Blog Links
stcynic | December 3, 2005My old pal DarkSyde has published an interview at Unscrewing the Inscrutable with Carl Buell, better known as Olduvai George. Buell, as I mentioned last week, is a brilliant illustrator who has done the illustrations for numerous books on science and evolution. Most notably, he did all the illustrations for Carl Zimmer's wonderful book At The Water's Edge (if you haven't read this book, go buy it. Now.). It's an interesting interview that touches on the subject of how a conscientious artist goes about turning a fossil into a picture of the animal as it might have looked while alive.
stcynic | October 25, 2005William Dembski has gotten the honor of an official parody blog, Uncommon Dissent. The author, using the nom de plume of TH Huxley (I would have chosen Asa Gray myself), does a post-by-post mockery of Dembski's blog. It's not terribly good, but I'll say this - he's a hell of a lot brighter than Robert O'Brien. Then again, your average baked potato is brighter than Robert O'Brien.
stcynic | October 6, 2005The 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 check it out, there are lots of other interesting links there about science.
stcynic | October 3, 2005There'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 computer picks all of the blog stories and links to them without bias or comment:
Unpartisan.com is a political site that blends news, discussion, and commentary from all over the internet. There are thousands of political weblogs all over the internet comprising two distinct political spheres.…
stcynic | August 4, 2005The latest edition of the Skeptic's Circle is available at Be Lambic or Green. It has links to lots of interesting posts in the skeptical vein.
stcynic | June 1, 2005Via Radley Balko comes this amusing link. The very right wing newspaper Human Events took a poll of prominent conservatives to get a list of the most harmful books ever written. The list was pretty much what you'd expect, with Das Kapital and the Communist Manifesto in the top ten. I was disappointed to see that two of my favorites, On Liberty by John Stuart Mill and On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin only made honorable mention (but got a good chuckle out of the rather predictable fact that they got the name wrong on the second one, calling it Origin of the Species). But here's the…
stcynic | May 26, 2005Timothy Sandefur has decided to leave the world of blogging, I am sad to report. Now that he is preparing to wed the lovely Erin and owns his own home (one can almost visualize the honey do list), the time and energy he has to devote to Freespace has dwindled and he has decided to cash in his chips. He signs off with a typically passionate defense of liberty:
My final message is to always love your freedom, and fight for it with all you can. It is the rarest, and most precious, possession on earth. Without freedom, no other joys are meaningful; no victory is worthy; no riches are wealth; no…
stcynic | April 17, 2005The group blog that I write for as well, In the Agora, has received a big notice in the Indianapolis Star, which I imagine is probably one of the top 20 largest circulation newspapers in the country. They also took note of Radley Balko's The Agitator. Congratulations to Paul and Josh and the rest of the Agora gang, and to Balko as well. Hopefully this will boost readership for both excellent blogs.
stcynic | April 6, 2005Jim Babka, the host of the radio show I was on a few days ago, has posted a report to his blog on how the show went. It seems he thought it went pretty much the way I thought it went:
Brayton, who argued that the outcome of Terri's case was correct, was well-prepared and forensically strong. I think Mr. Klayman, who was primarily upset with Jeb Bush's failure to intervene and rescue Terri, is used to shorter interviews because after his four or five-bullet point initial statement he crumbled into almost entirely ad hominem arguments. He called one set of judges morons, his opposing guest an…
stcynic | April 1, 2005I'm pleased to announce that Timothy Sandefur has returned to the blogging world after a few weeks away. Having moved in to a new home with his lovely fiance Erin, he is now free to ignore her and turn his attention to the far more important task of writing entertaining and enlightening posts for all of us. And he begins, naturally, by busting my chops for pointing out the wrong basis for decrying the fanaticism of those who are "pro-life", yet threaten to kill others (like Judge Greer, Michael Schiavo or abortion doctors). Point taken. He also has this amusing post about the "rational basis…
stcynic | March 13, 2005Chris from Mixing Memory posted a comment on my post about Pinker and Summers, and it led me to check out his blog. I urge you to do the same. It doesn't have much information about what Chris does, but I suspect it must have something to do with cognitive neuroscience or linguistics. Two recent posts really stuck out to me. The first was about the ways in which the secular left and the religious right misunderstand each other. In this post he makes two important points that I have often made myself. First, that there is a good deal of variation within what we often refer to simply as the…
stcynic | March 7, 2005Joe Carter of Evangelical Outpost, ID proponent and pretty decent guy, is mentioned in a New York Times article on religion and the blogosphere. Joe, Joe, Joe...first you decided to move from a red state to a decidedly blue state and now you're receiving notice in the flagship of the godless liberal media. I see the hand of the devil at work here. (/sarcasm off) Seriously, being mentioned in the Times is kinda cool. And good luck at the new job.
