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Eqquus Pallidus and the Topical Omnivore intend to debate evolution as well. Specifically, they are discussing this:

“By recourse only to Physics, Mathematics, and Logic, the existence of the universe requires, as a prerequisite, the existence of the God described by Christian scripture, rather than any other God, gods, or no god at all.”

Given EP’s history of posting here, I have no idea whether it will be a coherent discussion or an incomprehensible train wreck, but it will almost surely be entertaining in one way or another. I’m personally more than a little skeptical of this tact, but I remain open to the possibilities.

In case you ever need to get out of jury duty:

On a questionnaire that all potential jurors fill out, Ellis wrote that he didn’t like homosexuals and blacks. He then echoed those sentiments in an interview with Nickerson.

“You say on your form that you’re not a fan of homosexuals,” Nickerson said.

“That I’m a racist,” Ellis interrupted.

“I’m frequently found to be a liar, too. I can’t really help it,” Ellis added.

“I’m sorry?” Nickerson said.

“I said I’m frequently found to be a liar,” Ellis replied.

“So, are you lying to me now?” Nickerson asked.

“Well, I don’t know. I might be,” was the response.

I suspect two easier ways of getting out of it are as follows:

1. Start handing out information on jury nullification. You’ll not only get out of any prospective duty, they’ll send you home.

2. Tell the judge that you’d be a really good juror, because you can tell who is guilty just by looking at their eyes.

Justin Raimondo points out that Cindy Sheehan is sounding remarkably more sober than either the Democrats or the Republicans these days. I wonder how long it will take Democrats to disown her:

“I was a lifelong Democrat only because the choices were limited. The Democrats are the party of slavery and were the party that started every war in the 20th century except the other Bush debacle. The Federal Reserve, permanent federal (and unconstitutional) income taxes, Japanese concentration camps and, not one, but two atom bombs dropped on the innocent citizens of Japan were brought to us via the Democrats. Don’t tell me the Democrats are our ‘Saviors,’ because I am not buying it, especially after they bought and purchased more caskets and more devastating pain when they financed and co-facilitated more of George’s abysmal occupation and they are allowing a melt down of our representative Republic by allowing the evils of the executive branch to continue unrestrained by their silent complicity.”

As Justin notes, she sounds almost like Ron Paul. She’s certainly to be preferred to Nancy Pelosi, anyhow.

La Paglia Divina shows her open mind as a fellow Democrat rebukes the Green faith:

95 percent of the Earth’s greenhouse gases is that ethereal substance known as H2O. Peek out your window — you might be able to see a little bit of it. Without it, the Earth would be a balmy zero degrees F (ice skating galore). Of the remaining 5 percent greenhouse gases, 4.5 percent is attributed to CO2. Of this 4.5 percent, only 0.3 percent is caused by human activities such as burning fossil fuels, mowing Al Gore’s lawn, belching, etc. The remaining 4.2 percent of CO2 emanates from the Earth itself. If 0.3 percent sounds insignificant, it’s because it is….

Al Gore (and the U.N.) exclusively use Antarctic ice-core data of ancient air bubbles supposedly trapping the precise amount of CO2 that existed then versus now. This data set has recently been shown to be flawed by experiments proving that those ancient air bubbles did not encapsulate the CO2 but allowed some of it to escape, thus making the data look as if modern CO2 readings are significantly higher (20 percent) than in the past. More reliable proxy indicators for CO2 such as ocean sediment do not show a significant increase due to human activities.

Bravo for your invigorating deconstruction of current propaganda! I too am very concerned about the potential damage to Democrat credibility coming from the grab-bag Gore crusade, with its wild exaggerations and hypocritical sanctimony.

Sure, she’s economically illiterate and an uncharacteristically frightened female on gun rights, but nevertheless, she’s always worth reading.

I think that’s what everyone would like to know. You’d think that the administration couldn’t possibly be stupid enough to even think about running a false flag operation to try to whip the American people into a hysterical frenzy for a war with Iran, especially after the recent reports that Entebbe was just such an operation, but you never know:

U.S. counterterror officials are warning of an increased risk of an attack this summer, given al-Qaida’s apparent interest in summertime strikes and increased al-Qaida training in the Afghan-Pakistani border region.

On Tuesday, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff told the editorial board of The Chicago Tribune that he had a “gut feeling” about a new period of increased risk. He based his assessment on earlier patterns of terrorists in Europe and intelligence he would not disclose.

