May god damn these fools

Remember, you can’t spell Bibles without lies.

A nation where nearly

half the people believe the world is only 6000 years old and dinosaurs were in Eden and on the Ark probably doesn’t deserve to be saved.

Certainly, as more people willingly embrace ignorance every year, there isn’t much hope.

Religion is the lobotomy of the people.

mjh

In Evolution Debate, Creationists Are Breaking New Ground

Museum Dedicated to Biblical Interpretation Of the World Is Being Built Near Cincinnati
By Michael Powell, Washington Post Staff

Writer

PETERSBURG, Ky. — The guide, a soft-spoken fellow with a scholarly aspect, walks through the halls of this handsome,

half-finished museum and points to the sculpture of a young velociraptor.

“We’re placing this one in the hall that explains the

post-Flood world,” explains the guide. “When dinosaurs lived with man.”

Mark Looy [mjh: pronounced “Looney”]

— the guide and a vice president at the museum … [says], “We call him our ‘missionary lizard,’ ” Looy says. “When people

realize the T. rex lived in Eden, it will lead us to a discussion of the gospel. The T. rex once was a vegetarian, too.”

The nation’s largest museum devoted to the alternative reality that is biblical creation science is rising just outside

Cincinnati. Set amid a park and three-acre artificial lake, the 50,000-square-foot museum features animatronic dinosaurs, state-of-the-

art models and graphics, and a half-dozen staff scientists. It holds that the world and the universe are but 6,000 years old and

that baby dinosaurs rode in Noah’s ark.

The $25 million Creation Museum stands much of modern science on its head and

might cause a paleontologist or three to rend their garments. But officials expect to attract hundreds of thousands of visitors when the

museum opens in early 2007.

“Evolutionary Darwinists need to understand we are taking the dinosaurs back,” says

Kenneth Ham, president of Answers in Genesis-USA, which is building the museum. “This is a battle cry to recognize the

science in the revealed truth of God.”

[B]y any measure, Young Earth Creationism — which holds that the Bible is the

literal word of God and that He created the universe in seven days– has a more powerful hold on the beliefs of Americans than

evolutionary theory or intelligent design. That grip grows stronger by the year.

Polls taken last year showed that 45

percent of Americans believe that God created humans in their present form 10,000 years ago (or less) and that man shares no common

ancestor with the ape. Only 26 percent believe in the central tenet of evolution, that all life descended from a single ancestor.

Another poll showed that 65 percent of Americans want creationism taught alongside evolution. …

Another creationist museum

launches expeditions to the Papua New Guinea highlands in search of living pterodactyls.

All of this — creationist zoology,

paleontology, archaeology — is framed in a distinctive academic language.

So one reads of post-Babel studies, and floodology and

post-diluvium studies, these being the study of the world after Noah and the Great Flood, which is regarded as purest fact. …

the creationist bottom line is a through-the-looking-glass version of science. The scientific method of theory, experiment and

assumptions upended does not apply. Ask Ham if he could accept evidence that conflicts with his reading of Genesis — proof, say, that a

fossil is more than 6,000 years old — and he shakes his head.

Creationists believe man became mortal when God cast Adam and Eve

out of Eden 6,000 years ago. Death did not exist before that.

“We admit we have an axiom: We have a book and it’s the Bible and

it’s revealed history,” says Ham. “Where the Bible teaches on science, we can trust it as the word of God.” …

Scientists place

the age of Earth at 4.5 billion years. Many tend to act resigned at the mention of creationists, seeing a worldview so different as to

defy debate.

“There are people who are prepared to accept that the universe is a pretty untidy place,” said Ian Tattersall, a

curator at the American Museum of Natural History. “And there are people, like the creationists, whose minds rebel at this notion.”

“Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts.” Daniel

Patrick Moynihan

ABQjournal: Museum of Natural History Takes

T. Rex’s Story to Dramatic Proportions By John Fleck, Journal Staff Writer

The story of T. rex is dramatic for many reasons.

In addition to being Earth’s “most horrific predator,” it was the last of its family line, ripping and tearing its way into the

extinction of the dinosaurs.

“It’s the end of an evolutionary story,” said Lucas, a curator at the New

Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science.

But beyond the drama of T. rex is a tale as scientifically beguiling as it is

dramatic.

For a moment in Earth’s history that was brief in geologic terms, evolution gave the planet a family of killer

dinosaurs— the Tyrannosaurids— different from anything before or since.

