Dead from Stupid
Oct. 13th, 2005 03:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
herewiss13My GOD! but people are stupid. Another anti-evolution letter-to-the-editor in today's paper. Not blatantly creationist, but some interesting side-tirades about "offering no hope" and being used as "an excuse to live irresponsibly." I wrote three quarters of a letter in response to it, realized that it was well over the 250 word limit and just gave up in frustration. At one point he said that Archaeopteryx was just "a bird with teeth, like the quetzal or hoatzin of South America."
NEITHER OF THESE BIRDS HAVE TEETH!!! And frankly, a bird with teeth (and claws, and a long bony tail) sounds like a pretty damn good transitional fossil to _me_. What exactly are people like that hoping to find? What would the _exact_ mid-point between birds and dinosaurs look like, if not like something we haven't already discovered? And don't get me started on hominids.
Of course, that was just the tip of the iceberg in terms of falsehoods. I won't bother categorizing the rest (again), it'd just elevate my blood pressure.
I don't mind the op-ed page being open to alternative viewpoints, but let's employ a fact-checker please. If I write a letter claiming the sun revolves around the earth, that the moon is made of green cheese and that Columbus discovered London, then I shouldn't be published!
Argh!
*dies*
NEITHER OF THESE BIRDS HAVE TEETH!!! And frankly, a bird with teeth (and claws, and a long bony tail) sounds like a pretty damn good transitional fossil to _me_. What exactly are people like that hoping to find? What would the _exact_ mid-point between birds and dinosaurs look like, if not like something we haven't already discovered? And don't get me started on hominids.
Of course, that was just the tip of the iceberg in terms of falsehoods. I won't bother categorizing the rest (again), it'd just elevate my blood pressure.
I don't mind the op-ed page being open to alternative viewpoints, but let's employ a fact-checker please. If I write a letter claiming the sun revolves around the earth, that the moon is made of green cheese and that Columbus discovered London, then I shouldn't be published!
Argh!
*dies*
