San Antonio shooting

Saw this on Facebook:

On Sunday December 17, 2012, 2 days after the CT shooting, a man went to a restaurant in San Antonio to kill his X-girlfriend. After he shot her, most of the people in the restaurant fled next door to a theater. The gunman followed them and entered the theater so he could shoot more people. He started shooting and people in the theater started running and screaming. It’s like the Aurora, CO theater story plus a restaurant!

Now aren’t you wondering why this isn’t a lead story in the national media along with the school shooting?

There was an off duty county deputy at the theater. SHE pulled out her gun and shot the man 4 times before he had a chance to kill anyone. So since this story makes the point that the best thing to stop a bad person with a gun is a good person with a gun, the media is treating it like it never happened.

Only the local media covered it. The city is giving her a medal next week. Just thought you’d like to know.

Source

Agenda revealed! If you had any doubts that the media was pushing for this and who their masters were, doubt no longer. This is spooky. Alot of what you read in the ‘conspiracy world’ is bull but there IS alot of truth too.. You just have to sort out the facts yourself. -Mort

Attempted murder unfortunately is never as sexy as murder. He didn't shoot his girlfriend, she was not at the restaurant.[3] His pistol jammed when he attempted to shoot up the restaurant. [1] Also, he was not as heavily armed as the Newtown shooter. A Glock 23 .40 has a standard magazine of 13 rounds with an optional magazine of 15 or 17.[2] [3] If Garcia had had a better working weapon with a larger magazine and more fire power like in Newtown, he may have been more effective.

Millions of these part two

I have left in color the four that we are going to be discussing.

I wrote a couple of days ago about some of the things that were wrong with this meme.  With over 400 shares and counting, let's visit another thing.  The man who posted the meme follows Answers in Genesis (AiG) on Facebook.  I don't know if he knows, but various people at AiG have claimed at times that the four individuals left in color were fully human.

Homo erectus is the gentleman to the left of the naked bearded man.   Homo erectus is almost universally recognized by AiG as being fully human. [1] [2]  Dr. Kurt Wise thinks they built the Tower of Babel.

Preserved in post-Flood sediments older than any Neanderthals and Hobbits are Homo erectus fossils.3 Aside from the skull, Homo erectus skeletons are virtually indistinguishable from modern humans, so the evidence indicates they are human. And, since humans did not disperse across the world until after Babel, the distribution of Homo erectus across the Old World (Java, China, Africa) suggests they not only date from after the Flood, they also date from after Babel. Homo erectus is thus not only the oldest human fossil we have following Babel but the only human fossil for some time after Babel. From this we infer that the Homo erectus form is probably what humans looked like at the time of Babel. [3] 

Dr. Dewitt's grouping

Homo habilis, the third from the right, generally is not considered to be human by AiG.  However there are some exceptions to that rule.  The habilis skull, KNM-ER 1470 is almost said to be human by Dr. Elizabeth Mitchell. [4]  In "Baraminological Analysis Places Homo habilis, Homo rudolfensis, and Australopithecus sediba in the Human Holobaramin", Dr. Todd Charles Wood identified habilis as human.

[T]he dispersal of the human population from Babel would presumably have been led by H. habilis and H. rudolfensis, specimens of which appear stratigraphically lower than any other human species. [5]

Wood also placed an Australopith, Australopithecus sediba, in the human taxa.[5]  When the question of what is human is so up in the air, it is very disingenuous to mock the fossil record.  Four out of the six have been called human by Answers in Genesis.

A Christmas Carol

There was a boy walking the streets on Christmas morn?  The butcher was open?  The cabs were working?  Is Dickens raising a war on Christmas? LOL

Running to the window, he opened it, and put out his head. No fog, no mist; clear, bright, jovial, stirring, cold; cold, piping for the blood to dance to; Golden sunlight; Heavenly sky; sweet fresh air; merry bells. Oh, glorious. Glorious!

"What's to-day?" cried Scrooge, calling downward to a boy in Sunday clothes, who perhaps had loitered in to look about him.

"Eh?" returned the boy, with all his might of wonder.

"What's to-day, my fine fellow?" said Scrooge.

"To-day?" replied the boy. "Why, Christmas Day."

"It's Christmas Day!" said Scrooge to himself. "I haven't missed it. The Spirits have done it all in one night. They can do anything they like. Of course they can. Of course they can. Hallo, my fine fellow!"

"Hallo!" returned the boy.

"Do you know the Poulterer's, in the next street but one, at the corner?" Scrooge inquired.

"I should hope I did," replied the lad.

"An intelligent boy!" said Scrooge. "A remarkable boy! Do you know whether they"ve sold the prize Turkey that was hanging up there -- Not the little prize Turkey: the big one?"

"What, the one as big as me?" returned the boy.

"What a delightful boy!" said Scrooge. "It's a pleasure to talk to him. Yes, my buck."

"It's hanging there now," replied the boy.

"Is it?" said Scrooge. "Go and buy it."

"Walk-er!" exclaimed the boy.

"No, no," said Scrooge, "I am in earnest. Go and buy it, and tell them to bring it here, that I may give them the direction where to take it. Come back with the man, and I'll give you a shilling. Come back with him in less than five minutes and I'll give you half-a-crown."

