stcynic
Posts by this author
September 30, 2005
I've been so busy writing about the Dover trial that I feel I may be failing at my job of irritating both sides of the living false dichotomy that is the American political system. Let's fix that. We seem to be in an outbreak of feminist concern over sports issues. Eric Buzuvis, a law professor at…
September 30, 2005
The ACLU-PA has made transcripts of the first 3 days of the trial available, and presumably will continue to make them available as the court does so. You can find links to them in PDF format at this page.
September 30, 2005
After Rob Pennock's testimony the other day, Casey Luskin - who now works for the Discovery Institute - wrote an attempted critique of Pennock's claims concerning digital evolution. Pennock is the co-author of a paper published in Nature based on research from the Digital Evolution Lab at Michigan…
September 30, 2005
The Panda's Thumb mascot, Prof. Steve Steve, found his way into a picture in the York Daily Record yesterday, taken outside the courtroom:
The guy in the leather jacket is Charles Darwin's great great grandson.
September 30, 2005
As much as the ID crowd wants to separate themselves from old-fashioned creationists, they must realize that to the rank and file there simply isn't much distinction between the two. The folks in the pews don't really care whether it's traditional young earth creationism or vague "intelligent…
September 30, 2005
The ACLU-PA blog has a report on yesterday's testimony from Carol Brown, a member of the Dover school board for ten years until she resigned in protest when the board voted to put ID into science classrooms. On the witness stand, she described a long process by which the board, led by William…
September 30, 2005
Yet another example of why Jason Kuznicki is one of the truly indispensible writers in the blogosphere. Jason blasts the indefinite detention of an American citizen without charges being filed, a flagrant violation of both the letter and the spirit of the constitution. He also shreds the excuses…
September 30, 2005
In the race for the designation of American's dumbest state, Alabama is Carl Lewis and the other 49 might as well be Stephen Hawking. Already home to the cosmically ridiculous Judge Roy Moore and the outrageously stupid Gerald Allen (the state senator who wants to ban all books that even mention…
September 29, 2005
Mike Argento, a columnist for the York Daily Record, the local newspaper in Dover, Pennsylvania, had some amusing thoughts on the testimony of Rob Pennock:
Wednesday morning, as day three of the Dover Panda Trial meandered into discussions of stoner logic and street cred, one of the lawyers for the…
September 29, 2005
As a measure of the desperation felt by the Discovery Institute over the case in Dover, one could hardly find a better metric than this dishonest attack piece by John West on Barbara Forrest, an expert witness for the plaintiffs in the case and the author of Creationism's Trojan Horse. West makes…
September 29, 2005
The Discovery Institute clearly recognizes that its purpose is not science but public relations. It is incredibly obvious that their strategy at the moment is to sell the ridiculous spin that the Dover lawsuit will oppress scientists and forbid them from discussing or researching ID. Here's the…
September 29, 2005
Bartholemew has a typically thorough article about Zion Oil and Gas and their investment scam trying to find oil in Israel. The Worldnutdaily has been pimping this company for months, including having their writer Hal Lindsey write articles encouraging people to invest in it without revealing that…
September 29, 2005
The ACLU-PA blog records a rather amusing objection by the Thomas More Law Center attorneys yesterday. One of the plaintiffs in the case, Mrs. Eveland, was on the witness stand and was being asked about school board meetings that she attended where the ID policy was being discussed. This was the…
September 29, 2005
Anyone remember the Atlanta courthouse shootings last March, when a felon named Brian Nichols shot and killed a judge, stole a car and fled the courthouse, leading to a big manhunt? If you do, I'm sure you can't possibly forget Ashley Smith, the woman who was on every single network simultaneously…
September 28, 2005
The ACLU-PA blog has a report up about the testimony this morning of my friend and fellow MCFS co-founder Rob Pennock. It included a little levity:
The morning session included several light moments. Dr. Pennock testified that referring to a "designer" rather than "God" is like referring to "…
September 28, 2005
