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stcynic | June 27, 2004The Moon Coronation story, which I covered here previously, has finally been picked up by the mainstream media in the last couple weeks. The New York Times, Washington Post, ABCNews, BET, the Pittsburg Post Gazette and the Boston Globe have all picked up the story. The articles range in their accuracy and perspective. The BET article is excellent, while the Boston Globe article is little more than a fawning piece about how everyone likes the Moonies now.
True to form, of course, the Moonies are spinning the coronation as proof that America is now bowing before Moon:The "outside" view of the…
stcynic | June 25, 2004Okay, time for a basketball break. First and foremost, leave this page immediately, go read the Sports Guy's draft diary, and remind yourself why this guy is the best sportswriter on the planet today. This exchange alone cements his status:9:33 -- Utah takes 7-foot-5 Pavel Prdzswsbqzpdne, who stands up and immediately whiffs on two high-fives. Not a good start for the Pavel Era. Katz calls it a "safe pick." Of course, the USA Today's scouting report mentioned that Pavel "takes medication for a hormonal disorder related to pituitary gland." I don't know if "safe" was the best choice of words,…
stcynic | June 25, 2004As a follow up to the previous post on Reverend Moon's insane claims and his recent coronation ceremony, let's take a look at how well connected Moon is in American politics.
http://www.au.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=5684&abbr=cs_
stcynic | June 25, 2004From a USA Today chat:
"I do not believe the homosexual community deserves minority status. One's misbehavior does not qualify him or her for minority status. Blacks, Hispanics, women, etc. are God-ordained minorities who do indeed deserve minority status."
There's something bizarre about this statement. Several things, actually. First of all, Jerry, "minority status" comes from a simple mathematical calculation. You either have over 50% of a given population or you don't. If you don't, you are a minority within the defined group. Second, the phrase "God-ordained minorities" may be the single…
stcynic | June 25, 2004Too many idiots, too little time. My monthly award is going to have to be a weekly award now. Let's pray it doesn't become daily. John Scalzi has a very amusing post about Todd Pierce that links to another one, written by Teresa Nielsen Hayden. That post concerned Mr. Pierce, a professor at Clemson University, who gives spectacularly bad advice to aspiring writers to make up publishing credits to get an editor to look at their submissions - and no, I'm not making that up. Since Hayden is an editor herself, she saw fit to criticize Mr. Pierce rather strongly for that advice, and rightfully so…
stcynic | June 23, 2004Timothy Sandefur says this is the hot thing to do on blogs, and being the fashionable guy I am, I'll play along. It's a list of the top 100 grossing films of all time, with bold for the ones you saw in the theater and italics for the ones you saw on video, along with a few comments:
1. Titanic (1997) $600,779,824 - I have only seen a few minutes of it here and there on TV, and that's all I will ever see of it. The theme song alone is enough to bring terrorism charges against the makers of this film.
2. Star Wars (1977) $460,935,665 - I think I saw it 11 or 12 times in the theater, and I was…
stcynic | June 20, 2004I've been doing some reading today of two of my favorite living essayists, Stanley Crouch and Nat Hentoff. They are both intellectuals, cultural observers, literary critics and, primarily, jazz critics. Both have written for the Village Voice. Both are also relatively controversial figures, for different reasons.
Crouch is controversial for many reasons. He is a black intellectual who still uses the term "negro"; he calls afrocentrism a "simple-minded hustle" and Louis Farrakhan "insane"; and he has had a few major run-ins with colleagues, one of which led to his dismissal from the Voice. He…
stcynic | June 19, 2004On May 16th, Lori Haigh, the owner of an art gallery in San Francisco displayed this painting by Guy Colwell, depicting the abuse of Iraqis at the Abu Ghraib prison:
(If picture does not show up, go here to see it)
Within 2 days, someone threw eggs at the gallery window, dumped trash on her doorstep, and began leaving death threats on her answering machine. Here's what happened next:So she decided to remove the painting, but still things got worse.
One day, someone walked into the gallery and spit in her face.
And then on May 27, someone "knocked on the door of the gallery, then punched Haigh…
stcynic | June 17, 2004Sometimes one has to wonder if there are any editors at the WorldNutDaily at all, given the number of what can only be described as bizarre and incoherent screeds they publish on a regular basis. Here's the latest one, by Craige McMillan. It's an absolutely incoherent mishmash that leads from what appears to be a defense of Lynndie England, the American soldier being court-martialed for abusing prisoners at Abu Ghraib (she's the female soldier seen with an Iraqi prisoner on a dog leash in the photos) to something about the feminization of the media to the just plain idiotic claim that "Big…
stcynic | June 16, 2004This is just odd. When I spent a month writing for the Detroit News blog, one of the other bloggers there was a woman named Libby Spencer. She has a blog called Last One Speaks. When I hosted the Carnival of the Vanities a few weeks ago, she left the following post on her blog:Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars is hosting the COTV this week. I thought the name sounded familiar, it turns out Ed was a fellow guest blogger at the Detroit News last month.
