lord, Emma has such a strong foundation in God’s Word and won’t fall for the atheist lies in their attempts to shake their fist at their creator God.

We won’t fulfill Hambo’s prophesy by going ballistic about this. It’s sufficient merely to tell the tale. What you make of it, dear reader, is up to you.

Copyright © 2011. The Sensuous Curmudgeon. All rights reserved.

• • • • • • • • • • •

. . Permalink for this article