CBEB’s

Yesterday over at Dispatches from the Culture Wars Ed Brayton had a huge post of videos from the US Festival. There was a pretty healthy selection, but Ed noted that the US Festival was where Motley Crüe frontman Vince Neil proclaimed the death of New Wave. Maybe Vince was right, but in my opinion, New Wave left a mighty fine looking corpse. Let’s commemorate the death of New Wave with a massive post of clips from Urgh! A Music War. This was a great movie - it sounds like they caught every single band on their best night. It’s a shame that this will probably never get an official DVD release, because according to Wikipedia, the filmmakers filmed three songs by each band, but it looks like we’ll never get to see the other songs.

Kicking things off is Skafish with a great song for church burnin’ and ebola spreadin’, “Sign of the Cross”.
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There’s 9 more videos below the fold.
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Denyse O’Leary posed the following question at Uncommon Descent: “Are most Discovery Institute Fellows evangelical Christians?”. As is her custom, she urged readers to visit one of her 700 blogs to get the rest of the story. I should have known better. Clicking a link to one of Granny Spice’s articles is basically the same thing as clicking one of those “YOU HAVE WON A FREE LAPTOP!” pop-up ads. There’s no free laptop and there’s no answer, other than:

I suppose so, except for the ones who are Catholics, agnostics, or Moonies or something.

Then she goes off on some bizarre tangent about Beefaloes, caterpillars and molecular clocks.

Pop Journalism Quiz*
If this headline had been written by Denyse O’Leary, it would be about:
a) the new Monet exhibit at the local art museum
b) dating tips
c) a restaurant review
d) an article urging readers to buy her book

What the fuck, Denyse? If you’re going to write an article headlined “Are most Discovery Institute Fellows evangelical Christians?” at least make an attempt to answer the question before you jump on the train to Red Herring City. Your flippant answer followed by hundreds of words that have absolutely nothing to do with the question lead curious minds to think you’re hiding something.

For example, how many Discovery Institute Fellows are Moonies? We all know Jonathan Wells is a Moonie, but who else? You did, after all use the word in its plural form. Who are the agnostics? How many Discovery Institute Fellows are Christian Reconstructionists? Although my late grandmother was a Pulitzer Prize winner, I don’t know too much about journalism. But even I know about the concept of “Who, What, Why, When, Where and How“. From what little understanding I have as a layman, I know it’s one of the fundamentals of reporting. Maybe Denyse is once again trying to win over the younger crowd by taking a stab at New Journalism. Seeing that New Journalism is no longer new, that’s probably the case. After all, Denyse O’Leary is someone who writes the words “like totally” without irony.

Sometimes I feel as if I’m picking on Denyse, but then I realize that she’s the one with a blog named “Mindful Hack“. What a pretentious load of crap. If you’re going to wear your status as a writer on your sleeve, at least have the decency to learn how to write.

* The correct answer, of course, is b & d.

Things were pretty slow around here over the weekend, so I did a lot of behind-the-scenes tweaking. All the videos are up and running (now with the ability to be played full screen), with some more Urgh clips on the way. I also added an RTQG page which lists all the quotes currently entered in the RTQG. It should refresh itself as new quotes are added, but I’m a little upset that it there’s no option for showing all the quotes by author’s name or by date added. Oh well…

On the left-hand sidebar, you should see a link to the RTQG page for new submissions; this will keep people from having to dig through the archives to find the original post. I’ll try to add some new quotes over the next few days.

Thanks to those of you who have taken the time to read and offer comments.

I’ve added a bunch of new videos, but not all of them are available for viewing at the moment. I’ve installed a new Flash video plugin - one that allows for full-screen playback - so I have to go back and re-enter the tags for the videos. In addition to the full-screen option, there’s also a preview image so that you’ll have a clue as to the video quality.

Among the videos I’ve added are several clips from the old Ranch Party TV show. The quality is pretty dubious, but they’re pretty obscure clips. For instance, there’s just not that much footage of vintage Wanda Jackson in existence, which is a shame. Here’s Wanda doing “Cool Love”:

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That was Joe Maphis playing guitar on “Cool Love” - Joe is all over these Ranch Party clips, playing banjo, fiddle and his double-neck Mosrite. Here’s Joe Maphis with 15 year-old Larry Collins playing “Under the Double Eagle”

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If you visit the Video pages and aren’t able to watch the videos, be patient; they should all be back online in the next 24 hours.

(Note: a big tip of the headgear to JanieBelle for this)

You learn something new every day, or so they say. For example, until yesterday, I never knew that a person’s memories could be downloaded, said person could be killed, then replaced with an alien who possesses all the dead person’s memories. There’s also a name for it: Soul Shearing. I haven’t consulted the thesaurus on this, but I’m pretty sure “Soul Shearing” is synonymous with BATSHIT FUCKING CRAZY.

Sherry Shriner (as portrayed by Roddy Piper) and her
invisible friend Jesus Yahushua, at the bank.

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This is a recycled feature from my old blog. Since I was planning on adding this clip to the Video page, I figured I’d revive High Points in Lowbrow Cinema over here.

