Check out this headline and story: "Man in Virginia uses cable to decapitate self after argument with ex-wife"
Frankly, I'm sceptical. I mean after an argument with his wife, maybe, but with his ex-wife? C'mom.
Just kidding ladies.
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
Monday, August 29, 2011
Chinese Checker
The title, the subtitle actually, of this piece from The Daily Beast is one I found irresistible: "The City, Beijing: Ai Weiwei finds China's capital is a prison where people go mad."
Yea, and one of them is the New York Times columnist, Tom Freidman.
If you don't know or can't recall what it is I'm referring to, try just this one piece by the Gray Lady's sino-savant for a representative sample: "Our One-Party Democracy"
Yea, and one of them is the New York Times columnist, Tom Freidman.
If you don't know or can't recall what it is I'm referring to, try just this one piece by the Gray Lady's sino-savant for a representative sample: "Our One-Party Democracy"
"When the legend becomes fact, print the legend"
That's actually a telling line from one of my all-time favorite films, John Ford's, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.
With it in mind, consider this latest from Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne, Jr.: "Let's honor the real Dr. King"
Are you sure you want to open that can of worms, E.J.?
With it in mind, consider this latest from Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne, Jr.: "Let's honor the real Dr. King"
Are you sure you want to open that can of worms, E.J.?
California, To Go, Please
"Calif. could be first state to ban foam containers"
Well, at least their legislature isn't focused on silly sideshows like tackling the state's crippling debt.
Well, at least their legislature isn't focused on silly sideshows like tackling the state's crippling debt.
Sunday, August 28, 2011
Fade Away, General, Fade Away
"Powell: Cheney Take 'Cheap Shots At Me in New Book"
For a guy, a very prominent guy, who not only didn't vote for his party's nominee for president in 2008, but publicly endorsed its opponent, charging others with hitting below the belt is a bit much, don't you think?
For a guy, a very prominent guy, who not only didn't vote for his party's nominee for president in 2008, but publicly endorsed its opponent, charging others with hitting below the belt is a bit much, don't you think?
Saturday, August 27, 2011
Do You "Believe" in Evolution?
This seems to be the question du jour from elite media pundits and reporters eager to discredit GOP candidates just by the asking of it.
Well, Ann Coulter, for one, doesn't believe in it and will say as much, out loud and unapologetically. (Whatever else you think of her, you have to admit, this woman is fearless.) But before, in this week's column, she gives you a few reasons for scepticism, she first suggests turning the table on the press and their favorites, similarly liberal Democrats:
Anyway, the subject of evolution animates mightily many who come from my little cross-section of American culture known as evangelical Christianity. While I'm a card-carrying member, debating the question over whether and how we are descended from apes (why not "ascended"?) has never held my attention in the same way it does for so many others of my ilk. Nevertheless, Coulter's column made me feel as though I really ought to lay at least some of my cards on the table. (I say "some" because the post would be too long if I tried to lay all of them out. I know, I know, "It's too long already Sage." Yea, yea, yea.)
I, too, do not "believe" in evolution. At best, I'm sceptical, extremely so, and always have been. In the first instance because of that very word "believe". Coulter calls Darwinian evolution the "liberals' creation myth", a "mystery religion from the Victorian age." I have to agree because to me it's always had that feel of religion about it and not science. I recall watching many years ago an episode of the PBS series Cosmos hosted by the late Carl Sagan. (Remember it?) Anyway, while I only watched the one piece, I remember commenting at the time that this guy was no scientist, he was a preacher. Everything about that show made me feel as though I was sitting in church listening to a sermon.
Which leads to another reason for my scepticism. Experience has taught me that far too many of the champions of the theory of Darwinian evolution seem impervious, and increasingly so, to the acceptance of counter-factual evidence. In that respect, they're much like "climate change" enthusiasts. It's getting colder--climate change. It's getting hotter--climate change. It's staying the same...well, you take my point. Similarly, Darwinian evolutionists will argue that the principle of the survival of the fittest explains, for example, not only selfishness, but altruism as well. A theory that explains everything, actually explains nothing. When I encounter this in argument, over any subject, I always stop and ask my antagonists what kind of evidence they would be willing to accept in order to dis-prove their contentions. With evolutionists, one is usually met with silence. Evolution just is, you see. Um, no, I don't see. Help me out, please?
Another reason: The process of natural selection is really no insight at all. That a black bug has an advantage in surviving over a white bug because a hungry bird in a dark forest can see the white bug more easily is really no different than a black horse's advantage over a white one if the breeder prefers a darker colored animal. One mechanism is natural, the other artificial, but things become extinct just the same. When's the last time you saw anyone wearing bell-bottom pants?
