Goldberg Variations Alert
And so it begins….I mean what self respecting LibTardMarxyBastard and GentlemanScientist™ could avoid wading into the warm waters presented here.
Where to begin…This is just the title and the tagline, and before we even get out of the boat or have a chance to stub our toe on a bit of coral on our way to the mangroves and beyond, we encounter fail. If I were a generous sort, I might be inclined to see this as trolling. I mean is Science Ceasar in the title. Are we to render Salad unto same?
The “memo” such as it is falls not only into the “no Shit Sherlock” category (at least the part past the comma), but purports that its author is in tune with the will of a “god” that he cynically employs when it suits his fancy.
Before we dig in there is an editors note:
“The following is Jonah Goldberg’s weekly “news”letter, the G-File. Subscribe here to get the G-File delivered to your inbox on Fridays.”
Sounds like a deal at twice the price. I don’t know if I have seen a G-file of such quality in the wild or at the mall. For me the best part is the “news”letter. It would seem that it is now cool to use punctuation within words themselves, though I am not sure what you would call that…AwkwardLooking? A nod to “truth”inadvertising? Let’s see what tendentious codswallop follows.
Dear Reader (Unless you’re at the screening of Al-Qaeda Sniper), All of us are equal in the eyes of God and the law — or at least that’s how it’s supposed to work.
OK, yeah, huh? What the fuck? OK. So maybe this G-Phile is a new venture and that convoluted mess is supposed to serve as introduction, or something. I learned a couple of things, there is apparently a group called African American Conservatives, and these guys are fucking hilarious, so much so that they caught Jonah’s attention and Jonah just had to get a gag in before the first bell. Click to embiggen, its a tour de force of conservative humor and will save you a click on the previous link.
What this has to do with Science unless experimentation with the combustable properties of strawmen is involved (Pro Tip bucket of linseed oil soaked rags…), I know not, but the opening sentence is packed with meaning if you have a wingnut decoder ring and a cast iron stomach. Plus African Americans promoted this, indicating that poor taste does not adhere to any boundaries, racial or otherwise, but it does seem like conservatives have warehouses filled with the stuff a veritable Hudson Bay Company circa 1835 of Comedy. Back to the meat and let’s see if anything resembling the promised point rears its head in the first graph.
(Though the fact that Jon Corzine has neither been hit by lightning nor carted off to jail sometimes causes me moments of doubt on both fronts.) I try pay lip-service to the same principle about readers of this “news”letter, but let’s face it. That’s not true. Nearly all G-File readers are cherished, but not all are cherished equally.
As a reader it would seem that I fall into the latter, cherished but not equally so.
So out of the gate we are up to two digs on the Libtardian Menace, and three failed attempts to gin up a laugh, the double edged coda for which the “Load” is famous ends a graph that says literally nothing. Mayhaps the second graph will bear some fruit.
(And, in a year or two when my next book comes out, the great schism in my heart will be between those of you who eagerly purchase my book, and you shameful free riders who, for years, were perfectly happy for me to throw you the gold Aztec idol week after week, but now refuse to throw me the whip as promised, saying “Adios, Señor.” This is the quid people, my next book will be the pro quo.
Run this gibberish through the Janus node and we might find something within that makes sense. The self regard on display is astonishing as is his attempt to coerce a couple of sales out of his pack of “readers” who may be so weighted down with golden Aztec Idols that they find it impossible to make it to the book store, before the Book in question is remanded to the remainder bin. Or maybe this is just him giving them (AztecIdolCollectors™) time to get their waddle on.
The use of latin in the service of an attempted gag, lends both the author and his readers a simulacrum of gravitas. (I just did it too. I bet you are feeling even more substantial than you were before…n’yuk, n’yuk…JKMK,P.)
If you assume each Goldberg File I’ve written is worth a quarter, you should probably convert it into zombie-apocalypse currency and assume it’s equal in value to a can of dog food, six dead D batteries, or a fully operational calk gun. But the price is what the market will bear, and even at that valuation, it would more than cover the price of my forthcoming magnum opus for any longtime reader. You have been put on notice.)
