Category: Uncategorized

Strings were pulled and he had no choice but to create this:

4 Favorite Songs:

David Sylvian – Orpheus
Disturbed – Voices
Public Enemy – Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos
Duran Duran – Hungry Like the Wolf

Two groups with too many good songs to choose one:

The Police
My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult

Two groups with no good songs:

Chicago
The Grateful Dead

One group with only one good song:

Poison – Nothin’ But a Good Time

One group I don’t know well enough to choose:

Rush

NB: I would put “Down with the Sickness” above “Voices”, were it not for the rant at the end that, while thematically appropriate, breaks up the flow of the song. I seriously contemplated Sylvian’s “September“, My Chemical Romance’s “Welcome to the Black Parade“, and the perfect happy trance of Spooky’s “Don’t Panic“, but in the end I really had to go with “Orpheus” and “Black Steel”, both of which have been in the car for months.

As for the Responsible Puppet’s list, to actually articulate the mockery would be redundant; it proclaims itself. How anyone could rate “Cold as Ice” over “Jukebox Hero”, I’ll never know. More to the point, while GnR is overrated they did have three good songs off that first album, “Welcome to the Jungle”, “Paradise City”, and “Sweet Child o’ Mine”.

Kelly of the Rational Respond Squad asks a question:

This month’s issue of Psychology Today has an interesting piece that reminded me of everybody’s dear friend, Vox Day. He asserts in his blog and his book on many occasions that atheists are more likely to suffer from what he terms “social autism”–disorders such as Asperger’s Syndrome or mild forms of autism. He bases this on informal internet surveys that questioned people on their personality traits. But is the correlation really there, or is this just another attempt to disparage atheists?

An attempt to disparage atheists? Why, surely Kelly doesn’t consider human beings with Asperger’s Syndrome to be any less valuable in the eyes of God or less possessed of the unalienable rights endowed by their Creator than anyone else! The answer to her question, of course, is that it’s not a binary matter.

Kelly appears to have forgotten that the correlation between social ineptness and atheism was not first made by me, but by Gary Wolf of Wired Magazine in his influential article that first brought the New Atheists to the public’s attention, “The Church of the Non-Believers“. It was subsequently supported by the self-reported results of the atheists on Pharyngula; it was some time later that I gave the apparent phenomenon a name – social autism – and suggested a scientific hypothesis that might be worthy of further investigation.

In any event, there’s no reason to suppose that there is any inherent conflict between the hypotheses posed by Dr. Levin and me. It’s not as if there isn’t a theory which posits parenting style in general and paternal issues in particular as a causal factor in atheism, after all. Regardless, the matter is merely one for conjecture at this point, even if there is no shortage of observable empirical evidence in support of my hypothesis available all over the Internet.

In which Assistant Professor Myers boldly makes use of the trash bin:

I have to admit, I am surprised… it only took him two weeks to summon up the nerve to take on a cracker. But now that he’s found his courage, how about that radio debate, PZ?

UPDATE: PZ writes: “I’m really not at all interested in anything that loon Vox Day has to say…so there’s no point to forwarding his gibberings to me.”

I’ll just point out that I’m not the one bravely posting the contents of my garbage can on the Internet. And it’s such a pity that we won’t have any more of his keen and discerning commentary on my columns to anticipate in the future….

Since the testimonial evidence of the Apollo astronauts is considered significant when it comes to the lunar landing, what are we to make of this statement by an Apollo 14 astronaut?

Aliens have contacted humans several times but governments have hidden the truth for 60 years, the sixth man to walk on the moon has claimed. Apollo 14 astronaut Dr Edgar Mitchell, said he was aware of many UFO visits to Earth during his career with NASA but each one was covered up.

I think the solution is to be found in numerology. The number 14 is 2 x 7, and while 7 is a holy number, being the number of days in which God created the Earth – including the day of rest – 2 is an evil number indicating Man’s separation from God. Therefore, the 14 in Apollo is indicative of a lie, whereas 11, being an odd number and the number of Joseph’s brothers less Joseph himself, indicates a degree of ultimate reconciliation despite initial untrustworthiness.

Of course, 11 could also be read as 1+1, which would equal the evil number, in which case the separation almost surely represents the separation of the Moon from the Earth, thus indicating that the Moon landings were hoaxes. Ah well, perhaps the aliens will be able to work it out.

In which a women misinterprets the data:

A report from Britain’s leading universities found that for every 16-point increase in their IQ score, men were 35 per cent more likely to find themselves a wife. Yet for women, each 16-point advance in their intelligence decreased their chance of getting married by more than 40 per cent.

This, naturally, is somehow interpreted as men being afraid of successful women. First, this involves confusing intelligence with success; the two may be positively correlated but they are not synonymous. Even using income as a stand-in for success is not necessarily correct since it ignores wealth.

What’s left out of this equation is the fact that women are not helpless bystanders to the process. In most of the situations I’ve seen, it is the fact that many women refuse to consider getting involved with anyone they consider to be less successful, thereby limiting their marital options. For example, I knew several men in college who dated “townies”, but I can’t recall a single university woman ever doing so. In general, I would say it is much more accurate to say that women are scared of unsuccessful men than to say that men are scared of successful women.

