Formerly stable one-party state crumbles.

Ireland's Fianna Fail, which has been in control of Irish government for 61 of the last 79 years, has been swept from office by voters angry with Ireland's Euro-controlled crash:

When disaster struck, the government bet the country on its toxic banks. At its lowest ebb, Fianna Fail could always rely on the tribal vote that had its roots in civil war politics.


This time, fury drove mass desertion. What has astonished the political class is that in Friday's election, Fianna Fail voters crossed the historic divide to vote for Fine Gael, the old enemy, something that would have been unthinkable had there not been an economic catastrophe.

Yes, there was a big angry vote for Labour, independents and for Sinn Fein (whose economic strategy is to default on all debts, use the pension reserve fund to reverse cuts in social-welfare benefits - at present roughly twice those in the UK - and then demand that burned bondholders re-finance Ireland), but essentially, the electorate decided it wanted to play safe with Fine Gael.

So what will it get? Enda Kenny, who will be Taoiseach, was a schoolteacher for four years before he succeeded his father as a member of the Dail, or TD. His party is no more ideological than Fianna Fail, and is similarly awash with teachers and lawyers, but is more middle-class and honest. It has, however, almost no experience of government.

And is trouble brewing for the Euros?

And were the new government radical enough to take the issue to the people in a referendum, there would be overwhelming support for measured and sensible defaults. Ireland is out of love with the EU: the days of sullen acquiescence with its diktats could just possibly be over.

Civility Watch.

Chris Matthews expands on his disturbing misogynistic fantasy objectification of female politicians with a clip from "Funny or Die."

Here's what Matthews showed:




And here's the original source:

Sarah Palin Media Addict from Gina Gershon

Civility Watch/Liberal Fascism Watch.

FoxNews reporter describes hate of protestors against him:

you’ve been a viewer of the Fox News Channel over the past week and a half and have paid attention to its coverage of the standoff between Wisconsin Republican Gov. Scott Walker and Democratic members of the state Senate, you may have noticed the protest that has ensued in Madison, Wisc. has been less than hospitable to the cable news channel’s reporters.


On Saturday night’s broadcast of “Geraldo at Large,” Fox News correspondent Mike Tobin took some critical shots at protesters attempting to shout down and disrupt his broadcast. He told host Geraldo Rivera he has observed hate and an effort to shut out other viewpoints.

“One thing I think should make clear – the people coming after us from every live shot here, these people hate,” Tobin said. “These are people who don’t respect diverse viewpoints. In fact, they’re so afraid I’ll present a diverse viewpoint, that’s why they try to heckle me and shut down every live shot. They’ve made it clear, that what they want to make it harder for me to do my job. They are proud of that when they disrupt a live shot, when they really trample over the First Amendment rights or the First Amendment’s obligations of a reporter. Now, I am not saying that’s all of the people. Those are the people that come here and heckle and try to disrupt things. I look in their eyes – there is hate in their eyes. They don’t want to hear any kind of viewpoint that is different from their own. That’s why they do what they do.”

Rivera explained Tobin’s report was troubling, especially since Madison is the home of the University of Wisconsin, where one might think that in a university setting people would be more receptive to other points of view.

“And the sickest thing is many go to the University of Wisconsin there or are affiliated as teachers or some other positions with the university, supposedly a liberal bastion committed to the Bill of Rights and the United States,” Rivera said. “And yet, they are using bullying tactics on the one hand and then this gross interruptions of a reporter trying to do his job.”

Liberal fascism in Madison is not all that surprising.  I recall overhearing a conversation in a Madison bookstore a few blocks from the Capitol where the bookstore's owner explained that he listened to Radio Havana because "that was where the real truth could be heard."

Civility Watch.

Pro-choicer reportedly arrested for making threats against pro-lifers.

Are we there yet?

Ed Driscoll on "A World Without America?"

Beware the Christian Extremist...

...they might just protect your freedom of conscience.

Mike Huckabee thinks Islam is wrong and evidently the chattering classes think this is a serious issue.


The Christians of Constantinople cannot use one of the ancient churches of Christendom, because Islamic rulers will not allow it, but Mike Huckabee said something harsh about Islam so he must be rebuked.

The spiritual leader of the world’s Orthodox Christians, the Ecumenical Patriarch, cannot open a seminary, because the Muslim rulers of his nation will not condone it, but a Fox news commentator said something that offends Muslims so we must attend.

There is no land where Muslims are the majority and Christians are not second-class citizens, but a former Baptist minister publically disagrees with Islam and we must ponder the pain Huckabee may have caused Muslims.

I have friends doing humanitarian work in nations where Islamic tribes enslave Christians, but a former governor of Arkansas was politically incorrect, so Americans must discuss Christian tolerance of Islam.

This year Christians have been martyred all over the Islamic world, whether they were from families that have been Christian for centuries or were recent converts to Christianity, but Mike Huckabee may not understand Islamic history well so we should educate him.

Forgetting the Christians, God help Jewish people dwelling in majority Islamic lands.

Southern Baptists like Mike Huckabee are fighting in nations all over the world and have liberated millions of Islamic people from the tyranny of Islamic rulers. Southern Baptists like Mike Huckabee may not fully understand Islam, but no mainstream American Baptist, including Mike Huckabee, would deny the right to vote or hold office to Muslims.

Millions of Baptists voted for a man named Barack Hussein Obama and millions of Baptists who did not, including Mike Huckabee, loyally follow our Christian President. There is no majority Muslim land where a Muslim with a Christian name will be elected to lead anything, but we worry that Baptists, and Mike Huckabee, may be bigoted.

There are surely Baptist bigots, but there is no Baptist nation or state where Islamic people are denied the right to hold office, vote, or go to the school of their choice. There is no Islamic state that grants Christians the same rights that every Christian nation on the planet grants to them. A Muslim can build a mosque in Rome, Wheaton, Geneva, Canterbury, or Constantinople, but no churches are being built on the Arabian Peninsula and God help the man who tries to build one in Mecca.

Truth v. Ideology.

Billboards highlighting the sad truth that 60% of African-American pregnancies end in abortion in New York City cannot be posted because that would conflict with the provisions in the social compact that teaches (a) that African-Americans are to be protected from having to discuss dysfunctions in their community and (b) that Americans are to be protected from having to discuss the sorry facts of abortion.

An outdoor advertising company has taken down an anti-abortion billboard that pictured a black girl along with the tagline, "The most dangerous place for an African-American is in the womb."


Some residents had said they found the billboard offensive, and members of the black community were especially outraged by it.

A spokesman for Louisiana-based Lamar Advertising, Hal Kilshaw, said that while the company respects the right to freedom of expression, the decision to take down the billboard Thursday night was for "public safety." He said waiters and waitresses at a restaurant in the building where the billboard was placed had been harassed.

The Rev. Al Sharpton praised the decision and canceled plans to protest the billboard Friday. The civil rights activist said the billboard "depicted black women in an unfair way."

The billboard was placed in the busy Soho neighborhood of Manhattan by the group Life Always as part of a national campaign tied to Black History Month. The group said its message highlights Planned Parenthood's "targeting of minority neighborhoods."

Planned Parenthood called the ad a "condescending effort to stigmatize and shame African-American women."


Life Always said in a statement that it "strongly disagrees" with Lamar's decision to remove the billboard. The organization said "the intent of the board is to call attention to the tragedy and the truth that abortion is outpacing life in the black community."

Why isn't this part of the many calls for a "national discussion" about race?

One of the things you know that is wrong ....

...is the distance of the Earth from the Moon.

The obvious answer is that alcohol kills off stupid brain cells.

