Boston intolerance

Steve Sailer wonders if American intolerance is to blame for the Boston bombings:

We have to ask ourselves: What did we do wrong? How did American
intolerance alienate the Tsarnaev Brothers? Perhaps the political
climate was not welcoming enough, too conservative, ignorant,
xenophobic, and right-wing. A quick search shows that Cambridge, MA was
only the second most pro-Obama town in Massachusetts.

Let’s face it, if you found yourself living amongst the sort of moronic liberal pseudo-intellectuals that live in Cambridge, MA, you’d probably be more than a little tempted to turn indiscriminately homicidal too.

Mike Williams is too real smart

Mike Williams responds, sort of, although in his response, self-referentially entitled “The Fail, It Burns“, he doesn’t actually answer any of the six questions I posed to him:

“Mr. Williamson, with all due respect, you don’t appear to realize
that you are not only dealing with a number of people here who are
smarter than you are, but are also better educated in science than you
are. It may help to keep in mind that at Vox Popoli, those who live by
the rhetoric tend to die quickly and brutally by the dialectic.”

That’s the funniest thing I’ve read this week. Thanks.

I was at first interested in your site. I thought I had found the anti-Scalzi.  And in fact, I have. that is not a compliment.

~~~

So, first, by what metric does he assume, after one email exchange
and a couple of comments that there are a “number of people” there who
are smarter than me?

It’s certainly not impossible, but per standardized testing, the odds
are 99.8% in my favor.  That is a mathematical extraction based on my
tested IQ.  So unless his blog is a haven for pure geniuses, it seems
unlikely.  Nor have I seen much demonstration of any hard scientific
knowledge among his supporters.  Though to be fair, I haven’t read much
of his blog and don’t plan to.

By what metric?  By simple observation. I’ve read his blog. I’ve followed his trains of thought. He’s observably not as smart as I am.  Anyone who reads this exchange can’t help but reach that conclusion. And there are dozens of people who read this blog who are every bit as intelligent as I am and more.  But we don’t even need that metric any longer, as the odds may have been 99.8% in his favor, but he crapped out nevertheless.  As for his claim to not have seen much demonstration of any hard scientific knowledge among the readers here, there was, among other things, a physics PhD and several other individuals who happen to possess advanced hard science degrees whose questions he ignored.  And notice that he thinks the idea that Darwin is dangerous is my idea….

With all due respect, Mr. Williamson badly underestimated me and the readers of VP, most likely because he is a science fetishist who is, like most  science fetishists, unthinkingly bigoted against Creationists.  Based on his admittedly impressive standardized test scores, which indicate an IQ in the +3 SD range, there are still dozens of people here smarter than he is.  There are at least three, to my certain knowledge, who are +5 SD.  Unlike most blogs, a mere +3SD isn’t even enough make one a big dog here.

Given that most of the interest there is in unquantifiable local
social issues, devoid of cites or analysis, it’s untestable, but my
perception is his belief is incorrect.  There’s a lot of opinion
there–some little of which I concur with–but a lot of BS, including
the obsession with myth (Creationism) over science.  It even repeats the
“Evolution is losing support among scientists!” bleat that’s been
around since…Darwin.  Yet every year we have better information,
better ability to define what we’re looking at, and better ability to
predict what we don’t see.  That’s called “Science.”  He even cutely
entitles his response to me, “rhetoric is not science.”  Indeed.  His
rhetoric is not science. 

No, my rhetoric isn’t science.  I have never claimed that it is.  More to the point, Mr. Williamson’s rhetoric isn’t science either and rhetoric, unoriginal rhetoric at that, is all he has offered.  He hasn’t even attempted to engage in dialectical discourse, let alone cited any scientific evidence for anything at all.

Second, he seems unaware that for Darwin to be challenged is a
POSITIVE thing for science.  It means we’ve refined the theory and have
improved precision. Much like the Earth went from spherical to oblate
to precisely delineated, and we are now working on equations to explain
orogenous upthrust (which isn’t as sexy as it sounds). 

Unaware?  I’ve repeatedly stated that in order to advance, genetic science will not only HAVE to challenge Darwin, but abandon him entirely.  Of course, he wouldn’t know that, since by his own admission, he hasn’t read much of my blog.  See, Mr. Williamson, this is why I know I am smarter than you are.  I wouldn’t ever make such a foolish and easily disproven assertion.  I’m smart enough to check first.

