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stcynic | January 24, 2005With the legal controversies in Dover and Cobb County raging, the media is taking notice and publishing lots of articles and op-eds about it. Time magazine has weighed in with an article entitled Stealth Attack on Evolution that traces some of the history of attempts to weaken the teaching of evolution by religious groups who object to it. The New York Times published an editorial yesterday that also looks at the changing tactics of the anti-evolution movement over the years. They also sum up quite well the problems with the Cobb County disclaimer sticker and the selective application of the…
stcynic | January 23, 2005As I went to bed this evening, I turned on the TV to watch a little bit before I fell asleep and found out that Johnny Carson had died. I could not turn it off, as I watched clips of his shows and reminiscences from his friends. And I felt compelled to write something. Like half the country, I grew up with Johnny Carson. In a transient and temporary culture, he was for over 30 years one of the constants in our life. When he retired from the Tonight Show, it felt like losing a loved one. No one could replace him.
In my stand up comedy days, I can't tell you how much he was revered among…
stcynic | January 22, 2005In the recent hubbub concerning the use of the Nazi analogy, there are two seemingly unrelated statements that have struck me. The first was from Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, while giving a talk at the oldest Jewish synagogue in the United States. The AP reported on November 22, 2004:
In the synagogue that is home to America's oldest Jewish congregation, he noted that in Europe, religion-neutral leaders almost never publicly use the word "God."
But, the justice asked, "Did it turn out that, by reason of the separation of church and state, the Jews were safer in Europe than they were…
stcynic | January 18, 2005There is an interesting exchange on Jefferson and Christianity going on in the neighborhood, which I think was kicked off by Jon Rowe's fisking of a very bad article the other day that included what appears to be a fake quote from Jefferson. Sandefur picked up on the discussion of the Jefferson quote with this post. Then Jason Kuznicki posted about it here and here. And so did Paul Musgrave and Caleb McDaniel. The only one I wasn't familiar with in that was the last one, and how on earth did Caleb manage to escape my notice all this time? He writes about history, religion, and jazz - the…
stcynic | January 16, 2005Liz Ditz left a link to some other articles written by Michael Tremoglie, the author of the very badly reasoned article on church and state that I fisked the other day, and I had to take a look. It looks like that article was no fluke, he really is that clueless about most things. To wit, this absurd statement from an article he wrote about the Ninth Circuit court:
In another patently anti-Constitutional ruling about legalizing marijuana, the Ninth Circuit ruled that, for all practical purposes, California state law trumped U.S. law. The issue involved the California law about using…
stcynic | January 16, 2005I found this story on Pagan Prattle (thanks for the link, by the way) and didn't know whether to laugh or express outrage. A little goth wannabe in New York was allegedly attacked by two guys from the neighborhood in Queens who thought he was a Satanist and now they are charged under New York's hate crimes laws:
A blue-haired, Satan-loving man was pummeled with a metal pipe by a pair of God-fearing thugs as he strolled down a quiet Queens street, authorities said yesterday.
"Yo, Satan!" the hoodlums screamed before unleashing a hellish attack on 20-year-old Daniel Romano in Maspeth on Sunday…
stcynic | January 14, 2005Yesterday I thanked Timothy Sandefur for his hard work on the brief filed by a collection of state science organizations, which was cited by the judge twice in yesterday's ruling striking down the Cobb County disclaimer. I should also have included Reed Cartwright in that. Reed was the one, along with Sarah Pallas, who really got the ball rolling with that brief and did most of the first draft of it. Timothy then put it into a legal brief format and edited it into final form with input from all of us. The brief, as I recall, was originally going to be written on behalf of just the Georgia…
stcynic | January 14, 2005If there's one thing you can rely on in this world, it's knowing that the Worldnutdaily's writers can be counted on to write something completely contrary to reality at least a dozen times a day. Here's today's example, from Kevin McCullough's column about Hillary Clinton promoting the use of condoms:
It was no secret that condom use in America under her husband's leadership was at an all time ... er ... high. A lot of things were: the flow of pornography, teen pregnancy, abortion and, yes, the use of, discussion of, demonstrations in public schools of ... condoms.
The italics, for some…
stcynic | January 13, 2005President Bush had a town hall meeting yesterday to discuss social security reform. It wasn't a real town hall meeting, where people could actually show up and say what they wanted so the President could actually find out what people are thinking; it was a town hall meeting set up with people who had been vetted by his staff to make sure no one would say something that might stump him or might say something they didn't want said. But be that as it is, there was this absolutely baffling comment he made. Read this, and keep in mind that he's trying to convince people that privatization of…
stcynic | January 12, 2005I'm gonna be gone for the rest of the day until late this evening. I have an advisory board meeting for Michigan Citizens for Science this evening in Lansing, where we will be discussing strategy for the new legislative session, electing new officers and nominating new members, among the approximately 4000 things on the agenda. Hope everyone has a good day.
tfk | January 10, 2005Reposted from the old TfK.