The sharp-toothed dinosaurs wandered a world very

different from our own. Called the Cretaceous (kruh-TAY-shus) period, it was in geologic terms the dawn of our modern world, as the

ancient supercontinent of Pangea broke into the pieces that became the continents we see today.

Flowers and bees first

appeared on the planetary stage during the Cretaceous. Mammals played only bit parts, while dinosaurs, after 100 million years of

evolution, reached their apex.

Picking Over the Bones by

John Fleck

Here’s a little challenge to the Intelligence of the Design. mjh

Creationism Still Blows! at Jalenack

Octopi have their optic

nerves attached to the backs of their retina. They have no blind spot. Their eyes are the perfect ones. Ours still have flaws. [The

Intelligent Designer] decided that we weren’t good enough to have perfect eyes.

We didn’t evolve from Octopi, so we didn’t get

the non-blind eye that evolved after our common ancestor (probably a jellyfish, or something).

The Sky Will Fall

My thoughts on the

Living Wage vote are seriously provoked by a letter to the editor by a local restaurant owner. I feel for her as she explains how much

she has put into her business which she feels is threatened by paying people a decent wage.

I understand her point about tipped

employees doing well, as they can at an expensive or popular place. Still, even tipped employees have a minimum wage and fewer benefits

than regular employees. It’s always struck me as odd that restaurants don’t have to pay their employees because they count on the

customers to do so.

Harris writes of her 17 employees, but how many currently make minimum wage? Not all 17, I am quite sure.

But it is at the end of her letter that I think she blows it by using Chicken Little language. Entrepreneurs cannot avoid

risk.

ABQjournal: Letters to the

Editor
Should the proposed living wage law be passed, we will be forced to make reductions in staff, either to exempt ourselves

from its terms or to avoid closing altogether. If you are happily picturing your “yes” vote to be creating a higher wage for certain

starting workers, stop a moment to realize you are also inevitably leaving a lot of very skilled,

deserving workers with no wage at all.
SHEILA SCOTT HARRIS
Perennials Restaurant, Albuquerque

Heartfelt. “Inevitably” (no one seems to know what the impact will be); “a lot”; “no wage at all” (wow —

anyone familiar with the restaurant business knows servers land on their feet — not that I want any of them to have to). mjh

PS: It’s not terribly relevant, but Ms Harris is the mother of Neil Patrick Harris, formerly TV’s Doogie

Houser.

The Storm King

Thus begins the

rewriting of history.

ABQjournal:

Letters to the Editor
President Bush is to be commended. Not since Harry S. Truman has any president had to make such crucial

decisions in history, from the tragic events of 9/11 to the war in Iraq, and now this most current tragedy.
RITA ZACCARDI

Albuquerque

All hail our benevolent great and glorious leader. The Storm King doth battle the very

elements. mjh

Deception Is All They’ve Got

Got a mailing from “www.stopthedeception.org,” which, like the Clear Skies Initiative, the Healthy

Forest Act and the USA Patriot Act, effects the opposite of its name

Promoting deception, this postcard says the “so-called

‘living wage’ is only bait.” The deceivers note the “ordinance is 10 pages long and includes a clause you don’t know about.” If there

is only one troublesome clause, how relevant is it that the ordinance is 10 pages long?

Of course, we know about that clause,

which was introduced after it became clear that unscrupulous businesses in Santa Fe would do whatever they could to keep their employees

from knowing their rights.

The fearful flyer claims the clause would allow:

Complete

strangers to enter your child’s school. [mjh: ie, child molesters]
• Special interest groups to invade your

privacy in doctor’s offices or hospitals.
• Protesters and organizers to invade private property, badger

customers and bring business to a complete standstill.

Nothing should cost us our constitutional rights, because

our liberties are priceless.

What’s priceless is how many scoundrels

wrap themselves in the flag. Nothing like turning this into a constitutional issue. Clever to frighten even those who might

benefit from the increase with such nonsense. mjh

PS: a quick Google

Search shows I’m a bit late to the party on the “Coalition to Exhort Ballot Deception”, as SWOP

calls it.

Continue reading Deception Is All They’ve Got

The Disaster President

Storm and Bush On the Move

President Bush was not going to get caught off guard by Hurricane Rita this

weekend.

The president who refused to cut short a working vacation three weeks ago to prepare for the fury of Hurricane Katrina

was sitting at the U.S. Northern Command post in Colorado on Saturday morning monitoring what had become a more timid storm.

“I’ve come here,” Bush explained, “to watch NORTHCOM in action, to see firsthand the capacity of our

military to plan, organize and move equipment to help the people in the affected areas.”