Third, it doesn’t matter how smart or educated either of us is. Facts
are facts.  Extrapolations are extrapolations.  And mythic fantasy is
mythic fantasy, even when called “religion.”  It is untestable,
unprovable, and not scientific.  There’s also an implied assumption that
the scientists working in genetics aren’t as smart as…a blogger.
 Which again, is not impossible, but is irrelevant.

True.  Facts are facts. Evidence is evidence. Opinions are irrelevant. But he is absolutely wrong to say that religion is untestable, unprovable, and not scientific.  There are no shortage of testable hypotheses that can be generated from various religions, including Christianity.  Christianity, at the very least, is falsifiable. His inability to recognize this is not a testament to his intelligence.  Moreover, by his own metric, which is to say untestability, he surely must recognize that evolution by natural selection is untestable at present.

He knows nothing about me other than our two emails and a couple of
comments.  But he knows I’m not as smart as he because I “believe”
different things.  In point of fact, I believe very little.  I observe.
 If there is no conclusion to be reached, I delay judgment until there
is. 

 No, I know he’s not as smart as I am because he takes foolish and easily disproven positions, such as “[Creationists] pose a serious threat to society.”  I repeat my question: How do creationists “pose a serious threat to society”?

Fourth, it’s entirely possible to disagree with the modern American
left, while being just as idiotic, prejudiced and intellectually
dishonest as its worst practitioners…which he ably demonstrates
(forex, constantly calling Scalzi “McRapey,” apparently completely
missing the point of one of John’s blogs that I do agree with), despite
his ability to solve the softball pre-algebra question I tossed at him.
 During the Spanish Civil War, the Fascists and the Communists were
diametrically opposed, yet largely indistinguishable.  Or in a
non-Godwin sense, pick European peasants forced to choose between Viking
raiders or the Franks.

Intellectually dishonest? From the gentleman who hasn’t answered a single question posed to him because his feelings are bruised over the fact that he is less intelligent than I am, and than dozens of my readers are?  I find it vastly amusing that so many people claim that I am incapable of recognizing satire in the process of failing to recognize a superior form of it themselves.  Also, and I quote, “John Scalzi is a rapist“.

And Darwin’s (or any) ideas are only “dangerous” to bleating
ideologues. Information falls across a spectrum from factual to
opinion, from useful to not.  A truly smart person analyzes the content
and comes to a conclusion, adapting the conclusions as needed as new
facts are presented.  That, we call “Science.”

First, note that Mr. Williamson doesn’t even recognize the obvious reference to Daniel Dennett’s book, Darwin’s Dangerous Idea.  Second, no, merely reaching a conclusion and adapting it as needed is not, by any definition, “Science”. By that definition, quarterbacks are scientists.

And despite devoting more than 600 words to his response, Mr. Williamson didn’t manage to answer any of the questions I posed to him.  For someone who calls his blog The Sacred Cow Slaughterhouse, Mr. Williamson appears to preserve more than his own fair share of them.  So, I will repeat them.

  1. How do creationists “pose a serious threat to society”?
  2. There are an estimated 1,263,186 animal species and 326,175 plant
    species in the world.  Assuming the age of the Earth is 4.54 billion
    years, what is the average rate of speciation?
  3. How many mutations, on average, are required per speciation?
  4. What scientifically significant predictive model relies primarily upon evolution by natural selection?
  5. Which of the various human sub-species is the most evolved; i.e.
    modified by mutation and natural selection from the most recent common
    human ancestor? Which is the least evolved?
  6. Is the theory of evolution by natural selection strengthened or weakened by the claim that most DNA is devoid of purpose?

As for being the anti-Scalzi, compliment or not, I most certainly am. How can you tell?  Because I mentioned Mike.  I responded to him in substantive detail. And I have not banished him from my list of Standout Authors.  Why not?  BECAUSE WE ARE NOT RABBITS!  We can handle differences of opinion.  We can engage in discourse, even vicious, acrimonious discourse, without resorting to attempts to exclude and silence.

Mr. Williamson may not plan to read this blog in the future, but he is always welcome to do so, and to comment here as he sees fit, whether he agrees with me, whether he likes me, and whether he respects me or not. And my opinion of his writing is not dependent upon his view of Creationism or his opinion of me.

    Women love the strong horse

    In the absence
    of Christians and others of the traditional civilized West willing to stand up against modern trash culture and the
    third world invasion, women will naturally be drawn to the masculine strength they perceive in
    Muslims, even skinny, pot-smoking Muslims armed with pressure cookers.
    After reading “a poem for dzhokhar“,
    it is apparent that Amanda Palmer wants nothing more than to run her
    hands through the surviving bomber’s dark, curly hair, bury his face in
    her breasts, and give her all to ease his noble suffering.

