stcynic
Posts by this author
May 4, 2004
Charles Colson, the Nixon co-conspirator turned Christian apologist, can quite often be seen shoveling out nonsense on evolution on his website and in books, but I think this opinion piece may take the cake. His commentary is a follow up on this one by Roberto Rivera, and the subject of both…
May 2, 2004
Is there any limit at all on how far do-gooders are willing to dumb down our educational system in the name of helping students feel good about themselves? I rarely agree with anyone from Fox News on anything, but this opinion piece by Joanne Jacobs is pretty much on the mark. First, it reports on…
April 30, 2004
Every once in a while, I come across a webpage that makes me wonder how on earth it has managed to escape my notice for so long. Today I found one only because the editor of the page left a comment in response to a post I made on The Panda's Thumb. The site in question, Butterflies and Wheels, is…
April 29, 2004
Anyone who has followed the evolution/creationism issue for any period of time is quite accustomed to seeing articles filled with the most basic factual errors, poor spelling and hackneyed arguments. But this article, written by someone named Brian Cherry in a webmag called the Washington Dispatch…
April 28, 2004
Yet again, some intrepid explorers are preparing to trudge up Mt. Ararat to find Noah's Ark:
A joint U.S.-Turkish team of 10 explorers plans to make the arduous trek up Turkeys tallest mountain, at 17,820 feet (5,430 meters), from July 15 to Aug. 15, subject to the approval of the Turkish…
April 27, 2004
Is there a more meaningless cliche than "fabric of our nation"? I can't think of one. It's a perfect little piece of empty rhetoric, repeated ad nauseum without anyone bothering to ask what on earth it means. It just seems to be a phrase that people trot out when they're against something but they…
April 26, 2004
I'm going to start another new feature here, only because this subject fascinates me so much. It will be a series of posts on the subject of fringe religious groups, particularly those in the loonier groups of the religious right wing in the United States. I make no pretense of being fair minded in…
April 25, 2004
John Scalzi, a blogger you really should be reading, has a post on his blog that is both amusing and appalling. It's about the appearance of a racist on his site in the comments, but even more about his ham-handed backtracking he tried to do. It began with this post, wherein he critiques an anti-…
April 22, 2004
From the files of our intrepid vice police comes this story about Baltimore Ravens fullback Corey Fuller. His house in Tallahassee, Florida was raided by 20 - TWENTY - law enforcement officers on Tuesday night. Was he hiding stolen goods? Peddling crack? Storing bodies in his crawlspace? Nope. What…
April 22, 2004
John Maynard Smith, the venerable and brilliant old biologist, has died at the age of 84. A protege of J.B.S. Haldane, Smith was an enormous influence over two entire generations of evolutionary biologists. He also published many popular books for non-scientists on evolutionary theory. Science, and…
April 20, 2004
For my second Book Bytes entry, I'm going to continue the male/female theme, but from a more personal level than a political one. This will not be one continuous passage, however, but bits and pieces of various essays that Mencken wrote over many years, and from his 1918 book In Defense of Women. I…
April 19, 2004
I haven't written much lately, because I've been very busy. I just built a new computer last night, but I'm not using it to type this. I have to run some network cable in my house before it's ready to use and I'm still tweaking. It's a screaming machine, a huge step up in speed from the old one. I…
April 14, 2004
I'm going to start a new category - Book Bytes. I'm one of those people who reads books with a highlighter or pen and I note passages that I find particularly meaningful/moving/well-written/enraging. I'm also one of those people who returns to books over and over, finding some bit of insight in…
April 13, 2004
The third entry on my "These Are a Few of My Favorite Things" list is my favorite sportswriter. That honor goes to the legendary Sports Guy, Bill Simmons. The Sports Guy writes for espn.com, as well as for the Jimmy Kimmel show, and he's the funniest sportswriter this side of Bill Scheft. But…
April 12, 2004
The only two sure things in life are death and taxes, the old saying goes. I think by now we can safely add a third certainty - reading a Phyllis Schlafly column will leave you baffled that someone could write such nonsense with a straight face. Her latest column, about the Supreme Court's current…
April 10, 2004
A few days ago I took Bill Wallo to task for a post on his blog referring to theistic evolutionists as "useful idiots". Having spent a fair bit of time reading his blog, however, I should, in the interests of fairness, point out that Walloworld is well worth reading. He's a very bright guy, and…
April 9, 2004
This is a repost of a comment I left on The Panda's Thumb in a thread concerning Joe Carter of Evangelical Outpost and the Leiter/VanDyke situation.
