stcynic
Posts by this author
April 1, 2006
"I don't know what people are afraid of with the 'gay agenda'. Let's face it, if you're not gay, you're not gonna be talked into it. Your heart can be swayed, your mind can be changed, but your dick...is incredibly stubborn."
Jon Stewart
April 1, 2006
I was watching George W. Bush on TV the other day taking questions from an audience and bumbling through the answers when it suddenly struck me. Some people believe that our presidents are essentially picked for us by our corporate paymasters. If that's the case, I'm pretty sure that whoever it was…
April 1, 2006
Bill Maher had one of his "New Rules" last night about the ubiquitous "war on Christians" notion, particularly about last week's conference on that subject. He rightly pointed out how silly it is for a group that comprises 80% of the population and controls all branches of government to pretend to…
April 1, 2006
I've read several posts about the Danish caricatures, including at least one by someone who comments here, that says something to this effect: "I wouldn't post the Danish caricatures on my blog because I found them crude and based on stereotypes and I see no reason to make fun of these people."…
April 1, 2006
Eugene Volokh has been covering the controversy over NYU ordering the Objectivist Club not to show the famous Danish caricatures during a panel discussion about the Danish caricatures. Here's a link to all of his posts on the subject. Perhaps most importantly, he cites NYU's own policies that were…
March 31, 2006
I got an email today from John Allen Paulos, a mathematician from Temple University who writes a column for abcnews.com called Who's Counting. He is the author of a rather famous book called Innumeracy as well. He said he's going to include my information on the Liberty University debate team in…
March 31, 2006
I've written a couple times about the "War on Christians" conference held in DC earlier this week, but some others have much more comprehensive reports on the subject. Michelle Goldberg, the terrific writer for Salon, has a full report on that site. She includes this little gem:
Taking the stage…
March 31, 2006
As we head into final four weekend, they're starting to hand out the end of season awards. The US Basketball Writer's Association split their player of the year award between JJ Redick and Adam Morrison, while the AP gave it to Redick, with Morrison finishing second. I suspect the Naismith and…
March 31, 2006
So I'm perusing the MSU debate team webpage, which includes lots of pictures and stories of their national championship victory, and I come across this picture:
That's the coach, and my old friend, Will Repko. Why is he dressed like that? I have no idea. I thought about calling him to find out,…
March 31, 2006
I began a new project this week that I'm really excited about - writing a book. I've written a few million words worth of essays, but never a whole book, so this will be a new experience for me. Thankfully, I don't have to do it alone. I've got a co-author, Wesley Elsberry, whose knowledge and…
March 31, 2006
PZ Myers has a thorough takedown of the latest nonsense from the DI's Jonathan Witt. Well worth reading.
March 31, 2006
Jason Kuznicki and Timothy Sandefur (back from vacation) have begun a spontaneous debate about immigration. I have to confess that this is a subject I've thought very little about other than having a bias in favor of immigration as a general rule. Neither of them is against immigration, of course,…
March 30, 2006
Ken Brown, who has been commenting here lately, has a post at the Crux Magazine blog that compares Adam Morrison to Che Guevera. And I gotta say, the resemblance is pretty close. But would Che have cried at the end of the UCLA game? Fear the Stache!
March 30, 2006
The Dallas Morning News has an excellent editorial responding to Tom DeLay's ridiculous performance at the "War on Christians" conference in Washington DC this week. They point out examples which show that DeLay, rather than being a martyr for Christianity, is an exploiter of it:
But lest the…
March 30, 2006
Yet another example of caving in to threats of violence from Islamic radicals:
Borders and Waldenbooks stores will not stock the April-May issue of Free Inquiry magazine because it contains cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad that provoked deadly protests among Muslims in several countries.
I'm…
March 30, 2006
You can't find a more perfect statement of the warped mindset that leads to people being threatened with death over their religious views than this statement, from the father - the father - of Abdul Rahman, the Afghani man who faced the death penalty for converting to Christianity and has now fled…
March 30, 2006
Casey Luskin has an essay up on the Caldwells' lawsuit against UC's Understanding Evolution website, a suit that was dismissed a couple weeks ago. Luskin, like Caldwell, continues to make one glaring error in reasoning:
According to a Daily Californian article, attorney Larry Caldwell believes that…
March 30, 2006
Skemono left a link below to a comment at ex-gay watch that he thought might actually be dumber than the comment I linked to at Positive Liberty. Sadly, I have to admit he was right. It's a welter of stupidity so asinine that one wonders how the author managed to master the use of a keyboard.…
March 30, 2006
It has been astonishing to me how so many member of the two American insitutions that should most vociferously speak out in favor of the free exchange of ideas - the universities and the media - have shrunk in the face of violent extremism and refused to show the infamous 12 Danish caricatures. It'…
March 29, 2006
Just heard from my father that I am an uncle again. My younger brother Rick and his wife just had a baby boy. His name is Quin Ulrich Brayton. Don't congratulate me, I had nothing to do with it. But I think it's pretty cool.
March 29, 2006
I cross posted my essay about Alan Keyes and his hypocrisy to Positive Liberty and just got a hilarious response from some wingnut named John Houk. I didn't want my regular readers to miss out on it, or the response to it. It's well worth the trip, trust me.
March 29, 2006
Tom DeLay spoke at a conference on "The war on Christians" in Washington on Tuesday and religious right leader Rick Scarborough had apparently ingested some sort of hallucinogenic substance prior to speaking about him:
"This is a man, I believe, God has appointed ... to represent righteousness in…
March 29, 2006
I saw this article, titled Satanic Art in Catholic Church Exposed, a few days ago at the Worldnutdaily and made a note to write about it. The article details a new documentary called Rape of the Soul that claims that throughout the history of the Church, artists have been subliminally encoding "…
March 29, 2006
A couple days ago I made the testable prediction that the denial of tenure to Frank Beckwith would be turned into "those evil Darwinists did this" fodder by ID advocates. A couple of people challenged me on it, noting that no one had yet said that, but I replied that I was predicting that it would…
March 29, 2006
The Afghani Christian man, Abdul Rahman, who was just released from jail after charges of apostasy were dropped against him, has been granted amnesty by Italy. Why not by the US? Your guess is as good as mine. With the whackos threatening to kill him anyway, the US military should have taken the…
March 29, 2006
Here's an amusing coincidence of two things I've written about lately, John Lofton (the loony Christian theocrat who runs theamericanview.com) and the Liberty University debate team. It seems that Lofton is quite upset that a few years ago Falwell gave the okay for the debate team to debate in…
March 28, 2006
A couple of people over the last few days have emailed me links to articles about whether Justice Scalia should recuse himself from today's Hamdan case (a case involving whether detainess at Gitmo must be given civil trials in American courts) because of his recent remarks indicating how he would…
March 28, 2006
For the guys at In The Agora, ESPN is announcing that Kelvin Sampson of Oklahoma has been hired to replace Mike Davis as basketball coach at Indiana. This is a surprising choice, I really thought they'd hire Randy Wittman and keep it in the family. But it's a good choice. Sampson is a very good…
March 28, 2006
A reader writes to inform me that the action by the Liberty Counsel to threaten to sue a blogger for a parody of an Exodus International billboard while using their logo is rather ironic given their own past troubles in that area. It seems that for a long time, their page on the "war on Christmas"…
March 28, 2006
Casey Luskin touts the results of a Michigan poll showing that 76% of "Michiganonians" (huh?) agree with the following statement:
"Biology teachers should teach Darwin's theory of evolution, but also the scientific evidence against it."
My first thought was that this is a typically misleading poll…