Category: Uncategorized

A fascinating article on Bill Parcells. I particularly noted this bit:

In this laboratory he has identified a phenomenon he calls the game quitter. Game quitters, he says, seem “as if they are trying to win, but really they’ve given up. They’ve just chosen a way out that’s not apparent to the naked eye. They are more concerned with public opinion than the end result.”

I think Parcells’ loathing for this phenomenon is an integral part of his success as a football coach. The game quitter is a problem in every organization, an obstacle to every endeavor, and the deceptive nature of the phenomenon makes it hard to identify without looking specifically for it.

I know I have some tendencies that way, although I think I’ve successfully surmounted them for the most part. I certainly have the scar on my knee to prove it. Still, I can remember one game this fall when I was practically praying for the final whistle and barely going through the motions; I was so exhausted that I felt nothing but gratitude towards the midfielder who hit me from behind and allowed me to go down and let the ball go out of bounds while we kept possession.

I wish I knew how to solve the problem of the game quitter, as I see it in a few of the players on the kids’ team, but the only real solution seems to be a private, internal one. If Parcells can’t figure it out, I rather doubt anyone can.

Dread, can you supply me with the full “ontological speculation” quote from Tesla? The one from the NY Times. Just post it here if you’ve got it.

Thanks.

Et tu, Professor? Daniel Dennett admits that the fundamental atheist assumption is unproven in a Salon interview:

Are you saying a person is better served by relinquishing his faith in search of a more rational truth about the universe?

That’s a very good question and I don’t claim to have the answer yet. That’s why we have to do the research. Then we’ll have a good chance of knowing whether people are better served by reason or faith.

At least in this one instance, he’s more honest than Dawkins, Harris or your average irrational atheist, (henceforth “brigot” in honor of their silly, self-selected appellation), who all make the ironically faith-based claim that people are better served by reason.

You see, Reason cannot claim credit for modern medicine and modern agriculture without also claiming it for modern weaponry. And even that credit for food and medicine appears dubious in light of the sciencific claims that too many people currently infest the planet.

Dennett is totally wrong in his stated belief that all religious people fear either Reason or this debate. (Much less him and his books, three of which I picked up today….) Speaking only for myself, I say absolutely let us examine the question… I contend that Reason will ultimately prove to be less efficacious than Faith, since I already know that Reason serves me, rather more faithfully, in fact, than I manage to serve God.

Dennett, on the other hand, proves himself again and again to be nothing more than one of the apish clowns dancing slavishly at Reason’s court. Consider the following part of the interview:

Tell us the story from your new book about the ant and the blade of grass.

Suppose you go out in the meadow and you see this ant climbing up a blade of grass and if it falls it climbs again. It’s devoting a tremendous amount of energy and persistence to climbing up this blade of grass. What’s in it for the ant? Nothing. It’s not looking for a mate or showing off or looking for food. Its brain has been invaded by a tiny parasitic worm, a lancet fluke, which has to get into the belly of a sheep or a cow in order to continue its life cycle. It has commandeered the brain of this ant and it’s driving it up the blade of grass like an all-terrain vehicle. That’s how this tiny lancet fluke does its evolutionary work.

Is religion, then, like a lancet fluke?

The question is, Does anything like that happen to us? The answer is, Well, yes. Not with actual brain worms but with ideas. An idea takes over our brain and gets that person to devote his life to the furtherance of that idea, even at the cost of their own genetics. People forgo having kids, risk their lives, devote their whole lives to the furtherance of an idea, rather than doing what every other species on the planet does — make more children and grandchildren.

As with Sam Harris, Dennett fails to realize that he is actually making a case against himself. It is an empirical fact that it is not religion that plays the role of the lancet fluke in causing individuals to “forgo having kids, risk their lives, devote their whole lives to the furtherance of an idea, rather than doing what every other species on the planet does”, but secularism in general, his cherished atheism in particular.

In which a church leader applies the knife to her denomination’s throat:

Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, the first woman to head the US Episcopal Church (ECUSA), has adopted a unique vision for the Episcopal church: a church not “interested in replenishing their ranks by having children.”

In an interview with New York Times Magazine, Bishop Jefferts Schori conjectured that the Episcopal Church’s now only 2.2 million faithful “used to be larger percentagewise”. However now, she says, “Episcopalians tend to be better-educated and tend to reproduce at lower rates than some other denominations. Roman Catholics and Mormons both have theological reasons for producing lots of children.”

