stcynic
Posts by this author
March 6, 2006
From the December 19, 2005 issue of National Review, in an article on "How to increase liberty in America", Bork goes Orwell on us. Jacob Sollum has the money quote:
"Liberty in America can be enhanced by reinstating, legislatively, restraints upon the direction of our culture and morality," writes…
March 5, 2006
In the aftermath of the ruling in Kitzmiller, Pat Robertson famously proclaimed that the people of Dover would be in for some natural disasters and that they had no right to complain about it because they had "thrown God out of their community." Alas, it turns out that Robertson was right. In the…
March 5, 2006
One of the great things about the internet is that it provides a place for inexpensive self-publishing, acting as an amplification on the first amendment - anyone can speak their mind and get their views heard. The downside, of course, is that anyone can speak their mind and get their views heard.…
March 4, 2006
Okay, now that I've had a nap and I'm reasonably refreshed and alert, I can talk some more about the rest of the conference. On Friday (the day I thought was Saturday), we had one guy come by the table who was a student at Cornerstone University and he was a young earther. He's not a teacher, but…
March 4, 2006
Okay, as weird as the real Friday report was, as the old saying goes, you ain't heard nothing yet. I had the morning from hell. I got up at 6:30, had breakfast at a little restaurant I used to eat at regularly when I lived in Lansing, and drove to the convention center. A cop happened to pull up…
March 3, 2006
Okay, I feel like an idiot. I posted the "friday night report" on Thursday night and went all day today thinking it was Saturday. In fact, I didn't bother putting money into the parking meter because I thought it was Saturday, so when I came out to my car I found I had a parking ticket. Dan and I…
March 2, 2006
Back at my brother's house for the evening after the first few hours of the conference. Rob Pennock and I met at the exhibit hall and got our booth set up with our banners and posters and a very nice set of hominid skull casts. We have chimpanzee skull, A. africanus, H. habilis, H. erectus, H.…
March 2, 2006
I'm leaving in a couple hours to attend the Michigan Science Teacher's Association conference in Lansing. Michigan Citizens for Science has a booth there to recruit new members and get science teachers involved in the battles over science education in public schools. Rob Pennock, Greg Forbes and I…
March 2, 2006
As many of you no doubt know by now, Henry Morris, founder of the Institute for Creation Research and the man most responsible for the revival of creationism in America, has died at age 87. By all accounts of those who met him, he was a gentleman of unfailing civility and good will. Sadly, he was…
March 2, 2006
I've mentioned before the ReligionLaw listserv, run by Eugene Volokh of the VC (that's Volokh Conspiracy, not Vietcong). It's an interesting group to keep up with, especially when there are court cases involving the first amendment's religion clauses. The list is mostly law professors and public…
March 2, 2006
This is pretty cool. You can see Timothy Sandefur deliver a speech on the subject of eminent domain on C-SPAN on Saturday morning. For more information, go here. If I had TIVO, I would set it up to record the show as I will be out of town at the time.
March 2, 2006
The 29th Skeptic's Circle is available at Daniel Rourke's blog, Huge Entity.
March 2, 2006
It seems that yesterday's post with the press release was a bit dated. An actual FTC complaint has been filed and you just have to see it. I'll post the entire thing below the fold, along with the "evidence" they attached to it, which amounts to an interview where Aiken kinda sorta denies being gay…
March 1, 2006
Brett O'Donnell, the coach of the Liberty University debate team, was on the Colbert Report last night on Comedy Central. He actually talked about how great it was to beat Harvard and with all the talk of how Liberty is "better" than Harvard and Dartmouth and Northwestern, etc, not once did he even…
March 1, 2006
A group of writers and dissidents have issued a joint manifesto called Together facing the new totalitarianism, which has been published, appropriately, in the same Denmark newspaper that published the caricatures which have caused much violence around the world. The signers include Salman Rushdie…
March 1, 2006
A masonry contractor in Las Vegas has filed the papers to put an anti-evolution referendum on the ballot in Nevada that would actually amend the state constitution. The act would require teachers to teach several silly anti-evolution arguments, such as the claim that "it is mathematically…
March 1, 2006
Yet another study that demonstrates the rank ignorance of the average American when it comes to important matters:
Only one in four Americans can name more than one of the five freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment (freedom of speech, religion, press, assembly and petition for redress of…
March 1, 2006
There's a conference coming up in Washington DC the end of this month to discuss the "War on Christians". You gotta love this kind of over the top rhetoric:
Conference convener Vision America says "The War On Christians And The Values Voter in 2006" will be the first "to consider the savage and…
March 1, 2006
This guy is quite a piece of work. He's kept up his string of lies over at BigC's blog in this comment. He writes:
Ed B has now expanded upon his original argument, and speaks against these people being treated as authorities - but that wasn't my original point, and isn't what he orignally said,…
March 1, 2006
Here's the actual press release from the 9 "aggrieved fans" of Clay Aiken who are considering filing a class action suit because they found out he's gay and think it was false advertising to market him to women. And it's funny stuff:
"As consumers, we feel ripped off. It is obvious now that the…
March 1, 2006
The Supreme Court ruled 8-0 that the RICO statute, a law intended to stop organized crime's use of extortion, could not be used against abortion clinic protestors. This is actually the second time the court has ruled this way, once in 2003 and once now. See the full ruling here. The court is…
February 28, 2006
dlamming is back with yet another post where he waves his hands frantically to distract from his own distortions and misrepresentations. He begins:
Well, after a number of back-and-forth comments, Ed Brayton finally said "I don't believe that educated people in general have a good idea what…
February 28, 2006
Woody Paige of ESPN is reporting that Thomas has been summoned to Texas to meet with James Dolan, the owner of the Knicks, and that he is going to be fired in the next couple days. Whether it happens now or later, it's inevitable. A good case can be made that this is the worst example of running a…
February 28, 2006
Just when you thought you'd seen it all, allow me to show you once again just how immensely ridiculous human beings can be. From the "truth is always way funnier than fiction" department:
Nine former fans of American Idol star Clay Aiken are forging ahead with threats to sue his record label bosses…
February 28, 2006
Some of the other ScienceBloggers have been writing about this amusing little blog carnival called "Darwin is Dead". This is really elementary school-level creationist apologetics. It includes an entry from "highboy", a minister in training whose blog features a picture of Jesus with a rifle in his…
February 28, 2006
As the old song from The Wiz says - you can't win, you can't break even, you can't get out of the game. Via Radley Balko comes this libertarian joke:
Three guys are in a jail cell. They start to talking and find out that they're all gas station owners.
The first one says, "I set my prices at a…
February 27, 2006
No, not the bill on gay straight clubs, though that would make the metaphor in the title of this post much funnier. His anti-evolution bill has been rejected by the Utah state legislature:
The Utah House of Representatives voted 46-28 to kill SB96, which cast doubt on the teaching of evolution.
"…
February 27, 2006
You gotta love this. dlamming has a new follow-up post wherein he makes this highly amusing statement:
I called this position the absolute worst form of elitism. Now, Ed Brayton has a new post up, in which he admits he might be elitist, but he thinks that's ok.
Actually, I didn't say anything about…
February 27, 2006
Jon Rowe has an excellent essay on the concept of natural law, its influences on the founding of this country, and the problem with taking Aquinas too seriously in this regard. Well worth reading.
February 27, 2006
Via another blog I found this post by someone named dlamming responding to my post about the DI's infamous list of "dissenting" scientists. Unfortunately, dlamming spends most of his time attacking a straw man version of what I said and presuming that I meant something far stronger than I meant (or…