Archive for the ‘All’ Category
Vote Walken in 2008
The little bandwagon rolled quietly by in front of my house today and I decided to jump on. I may turn out to be fickle, but right now I'm firmly behind the Christopher Walken 2008 campaign for president. The press release from Walken's campaign, dated 9 Augsut 2005 (see the website), said The campaign website […]
Not For Our Kind of People
Staff Sgt. Jason Rivera, 26, a Marine recruiter in Pittsburgh, went to the home of a high school student who had expressed interest in joining the Marine Reserve to talk to his parents. It was a large home in a well-to-do suburb north of the city. Two American flags adorned the yard. The prospect's mom […]
In: All, Common-Place Book, Raised Eyebrows Dept.
Gosh, They Had No Idea!
In the matter of Supreme-Court nominee Roberts, I read someone quoting someone about the tens of thousands of pages of documents that the White House was refusing to release about Roberts' legal career, his opinions and ideas, his writings on the law, and such things. The thought that lept into my mind was: what is […]
In: All, Raised Eyebrows Dept., Splenetics
A Better Answer
To be sure, there are plenty of scientists who believe in God, and even Darwinists who call themselves Christians. But the acceptance of evolution diminishes religious belief in aggregate for a simple reason: It provides a better answer to the question of how we got here than religion does. Not a different answer, a better […]
Mystery and Creationism
Someone pointed out this fascinating article in the DC Examiner, in which Robert Vanasse discusses the current ruckus between fundamentalism and (rational) science and points out that it hasn't always been that way ("old time religion" is not so "old time" as fundamentalists would like to imagine), but is instead a rather recent development. Read […]
In: All, Common-Place Book, Eureka!
The Coming Convergence
Isaac is reading a biography of Isaac Newton (while I sit at the computer) and, incredibly, laughing aloud while doing so. Here is one of the moments that inspired the guffaws, indicating that wacky fundamentalist types are not only a present-day scourge: As it evolved into a new orthodoxy, Newtonianism became a target. … It […]
In: All, Common-Place Book, Plus Ca Change...
By What Measure?
You'd think, given that his popularity in surveys would probably skyrocket as a result, that the President might wipe the sweat from his brow and set a spell with Cindy Sheehan at his Crawford ranch and talk some about her dead son, Casey. It might not be an easy conversation but — as the President […]
The Matthew Effect
A little while back ("Let's Play Internet!") I wrote about trying to track down an authoritative attribution for this quotation: The plural of "anecdote" is not "data". It was fun but inconclusive, barely penetrating the surface of the murky waters of misattribution. It's a game I enjoy playing, although I only get to play in […]
Don't Eat It!
Sometimes it irritates me when I can't remember who pointed out some blog to me that I end up wanting to point out but then, in a sort of anti-anal-retentive moment, can't point out the pointer out. There are other times when we might be better off, though. It's very, very hard, I think, to […]
In: All, Curious Stuff, The Art of Conversation
Notes from Waxman's Office
With some regularity I get these interesting little statements from U.S. Representative Henry Waxman's Government Reform Minority Office. Here are the two most recent ones. Permanent Estate Tax Repeal Would Save President, Cabinet Millions of Dollars Monday, July 25, 2005 — Rep. Waxman has released a new fact sheet showing that a permanent estate tax […]
In: All, Common-Place Book, Raised Eyebrows Dept.
Pink Lemons
The inimitable snopes.com, on their "Unanswerables" page, lists these two items one after the other: I just read a blurb that pre-packaged foods can cause people to turn gay because of too much estrogen. If I was only allowed one question for snopes, I would ask if this is true. Is it? Does the color […]
In: All, Common-Place Book, Raised Eyebrows Dept.
"Struggle" vs. "War"
WASHINGTON, July 25 – The Bush administration is retooling its slogan for the fight against Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups, pushing the idea that the long-term struggle is as much an ideological battle as a military mission, senior administration and military officials said Monday. In recent speeches and news conferences, Defense Secretary Donald H. […]
In: All, Common-Place Book, Raised Eyebrows Dept.
Such a Safer World Today
Jean Charles de Menezes: an unarmed, brown-skinned man from Brazil, shot five times in the head by British policemen who thought his coat was too bulky and might, therefore, be hiding something. Which truly makes us less safe: terrorists, or the "war on terror" itself? For a chilling examination of what unthinking, bigoted hysteria can […]
An "Uncle Bruce"
Meanwhile, Rick Santorum, perhaps the most intolerant member of the Senate, turns out to have a gay chief of staff/communications director. When asked how a gay man could speak for someone with Santorum's record of homophobia, Robert Traynham said "Senator Santorum is a man of principle, he is a man who sticks up for what […]
In: All, Common-Place Book, Raised Eyebrows Dept.
Understanding vs. Control
I was struck today by another distinction between liberals and authoritarians that seems to summarize quite a few observations for me. Liberals want to understand other people's behavior; Authoritarians want to control other people's behavior. The goal for the liberals then, seems to be to figure out things to do that will accommodate and acknowledge […]
No Telling How Much
It used to be that the federal government prohibited brewers from listing the percentage of alcohol on the labels of beers to discourage people from choosing their beverages based on alcohol content. But that's not true anymore. In 1935, two years after the repeal of Prohibition, the Federal Alcohol Administration (FAA) Act prohibited the labeling […]
In: All, Common-Place Book, Plus Ca Change...
Massive Election Conspiracy Not Required
Sometime ago, I read this article in The Washington Post on the topic of election fraud: had the presidential election suffered from it. This is the bit that has continued to niggle: Similarly, it strains credulity to think that there was some sort of massive, coordinated effort to steal an election. Such a conspiracy would […]
What's That In Your Briefs?
Okay, maybe it's just me, but here was this advertisement that I noticed in an article at TalkLeft ("New Damaging Information About Karl Rove", although there's no guarantee the ad will be there when you look). Over a picture of a youngish guy in a power-blue shirt and power-red tie sitting comfortably at a desk […]
In: All, Raised Eyebrows Dept.
Let's Play Internet!
I won't claim this observation is at all profound, but it is curious, I thought.* Is this an example of a new game, named something like "Internet Quoting", akin to the well-known game known variously as "Telephone" or "Rumors" or "Whispers"? In the older game of telephone, one person in a line of, say, 20 […]
In: All, Common-Place Book, Such Language!, The Art of Conversation
Not All Things Freeze
Some time ago I started reading1 Robert Wolke's What Einstein Told His Cook 2. It is a collection of very short pieces about food and cooking from a chemist's point of view, assembled from his Washington Post columns. Rather early on though, he made a small error of fact. I point this out not to […]
In: All, It's Only Rocket Science, The Art of Conversation