Uncategorized
stcynic | October 3, 2006A columnist for the St. Petersburg Times has a column on the mounting cost of the Iraq war. It's stunning to me that the "liberal media" hasn't made a bigger deal out of the fact that the White House was either completely clueless about what the war would require, in terms of both troop strength and money, or they flat out lied about it. When Gen. Shinseki testified that the war would require a quarter million troops and a couple hundred billion dollars, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz called a press conference the next day and declared his estimates "wildly off the mark." Turns out even that was a…
stcynic | October 3, 2006After yesterday's shooting at a school in Pennsylvania, CBS News gave Brian Rohrbough, father of one of the kids shot at Columbine in 1999, a forum to blame it all on evolution:
When my son Dan was murdered on the sidewalk at Columbine High School on April 20, 1999, I hoped that would be the last school shooting. Since that day, I've tried to answer the question, "Why did this happen?"
This country is in a moral free-fall. For over two generations, the public school system has taught in a moral vacuum, expelling God from the school and from the government, replacing him with evolution, where…
stcynic | October 3, 2006Over on the ADF's blog, Patrick Trueman is appalled by an article concering Anthony D'Amato's study that concluded that pornography may play a role in reducing rape. But this may be the most substanceless blog post you've ever seen. It contains one sarcastic remark followed by a red herring and then a conclusionary statement from others who think porn is bad, but not a word about the study or the arguments it makes. He begins:
This article titled, Pornography Has Its Benefits, demonstrates nothing more than that in a free-press society, anyone may write whatever regardless of the absurdity of…
stcynic | October 2, 2006A very amusing parody from Jim Burroway, The Heterosexual Agenda: Exposing the Myths. Funny stuff.
tqa | October 2, 2006I needed to buy a few things for the house and yard yesterday, so I packed the kids into the car and headed off to the store. What I saw when I got there didn't make me feel very jolly, and I'm afraid that I said a few things that were naughty, not nice. One of the things that I said seemed to be a common refrain - I heard minor variations on it from at least two other people who walked in behind me: "You've gotta be shi--ing me! It's not even Halloween yet!"
I apologize for the poor quality on the pictures. The camera phone isn't great to start with, and I was still trying to figure out…
nisbetmc | October 2, 2006
Everyone here in D.C. is talking about Bob Woodward's State of Denial, as the book's insider accounts continue to dominate the news cycle this week. Woodward's impact offers a leading example of how politicians, journalists, and the general public use frames to cut down on complexity and uncertainty, and as tools to make sense of what's either wrong or right in America. Yet in order to understand why Woodward's book resonates so powerfully at this moment, you have to understand the history of the frame contest to define Bush.
State of Denial is a classic example of a "frame device," a…
mikethemadbiologist | October 2, 2006A while ago, I posted a video by Princeton researchers that showed how electronic voting machines could be hacked. Dave Johnson has a solution:
Here is the solution: The machine is used as a data-input device ONLY. This solves all the problems from earlier ways of voting, including "hanging chads" etc. It then prints out a paper ballot, filling in the voter's choices from the touch-screen. The voter looks over the ballot and, if it has the right information, puts it into a separate ballot box. Then there is a way to PROVE how the voters voted. AND it doesn't MATTER what software is on the…
stcynic | October 2, 2006When I saw this story the other day, I almost posted about it and said that I'd be $100 that it would turn out to be a bunch of nonsense. The claim is that the head of the College Republicans at Oakland University was beaten up by his political enemies:
Justin Zatkoff, the executive director of the Michigan College Republicans, was brutally beaten after leaving a party in Ann Arbor on Saturday night. The Oakland University junior from Bloomfield Hills, Mich. was rumored to be targeted by militant leftist groups. Zatkoff, pictured above, did not know his attacker, and no money was stolen...