“But the price is what the market will bear,…” “…valuation…”
“…magnum opus…” “…put on notice…” I am reminded that the only reason the market floated this excrescence to prominence was due to a cum-stain on a dress. That is it. In a nutshell. Period.
Reminding myself that he actually gets paid enormous amounts to do his literary version of interpretive dancing has me wishing for a fully operational battle station targeting my current location.
Anyhoo, I was promised Science and so maybe, possibly, we’ll find something in the third graph, but this time I’m going scuba:
I bring this up because Charles Krauthammer is a reader of this “news”letter which, like seeing a spider monkey in your brand new kitchen making crème brûlée with a blowtorch, is both cool and scary.
Namedropping Krauthammer is not science, but is both scary and cool like a spidermonkey gourmand with a blowtorch in a new kitchen….I Wonder if McMe-again has one of those in a cage next to the himalayan salt. But really? Hello? Science? Nope, not yet, more about the super cool and menacing Krauthammer.
Why it’s cool should be obvious. He’s the Hammer. It’s scary because . . . he’s the Hammer. I try very hard not to put a face to my readers because, frankly, this thing is sometimes so stupid and self-indulgent if I imagined a real person reading it, I’d push the keyboard away.
Yeah, we get it Jonah, you can remove your lips from the lap of Charles now. Now the dime on which this chooses to turn, represents something so rarely seen in the wild among movement conservatives, a sense of self awareness, that I really have to see it again…
because, frankly, this thing is sometimes so stupid and self-indulgent if I imagined a real person reading it, I’d push the keyboard away.
Yet he won’t. Will he. Ever…It appears that he is gonna stun us with his acumen and bring science up in the next graph:
Fernal Linguistics
Anyway, Charles is a big fan of “unpaired words.” I don’t mean words with the Bluetooth turned off. I mean . . . hmmm . . . how do I explain?
Get your face the fuck out of the poor doods lap, his pants are soaked through by now.
Well, many times, during the commercial break on Special Report, we’ve gone back and forth — brandy snifters in hand — talking about how we need a president with more feck running an ept and gormful foreign policy. These conversations usually take place after the make-up lady comes into the studio to make sure that we look kempt and shevelled. Well, last Wednesday, the topic came up again, and we kept bandying them about. Which made me think, “This is pretty cool.” It also made me think, “This would be a good riff for the G-File.”
Ha, Ha, Ha, bringing the funny ala Goldberg has me wondering if he is getting paid to make Dennis Miller look good, I mean really, “feck” and “gorm”? Still no science, and Jonah continues to go at krauthammers lap like a starving dog attacking a pound of ground round.
Still, I’m hoping that he isn’t gruntled by this somewhat nocuous and entirely effable effort to rip off one of his favorite parlor games. Indeed, I could have dropped this choate schtick without name-dropping Charles, which might have made it seem less petuous, but why leave my motivation unbeknownst when it can be beknownst? Better to go communicado and cognito, I say. Particularly when I’m still throat clearing as I try to scrounge up a real topic to discuss. Still, I fear I seem quite chalant as I search for sipid things to say. If I don’t work harder, this “news”letter will never be combobulated. (“I don’t want to disrupt your flow here, so I’ll rupt it. But you should know this all comes across as soucient and below even your pareil writing style. I would have thrown this whole thing out the window, but you opted to fenestrate it.” — The Couch)
Thus ends the first page (two more to go for our intrepid mango hunters) in a flourish.
“It takes the dictionary and puts it in the blender. It empties the blender into a salad shooter and sprays the contents upon the wall.”
Which is what I imagine to be his instruction to the interns who clearly show a heavy hand on this, this, thing. That I have no idea whatsoever who the fuck the last parenthetical aside is addressing, I will state that I would willingly sharpen Cheney’s Hardon and pluck out my remaining eye with it, if even my F-Game could not best Jonah’s prose while phoning it in with both hands tied behind its back.
