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stcynic | May 14, 2004Andrew McCarthy, the prosecutor who put Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman in prison for the original WTC bombing in 1993, has a fascinating article at the National Review Online. He begins by debunking the notion of the "war on terrorism":Terrorism is not an enemy. It is a method. It is the most sinister, brutal, inhumane method of our age. But it is nonetheless just that: a method. You cannot, and you do not, make war on a method. War is made on an identified and identifiable enemy.
In the here and now, that enemy is militant Islam a very particular practice and interpretation of a very particular…
stcynic | May 14, 2004John Scalzi has a really good post on the "frat meme" that is going around, comparing the abuse and torture at Abu Ghraib prison to fraternity hazing. Rush Limbaugh has been pushing this meme, as has Tom DeLay. Scalzi rightly blasts this ridiculous idea, but what fascinates me are some of the comments that have been made. Scalzi had mentioned in his post that he tends not to care much for fraternities, and I have to agree with him. A couple of frat members came along to say that their frats didn't haze and only the bad ones did. But then along comes this guy, Jeff Porten, and he says:As a guy…
stcynic | May 12, 2004I've never heard of Adam Felbers before today, but after reading the piece I'm going to reproduce below, I'm ready to nominate him for the comedy hall of fame. He gives permission here to reproduce this transcript in e-mails of a commentary he did on This American Life on the radio recently, so I assume it's also okay to reproduce it in full on this page. If not, I'll take it back down again. But this has to be seen by people. It sums up so perfectly the reasons why the arguments against gay marriage are so absurd. And I'm awarding Adam Felbers a perfect 10.0 and the gold medal for satire…
stcynic | May 6, 2004I've recently added a new link to I Speak of Dreams, the blog of Liz Ditz. Lynnie and I have really enjoyed exploring her page and strongly encourage everyone to pay her a visit. Liz has a varied and interesting background, including working for the Cato Institute and the Institute for Humane Studies at various times. She is, like us, a big advocate of independent education and has many interesting thoughts on that subject.
Another very interesting page on that same subject is Erin O'Connor's blog, Critical Mass. Erin is an English professor from Penn who recently, along with her partner,…
stcynic | May 5, 2004I've had several people ask me recently what the word "fisking" means, as I use it often. I had only a vague conception of it myself, as a thorough refutation of a blog entry or article, but lo and behold I came across a good definition::fisking: n.
[blogosphere; very common] A point-by-point refutation of a blog entry or (especially) news story. A really stylish fisking is witty, logical, sarcastic and ruthlessly factual; flaming or handwaving is considered poor form. Named after Robert Fisk, a British journalist who was a frequent (and deserving) early target of such treatment.
So there you…
stcynic | May 5, 2004I haven't paid much attention to the Pat Tillman situation. The pious invocations of heroism in the media have been met with sarcastic derision from some, while the casual dismissal of his sacrifice by the likes of Ted Rall have provoked cries of moral outrage from those who like their heroes unsullied by humanity. As is usual in such circumstances, both extremes amount to emotional, visceral responses that leave me bored. Neither side puts much thought into it, and neither hagiography nor demonization appeals to me because people are a mixture of saint and sinner and painting with that wide…
stcynic | May 5, 2004This is a must see post by Timothy Sandefur that dovetails nicely with several of the subjects we've been discussing lately, particularly feminism and postmodern thinking. His post is a response to this piece of postmodern nonsense from someone named DF Moore, which purports to be a postmodernist response to libertarianism. It is subtitled How Libertarianism is a Masculine Belief. In short, Mr. Moore argues that libertarianism, with its focus on the primacy of reason and belief in an objective reality, ignores the subjective, touchy-feely things that women like so much and thus is "…
stcynic | May 4, 2004The folks at mblog support tell me that the recent problems are all fixed. You may have noticed the sidebar on the left disappearing and reappearing, in whole or in part, seemingly at random, over the last few days. Apparently they were running short of hard drive space and have the problem fixed. I now also have the means to post my entries to two different blogs at once, so from now on I'll be posting all of my entries both here and at my old Blogger page so I have a backup in case this one goes down permanently. Frankly, I have my doubts about mblog. It's a free hosting service, but they…
stcynic | May 2, 2004Is there any limit at all on how far do-gooders are willing to dumb down our educational system in the name of helping students feel good about themselves? I rarely agree with anyone from Fox News on anything, but this opinion piece by Joanne Jacobs is pretty much on the mark. First, it reports on a plan by some California schools to do away with the D grade, with anything below a C- garnering a failing grade. Good idea, I'd say, but some parents aren't too happy:"I'd rather go to a junior college,'' said Alex Johnson, a junior at Mountain View High who is eyeing Foothill or De Anza community…
stcynic | April 30, 2004Every once in a while, I come across a webpage that makes me wonder how on earth it has managed to escape my notice for so long. Today I found one only because the editor of the page left a comment in response to a post I made on The Panda's Thumb. The site in question, Butterflies and Wheels, is the work of Ophelia Benson, a historian by training, and Jeremy Stangroom, a sociologist. The moment I read there raison d'etre, I knew this was my kind of page:Butterflies and Wheels has been established in order to oppose a number of related phenomena. These include:
1. Pseudoscience that is…
stcynic | April 27, 2004Is there a more meaningless cliche than "fabric of our nation"? I can't think of one. It's a perfect little piece of empty rhetoric, repeated ad nauseum without anyone bothering to ask what on earth it means. It just seems to be a phrase that people trot out when they're against something but they can't come up with a tangible, concrete reason why they're against it. So they say that it "destroys the fabric of our nation" and everyone who agrees with them nods in agreement, not having a clue what it actually means but knowing it sounds good. The perfectly pointless rhetorical flourish.