Yet another reason: Darwinian evolution looks to me very much like a return to a belief in spontaneous generation, that discredited medieval superstition explained to me by the same tenth-grade biology teacher who first introduced me, formally, to Darwinian evolution. Darwinists insist that if you were to mix up a brew of carbon and hydrogen and oxygen and then step back and stare at it long enough, then not only a fly, but a full-grown man will eventually rise up out of that puddle. Oh, they'll gussy it up a bit with talk of random mutations and punctuated equilibriums and such, but at the end of the day, or, rather, at the end of untold billions of years, homo-sapien himself will evolve, emerge, stand erect, hunt and gather, construct huts then cathedrals, debate philosophy, compose sonatas, and finally argue, with a straight face, that he's essentially no different than any other living thing despite the fact that no other living thing can do anything even remotely approaching what he does as a matter of course.
(By the way, "billions and billions of years" is one the evolutionist's trump cards. I find it much too often a convenient dodge. It's hard to argue against the "mists of time" as an explanatory factor. "How long does it take for something, for anything, to evolve?", you ask. "Why, billions and billions of years", they respond. It's kind of like the US debt, huge numbers with which, conveniently, no one can possibly be intimately familiar and, therefore, in a position to judge.)
Which leads to yet another reason, which is actually a moral objection as well: Insofar as evolutionists maintain that all living things descend (that word again) from a common ancestor, and are therefore essentially the same, I think they are being willfully ignorant. Imagine some Martian, some objective Martian scientist, that is, observing the planet earth. While I can agree that he might conclude that among the many living things that inhabit the planet, they share many, very many, in fact, characteristics that distinguish them from the inanimate rocks. But beyond those elementary distinctions, the differences get larger, not smaller. That which distinguishes, for example, flora from fauna is huge. The distinctives among fauna are greater still, the fish from the fowl from the amphibians from the mammals. But among the mammals one species stands out, stands out so much that it simply must be of a different order altogether. That species is of course man. I cannot believe that any scientist could fail to notice the difference, any scientist, that is, who is not already committed to some other paradigm, a paradigm that begins with a conclusion, a conclusion that the differences are not really remarkable at all and, as a result, must be explained away.
There are more reasons, many more in fact, but this is a blog after all.
Bottom line: Don't let the fact that because much of what passes for the contemporary intelligentsia has swallowed Darwinian evolution hook, line, and sinker make you feel stupid for refusing the bait yourself. You're not only not alone, you're actually in pretty good company, pretty smart company as well.
PS
Notice that I never once invoked God, Jesus, the Bible, the Church, the Virgin Mary, or any of that Christian stuff that drives liberals and secularists nuts. Hmm, maybe I should have?
Well, Ann Coulter, for one, doesn't believe in it and will say as much, out loud and unapologetically. (Whatever else you think of her, you have to admit, this woman is fearless.) But before, in this week's column, she gives you a few reasons for scepticism, she first suggests turning the table on the press and their favorites, similarly liberal Democrats:
Evolution is the only subject that is discussed exclusively as a "Do you believe?" question with yes-or-no answers. How about conservative journalists start putting mikes in front of liberal candidates and demanding, "Do you believe in the Bible -- yes or no?" "Is an unborn baby human -- yes or no?" and "Do you believe teenagers should have sex -- yes or no?"I love it.
Anyway, the subject of evolution animates mightily many who come from my little cross-section of American culture known as evangelical Christianity. While I'm a card-carrying member, debating the question over whether and how we are descended from apes (why not "ascended"?) has never held my attention in the same way it does for so many others of my ilk. Nevertheless, Coulter's column made me feel as though I really ought to lay at least some of my cards on the table. (I say "some" because the post would be too long if I tried to lay all of them out. I know, I know, "It's too long already Sage." Yea, yea, yea.)
I, too, do not "believe" in evolution. At best, I'm sceptical, extremely so, and always have been. In the first instance because of that very word "believe". Coulter calls Darwinian evolution the "liberals' creation myth", a "mystery religion from the Victorian age." I have to agree because to me it's always had that feel of religion about it and not science. I recall watching many years ago an episode of the PBS series Cosmos hosted by the late Carl Sagan. (Remember it?) Anyway, while I only watched the one piece, I remember commenting at the time that this guy was no scientist, he was a preacher. Everything about that show made me feel as though I was sitting in church listening to a sermon.