Where I recover the newly missing 20 IQ points is a mystery to me, as is LoadBellies™ Relevance. Maybe he’ll get to science and an actual point on one of the other pages that I won’t be bothered to read….JeebusFuckingX on a hand hewn wooden PogoStick.
You made that up didn’t you? I’d probably gain more actual information from Krauthammer, where at least I’d see what the latest talking point was.
Thanks, better you than me to read through that.
Shorter Doughy Pantload: FAAAAAAARRRT!!!!!
You made that up didn’t you?
Would I were that good…
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Unfortunately for his readers, he didn’t have to walk the dog that day.
…did you miss Raiders of the Lost Ark, Provider? Or has “You throw me the idol, I throw you the whip” been blasted out of your memory by the pure cheese-food that was Kingdom of the Crystal Skull?
Science doesn’t care if folks believe in it? Tell that to Galileo Galilei or Giordano Bruno.
A study purports that conservatives are more charitable than liberals – & the success of Jonah Goldberg certainly seems to confirm it.
Omnissiah help me, I read the rest of it. On page two, he recycles a turd he extruded into the Corner three years ago which remains ripe:
On page three, he gets to his actual point:
With all due respect to Brother Charles Pierce, these are not the mole people. They’re not even the Morlocks. There’s no species on this green Planet of the Clocks, or in the imaginations of its inhabitants, that I can compare them to without insulting that species. I’m reminded of Bill Hicks’ observation that those who say they don’t believe in evolution, by and large, don’t seem to have any ancestors who underwent the process.
And what the fuck do you mean I’m posting comments too quickly, WordPress? Two hours is too quickly for you? Eat all my shit.
Austin, you wanna bust my chops over a movie reference 35 years gone. And was it an aztec idol in the movie in question. Who re-loaded the walls that shot the darts…via you, i have been bested by loady.
/Hangs head in shame…
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There’s a blockquote missing in there, too. o-o
In other words, the “Don’t you believe in evolution!?!” people don’t really believe in science qua science, what they’re really after is dethroning God in favor of their own gods of the material world (though I suspect many don’t even realize why they’re so obsessed with this one facet of the disco ball called “science”).
I never get tired of pointing this out, but no, no, it really doesn’t. Millions of people the world over believe in God and accept evolution. Even Christians. The largest Christian denomination out there, the Catholic Church, accepts evolution. So do plenty of others. Heck, it’s hardly unheard of for scientists to themselves be Christian or otherwise religious. Whether or not you believe some omnipotent entity somewhere was somehow responsible for creating the universe out of thin air (or thin void) has no bearing on whether you acknowledge the simple mechanics of how that universe works. The people who acknowledge how the universe works aren’t taking a dump on God; they’re just taking a dump on you and your gaggle of fellow illiterates. We can’t help it if you can’t tell yourselves from God, or your F in middle school biology from sacred text.
As I say in my column, the fight over evolution is really a fight over the moral status of man. And, if we are nothing but a few bucks worth of chemicals connected by water and electricity, than there’s really nothing holding us back from elevating “science” to divine status and in turn anointing those who claim to be its champions as our priests.
They really do have a weird fixation with discovering “the liberal religion.” Darwinism’s a popular one, of course (to the point that I’ve heard them use Darwin’s name in conversations completely unrelated to Darwin’s field of specialty, like “Darwin believed torture works [so you should too!]” or something about as ridiculous). “Environmentalism” is another. “Political correctness” is another. “Feminism.” “Socialism.” It goes on.
And no, it wasn’t an Aztec idol. That movie started in Peru. The Aztecs were in Mexico. Goldberg, you rube.
Tnx crissa, had a closing bq start that one.
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Indeed. And in spite of this false dichotomy, I’m quite sure that
A) Goldberg doesn’t actually believe in a God-that-created-the-world-in-six-days.
