(no subject)

Dispatches from the Culture Wars: Stop the Presses!:

Folks, we might be witness to an earth-shattering event: the Worldnutdaily actually printed a column that makes sense. I know, I know, it doesn't seem possible. But it's true. Read this column by Walter Williams, which bashes Congress for passing a bill to ban internet gambling (only the House has passed it so far, actually). Forget about the ongoing violence in the Middle East, this may well be the opening of the seventh seal and the start of armageddon.

a quote that column  -WorldNetDaily: Congress gambles with our liberty:

If people want to gamble online, they are going to gamble online. The only thing the act will accomplish is, like Prohibition, make criminals out of otherwise law-abiding people. It will turn banks and other financial institutions into government snoops. Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., said, "If an adult in this country, with his own money, wants to engage in an activity that harms no one, how dare we bar it." I second that and add, since protection of "the children" often serves as an excuse to restrict our liberties, that if children get involved, let their parents, not Congress, deal with it.

Frank: an activity that harms no one

See, that's the problem. There are people harmed by addictive gambling, just as their are people harmed by pretty much any addition including alcohol, tobacco, recreational drugs, and of course, blog reading on the internet.

To "their" eyes (the "freedom? what freedom?" crowd in the Right), they are protecting families from themselves, as the families of the addicts are the ones that suffer, often to the extent of needing government assistance. This assistance omething the Right also wants to do away with as its liberal socialism in action at the rich's taxpayer expense.

It all adds up - restrict the addictive activity and they can cut back on the support programs.

Of course, it completely ignores the fact that enforcement of the law will cost billions more than the social support costs do, as demonstrated by the "drug war"'s costs over the last 2 decades (especially in our courts and prisons).

But when did facts ever get in the way of "supporting the family" and "protecting the children"?

Like this fact: just how many children out there have credit cards and are using them on the internet without their parents supervision?

why Coulter is wrong part iii

Talk Reason: arguments against creationism, intelligent design, and religious apologetics:

You may have noticed something about this posting, which should be no surprise for those who are familiar with creationist apologetics. It took many pages to explain why Coulter's single paragraph was wrong. That is one of the daunting challenges facing all who take on the Coulters of the world (or Hovinds ... or even the Discovery Institute pooh bahs). Ignorance and ideology are high compression pursuits, prone to scattershot and rhetorical excess, whereas genuine science is "slow down to thinking speed" and make sure all your facts are lined up properly.

This paragraph was the end of a fascinating article covering the history of the Archaeopteryx discovery, the nature of Europe in the Jurassic that makes fossils hard to find, and the history of pre-Tertiary bird discoveries, exploring their collective relationship to history's first transitional fossil.

Part I of that series covers Coulter's repeat if the "fittest" misconception, and part II deals with her ignorant statements about the general "lack" of transitionals (where she wouldn't even dare call the magnificently predictable Tiktaalik by name).  The latter has a nice detailed explaination of "biogeography" and how it was a major factor in finding the Tiktaalik fossil.  The upcoming part IV will spend probably a million bytes or so on why her one paragraph about the Cambrian Explosion, copied verbatim from Wells, is also utterly wrong in every word.

The other interesting thing is the crediting.  Coulter doesn't directly credit anybody in her evolution section - as Al Franken noted before, Coulter has no concept of footnotes or endnotes.  Indirectly, we know from her interviews that her main sources were Dembski, Berlinski, Johnson, and Wells.

By contrast, TalkReason cites over 100 different articles, most of them peer-reviewed from journals like Nature, Science, and Scientific American.

sobering thought...

The chinese have a large enough population that if it was proportionally as educated as ours (they're working on it), they could have more people working in intelligence gathering against america than we have total people in this country.

we saw it from within, now it comes from the "top"

Jerry Falwell Ministries - Falwell Confidential: Bible History, Prophecy and ‘World War III’:

It is apparent, in light of the rebirth of the State of Israel, that the present day events in the Holy Land may very well serve as a prelude or forerunner to the future Battle of Armageddon and the glorious return of Jesus Christ.

of course, as Pharyngula notes, if you're supposedly so "in" with the lord, how come you're not absolutely certain that this actually is, or isn't, the armageddon?

these "endtimes" people piss me off.

the world ain't coming to an end.

2 billion years, then that's it.  enough time to get off this rock, i hope.