Joe Carter wrote:
"I dont really know since Im not a defender of ID theory but a defender of the idea that the theory should be given a chance. If it…
April 8, 2004
I'd like this to be an ongoing discussion between me and the readers of this page. It was motivated by a conversation with my brother, beginning with some shocking statistics. Did you know that the United States locks up 4 times as many of its citizens than any other western nation per capita? Did…
April 7, 2004
The ID crowd just continues to push this ridiculous argument that the Understanding Evolution website, by pointing out that evolution is not necessarily in conflict with religion and that many Christians and other types of theists accept evolution without giving up their faith, violates the…
April 7, 2004
The Baltimore Sun's article on the Bush administration's anti-pornography efforts begins with this:
Lam Nguyen's job is to sit for hours in a chilly, quiet room devoid of any color but gray and look at pornography. This job, which Nguyen does earnestly from 9 to 5, surrounded by a half-dozen other…
April 7, 2004
Joe Carter at Evangelical Outpost has jumped into the Leiter/VanDyke fray, in a post filled with misconceptions and illogical statements. He begins:
For a legal scholar and professor of philosophy, Brian Leiter has a remarkably poor grasp of basic logic. For the past week Leiter has been bashing a…
April 6, 2004
I'm very disappointed to see Bill Wallo join Rusty in insulting all of his fellow Christians who are theistic evolutionists. He, too, cites John West's NRO article, particularly the section wherein the Understanding Evolution website points out that evolution is not necessarily incompatible with…
April 6, 2004
Brian Leiter has replied to VanDyke's latest response, posted on Ex Parte and as a comment here, and it is a devestating reply, to be sure. I was hoping Brian would get around to doing this, mostly because I've been too busy to do it myself. The misuse, probably born of misunderstanding and…
April 5, 2004
There is a new blog on the block that may prove interesting, Letters from Babylon. It's a group blog and it will likely offer a relatively conservative Christian view of things. One of the contributors is Joshua Davey, who was the litigant in the Locke v Davey Supreme Court decision from the…
April 5, 2004
This is becoming a regular series, isn't it? It wasn't intended as such. Rusty's latest salvo deals with a couple of questions. It started with his post concerning the Understanding Evolution website, and one section of that site in particular, which advised teachers on how to answer the common…
April 5, 2004
I told this story during a real poker game the other day and thought someone might find it amusing to write about it here. The story took place on my first trip to Vegas, about 10 years ago. We were staying at Treasure Island and back then, Treasure Island had a poker room, which is now gone. One…
April 3, 2004
See Feddie's screed on Southern Appeal about how horribly those anti-gay marriage folks are being treated. I'll paraphrase his argument:
The bible says gay people are abominable. Therefore gay marriage is abominable and I want to use the law to impose those views on everyone else. And if you try to…
April 3, 2004
I've been having a bit of an exchange with Rusty in the comments on his blog. Because those comments only allow 1000 words, I'm posting this here. You can see the beginning of the exchange in this post and the comments that follow it. The argument concerns two things. First, Rusty quotes this…
April 1, 2004
A few quotes I found on the page of someone I don't know:
If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you. If you really make them think, they'll hate you.
D. R. P. Marquis (1878-1937)
You know, only dumb people try to impress smart people. Smart people just do what they do.
Chris Rock…
April 1, 2004
Why am I not surprised this took place in Texas? A woman in Tyler, Texas stoned her two sons to death and says that she was reading between the lines:
A housewife said the first sign that God wanted her to kill her three boys came Mother's Day weekend when she saw her 14-month-old playing with a…