    you don’t know where your friends went.
    you don’t know how to dance but you give it a shot anyway.
    you don’t know how your life managed to move twenty six miles forward and twenty eight miles back.
    you don’t know how to pay your debts.
    you don’t know how to separate from this partnership to escape and finally breathe.
    you don’t know how come people run their goddamn knees into the ground anyway.
    you don’t know how to measure the value of the twenty dollar bill clutched in your hurting hand.
    you don’t know how you walked into this trap so obliviously.
    you don’t know how to adjust the rearview mirror.
    you don’t know how to mourn your dead brother.
    you don’t know how to drive this car.
    you don’t know the way to new york.
    you don’t know the way to new york.
    you don’t know the way to new york.
    you don’t know the way to new york.

    If the Muslim doesn’t know his way to New York, then obviously Amanda must go to the Muslim.

    She will look beautiful in hijab.

    As one author comments:  “This is our
    culture, this is our field, this is what’s permissible and expected. May God have mercy on our souls.”

    I look forward to reading Ms Palmer’s other poems, including “A Hummer for McVeigh” and “Say What You Like About the Tenets of National Socialism, Girl, Those Uniforms Were Hot”.

    UPDATE: Sarah Hoyt adds her two cents on the matter, not so much on the Vogon-like “poetry”, (which frankly, in my opinion, is glorious in its unabashed self-satisfied myopia), but on the contrast between the reaction of the SF/F community to this versus Orson Scott Card’s insufficient enthusiasm for abnormal sexual relations.

    Orson Scott Card was near-crucified for expressing an opinion one would EXPECT from someone with his religious beliefs.  (I disagree with his opinion but while religious I’m very odd.  Also, my religion is not his.) HOWEVER it is not only permissible, it is ENCOURAGED to publish a poem empathizing with a mass murderer, who murdered in the name of a religion that HANGS gay people, mutilates women, and aims at world-wide dominance.

    Wait, what?

    But see, the second religion a) has been identified as “of little brown people” which is why we keep getting told being anti-Islam is “racist” – even though most of them look about as dark as I am.  b) it aims to destroy America, and so it must be good, right?

    (And before you tell me the repulsive terrorist-glorifying poem was written by one of my colleague’s wife, not himself.  Yes.  Indeed.  However, DO rest assured that in this field we have to watch what our spouses do too – or we had to.  I frankly can go indie and my give-a-d*mn is broken. – Imagine as a thought experiment that my husband wrote a poem about the Koch brothers, sweet Libertarian bachelors who have not in fact ever killed anyone.  How long do you imagine it would take before ANYONE refused to talk to me at conventions?)

    So this is the way things are.  Why would they upset me, if I’ve always known they’re that way?

    Because I suddenly realized, with a swimming sense of nausea and shame that this is as much our fault as theirs.

    She is right. It is our fault. It is our fault for not mocking these lunatics, idiots, and shysters. It is our fault for enabling them. It is our fault for buying their books, watching their movies, and generally supporting them as they shit ceaselessly on our society, our culture, and our civilization. It is our fault for permitting them to have it both ways. It is our fault for not calling them out when they call good evil and evil good. It is our fault for permitting them to blithely pass off talentless hacks as artistic geniuses. It is our fault for letting them first infest, then pollute, then degrade, and finally kill off our literary traditions just as they have attempted to kill off our societal and civilizational traditions.

    We have failed to stand up for the Orson Scott Cards and failed to spit on the Amanda Fucking Palmers.

    The choice is stark. Western civilization or idiot women writing Vogon mash poems to Islamic killers. I would say the choice is simple, but then, as we have learned, MPAI.

    UPDATE 2: Gawker piles on:

    This weekend, as law-enforcement officers across the country devoted their resources to the manhunt and capture of the dangerous criminal Reese Witherspoon, an actual crime against humanity was being ignored: Musician Amanda Palmer was writing the worst poem ever composed in the English language, “A Poem for Dzhokhar.”

    I don’t know that we really needed a litmus test for “are you willing to crawl up Neil Gaiman’s intestinal tract in the faint hope that some of his glamor might rub off on you”, but we appear to have found ourselves one anyhow.