According to evolutionary psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa, "more intelligent people are more likely to binge drink and get drunk (Intelligent people are more likely to do stupid things.)"  According to Kanazawa, this phenomenon is consistent with an evolutionary Hypothesis of human behavior:

 Evolutionarily novel entities that more intelligent individuals are better able to comprehend and deal with may include ideas and lifestyles, which form the basis of their preferences and values. It would be very difficult for individuals to prefer or value something that they cannot truly comprehend. So, applied to the domain of preferences and values, the Hypothesis suggests that more intelligent individuals are more likely than less intelligent individuals to acquire and espouse evolutionarily novel preferences and values that did not exist in the ancestral environment and thus our ancestors did not have, but general intelligence has no effect on the acquisition and espousal of evolutionarily familiar preferences and values that existed in the ancestral environment.

Yeah, evolutionary, whatever....a proclivity to do stupid things hardly seems to be an indication of intelligence, which makes one wonder if the study got the definition of 'intelligence' wrong.

Likewise, Kanazawa's Hypothesis would seem to make intelligence maladaptive, leading to a return to instinctual and safer behaviors.

A better explanation is Cliff Claven's "Buffalo Theory" of alcohol and intelligence:

“Well ya see, Norm, it’s like this. A herd of buffalo can only move as fast as the slowest buffalo. So when the herd is hunted, it is the slowest and weakest ones at the back that are killed first. This natural selection is good for the herd as a whole, because the general speed and health of the whole group keeps improving by the regular killing of the weakest members.


The human brain works that way too. It only operates as fast as the slowest brain cells. Excessive intake of alcohol, as we know, kills brain cells. But naturally, it attacks the slowest and weakest brain cells first. So, regular consumption of beer eliminates the weaker brain cells, making the brain a faster and more efficient machine. That’s why you always feel smarter after a few beers.”

Another reason to defund PBS.

Tavis Smiley argues to former Muslim Hirsan Ali that there are more Christians blowing themselves up than Muslims.  He offers Colombine as an example and eventually limits it to "this country.  Here's the link to the PBS site.

Here's a Psychology Today post describing how even the execrable Bill Maher couldn't believe Tavis Smiley's arguments designed to relativize and trivialize the Muslim world's treatment of women.

Last night, I watched Tavis Smiley on Real Time with Bill Maher. At one point during the discussion, Bill Maher intimated that for a meaningful and long-lasting revolution to take place in the Middle East, the treatment of women must improve. Smiley went on to lecture Maher about the ill treatment that women face in the United States (he referred to the patriarchy), and accordingly (to paraphrase him), "we should clean our house before we criticize other cultures."


This triggered several angry responses from Maher, as he could not understand how Smiley could argue for the moral equivalence of the realities faced by women in the United States versus in the Muslim world. Maher was equally incredulous that Smiley could not recognize that sex-based oppression occurs in various degrees across disparate cultures. Smiley refused to recognize that "degrees matter." Maher readily conceded that sexism exists in the United States, but surely he argued the plight of American women was nowhere near that faced by women in many parts of the Middle East. Here is a thought experiment: If we were to elicit the opinions of 10,000 women from the Middle East and 10,000 American counterparts, which group would proclaim possessing greater freedoms, gender equality, and life opportunities?

On Smiley's own talk show last year, while interviewing Aayan Hirsi Ali, he interrupted her and proclaimed that it was simply untrue that terrorists were more likely to be Muslim. His exact words were: "But, but, but Christians do that [blow themselves up] every single day in this country. Yes. Oh, Christians, every day, people walk into post offices, I mean- people walk into post offices, they walk into schools- that's what Columbine is - I mean I could do this all day long. There are so many more examples of Christians - and I happen to be a Christian." Smiley is arguing that since American postal workers who go on a killing rampage are likely to be Christians, and since the Columbine killers were Christian (I am assuming that this is the case), these acts of violence can be attributed to Christianity in the exact same way that terrorist acts committed by Muslims can be attributed to Islam. This oft-used "progressive" argument does leave one speechless.

Smiley's positions epitomize what happens when one mixes the tenets of moral and cultural relativism, cultural self-hate, postmodernism, and political correctness. I have often argued that tolerance toward any form of intolerance is self-inflicted barbarism. Bill Maher captured my position quite well on his most recent show when he stated, "When you tolerate intolerance, you're not really being a liberal." Tavis Smiley has repeatedly demonstrated an uncanny willingness to criticize American values but seems utterly incapable of levying one criticism against the abhorrent realities found in other cultures. Apparently, this would be culturally insensitive. Self-criticism is progressive and enlightened. To judge other cultures is gauche, racist and ultimately a form of oppressive cultural imperialism.

People like Smiley have an amazing ability to tolerate behavior in Kabul that they would never tolerate in Florida.

Science proves that while a majority of people think that they are "above average," in fact, at least half are below average.

Modern women not as shapely as they like to think  -  Almost half of British women mistakenly believe their figures match the ideal body shape desired by men.

Of course, the scientists have only science to go on. 

British women, on the other hand, have the experience of getting hit on in pubs at closing time as their basis for believing that their figures match the ideal body shape desired by men.

Does God love Lucifer?

An Autistic Child and an Answered Prayer.

This post on actor Joe Mantegna's perspective on how his prayer was answered - in a circumstance that might lead other people to bitterness - is worth reading.

Returning to a fact-based reality.

Outside of three areas, simply proclaiming oneself to be something doesn't generally entitle one to be treated by the world as that thing.  Hence, proclaiming oneself to be a Supreme Court justice, a reporter for the New York Times or a player for the Green Bay Packers doesn't make one a Supreme Court justice, a reporter for the Gray Lady, or a part of the World Championship football team.  The three areas where an objective connection with the claim are not required are (a) inside of insane asylums; (b) by people claiming to be "transgendered" and (c) by women claiming to be Catholic priests.

Concerning category three, one lady appears to have clawed her way back from the world where feelings make reality:

A San Diego woman “ordained” a deacon of the Roman Catholic Women Priests movement in 2007 has repudiated her participation in the organization and is seeking a return to the Church.


The woman, Norma Jean Coon, published the following statement on her website on Feb. 8:

Document of Renunciation of Ordination to Diaconate

On July 22, 2007, I was ordained to the diaconate by Bishop Patricia Fresen, of Germany and South Africa who was ordained by three male bishops in Germany for the group called Roman Catholic Women Priests. The ordination took place at the Santa Barbara Immaculate Heart Spiritual Center. Because neither Patricia Fresen nor myself were given permission for the ordination by Pope Benedict XVI, the ordinations were illegitimate and not recognized by the Roman Catholic Church. Thus an excommunication process called Latae Sententiae occurred, excommunicating oneself by failure to observe the Canon Laws of the Church.

I wish to renounce the alleged ordination and publicly state that I did not act as a deacon as a part of this group except on two occasions, when I read the gospel once at mass and distributed communion once at this same mass. I withdrew from the program within two weeks of the ceremony because I realized that I had made a mistake in studying for the priesthood. I confess to the truth of Pope John Paul II's Apostolic Letter Ordinatio Sacerdotalis. I confess the authority of the Holy Father on these issues of ordination and recognize that Christ founded the ordination only for men.

Here is Norma Jean Coon's website, where she adds the following:
 

Formally, I relinquish all connection to the program of Roman Catholic Women Priests and I disclaim the alleged ordination publicly with apologies to those whose lives I have offended or scandalized by my actions. I ask God's blessings upon each of these folks and their families.

It looks like she has gone through some recent personal tragedy.
 
To see how the opposing view is pitching this, check out this Spero Forums post:
 

California woman reneges on ordination to Catholic diaconate


A San Diego woman who was ordained into the so-called Roman Catholic Women Priests movement in 2007 has repudiated her participation in the organization and is seeking a return to the Church. The movement, and her ordination, are not recognized by the worldwide Catholic Church and its members have been sanctioned under church law.

Reneges????