But it is true that women significantly overrate the importance of their income and education to most men. While such things might be quite appealing to the lazy guy, the permanent adolescent, or the artistic dreamer, they’re simply irrelevant to the average man who is capable of supporting himself and is interested in having a family. He’s less likely to be concerned about a woman’s “success” and more concerned about the obstacles that “success” places in the way of her successfully being able to live up to the responsibilities of being a wife and mother.

Ian McLeod of the Clan McLeod wonders:

What is the cubic root of red?

6.341325705384997

Scott Hatfield asks a question:

It should be noted that Vox’s arguments are short on the sort of data that impress working biologists, but they are long on ‘information + intelligence + pattern recognition.’ But the question is, what if your intelligent attempts to recognize patterns are based on faulty information?

Then the attempts are doomed to near-certain failure. GIGO and all that. If there is nothing new about the epigenetic inheritance reported so breathlessly in New Scientist magazine and Lamarckism is not due for an unexpected revival, then obviously any conclusions based on that information are incorrect. Of course, my skepticism about ND-TENS long precedes Ms Young’s article and is in no way dependent upon the vagaries of prospective Neo-Lamarckism. While I still expect the Darwinian biological model to eventually go the way of the Ptolemaic cosmological model, the Marxian economic model, and the Freudian psychological model, I should be very surprised to see it happen within the next thirty years.

Now, if New Scientist magazine is little more than puffed-up science fiction, perhaps Scott or another science enthusiast would be so kind as to direct my attention to a more reliable source of science information. If scientists are genuinely concerned that the public is well-informed on science matters, it would seem to make sense for them to provide some reasonable means of doing so. I can’t say I’m terribly shocked to have the scientific legitimacy of New Scientist called into question, however, given the plethora of articles on largely unscientific concepts such as global warming, string theory, multiverses, and dark matter/energy/vapor.

On Pharyngula the other day, a man named Fr. J pointed out that PZ’s hate mail notwithstanding, it is atheists who are killing Christians rather than the other way around. Unsurprisingly, this prompted the expected reaction from PZ’s incredibly ignorant and mindlessly defensive readers:

“I read about how atheists kill and torture Christians all the time.”

Woah, proofs? And while you’re at it, care to talk about the jews you guys killed and tortured for supposedly desecrating the host?
Posted by: Michelle | July 22, 2008 3:27 PM

You lying sack of crap… where have the actual threats and actions of physical harm come from in this inceident? WHERE? Answer the question. Then go away.
Posted by: Celtic_Evolution | July 22, 2008 3:25 PM

No you don’t, you fucking liar.
Posted by: Brownian, OM | July 22, 2008 3:22 PM

That is a big fat case of your pants being on fire lying.
Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | July 22, 2008 3:32 PM

And I read about Kirk sky-diving from orbit! IT MUST BE TRUE.
Seriously, with this comment you’ve embarrassed yourself past even most christians being willing to defend you.
Posted by: NanuNanu | July 22, 2008 3:41 PM

I can believe that’s true if you spend all your time reading medical reports documenting the delusions of schizophrenics.
Posted by: Emmet Caulfield | July 22, 2008 4:00 PM

There are four atheist countries in which atheists are presently jailing, torturing, and murdering Christians. These countries are China, Laos, North Korea, and Vietnam. (Cuba was doing the same in the past, but has shown some respect for religious freedom for nearly a decade now.) While American atheists customarily try to fall back on a spurious No True Atheist defense, government documents prove this defense to not only be illogical, but incontrovertibly false. For example, the motivation for China’s most recent wave of anti-Christian persecution was laid out in a government document entitled “Notice on Further Strengthening Marxist Atheism Research, Propaganda and Education“. This proves that the motivation underlying the persecution is atheism; specifically the Marxist variant which is the heart of a godless worldview that correctly sees Christianity as a serious threat.

A subsequent document laid out the case against the Christian church: “We have dealt with the Falun-gong. We have arrested and put their leaders on the run. Now we must resolutely and strongly deal with the unregistered house churches. They are too numerous — too many. We must deal with them strongly.”

Given that at least 1,600 Falun Gong practitioners have been tortured to death and a number of recent Christian deaths have also been confirmed, such as the beating death of Ms. Jiang Zongxiu in prison on June 18, 2004 and the death of Bishop John Han Dingxian on September 12, 2007, there is absolutely no question that Chinese atheists are murdering Christians today and intend to continue doing so.

The situation is much worse in North Korea. In TIA, I quoted a 2004 article published by The Guardian: “The number of prisoners held in the North Korean gulag is not known: one estimate is 200,000, held in 12 or more centres. Camp 22 is thought to hold 50,000. Most are imprisoned because their relatives are believed to be critical of the regime. Many are Christians, a religion believed by Kim Jong-il to be one of the greatest threats to his power.” These North Koreans are not “Kim Jong-ilists”; they are atheists and correctly identify themselves as such. Their atheist self-identification is less dubious than that of the American atheist who makes a fetish of science and/or Darwinism and believes in the ever-ineffable “progress” towards a shiny, secular, material paradise.

