jrosenhouse | April 16, 2009I was going to write something up about those miserable teabagging dimwits, but I can not improve on the eloquent summary of Comrade PhysioProf. My longstanding no profanity rule prevents me from quoting any of it, alas, so you will just have to follow the link.
jrosenhouse | April 16, 2009Via P.Z. Myers I came across this article by Julian Baggini. Baggini is the editor of The Philosopher's Magazine and the author of Atheism: A Very Short Introduction.
The essay is rather weird. It begins with the standard brain-dead boiler-plate about how Dawkins et al are just too darn mean in their attacks against religion:
When I threw off my Christianity, I did not throw out my Bible, I just learned to read it properly. Intelligent atheism rejects what is false in religion, but should retain an interest in what is true about it. I don't think many of my fellow atheists would disagree…
jrosenhouse | April 13, 2009Happy news from the Boston Globe:
Let's just say that in these days of digital shock and computerized awe, Jay dazzles us the old-fashioned way: with his hands. He last appeared in Boston eight years ago in the Mamet-directed off-Broadway hit "Ricky Jay and His 52 Assistants." On Friday Jay brings his new theatrical work, "A Rogue's Gallery: An Evening of Conversation and Performance," to the Somerville Theatre, and the show marks a number of firsts for Jay - among them, serious audience participation and the introduction of materials from his personal collections (show bills of singing mice…
jrosenhouse | April 10, 2009Glenn Beck is not happy with the Obama administration:
Glenn Beck is so outraged by President Obama's immigration plan that he was forced to ask on his show Thursday, “President Obama, why don't you just set us on fire?”
In his “The One Thing” segment Thursday (that was picked up and hammered by Media Matters), Beck imitated Obama pouring gasoline on the “average American” by dousing Red Eye's Bill Schulz with water out of a red jug.
Beck railed against Obama's budget, his speech to France, his quasi-bow to the Saudi King, the closing of Gitmo, developments in Cuba, and finally Obama's new…
jrosenhouse | April 7, 2009I have not been blogging much lately, a state of affairs likely to persist until the end of the semester at the start of May. This is partly a consequence of blogger burn-out; I just flat haven't felt like blogging. Mainly, though, it is because this semester has been an unusually busy and stressful one. The reason I have not felt like blogging is that I have been inundated with other work, some self-inflicted, some inflicted from without.
EvolutionBlog will make a triumphant return, but until then I thought I would unburden myself by telling you what I have been up to this term. What,…
jrosenhouse | April 3, 2009Regular blogging will not resume until the end of the semester, but I couldn't resist emerging from my hidey hole to call attention to this article, from The Times of India:
Bad at maths? Gorge on chocolates before you attempt your next
examination.
A new study has revealed that eating chocolate could improve the brain's ability to do maths as well as boost your energy level.
Researchers have carried out the study and found that flavanols, compounds found in chocolate and part of a group of chemicals called polyphenols, actually work by increasing the flow of blood into the brain.
According…
jrosenhouse | March 26, 2009Here's William Dembski holding forth on the bacterial flagellum.
Requiring no great conceptual leaps or being unable to find a case where Darwin's theory could not possibly apply is not the same thing as providing evidence. Sure, the proteins in the flagellum may have homologues that serve functions in other systems. And we can imagine that the parts were co-opted over time by selection to produce the flagellum. But so what? We can imagine lots of things. Where's the evidence that it happened that way? And why isn't the exquisite engineering that we observe in the flagellum evidence for ID…
jrosenhouse | March 23, 2009Distressing news from Florida:
The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences announced its plans to cut 10% from its budget. It targeted three departments: Communication Sciences and Disorders; Religion; and Geology. These three departments will take a far larger cut than 10% in order to 'preserve' the integrity of other departments. In an era of 'green technology', environmental awareness, the need for natural resource management, global climate change and the need to preserve access to freshwater, the thought of decimating a Geology Department borders on insanity. This is especially true…
jrosenhouse | March 22, 2009Paul Krugman is disturbingly convincing about the merits of Obama bank bailout plan:
But it's immediately obvious, if you think about it, that these funds will have skewed incentives. In effect, Treasury will be creating -- deliberately! -- the functional equivalent of Texas S&Ls in the 1980s: financial operations with very little capital but lots of government-guaranteed liabilities. For the private investors, this is an open invitation to play heads I win, tails the taxpayers lose. So sure, these investors will be ready to pay high prices for toxic waste. After all, the stuff might be…
jrosenhouse | March 21, 2009For reasons that are obscure, George Will has a reputation for being the most intellectual of conservatives. Not for him the cheap theatrics of Rush Limbaugh or Ann Coulter. He's the thinking man's conservative, or so goes the CW.
