Ben Stein's new movie "Expelled"

[Friday]

I thought I'd post a link to this damning article about Ben Stein's new movie Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. I like Ben Stein (or thought I did  ) and might have been misled into thinking this was a film about the courage to be un-P.C., defy conventional wisdom, yadda yadda.
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=six-things-ben-stein-doesnt-want-you-to-know

[ReverendRyan]

http://www.expelledexposed.com/

[Russell Kanning]

Too bad
I was like you Friday. I thought I might like his movie.

[StrongArm]

I saw it, I thought it was very informative.

[toowm]

We follow rottentomatoes.com, so the 9% (out of 100%) made it pretty clear we wouldn't go.

Funny thing is, I spoke with Ben on Monday. He was the guest at a conference I attended. It was a good talk, with lots of dry humor, and he is very self-depreciating, which is uncommon among celebrity types. I did disagree with most of his opinions, though.

Anyway, he said that Milton Friedman had been a personal friend and the smartest person he ever met. Toward the end of the talk, where he correctly identified the key national problem as education, his "solution" was a 100% national service draft!!!

At lunch afterwards, I reminded him that Dr. Friedman was the key person on the commission that ended the draft. He said something along the lines of: "Milton was brilliant at economics, but he didn't trust the government at all, which is unfortunate, because only the government can do certain things." What was funny/tragic about this is that I agree almost 100% with Milton on freedom and anti-government issues, and on the economic side I have been of late more aligned with the Austrian school. The conversation turned and ended up back at education. When I mentioned homeschooling, he was very favorable. In his talk he mentioned that the great works of history, fiction, etc. are all available free in the internet age, but not used by kids today.

I think much of his beliefs are colored by his son, who struggled at private school, but had a good experience at Cardigan Mountain School in NH, before backsliding in college. Through personal experience, Ben sees the trees of education, but not the forest of a government-managed forest.

[Russell Kanning]

amazing how blind some people can be to obvious truth .... he just can't break from his old model

[margomaps]

I thought I'd post a link to this damning article about Ben Stein's new movie Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. I like Ben Stein (or thought I did  ) and might have been misled into thinking this was a film about the courage to be un-P.C., defy conventional wisdom, yadda yadda.
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=six-things-ben-stein-doesnt-want-you-to-know

Since Scientific American was so keen to pick apart Ben Stein's movie (not that I necessarily blame them), did they do the same for Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth?"

I would hope so, since Al Gore's movie likely makes a bigger mockery of science than Ben Stein's.

[Russell Kanning]

what happened to "the other other white meat"?

[shyfrog]

I didn't want to watch "What A Way To Go: Life at the End of Empire" but sat through it anyway and reviewed it

So, I think I will end up sitting through "Expelled" because I'm actually interested in the subject matter.
I'll save judgment till after 

[Russell Kanning]

cool .... let us know

[John Edward Mercier]

I thought I'd post a link to this damning article about Ben Stein's new movie Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. I like Ben Stein (or thought I did  ) and might have been misled into thinking this was a film about the courage to be un-P.C., defy conventional wisdom, yadda yadda.
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=six-things-ben-stein-doesnt-want-you-to-know

Since Scientific American was so keen to pick apart Ben Stein's movie (not that I necessarily blame them), did they do the same for Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth?"

I would hope so, since Al Gore's movie likely makes a bigger mockery of science than Ben Stein's.

It was picked apart. It was determined it had a mixture of inaccuracies and vague hypotheticals.