Which leads to another reason for my scepticism. Experience has taught me that far too many of the champions of the theory of Darwinian evolution seem impervious, and increasingly so, to the acceptance of counter-factual evidence. In that respect, they're much like "climate change" enthusiasts. It's getting colder--climate change. It's getting hotter--climate change. It's staying the same...well, you take my point. Similarly, Darwinian evolutionists will argue that the principle of the survival of the fittest explains, for example, not only selfishness, but altruism as well. A theory that explains everything, actually explains nothing. When I encounter this in argument, over any subject, I always stop and ask my antagonists what kind of evidence they would be willing to accept in order to dis-prove their contentions. With evolutionists, one is usually met with silence. Evolution just is, you see. Um, no, I don't see. Help me out, please?
Another reason: The process of natural selection is really no insight at all. That a black bug has an advantage in surviving over a white bug because a hungry bird in a dark forest can see the white bug more easily is really no different than a black horse's advantage over a white one if the breeder prefers a darker colored animal. One mechanism is natural, the other artificial, but things become extinct just the same. When's the last time you saw anyone wearing bell-bottom pants?
Yet another reason: Darwinian evolution looks to me very much like a return to a belief in spontaneous generation, that discredited medieval superstition explained to me by the same tenth-grade biology teacher who first introduced me, formally, to Darwinian evolution. Darwinists insist that if you were to mix up a brew of carbon and hydrogen and oxygen and then step back and stare at it long enough, then not only a fly, but a full-grown man will eventually rise up out of that puddle. Oh, they'll gussy it up a bit with talk of random mutations and punctuated equilibriums and such, but at the end of the day, or, rather, at the end of untold billions of years, homo-sapien himself will evolve, emerge, stand erect, hunt and gather, construct huts then cathedrals, debate philosophy, compose sonatas, and finally argue, with a straight face, that he's essentially no different than any other living thing despite the fact that no other living thing can do anything even remotely approaching what he does as a matter of course.
(By the way, "billions and billions of years" is one the evolutionist's trump cards. I find it much too often a convenient dodge. It's hard to argue against the "mists of time" as an explanatory factor. "How long does it take for something, for anything, to evolve?", you ask. "Why, billions and billions of years", they respond. It's kind of like the US debt, huge numbers with which, conveniently, no one can possibly be intimately familiar and, therefore, in a position to judge.)
Which leads to yet another reason, which is actually a moral objection as well: Insofar as evolutionists maintain that all living things descend (that word again) from a common ancestor, and are therefore essentially the same, I think they are being willfully ignorant. Imagine some Martian, some objective Martian scientist, that is, observing the planet earth. While I can agree that he might conclude that among the many living things that inhabit the planet, they share many, very many, in fact, characteristics that distinguish them from the inanimate rocks. But beyond those elementary distinctions, the differences get larger, not smaller. That which distinguishes, for example, flora from fauna is huge. The distinctives among fauna are greater still, the fish from the fowl from the amphibians from the mammals. But among the mammals one species stands out, stands out so much that it simply must be of a different order altogether. That species is of course man. I cannot believe that any scientist could fail to notice the difference, any scientist, that is, who is not already committed to some other paradigm, a paradigm that begins with a conclusion, a conclusion that the differences are not really remarkable at all and, as a result, must be explained away.
There are more reasons, many more in fact, but this is a blog after all.
Bottom line: Don't let the fact that because much of what passes for the contemporary intelligentsia has swallowed Darwinian evolution hook, line, and sinker make you feel stupid for refusing the bait yourself. You're not only not alone, you're actually in pretty good company, pretty smart company as well.
PS
Notice that I never once invoked God, Jesus, the Bible, the Church, the Virgin Mary, or any of that Christian stuff that drives liberals and secularists nuts. Hmm, maybe I should have?
Why So Few Terrorists?
With a billion Muslims worldwide, Charles Kurzman wonders why, after 9/11especially, but even before, there are so relatively few Islamist terrorists?
He proffers five reasons, mostly sound, that boil down to the fact that your average Muhammad, just like your average Joe, is willing neither to kill nor die for someone else's overheated passions, even if the source of that passion is a common faith.
He omits, however, one very important, and obvious, reason (I'll leave it for you to decide why): After 9/11 there arose in the West, among a majority at least, the will to strike back and strike back we did. As a result the cost for Muhammad of signing up with his otherwise terrorist buddies went up, and more than just a bit.
Your average Muhammad, again, just like your average Joe, is no fool.
He proffers five reasons, mostly sound, that boil down to the fact that your average Muhammad, just like your average Joe, is willing neither to kill nor die for someone else's overheated passions, even if the source of that passion is a common faith.
He omits, however, one very important, and obvious, reason (I'll leave it for you to decide why): After 9/11 there arose in the West, among a majority at least, the will to strike back and strike back we did. As a result the cost for Muhammad of signing up with his otherwise terrorist buddies went up, and more than just a bit.
Your average Muhammad, again, just like your average Joe, is no fool.
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