Also, note that the "so-called" is appended to "Roman Catholic Women Priests" and not to "ordained." 

Also, the post asserts that she was ordained but that the ordination was not "recognized" by the "worldwide Catholic Church."

Which is a lot like saying that a person falsely claiming to be a Supreme Court justice was "appointed" but that the "appointment" was not "recognized" by the Congress or the people of the United States.

Not News - the Faux Civility Shuffle

The Media was on spurious claims of Tea Party links to violence like "white on rice" but can't find the energy to report on real instances of union violence:

Last month after the shootings in Arizona where several people were murdered and Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was severely injured there was a lot of talk about civility in politics. Members of congress, the president and news organization both print and visual bemoaned the lack of civil discourse and attempted (and still attempt despite established facts) to blame the Tea Parties and Sarah Palin for inciting violence.


Over the last few days several incidents have taken place nationwide that are contrary to the media's wish for a new spirit of civility in public discourse.

Massachusetts: At a Union Rally in support of the absent senators in Wisconsin and the teachers unions, union protesters decried tea party protesters as fascists and mass murders, gave them Nazi salutes at that same rally a former republican congressional candidate alleges he was knocked over by union protesters.

Washington DC: During a union protest against Freedom Works which has already received threats over their support of the tea party, A member of the Communications Workers of America physically assaulted Tabitha Hale, a young 5’ 1” woman who was recording him. During that same protest another union supporter angrily berated a Freedom Works member as a “Bad Jew”.

Colorado: A gay black man is called “uneducated” “son” and is asked if he has any children “that he claims” by a white crowd angry at his presence with a small Gadsden flag supporting the tea party.

All of these events have three things in common:

Video of these events are all available on Youtube

Blogs have reported and covered these events

None of them have been deemed worthy of coverage by the mainstream media.

Reverse the political positions of the people in question. Would actions and slurs against blacks, jews or assaults against young ladies by tea party members caught on tape be ignored by media? How is it that these acts of incivility that outraged journalists just weeks ago are ignored now?

It's the speed of the change in narrative that causes whiplash.  We haven't seen this kind of reversal in a political position since the progressives Communists flipped their position on America's entry into World War II the day after Hitler invaded Russia.

It looks like "Idiocracy" has already arrived.

It's amazing the things that people will do to wreck their lives, and the statements they'll make after the fact.

For example, this article about a man who got "frisky" with his co-worker's water bottle is filled with unintentional comedic gems.

Consider the defendant's explanation, to wit -

"Lallana explained, "It was the closest I could ever get to someone as good looking as that without tampering with my marriage ...."

I wonder how that's working out for him.  Putting aside the yuch! factor of what he did, did his wife castrate him for essentially saying that he had to settle for her because he couldn't get close to anyone "hot" without committing a depraved sex assault?

Then there is the victim's approach to criminal forensics -

Tiffany testified she threw the water bottle away that January. But after the second time in April, she kept the fouled liquid and asked her fiancee put his semen in a water bottle to see if that's what she had tasted at work.


"At the time, I had no idea how else to figure out what this was," she testified."

Two questions:

A. Really????

and

B. Really????

"Rumsfield flummoxes Mitchell."

Whitehouse Dossier observes:

Just thought you all might want to take a look at this interview of former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld by Andrea Mitchell. Rumsfeld is promoting his new book, Known and Unknown: A Memoir, a major portion of which deals with his time in the Bush administration.


I’ve rarely seen a political figure tie a top news personality up in such knots. And Andrea Mitchell is certainly smarter than average for the TV interviewer species. It’s 16 minutes of very compelling viewing.

Mitchell pitches myths and Rumsfield bats them down with facts.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Apparently, if you're not married ...

...it really is you, according to Tracy McMillan at Slate Magazine.

Via Wintery Knight.


McMillan's diagnosis rings true to someone sitting on the opposite bench:

1. You're a Bitch.


Here's what I mean by bitch. I mean you're angry. You probably don't think you're angry. You think you're super smart, or if you've been to a lot of therapy, that you're setting boundaries. But the truth is you're pissed. At your mom. At the military-industrial complex. At Sarah Palin. And it's scaring men off.

The deal is: most men just want to marry someone who is nice to them. I am the mother of a 13-year-old boy, which is like living with the single-cell protozoa version of a husband. Here's what my son wants out of life: macaroni and cheese, a video game, and Kim Kardashian. Have you ever seen Kim Kardashian angry? I didn't think so. You've seen Kim Kardashian smile, wiggle, and make a sex tape. Female anger terrifies men. I know it seems unfair that you have to work around a man's fear and insecurity in order to get married -- but actually, it's perfect, since working around a man's fear and insecurity is big part of what you'll be doing as a wife.

2. You're Shallow.

When it comes to choosing a husband, only one thing really, truly matters: character. So it stands to reason that a man's character should be at the top of the list of things you are looking for, right? But if you're not married, I already know it isn't. Because if you were looking for a man of character, you would have found one by now. Men of character are, by definition, willing to commit.

Instead, you are looking for someone tall. Or rich. Or someone who knows what an Eames chair is. Unfortunately, this is not the thinking of a wife. This is the thinking of a teenaged girl. And men of character do not want to marry teenaged girls. Because teenage girls are never happy. And they never feel like cooking, either.

There is also this biological fact that runs counter to modern ideology:

3. You're a Slut.


Hooking up with some guy in a hot tub on a rooftop is fine for the ladies of Jersey Shore -- but they're not trying to get married. You are. Which means, unfortunately, that if you're having sex outside committed relationships, you will have to stop. Why? Because past a certain age, casual sex is like recreational heroin -- it doesn't stay recreational for long.

That's due in part to this thing called oxytocin -- a bonding hormone that is released when a woman a) nurses her baby and b) has an orgasm -- that will totally mess up your casual-sex game. It's why you can be f**k-buddying with some dude who isn't even all that great and the next thing you know, you're totally strung out on him. And you have no idea how it happened. Oxytocin, that's how it happened. And since nature can't discriminate between marriage material and Charlie Sheen, you're going to have to start being way more selective than you are right now.

Bottom line - narcissism isn't attractive.

Then, there is this bit of advice from Vox Day about the "real politik" of marriage:

Marriage is no place for cowards. No woman wants to be married to a man she can intimidate, even if she tries from time to time. Men have to realize that if they want to have a happy home, they have to be a man about facing up to conflict.

Remember the old saying, "Home is Where the Heart is?" That only applies if you relish being in your home in the first place. And that 'aint gonna happen if you live every waking moment in your home, fearful of upsetting your wife. Lying to her to try and avoid upsetting her only makes it worse, because even if you don't consciously realize it, you will hate yourself for living a lie.


Home is supposed to be your sanctuary. Your place to rest, relax, and recharge, so that you can get ready to go out and face the world another day...knowing you can come home and let your guard down and just enjoy the company of your family upon your return. How can you do that when you're afraid of doing or saying something, and than having to deal with an upset tyrant of a spouse?

That is because you are not supposed to be under the dominion of her emotional state in the first place.

I understand that for many men, this is a concept that is much easier to agree with than to put into effect. But if you are under the dominion of a woman's emotional state, you have to break free of it for her sake as well as your own. How can you be relied upon if you are constantly being blown to and fro in the winds of her emotional hurricanes? How can she feel secure with a protector who is a pushover? However, keep in mind that it's also important not to overdo it with your reaction, as so many men and women do when they have finally resolved to act against their habitual behavioral patterns.

Remember that practice makes perfect. The man in control of himself doesn't fear the rage of an out-of-control woman anymore than the boxer fears getting hit. He has absolutely no doubt that he can take the shot because he has taken it before. So, look for opportunities to practice facing up to your fear. The next time you find yourself tempted to shade the truth or avoid telling her something because you are afraid of her reaction, first remind yourself of the Litany Against Fear and then assume that you're going to be busy not exacerbating the situation by giving into your own emotions for the next 15 minutes.

