Category: Uncategorized

Dan waxes wroth:

‘Christian’ I doubt it very much. Let that be said but your ramblings or better known as ‘Bush Derangement Syndrome’ only serves what the democrat party portrays in their unadulterated hate for our troops and America at a time of war. Instead of getting your talking points from the alphabet soup stations of biased news all the time like abc, cbs, nbc, pbs, msnbc, npr, etc. you ought to check out what’s really happening from the ‘ground troops’ that are actually serving this nation while armchair quarterbacks like yourself are stabbing them in the back. Your hatred for a fine leader in President Bush has blinded you to the truth.

If your still believing the nonsense of it’s a ‘war for oil’ then you and Greenspan are too far gone.

THANK GOD for President Bush and our troops for not taking heed of the enemies wishes in Iraq or in America such as the democrats and Vox Day.

Yes, obviously one who fails to believe with his heart that George W. Bush is lord is no Christian. It seems Dan has an itch in his back that only twelve inches of West Texas steel will cure.

James Oliver Rigney Jr, author of the long-running fantasy series The Wheel of Time and better known to millions of fans by the pen name Robert Jordan, died on 16 Sept 2007 from cardiac amyloidosis. Jordan announced he had been diagnosed with the disease in March 2006 and vowed to beat the odds, but determination and gumption sometimes just aren’t enough in the face of a disease with a median survival time of just over two years. Jordan was in the process of writing the twelfth and final book in the Wheel of Time series, A Memory of Light, but the book was not slated for release until 2009 and is still incomplete.

The authors of A Wrinkle in Time and The Wheel of Time series both died recently, on September 6th and September 16th, respectively. While I loved Madeleine L’Engle’s work – A Swiftly Tilting Planet is still the model of pure fictional tension for me – and very much disliked Robert Jordan’s imposing collection of doorstops, it seems right to note the respective passings of two very different fantasy authors.

And while I would be happy to forgo ever reading another word of Jordan’s prose, I do admire his resourcefulness in preparing copious notes and recordings so that his estate could arrange for the twelfth and last book to be finished, in anticipation of his untimely demise. Such an action isn’t akin to the abusive committing of prequels that has become increasingly common these days, but rather, an indication of a storyteller’s laudable concern for his audience and desire to ensure that the tale is completed.

Nevertheless, here’s hoping George R.R. Martin isn’t forced to do likewise.

PS – While we’re on the subject of non-deceased fantasy writers, I should mention that last week I accepted a book contract from a small fantasy press for a novel set in the world in which a few of my short stories are set. I chose this project because the publisher was specifically interested in my ideas about breaking outside of some of the entrenched fantasy tropes in favor of a more historical and philosophical approach. It’s not the sort of thing one would ever bother to submit to places like Baen or Tor, given that it completely lacks those all-important elements of plasma cannons or vampire sex. The working title is Sublimus Dei, and the story concerns the struggles of powerful factions within and without a Church that is occupied with deciding whether the non-human inhabitants of the world possess immortal souls or not.

Sublimus Dei will be published in December 2008.

I’d be tempted to break a few windows, or maybe just a windshield, if I knew my neighbor was a volunteer spy:

After clocking drivers in her hometown for almost a year, Hudson, Wis., resident Jodi Colbeth has learned a lot about speeders. Women tend to have more of a lead foot than men. Teenage boys driving tricked-out Honda Civics are probably going too fast. Ditto for pizza delivery guys.

Colbeth is one of about eight volunteers in the Traffic Tamers program who regularly check out a radar gun from the Hudson Police Department to help tag speeders. About once a month, Colbeth and another volunteer pick a “hot spot” in the city and clock everyone who drives by during a shift about two hours long.

I must be getting old. I remember when people used to point out how awful the Soviet Union and East Germany were because of all the spies among the citizenry. And what a surprise that it should be middle-aged female government bureaucrats that are volunteering for this.

Now Americans are being actively encouraged to spy for terrorists, tax evaders, in-state residents and speeders, among others. Why not go whole hog and set up citizens groups to spy for secret homosexuals, adulterers, global warming deniers and illicit doughnut eaters? Ah, that’s right, doughnuts are still legal… at least they are until health care gets nationalized.