The response provoked this query from NYT reporter Deborah Solomon: “Episcopalians aren’t interested in replenishing their ranks by having children?”

“No. It’s probably the opposite,” responded Jefferts Schori. “We encourage people to pay attention to the stewardship of the earth and not use more than their portion.”

Although I’m an evolutionary skeptic, I am a genuine fan of observable natural selection. I have no pity for the dying Episcopalian church, clearly this woman is the sort of leader who suits the individuals who selected her very well indeed.

The Good Captain makes a mistake in criticizing Tom Tancredo’s exposure of George Bush’s treason in selling out the nation to the North American Union:

Tancredo lashed out at the White House’s lack of action in securing U.S. borders, and said efforts to merge the U.S. with both Mexico and Canada is not a fantasy.

“I know this is dramatic – or maybe somebody would say overly dramatic – but I’m telling you, that everything I see leads me to believe that this whole idea of the North American Union, it’s not something that just is written about by right-wing fringe kooks. It is something in the head of the president of the United States, the president of Mexico, I think the prime minister of Canada buys into it. …

This is absurd. George Bush may not have responded very well to immigration concerns from his base, but he’s done more than his father, Bill Clinton, and even Ronald Reagan in bolstering border security. Tancredo is engaging in mindless demagoguery with these doomsday descriptions, and moving closer to the realms of paranoia.

Unfortunately, on this particular matter, the normally observant Captain Ed is being a blind, parochial and historically ignorant fool. The direction is obvious to anyone who is even remotely familiar with the way in which the various countries of Europe were led by their political elites from sovereign nations into a single, anti-democratic, autocratic superstate. It should give the Captain pause to consider that Mr. Regression to the Mean himself, Jon Podhoretz, is in full agreement with him here.

Consider the words of Lady Thatcher from a column I wrote in 2002: “The wisdom of hindsight, so useful to historians and indeed to authors of memoirs, is sadly denied to practicing politicians. Looking back, it is now possible to see the period of my second term as prime minister as that in which the European Community subtly but surely shifted its direction away from being a community of open trade, light regulation and freely co-operating sovereign nation-states towards statism and centralism….

“We had to learn the hard way that by agreement to what were apparently empty generalizations or vague aspirations we were later held to have committed ourselves to political structures which were contrary to our interests.”

This process is now at work in the United States and has been since 1992, the same year as Maastricht. Based on the European model, the USA will reach full monetary integration with Mexico and Canada before 2043, most likely in the 2030s. Given the current pattern and the leading position of the dollar, the open abandonment of national sovereignty will likely follow that monetary integration.

It is worth noting that the European Union is celebrating its 50th anniversary 14 years after it officially became the European Union and four years after the introduction of the Euro.

Richard Dawkins comes out as a eugenicist:

A leading international anti-religion crusader and supporter of Darwinian theory, Dr. Richard Dawkins, has said that the pseudo-science of eugenics that drove the Nazi regime’s genocidal project “may not be bad.”

Since the end of the second world war, the name of eugenics, the social philosophy that the human species or particular races ought to be improved by selective breeding or other forms of genetic manipulation, is one that conjures instant images of the Nazi death camps and “racial hygiene” programs.

In a letter to the editor of Scotland’s Sunday Herald, Dawkins argues that the time has come to lay this spectre to rest. Dawkins writes that though no one wants to be seen to be in agreement with Hitler on any particular, “if you can breed cattle for milk yield, horses for running speed, and dogs for herding skill, why on Earth should it be impossible to breed humans for mathematical, musical or athletic ability?”

Yes, I am vastly amused by this. It’s all just so predictable. And while I’m surprised that Dawkins has gotten so carried away by his success that he is finally daring to openly proclaim a more rational atheism, I’m not at all shocked by his conclusions. I merely wonder how long it will take for him to realize that he also lacks any rational basis to avoid exterminating pesky and unwanted minorities.

Seriously, on what basis does the atheist prosecute the individual who digs up a few kilos of rotting flesh in order to have sex with it? Trespassing? We’ve already settled that atheists have no objection to who puts what where so long as all parties a) aren’t children, and, b) consent. So, in that case, what does it matter if the lifeless random collection of atoms once happened to be human or plastic?

