stcynic
Posts by this author
October 6, 2005
As the NCSE reports, we have a new battle that has just begun over evolution here in Michigan. House Bill 5251 has just been introduced. It would revise the current scence standards to ensure that students will be able to:
"(a) use the scientific method to critically evaluate scientific theories…
October 6, 2005
Remember a few days ago, when John West of the Discovery Institute was trying to discredit Barbara Forrest by quoting, in a highly distorted fashion, from a pretrial hearing on the defense's attempts to have her barred from testifying? West claimed that the judge had "skewered" Forrest, when in…
October 6, 2005
The Tangled Bank, a weekly blog carnival devoted to science, is up for this week and, without my knowledge, I'm linked in it. Given the excellent company of bloggers, which include PZ Myers, Orac and many other fine folks, I'm happy that someone nominated me for it and happy to be included. Go…
October 5, 2005
My BBQ giftbox from Cooper's arrived this morning. Holy cow, way more than I expected - a whole brisket, a rack of spare ribs, two huge pork chops, some smoked sausage, summer sausage and a bottle of BBQ sauce. I put the spareribs on the grill and reheated them tonight and I'm currently in that "oh…
October 5, 2005
Today's Worldnutdaily has a story about a Navy vet who wants to have a Wiccan symbol on his tombstone when he dies but the military won't approve his request. Since 1997, the VA has been paying for inscriptions on the headstones of vets and they have approved religious symbols for a wide range of…
October 5, 2005
I mentioned the brief filed by 85 scientists asking the judge not to rule on the question of what is and is not science, a brief written by DI fellow David DeWolf. Over on the Panda's Thumb, Timothy Sandefur has written a blistering critique of the dishonest rhetoric found in that brief. Also pay…
October 4, 2005
I forgot to mention this, but the Panda's Thumb, the group science blog I co-founded a year and a half ago, has just been named one of the top science websites by Scientific American. They wrote:
If it's in the media and related to evolution, you'll find it posted, dissected and debated on this…
October 4, 2005
In the face of criticism from the left and right, President Bush insisted Tuesday that Harriet Miers is the nation's best-qualified candidate for the Supreme Court and assured skeptical conservatives that his lawyer-turned-nominee shares his judicial philosophy -- and always will.
Folks, George W.…
October 4, 2005
Randy Barnett has an op-ed piece in today's Wall Street Journal that absolutely shreds Bush for nominating Harriet Miers. He begins by quoting a passage from Federalist Paper 76, written by Alexander Hamilton, on why the consent of the Senate is required for appointments:
"To what purpose then…
October 4, 2005
It's clear that the DI's political strategy on Dover is to spin it as a danger to academic freedom, but this position is utter nonsense. They are crowing over a brief filed in the case by a group of scientists, no doubt prompted by the DI, claiming that if the court rules on the nature of science…
October 4, 2005
It's kind of fun watching the right disagreeing over the nomination of Harriet Miers. It's even more fun watching them continue to scream about the left while doing so. Here's what Jay Sekulow, head of Pat Robertson's American Center for Law and Justice, had to say yesterday:
"Once again, President…
October 4, 2005
The uber-nut Judge Roy Moore has announced that he is running for governor of Alabama next year. This should be fun to watch, but naturally the polls show that he's likely to win. Which just reinforces what I said about Alabama before. It's our looniest state.
October 4, 2005
My favorite line from Bush's speech nominating Miers yesterday was this one:
"Harriet has built a reputation for fairness and integrity. When I came to office as the governor of Texas, the Lottery Commission needed a leader of unquestioned integrity."
Seriously, how bad would life suck if you had…
October 4, 2005
Someone very funny has started a Harriet Miers blog. And a J. Michael Luttig blog too. Hilarious stuff.
Hat tip to Josh Claybourn.
