stcynic
Posts by this author
February 14, 2005
I completely forgot to post a Happy Darwin Day message on Saturday. Charles Darwin was born on February 12, 1809. That was also the same day that Abraham Lincoln was born (though there is some dispute over that, I guess). More importantly, February 12th is also the birthday of Brent Rasmussen's…
February 14, 2005
Timothy Sandefur has announced publicly what he told me by email a few weeks ago, that he and Erin are getting married. To Timothy and Erin, Lynn and I send our most sincere congratulations and wishes for a life filled with as much joy and happiness as they can stand. Wonderful news from wonderful…
February 14, 2005
The Worldnutdaily is reporting that a Scottish minister has written that the enormous tsunami that killed so many people recently was God's revenge on people for not keeping the Sabbath holy:
In the February issue of his church magazine, Rev. John MacLeod of the Free Presbyterian Church of…
February 14, 2005
Marci Hamilton has an interesting column on Findlaw about whether the Establishment Clause is incorporated by the 14th amendment, which means whether it now applies to the states or not. The Supreme Court has long held that it does, but at least one justice, Clarence Thomas, argues that it does not…
February 13, 2005
As a follow up on the recent articles on ID advocates making offensive comparisons between evolution advocates and various bad guys, try this one on for size. Commenting on the Klinghoffer article and the claims of persecution by Sternberg (which he accepted uncritically as gospel truth, of course…
February 12, 2005
Yesterday was the one year anniversary of the start of Positive Liberty, by Jason Kuznicki. It is an anniversary that is well worth noting and celebrating. Jason thanks me for the many links I've made to his blog over the last year, and I have tried to send people to his blog as often as possible.…
February 12, 2005
I've gotten a lot of new links lately and I should say thanks for them. They include the New Jersey Humanist Network, Jesus Politics, and Sleepy Sage.
February 12, 2005
Jon Rowe pointed out that Eric Alterman linked to both his page and mine in a recent article. While I appreciate the link from such a prominent figure in the media, I'm at a loss to understand why he linked to me. It's a strange snippet from Alterman. First he takes a shot at Andrew Sullivan for…
February 11, 2005
Eugene Volokh has a post about Michigan's new law against gay marriage, passed by referendum in November, being used as a weapon against state and local governments offering benefits to gay couples. During the ugly campaign for and against the referendum last fall, opponents of the referendum…
February 11, 2005
Last night, Christopher L. Colegrove left a comment after a post I wrote last week about the Worldnutdaily pimping a book that claims that the pyramids around the world were built by the Nephilim, the demonic giants mentioned in Genesis. Here is his comment in full:
I think the book gets at…
February 10, 2005
I am very pleased to announce that Howard Van Till has agreed to join the board of Michigan Citizens for Science, on whose board I also sit. Dr. Van Till is professor emeritus of physics and astronomy at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan and is also on the board of advisers for the Templeton…
February 10, 2005
So I'm flipping channels and I come across a report that Prince Charles is going to marry Camilla Parker Bowles. This report came complete with its own poll, wherein 44% of viewers who responded said he should marry her, 52% said he should not, and 4% said they don't know. And it left me with one…
February 10, 2005
Jon Rowe has stepped into the religious ring to ask a question. It's a question all of us have probably asked. It is:
If there is no "Creator" and only the material world is true, how did time-space, matter and energy come into existence? Would it not follow that if there is no Creator then…
February 10, 2005
I don't often write about sports, but since last night was one of the high holy days for a college basketball fan, I have to. For those who don't know, I am a Duke fan. No, I'm not a bandwagon fan who jumped on when they became the New York Yankees of collge basketball, I've been a Duke fan since…
February 10, 2005
Rusty Lopez, with whom I've had many an interesting exchange since I started this blog, has written a very gracious post apologizing for part of an exchange we had almost a year ago. I'd just like to say thanks for that post. Despite our disagreements, and they are many, Rusty is a gentleman and…
February 9, 2005