In the last weeks, there have been a bunch of stories about endangered species recovery and possible changes to the Endangered Species Act. I blogged on some of the issues raised before (and before that). The fundamental problem in many cases is that the ESA is not perfect.
Western governors seem to have their own ideas:
The most controversial proposal is change the law so it requires the use of "best science" rather than "best available science" to determine if a species is endangered. If the current research weren't conclusive, then more studies would have to be…
stcynic | January 9, 2005A medical benefits company in Okemos, Michigan (where I used to live and coach debate) has begun firing employees who smoke:
Weyco Inc., a medical-benefits administration company, no longer will employ anyone who smokes -- including those who light up during their time off from work. Four employees resigned at the end of December because they refused to quit smoking.
Last week, the remaining 200 employees all were tested for tobacco use and more could find their way to the unemployment line because they're addicted to nicotine. The company no longer will hire anyone who uses any form of…
stcynic | January 8, 2005Last night I received a copy of an email that some of you may have seen as well. That is, if you have ignorant friends or relatives who like to forward you breathless and overblown emails with titles like "Reclaim America as a Christian Nation!" or "The ACLU Must Be Stopped!". This particular one had a picture of a crowd of US Marines with their heads bowed in prayer and under the picture it said:
If you look closely at the picture above, you will note that all the Marines pictured are bowing their heads. That's because they're praying!
This incident took place at a recent ceremony honoring…
stcynic | January 7, 2005Since I've been busy with Dean Esmay, Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, I tagged in my partner Jon Rowe to put the Worldnutdaily's usual nonsense about church and state into a figure four logic lock. Count the pin, 1 2 3. He also hits one of my major pet peeves in this post about the tired cliche "we're not a democracy, we're a republic." Whenever I hear it, I assume that the person speaking is just repeating a phrase without any understanding of what it actually means. As Rowe points out, it isn't an either/or situation. A nation can be both a democracy and a republic because a republic is a…
stcynic | January 7, 2005Mr. Esmay replied to my last post. His reply can be found here. I am moving this up here because it will be fairly long and detailed and deserves to be its own post. He writes:
Argh. Because you still choose to hash these out as public arguments on your front page, here is my response:
Perhaps it's just me, but I thought that was the purpose of having a blog, to put your thoughts out for the public to see and comment on, leading to a sort of multi-way conversation among people. Sometimes those thoughts are responses to things other people say. When you posted your thoughts - publicly, of…
stcynic | January 6, 2005Mr. Luskin has posted a brief addendum to his article, ostensibly to answer criticism of his article, but he completely misses the point. He writes:
There is very little that needs to be said in response how some people on the internet are responding to this article. The fact that some people are actually defending the tactic of making comparisons to Holocaust deniers completely speaks for itself, and so little response is necessary. Additionally, I applaud those from all sides who have joined in this truce to agree that such comparisons do not belong in this debate.
Some have blown my…
stcynic | January 6, 2005I posted this in a comment on Dean's blog as well, since he says he will not return here to see it. But I thought my readers might want to see it too. His comment can be found at the bottom of this post. Needless to say he is upset, but I don't think it should be with me. Dean wrote:
Yes, and you manage in that answer to be pedantic, condescending, and presumptuous all at once. A hat trick. Thanks for hosting that little "Dean Esmay and his wife are lunatics and stupid too" tete-a-tete, by the way.
Dean, I think you're reacting to a few of the people who responded to what I said, not to what…
stcynic | January 4, 2005I have to send out a box full of gratitude to Reed Cartwright, who was kind enough to rescue me from my cluelessness and install the mt-blacklist plugin on my blog. I have tried several times and couldn't seem to get it to work, so I sent Reed and email and asked him for help and he got it working for me, and also upgraded my MT software to version 3.14 while he was at it. Reed is also the man who handles virtually all of the programming work at the Panda's Thumb, hacking away at the MT code and producing the wonderful style sheet that it uses (which is so much better than mine). He's one of…
stcynic | January 3, 2005I find this pretty funny. Someone told John Scalzi that there were no Christian lawyers who worked for the ACLU because the ACLU hates Christianity and wants to stamp it out (typical right wing nonsense, of course). So Scalzi promptly posted a message asking Christian lawyers who work for the ACLU to step forward and he would donate a dollar per lawyer, up to $200, for each one that did. He quickly had the first one, and shortly thereafter another. The second one was actually the past president of the ACLU of Alabama (talk about a rough job!). Says said past president:
I know of my own…