This is the classic “John Wayne” scene from the 1984 Alex Cox film, Repo Man. Dig Robby Müller’s outstanding cinematography.
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William Dembski finally returned to Uncommon Descent (incidentally, Galapagos Finch returned to The Brites around the same time) and kicked off his return in grand fashion. Supposedly, a “producer from one of the national talking heads programs” wants Dembski or Jonathan Wells to appear on their program. We know it’s not Glenn Beck or any of the programs on Fox News, because the producer requested the following:

…can you or they provide any samples of things that intelligent design theory has predicted, which researchers have later determined to be true?

The Isaac Washington of Information Theory then made the following request:

I have my own list of answers, but I’d like to hear those of this group.

My friend, can your heart stand the shocking facts of ID predictions from outer space?

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Over at Pharyngula, PZ Myers has posted an article about an online bookseller, Abunga, whose motto is “Empowering Decency”. Their policy is to allow customers to vote on a book’s wholesomeness, and books that don’t pass muster are removed from stock. It’s a dumb idea and a stupid business model, too - it’s supply-and-demand turned on its head. PZ correctly points out that Abunga is an example of religionist idiocy, but apparently some of his readers have missed that point.

Take a look at the comments in PZ’s post and you’ll see that several people are advocating visiting Abunga for the purpose of getting religious and creationist texts removed from stock. In fact, the very first comment uses the word “freep“. Great idea… let’s act like a bunch of knuckle-dragging right wingers.

In case anyone’s missing the point here, if it’s wrong for a religionist bookstore to remove from stock books that are deemed indecent, it’s just as wrong for atheists to do the same. It’s doubly wrong in this instance because it’s basically vandalism. This is just the sort of two-wrongs-make-a-right bullshit that creationist fuckwits like FtK use to justify their inane behavior.

Being an atheist should free people to be ethical and not get caught up in the mob mentality.

Here’s a little tidbit from yesterday’s access logs:

The IP address resolves to this:

Hi, and thanks for visiting, DaveScot! Next time, stick around. Play with the RTQG if you’d like and perhaps make a spontaneous submission of exclusive Tard.

I found this gem at Answers in Genesis today: Creationist Crimefighter. Have you ever wondered why people get addicted to drugs and commit crimes? According to Australian police superintendent Gary Raymond, the answer is simple: Darwinism.

If you think you’re just an animal that came from some explosion and then from some chemical soup, what’s the use? Number one, there’s no accountability. Number two, there are no rules—you just make up your own. Number three, get the best while you can, life’s a feeding frenzy. There’s no purpose, nowhere to go. Whether you’re rich or poor—same thing.

The next time I go on one of my evolution-inspired crime sprees, I’ll be sure to steer clear of Gary Raymond’s beat. If Raymond roughs up suspects the way he beat down that straw man, I would hate to be in the interrogation room with him playing the Bad Cop.

“Go to the nearest University’s biology department and round up the usual suspects.”

My favorite bit is the sidebar item, “Murder, fingerprints and evolution”:

Say that a woman’s been murdered. Neighbours have reported the couple’s fierce recent brawling, and the husband’s fingerprints are all over the knife. All the clues seem to fit the obvious answer—the husband did it. Most of the investigating police are content to leave it at that. But one of them digs a bit deeper into the scientific evidence of the murder’s timing. The result blows the favoured theory out of the water; the time his wife was stabbed was right when her husband was at a function with 5 judges and 11 policemen! The same facts regarded as “proof” now turn out to fit another story—the fingerprints are there because the husband used the knife to carve the roast, and so on. (Looks like the butler did it after all!)

What evolutionists see as “proof” is just one possible story—the same facts fit creation perfectly well.

Translation: “When you believe that people lived with dinosaurs, anything is possible, including a man pulling a knife out of his recently murdered wife’s body and using it to carve a roast.”

Working a murder case with Gary Raymond must be a pain in the ass.

Detective: We found the murder weapon, Superintendent. It’s a cheap Swiss Army knife.

Superintendent Raymond: Good work, detective. Now get on the horn and have the boys round up all Swiss soldiers in the area.

Detective: Um… it’s not even a real Swiss Army knife, Supe. It’s made in Japan.

Superintendent Raymond: Outstanding! This will narrow down our search; put out an APB on any Swiss soldiers of Japanese descent. Or maybe a Japanese soldier who likes yodeling and cuckoo clocks.

Detective: …but Supe, the wife’s fingerprints are all over the murder weapon.

Superintendent Raymond: How can you be so sure? Have you examined every fingerprint on earth? WERE YOU THERE???

The world of forensics must be exciting for creationists; when you get to make shit up as you go along, anything can happen. I’m surprised the crimebusters at AIG haven’t named Professor Moriarty as a suspect in the assassination of JFK.

However, Church Burnin’ Ebola Boys (and Girls) should take note: if one of your Darwin-induced tri-state killing sprees ever lands you in court on multiple felony counts, don’t expect a creationist forensics expert to get you off the hook with some “If the earth is young, he must be sprung” line of testimony. As many of us know, creationism and courtroom testimony is a recipe for disaster… and perjury:

“Any claim by Mr. Shaibani that he is now a member of, or even affiliated with, the Temple University Department of Physics is fraudulent,” read a Sept. 27, 2001, letter from Edward Gawlinski, chair of the Temple University physics department. “Furthermore, at least once a year I have to write this sort of letter when Mr. Shaibani again tries to establish his bona fides as an expert witness by claiming he is a member of the Physics Department.

Next week on CSI: Bedrock: The Case of the Pilfered Pumpkins - is there a hungry Tyrannosaurus Rex on the loose?