We've all seen this particular movie before

On the Internet, even advocating a perfectly good idea can cost you; maybe not money, but certainly your sense of security in advocating that idea. This is especially true in the case of skepticism-oriented blogs when dealing with litigation-happy individuals who don't like having their suspect ideas questioned in public. Orac at Respectful Insolence has recently authored a series of articles on attempts by, er, "alternative cancer therapy" physician (read: probable q**ck) Stanislaw Burzynski and his lawsuit-threatening email goon Marc Stephens to silence Andy Lewis of Quackometer; the articles are far too detailed for me to quote at length here, but you can find them at Insolence or (if you're interested in reading them right now) in four easy pieces (namely, 1, 2, 3 and 4).

(UPDATE: Quackometer itself is currently down as of 6:28 CST; whether this has anything to with the Burzynski/Stephens case is strictly left up to the morbid curiosity of the reader.)

(Also at WTTFTG).

Texas and science curricula: same old song, different verse

Just when you thought that the Texas textbook question had been solved in favor of actual scientific rigor, the same old nonsense concerning textbooks rears its ugly head again (a full-length analysis of the issue by the Texas Freedom Network can be found in PDF form here). This was a tiresome issue a long time ago; now it's getting to be beyond tiresome and quickly turning idiotic instead. 

(Also at WTTFTG)

Lynn Margulis, 1938-2011

In Memoriam.(Courtesy the New York Times)

We're way past the "uh oh" stage on this

As the New York Times'  Chrisopher Drew points out in this article, we've got a problem and it's not even one that starts occurring where you would assume it would:

"We’re losing an alarming proportion of our nation’s science talent once the students get to college,” says Mitchell J. Chang, an education professor at U.C.L.A. who has studied the matter. “It’s not just a K-12 preparation issue.”

Professor Chang says that rather than losing mainly students from disadvantaged backgrounds or with lackluster records, the attrition rate can be higher at the most selective schools, where he believes the competition overwhelms even well-qualified students.

“You’d like to think that since these institutions are getting the best students, the students who go there would have the best chances to succeed,” he says. “But if you take two students who have the same high school grade-point average and SAT scores, and you put one in a highly selective school like Berkeley and the other in a school with lower average scores like Cal State, that Berkeley student is at least 13 percent less likely than the one at Cal State to finish a STEM degree.”

With yet more sympathy to PZ Myers: the idiot brigade moves in on Pharyngula

This is ridiculous. Very ridiculous.

No sooner do I post on the subject of PZ Myers receiving some truly moronic emails defending convicted tax evader and creationist/conspiracy theory/antisemitism huckster Kent Hovind at Myers' blog Pharyngula than he ends up getting barraged by Hovind apologists (including his especially vacuous son Eric) proving their complete lack of worth as anything except creative occupiers of  furniture (the thread PZ references can be found here). The following - from the earlier thread - is a good example of the level of "reasoning" that PZ has ended up having to slog through recently:

You are an arrogant jackass. Your pompousness is only exceeded by your stupendous idiocracy. The fact that you are game fully (sic) employed is proof that we were created and it was obviously not survival of the fittest. If there were any true justice in this country, you would be the one sitting in jail. Hey ape-man, go back and crawl under the rock from witch you came and do the world a favor…

Have a wonderful day

Likewise, here's this example from Eric Hovind himself from the bullying thread:

Nerd,
So I start with the pre sup that God is true, and I am a looser (sic). You start with the presup that you can reason that reason is valid. Back to my question, could you be wrong? You said no. Do you know everything?

Clever, no?

No.

By the way, the idiots I quoted might want to keep in mind that these are the reasons that Kent Hovind is in prison; they seem entirely independent of the content of the gargantuan loopiness he's advocated in the past, so it certainly doesn't turn on any bogus First Amendment argument. But then, expecting such twits to understand the difference between advocating wholesale nonsense and engaging in wholesale tax fraud because you think that such advocacy allows you to do so seems an impossible task for them to undertake.  

With sympathy to PZ Myers

You would think that if creationists were going to attack a noted professor of biology on his blog they'd be able to come up with a better attack than "you're a mean doodyhead for calling a convicted felon we admire for no real reason an idiot!", but no.