Category: Uncategorized

We try to remain family-friendly around here, okay, at least borderline civilized, so I shall only say that Michael Medved truly is a genuine [two syllables, begins with ‘d’, rhymes with ‘duck’). He actually tried to characterize Joseph Farah’s response to his “there is no NAU” fairy tale like this:

“I’m greatly encouraged by the lengthy, indignant responses by prominent scare-mongers Joe Farah and Jerome Corsi to my on-air and on-blog denunciation … of their self-promoting paranoia regarding an alleged conspiracy to merge the U.S., Canada and Mexico,” he begins. “The defensive tone of their commentary suggests that these two have been appropriately embarrassed: Farah, in particular, dramatically de-escalated his rhetoric.”

Farah, needless to say, lost little time in bitch-slapping Medved hard enough to knock that righteous porn ‘stache right off his face.

Given the way in which Medved slings around “Nazi”, it’s hard to credit his claim that he’s never accused Jerome Corsi of anti-Semitism either. I don’t see why Corsi would want to bother debating him, though, Medved’s words are sufficiently self-refuting.

Unfortunately, Mr. J. Goldberg, to whom the email was addressed, doesn’t, not in fullness, anyhow:

I wonder if in time the theme of legislation in all things, an attempt at a governmental guarantee that all risk will be reactively legislated against, vs. individual freedom and personal risk / responsibility (including the freedom to abuse that) will be a more important divide than the old Left / Right split.

That should be the entire basis of the Left/Right split. Or Red/Blue or Green/Yellow, whatever you want to call it. The important thing to understand is that from a political perspective, government is there to fuck you over!

So long as you accept government’s claim to jurisdiction for anything but the wholly voluntary, you are guaranteeing that if you do not hold the whip hand, you will get whipped. You may be happy about banning smokes, but upset about banning cheeseburgers… or vice-versa. It doesn’t matter, it’s all the same.

It’s never the momentary What that matters, but the How.

So Spacebunny is out and about and I find myself contemplating treachery. I’ve been most faithful to my Treo for some time now, but that sexy new iPhone has me thinking some iPhilthy thoughts.

I’m not a member of the Apple cult, but as an Apple II and original Macintosh owner, I’m not anti-Apple either. All the slick stuff is nice, of course, but what will cause me to leave the old device is the inclusion of Wi-fi. When Treo didn’t put that into the 680, I knew it was all but over.

And perhaps only Apple could make this move, as all the other smartphone manufacturers are too dependent on bulk sales to carriers to risk angering their largest potential customers, who really, really don’t want you Skyping for free on your cell at the local hotspot.

As for the other application that’s important to me, let’s face it, eight gigs will hold a lot of ebooks….

Here’s something I’ve been thinking about which is probably better suited to some of my critics like Pharyngula and Orac. And I’m not attempting to lay some sort of ambush or anything, I’m merely considering a question that revolves around something that is generally of far more interest to them than to me.

The first question is: What is the best definition of science? To me, the OED definition is: “the intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behaviour of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment. — ORIGIN Latin scientia, from scire ‘know’.”

This seems perfectly workable to me, but I’ve noticed that people often bring up a second definition revolving around the concept of falsifiability. But can Popper’s concept of falsifiability really be taken very seriously as a dividing point between science and not-science? It seems somewhat flawed to me. Let me begin with postulating that while the language of the gods is not proper science, whereas the color of swans is.

The classic example of a falsifiable proposition is “all swans are white”. The fact that one could prove this proposition to be wrong by observing a black swan therefore makes it falsifiable and therefore a matter of science.

However, is not the proposition “all gods speak Aramaic” equally falsifiable, given that the theoretical observation of a Greek-speaking god would falsify the proposition and therefore make divine linguistics a legitimate matter of science?

