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stcynic | October 13, 2004Both Rusty at New Covenant and Matt at Wheat and Chaff have posted in the last couple days to bash Christopher Reeve for promoting embryonic stem cell (ESC) research. They say that he is selfish and self-serving for promoting "death" to improve his own position. Matt writes:
Why are these men regarded as moral heroes when their only cause is to deny life to others for their own benefit? I am sorry for the family of Christopher Reeve, and I'm sorry for the suffering he went through. Likewise for Michael J. Fox. But I do not regard it as a great act of moral bravery that they agitate for a…
stcynic | October 12, 2004What does it mean that I got all the way to the end of this post before finding out it was a satire? Does it say more about me, about how well written it is, or about the commonality of the language that it mimics so effectively?
stcynic | October 11, 2004I've often said that the most gratifying thing about blogging is the sense of community that develops, as though each blog is a house in a neighborhood and the neighborhood is full of interesting people. In my blog neighborhood, as I perceive it, there are three houses that have stood out to me above any others, the inhabitants of which I feel a particular kinship with either through common interests or common perspective, even when we may disagree. Those three houses belong to Timothy Sandefur, Jon Rowe and Jason Kuznicki. I often encourage my readers to visit their homes and enjoy their…
stcynic | October 9, 2004Via Jason Kuznicki, via Alas, A Blog, and via Teresa Nielsen Hayden, comes this story of an aspiring writer who is attempting to sell a book manuscript on E-bay, but only to famous authors. He believes that it's good enough that if it just had a famous author's name on it, it would be a bestseller. One hopes that his manuscript is written more competently than his horrible sales pitch:
I am a first time writer and have two more chapters to go, to complete my story. It's fiction, a coming of age story that would be most enjoyed by adults. It's a fascinating read that I had a couple of english…
stcynic | October 8, 2004Yesterday, I wrote about Robert Wright's claim that Daniel Dennett had reluctantly admitted that there is evidence of design in nature. Today, Andrew Sullivan has Dennett's reply:
"This is ridiculous: Wright misinterprets his own videoclip (I am grateful that it is available uncut on his website, so that everybody can see for themselves). All I agreed to was that IF natural selection had the properties of embryogenesis (or "an organism's maturation"), it would be evidence for a higher purpose. But I have always insisted that evolution by natural selection LACKS those very properties. And I…
stcynic | October 8, 2004Recently I was watching an HBO comedy special starring Ellen Degeneres. I only watched her sitcom a few times when it was on, but I've always thought she was quite funny and original. And I've always respected the way she handled that big "coming out" show that got so much attention. She didn't lose sight of the fact that it had to be funny, and it was. At the end of this special, she did something unusual - she turned up the lights and took questions from the audience. And after a few questions, a young woman stood up and started talking about how Ellen's coming out gave her the strength to…
stcynic | October 4, 2004The debate tournament went well, though I definitely realized that I am too old to do that anymore. It ended Saturday night and I'm still recovering from the lack of sleep. Still, it was a nice nostalgia trip. I was disappointed in the quality of the debate that I saw. The best team there was from Ohio and I can't imagine they would last long at a major tournament. I was told they went 3-3 at Wake Forest a few weeks ago, which is a major national tournament, and that sounds about right.
I don't know if the quality of debate overall has gone down in the 13 or 14 years since I was actively…
stcynic | September 30, 2004I posted a bit of this email from a Wall Street Journal reporter in Baghdad in the Andrew Sullivan post below, but there's more worth reading in it.
It's hard to pinpoint when the 'turning point' exactly began. Was it April
when the Fallujah fell out of the grasp of the Americans? Was it when Moqtada and Jish Mahdi declared war on the U.S. military? Was it when
Sadr City, home to ten percent of Iraq's population, became a nightly battlefield for the Americans? Or was it when the insurgency began
spreading from isolated pockets in the Sunni triangle to include most of Iraq? Despite President…
stcynic | September 30, 2004From Andrew Sullivan, an ardent supporter of the war in Iraq, who echoes much of what I've been saying here lately about the situation there:
The reason I believe things are dire in Iraq is pretty simple. The evidence is accumulating that the insurgency - fostered by Baathist thugs, al Qaeda murderers, and other Jihadists - is gaining traction. That would be a manageable problem if the population despised them and saw a way through to a better society. But the disorder and mayhem continues to delegitimize the Iraqi government and, by inference, the coalition occupation. And the inability or…
stcynic | September 29, 2004I just had to copy this passage as well from Moyers' speech.