In Vietnam, the atheist regime is currently persecuting the Montagnards, a predominantly Christian minority. This is probably done as much for ethnic reasons as anti-religious ones, but the persecution has been purely religious and directed against ethnic Vietnamese Christians in the recent past. Persecution is most intense for the ethnic minorities, especially the Montagnards from the hill country. Many of these people have attempted to flee to neighbouring Cambodia. However, under an agreement with the Vietnamese government, the authorities there have been returning the refugees to Vietnam to collect a bounty. Those who are returned are imprisoned, tortured or killed. Despite the persecution, instead of being destroyed, the church in Vietnam is growing and becoming stronger. Christians now make up almost ten percent of the population.

In Laos, Christians are considered to be enemies of the state and have been viciously persecuted since 1975. Although the persecution has not been as intense in the last three years, it still continues: “At least thirteen Christian villagers who were falsely accused of stirring rebel dissent have been killed by authorities in Laos over the past month, according to an August 7, [2007] report from Compass Direct. The report also states that approximately 200 Christians in the village of Sai Jerern have been arrested and imprisoned.”

Atheists have been murdering Christians almost non-stop around the world for the last 91 years and they have done so with predictable regularity in the majority of countries where they have obtained political dominance. It is all too typical that American atheists are far more concerned about Christian crimes committed against non-atheists in Europe more than 500 years ago than they are about the crimes being committed by avowed atheists against Asian Christians today.

But the persecutions will fail in the end, as they always do, and as Western Christianity continues to decline amidst its sloth, wealth, and apostasy, Eastern Christianity will rise, energized by the bloody test of its faith in the risen Lord Jesus Christ.

First, Spacebunny alerted me to the arrival of…THE LANDMARK HERODOTUS! It’s not on the short list for the next book study, but it’s a really lovely book. By the way, if your paperback Thucydides fell apart too, let me know. I took a picture of mine and I’m contacting the publisher, so perhaps we can arrange for an exchange or something.

Also, I finally managed to get not one, but TWO high scores on our Wii Fit. Spacebunny is absolutely crushing me at nearly everything; at one point, the only thing I had the high score on was pushups, she had the other 60 or whatever. Now, it’s true that she spends rather more time on it than I do, but even so, it’s just been an all-around horrible performance by me.

Here’s the quiz for the final chapter of Thucydides. I’d like to have a separate discussion of some of the appendices to accompany the final test that will be posted next Saturday. In the meantime, do discuss away:

The Landmark Thucydides 8.1 to 8.109

For those who wondered how I could possibly write in TIA that the death sentence imposed on Socrates by the Athenians was justified, this chapter should suffice to explain quite a bit.

I’m quite a bit late in chiming in here on chapter seven, but it’s my blog so I’m going to go ahead and do so. While I find the political speeches and the section on revolution to be the most insightful parts of the history, the chapter on the Sicilian Expedition is easily the most fascinating to anyone with even the slightest interest in wargames.

The first thing that leaps out at one is the fact that what is quite clearly a major invasion has somehow come to be characterized as an “expedition”. Just as we are expected to cheer for the Romans, we are supposed to cheer for the noble and intellectual Athenians, who would never to anything so vulgar and grasping as to “invade” a rich and prosperous land. They’re just attempting to spread democracy around Greece and Italy, some 2,400 years in advance of the neocon world democratic revolution. It’s intriguing to note that not even the pretension to be altruistically spreading democracy under the force of arms is new.

The second thing that is striking is the very crude state of siege warfare at this point in time. Sparta has been staring helplessly at the walls of Athens for some time, in Syracuse, the landside circumvallation of the city is assumed to be its death knell by both sides. The frantic wall-building on both sides seems a little strange, especially the notion of a perpendicular wall as a serious counter-measure, but then, without any reasonable siegecraft, it would have amounted to an effective land-sea blockade.

As for the omens, I tend to doubt that they played as big a part in Nicias’s decision to delay the Athenian departure once Demosthenes’s attack failed as is customarily supposed to be the case. It seems pretty clear that Nicias had good cause to believe that returning to Athens would probably end in a death sentence for him, as he later makes his preference in this regard quite specific. So, the omens strike me as much more of an excuse to justify his stupid and selfish decision to keep the expeditionary forces at Syracuse, especially given the not-entirely-serious manner with which many Athenians customarily practiced their religion, to say nothing of giving the reported fifth column more time to work inside the Syracusan walls. There is little doubt that the Spartans, on the other hand, really did take their ceremonies and omens very seriously indeed, considering how many times they sacrificed the initiative because of an ill-timed earthquake on the peninsula.

The most important lesson of the Sicilian Expedition, in my opinion, is the way it shows how foreign military adventures tend to weaken a powerful empire rather than strengthen it. How many powerful military nations have fallen after engaging in aggressive action? Expanding empires tend to be marked by smaller forces carving up huge chunks of land almost haphazardly, as the British did in India, the French in Africa and the Spanish in South America. But massive military actions seem to often be the prelude to a collapse, often in connection with the failure of the aggression.

This does not bode well for the current USA, given its shaky economic position and the multiple military occupations in which it is engaged around the world.