Unintelligence: “Expelled” Reviewed
With the film’s website reporting widespread blog coverage - dubious as any of their data must be considered - and given the fact that that I’ve already written about it on this site - another entry regarding Ben Stein’s Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed might seem redundant and tiresome, if not needless, given that the film has already been near-universally panned. But, if my review - or the act of reviewing - is to be redundant and tiresome, at least it is in proper keeping with the film itself, for Expelled was a terribly redundant and tiresome work. And if my thoughts add little to the mass of writings already dedicated to the topic, at least I will have helped to somewhat justify (to myself) the mischievous curiosity that led me into the theater for what proved to be an agonising endurance test, staining an otherwise lovely Spring Saturday evening. The scientific errors of the film have been thoroughly corrected, most notably by those scientists who appeared in the film portrayed as a bitter conspiracy of atheist Nazi-sympathisers1 . For my part, I will attempt to review the film for its cinematic merits. The power of the presentation of the arguments necessarily overlaps with an assessment of the film’s worth as a film alone, but anybody seriously interested in more detailed refutations of Expelled’s claims would do well to follow the footnoted links. … Continue reading
- Most notably, the reviews of Michael Shermer, Richard Dawkins, and PZ Meyers [↩]
Compassion
In vampire lore it has been said that a vampire cannot enter your house unless they are invited. This is useful to remember because the world is indeed full of vampires. They come in all shapes and sizes and walk among us every day. Now, I am not speaking about the kind with long teeth, black clothes and pale skin. I happen to know many of those people and I can tell you from personal experience that many of them are most excellent beings and, unless you take away their absinthe, they are pretty much harmless (little joke mes amis). If blood=life and life=energy then I speak of people who feed on the energy of others and offer nothing in return. … Continue reading
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The Empty Safe
As an amateur prestidigitator, I have always had the utmost respect for well-performed stage magic. In the Art of Magic, effect is of course everything. Sleight-of-hand is a practiced and elite skill, but I am equally impressed by the genius that has devised methods of producing illusions that are staggering in effect but simple in execution. As author, and inventor of illusions, Jim Steinmeyer writes in his book Art & Artifice and Other Essays on Illusion:
Magicians guard an empty safe. There are few secrets that they possess which are beyond a gradeschool science class, little technology more complex than a rubber band, a square of black fabric or a length of thread.
Indeed, most spectators are disappointed to learn the techniques of the theater magician. Knowing that they are being deceived, the audience is always looking for the gimmick, the misdirection, a give-away. Their minds are trying to puzzle out an idea of “how”, and are only impressed when they are capable of none. Theater magic is a difficult and demanding profession, substantially lucrative only to a select established minority. A skilled magician, deft in sleight-of-hand, practiced in illusion, and well-spoken in scripted monologues, most likely works a “day job” while performing his art for extra money on-the-side. On the other hand, a bullshit artist employing but one routine - even (and most usually) very poorly - outside of the context of stage magic, can usually coax large sums from credulous rubes. … Continue reading
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Expulsion
I didn’t recognise her voice, nor did I recognise the number on my caller ID, but she said my name with such enthusiastic familiarity that I felt compelled to match her tone. Some of my friends have proven easily insulted by my occasional failures of immediate voice recognition, and who but a friend would be calling me so late on a Sunday night?
“Hey!” I said. “Where are you at?” I was fishing for clues. This confused her.
“I’m really sorry to be calling so late…” she apologised. She explained that she works for a production company1 that I had contacted by email several weeks earlier in regards to an upcoming film. … Continue reading
- The same production company responsible for the Narnia fiasco, as well as Mel Gibson’s disturbing sado-masochistic blood-porn The Passion of The Christ. Motive Marketing, they are called. I think that the motive here is quite obvious. [↩]
Marked as: Abnormal Sociology • Belief Systems • Science • Societal Policies — 20 comments (RSS (10 votes, average: 4.7 out of 5) Loading ...
Fear
I am one of those people who rarely remembers my dreams but jet lag has thrown me the keys to Pandora’s flat for the time being. The other night I dreamt that I died. It wasn’t anything dramatic, no fiery plane crash, no end of the world scenario. It just occurred to me that it was happening and was irreversible. … Continue reading
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School For Rodents
“Innocence” is often merely a euphemism for gullibility, and it’s this quality that typically endears children to adults. Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and Jesus all entered our tender, nascent minds without troublesome critical inquiries, so often the demon enemy of adult happiness. Liquor is often needed to bring the “magic” back, and in retrospect, I think my First Grade teacher was a drunkard. Or worse. Her moods were erratic. She oscillated from sedate, glassy-eyed trances to wild-eyed hysterics. She wasn’t taken in by our “innocence”. She knew full well what savage little beasts we were, and that without the proper subordination we’d break off into primal tribes, murdering the fat kids in ad hoc rituals. With the proper organization and physical strength, we’d have had her on a rotisserie before Nap Time. … Continue reading
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Of Souls and State Machines
William is packing for, and in transit to, Italy this week where he’ll be doing a couple months of work on The American Memory Project with Justin Bennett. So, you’ll have just Doug and myself this cycle.
Many known belief systems in the world feature the idea of a ’soul’ — a sentient component of an entire human being; in most of these systems, the existence of this soul continues beyond the corporeal existence of the human being, maintaining some carry over from its time spent in the host body (depending on belief system, ranging from actual memories and feelings, to more hand-waving-vagaries like ‘psychic energy’). I won’t address the varying theories about where these souls are supposed to come from, what their state of existence is prior to the physical existence of the host form, which is an article unto its own; i will, instead, focus on what the continual march of scientific discovery brings to light on dark age notions of the soul. … Continue reading
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Fluids of Strangers
The events of that debauched evening haunted my memory like some irrepressible Zapruder loop.
I felt that I had to come clean.
I composed an e-mail to avant industrial artist Otto Von Schirach, an innocent man who had fallen victim to the spiraling dysfunctional buffoonery of both The Drunken Murphy and myself: … Continue reading
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