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stcynic | February 27, 2004Ed Brayton has had an interesting 37 years on the planet Earth. During college, he coached high school debate for 3 years, followed by more than 4 years on the road as a stand up comic. Today he is a freelance writer and a partner in a mortgage company and a political consulting firm.
Okay enough of speaking about myself in the third person. In honor of James Lipton and that French guy he's always talking about, whose name I can't remember, I'll begin the list of things about me with the questions he asks of every guest at the end of Inside the Actor's Studio.
What is your favorite word?…
stcynic | February 27, 2004Just discovered a great blog through someone who left a comment on this site. This blog is done by Sheila O'Malley. Reading some of her entries had me laughing out loud in my office. There was one on being a bridesmaid that reminded me of my own experience as a best man. I've only been a best man once and it was now nearly 12 years ago, for my oldest and best pal in the world, Rick, and his wife Tami.
Brian, another of the groomsmen, and I arrive together at her parents' house the day before the wedding for the rehearsal dinner, and we are unfortunately the first to arrive. Being the first…
stcynic | February 27, 2004Well, it seems that mblog has managed to fix at least part of the problem. I can now post new entries here, but the comments are still not working correctly. Hopefully that will be fixed soon as well.
stcynic | February 25, 2004
Someone needs to remind the good folks in Texas that they lost at the Alamo.
stcynic | February 11, 2004The Brigade of Bellicose Women at On The Third Hand are hosting this week's Carnival of the Vanities. Check it out and follow the links. You'll get to see interesting writing from other bloggers. It will either inform you or inflame you, and either one can be a good thing. And go back to read On The Third Hand every day just because it's a cool blog.
stcynic | February 4, 2004Rusty has again left comments on a post below. Unfortunately, the comments only allow a short message and the issues he raises may require more than 300 words, so I'll copy them here and respond in more detail. Rusty's words are in italics, my responses are in plain type.
I will take a different tact here and state that I disagree that the order of appearance MUST be as the record shows for evolution to be true. Gould himself stated that if the evolutionary tape were rewound and then run again the results would be entirely different. For all the data we have on the Cambrian Explosion there is…
tlambert | January 3, 2004 Last month I detailed how Lott posted at least six and probably ten five-star reviews of his books to Amazon.com. Well, it may be that Lott isn't the only conservative author who does this. Someone posting as "A reader from New York, NY" (which is where Coulter lives), has posted many five-star reviews of Ann Coulter's books at Amazon.com. Each of these reviews is actually a detailed response to points raised in negative reviews. The writing style is similar to Coulter's and the reviewer seems to have an uncanny insight into Coulter's thought processes…
stcynic | November 26, 2003"Democracy is the theory that holds that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard." - HL Mencken
Mencken certainly would not be surprised by how little the average American understands about the constitution or the nature of the American political system it was intended to establish. Anyone who has frequented internet political chat rooms can attest that that understanding is very shallow indeed. In a conversation I watched this afternoon concerning prayer in schools, one chatter kept repeating over and over "but what about the will of the people?", arguing…
loom | November 24, 2003I'll be talking about evolution on Tuesday at 12 pm PST/3 pm EST with Alan Stahler on KVMR in California. You can listen to the live webcast here.
UPDATE: I'll be on at about 20 minutes after the hour. Andy Knoll from Harvard is on first.
loom | November 2, 2003I'll be off blogging duty for a couple days while I head out to Wisconsin to give a couple talks at UW. I'll be talking about what chimp DNA can tell us about ourselves. I wrote about the topic last year for Natural History, but I'll be focusing on some newer work that has come out since then. I hope any Wisconsinites (sp?) reading this can come.
On my return later this week, I'll put up a post about some of the most interesting new research about the chimp within.
tlambert | September 5, 2003 Kevin Drum points out that a correction that Lott requested in response to this Washington Post item implies that Lott did not use "Mary Rosh" in emails when, in fact, Lott did. Drum thinks Lott is lying, which is certainly quite possible, but since there were hundreds of Rosh Usenet postings and only a few emails, it also possible that he just forgot about the emails. Colour me pedantic, but I wish Lott would quit referring to Usenet as an "Internet chat room". Unlike Usenet, "chat rooms" have real-time discussions.