Comments on: Oh Beautiful for Spacious Skies, for Hare-Brained Crackpottery…

By: Steven Gould

Steven Gould — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 16:25:58 +0000

There is enough evidence both for and against the class/race aspect of the war on druggies to make that an actual meaningful discussion. The evidence for Neal’s obsession with the growing earth theory is his =own= incredulity with the existing scientific consensus.

By: Ken Houghton

Ken Houghton — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 15:08:24 +0000

Neal Adams, as in O’Neill and Adams and those great GL/GA books??

Damn. Now I need to see the video.

I’m one of the people who believes the crack conspiracy talk, though: but that’s more from Gary Webb’s research and writing, and the view that the harm to African-Americans was probably just viewed as a collateral benefit. (As a resident of Washington Heights in the late 1980s and early 1990s, I can vouch for the effect of crack on the neighborhood, including a lot of Jersey boys with fancy cars who had never been seen before or since.)

That the punishment for users was and mostly still is severely disproportionate compared to the “white drugs”–cocaine, meth–neither appears to be coincident nor presents any evidence against the “irrational” belief.

By: Steven Gould

Steven Gould — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 22:47:02 +0000

Neal Adams is infamous for deciding that drawing comics trumps scientific consensus. He appeared on this episode of The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe.

By: Morgan J. Locke

Morgan J. Locke — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 21:50:33 +0000

OMG, it’s so cute! A baby Earth! What happens when it reaches adulthood? Does it HATCH???

By: Sean Craven

Sean Craven — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 21:04:25 +0000

Hey, comics fans!

The nutjob behind that video is Neal eff’n Adams, late of the X-Men and Batman…

Face front, true believers!

By: Erin O'Brien

Erin O'Brien — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 19:50:05 +0000

I watched the nice movie and concluded that Adam and Eve got here on a spaceship.

Can I have a cookie now?

By: Madeleine Robins

Madeleine Robins — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 19:00:52 +0000

Omigod. That video is stunningly…stunning.

By: Sean Craven

Sean Craven — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 18:24:02 +0000

Oh, brother. Or rather brother-in-law… When I checked my email at three this morning (early to rise, early to bed, makes a male healthy, wealthy, and dead) I found a transmission from the much-beloved husband of my sister touting this –

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjgidAICoQI&feature=related

He’s no dummy by any stretch of the imagination. Dude was interviewed by Forbes at one point in his career. And he had the sense to end his message with “Am I high?”

The short version of my answer was, “Yes. Very.” The long version went on about the nature of science and belief…

The thing is, is that Americans don’t know jack about science and they hate and fear intelligence. You’ve got to remember that the architects of the American educational system were very forthright about their intentions. It was designed to turn farm laborers into industrial workers. (Ever wonder what’s up with the bell? You can hear it on the factory floor.)

It drives me nuts. Science is now coming to grips with the Big Questions in a seriously functional fashion and every *#%@(#_%& publication in the US has an astrology column. My wife believes in Lemuria (yeah, I told her where the word came from) and disbelieves in the germ theory of disease. It’s like living in New Guinea.

By: Madeleine Robins

Madeleine Robins — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 16:55:02 +0000

I always wanted to be smart. Even when I was a kid. It seems to me that when I was a kid being smart was more…honored…than it is now. But then I reread It Can’t Happen Here and remember that Stupid (or at least Folksy Anti-Smart) has been with us for a long time.

Somewhere Thomas Jefferson and John Adams are weeping.