[plantar fasciitis]

“Why do we still have apes if we came from them?”

motherjones:

Ugggghhhh…

“Why do we still have apes if we came from them?” Wise, a retired educator, said during the interview with the Tampa radio station. “And those are the kind of questions kids need to ask themselves. You know, ‘how did we get here?’ And, you know, there’s more than one theory on this thing. And the theory is evolution, the other one is intelligent design.”

Honestly, I’d just like to see us start teaching evolution in schools. How do I know we aren’t? Because retired educators, along with millions of other Americans, routinely ask the question, “But why are apes still here?!” to disprove evolution, even though there’s long been a scientific answer to this question.

If our science classrooms weren’t already being used as platforms to spread “creation science”/”intelligent design” propaganda, people like Sen. Wise would know how not persuasive this question is in the argument against evolution. It is a great question for a student to ask in their science class, but only if the student in question is actually willing to hear the answer and only if the science teacher is actually interested in giving their student a scientific explanation. I’m willing to put money on it that in many schools in America, neither the student nor the teacher are willing to do either.

(Source: fussybabybitch, via skittleguy-deactivated20110422-)

robot-heart-politics:

All Terrorists are Muslims…Except the 99.6% that Aren’t

insaniyat:

Islamophobes have been popularizing the claim that “not all Muslims are terrorists, but (nearly) all terrorists are Muslims.” Despite this idea becoming axiomatic in some circles, it is quite simply not factual. In my previous article entitled “All Terrorists are Muslims…Except the 94% that Aren’t”, I used official FBI records to show that only 6% of terrorist attacks on U.S. soil from 1980 to 2005 were carried out by Islamic extremists. The remaining 94% were from other groups (42% from Latinos, 24% from extreme left wing groups, 7% from extremist Jews, 5% from communists, and 16% from all other groups).

But what about across the pond? The data gathered by Europol strengthens my argument even further. Europol publishes an annual report entitled EU Terrorism Situation and Trend Report. On their official website, you can access the reports from 2007, 2008, and 2009.

The results are stark, and prove decisively that not all terrorists are Muslims. In fact, a whopping 99.6% of terrorist attacks in Europe were by non-Muslim groups; a good 84.8% of attacks were from separatist groups completely unrelated to Islam. Leftist groups accounted for over sixteen times as much terrorism as radical Islamic groups. Only a measly 0.4% of terrorist attacks from 2007 to 2009 could be attributed to extremist Muslims.

(via ohnoitsemilyy-deactivated201104)