The obvious response is to say, “well, we can’t observe gods”, but the same inability to observe was also true of any number of things for which we today have instruments capable of performing observations. For example, stating “all light from 7.5 x 1014 – 3 x 1017 Hz is purple” would have been an equally non-falsifiable proposition and therefore not science prior to Man’s ability to detect and measure ultraviolet.

So, it would seem to me that either one would have to admit that such things were not properly considered to be scientific matters until the point at which observation became possible, or that divine linguistics actually is a legitimate field of science.

Now, Popper presumably would describe this as “naive falsification” and put swans in the category approved by sophisticated methodological falsification and divine linguistics in the one not approved by it. But by this point, falsifiability has become a fairly haphazard definition which verges on tautology, defining science as whatever scientists believe science to be at the moment.

Anyhow, I have to assume I’m missing something here in this particular contemplation of the wheel, so I’d welcome any comments correcting my thinking here or, better yet, a more precise and universally acceptable definition of science.

Yet another reason:

My latest book, American Vertigo, is an account of a journey I took through the US. I wrote it because I thought that for a European intellectual there was nothing more important than to understand what was happening in America, to go and tell the Americans what was wrong with their society.

This is the sort of “intellectual” whose ass I’d like to kick, then explain to him that the ass-kicking was actually a metaphorical piece of performance art intended to raise consciousness about the suppression of the French language by the global English hegemony and that anyone who is not honored to have played a vital role in such an important, revolutionary speaking of truth to power must be a complete Philistine.

Of course, he isn’t actually wrong. There is nothing more important than for a French intellectual than to take a vacation in America, albeit because there isn’t anything of any significance whatsoever that actually requires the participation of French intellectuals. Regardless, few things give me more pleasure than being handed the opportunity to go through the following exchange:

French guy pontificating: “Americans, of course, only speak English. Did you know that only one in ten billion Americans even have a passport?”

VD: “Actually I speak Italian. And German.”

French guy: “Really? But you don’t speak French?”

VD: “Why on Earth would I want to do that? Hey look! A snail!”

The evidence very strongly suggests that Rick Warren, like Ted Haggard, is a model example of the wolf in sheep’s clothing that the Apostle Paul warned against. If you have any ties to Saddleback or a church that follows a Purpose-Driven program, I’d recommend severing them.

From Joseph Farah’s column today:

It was in the context of our debate over Warren’s characterization of Syria as a “moderate” country that provides religious freedom to Christians that I suggested the media’s favorite mega-pastor should have sought counsel from someone like me – a Christian journalist of Syrian and Lebanese heritage who has covered and analyzed the Middle East for the last 25 years.

Warren explained, somewhat condescendingly, that he had counseled with the National Security Council and the White House, as well as the State Department, before his little pilgrimage to Damascus.

”In fact,” Warren added, ”as a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and Oxford Analytica, I might know as much about the Middle East as you.”

I hadn’t asked about the CFR. I didn’t use thumbscrews to pry this information out of him. He volunteered this bombshell in a written communication.

But there’s something deeply disturbing I have learned about Warren: He generally tells people what they want to hear. And evidently he didn’t realize how alienating news of his membership in the CFR would be to many in his own flock.

So what did he do?

He and his staff have revised history – or their story, anyway.

Now, according to an e-mail from John Mogush, his assistant at Saddleback, his boss was just confused.

“Pastor Rick is not a member of the Council on Foreign Relations,” he wrote one concerned constituent. “He was asked to become a member, but declined. If you can tell me where it was written, we will respond to them.”

It’s becoming increasingly clear that the organized Evangelical Church is almost as bad, in it’s own way, as the Episcopalian Church.

For some, it is time to decide to where your loyalties lie, with a particular organization or Jesus Christ.

I think it’s time for Americans to begin sitting down for the national anthem. Perhaps while holding aloft two middle fingers as a remembrance of the “don’t tread on me” motto of the time when Americans really were free:

John Gilmore’s splendid isolation began July 4, 2002, when, with defiance aforethought, he strolled to the Southwest Airlines counter at Oakland Airport and presented his ticket.