    Bernankomancy

    Zerohedge attempts to read the entrails:

    The Fed’s Jackson Hole, Wyoming symposium is one of the most sacred of annual Fed meetings: it is here that the Fed has historically hinted at any and all upcoming episodes of major monetary experimentation. As such, presence by the high priests of global monetarism is not only compulsory, it is a circular stamp of approval of the Fed’s ongoing status quo-preservation capabilities. Which is why the fact that the man at the top himself, Ben Bernanke, whose term is due to expire just five months after this year’s Jackson Hole gathering, will be absent “due to a scheduling conflict”, is set to spark a fire of questions, first and foremost of which: is this the sign Bernanke is handing over the suitcase with the printer launch codes to some yet unspecified, second in command? Or, even worse for those addicted to monetary heroin, will Bernanke simply try to put as much distance as possible between himself and the place where (and when) the Fed announces the grand “open-ended” QE experiment is set to begin tapering?

    I tend to doubt Bernanke’s absence is meaningful here, although it might offer some guide to who will be the next Fed Chairman. The interesting thing will be what happens after Bernanke’s term expires; if things are going to blow up, I assume they’ll probably do so once the handover has taken place.

    The importance of stories

    Sarah Hoyt explains why it is so important to resist the media mainstream and the stories it is telling:

    That wish for normality, that desire to belong to a group is what causes the whole concept of “normal.”  I don’t know anymore who I was reading the other day, when a character says “What if nobody really is normal?  What if everyone is just pretending?”

    I’d say it makes no difference, really.  Partly because the concept of normal and people acting externally normal makes it easier for rulers to control you and particularly to hold over you the threat of exclusion form the group; and partly because eventually you internalize what you pretend to be….

    In the same way the slow, trickle, trickle, trickle distorts our impression of normal too.  It’s become impolite to say in public you’re a Tea Partier, for instance.  The slur of sexual innuendo, followed by never substantiated rumors of violence, have stained the name, though there is no truth at all in it.  At the same time, unless you are with friends and know them well enough, it is against politeness to refer to Occupiers as “Louse infested would be communists” – though it is true of the vast majority of them.

    Because that’s not how the stories present those groups.  And people want to belong to the majority – to the “normal.”

    Even outliers, people who step out, can break and fall back into the norm.  A great example is that blog that shall never be mentioned, but which has turned completely around in the last 5 years or so.  I was talking to a friend about that and wondered if it was always a false flag operation, designed to turn before 08 and confuse the issue.  He said maybe but – and he’s a right outlier, by virtue of what he is, the same I am – he thought what it actually was just pressure.  Because the owner of that blog is an artist in a leftist community.  The pressure to “return to normal” just broke him at last.

    In my case, of course, the more pressure to return to normal the more I explode in weird directions, but growing up when and where I did with non-pierced ears and wearing pants (for the UK visitors that means trousers) I was sort of like the boy named Sue and learned to fight before I could walk.  The shock is not that I won’t return to “normal”; the shock is that I managed to semi-pretend for ten years.

    Of course, the most effective strategy would be to pretend to be of them and change it from the inside, but I’m not sure it’s possible.  Religions take time to subvert and cultures take time to change, and we’re nearing the end of that time.  (No?  Look at our economy.  Or our feral children.)

    Christianity, while it was replacing the old culture, at least was aware of how the world works.  The culture the Marxists seek to impose doesn’t fit ANY real world with real people, not even the places where they won.  To be “normal” people are going around pretending to believe things that simply aren’t so, like that anyone wanting to look after himself and his is “greedy” and must have stolen what he has; that women are physically stronger than men, and more independent in spirit; that children are wiser than their parents; that everyone must have sex all the time, or they’ll go mad; that every culture in the world is superior to ours.

    No one sane can believe any of these even for a minute, if they examine it.  But people don’t.  They just try to “act normal” – which is bringing down Western civilization.  That part might be a feature not a bug, except that communist regimes in the end are like all the old empires: they must feed off healthy societies near them.  If they destroy the healthy societies, the world will go down to a long darkness, until the culture changes.

    When both a European immigrant to America and an American immigrant to Europe, two writers who have never met, who have never read each other’s books, and who have considerably different opinions on a number of policies and issues provide almost identical warnings concerning the cancerous societal effect of what is presently being pushed as “normal”, even the most enthusiastic supporter of the proposed new normal should be inspired to, at the very least, consider rethinking his enthusiasm.

    Because moral degradation is the new normal. Is the nihilism of Martin, Bakker, and Abercrombie truly to be preferred to the humble heroism of Tolkien? Has the progressive and privileged white preachiness of Rapey McRaperson genuinely produced better science fiction than the libertarian idealism of Robert Heinlein? Are the pornographic necro-bestial fantasies of Laurell Hamilton better plotted or more psychologically relevant than the modest Christian piety of Ellis Peters and Agatha Christie?  Is the YA work of Stephanie Meyer as thought-provoking or as edifying as the children’s novels of CS Lewis?