I'm really, really, really tired of the comment spam so I'm going to try something new. I've changed my settings to require Typekey authentication. You can get a registered Typekey account for free by clicking here. Once you have it, you can sign in when you go to leave a comment and it will allow…
September 28, 2005
The most important issue in the Dover case is whether "intelligent design" is a genuine scientific theory or whether it is just old-fashioned creationism given a new label - old wine in new skins, to use a Biblical metaphor. Here's powerful evidence for the plaintiffs, presented by their attorney…
September 28, 2005
One of the arguments we Americans hear constantly from the religious right is that everything went to hell when we "took God out of the schools". In a classic case of post hoc reasoning, they will point to all of the measures of social problems that got worse after 1962 and say, "See? When you…
September 28, 2005
Genie Scott and Nick Matzke of the NCSE are podcasting from the Dover trial. Mp3s are available on the NCSE's Kitzmiller website. For some reason, the downloads seem to be running at sub-dialup speeds (I'm currently getting one at 1.3k per second - ouch), but they're still probably worth the…
September 27, 2005
I don't know how this happened, but I got linked by Slate magazine today regarding the Dover trial. So if you're new here because you saw the link in Slate, stick around. I'm guessing you'll either love me or hate me.
September 27, 2005
Here's another excellent resource for timely updates on the Dover trial. The ACLU of Pennsylvania has set up a blog with frequent updates on what is going on in the courtroom. Jonathan Witt of the Discovery Institute is also blogging live from the trial on the DI blog. His post on Ken Miller's…
September 26, 2005
Over at the Legal Affairs debate club, this week's debate is over the question, Is Teaching Intelligent Design Illegal? The debate pits Frank Beckwith, DI Fellow and the associate director of the Dawson Institute for Church-State Studies at Baylor, against Doug Laycock, a church-state specialist at…
September 26, 2005
The Dover trial has begun. After opening statements, the first witness was Ken Miller, a Brown university molecular biologist. Rob Pennock, president of Michigan Citizens for Science and author/editor of several books on Intelligent Design Creationism, is scheduled to testify on Wednesday. The…
September 26, 2005
Okay, I finally got to watch the NCBCPS press conference on their bible curriculum and it's even funnier than I imagined. You can download or stream the video by clicking here, but the video is very long, about 125 meg. I actually downloaded it. If you have broadband and a half hour to kill, I…
September 26, 2005
Jon Rowe has an excellent post at Positive Liberty looking at the views of Jack Balkin and Akhil Amar, one a "living constitutionalist" and the other a "liberal originalist". He makes the important point that rejecting the Bork/Scalia version of originalism does not necessarily make one an advocate…
September 26, 2005
Mark Olson has written a third response in our exchange over the issue of the limits of individual rights. I think this response makes significant progress in defining where exactly we disagree. He has better defined his position and it's true that he is not taking the extreme anti-rights position…
September 24, 2005
Got to watch the MSU-Illinois game on TV and I think it's time to start talking about MSU QB Drew Stanton as a serious candidate for the Heisman Trophy. His numbers this year have been phenomenal as he's led the Spartans to a 4-0 start. In those 4 games, here are his numbers:
Kent State: 22 for 29…
September 24, 2005
The Discovery Institute really is frantic about the Dover case and it's making them tell some real whoppers. The latest one is from DI director John West:
Dr. John West of the Discovery Institute, which sponsors research on intelligent design, said the case displayed the ACLU's "Orwellian" effort…
September 24, 2005
For the last couple weeks I've been dying to get my hands on a transcript of the NCBCPS press conference where they responded to the Texas Freedom Network's criticism of their bible curriculum, mostly because I wanted to see what sort of stupid things Chuck Norris might have said. Last night I got…
September 24, 2005
If PZ Myers gave out a version of the Robert O'Brien Trophy, he would no doubt award it to Timothy Birdnow, the author of a delightfully idiotic anti-evolution screed in, of all places, a webmag called The American Thinker. PZ shredded the poor sap in a post, prompting the guy to start a separate…