Flock of Dodos, on the other hand… THAT I’ll buy!

There’s a little-known Tim Robbins movie from the early 90s called “Bob Roberts.” If you haven’t seen it, you should.

Note: Look for the awesome performance by then-unknown young actor Jack Black.

You could just pay for a different movie ticket (say for whateverthehell J.J. Abrams is doing) and sneak into this one after, course that might just end up creating a different moral dillema, but a much more cost effective one.

We will await your report.

If you haven’t noticed, O-Dub the wise seems incapable of even thinking about Dawkins without inventing reasons to hate him, selecting context-free quotes of his when he’s being more aggressively pithy than usual, typically when he’s introducing or reiterating his argument, and never, I note, when he’s actually making it, which makes it all the more apparent that our esteemed host has never actually read him. Case in point, the website for this criminally stupid movie opens with this quote:

“If people think God is interesting, the onus is on them to show that there is anything there to talk about. Otherwise they should just shut up about it.”
- Richard Dawkins

Suggesting that matters of faith should be approached with a modicum of empiricism and logic? Clearly Dawkins is a raving bigot of the worst kind.

It’s just like the Creation Museum in Kentucky. I think that a trip to KY in order to spend a day in that museum might be the single greatest day of my life. But can I give my money to these people, even if I only intend on mocking them? Can I? Please, someone, anyone… give me a rationalization. I’m in desperate need.

That he’s an atheist?

Please.

Amusingly PZ notes he would have been happy to talk to them even if they’d been honest.

f Mathis had said outright that he wants to interview an atheist and outspoken critic of Intelligent Design for a film he was making about how ID is unfairly excluded from academe, I would have said, “bring it on!” We would have had a good, pugnacious argument on tape that directly addresses the claims of his movie, and it would have been a better (at least, more honest and more relevant) sequence. He would have also been more likely to get that good ol’ wild-haired, bulgy-eyed furious John Brown of the Godless vision than the usual mild-mannered professor that he did tape. And I probably would have been more aggressive with a plainly stated disagreement between us.

I mean, seriously, not telling one of the sides in a debate about what the subject might be and then leading him around randomly to various topics, with the intent of later editing it down to the parts that just make the points you want, is the video version of quote-mining and is fundamentally dishonest.

One thing’s fer sure, I never ever ever ever never want to hear any of these ass clowns bemoaning the so-called “ambush journalism” of Michael Moore. At least when Moore calls up the head of Scumco, Inc. for an interview he’s up front about who he is.

U.S. OK’d troop terror hunts in Pakistan

AP IMPACT: U.S. Military Gave Troops OK to Enter Pakistan in ’04, and They May Still Have It

SCOTT LINDLAW
AP News

Aug 23, 2007 17:14 EDT

Newly uncovered “rules of engagement” show the U.S. military gave elite units broad authority more than three years ago to pursue suspected terrorists into Pakistan, with no mention of telling the Pakistanis in advance.

The documents obtained by The Associated Press offer a detailed glimpse at what Army Rangers and other terrorist-hunting units were authorized to do earlier in the war on terror. And interviews with military officials suggest some of those same guidelines have remained in place, such as the right to “hot pursuit” across the border.