    And if the stories of this new and progressive normal are so uniformly pallid and cancerous when viewed in comparison with the stories of the old and traditional normal, how can anyone credibly suppose that its reality will not prove equally diseased and devolutionary?

    There is power in the old stories. That is why the gatekeepers of progress are so intent on preventing them from being told.  This is why it is important to continue telling them, and why I encourage those who hold to the traditions of the civilized, Christian West to give the works of those authors listed on the sidebar as Standout SF Authors and Friends of Narnia a shot.

    So much to learn

    Jared Diamond, the great prophet of geographical destiny, tells the West that it has much to learn from the tribal people of Papua New Guinea

    “”I believe the few remaining tribes and nomad groups left on the
    planet have a great deal to teach us,” he says and it is this belief
    that inspired The World Until Yesterday.  Some tribal
    customs, such as widow-strangling, will not be missed, of course. “We
    should not romanticise traditional societies,” he says. “There are
    horrible things that we want to avoid, but there wonderful things that
    we should emulate.”

    Take the example of child rearing. Far from
    being harsh towards children, many tribes and groups adopt highly
    permissive attitudes. “I mean permissive in that it is an absolute no-no
    to punish a child. If a mother or father among African pygmies hits a
    child, that would be grounds for divorce. There is no physical
    punishment allowed at all in these societies. If a child plays with a
    sharp knife and waves it around, so be it. They will cut themselves on
    some occasions, but society figures it is better for the child to learn
    the hard way early in life. They are allowed to make their own choices
    and follow their own interests.””

    I consider his theses to be absolutely absurd, but then again, there may be something to be said for the wise people of Papua New Guinea’s vigorous response to U.S. academics.

    “A U.S. academic has been gang raped in Papua New Guinea by nine armed men who hacked off her blonde hair and left her husband tied naked to a tree. The 32-year-old woman, who was conducting research into exotic birds in a remote forest on Karkar Island, was walking along a bush track with her husband and a guide on Friday when they were set upon by the gang armed with knives and rifles. Her husband and the guide were stripped and bound by the men, who then used a bush knife to hack off the woman’s hair before raping her in a terrifying ordeal lasting 20 minutes.”

    It would certainly make the average East Coast cocktail party more lively if the sort of overeducated midwits who take Diamond at face value were to follow the example of the noble people of Papua New Guinea in this regard.

    Now, I realize that many doubt my thesis that most of the desirable tenets of Christian civilization will not survive in post-Christian society, but note that in Diamond, we already have a well-regarded, much-honored academic overtly advocating a return to many pagan, pre-civilized customs. But it never seems to occur to those who eagerly anticipate Western post-Christianity that those raised in a pagan society without Christian customs and strictures will not necessarily retain the civilized customs that are inculcated in the secularist or pagan raised in a Christian society.

    It is easy to say, well, we’ll keep the Western strictures against widow-strangling, witch-burning, and academic-raping, we’ll just toss the ones against homosexual-marrying, public fornication, polygamy, and letting children play with loaded guns… wait a minute! The brutal reality is that a society in which most children are “allowed to make their own choices and follow their own interests” is a society where the values, and the resulting societal strictures, will eventually be decided by those semi-feral children and not their overly permissive parents.

    What has long been decried by the civilized Christian West as “the cowardly act of animals” – how very raciss and judgmental – may well become the next “new normal”. No one should be so foolish as to believe that behavioral change on a societal level is either predestined or readily controlled by government bureaucracy. It is easier to destroy than create; it is easier to degrade than strengthen. The progressives who proudly proclaim that the youth of today are much more open to “gay marriage” should keep in mind that in the not-too-distant future, those formerly open-minded youths may well find themselves position of the disregarded, close-minded elderly, listening in horror as the progressives of tomorrow proudly proclaim that the youth are much more open to “sexual services on demand”.

    Rabbit logic in action

    “Branding terrorists as LOSERS, not villains, not monsters, not fanatics, not foreigners, not religious fanatics —> a win.”
    – Ana Marie Cox

    This is a revealing and educational statement. It demonstrates both the priorities and the intrinsic solipsism of the average rabbit.  To a rabbit, the thought of being labeled an all-caps LOSER is the ultimate evil and everything from religious faith to national identity will be readily cast aside in order to avoid that dreadful fate.  Being a loser, after all, is only one step away from being cast forth into the outer darkness outside the warren. Living in fear as it does, the rabbit genuinely cannot imagine that the not-rabbit does not feel the same way.