The problem is that the nature of the previous attacks in Britain is far too small to get Americans worked up for a third invasion of the Middle East. Even looking the other way while a few terrorists crash their car into a shopping mall isn’t going to do the trick. So, it leaves the administration with the choice of doing nothing, doing something without any mass support, or trying to generate that support somehow.

I suspect they’ll choose the first option, if nothing else because far too many people are more than ready to leap on anything that will give them a chance to impeach Bush.

The Inquisition rumbles:

Pope Benedict XVI has ignited controversy across the world by approving a document saying non-Catholic Christian communities are either defective or not true churches, and the Roman Catholic Church provides the only true path to salvation.

“Christ ‘established here on earth’ only one church,” said the document, reasserting the primacy of Catholicism.

It said other Christian communities such as Protestants “cannot be called ‘churches’ in the proper sense” since they don’t have what’s known as apostolic succession – that is, the ability to trace their bishops back to the original 12 apostles of Jesus. The document said the Orthodox church suffered from a “wound” because it did not recognize the primacy of the pope, adding the wound was “still more profound” among Protestant denominations.

It was “difficult to see how the title of ‘Church’ could possibly be attributed to them,” said the statement from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, purporting Roman Catholicism was “the one true Church of Christ.”

“These separated churches and communities, though we believe they suffer from defects, are deprived neither of significance nor importance in the mystery of salvation,” the document read. “In fact the Spirit of Christ has not refrained from using them as instruments of salvation, whose value derives from that fullness of grace and of truth which has been entrusted to the Catholic Church.”

I don’t take much exception to this statement, except for the inaccurate report that Pope Benedict is claiming salvation comes through the Catholic Church. He isn’t, nor is the Congregation, such a description is simply an example of the inability of the media to understand theological issues than anything very controversial.

Dread should have a field day with this one. The statement makes complete sense if you understand what the Congregation is asserting, which almost certainly isn’t what 99.99 percent of the people think he is saying. And honestly, I’m delighted to see the Latin Mass is back. I’ll probably attend a service or two, in fact. John Paul II was a good pope, but Benedict is off to a blazing start. (Just a little Inquisition humor for you there….) Someone should send him one of Sam Harris’s books, that just might be enough to cause him to rethink that whole “we don’t burn atheists” thing.

Oh… you did know that the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is the institution formerly known as the Inquisition, right?

I haven’t been paying much attention to the Democrats since the “race” is simply a delayed coronation for Hillary, but I would have thought that the Magic Negro coming out wouldn’t have completely escaped my notice.

Presidential Candidates In First Ever Gay Debate

Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards have confirmed they will participate.

We’ve all known for years that the Lizard Queen is a lesbian and we were famously informed that John Edwards is light in the loafers, but I had no idea that Obama had come out of the closet too. Interesting.

By the way, if you haven’t seen the looks on Sean Hannity’s and Alan Colmes’s faces when Gennifer Flowers is on their show and casually mentions that everyone in Little Rock knows about Hillary’s preference for women, you’re truly missing something. I can’t believe no one has put that on YouTube yet.

This does promise to be one of the most interesting debates on the Democratic side, though. The battle over whether the Pet Shop Boys, Erasure or the Indigo Girls are the greatest band in the history of the world should be a savage one. Although it could be even more interesting if they had the Republicans debating related issues.

Rudy, having lived with homosexuals, would hold the significant advantage, of course, when it came to answering questions about Brokeback Mountain and skin moisturizers. But I think Tommy Thompson just might surprise everyone, I mean, can you really be called Tommy at 50-whatever years of age and not have a disco ball or two in your closet?

Remember when everyone said that Ron Paul wasn’t electable like John McCain?

John McCain’s campaign manager and chief strategist resigned Tuesday in a major staff shake-up for the struggling Republican presidential candidate who is all but broke and trails in opinion polls.

It will be interesting to see if it’s the Lisper or Mr. Underpants who bows out next. And Thompson isn’t looking so hot either.

Senator Thompson believes two things on life. First, he thinks the states should decide abortion policy, which would require overturning Roe v. Wade. So far, so good. Second, Senator Thompson himself would not support a ban on abortion in his state.

I told you all years ago, back when Republican supremacists were still beating their chests about a permanent majority, that the Republican Party wasn’t going to try to win the White House in 2008. Throwing out a potpourri of three pro-choice establisment candidates in a solidly pro-life party would seem to be a pretty solid indication of an attempt at self-sabotage.

Everyone is getting into the act these days, even psychologists!

“Blue-eyed people,” they write, “are considered attractive as potential mates because it is easiest to determine whether they are interested in us or not.”