The gate agent asked for his ID.

Gilmore asked her why.

It is the law, she said.

Gilmore asked to see the law.

Nobody could produce a copy. To date, nobody has. The regulation that mandates ID at airports is “Sensitive Security Information.” The law, as it turns out, is unavailable for inspection.

I suspect that law can probably be found in the bathroom with the “Beware of the Leopard” sign, along with bypass construction plans the North American Union agreement and the list of fraternities on double-secret probation.

BAJ draws an intriguing analogy:

People argue against the existence of God by claiming that a belief in God is not logical. Atheists attempt to dismiss God by claiming that God exists only in the mind.

Consider that numbers exist only within the mind. But can numbers be dismissed? Without numbers – the thought ephemera that allows us to make measurements (among other things) – people can’t produce anything tangible. Belief in the existence of numbers has allowed humans to do the jobs of building things, flying to the Moon and creating new console games.

Given the importance of the acceptance of the the fiction of numbers, I wonder: does it matter if God exists only within the mind? Without God – the unassailable bastion of righteousness demanding moral behavior (among other things) – civilization would never have been established. Belief in the existence of God has inspired humans to do the jobs of creating laws, establishing rights and treating decently those who might be called useless.

I had a similar utilitarian notion about the concept of “money”, but considering the way fictional money has been used to impose servitude on so many people, I thought I’d probably be shooting myself in the foot with that particular analogy.

BAJ’s argument appears to be rather less self-damaging from that perspective, any mathmeticians here who might like to take a crack at it? I imagine Derbyshire would have something to say about it.

David Frum explains the train of thought behind a presidential speech:

a) Tyranny leads to resentment.

b) Resentment breeds ideologies that excuse murder.

c) Murderers will seek the deadliest weapons they can find.

d) Those weapons can threaten the American homeland.

e) Therefore: American security requires the US to help defeat tyranny and promote freedom in other lands.

(a) and (b) are true. However, the chain breaks down at (c), as this is demonstrably untrue. Murderers almost never seek the deadliest weapons they can find, but rather, make use of those which come most easily to hand. A fifty-caliber Desert Eagle is far deadlier than a cheap 9mm or bare hands, but more people are murdered by 9mm and bare hands than by large caliber weaponry.

Since (c) is false, the chain is broken, (d) and (e) are therefore false and need not be considered.

It’s not surprising that the administration is incapable of basic logic, but it’s interesting to see one of its crudely constructed arguments laid out so clearly by a former participant in the process.

…to pay the bills, anyway. This study purports to offer some scientific explanation for why so many women claim that they just want to meet a nice guy while simultaneously throwing themselves at every biker, rocker wannabee or all-around jerk who happens to cross their path:

Overwhelmingly, participants said those with more masculine features were likely to be risky and competitive and also more apt to fight, challenge bosses, cheat on spouses and put less effort into parenting. Those with more feminine faces were seen as good parents and husbands, hard workers and emotionally supportive mates.

Despite all the negative attributes, when asked who they would choose for a short-term relationship, women still selected the more masculine looking men.

It’s not exactly surprising. Of course, men do precisely the same thing when they pursue spunky, high-maintenance pain-in-the-posteriors instead of submissive nice girls who want children and a family life. The main difference is that most of these men don’t want to get married or settle down, while all of the women lamenting the nonexistence of nice guys in their lives claim to.

I have little sympathy for any guy dumb enough to date, let alone marry, any woman who can reasonably be described as “spunky”. If you enjoy constant fighting over really petty things, hey, go for it.

By the same token, no sane girl should ever waste her time with guys who are “exciting”. Such men will usually provide far more excitement than any reasonable woman seeks in her life. But if you don’t mind finding out that he’s got four other girls on a string, hey, go for it.

In case some of the slower readers need it spelled out for them… you can’t draw some sort of bright line between “short-term” and “long-term” relationships, since the short-term always turns into the long-term over time.