Jon Rowe has a brief post up about Robert Tilton, one of my favorite TV evangelist hucksters and one of his as well. Another of my favorites is Peter Popoff, whose mailing list I used to be on. Both Tilton and Popoff were exposed on national television as frauds, Tilton by Diane Sawyer on Prime…
February 9, 2005
The Virginia assembly is considering a bill, HJ537, which would amend the Virginia constitution's provisions concerning religious liberty and disestablishment, provisions that were taken directly from Thomas Jefferson's Act for Establishing Religious Freedom. Currently the Virginia Constitution, in…
February 8, 2005
DI fellow and ID advocate Michael Behe wrote an op-ed piece for the New York Times yesterday. For more thorough responses, see Nick Matzke and PZ Myers. But I want to focus on one aspect of the article, the way it clashes with statements from other ID advocates. Behe states:
As one of the…
February 8, 2005
Crux magazine is a new publication with a virtual who's who of ID advocates as contributors and editors. It also has three blogs associated with it, with contributions from those same people. While declaring itself the "last bastion of Truth" (yes, they even capitalized it), their contributors seem…
February 8, 2005
Joe Carter of Evangelical Outpost has replied to my post that pointed out that none of the bloggers who jumped so eagerly on the Sternberg situation as proof of his martyrdom have bothered to mention the other side of the story, Coddington's denial of the accusations. He says:
While there are at…
February 7, 2005
Am I the only one who finds press reports like this amusingly ridiculous?
President Bush sent Congress a $2.57 trillion budget plan Monday that seeks deep spending cuts across a wide swath of government from reducing subsidies paid to the nation's farmers, cutting health care payments for poor…
February 7, 2005
Jon Rowe has a couple of posts up about a breathtakingly bad argument for why Congress has the authority to ban gay marriage under the 14th amendment. The argument is made by Austin Bramwell in this article from the American Conservative magazine. Here is the argument as Bramwell states it:
It isn…
February 7, 2005
Chris Geidner has a roundup of the reactions from around the blogosphere to last week's New York court ruling in favor of gay marriage, including analysis of the decision from Jack Balkin, Patterico, Kip Esquire and others. I've not read the decision yet, but my friend Dan Ray sent me it to me last…
February 7, 2005
I just did a search at both the blog search engine and Technorati, and as far as I can tell, the DI blog is still the only one that even mentions that there has been a denial of the accusations made by Richard von Sternberg against Jonathan Coddington and the Smithsonian. Bloggers like Joe Carter,…
February 6, 2005
The Alliance Defense Fund has apparently filed a modified complaint in the Steven Williams lawsuit in Cupertino. The new complaint includes a couple of other handouts that the principal wouldn't allow Williams to hand out, both of them apparently with some historical problems of their own. ERiposte…
February 5, 2005
This you just have to find funny. Jonathan Witt has written a post on the DI blog about the Sternberg/Smithsonian situation. In the process, he has made clear the utter hypocrisy of the DI in handling criticism. The DI blog, you see, steadfastly refuses to link to the Panda's Thumb, which is the…
February 4, 2005
On the heels of finding out that Ernst Mayr died, I also just read that Ossie Davis has died. Ossie Davis, husband of actress Ruby Dee, was a brilliant actor, playwright, writer and civil rights activist. If you don't recognize his name, you almost surely would recognize his face and his deep,…
February 4, 2005
A New York state court ruled today that gay couples must be allowed to marry in that state. Like the decision in Massachusetts, this decision is based upon the NY state constitution, not the U.S. Constitution, so it only is enforcable in that state. But it is still an enormously important ruling.…
February 4, 2005
Harvard announced today that Ernst Mayr, the venerable and legendary evolutionary biologist who made his home there for so long, died yesterday at the age of 100. Science magazine published a retrospective, written by Mayr himself, on his 80 years as a scientist last July after his 100th birthday…
February 4, 2005
Some of you are aware, I'm sure, of the controversy that has been raging throughout the right side of the blogosphere concerning Richard von Sternberg and the Smithsonian. Based solely on an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal, everyone from the Discovery Institute to the Worldnutdaily and a…