Atheism always leads the thinking individual to nihilism. The fact that most atheists aren’t nihilists isn’t a credit to atheism, it’s more a testimony to how few individuals are capable of reason or even understanding the logical consequences of their basic assumptions.

Oh, and Richard, the answer to your question is that music lessons are provided with the consent of the individual, or at least the parent. Breeding heavily implies, (although it does not absolutely require), a lack of consent on the part of the individuals involved. Of course, if you don’t believe that Man possesses God-given rights because there is no God to give them, then there’s no rational reason why one shouldn’t treat men and women like dogs.

UPDATE – Here’s Dawkin’s actual letter. While I always prefer the original source, the Herald link wasn’t working when I first posted.

… after killing all the lawyers is to kill all the idiot accountants:

Fans of the fantasy films were dismayed by an e-mail, detailing a dispute between Jackson and the New Line film studio, which the New Zealander sent to a website devoted to matters Tolkien.

It contained explosive news that the most lucrative franchise in Hollywood history after Star Wars will return with a Lord of the Rings prequel. A big-budget version of The Hobbit is also set for production.

But Jackson, a devoted Tolkien fan who battled to bring his vision of Rings to the screen, will not be involved. The director said that he had been removed from the project by New Line. “We have always assumed that we would be asked to make The Hobbit and possibly this second film, back to back, as we did the original movies,” Jackson’s e-mail to TheOneRing.net fansite read.

I hate this sort of thing. I loathe executives who attempt to shaft overperforming employees, partners and contractees, it’s so stupid and short-sighted. Why work hard and exceed your goals if you’re merely going to be cheated of your merited rewards?

New Line had better come to its senses, otherwise they’ll end up losing more money than they ever had to gain by monkeying around with Jackson’s payouts.

Of course, this could never happen here:

In a statement yesterday Lord Falconer, the Lord Chancellor of England has warned doctors that they may face prison sentences if they refuse to starve and dehydrate patients to death. Criminal charges of assault could be laid against doctors or nurses who refuse to allow patients to die, even by removal of food and hydration tube.

The Labour government unveiled its new guidelines for doctors to follow the Mental Capacity Act that is to come into effect next spring.

The guidelines instruct doctors that a patient’s “advanced decision,” what is often called a “living will,” that includes a request for cessation of medical treatment must be followed even if it means the patient will die. To fail to do so, in other words, to take action to keep a patient alive, could result in criminal charges or heavy fines.

The government’s guidelines instruct doctors, “If you are satisfied that an advance decision exists which is valid and applicable, then not to abide by it could lead to a legal claim for damages or a criminal prosecution for assault.”

British courts, in conjunction with jurisdictions around the world, have determined that it is sometimes in the patient’s best interest to be dehydrated to death by removal of feeding and hydration tubes. In many parts of the world, including Canada, food and hydration is considered “medical treatment” and as such can be, and frequently is, withheld on the grounds that it constitutes “extraordinary treatment”.

One wonders why this same government is simultaneously jailing for life two individuals who neglected to provide such “extraordinary treatment” to an 8-year old girl, with the result you’d expect from the dehydration-starvation double-whammy. On the other hand, perhaps I should keep such thoughts to myself, lest I provide the post-natal abortionists with any nefarious new ideas.

Yeah, I wouldn’t vote for him either:

Forty-three percent (43%) of American voters say they would never even consider voting for a Mormon Presidential candidate. Only 38% say they would consider casting such a vote while 19% are not sure (see crosstabs). Half (53%) of all Evangelical Christians say that they would not consider voting for a Mormon candidate.

Of course, this doesn’t seem to chill NRO’s enthusiasm for him. Apparently “electability” only matters when you’re using the concept to eliminate genuine conservatives from the Republican nomination.

Still, I’d support a libertarian Mormon over your garden variety Republican Evangelical Christian, especially in light of the wretched state of the Evangelical leadership these days.

83 Burns Montgomerys
69 Santa Barbarians

69 Mounds View Meerkats
54 Greenfield Grizzlies

63 East Mesa WhiteTrash
50 COS McRays

54 Pale Horse Cowboys
35 West Texas Vikings

33 Mile High Club
21 Newport Sea Dogs

Well, at least I managed to prevent a double season sweep by the Grizz… salvaging a few shards of dignity on Monday night.