stcynic | March 5, 2005Jason shows once again why he is such an irreplaceably compelling voice in the blogosphere. I should link first to the Dave Jansing essay that Jason quotes from, making similar arguments about the need for a focus on virtue rather than values. Read that one first, then read this essay by Jason. Brilliant writing from both gentlemen.
stcynic | March 1, 2005The terrific Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) has finally started their own official blog, The Torch. The great thing about FIRE is that, unlike a lot of people who talk about liberty from both left and right, they actually take a consistent stand for freedom of thought regardless of the political viewpoint being expressed. For example, they are currently arguing against hate speech codes and also on behalf of Ward Churchill's right to express his vile opinions, as well as standing up for Lawrence Summers at Harvard and many other cases where the expression of…
stcynic | March 1, 2005Steve Sanders has a couple of terrific posts up currently at Reason and Liberty. The first is about Pope John Paul II's most recent statements calling gay marriage "evil". You can hear sadness in his voice as he writes this, and I can understand why. Like Steve, I've always held the current Pope in fairly high esteem despite our obvious disagreements. I've admired his ecumenical nature, his respect for science and his breadth of knowledge on a wide range of matters. He is, in short, a scholarly man in a position where it is easy not to be one. And as Steve notes, he is a man who has clearly…
stcynic | February 27, 2005As usual, these two have challenging and interesting posts up about issues I care deeply about. Rowe has this post about the Ten Commandments case and David Barton's dishonest arguments about their influence on our founding. And Sandefur delivers this post examining the various meanings of "liberty". Great stuff by both of them.
stcynic | February 27, 2005Come on, tell the truth. You all missed mynym, didn't you? Well let me show you his latest bit of stupidity, wherein he takes me to task for opposing censorship by a public university while banning him from leaving comments here. It seem that our favorite little halfwit still doesn't recognize the difference between a private forum and a public one. The Constitution's free speech provision applies to governments, not to privately owned webpages, or family homes, or even privately owned businesses. The University of Alabama is a public, government-run institution; as such, it falls under the…
stcynic | February 18, 2005Jason Kuznicki reports on a recent meeting of the Inner Ethical Council in this absolutely brilliant bit of writing at Positive Liberty. I only find it mildly disconcerting that despite the fact that I have long claimed the mantle of cynic, I found myself agreeing mostly with the Epicurean avatar in his imagination. Does that make me an epicurean cynic or a cynical epicurean? Or just confused? Oh, who cares. Eat, drink and be merry....at least until our parasites, slowly crafted by the unconscious designs of natural selection for maximum effectiveness, consume us all.
stcynic | February 16, 2005The Two Percent Company has a wonderful rant comparing the relative lunacy of Alabama and Virginia. As they point out, Alabama has long held the title as the state with the looniest legislation, but Virginia is trying hard to take their title from them with some recent stupidity that I've mentioned here. Still, I'm not sure anything can top Gerald Allen for sheer idiocy.
stcynic | February 14, 2005Timothy 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 people.