October 3, 2005
I am the lucky recipient of another completely unexpected gift from a reader. A reader from Texas named Jeff emailed me today and said he would like to send me a gift basket of authentic Texas BBQ from Cooper's Old Time Pit BBQ, one of the most famous and well reviewed BBQ joints in the nation. I…
October 3, 2005
ID advocates love to use the term "Darwinism" rather than "evolution" or "evolutionary theory", a tendency that has always grated on my nerves. We don't do this with any other theory. We don't talk about "Einsteinism" instead of the theory of relativity or "Wegenerism" rather than plate tectonics.…
October 3, 2005
There's a site called Unpartisan.com that links to my site a lot. Unpartisan.com is a computer-generated RSS feed that tracks big news stories and the reaction to them from around the blogosphere, then provides links to them. They pride themselves on covering both left and right equally because the…
October 3, 2005
From the "I ain't never had no need for book learnin'" department:
As for the pastor, after four days of listening to science experts dismantling the case for intelligent design, he was unimpressed.
"They're babblers," said the pastor, the Rev. Jim Grove, who leads a 40-member independent Baptist…
October 3, 2005
Wow, the more I bounce around the right wing blogosphere the more vitriolic the reactions from conservatives to the nomination of Harriet Miers. Michelle Malkin's reaction:
What Julie Myers is to the Department of Homeland Security, Harriet Miers is to the Supreme Court. (Video of the announcement…
October 3, 2005
Tom Goldstein, partner in one of the top appellate practices in DC and an astute observer of such matters, writes on the SCOTUSblog that Miers is likely to face serious opposition. In fact, he predicts she will be hammered in the confirmation hearings and be rejected:
The nomination obviously will…
October 3, 2005
Well here's one conservative who really doesn't like the nomination. David Frum writes:
I worked with Harriet Miers. She's a lovely person: intelligent, honest, capable, loyal, discreet, dedicated ... I could pile on the praise all morning. But there is no reason at all to believe either that she…
October 3, 2005
Like everyone else around the country, I'm asking, "Who???", right about now. Bush has chosen another stealth candidate, but this one is about a thousand times more stealthy than the last one. Since I know virtually nothing about her, I will reserve judgement until I've got a lot more information…
October 3, 2005
The more I observe the ID public relations effort, the more I come to think of it as the Ministry of Truth from 1984, busily editing old newspapers and magazines to remove inconvenient statements and facts that might undermine their current accepted history. Time and again we come across a…
October 2, 2005
An email received by Andrew Sullivan:
"It's always been clear to me that you have a fine mind and the ability to write, but these talents are attenuated by your unremitting homosexuality - the emotional need to have aberrant sex. Clearly, your perversion and deviancy have affected your reason. Thus…
October 2, 2005
Okay, a break from all the serious stuff for a little pop culture. While doing a search for information on a restaurant, I came across this post on a blog I've never seen blasting the Food Network for many things. Now, the Food Network is quite possibly my favorite channel. I'm a serious food lover…
October 1, 2005
Connecticut, the first state to vote to allow civil unions with all the rights of marriage to gay couples, made it official today as that law went into effect. Undoubtedly, we will see the collapse of heterosexual marriage in that state within months as straight couples stop loving each other or…
October 1, 2005
Yesterday, John Haught, a professor of theology at Georgetown, took the witness stand in the Dover trial and a line of questioning by Richard Thompson inadvertantly demonstrated why ID is not falsifiable. According to the York Daily Record, Thompson was trying to make the argument that because God…
October 1, 2005
I did a technorati search to see who else was writing about the Dover case and came across this badly reasoned post by someone named Josh Bozeman. While insulting the parents who filed the suit as "idiots", he throws out some real whoppers himself. He begins:
The idiot 8- that's how I'll refer to…
October 1, 2005
The Michigan State-Michigan game begins in a moment. If MSU wins this game, they'll be a legitimate top 10 team looking for a BCS bowl bid. Go Spartans!
Update: Ugh. They did everything they could do to lose a game they should have won (and I'm sure Michigan fans would be saying the same thing if…
October 1, 2005
Great research from the indispensible Radley Balko about the alleged link between pornography and rape, teen pregnancy and other bad things. With the attorney general cranking up the porn prosecutions and the religious right foaming at the mouth about the easy availability of porn on the internet (…