We never really connected. I'm sure this will come as a shock to all of who know and love me dearly, but not everyone likes me and…
stcynic | June 16, 2004Another cool blog I didn't know about, discovered because I'm apparently on their blogroll and someone linked to this page from theirs. The Pryhills are a rather unconventional couple - Christian, conservative, and lesbian. In particular, see this post about the difficulty one set of parents are having accepting that their daughter is lesbian. It reminds us, once again, that homosexual people are still people, that they want the same things everyone else wants - love, acceptance, strong family bonds.
stcynic | June 16, 2004As long time readers of this blog know, basketball is the one sport I really am crazy about, college basketball in particular. But over the last 2 weeks, I've been glued to the TV watching the Pistons do what everyone, including me, assumed was impossible - beat the Lakers for the NBA championship. At the beginning of the series, I predicted it would only go 5 games, but with the Lakers winning. It only went 5 games, alright, but the Pistons - improbably, miraculously - came out on top. And without a miracle shot from Kobe in game 2, it would have been a sweep! I don't know what the odds…
stcynic | June 14, 2004In the ongoing controversy over the legal advice and position of the Bush administration regarding torture and abuse of political prisoners, this is an article that everyone should read. Stuart Taylor is not a bomb-thrower by any means, and he spends the first part of the article defending the administration against some of the criticism they've gotten on this matter. But he is nonetheless scathing in his opinion of the now-famous leaked memo from Pentagon lawyers justifying what is, in essence, the notion of president-as-dictator:For all that, some of the legal analyses concocted by…
stcynic | June 14, 2004An interesting anniversary is coming up. July 11, 2004 will be the bicentennial of the duel between Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton. A fascinating event in American history, especially considering the fact that Aaron Burr was the sitting vice president at the time of the duel. Burr blamed Hamilton for his loss in a race for Governor of New York earlier that year and he challenged him to a duel. Burr's shot connected while Hamilton's did not, and Hamilton died the following day. Burr returned to Washington and served out the rest of his term as Vice President.
A related but relatively…
stcynic | June 11, 2004There are few things quite as amusing as watching ID advocates pretend that ID is not about promoting a particular religious view. It's just fun to see them wiggle and dance when they get caught up in this web of pretend objectivity. A perfect example of this is Casey Luskin, of the IDEA club, a group that starts pro-ID groups on college campuses. Luskin seems to have a particular problem with getting caught distorting reality, then getting all huffy when he does. PZ Myers just nailed him completely on his feigned outrage at the IDEA club being called a ministry by the organizers of a bible…
stcynic | June 11, 2004John Wilkins, fellow contributor to the Panda's Thumb, has begun his own blog, Evolving Thoughts. John is a brilliant guy, with a PhD in history and philosophy of science. And like virtually every Aussie I've ever known, he's extraordinarily funny. His blog should be both fun and informative, so check it out.
stcynic | June 10, 2004Ray Charles has died at the age of 73. While Reagan's death will obviously gain more attention, and rightfully so, Ray's death has far more emotional impact on me. He was a music legend who recorded classic songs in a number of genres - gospel, blues, soul, jazz, even country. Van Morrison, another of my all time favorite singers and songwriters, said of Charles,"His sound was stunning -- it was the blues, it was R&B, it was gospel, it was swing -- it was all the stuff I was listening to before that but rolled into one amazing, soulful thing."
Indeed. Ray Charles was the embodiment of…
stcynic | June 10, 2004ABC has pulled Jimmy Kimmel's show off the air for a day because he commented on his show, in a joking manner, that if Detroit wins the NBA championship, the fans in Detroit will burn the city down. Jesus Christ, someone needs a humor transplant. He's right, the people in Detroit (and most other cities that win championships, strangely) DO riot and burn things down when their teams win. It happened in LA a couple years ago too. But talk about misplaced anger. Be bothered by the fact that people act like idiots, not by someone daring to mention that they act like idiots.
stcynic | June 9, 2004One of the hallmarks of my business is that I spend an enormous amount of time waiting. As I sit in my office all day long, I don't really do all that much work, but the work I do is in five minute increments here and there. I print up docs and fax them off, then I have to wait for someone to fill them out and fax them back. I fax off a client's loan application and credit report to a lender, then I have to wait for them to send back a pre-approval. I go online and submit a loan, get it approved, call the client to let them know, then I have to wait for them to send me income documents. I…
stcynic | June 7, 2004I've been pondering what to say about Ronald Reagan over the last couple days, and reading what others have to say. The first thing I said to someone when I heard he had died is that we would now have to endure wildly exaggerated obituaries from both his political supporters and enemies. His supporters would hail him as not only a hero but a savior, while his enemies would quite literally trace all of the world's problems to him. That prediction has borne true, of course. My own opinion is somewhat mixed.
The first thing that absolutely must be said is that all of the talk from my fellow…