stcynic
Posts by this author
February 10, 2006
You gotta love this. George Deutsche continued his dodging in an interview with the New York Times. Here's my favorite line:
"When I left college," he said, "I did not properly update my resume. As a result, it may appear misleading to some. However, I was up front with NASA about my undergraduate…
February 10, 2006
You can hear an interview with George Deutsche, the boy wonder who just resigned from NASA because he lied on his resume about having graduated from Texas A&M, here. It's pretty funny stuff. I especially like his defense of having lied on his resume.
Host: Was it public, I mean, it was pretty…
February 10, 2006
The White House must be equal parts furious and frightened over this report in the National Journal that says that Scooter Libby testified to the grand jury investigating the Plame incident that he was authorized by his superiors to leak classified information to reporters in order to defend the…
February 9, 2006
A reader sent me a link to this amusing letter to the Weekly Dig in Boston.
This is a response to the "artist" who in last week's Dig insulted my God by running a comic strip depicting Him clad in an explosive vest, carrying a gun, with a knife between his teeth. I cannot begin to express how…
February 9, 2006
Eugene Volokh has an interesting post about the comparison between flag burning and the Muhammed caricatures. I agree with him that anyone who thinks that there should be an amendment banning flag burning but supports freedom of expression to print caricatures of Muhammed that inflame Muslims is…
February 9, 2006
Sal Cordova has replied, kind of, to my post and to Jack Krebs' response to his questions, in a comment at Uncommon Descent. Let me first note that I was wrong about Cordova teaching at George Mason. I'm not sure why I had that in my head, but it's not true. I don't know what it is he does, but I…
February 9, 2006
Wesley Elsberry has an interesting post up where he details a question and answer exchange with Dembski at a conference last weekend. I think it's worth highlighting for the same reasons Wesley does. First, because it has Dembski saying that he thinks putting ID into high school science classes is…
February 9, 2006
Allen MacNeill, who guest posted here a few weeks ago, has started his own blog. Allen teaches evolutionary biology at Cornell, so he'll certainly have a lot to add on this subject. Check it out.
February 8, 2006
Sal Cordova is an ID advocate who teaches at (I think) George Mason University. He now blogs at Dembski's home for wayward sycophants and comments there often. Lately he's been pushing this notion that Jack Krebs and Nick Matzke refuse to answer this simple set of questions he poses. He apparently…
February 8, 2006
A reader left this in a comment, but it should be up top:
James Randi underwent bypass surgery last Thursday. He is currently in stable condition. He is receiving excellent care, but will need quiet time to recover. We will release more information as it becomes available, and we ask everyone to…
February 8, 2006
Josh Claybourn has a post about a bunch of kids from East Grand Rapids high school here in Michigan who are in trouble with the school after posting pictures of themselves and other students drinking at parties to their blogs. And it turns out that the school monitors the blogs of students:
Goethal…
February 8, 2006
In a new post at Uncommon Descent about the Wisconsin bill, Dembski makes a big deal out of the fact that Ronald Numbers attended the press conference announcing the bill and may have had a role in writing it. Numbers, for those who don't know, is a historian of science from the University of…
February 8, 2006
Remember the story the other day about a 24 year old journalism graduate named George Deutsche who didn't know what the word "theory" meant and was telling the scientists at NASA what they can and can't say on the website? As it turns out, he wasn't even a journalism graduate. Texas A & M…
February 8, 2006
Here is the actual text of the Wisconsin bill, which has not yet been assigned a bill number so is not available on the Assembly's website:
SECTION 1. 118.018 of the statutes is created to read:
118.018 Science instruction. The school board shall ensure that any material presented as science within…
February 8, 2006
I really like this idea:
Creationism or intelligent design could not be taught as science in Wisconsin public schools under a first-of-its-kind proposal announced today by Madison state Rep. Terese Berceau.
Under the bill, only science capable of being tested according to scientific method could be…
February 8, 2006
Iran has decided to rename Danish pastries "Mohammedan" pastry - a new twist in the crisis which has triggered protest by Muslims throughout the world against cartoons of Mohammed first published in Denmark.(link)
Nice to know that we don't have a monopoly on idiotic politicians. I still think that…
February 8, 2006
What's wrong with this picture? The US, home of the first amendment, plays "yeah, but" games with freedom of expression over the Danish caricatures; Russia, for so long the world's leading agent of repression, takes a strong stand in favor of a free press:
A Moscow museum has announced it will…
February 8, 2006
The Middle East Times has a rundown of various anti-blasphemy laws in Europe. All such laws are a blatant violation of the right of free expression and thankfully they are rarely used.
February 8, 2006
Well, last night's game had everything you could want. You have to take your hat off to the Tar Heels. They were clearly undermatched and could easily have folded when Duke took a 17 point lead in the second half, but they fought back hard and took a 5 point lead with about 4 minutes to go. Then it…
February 7, 2006
The greatest rivalry in sports resumes at 9 pm tonight on ESPN when Duke visits North Carolina for the first of their two regular season meetings this year. It may look like a mismatch on paper, with Duke ranked #2 and Carolina on the edge of the top 25, but forget about records in this game. Duke…
February 7, 2006
I've just spent the last couple hours watching the funeral of Coretta Scott King and shedding not a few tears. I may be a heathen, but I have a great affinity for gospel music and good preaching. Rev. Joseph Lowry was brilliant, the first President Bush was unexpectedly charming, and Bill Clinton…
February 7, 2006
Oh, how I wish I could have been in LA last night to see James Taylor honored by MusiCares. Bruce Springsteen, Sheryl Crow, Sting, Paul Simon and many others told stories about him and sang his songs in a show that I hope will be televised at some point, or perhaps released on DVD. I am a huge…
February 7, 2006
I have often made the argument that gay marriage and interracial marriage are analogous, particularly in the arguments against each (no one outside the KKK thinks interracial marriage should be banned anymore, but the arguments against it were virtually identical to the arguments against gay…
February 7, 2006
Ibn Warraq, a Muslim dissident who is well known in the skeptic movement (I've heard him speak and read much of his work), has an article in Der Spiegel about the caricatures (thanks to Sandefur for pointing me to it). I'll quote a long passage from the article below the fold:
The cartoons in the…
February 7, 2006
Sandefur also discovered that Larry Arnhart, a strongly pro-evolution conservative philosopher, has a blog. And wouldn't you know it, right at the top is a fascinating post addressing several of my favorite subjects all at once - Straussianism, evolution and natural rights. This will be a must-read.
February 7, 2006
More details are coming out about Jacob Robida, the 18 year old who tried to kill 3 people in a gay bar in Massachusetts and then fled and was shot and killed by officers in Arkansas. Some of the details aren't surprising:
Robida's mother told police her son had come home after the attack around 1…
February 6, 2006
The Sports Guy has a running diary of last night's Super Bowl with all of the great lines you would expect from him. He thinks that the MVP trophy should have gone to the refs. Ouch. He also wondered the same thing I did when they were introducing the former Super Bowl MVPs before the game - what…
February 6, 2006
Some of you may have noticed that Positive Liberty is down at the moment. I'm not entirely sure why at this point, there is some suspicion that it got hacked, but we were planning on changing hosting services anyway so it may just stay down until we get it moved. In the meantime, Sandefur and Rowe…
February 6, 2006
Not that this is going to surprise anyone, but the Catholic Church has issued an official statement saying that no one has a right to say anything that might offend "the faithful":
The Vatican on Saturday condemned the publication of cartoons lampooning the Prophet Mohammad which have outraged the…