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stcynic | July 23, 2004Today's target is one Robert Meyer, who wrote this train wreck of an article, Were We Fooled by Stephen J. Gould ? on a site called intellectualconservative.com. If this article represents what they consider to be intellectual, it's time to redefine the term. It's one of those extraordinarily common articles where someone who clearly knows nothing whatsoever about evolutionary theory nonetheless feels qualified to spout off about it, combining smugness with ignorance along the way. In it, Meyer goes for the two oldest and most often refuted lies about Gould. They were in fact refuted by Gould…
stcynic | July 23, 2004In a post about Linda Ronstadt and the Aladdin situation, someone mentioned that the opening act for her show was the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra performing Rhapsody in Blue and other Gershwin songs. It reminded me of this story, which in retrospect I find very amusing. As a much younger man, I was involved in a long term relationship that was about as empty as a relationship could be. She wasn't a bad person, she just wasn't really what I wanted and I wasn't really what she wanted, and neither of us bothered to leave for a long period of time. It's a fairly common situation, I think, but…
stcynic | July 23, 2004Matt Powell of Wheat and Chaff has responded, at least indirectly, to my post on evolving morality. That is, he is ostensibly responding to my friend DarkSyde's comments left on Rusty's kind-of response to my post, but he mentions me by name. The mistakes in Matt's post begin with the title itself, which is "Judging God". But nowhere do I "judge God". What I judged - i.e. analyzed, thought about, reached conclusions about - are claims about God, specifically the claims that God ordered slavery and genocide. I reject those claims, in every case in which they are made. Matt rejects all such…
stcynic | July 22, 2004This is the text of a fundraising e-mail sent out by the Christian Family Coalition. I have not altered the text in any way, but I have added my own comments in italics just for fun.
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From: Christian Family Coalition
The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, the nation's most radical homosexual group HAS RECEIVED A $100,000 matching grant to LEGALIZE homosexual "marriage" in America from a "gay family"! (see the scare quotes around "gay family"? Everyone knows that gays don't have families, only Christians have families. In fact, they've trademarked…
stcynic | July 21, 2004Rusty Lopez at New Covenant has responded to my post on the evolution of morality. Well, he's kind of responded, by which I mean his response doesn't actually engage what I said very much at all. He doesn't deny the fact that today's common moral precepts are significantly different from those found in the bible as it regards either the conduct of war or the institution of slavery (the claim that morality has evolved) or that today's outrage at slavery is better than the bible's acceptance of it (that it has evolved for the better). And those were, after all, the central claims of my essay on…
stcynic | July 20, 2004I'm sure this story will be all over the blogosphere. Linda Ronstadt, a singer I've never much liked, performed a concert at the Aladdin Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas on Saturday night. Here's the report on what happened:
Singer Linda Ronstadt was thrown out of the Aladdin casino in Las Vegas on the weekend after dedicating a song to liberal film maker Michael Moore and his movie "Fahrenheit 9/11," a casino spokeswoman said on Monday.
Ronstadt, who had been hired for a one-show engagement Saturday night at the Las Vegas Strip casino, dedicated a performance of "Desperado" to Moore and his…
stcynic | July 20, 2004Hat tip to Jon Rowe for the link to this blog, Electric Commentary. It reads like a list of my favorite things.
Caddyshack references? Check
Loves the Sports Guy? Check
References to the Will Farrell/Christopher Walken Cowbell sketch? Check
Wants Martha Stewart and Courtney Love to share a cell in prison? Check
Overall, a nice mix of the serious and the satirical. Check out this blog.
stcynic | July 17, 2004Another "exclusive commentary" from the WorldNutDaily, which, as usual, means that no one else would publish such a ridiculous article so they get exclusive access to it. This one is from P. Andrew Sandlin, the president of something called the Center for Cultural Leadership, and is called In Praise of Discrimination. It's pretty standard stuff from the religious right, mostly silly arguments based on bad history, sprinkled with responses to crude caricatures of "liberal beliefs" - the straw man seems to be God's own favorite fallacy. He begins his argument against gay marriage the same…
stcynic | July 16, 2004If you're looking for something substantive today, you best move along to the next blog. I'm just not motivated to write anything serious today. But I did find out that the immortal Sports Guy has his own domain now and, since he quit being a writer for the Jimmy Kimmel show, he's posting stuff nearly every day. If you're a fan of sports, sarcastic humor, or both, this is a must-read every day. And in honor of him, my own thoughts on what has been the strangest NBA off season in recent memory.
Burning Questions for Next Season
1. Who is the big winner in the Shaq v. Kobe steel cage death…
stcynic | July 15, 2004Don M. sent me a link to the Discount Blogger and I came across this post on gay marriage, which includes the following statement:
I wish conservatives would just understand that this is something they're going to be remembered for 50...100 years down the road. When gay people are allowed to marry and when we're raising healthy, productive families and are full members of society, we'll look back to the early part of this century and wonder how anyone could have done what conservatives tried to do.
