Anyone looking for something to do Saturday?

OSU spring game?
Thanks for the reminder.

Or go see this film;

Since I am one to err on the side of overcritical:

Amanda Gefter, reviewing the film in New Scientist, described the movie as "pure propaganda" in the style of a "sub-standard Michael Moore flick" with "problematic references to the Holocaust". Echoing Roger Moore's concerns that the movie demonizes evolutionary biologists, she notes that dark lighting, foreboding music and sinister camera angles are used during an interview with Richard Dawkins.¹⁰⁸ She also observed that the movie makes explicit connections between Intelligent Design and religion, something which proponents of ID such as the Discovery Institute have argued is not the case.¹⁰⁸ Reporting in the magazine's blog on a screening and subsequent question and answer session, she expressed concern that several of those asking questions appeared to be members of staff who arranged the screening.¹⁰⁷

Following an unexpected private preview of the movie provided by associate producer Mark Mathis, Scientific American is publishing a series of articles entitled Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed--Scientific American's Take, in which editor John Rennie, movie interviewee Michael Shermer, and Steve Mirsky review and discuss the movie.

Shermer relates that he was surprised to see his alma mater Pepperdine University feature so prominently as supporters of Stein in the opening of the movie, as "their mostly Christian students fully accept the theory of evolution" and it was during his studies there that Shermer himself learned about evolutionary biology and realized that he had been "hoodwinked" by creationism proponents. He explains that according to the university, only "two or three" students appear in the scene, and the remainder are hired extras. He discusses how he was misled about the subject of the movie and how his interview was edited, and various omissions of pertinent fact in the movie. He describes the movie's exploitation of Holocaust imagery as a "propaganda production [that] would make Joseph Goebbels proud."¹¹⁰

Rennie believes that Expelled is "a movie not quite harmless enough to be ignored" and although its points are "all recycled from previous pro-ID works", "its heavy-handed linkage of modern biology to the Holocaust demands a response for the sake of simple human decency". He criticizes the rhetorical device of referring not to "scientists" but "darwinists," indicating that "Ben Stein wants you to stop thinking of evolution as an actual science supported by verifiable facts and logical arguments and to start thinking of it as a dogmatic, atheistic ideology akin to Marxism." He echoes Shermer's comments regarding the omission of facts, and in particular the way that the movie depicts Robert Sternberg is "shoddy investigation or deliberate propagandizing," but more generally its depictions of the other scientist and the histories of Stalinism and the Holocaust.

He observes that "the omission of science from Expelled was a deliberate choice", that "Ben Stein doesn't want you to recognize evolution versus ID as a conflict between valid scientific ideas and invalid ones" because then "it suddenly begins to look much more just when, say, universities don't reward faculty who fritter away their careers on ill-conceived theories". In summation he considers that it is "a film for ID creationism's religious base," "a rallying point to revive their morale." His closing remarks express concern for Stein, who "might have lost relatives in the Holocaust but is now appropriating it for an intellectually dishonest purpose".¹⁰

In a podcast, Mirsky talks with Expelled interviewee Eugenie Scott and how she was "bamboozled" into appearing.