stcynic
Posts by this author
August 15, 2004
Anyone familiar with the talk.origins newsgroup remembers Ed Conrad. He's a first class kook from Pennsylvania who has been claiming for years to be the victim of a grand scientific conspiracy. He claims to have found human remains in a coal seam that dates long before humans were around, and of…
August 13, 2004
This morning, I was thinking that perhaps I should cut back on bashing people who are so obviously moronic that it's not sound sport to even bother with it. Then I came across the cretinous Joseph Grant Swank's latest bit of utter idiocy:
The APA has stated to media that homosexual lifestyle is…
August 13, 2004
One of the most influential people in my life was a teacher, Louis Johnson. He was my French teacher my junior and senior years of high school, but I knew him from conversations before I decided to take the class. He was exactly what a teacher should be - learned, passionate, consumed with the…
August 12, 2004
Craige McMillan, the WorldNutDaily's uber-moron, has finally sunk to about as low as you can get to score political points. Just gaze at this unbelievable statement:
Many conservatives worry that the Democratic Party is nothing more than a loose-knit collection of social extremists intent on moving…
August 12, 2004
On a lower post, Jen Shroder seems to think that I've blocked her from commenting. She's wrong.
Ed, why does it appear that I'm blocked from an Aug 11 page where you make a lot of ridiculous claims?
I have no idea, but it's not true. It's not possible to block someone from commenting only on one…
August 11, 2004
This morning's Worldnutdaily includes a prominent front page headline, Kerry Silent on Beijing Photo. The headline links to an article in Insight Magazine about John Kerry taking a privately sponsored trip to promote trade in China in the late 1990s. Hardly unusual, of course, and the president's…
August 10, 2004
Jon Rowe has an interesting post up about a new book, available online here, by Gary North, the Christian reconstructionist. The book is called Conspiracy in Philadelphia, and North's primary thesis is that the constitution itself was an illegal document that overstepped the boundaries of the…
August 9, 2004
Here's how I'm gonna vote in November. I'm going to vote for the first candidate that says he'll support a new law allowing us to take comment spammers, email spammers and those who write popup ads for websites, and ritually disembowl them, behead them, and then parade their lifeless bodies through…
August 9, 2004
In perusing Jen Shroder's hysterical website, I came across this little gem, which I debunked back in January. It claims that this alleged terrorist, Alamoudi, helped write the guidelines on religion in schools that allows schools to induct kids into Islam. It's complete and utter nonsense, of…
August 9, 2004
For some reason, Mr. Powell just cannot let our exchange end without ducking back into the punch one last time. His latest post on it combines incessant whining with precisely the kind of arrogant presumptuousness that he accuses me of:
Ed Brayton from Dispatches from the Culture Wars is a very…
August 9, 2004
Our intrepid correspondent, Jen Shroder, is rapidly moving up the charts to become our Idiot of the Year, if not decade. This just has to be seen to be believed - this woman is calling on Christians to swear curses against "liberal judges" to make them blind:
These actions are outrageous and worthy…
August 6, 2004
Bruce Walker of the inaccurately titled intellectualconservative.com has an amusing little essay up virtually begging conservatives to help convince Keyes to move to Illinois and run for the senate against Barack Obama. And you've just got to love this beginning:
Black conservatives are treated…
August 6, 2004
In our continuing exchange with Jen Shroder, a former Idiot of the Week award winner, I want to bring up another discussion from a comment thread below. In that thread, totally unrelated to anything so I have no idea why she brought it up, she said:
Did you know that African Americans and Jews are…
August 6, 2004
I'm moving this exchange up to its own posting because I don't want it to get lost amid the more recent articles. We first encountered Jen Shroder when her colleague Tamara Wilhite was awarded the Idiot of the Week prize a few weeks ago. I found an incredibly stupid article by Wilhite on a site…
August 5, 2004
Jon Rowe has an excellent essay up about Judge Roy Moore and the contradiction at the heart of his claim that the ten commandments are part of the organic law of America, a claim explicitly rejected by Jefferson and Madison. Also has some fascinating details about the often-mentioned mural of the…