This…
stcynic | April 25, 2004John Scalzi, a blogger you really should be reading, has a post on his blog that is both amusing and appalling. It's about the appearance of a racist on his site in the comments, but even more about his ham-handed backtracking he tried to do. It began with this post, wherein he critiques an anti-immigration book. In that post, he included a picture of his adorable daughter Athena, who is partially hispanic, with the caption, "Behold! The Unassimilated Hispanic Menace!". The Drudge Report put up a link to the post and along comes an asshole named Mike, who leaves the following comment:"Cute…
stcynic | April 22, 2004John Maynard Smith, the venerable and brilliant old biologist, has died at the age of 84. A protege of J.B.S. Haldane, Smith was an enormous influence over two entire generations of evolutionary biologists. He also published many popular books for non-scientists on evolutionary theory. Science, and the larger human community, has lost a giant.
stcynic | April 19, 2004I haven't written much lately, because I've been very busy. I just built a new computer last night, but I'm not using it to type this. I have to run some network cable in my house before it's ready to use and I'm still tweaking. It's a screaming machine, a huge step up in speed from the old one. I can actually watch DVDs and have the sound and the video match each other now. Anyway, some random thoughts while reading today's news. Two stories that have to do with succeeding your boss...
Jim Cantalupo, the CEO of McDonalds, died today of an apparent heart attack. Rumor has it his widow is…
stcynic | April 10, 2004A few days ago I took Bill Wallo to task for a post on his blog referring to theistic evolutionists as "useful idiots". Having spent a fair bit of time reading his blog, however, I should, in the interests of fairness, point out that Walloworld is well worth reading. He's a very bright guy, and though a relatively conservative Christian, tends to take a more reasonable view on most of the hot button issues for the religious right.
For example, on Judge Roy Moore in Alabama, and on the subject of religious symbols in state buildings and America's religious history in general, Bill takes a…
stcynic | April 9, 2004This is a repost of a comment I left on The Panda's Thumb in a thread concerning Joe Carter of Evangelical Outpost and the Leiter/VanDyke situation.
Joe Carter wrote:"I dont really know since Im not a defender of ID theory but a defender of the idea that the theory should be given a chance. If it doesnt work, then fine, well move on."
There are three problems with this claim. First, it's false. Anyone who goes to his blog archive labelled "intelligent design" can see that Joe IS a defender of ID.
Second, if there is no model to test and no means of testing if it there was one - and Joe has…
stcynic | April 8, 2004I'd like this to be an ongoing discussion between me and the readers of this page. It was motivated by a conversation with my brother, beginning with some shocking statistics. Did you know that the United States locks up 4 times as many of its citizens than any other western nation per capita? Did you know that despite this, the US is the most violent western nation by far? Murders per capita are 2.5 times higher than any other nation, rapes nearly 3 times higher.
What I'd like to figure out is, why? What is it about American culture that breeds this sort of thing in numbers so…
stcynic | April 6, 2004I'm very disappointed to see Bill Wallo join Rusty in insulting all of his fellow Christians who are theistic evolutionists. He, too, cites John West's NRO article, particularly the section wherein the Understanding Evolution website points out that evolution is not necessarily incompatible with Christianity, then says:As West notes, the use of these religious "useful idiots" is part of a concerted strategy by NCSE (and other similarly situated groups) to "defuse skepticism of neo-Darwinism."
This is truly astonishing to me. Does Wallo really think that Howard Van Till, Ken Miller, Glenn…
stcynic | April 5, 2004There is a new blog on the block that may prove interesting, Letters from Babylon. It's a group blog and it will likely offer a relatively conservative Christian view of things. One of the contributors is Joshua Davey, who was the litigant in the Locke v Davey Supreme Court decision from the current term. This was the case that upheld a Washington law that gave academic scholarships to qualified students, but forbid them from using them to study theology. Joshua was originally going to study theology, but ended up changing his mind and he is now attending Harvard Law School. Though I am…
stcynic | April 1, 2004A few quotes I found on the page of someone I don't know:
If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you. If you really make them think, they'll hate you.
D. R. P. Marquis (1878-1937)
You know, only dumb people try to impress smart people. Smart people just do what they do.
Chris Rock in Premiere of March 2001
First they came for the Communists, but I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, but I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.... Then they came for me, and I said, "Wait! You forgot about the gays! And I know where they're hiding!
Angus…