B) Goldberg doesn’t actually disbelieve in evolution
But since he enjoys loud farting to annoy people and attract attention, he finds it amusing to pose as a Bible-thumpin’ idiot.
See, Jonah, here’s the thing, evolution isn’t just some random idea which the left inexplicably chose as a “benchmark”.
Evolution has been thoroughly tested for many years now, and has over many years become the foundation of all biology.
Anybody who chooses not to “believe” in evolution is rejecting the methodology of science in general and the entire science of biology.
You see, Jonah, science has this thing called “falsifiability” which religion doesn’t.
You are welcome to attempt to “falsify” evolution as much as you want— succeed in this, and you will be much more famous than Darwin.
But falsifying evolution must be done using the scientific method, not by insisting on your irrelevant “beliefs”.
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To argue about ANY scientific question with somebody who doesn’t “believe” in evolution would be like arguing about advanced mathematics with somebody who doesn’t “believe” in the number zero.
Yes, I know this sounds outrageous, but in actual fact, the Catholic Church didn’t “believe” in the number zero during the Middle Ages, insisting that Roman numerals were God’s own numbering system, and banning those barbaric Arabic numerals.
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See, Jonah, here’s the thing… you don’t really give a shit about science, or you wouldn’t utter such fucking stupid utter nonsense.
So why don’t you just stick to subjects you know about? Perhaps a psychological issue such as “Why do some people deliberately act stupid to get attention”?
You are welcome to attempt to “falsify” evolution as much as you want— succeed in this, and you will be much more famous than Darwin.
If I understand correctly, plenty of scientists have in fact gone back to Darwinism over the years and either corrected things or fleshed things out or addressed things that he left unanswered – IOW, Darwin’s hardly a prophet whose word has gone unquestioned and untested ever since. (Partly because the scientific community doesn’t have prophets and doesn’t see them that way, no matter how hard the religious righters try to convince themselves that surely everyone MUST be like them).
But falsifying evolution must be done using the scientific method, not by insisting on your irrelevant “beliefs”.
I’ve heard this decried angrily as a double standard, because if scientists insist on justifying science by using nothing more than science, then fundamentalists should be allowed to justify the Bible using nothing more than the Bible.
This is what TVTropes has the “Too Dumb To Live” entry for.
(I need to start pre-emptively including the FYWP in my posts, because I got the thing again where the first try is told I’m posting too fast and the second try will probably go through just fine.)
“There is no point in saying less than your predecessors have said.”
— John Simon
“On two occasions I have been asked, — ‘Pray, Mr Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?’ In one case a member of the Upper, and in the other a member of the Lower, House put this question. I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.”
— Charles Babbage, Passages from the Life of a Philosopher
“Dear God,”
YES, MY CHILD?
“I would like to file a bug report.”
— Randall Munroe, “xkcd: Conspiracy Theories”
after reading loadberg (autocorrect insists on “loaded erg” which works too) yesterday and then coming to work today and being forced to spend the morning with our very own version of loaded erg, i want to go home and repeatedly hit myself in the head with a hammer…
Stupidly posted downstairs, damnit
Ho. Lee Fuk.
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Also, on topic, Neil deGrasse Tyson with Bill Moyers.
“Nothing more than science” Nothing? Nothing more than the entire natural world measured and experimented and checked for errors in an ongoing process to determine the origin of species, the mechanism of change, and create measurable predictions about the natural world. Vs the internally inconsistent, unverifiable, unevenly translated, hastily and politically minded assembly of a few dozen decades- or centuries- after-the-fact accounts, prophecies, visions, and legends of a few tribes of bronze age shepherds? And even if we accept their ancient legends as truth, how are they different and more true than any other ancient legends?
Meanwhile, in Puerto Rico the Christians are saying “No books. Don’t damage our kids.”
http://i.imgur.com/5nK8WyA.jpg
According to the source, This occurred yesterday in a protest against teaching Gender equality in public schools. Yesterday the radio was plagued with religious people talking about how immoral and un-christian it is to accept homosexuals into our society.