What it sounds like is that there is a lot of undiagnosed "obsessive compulsive personality disorder" out there, which can make a marriage a living hell:

Generally two hallmark thinking styles are pervasive for persons who suffer this condition. The primary manifestations of OCPD entail either a bent toward perfectionistic standards or righteous indignation. Along with perfectionism comes relentless anxiety about not getting things perfect. Getting things correct and avoiding at all costs the possibilities of making an error is of paramount importance. This perspective produces procrastination and indecisiveness. The second factor entails the rigid ownership of truth. This feature produces anger and conflict. Persons with OCPD generally lean toward one of these perspectives or another. In some cases both perspectives are of equal magnitude. Rituals, on the other hand, often play a relatively small part in this complex syndrome of perfectionistic mannerisms, intense anger and strict standards. Their way is the correct way and all other options are "WRONG". Anger and contempt are rarely held at bay for those who disagree.

I'm not sure that Vox Day's advice can have any effect on a person in the grips of OCPD since the OCPD sufferer has nearly unlimited energy for their condition and would find energy from the conflict that Day is suggesting. 

America silent on execution of Muslim Christian.

According to NRO:

Newspapers in the U.K. and elsewhere in Europe have reported the story, but with, the exception of the Wall Street Journal and, of course, NRO, American outlets have not found it worthy of attention. The Journal reports that “Afghan officials have been unapologetic: ‘The sentence for a convert is death and there is no exception,’ said Jamal Khan, chief of staff at the Ministry of Justice. ‘They must be sentenced to death to serve as a lesson for others.’”


The U.S. government — reportedly including Secretary of State Clinton — and other governments have pushed for his release, but to no avail.

But the president has been silent, even as we fight a war that has among its goals the creation of a government that conforms to international human-rights standards.

An American president certainly needs to guard and shepherd his political capital, and should not speak out about every prisoner. But Musa himself has appealed to “President Brother Obama” to rescue him from his current jail. And when an obscure and aberrant Florida pastor, Terry Jones, threatened to burn a Koran, not only President Obama but much of his cabinet, as well as General Petraeus, weighed in on the matter.

If the actions of a Florida pastor who threatened to destroy a book holy to Muslims deserved public and presidential attention, then the actions of the Afghan government, ostensibly a ‘democratic’ ally, to destroy something holy to Christians, a human being made in the image of God, also deserve public and presidential attention.

Sci-Fi Obsession.

I didn't know that the rather mediocre John Cusack movie, "The Martian Child," was based on David Gerrold's autobiographical story about his adoption of his son.

What happens when a science fiction writer adopts a little boy who says he's from Mars? Prepare to be enchanted.


David Gerrold's bittersweet memoir of his son's adoption was rejected by six editors before it finally found a home in the September 1994 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Readers fell in love with it immediately and the story went on to win the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus awards for Best Novelette of the Year. It was the basis for the 2007 movie Martian Child, starring John Cusack and Amanda Peet.

This hilarious and moving account of the poignant adventure of parenthood is the author's personal favorite. With a new afterword, special for this edition.

Truth versus Ideology.

Here is another example of how ideology creates a dangerous congitive dissonance. 

The Ft. Hood shooting has finally been the subject of a careful after-action analysis — a study that DOD should have done but didn’t. The analysis was done instead in a bipartisan report by Senators Lieberman and Collins, who lead the Homeland Security committee. Their report reveals few new facts but offers disturbing insights into DOD’s cultural dysfunctions.



On November 5, 2009, witnesses say, Maj. Nidal Hasan leaped on a desk at a Ft. Hood readiness center, shouted “Allahu Akbar” and began executing the unarmed soldiers all around him. Thirteen people were dead and thirty-two wounded before an armed police officer managed to shoot Hasan five times. Now confined to a wheelchair, Hasan is expected to go on trial shortly.


Anyone who paid attention to news coverage after the rampage knows that the Army had plenty of warning about Hasan’s Islamist views. Classmates say that he questioned whether he could fight against other Muslims and made presentations justifying the murder of non-Muslims, suggesting that Muslim-Americans in the armed forces might kill other servicemembers, defending Osama bin Laden, and justifying suicide bombers. The servicemembers in the audience were so appalled that the instructor finally stopped one of Hasan’s presentations. Off the record, it seems, everyone thought Hasan was dangerous, a nutjob, or an Islamist, and perhaps all three.

On the record, though, no one would criticize him. You don’t rise in the armed forces if you can’t read your superiors. And the rising officers who met Hasan knew what their superiors wanted without having to be told. Islam was a religion of peace, and Muslims in the Army were a welcome sign of diversity. Treating Hasan as a dangerous Islamist would put those messages at risk.

And:
 

DOD quickly stood up an independent review of the Ft. Hood shooting by former Secretary of Veterans Affairs Togo West and retired admiral Vern Clark. A staff of full-time contractors and military personnel served West and Clark, who were asked to look hard at internal threats to the military. The result of all this effort is a model of politically correct mush — a classic of contractor-speak, in fact.


Fifty members of the military community were gunned down, their ears still ringing with “Allahu Akbar!” shouted by a man wearing their own uniform. And the official DOD report on the attack never mentions Islam once. In contrast, it touches on the threat posed by “low self-esteem” four times.

The closest the report comes to blaming Islamic extremism for the attack is a single sentence identifying the sources of domestic terrorism. In case you’re wondering, they include “animal rights, environmentalism, nationalism, white supremacy, religious causes, and right-wing politics.”

And:

Okay, that’s a little unfair to Secretary West and Adm. Clark. But only a little. In its delicate sidestepping of Hasan’s obvious motivation, and its irresponsible sidestepping of the shocking PCness epitomized by Hasan’s evaluations, the West/Clark report is part of DOD’s problem. It stands in stark contrast to the aggressive DOD action in 1996, when two Army soldiers carried out a racially motivated murder of an African-American couple. Then, the Army had no trouble adopting a policy on extremist activities that forthrightly named white supremacist activities as a basis for disciplining soldiers.

Practicing Christians do not divorce at the same rate as society.

According to the Baptist Press:

Christians divorce at roughly the same rate as the world!" It's one of the most quoted stats by Christian leaders today. And it's perhaps one of the most inaccurate.


Based on the best data available, the divorce rate among Christians is significantly lower than the general population.

Here's the truth....

Many people who seriously practice a traditional religious faith -- be it Christian or other -- have a divorce rate markedly lower than the general population.

The factor making the most difference is religious commitment and practice. Couples who regularly practice any combination of serious religious behaviors and attitudes -- attend church nearly every week, read their Bibles and spiritual materials regularly; pray privately and together; generally take their faith seriously, living not as perfect disciples, but serious disciples -- enjoy significantly lower divorce rates than mere church members, the general public and unbelievers.

Professor Bradley Wright, a sociologist at the University of Connecticut, explains from his analysis of people who identify as Christians but rarely attend church, that 60 percent of these have been divorced. Of those who attend church regularly, 38 percent have been divorced [1].

Other data from additional sociologists of family and religion suggest a significant marital stability divide between those who take their faith seriously and those who do not.

W. Bradford Wilcox, a leading sociologist at the University of Virginia and director of the National Marriage Project, finds from his own analysis that "active conservative Protestants" who regularly attend church are 35 percent less likely to divorce compared to those who have no affiliation. Nominally attending conservative Protestants are 20 percent more likely to divorce, compared to secular Americans [2].

Professor Scott Stanley from the University of Denver, working with an absolute all-star team of leading sociologists on the Oklahoma Marriage Study, explains that couples with a vibrant religious faith had more and higher levels of the qualities couples need to avoid divorce:

"Whether young or old, male or female, low-income or not, those who said that they were more religious reported higher average levels of commitment to their partners, higher levels of marital satisfaction, less thinking and talking about divorce and lower levels of negative interaction.These patterns held true when controlling for such important variables as income, education, and age at first marriage."