I agree completely, and was just saying this to Lynn last night. I don't think it will take…
stcynic | July 15, 2004Mr. Sandefur writes this morning:
Again, Im sorry if my tone came off as overly hostile to Ed Brayton. Hes right that Mercers phraseology was silly, but the other things he said were wrong (and yes, I know Brayton was joking, but the joke was an attempt to express real beliefs, and it was baseless; one doesnt get a free pass by just saying it was a joke.) But normally I agree with Brayton, and enjoy his blog immensely.
Adversity is true friendship.William Blake
For the record, I never took Timothy's criticisms as hostile at all. I consider him a friend and, as the William Blake quote implies…
stcynic | July 13, 2004Boy, ya know, I send all those people to read his brilliant posts on constitutional law, and this is how he repays me! He thinks my post about the Randian grandeur of sex was mean-spirited, overly simplistic and betrays an ignorance of Rand's views on sex. To which I reply, "guilty as charged". But Timothy, it was a joke. I was just poking fun at Mercer's profoundly ridiculous invocation of the "Randian grandeur and meaning" of sex. The Marge Schott joke was really just a recycled joke I wrote about Madilyn Murray O'Hair a long time ago. And of course I know that people who like Ayn Rand…
stcynic | July 12, 2004There's something just plain weird about this commentary by Ilana Mercer in the WorldNutDaily. She is discussing a couple of books, one entitled Ayn Rand, Homosexuality, and Human Liberation by Chris Matthew Sciabarra, and one entitled The Hijacking of a Philosophy: Homosexuals vs. Ayn Rand's Objectivism by Reginald Firehammer (theres a porn star name if ever I've seen one). In particular, she is discussing the foreword to the first book, written by Lindsay Perigo, in which he pledges to challenge Ayn Rand's "outrageous view" of homosexuality "in the name of objectivism". Now, I have read…
stcynic | July 12, 2004John Scalzi has an interesting post this morning (well, interesting if you're a writer anyway) about the use of punctuation, prompted by a little battle he is having with the copy editor for his new book. It's interesting to me, at least, because I just had a similar conversation with Lynn last night in the context of discussing Mencken's writing. John writes:
The comma thing does make me aware how much I use punctuation in general and commas specifically for intonation in my writing. Commas are grammatically used today primarily for reading clarity, to separate phrases and clauses from each…
stcynic | July 7, 2004Thanks to the anonymous person who nominated me for the underblog list. That's a list of blogs that someone thinks should be read more widely, published by an Australian blog. Timothy Sandefur is on the list too, as well he should be. Check out the whole list, you may find some other great pages you didn't know about.
stcynic | July 6, 2004Whenever you find something on Worldnutdaily labeled an "exclusive commentary", you can usually be assured that it's exclusive because it's so badly written and poorly reasoned that no one else would publish it. Such is the case with today's commentary by Mychal Massie entitled Morality Doesn't Evolve. It's badly written because it's written in that pseudo-highbrow style that uses words because they sound impressive, not because the resulting sentence is either eloquent or persuasive. To wit:
Minority rule is now the consensus notwithstanding the majority, and heretofore the laws hold…
stcynic | July 5, 2004Coach K has turned down the Lakers' offer to coach in the NBA and decided to stay at Duke University. According to news reports out of LA, not only did they offer him $8 million a year ($2 million more than Phil Jackson made even after winning 3 NBA titles with the Lakers), they also offered him the post of team president, which would mean total control over all basketball decisions (something Jackson never had), AND a 5% ownership stake in the team, one of the most valuable in all of sports. No wonder he was tempted to take it. But in the end, he couldn't leave the university he loves. Good…
stcynic | July 4, 2004I've been documenting lately the many lies put out by Rev. Moon's Unification Church, and one of the reasons why I'm so fascinated by this is because the pattern is so similar to what we see from ID advocates - say one thing to the public, a different thing to the "initiated", and then when someone posts the contradictory statements, claim that they're just biased or part of some cabal out to destroy men of God. Now let me make a direct connection between the two.
One of the most prominent advocates of Intelligent Design Creationism is Jonathan Wells, author of Icons of Evolution. He has a…
stcynic | July 2, 2004Say it ain't so. Please say it ain't so. Long time readers of this blog know that I am a huge college basketball fan, especially a Duke fan. Have been since I was about 14 years old. Coach K has been at Duke since 1981. In that 23 years, he has taken Duke to 10 final fours and 3 national championships. He is the unquestioned king of college basketball coaches, and he is revered at Duke. But now the LA Lakers have offered him a huge contract to coach in the NBA, something he has turned down several times before, and he is seriously considering it. Duke fans are on pins and needles awaiting his…
stcynic | June 28, 2004You know, when I first started blogging I refused to do these lists that made the rounds of blogs. What changed? I have no idea. But if it's good enough for my buddy PZ and the Little Professor, it's good enough for me. So herewith, the ABCs of me:
Act your age? Actually, I think I'm finally aging into my personality. I was born a curmudgeon. I'm told that my first spoken words were, "Goddamned kids these days."
Born on what day of the week? Not a clue.
Chore you hate? Cleaning. Cleaning what? Almost anything.
Dads name? Alton David, but he goes by David. I also have a brother who is Jack…