Saying things like “they can already ride our buses, visit the same stores, they can do anything we do. There is no discrimination, we don’t need to teach this in school”.
“Our” buses?
A line from “Naked Lunch” we might find on the Goldberg family crest:
“Mmmm, that’s my rich substance.”
You figure it out, kids!
That vid, which totally surprised me by embedding, doesn’t jump to the time mark that I put in the link. And now I don’t remember it. About 34 minites and change, as I recall.
Also FYWP. Too quickly my ass
Meanwhile in Oklahoma http://thinkprogress.org/education/2015/02/17/3623683/oklahoma-lawmakers-vote-overwhleming-ban-advanced-placement-history-class/
i want to go home and repeatedly hit myself in the head with a hammer…
The thing about hitting yourself in the head with a hammer is that it feels so good when you stop.
I have a couple of new posts up:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/02/11/1363619/-When-airliners-attack
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/02/17/1364915/-Airports-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly
Nice airport roundup MK.
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FYI: if you simply paste the “short” youtube “share” url, FYWP automatically embeds it. On the other hand, if you paste Youtube’s “embed” HTML stuff, FYWP does not embed it. Because reasons.
Related — I really need to put a GoPro®™© on my dog:
http://youtu.be/rZGDStLxyEU
I’ll take “The Golden Rule” for $200, Alex.
As my late father once observed, “The only passage in the Bible that has never been taken literally is the Golden Rule.”
Also, too: the local rag weighs in on the recent Pew study, and talks to a prof at OSU about it. This jumped out at me (from here note: em-pha-sis added by me):
And that, in a nutshell, is what Loadberg is fighting against. An educated citizen is an enemy of conservatism.
So…you’re saying it might be possible to recover the Glenn Reynolds robot photoshops?
Those were so awesome…
~
Agreed. But looking behind the lack of critical thinking skills, you see a pervasive nastiness.
The fetish for firearms… the love of war… the insistence that the Civil War was not due to racism or slavery… the idea that 47% of their fellow citizens are freeloaders… the enthusiasm for capital punishment, etc. etc.
“The base” are not nice people who lack critical thinking skills.
They are a bunch of nasty pricks.
“It’s more a loss of basic critical thinking skills.”
you know where the kids learn those critical thinking skills don’t ya? those commie librul arts colleges! therefore critical thinking = bad
There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge. – Isaac Asimov, 1980
After the Christian supremacists took over the
governmentRepublican party in the 80s the anti-intellectualism became their core element. Conservative = Republican = Christianist = LALALALA I DON’T WANT TO KNOW LALALALACheck one two three
Hello? Is this thing on?
So I signed up at the great orange Satan just so I could comment on the Major’s attack airliner column. But I can’t see how to do it. I r dum.
Karl Marx, who then proceeded to create his own secular religion.
No, he didn’t. You must be thinking of L. Ron Hubbard.
, if we are nothing but a few bucks worth of chemicals connected by water and electricity
Straw man alert! Who ever said this?
than there’s really nothing holding us back from elevating “science” to divine status and in turn anointing those who claim to be its champions as our priests.
Um, you mean, other than the fact that that has never happened in the history of civilization?
But nice try, Jonah.
The only way to stop a military spouse with a gun is gay marriage.
http://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/2015/02/johannes-paulsen/ne-state-senator-kills-military-spouse-ccw-bill-because-gay-marriage/
…might be able to recover the Glenn Reynolds robot photoshops?
“might” being the operative word. can I put you down for hoovering all images from Jan 2007 at the wayback machine copy of sadlyno.com?
Still working on a space for uploading same.
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You are posting comments too quickly. Slow down.
Yes yes thank you, may I have another?
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those commie librul arts colleges! therefore critical thinking = bad
I larned ’em from my mom afore I got to middle school, well from her and my nascent love of science.
But yeah
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New one uptiddy doo dah.
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