These positive factors translated into actual lowered risk of divorce among active believers.

Faith and works matter.

Ordained by the Daily Journal.

The Daily Journal is the California legal newspaper of record.  Like a lot of mainstream newspapers it can't help but inject its ideology into cutesy profiles, like this one:

Deputy DA is Woman Priest


By Pat Broderick

SAN DIEGO - Jane Via, garbed in vivid red and white vestments, stood before her congregation in San Diego on a recent Sunday, preaching about the importance of inclusiveness and praying for courage to challenge the Roman Catholic Church. Via wasn't there as a layperson assisting the priest. She is the priest, at least according to the international women's priest movement, earning her and others like her the wrath of the Vatican, which forbids women's ordination.

And:

Via then became one of the first U.S.-born citizens to be ordained a deacon in the women priest movement, the step that comes before ordination as a priest. She was ordained in 2006 in Switzerland. Now Via is the primary pastor of a 150-member congregation that includes two other priests - Stephens and Nancy Corran.  "She probably has a larger community than anyone else in the country," said Suzanne Thiel, the USA-West administrator for Roman Catholic Womenpriests, an
initiative that began in Germany in 2002 with the ordination of seven women. In the United States, the initiative now has 48 priests, five bishops, who handle administrative duties, and 10 deacons, according to Thiel.

You have to wonder how the article would have read if Via had declared herself to be the District Attorney of Orange County because she claimed to have been "apponted" by some Swiss magistrate to that position.
She'd probably be viewed as a "loon."
 
But, hey, if she "feels" like she's a Catholic priest, who cares what the Catholic Church says.

Hollywood - where all belief systems are equally superior to Christianity.

This Big Hollywood article describes the weird knee-jerk attitude of Hollywood, which used digitial technology to eliminate the title of one book from various scenes in a movie. 

The book title?  Was it Mein Kampf?  Was it Das Kapital? 

You know the title already.

Unreliable Confessions - The Fallible Criminal Justice System.

Io-9 points out this fascinating and disturbing factoid:

Prisoner advocacy group The Innocence Project has used DNA to overturn the wrongful convictions of 266 people since 1989. In twenty-five percent of those cases, the DNA exoneration was an extreme surprise - not because the people had been convicted, but because they had confessed. Why would anyone do that if they were innocent?


Here is the underlying source:
 

In about 25% of DNA exoneration cases, innocent defendants made incriminating statements, delivered outright confessions or pled guilty.


These cases show that confessions are not always prompted by internal knowledge or actual guilt, but are sometimes motivated by external influences.

Why do innocent people confess?

A variety of factors can contribute to a false confession during a police interrogation. Many cases have included a combination of several of these causes. They include:

•duress
•coercion
•intoxication
•diminished capacity
•mental impairment
•ignorance of the law
•fear of violence
•the actual infliction of harm
•the threat of a harsh sentence
•Misunderstanding the situation

•Some false confessions can be explained by the mental state of the confessor.

•Confessions obtained from juveniles are often unreliable – children can be easy to manipulate and are not always fully aware of their situation. Children and adults both are often convinced that that they can “go home” as soon as they admit guilt.

•People with mental disabilities have often falsely confessed because they are tempted to accommodate and agree with authority figures. Further, many law enforcement interrogators are not given any special training on questioning suspects with mental disabilities. An impaired mental state due to mental illness, drugs or alcohol may also elicit false admissions of guilt.

•Mentally capable adults also give false confessions due to a variety of factors like the length of interrogation, exhaustion or a belief that they can be released after confessing and prove their innocence later.

Regardless of the age, capacity or state of the confessor, what they often have in common is a decision – at some point during the interrogation process – that confessing will be more beneficial to them than continuing to maintain their innocence.

The Innocence Project suggests that interrogations be recorded, which may be a good idea but suggests a whole new field of procedural mistakes that would be opened up for Defense lawyers to mine.

Nonetheless, a 25% false confession rate is disturbing.

Greg Koukl answers a pro-abortion caller's question.

[Via Wintery Knight.]

This is a nice demonstration of the conversational tactics that Greg Koukl outlines in his book "Tactics."  

The issue - posed by a teacher - is "how can Koukl speak out against abortion unless he adopts every child who would be aborted." Koukl answers the question by pointing out that he has adopted two children out of crisis pregnancies and that her raises money for crisis pregnancy centers.  He then asks if that satisfies the caller.  It becomes clear that the caller would not be satisfied unless every last concern involved in rearing children was satisfied.  Koukl remains calm and polite throughout the discussion.  It's an extremely effective clip for highlighting the illogic of that particular trope.

Interesting stand on principle.

You don't see people take stands on principle like this. Also, it does seem rather late in the day for chivalry not to bend before the fungibility of the sexes. I'm not sure it was necessarily the right decision, but you have to admire someone who will pay the price for his beliefs.

An Iowa high school wrestler who was one of the favorites to win his weight class defaulted on his first-round state tournament match rather than face one of the first girls to ever qualify for the event. (Latest update...)


Joel Northup, a home-schooled sophomore who was 35-4 wrestling for Linn-Mar High this season, said in a statement that he doesn't feel it would be right for him to wrestle Cedar Falls freshman Cassy Herkelman. Herkelman, who was 20-13 entering the tournament, and fellow 112-pounder Ottumwa sophomore Megan Black, who was 25-13, made history by being the first girls to qualify for the state tournament. Black was pinned quickly in her opening round match.

"I have a tremendous amount of respect for Cassy and Megan and their accomplishments. However, wrestling is a combat sport and it can get violent at times," wrote Northup. "As a matter of conscience and my faith I do not believe that it is appropriate for a boy to engage a girl in this manner. It is unfortunate that I have been placed in a situation not seen in most other high school sports in Iowa."

There were several thousand fans on hand Thursday at Wells Fargo Arena, but many were watching other matches when the referee raised Herkelman's hand to signal her win. There was a smattering of cheers and boos from the crowd before Herkelman was whisked into the bowels of the arena.

"We are witnessing the logical conclusion of the Democratic Party's philosophy, and it is this:Your tax dollars exist to make public sector unions happy."

Matt Welch at Reason Magazine writes:

Just think–there once was a time (for more than a century, actually), when the president of the United States thought it too imperious to deliver the State of the Union via a speech to a joint session of Congress, since that would smack of telling a co-equal branch of government what to do. Now we have a president not just taking rhetorical sides in a state issue, but actively mobilizing his political organization to affect the outcome(s), even though (to my knowledge) nothing that Gov. Walker or any other belated statehouse cost-cutter is doing has a damned thing to do with federal law.

I have written in the past about how libertarians are pretty lonely in the political scheme of things in terms of constantly being challenged to defend themselves against the "logical conclusion" of their philosophy. But I think it's time to amend that. We are witnessing the logical conclusion of the Democratic Party's philosophy, and it is this: Your tax dollars exist to make public sector unions happy. When we run out of other people's money to pay for those contracts and promises (most of which are negotiated outside of public view, often between union officials and the politicians that union officials helped elect), then we just need to raise taxes to cover a shortfall that is obviously Wall Street's fault. Anyone who doesn't agree is a bully, and might just bear an uncanny resemblance to Hitler.

The Republican "Agenda" against Science.

Second round with Anthroslug.

My points were:


1. There is a history of what might be called “Democrat anti-science” in the example of William Proxmire.

2. Although we may disagree with Proxmire, as an elected representative, he had a public duty to represent the public vis a vis what he considered to be fraud, corruption and waste.

3. The link you provided to support your claim that Inhofe was terrorizing scientists only allowed the inference that Inhofe was properly calling for investigation and prosecution of FOIA violations and/or fraud.