The Chicago Tribune recently conducted a national poll in which about half of those surveyed said there should be been some kind of press restraint on reporting about the prison abuse scandal in Iraq; I suggest those people don't want the facts to disturb their belief system about American exceptionalism. The poll also found that five or six of every 10 Americans "would embrace government controls of some kind on free speech, especially if it is found unpatriotic." No wonder scoundrels find refuge in patriotism; it offers them…
stcynic | September 28, 2004From Debbie Daniels' fawning religiobabble article about President Bush at intellectualconservative.com:
George Bush is no ordinary man. It is because of his deep faith in God that he's been able to withstand the vile attacks by seemingly everyone...
He's been knocked by one of the big three networks; the billion dollar bank account of George Soros (a.k.a. Moveon.org); many foreign leaders who have been quoted saying: "We don't want George Bush to win;" the Communist Party of America; the Atheists; the Agnostics; the National Association of Women; Hollywood's Paparazzi; the Gay Community;…
stcynic | September 28, 2004I love this. The Worldnutdaily's idea of "news" is an article like this one, entitled "Christian Revival in U.S. - Can It Really Happen?", which is really just an ad pimping a book by John Chalfant that is available, naturally, from the Worldnutdaily at a tidy profit. Ironically, but predictably, Chalfant has ties to Reverend Moon (as does virtually everyone on the religious right these days, since he has spread huge amounts of money around those circles).
Chalfant is a member of the board of the Council for National Policy. Sounds inoccuous enough, but the CNP has been home to a Who's Who of…
stcynic | September 28, 2004Here's a scathing article on Bush administration incompetency in Iraq, written by a retired Air Force Colonel and Central Command war planner:
To discern the truth about Iraq, Americans must simply look beyond the spin. This war is not some noble endeavor, some great struggle of good against evil as the Bush administration would have us believe. We in the military have heard these grand pronouncements many times before by men who have neither served nor sacrificed. This war is an exercise in colossal stupidity and hubris which has now cost more than 1,000 American military lives, which has…
stcynic | September 27, 2004"The point is, if millions of heterosexual divorces every year have not hopelessly denigrated the institution of marriage, why would some thousands of same-sex marriages do so? If straights like reactionary radio commentator and drug-head Rush Limbaugh can get married again and again without undermining the institution, what is so threatening about a gay union? Does Limbaugh feel that gay marriage makes a mockery of all three of his past marriages---and his pending fourth? If anything, happy gays wanting to get into the institution might help make up for all those unhappy straights wanting to…
stcynic | September 26, 2004Eugene Volokh is guest-blogging for Glenn Reynolds on MSNBC and has written an excellent essay on the commonly-heard accusation that liberals exhibit moral relativism. Very well analyzed and fair-minded.
stcynic | September 26, 2004I got to spend yesterday with one of my longtime readers, Dan Ray, a law professor from my home state. We went to the Michigan-Iowa football game, had a nice meal and many hours of interesting conversation. One of the things we talked about was how this blog has sort of organically turned into a little mini-community of bright and interesting people, and it was a fun day of getting to know one of those people yesterday. I want to thank him for his company, and I look forward to a continuing friendship and, hopefully, to meeting some of the rest of you at some point in the future.
The most…
stcynic | September 24, 2004Via Kevin Drum:
Look at this map from the US State Department, posted in November 2001. It shows in red every country in which Al Qaeda had been known to operate. It even includes the United States. Guess what country is not on the list, the most prominent nation in the Middle East in which they did not operate? You guessed it - Iraq.
stcynic | September 24, 2004I'll be gone pretty much all day tomorrow, so nothing new until Sunday at least. I'm going down to Ann Arbor to see the Michigan/Iowa football game, and I get to meet one of my readers while I'm at it. Not a bad deal. Now if it would just turn into real fall weather, I'd be all set.
stcynic | September 24, 2004This comes from Paul Phillips, who, in addition to being one of the world's best poker players, is also a computer wizard. He's also not a guy prone to overstatement, so I'm just going to copy it here because I think this is very, very important and I want to hammer home the point to everyone who might read this page - update your Windows software:
The end is near: JPEG exploit proof of concept
It will be a bug like this that will take the whole world down. For the less computery types: a bug in all versions of windows prior to XPSP2 makes it possible for the bad guys to take over a windows…
stcynic | September 23, 2004Professor Cole also points out the same kind of ambivalent feelings I had upon learning that the Artist Formerly Known as Cat Stevens had been taken off a plane because he's on a terrorist watch list. A lot of people made fun of that, mostly because they still think of Cat Stevens as the guy who sang Moonshadow and Peace Train. Sorry kids, that Cat Stevens left us a long time ago, replaced by Yusuf Islam, a radical nutball who thinks it's okay to kill people for writing books he disagrees with. Several times he endorsed the Ayatollah Khomeini's death sentence on Salman Rushdie back in 1989.…