L’Affaire Belicheat may run deeper, according to PFT:

Goodell has ordered the team to turn over all videotapes, notes, and files dating back to 2000. They have to do this, Mortensen explained. If the materials indicate further rules violations, or if there is any fishy behavior in connection with the disclosure of information, there will be further sanctions.

My suspicion, as I suggested previously, is that Goodell is gauging public sentiment. Since the punishment has been widely perceived as having been unfairly light when compared to Wade Wilson’s five-game suspension, I think he’s looking for an excuse to drop another hammer on the New England coach.

A scientist blows the whistle on the poor reliability of peer-reviewed scientific research:

Most Science Studies Appear to Be Tainted By Sloppy Analysis

These flawed findings, for the most part, stem not from fraud or formal misconduct, but from more mundane misbehavior: miscalculation, poor study design or self-serving data analysis. “There is an increasing concern that in modern research, false findings may be the majority or even the vast majority of published research claims,” Dr. Ioannidis said. “A new claim about a research finding is more likely to be false than true.”

The hotter the field of research the more likely its published findings should be viewed skeptically, he determined….

In research published last month in the Journal of the American Medical Association, Dr. Ioannidis and his colleagues analyzed 432 published research claims concerning gender and genes. Upon closer scrutiny, almost none of them held up. Only one was replicated.

This doesn’t surprise me in the slightest, especially in light of what we’ve learned in the course of the ongoing evolution debate. (I should be posting my latest response to Scott this weekend.) Science is far less reliable than scientists would have us believe; this shouldn’t surprise anyone, least of all economists, given the financial incentive for scientific publication. It would certainly be interesting to see what Dr. Ioannidis would conclude were he to perform a similar study on the published research claims regarding evolution and genes, especially considering his conclusion that “Claimed Research Findings May Often Be Simply Accurate Measures of the Prevailing Bias“.

In any event, it does offer an explanation of why the scientists are having so much trouble understanding the significance of my “margin of error” point.

In anatomy class, you got a butt-minus!

This ad is hysterical. Of course, even funnier than the ad is the idea that public school teachers should command so much respect that they cannot be objectified in this way. But what schoolboy wouldn’t like a slender, sexy teacher?

Peter King argues that the NFL’s penalty should have included a suspension:

Goodell slapped Belichick hard, but not hard enough. A suspension should have accompanied the loss of the top draft choice.

I think the penalty is appropriate, but a bit soft in light of how Wade Wilson was suspended for five games for his much more defensible transgression. Of course, Goodell is primarily concerned with dissuading future behavior, and HGH is more likely to be an ongoing problem than illicit filming. Coaches aren’t going to be willing to risk losing a first-round draft pick in order to pick up defensive signals in the future.

I would have preferred to see Belicheck also suspended for four games and for the team’s fine to come off its salary cap as well. Of course, if more wrongdoing is uncovered, Goodell will have an excuse to jack up the penalty; I don’t think the initial response to the punishment expresses the sense of satisfaction that justice has been done for which he was surely hoping. If New England didn’t have two first-round picks, it might have been perceived as appropriate, but since they do, the whole thing feels somewhat tailored and superficial.

However, as PFT has already pointed out, this affair is likely to move the Competition Committee towards allowing radio helmets for defensive captains. I don’t like it, but I don’t have a huge problem with it either ; it’s clear that the league is increasingly moving towards on-field play calls anyhow, thanks to Peyton Manning.

In any event, the most painful punishment isn’t one that the NFL could dictate anyhow. It’s the fact that Belicheck will henceforth be known as “Belicheat”. That’s a pain that’s not only going to sting, but linger and fester, for Belicheat himself as well as the Patriots’ fan base.

I’m beginning to understand why so many people hate this man:

Whatever political party you belong to, whatever your position on Iraq, we should be able to agree that America has a vital interest in preventing chaos and providing hope in the Middle East.

I, for one, don’t agree at all. America doesn’t have a vital interest in providing hope ANYWHERE. And chaos in the Middle East actually works to our benefit. The first part of “divide and conquer” is “divide”. The neocon notion of “unify and convince” is hopeless.

The success of a free Iraq is critical to the security of the United States.

Thus speaks the man who is actively allowing tens of millions of Mexicans to invade the country. What a contemptible creature. Not even Clinton lied so blatantly.

Does anyone know how to get rid of tabs and line returns by using Find and Replace in OpenOffice Writer? It’s simple in Word, one simply uses ^t and ^p, but that doesn’t work in Writer.