4. There is nothing about such a call – specifically the call that FOIA violations should be investigated and prosecuted - that should offend a reasonable scientist other than the natural tribal tendency to “circle the wagons.”

5. The term “scientist” used in the study reflected people in employment settings that in general were dependent on government money for their livelihood.

6. The “liberalism” of “scientists” was better explained by the dynamics of human psychology and the entrenchment of liberalism in academia than by some “anti-science” attitude among Republicans.

My summary of Anthroslug's response was:

1. You assert that I have accused you of being an ideologue “circling the wagon against fair criticism.”

2. I disagree with your thesis that the reason there are more Democrat scientists than Republican scientists is due to the ideological opposition of Republicans to science in the areas of climate, geology, biology and archeology.

3. In some fashion, you believe that I have called or implied that you are an “ideological liberal,” which you find humorous because some other person thinks that you are a conservative.

4. You think that I am doing to you what you think I am accusing you of doing, i.e., pulling one sentence out of context from your article, misreading that sentence and disregarding everything else as the product of ideological bias.

5. You think that I am acting like creationists and homeopathists, who do the same thing.

6. You think that my argument arises from the satisfaction I take in discounting someone who I write off on ideological grounds.

7. You claim that Republicans have been more successful in pushing “an agenda” which is “hostile to a good deal of science.”

8. You think that I have conflated Academia with science.

9. You assert that the preponderance of Democrats in science doesn’t prove “sinister indoctrination” than the preponderance of Republicans in business proves indoctrination.

10. You claim that the allegations against CRU may not show that there was criminal wrongdoing, but you acknowledge that there was a finding that the scientists were not as “forthcoming or open as they should ethically have been,” which bothers you because scientists should be held to high standards.

11. You assert that I “failed to mention” that Inhofe’s grandstanding call for prosecution was “one more damn thing” in Inhofe’s attempt to “discredit science” and “bully scientists” based not on the validity of data or arguments but on pure politics.

12. You ignored Proxmire.

My response to those points:

1. I didn’t accuse you of being an ideologue. I didn’t say that “you” were “circling the wagons” against “fair criticism.”

If you go back to my comment, you will see that I spent a paragraph pointing out that your source didn’t support the contention that Inhofe was engaged in some “broad vendetta” against science. In other words, I clicked through your post and read your supporting material and I went further and read the material that your supporting material was relying on. What I found was a Senate Report where I learned that the McCarthyite tactics included a statement that the authors of the report were investigating to determine if there were any FOIA violations.

Color me unconvinced by the data supported your contention that “it is telling that the Republican Party went from an organization that once respected science and scientists to one where prominent members in elected office can publicly call for the use of criminal prosecution in an attempt to bully scientists into silence.” I don’t see that in your supporting data. What I saw was a public official doing his job of, inter alia, overseeing the enforcement of the law.

Since I can’t fathom why anyone would be opposed to seeing the law enforced, I asked why you wouldn’t want FOIA law enforced and wrote “Why would you think otherwise, except for a "circle the wagons" mindset?”

I would think that one thing a scientist should be in favor of is the dissemination of scientific knowledge. One of the most inexplicable things I have seen in the CRU controversy was the failure of CRU to provide its back-up data for years. Fortunately, some scientific publications finally enforced the basic rule of sharing data. But why any scientist would think that withholding data from other scientists may be excused is beyond me. (Parenthetically, the Guardian article is misleading; a sin of the CRU was not complying with requests for data from other scientists, which turned into FOIA requests from other scientists, not from “ideologues” trying to “scare” scientists. So, it would seem that CRU was doing what you have accused me of doing.)

Two points:

A. Perhaps it is the case that Inhofe is engaged in a vendetta against science, but your source doesn’t make the case.

B. I didn’t say what you accused me of saying. My point was more precise, and was targeted on what you wrote.

2. I do disagree with your thesis. I explained why I did. What I haven’t seen is any explanation that tells me why I’m wrong.

Yes, I understand that you think that there is an “agenda,” but seriously outside of certain limited areas do you really think that in 99.999% of “science,” there is such an ideological separation. Do you really think that in the science that most scientists are doing – outside of life issues or race issues or “global warming” – that politics is implicated in the slightest?

If you do, I’d like to see the data that supports your view, because as we both ought to know, most science is science within an established paradigm.

On the other hand, wars are fought over money, and we know that rewards, such as money, are positive reinforcement for behavior.

Let’s take your examples. You cite archeology, but liberal democrats have stymied research in that area, See the Kennewick Man controversy. Likewise, investigation into social behavior, intelligence, genetics, etc. on the basis of racial, gender or ethnic differences is severely punished by liberals. Larry Summers wasn’t fired by conservatives after raising the issue of gender and the hard sciences for example. Likewise, the cost of true political correctness may include the recent recession since no one was particularly encouraged to investigate the social behaviors of minorities in repaying mortgages.

Those things count as “science,” don’t they? In light of those examples, why can’t we say that scientists are frightened by the anti-science ideology of Democrats? The answer doesn’t seem to lie in the fact of “censorship” but on whether there is a prior acceptance by scientists of the ideology in question. So, something precedes ideology. What is it?

3. All I know about your “ideology” is what I read here. I think that you have a tribal loyalty to scientists, which is why you tell stories about how people have some kind of prejudice to archeologists, which is weird because everyone loves archeologists.

4. When you write something, often times your argument stands or falls on the particular, discrete claims that you make. I selected the one that I did because you made a blanket claim about Republicans having a vendetta against science. I checked your source and explained why I found it wanting. Your response, ironically, was to accuse me of ideological blindness, notwithstanding the fact that I did not accuse you of ideological blindness.

5. Speaking of which, accusing me of being “like” a creationist smacks of “well poisoning.” The syllogism might go – Creationist arguments are stupid, this argument is like a Creationist argument, therefore this argument is stupid. Well, if you accept the premises, that might work.

6. I wouldn’t post a comment if I was writing something off.

7. In light of my observations in 2, I’m not seeing it.

8. I didn’t conflate academia and “science.” What I said was that “scientists” qualify as “scientists” by passing through academia, which we see is preponderantly liberal and democrat. I, therefore, argued that peer pressure is a better explanation than an “anti-science agenda.”

9. I never spoke about “sinister indoctrination.” However, I do believe that indoctrination necessarily takes place whenever anyone joins a profession, in that they are not just learning facts, but attitudes and values. Science is no different, as has been shown by Thomas Kuhn and other historians of science. If values are being indoctrinated, then it isn’t surprising that a political ideology – particularly one that says that spending public money for things that would not otherwise get private funding - can get smuggled for the ride.

And, yes, I do think that indoctrination into “Republican values” happens in “business.” Such values might include a desire for lower taxes, self-reliance, personal initiative, and “business” would be those businesses who do not have a “rent seeking” relationship with the government. Likewise, I think that the military is preponderantly Republican because of the historic support of Republicans for spending public money on national defense.

Same idea, different results.

10. The standard for criminal liability is high. I don’t know that American law or FOIA applied to the CRU. CRU’s documented conduct in withholding data, claiming that primary data was destroyed, providing only adjusted data, etc. tears at the heart of proper science. If CRU was guilty of criminal violations, they should have been prosecuted, for, among other reasons, the purpose of restoring public confidence in science. If they were not guilty, handwaiving about “stolen” e-mails misses the point. We should not have needed a leak of data to find this out.

11. I “didn’t mention” Inhofe’s history of “bullying science” because I don’t know of any such thing. I still don’t. I know that Inhofe is skeptical of AGW claims and the idea that there is a consensus, but at least he has the merit of actually believing that AGW is nonsense on the merits and is willing to deal with arguments about the science. The liberals who arranged to have Larry Summers fired and to pour concrete on the Kennewick Man site were not so honest. Their concern wasn’t that the science was nonsense and that we would be formulating expensive public policy on bad science, they were afraid that the science might upset their ideology and they have been successful in tarring those who might want to pursue such science as racist or sexist.