The boy was off like a shot. He must have had a steady hand at a trigger who could have got a shot off half so fast.

"I'll send it to Bon Cratchit's!" whispered Scrooge, rubbing his hands, and splitting with a laugh. "He shan't know who sends it. It's twice the size of Tiny Tim. Joe Miller never made such a joke as sending it to Bob's will be!"

The hand in which he wrote the address was not a steady one, but write it he did, somehow, and went down-stairs to open the street door, ready for the coming of the poulterer's man. As he stood there, waiting his arrival, the knocker caught his eye.

"I shall love it, as long as I live!" cried Scrooge, patting it with his hand. "I scarcely ever looked at it before. What an honest expression it has in its face. It's a wonderful knocker. -- Here's the Turkey. Hallo! Whoop! How are you? Merry Christmas!"

It was a Turkey! He never could have stood upon his legs, that bird. He would have snapped them short off in a minute, like sticks of sealing-wax.

"Why, it's impossible to carry that to Camden Town," said Scrooge. "You must have a cab."

The chuckle with which he said this, and the chuckle with which he paid for the Turkey, and the chuckle with which he paid for the cab, and the chuckle with which he recompensed the boy, were only to be exceeded by the chuckle with which he sat down breathless in his chair again, and chuckled till he cried.[1]

British wee

Who doesn't think that they are alive?

This is the second generation of this strawman that I have seen on Facebook.  I used to think that everyone knew that it was a strawman, until I started seeing friends repeat it and someone posted it in one of the threads that I was commenting on.  OK, first watch this Sesame Street video to learn what is alive.  

Does that Paramecium on the left, breath and eat and grow? [1]  Certainly it does.  Does that 24 to 26 week old fetus on the right, breath and eat and grow? [2]  Certainly she does. (Human embryos and fetuses generally default to the female gender) So who is saying that a growing fetus with sleep cycles and a 40-90% chance of surviving outside of the womb [3] is not "life"?  The answer is no one.  Also, 88% of abortions happen in the first twelve weeks.  Only 1.5% of abortions are performed on fetuses over 20 weeks. [4] Most people who get abortions do not wish to terminate fetuses over 20 weeks.  Let's try this next one.

The picture is of a one hour old single cell embryo. [5] Now let's try the Sesame Street test.  Does she breath and eat and grow? Certainly she does.  Who dares to challenge the wisdom of the muppets? The answer is no one.  

At an hour old, this single cell has an up hill battle.  About 19.6 out of every 1000 women annually will have an abortion.  This means that 22% of pregnancies will end in abortion [4], but this embryo only has about a 30-70% of even implanting in the uterus to transition from conception to pregnancy. [6]  Even if she implants, she may not implant in the uterus.  Ectopic pregnancies occur at 19.3 out of every 1000 pregnancies or about 2% of pregnancies. [7] Once implanted correctly, she still has about a 31% chance of miscarrying. [8] Things get a little more dicey when you considered that one out of eight embryos form twins, but only one out of 80 twins make it to birth. [9] All of this adds up to the embryo having as great as a 70% chance of not surviving to birth [8].

Tubal Pregnancy

I type all of that to point out that when a embryo dies or miscarries, those terms mean that it was considered life to begin with.  The question is not whether she is life, but whether she is a person.  The irony here is that the first meme equates pond scum with a fetus.

Correction 12/5/2012: This post originally said that 19.6% of 1000 pregnancies end in abortion.  This was an error on my part.  It should have said 1000 women.  The abortion rate is about 11 times the ectopic pregnancy rate.  I apologize for the error.  

Sunday America and Sunday Africa

Someone posted this meme to Facebook, so I thought I would comment on it.  In the upper left is "Black Friday".  Upper right is "Sunday America".  On the bottom is "Sunday Africa."

America generally refers to US citizens. [1] But there are 300 million plus people in this country and about 40% of them attend church almost weekly. [2] (The particular church in question is a small Calvinist congregation of 25-50. [3]) Less than one half of one percent of American churches are mega churches and they are attended by 10% of all church attendees.  Half of the approximately 120 million church attendees attend the top 10% of churches. [4]  While most churches in the America may look like the church in question, there are many churches in this country where thousands attend every Sunday.  Of the approximately 12 million people who attend mega churches, 30,000 attend Lakewood Church on Sunday mornings. [5]

This brings us that bottom picture.  Africa is not a country, but a continent populated by over a billion people who are spread out over 54 nations. [6] This picture was taken for a 2009 revival in Maua, Kenya. [7]  Those who took the picture only counted about 3000, about 10% of those that attend Lakewood regularly.  Also, though the revival went till Sunday, this was not a normal Sunday service.

Black Friday 2011, a record number, 226 million Americans, shopped at retail stores.  Surely they did not all wait in long lines before sunrise.  Still, more Americans shopped than attend church regularly.  Yet "regularly" is the key word.  The revival service in Maua is not a weekly event and neither is Black Friday.  For that matter only 40% of Americans attend church while 78.4% profess to be Christians. [8]

Like most memes this picture is very misleading and borderline ignorant.  Africa is the most genetically diverse continent on earth, yet it is treated as if it were a country. [9] Also, two out of three of the pictures do not refer to a weekly event.