Bush’s government was

on war footing for Rita’s arrival….

At an afternoon news conference here, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-

Tex.) praised Bush. “The president is hands-on and knows what’s going on,” he said. “The president is a take-charge type of guy.”

Barf. mjh

Newsday.com: Bush urges larger

role for military BY CRAIG GORDON

Continue reading The Disaster President

Support A Living Wage

A week ago, Vern Raburn, CEO of Eclipse Aviation in Albuquerque, New Mexico, expressed

his opinion about the upcoming vote on raising the minimum wage in Albuquerque (assuming he wrote it and it wasn’t written by the

Chamber of Commerce or Karl Rove). I responded to his gall at taking public money and opposing the public good. Jon Knudsen put it best:

“Ingrate” would seem like an appropriate term.

A couple of days later, Raburn’s opinion piece was front page news. After

all, the Journal pronounces him the “arguably the state’s most visible entrepreneur” — well, yes, “most visible” now that he’s on the

front page. To Andrew Webb’s and the Journal’s credit, the story does eventually get around to the he-said-she-said of modern

journalism, but the real message, as it so often is, is in the headline: “Bad for Business.” Mission Accomplished.

Today, the

Journal offers some balance by having an employer speak in favor of the change (excerpt below).

When you go to vote, remember what

Martin Luther

King said almost 40 years ago:

MARTIN LUTHER KING: “All labor has dignity. [Y]ou are reminding … the

nation that it is a crime for people to live in this rich nation and receive starvation wages.”

ABQjournal: CEO: Minimum Wage Bill Access Clause Bad for Business

Thursday, September 22, 2005, By Andrew Webb, Journal Staff Writer

Eclipse Aviation CEO Vern Raburn says he would have

bypassed Albuquerque if a proposed wage ordinance with its controversial public access provision had been on the city’s books

when he was looking to relocate his company in 2000….

Raburn has joined other business leaders calling for defeat of the

ordinance, which will raise the minimum wage and, they say, force employers to allow access to activists. …

Supporters

maintain that critics, among them a Chamber of Commerce-led initiative, are using the access clause to distract attention from their real

concern— that businesses face having to pay higher wages.

They contend opponents are exaggerating the effect of the access

wording. …

The sentence at issue is:

“Every employer shall allow any member of the public access to non-

work areas of the employer’s business that are otherwise open to the public or customers generally, such as parking lots,

sidewalks, and pedestrian areas, to inform employees of their rights under this ordinance and other laws.” …

Henderson

said the access clause was added to Albuquerque’s proposal because some businesses in Santa Fe had attempted to skirt that

city’s minimum wage law
.
“We wanted to see something that would help hold businesses accountable to the

law,” he said. …

Opponents, he said, “are not only making lies about how this ordinance could be used, but

they’re ignoring the fact that 40,000 hard working people in Albuquerque are in desperate need of a raise.”

Please re-read that clause about access. In NO WAY does it allow the disruption opponents are using as a sham

to defeat the ordinance. Further, supporters and councilors have offered to be more explicit in its restrictions.

If Raburn

genuinely believes that clause exposes his company to invasion, than he isn’t very smart. More likely, he opposes any interference in

his business. Not the attitude you want in a guy who wants to fill the air with small jets. peace, mjh

ABQjournal: Value Work by Paying Workers a Living

Wage By Mike Chandler, President, Valley Gases

My lowest-paid, employee is paid $10.50 an hour. My decision to pay well

above the federal minimum wage — and above the $7.50 that will be Albuquerque’s minimum wage if voters approve it Oct. 4 — is both a

personal choice and a business decision.

My employees need to be able to support their families on the wages they earn

— and I know they cannot at the current minimum wage.

Continue reading Support A Living Wage

Happy Equinox, Everybody!

Once again, we humans pull out of the continuum a discrete moment as somehow more important than the infinite flow, this one

where night and day balance each other. Here’s wishing you more balance in your own life.

At the precise nanosecond of the

equinox — so powerful is science to measure — at that precise moment, MR and I will be wading the Alamosa Creek in the vicinity of the

Monticello Box, celebrating the temporary stopping of the relentless profiteers, wishing the wolves were there,

but glad they’re only an easy trek away. Science, bless it, could tell you our precise location in at least 4 dimensions; its child,

medicine, could tell you what it does to our state of being. But nothing can recreate it or preserve it forever. peace, mjh

The Monticello Box

PS: I’ll balance my happiness

by sending you to j f l e c k : : a t : : i n k s t a i n: Annual Heartbreak

"It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people's minds." — Sam Adams