Leftwing regulation of science exists and is apparently socially acceptable, unlike rightwing regulation of science, which hits all the news shows when it happens. You might be interested in this article.

Last point – you’ve raised the “creation question” in Presidential debates. I’m not sure what your point is. The fact that someone – a journalist – asks a question doesn’t prove that the person who was asked the question has an anti-science agenda. In fact, 7 of the 10 candidates said they did believe in evolution.

What would the Democrat field have said? We don’t know because the point of that question is to embarrass Republican candidates who have to vouch for either their scientific bona fides or their tribal allegiance to their particular church. Mike Huckabee made a fair point about how silly that question was in the context of a presidential “debate.”

"The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. He is the man who has lost everything except his reason."    - G.K. Chesterton.

BadUFO points to an example of the lunacy of the true believer.  Radical Lawyer/Ufologist Peter Gerstner intends to leap from the top of a 200 foot Bells Rock in Sedona, Arizona on the Winter Solstice of 2012 because he is certain that at that time and at that place a rift in space and time will open up.  Apparently, the immutable laws of physics - or magic - have chosen that time and that place for their deep physical/magical properties to manifest a "transdimensional vortex."

BadUFOs makes the gibe that "[w]hen Faith clashes with Reason, Faith wins out nearly every time."

I think that BadUFOs is missing the point of Mr. Gersten's mania. Mr. Gersten is not without his reasons, and he certainly has a logic that is internally consistent and defendable from his perspective, and he seems to have a firm grasp of the facts that are of importance to his reasoning. Of course, the only problem is that Mr. Gersten's logic is disengaged from the truth in that he is not properly apprehending the nature of reality.

In short, Mr. Gersten suffers from a bad metaphysics, not bad facts or bad logic.

Oh, goodie....

NPR is getting more money from our taxes.

NPR STATEMENT ON THE PRESIDENT'S FY 2012 BUDGET


Public broadcasting received a vote of confidence today from the Obama Administration. The President's FY 2012 budget submission to Congress included $451 million for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) for the two year advance appropriation for FY 2014, an increase of $6 million over FY 2013 funding.

NPR President and CEO Vivian Schiller said, "We are grateful to the Obama Administration for recognizing the importance of public radio to the life of communities across the nation. Every day, over 900 public radio stations present fact-based local, national and international news, as well as local arts, music and cultural programming that can't be found anywhere else."

She concluded, "At a time when our country is confronting many difficult challenges, public broadcasting is providing an essential service by informing and educating 170 million Americans every month. This mission is more relevant than ever."

 After all, where else would we get stories about Aids-activists teaching opera to inner city kids.

Note that NPR is actually getting a raise for its fine work.

More things that everyone knows packaged as faith shattering news.

Bart Ehrman's next book is coming out in March and is entitled "Forged: Writing in the Name of God--Why the Bible's Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are."

We're probably going to discover that the Gospels do not have a title page with their author's name! Shocking!

And some of the Pauline epistles may have been written by Pauls' disciples in Paul's name! Shocking!

And John's epistles were written by a different guy with the same name!

I made up that last one.

The Wonderful World of Disney....

...destroying the lives of child actors for over 50 years!

Billy Ray Cyrus admits that his daughter is a trainwreck of Anna Nicole Smith proportions:

In a shockingly candid GQ interview, Billy Ray Cyrus slams Hannah Montana, the smash Disney series that catapulted his daughter Miley Cyrus to the spotlight.


"It destroyed my family," says Cyrus, who split from wife Tish last year and says he is no longer speaking with his 18-year-old daughter. "I'll tell you right now -- the damn show destroyed my family ... it's all sad."

And:

In the interview, he puts his daughter in the same category as Kurt Cobain, Anna Nicole Smith and Michael Jackson. "That's why I'm concerned about Miley," he says. Referring to Cobain, he adds, "I think that his world was just spinning so fast and he had so many people around him that didn't help him."

In other Disney news, Lindsay Lohan pleads "not guilty" to felony theft charges.

Role models for impressionable girls, each and every one of them.

Scientist Roger Penrose Criticizes Stephen Hawkings' Recent Book.

"M-Theory" isn't a theory.

Here is the site.

Here is the video.

Child born without cerebellum is learning to walk.

Wesley Smith points to an amazing story about a child who was born without the portion of his brain that controls the human ability to learn is learning to walk.  He's also learning to talk and is potty-trained.

Smith also points out that in the Netherlands, this child would have been drafted into the organ banks over his parents' objections:

This child wasn’t technically anencephalic, but in the Netherlands, he would have qualified for extermination under the Groningen Protocol, by which Dutch doctors euthanize infants with terminal and seriously disabling conditions. They kill infants in Belgium, too. And no doubt, he might have been treated as a lost cause in most countries.


But the moral of the story is that all of us should be treated as fully human, no matter how dire our seeming circumstances. And sometimes there is no suppressing the power of human will, and if you will, what is often called the human spirit.

A Rabbi Answers Dawkins.

Rabbi Moshe Averick discusses the argument from design.

The entire plot of the classic film, 2001: A Space Odyssey is based on this obvious principle. At a dramatic moment in the film, when a rectangular monolith is discovered buried on the moon, it is clear to those who discover it (and accepted as absolutely logical and reasonable by everyone watching the movie) that this is unmistakable proof of alien life. After all, a precisely measured monolith couldn't possibly have made itself or "evolved naturally." The rest of the film is about the search for the aliens who constructed and buried the monolith in the first place.

And:

For the truth-seeking individual, the very best that Darwinian evolution can tell us is the following: Once you have in place a fantastically complex piece of molecular machinery called a living cell, which has at it's core an astonishingly sophisticated self-replicating system, which is based on the storage, retrieval, and decoding of enormous amounts of pure digital information – given enough time – the interactions between this nanotool filled organism, its "uncannily computer-like" genetic code and its environment (interactions we call "natural selection") are able to produce an astounding variety of forms of biological organisms. All varieties of life are possible – if, and only if – this amazing piece of machinery is in place. How did it get there?

And:

One of the skills stressed in Talmudic learning is that when posing a logical difficulty, one must struggle to formulate the question as precisely as possible. Many times, the largest part of finding a solution to a difficulty is asking precisely the right question. Dawkins did not accurately pose the question; therefore it is not surprising that he is getting inaccurate answers. Properly presented, the question is as follows:


Any functionally complex and purposefully arranged form of physical matter (i.e. a Boeing 747, a calculator, or a bacterium), must itself have a creator at least as complex as the object in question. How do we (or can we) escape an infinite regression of creators?

That which demands and requires a preceding creator is a complex arrangement of physical matter. With this precise formulation of the question, the answer becomes obvious. At some point in the progression, we are faced with the inescapable conclusion that there must be a creator who is not physical matter at all; a creator who does not need to be created; a creator who is not subject to the limitations of cause and effect. There must be a creator who is the first, who is the beginning of it all. There must be a creator who is outside of the physical universe. A creator who is outside of the physical universe, not existing in time and space, and composed of neither matter nor energy, does not require a preceding creator. There is nothing that came before him. He created time, he does not exist in time; there is no "before". ("What happened before the big bang? The answer is there was no ‘before.’ Time itself began at the big bang." 16Physicist, Dr. Paul Davies) We are created; along with time, space, matter, and energy. We are subject to the limitations of a time/space bound series of causes and effects. The creator simply is.

Rabbi Averick's website is here.

Swords and Sandals.

Evangelical scholar Ben Witherington likes the latest Roman epic flick, "The Eagle."