On at least two recent issues, however, Will has shown himself to be just another delusional right-wing hack. In this essay he touts the standard revisionist nonsense about what a big failure the New Deal was. He bases his argument in part on the work of Amity Shlaes, whose work comes in for a well-deserved drubbing from Jonathan Chait in this excellent essay.…
jrosenhouse | March 20, 2009You've heard of those parasites that can invade other creatures and turn them into zombies, mindlessly doing the parasite's bidding? Well, if Ken Ham is is to be believed, that's pretty much what has happened to our own P.Z. Myers:
As you watch this intriguing video exchange, please note that Dr. Purdom circles back from time to time to engage [Michael Shermer] in some of the more urgent aspects of the creation/evolution question, including how the gospel message is connected to Genesis. This video, by the way, has become somewhat popular on the web. It's been picked up by other…
jrosenhouse | March 19, 2009The recent war in Gaza, coupled with the rejection of Israel-critic Charles Freeman for an intelligence post in the Obama administration, has led to a renewed round of hand-wringing over America's relationship with Israel.
Let's kick things off with this delightful article from today's New York Times. It reports on Israel's growing isolation from the international community:
Israel, whose founding idea was branded as racism by the United Nations General Assembly in 1975 and which faced an Arab boycott for decades, is no stranger to isolation. But in the weeks since its Gaza war, and as it…
jrosenhouse | March 12, 200911:23 First commercial break in the big Jon Stewart -- Jim Cramer interview. So far it's Stewart in a rout. Cramer's making a fool of himself; I actually feel a bit bad for him. It's pure train wreck time. Hard to watch but impossible to turn away.
11:30 Colbert's coming on so I'll keep this short. Stewart signed off by saying he hoped it was as uncomfortable to watch as it was to do. Believe me, it was. But it needed to be done and God bless Stewart for doing it. I've been saying for some time that people like him, and Colbert and Maher are the only ones doing any serious…
jrosenhouse | March 12, 2009We chess players have had to put up with taunts from our Go playing counterparts for quite some time. First there was the jibe that Go is so much easier to learn than chess. Then the dubious charge that Go is actually more complex than chess. Some have argued that the superiority of Go over chess represents he difference between Eastern and Western values. (In Go you start with an empty board and gradually build up structures that control territory. Chess is just a bloodbath where rival armies try to slaughter the other guy's leader.) And then there was the undeniable fact that chess-…
jrosenhouse | March 10, 2009As you have probably noticed, I haven't been blogging lately. This is largely because I have been working on some other writing projects, which involves many hours spent in frustrated contemplation of a blank computer screen, which leaves me decidedly unmotivated to then embark on lengthy blog entries. Having just read this insufferably pompous, not to mention poorly argued, essay from William Saletan at Slate, I suddenly feel moved to emerge from my blog sabbatical.
Saletan is in full lecture mode, informing those of us who are happy about Obama's recent decision regarding stem-cell…
jrosenhouse | February 27, 2009Writing at Christian Today Tony Campolo has unleashed a stunningly stupid barrage of attacks against Charles Darwin.
Campolo is a bit of a celebrity among the evangelical left. He can thump his Bible with the best of them, but also defends progressive political positions. That he is usually a rare voice of political moderation in an ocean of evangelical narrow-mindedness makes this essay especially disappointing. We consider his essay in full.
Campolo begins:
Many supporters of the principle of separation of church and state say that the Intelligent Design Theory of creation ought not…
jrosenhouse | February 20, 2009The general blog drought around here lately will, regrettably, continue a while longer as I dig out from under a big pile of work that isn't getting done on its own. But I just had to poke my head up for a minute to comment on this bit of silliness from the lunatics over at Uncommon Descent.
By now I'm sure you've seen the New York Post cartoon, in which a policeman, having just shot and killed a chimpanzee, remarks, “They'll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill.” This was a play off the recent story about the pet chimpanzee who went crazy and mauled a woman. The…
jrosenhouse | February 12, 2009After my last class tomorrow I will hop into the Jasonmobile, spend some quality time on I-81 and the Pennsy Turnpike, say hello to the 'rents in central New Jersey, and then wander up to Parsippany for the annual chess extravaganza known as the U.S. Amateur Team East. I first played in this event back in 1986 and have only missed a handful of them since then.
Alas, this will be my first over the board chess tournament since this tournament last year, so I fear I'm pretty rusty. Whatever. This is hands down the most enjoyable tournament of the year. With something like 1500 players, small…
jrosenhouse | February 12, 2009By now you have surely heard that Charles Darwin turns 200 today. Happy Birthday! In honor of that fact, Darwin articles in various media outlets are currently a dime a dozen. Some good, some pretty bad, many just standard boilerplate.
Here's one that caught my eye, from The Times of London. It was written by Cormac Murphy-O'Connor and extols the virtues of blending faith with science. Let's have a look.
Towards the end of his life Darwin wrote: "It seems to me absurd to doubt that a man may be an ardent Theist and an evolutionist." The science opens me not only to puzzles and to…
jrosenhouse | February 6, 2009From the San Jose Mercury News:
An evening that started with two friends playing chess and drinking beers ended with one man stabbed to death and another booked on murder charges Tuesday, Alameda police said.
Kelly Scott Kjersem, a 40-year-old Alameda man, arrived earlier in the evening at 1220 Park Avenue with a 12-pack of beer, police Lt. Bill Scott said.
Kjersem was visiting the home of his friend, Joseph W. Groom, 62, to drink and play chess. The two men played and drank for some time, and later a female friend of Groom's arrived and began cooking dinner for the two men.
While she was in…