Or, as the authors explain, men like blue eyes because, since eyes dilate when the owner is interested in something, in this case getting laid, and since blue eyes better show a large pupil, then men will know when the woman is interested. This produces more children.

Ponder the solemn fatuity of this. Does any reader over the age of thirteen believe that women with any sort of eyes have trouble letting a man know when they are interested? The authors need to get out more.

Why is this sort of story-telling so widely engaged in when an alert porcupine would reject it? Because it is PC. As a fellow I see on the internet said in another context, “This is a stretch and illustrates how easy it is to believe what fits your world view.” Yep. The authors would find an evolutionary explanation for a loose doorknob.

To be fair, the greater reproductive success of the blue-eyed does explain why they predominate around the planet, with the exception of small population pools such as China, Africa, the Arab world, Southern Europe, Japan, India, Mexico, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and South and Central America. It’s because men in all those dark-eyed, under-populated places can’t tell when women are interested.

Being a scientist, I feel it is no less than my scientific duty to contribute to the evolutionary canon, so as a service to the human race I shall lay my humble offering before the shrine of St. Darwin: how Natural Selection explains why men voluntarily select bitchy women as mates.

Heritable psychological variation is the “raw material” of human evolution by natural selection, and understanding the mechanisms that generate such variation has become a fundamental challenge for contemporary evolutionary biology. A male human faces an inescapable reproductive dilemma, in that he seeks to spread his genes as widely as possible, an evolutionary pressure which is countered by the fact that an overly aggressive man risks a higher probability of being injured or diseased, thus resulting in a hindered ability to mate. However, a wholly passive man faces the high probability of falling under the influence of his mate and being prevented from going out to find other potential mates, thereby limiting his gene-spreading.

The STD-PW dilemma has, through Natural Selection, resulted in the evolutionary stable strategy (ESS) of passive men selecting for bitchy women, with whom they mate and spread their genes before prolonged exposure to the bitch results in the application of one of two variant strategies. Either the male cannot take the female’s bitching anymore and leaves under its pressure, (the proto-passive strategy) or she is enough of a bitch to forcibly drive him away / leave of her own volition (the passive strategy).

Either strategy results in freeing the passive man to pursue subsequent mates and further spread his genes without any need for the aggression that would force him to risk reproductive-hindering injury and disease. Examining the oscillations about the equilibrium point, we find the average payoff to an individual male in a stable population consisting of 11/12 passive men and 7/12 complete bitches to be 42.

So, if you have ever wondered why that nice guy is paired up with a total bitch, now you know. He is merely pursuing the evolutionarily optimal strategy to ensure that his own passivity does not hinder the widest possible transmission of his genes. If you should wish to nominate your humble scientific servant for the John Maynard Smith prize for this outstanding research in the field of evolutionary biology, instructions are here.

Seriously, you’re going to bring this weak quasi-game theory shit and try to play it off as science on a game designer? One trained as an economist, no less? Don’t play a player.

Because we are, after all, scientists. Well, I am, anyhow, the Original Cyberpunk is apparently pursuing a degree in Amazonology:

Archaeologists spelunking through the majestic ruins of Castle Voxenstein have recently stumbled across a treasure trove of copies of REBEL MOON, in absolutely NEW, PERFECT, and UNTOUCHED condition. In point of fact, these books are so untouched, they are STILL IN THE ORIGINAL SEALED BOXES in which Simon & Shuster shipped them to Vox!

And then the brilliant idea hit us: Why don’t we put them on Amazon.com for as close to free as Amazon will let us post them? So that’s what we did, and you can buy as many copies as you want for the lordly price of 1-cent per copy, plus Amazon’s standard shipping charges.

But — and you just knew there’d be a “but,” didn’t you? — here’s the catch. We want to get something out of this experience, and what we want to get is information: specifically, some empirical data on just how easy or hard it may be to game the Amazon.com sales rankings.

So here’s the deal. If you’re at all interested in buying one or more copies of this book, we want you to place your order on Wednesday, July 11, 2007, preferably between the hours of 6 a.m. and noon U.S. Central time.

And in answer to the inevitable question, no, I can’t sign them unless you’d be satisfied with some kind of plate attached to the inside. But if you’re willing to spend the $4 required to participate in this grand experiment – and I would appreciate it if you’d help the OC gather this data since nearly every author in the world would be interested in it – let us know if you’re going to participate here in the comments.

I’m not sure what the optimal number of books to order would be, but at one penny per additional book, you can surely afford to buy more than one.

UPDATE: We’re going to postpone this, as the OC figures that the imminent release of the new Harry Potter novel is likely going to skew the results.