Those Anti-Science Republicans.

Anthroslug writes:

Hell, it is telling that the Republican Party went from an organization that once respected science and scientists to one where prominent members in elected office can publicly call for the use of criminal prosecution in an attempt to bully scientists into silence.

My Response:

Remember Democrat William Proxmire?

Proxmire was infamous among scientists - and readers of Analog magazine - in the '70s for his "Golden Fleece Award," which was often an exercise in exposing his own ignorance of the state of scientific issues.

But to be fair, Proxmire was a government representative and if money was being spent foolishly, he had a duty to call out such expenditures as foolish.

On the other hand, your link to Inhofe is really unsupportable. The link doesn't demonstrate that Inhofe was engaging in some broad vendetta against science. In fact, Inhofe showed more restraint that Proxmire because he is addressing a particular issue in the contest of particular suspected legal violations. The CRU and other climate researchers appear to have had a policy of violating the Freedom of Information Act. They aren't excused from complying with the FOIA - which as a scientist you should fully support. If they violated the FOIA - or committed fraud while using public money - then they should be prosecuted.

Why would you think otherwise, except for a "circle the wagons" mindset?

On which point,one thing that these scientists are is heavily indoctrinated. Look at the poll data and you can see that the highest number of Dems are in Academia, the lowest in Industry, and that a sizeable percentage declare themselves independent. That means that scientists are formed by people who are Democrat and largely liberal and supported by public money. It is also consistent with a truism of political science that most communities are effectively "one party." Even in the Old South, One-party Democrat states had Republican enclaves that were effectively all Republican. It's a truism of human nature that we like to be popular and part of the in-crowd and that only a minority is willing to accept the social ostracism of belonging to a minority.

Tolerance is not enough.  You. Must. Approve.

England proposes new law "ending the ban" on same-sex marriage in religious institutions:

Gays and lesbians will be able to 'marry' in church under new laws to be unveiled this week.

The historic decision by Liberal Democrat Equalities Minister Lynne Featherstone will end the legal definition of marriage as a relationship between a man and a woman.

A gay couple will be able to refer to one of the partners as a 'husband', and a lesbian couple will be able to refer to one of the partners as a 'wife'.

A key part of the reform will bring an end to the ban that prevents civil partnerships being conducted in places of worship.

That "end the ban" phrase sounds Orwellian.  If there is a law that prevents Unitarians from holding religious ceremonies such as blessing or "marrying" same-sex couples, then that should be ended because it is not the business of the state to be regulating what religion does or thinks it can do. 

On the other hand, if "ending the ban" is used the same way as it is in the United States to mean that same-sex marriage will be imposed on the population, or in this case, that the Catholic Church cannot decide not to perform same-sex marriages, then that is an intolerable piece of tyranny.

More accurate than all the Sociological faculties at every major university.

From the Volokh Conspiracy:

OKCupid’s datamining blog is a source of amusement, politically incorrect insight, and horror in equal measure.  But what strikes me is the enormous power that comes from the democratizing of data-mining.  It will change the world, just as Google did when it democratized clipping files and newspaper morgues.

The people at OKCupid do a nice job of presenting the data without shaving the data to fit social pieties.  Some of their observations are amusing, such as the finding that everyone - men and women alike - make themselves two inches taller in their profiles. 

Some are counter-intuitive, such as the fact - Ladies, listen up - that skin "sells" for women on internet dating sites, and it sells more the older you get.

Alright, I'm not sure how that last point is "counter-intuitive."  But that's the data.

This one answer the question my 12 year daughter asked me about why society thinks it is "ok" for men to date younger women, but not for women to date younger men.  I gave a lot of folderol about arbitrary social conventions linked to evolutionary psychology, but OKCupid has the data and an explanation:

A woman's desirability peaks at 21, which, ironically enough is the age that men just begin their "prime," i.e. become more desirable than average. Following that dotted line out, you can see that a woman of 31 is already "past her prime," while a man doesn't become so until 36. As we mentioned above, after age 26, a man has more potential matches than his female counterparts, which is a drastic reversal of the proportion in young adulthood, when women are much more sought-after. Because men's dating preferences skew so young, and women's are age-equitable, men peak later, and have a longer plateau of desirability, than women.

Also, if you want to know the chances of whether you will "get lucky" on the first date, find out if you date likes the taste of beer or whether they would find the prospects of nuclear war "exciting" since "in the post-apocalypse, there are no second dates."

If you are on the front-lines of the "the Dating Life," OKCupid is an essential survival resource.

Memory Lane.

The evolution of the automobile sound system.

It slowly dawns on one writer that Stalin may have been worse than Hitler.

Writing a review of "Bloodlands" for Slate, author Ron rosenbaum observes:

How much should the cannibalism count? How should we factor it into the growing historical-moral-political argument over how to compare Hitler's and Stalin's genocides, and the death tolls of communism and fascism in general. I know I had not considered it. I had really not been aware of the extent of the cannibalism that took place during the Stalinist-enforced famine in the Ukraine in 1933 until I read Yale University history professor Timothy Snyder's shocking, unflinching depiction of it in Bloodlands, his groundbreaking new book about Hitler's and Stalin's near-simultaneous genocides.

And:

But I suppose that, without looking deeply into it, I had considered Stalin's state-created famine a kind of "soft genocide" compared with the industrialized mass murder of Hitler's death camps or even with the millions of victims of Stalin's own purges of the late '30s and the gulags they gave birth to.

Snyder's book, while controversial in some respects, forces us to face the facts about the famine, and the cannibalism helps place the Ukraine famine in the forefront of debate, not as some mere agricultural misfortune, but as one of the 20th century's deliberate mass murders.

And:

Students of comparative evil often point out that Stalin caused a higher death toll than Hitler, even without taking the famine deaths into account; those losses were not treated the same way as his other crimes or as Hitler's killing and gassing in death camps. Shooting or gassing is more direct and immediate than starving a whole nation.


But Snyder's account of the Ukraine famine persuasively makes the case that Stalin in effect turned the entire Ukraine into a death camp and, rather than gassing its people, decreed death by famine.

Should this be considered a lesser crime because it's less "hands-on"? Here's where the accounts of cannibalism caused me to rethink this question—and to examine the related question of whether one can distinguish degrees of evil in genocides by their methodology.

And:

find it hard to understand anyone who wants to argue that the murder of 20 million is "preferable" to anything, but our culture still hasn't assimilated the genocidal equivalence between Stalin and Hitler, because, as Applebaum points out, we used the former to defeat the latter.*

Consider the fact that downtown New York is home to a genuinely likable literary bar ironically named "KGB." The KGB, of course, was merely the renamed version of Stalin's NKVD, itself the renamed version of the OGPU, the secret police spearhead of his genocidal policies. And under its own name the KGB was responsible for the continued murder and torture of dissidents and Jews until the Soviet Union fell in 1991 (although of course an ex-KGB man named Putin is basically running the place now).

You could argue that naming a bar "KGB" is just a kind of Cold War kitsch (though millions of victims might take issue with taking it so lightly). But the fact that you can even make the kitsch argument is a kind of proof of the differential way Soviet and Nazi genocides and their institutions are still treated. Would people seek to hold literary readings at a downtown bar ironically named "Gestapo"?

The full evil of Stalin still hasn't sunk in. I know it to be true intellectually, but our culture has not assimilated the magnitude of his crimes. Which is perhaps why the cannibalism jolted me out of any illusion that meaningful distinctions could be made between Stalin and Hitler

That this is an epiphany for Rosenbaum suggests the wool of euphemism that people from his social structure have been wrapped.  Rosenbaum is the author of
"Explaining Hitler: The Search for the Origins of His Evil ."  One would think that someone interested in "evil" would have had more than an intellctual understanding that the evils of Communism were at least as bad as those of Nazi Germany.