August 5, 2004
In 1995, Alan Keyes said this of the Republican party in a 1995 speech:
This Party was born on a clear commitment to principle. This Party was born of those who had the courage to stand before the American people and in the face of the threat of a greater division than we'll ever face, insist that…
August 5, 2004
In the comments in response to a post on New Covenant about whether scientists can objectively analyze creationist/ID positions , Matt Powell writes the following, in obvious reference to me and our recent discussion:
In some of the recent discussions on morality, religion and Biblical philosophy,…
August 5, 2004
Jason at Positive Liberty has a post up about Missouri passing an amendment to their state constitution to outlaw gay marriage. Missouri had already passed a state law against gay marriage a few years ago, but apparently they figured they better shoot the corpse again to make sure it was dead.…
August 4, 2004
Happy Anniversary to Timothy Sandefur and his lovely girlfriend, Erin. Nice to see I'm not the only one who gets all mushy and sappy despite my reputation for sober and cynical thinking. It happens to the best of us, ya know. Even HL Mencken, the uber-cynic who once defined love as "the delusion…
August 4, 2004
Wow, this guy is really a piece of work. Judge Moore is now appealing his ouster as Chief Justice of Alabama to the Supreme Court, claiming - and this is really funny - that his ouster established an "unconstitutional religious test for office". A religious test for office would be, for example, a…
August 3, 2004
It seems that Tamara Wilhite and Jen Shroder are in good company over at bushcountry.org. Let's take a look at another columnist there, Joseph Grant Swank. He writes not only for bushcountry.org but also for the amusingly named intellectualconservative.com that allows the uber-idiot Bob Meyer to…
August 3, 2004
I am jealous beyond belief of Timothy Sandefur right now, after reading his report on seeing Eric Clapton at the Hollywood Bowl this weekend. I've seen Clapton only once, in 1990, but it was one of the best concerts I've ever seen. No opening act, but the concert still lasted nearly 3 and a half…
August 3, 2004
A few weeks ago, I reported on Falwell's blatant lie on TV that his ministry had never lost its tax exempt status in the past. When Barry Lynn brought it up, Falwell sputtered:
"Never. Never. Not one minute. Not one second. You are wrong. Never one second did we lose our tax exemption."
I posted…
August 3, 2004
Came across this on Will Wilkinson's blog (another blog you really should be reading regularly; Will is a top notch thinker) and it gave me one of those wonderful moments that only those who love ideas can relate to. The greatest joy for an intellectual is that moment when you come across an idea…
August 3, 2004
Matt Powell, who has been commenting here for the last couple of weeks, writes on his own blog about the bible and slavery. His post includes the following statement:
And I reject a divine command theory of morality, which would teach that anything that God commanded is moral. Rather, I believe…
August 3, 2004
Steve Reuland, my fellow Panda's Thumb contributor who is finishing his PhD in genetics, has also written a fisking of Rodney Stark's pathetic attempt to jump into a field he has no knowledge of. I particularly liked his response to Stark's silly claim that mammals and reptiles are examples of…
August 2, 2004
The sociologist Rodney Stark, writing for the American Enterprise Institute (why? I have no idea), has given us a delightfully ridiculous little article called Fact, Fable and Darwin. Now ordinarily I take articles like this and rip them apart claim for claim, but I wanna try something different…
August 1, 2004
I spent a great day yesterday visiting with old friends in two different shifts. First, I went down to MSU to spend a few hours with my old friends Will and Biza, who are brother and sister and in some ways like a little brother and sister to me. When I coached the debate team at Okemos High school…
July 30, 2004
Jon Rowe has a post about the WorldNutDaily called Antistatism Makes for Strange Bedfellows. He says:
I think the strangest case of antistatist politicsin fact, libertarian politicsmaking for strange bedfellows is how the Christian Reconstructionists have managed to infiltrate libertarian circles,…
July 30, 2004
Anyone know what language this is? Maybe Finnish? Is there a Finnish language?
He seems to be quite enthusiastic about my blog, having linked to about a dozen articles. But anyone have any idea what it says?