A…
mixingmemory | October 2, 2006Of all the mirror neurons discovered in monkeys, auditory mirror neurons may be the coolest. These cells respond when a monkey performs an action, and when that monkey hears the sounds of that action being performed by another. Until recently, there was limited evidence of a corresponding auditory mirror neuron system in humans. In one study, for example, researchers contrasted the brain activity of expert pianists and nonmusicians1. In one condition, both groups of participants listened to piano music, and in another, they pressed random keys on a piano keyboard that was rigged so that it…
stcynic | October 1, 2006I've been gathering information on the new internet gambling bill. No one can know for sure just how draconian it will be until the Treasury department writes the regulations to implement it, but here's what I am tentatively concluding at this point: the bill will fail to achieve its purpose. It will make it harder for people to send money to and from the gambling sites, but there will inevitably be workarounds to avoid the law and they will be perfectly legal. The bill requires banks and other money exchange services (Western Union, credit card companies, etc) to stop the transfer of funds…
revere | October 1, 2006Now there appears to be another frontline flu antiviral on the horizon, a neuraminidase inhibitor like Tamiflu and Relenza. It's generic name is peramivir, being developed by Alabama-based BioCryst Pharmaceuticals. Tamiflu can be taken orally. Relenza must be inhaled. So far, peramivir has to be given intravenously or via injection. Much of the optimistic information that has come out in the last two days is from BioCryst, so we don't know how much is real and how much is hype. Information from researchers said to be independent of the company (what this means exactly we don't know) were…
stcynic | September 30, 2006Today should be fun. I'm going to watch my dad drive a race car at 170 miles per hour or so. It's a birthday gift that he's really excited about. So I'll be gone most of the day for that. See ya on the flipside.
Update: Sadly, we drove two hours down there and it was rained out and had to be rescheduled for next May. Very irritating.
stcynic | September 30, 2006Raw Story reports that Rep. Mark Foley has been caught sending suggestive emails to a 16 year old congressional page. Foley is one of the many "family values" Republican legislators who is secretly gay (though not so secret anymore, he was outed publicly a couple years ago). I don't care that they're gay, of course, only that they vote against gay rights issues to hide the fact that they are (yes, I'm talking to you David Dreier, and Ed Shrock, and many others). The news outlet also talked with several sources on the Hill who "confirmed that they felt Foley was unusually friendly with young…
stcynic | September 30, 2006Award-winning art teacher takes her class on a trip to Dallas Museum of Art. Principal not only approves the trip but encourages the teacher to do it. Parents all sign permission slips for the kids to go. The kids see a statue of a nude person at the museum. Award-winning teacher gets fired. Sometimes the utter stupidity of much of the population of this country makes me want to scream. It reminds me of my high school, where the best teacher I had - and there was no close second, he was the only really good teacher at the school - was the French teacher. And one of the things he adamantly…
tqa | September 29, 2006As most of you probably know, there's been a bit of discussion over the question of whether or not the pro-Intelligent Design textbook Of Pandas and People qualifies as a "challenged" or "banned" book as a result of the ruling in the Kitzmiller vs. Dover lawsuit. A few things have happened since my first two posts about the "banning." In this post, I'm going to summarize the recent events, and explain what I've learned about the ALA's views on this situation.
On the 26th of September, William Dembski posted a brief article on the Uncommon Descent weblog mentioning that "a colleague" had…
tqa | September 29, 2006...but go read what Coturnix has to say about the state of our country. He's feeling like he's seen this before, and I'm becoming more and more afraid that he's right.
While you're at it, go over to Thou Shalt Not Suck and read the Obituary for America.
stcynic | September 29, 2006I found this on Pam Spaulding's blog and I think it was made by someone who comments here once in a while (M.T. Rational XXXIV). It's....Gaypocalypse Now.
tqa | September 29, 2006This is a repost of something I wrote on my old blog back in April. With the general election rapidly approaching, it seems like a good one to put back out there.
The election season is starting to heat up. Scandals rock DC on what seems like a daily basis. The public is split, at least according to the polls, on many major issues. We are heading toward a political (and probably historical) crossroad. Now is the time for people to stand up for what they believe, and to help move the country in the right direction.
But where do I stand? Sometimes I have a hard time figuring that out.
I think…
tqa | September 28, 2006It's 4:20. Do you know what's happening in your National Parks?
If you listened to Morning Edition yesterday, you know exactly what I'm about to talk about: the environmental damage that pot farms have been causing in our national parks.
The problem is actually pretty simple: cannabis cultivation typically doesn't fit the certification guidelines of the National Organic Standards Board. To put it another way, ganja isn't a green crop.
Pot is a big business cash crop. It's also a crop that really can't be grown in large wide-open fields. Anyone who wants to make a big profit growing…
stcynic | September 28, 2006Timothy Sandefur gave a speech about his new book and about the state of property rights in America, particularly with regard to eminent domain and regulatory takings, at the Cato Institute recently. You can listen to that speech in mp3 format here.