    The rabbit believes that if the not-rabbit only understood, truly understood, that all the rabbits are calling the not-rabbit is a LOSER, (or RSHD), he will be so overcome with remorse and shame at his ostracism that he will stop slaughtering people, (or making John Scalzi feel bad about himself), in order to avoid the pain of that terrible, awful, unbearable state.

    The fact that this tactic has never, ever worked on a not-rabbit, (for example, the ritual denunciation of people willing to give their lives in suicide attacks as “cowards” doesn’t appear to have any effect in reducing the frequency of such attacks), because, as always, material results are much less important than the rabbit’s ability to feel it is a contributing and valued member of the warren who is Doing Something.

    In a world of wolves

    There is a need for big dogs with sharp teeth to guard the sheep, especially the little lambs:

    Rembrandt’s phone rang at 3:15p.m. on a Saturday. He was on his way home from his grandson’s karate tournament, about 5 miles from his Mesa home.

    It was Sassy. A BACA kid was in trouble.

    Her road name is Music, and she’s 10. She belonged to a BACA chapter in another state but is now living in Arizona with her grandmother. That makes her Sassy’s and Rembrandt’s kid now.

    Her abuser is in jail, but his family members had tracked the girl down in Arizona and were banging on the grandmother’s front door, demanding that she turn the girl over to them, shouting up at the second-floor window where the child was huddled in her bedroom. Her grandmother called BACA and then dialed 911.

    The bikers know the drill well. Rembrandt called those who live closest to him – Rock, Uno and Fat Daddy. He stopped to change out of his grandpa clothes – shorts, T-shirt and sandals – and put on his biker garb – jeans, boots, leather vest, holster and handgun.

    The bikers carry weapons on stakeouts only when there is a threat against a child and they feel that as citizens they also could be threatened. Otherwise, Rembrandt says, they do not wear weapons around children. He says most of the bikers are licensed to carry concealed weapons.

    Rembrandt stuffed water bottles into his saddle bags and jumped on his 2000 purple-and-orange Indian Chief.

    By 3:40 p.m., the four men were on their way to Music, the rumble of their bikes announcing their arrival. Music’s grandmother rushed outside when she heard them, hugging Rembrandt and giving him a piece of notebook paper with a description of the people and their license-plate number.

    Sheriff’s deputies had been there, she said, and had escorted the people out of the neighborhood. But it is a public street, and law-enforcement officers just don’t have the manpower to stay for long. She feared that once the deputies left, the people would be back.

    She was right. But when they did return later that evening, they saw something different: four big bikers, all wearing shades even in the dimming light, their motorcycles backed into the mouth of the driveway.

    Rock had something resembling a cannon strapped to his leg; Rembrandt wore his gun on his hip.

    To someone trying to mess with a little girl, a group of large, strong bikers sends a certain message, Rembrandt says. “It just has a different feel than a cop,” he says. More unpredictable, maybe.

    “Cops are actually handcuffed by specific rules and laws that we are not. A cop has to work within a framework,” Rembrandt says. “You can flip off a cop. You don’t want to flip off Rock.” Just knowing that a biker doesn’t have to follow rules or honor boundaries can intimidate a person trying to make trouble.

    That night, Music’s grandmother pitched a small tent in her granddaughter’s bedroom, right under the window, so the little girl could look out the window whenever she wanted to see the bikers at the end of the driveway.

    Bikers guarded the house in shifts for the next 2 1/2 days. Some rode two hours from Tucson, kept watch for eight hours and then rode home again.

    They talked in low voices, and once Music was asleep, the red embers of their cigarettes glowed in the dark.

    Bikers Against Child Abuse is an example of the vast superiority of the libertarian model based on good people freely contributing their time and energy to other individuals in their community to the statist model of permitting a parasite class to forcibly extracting resources from everyone and pay itself to pretend to address the problem through government regulations and bureaucracy.

    I thought I’d post this since it strikes me as the sort of activity that some of the Ilk might find to be fulfilling, assuming any of you are capable of passing the required background checks.  BACA seems to go in more for road bikes and handguns than crotch rockets and fully tricked-out .50 caliber rifles with 4th Gen scopes, though.

    It’s a good cause. Sometimes, all that courage requires is the certain knowledge that somewhere out there, someone is looking out for you.

    Mailvox: rhetoric is not science

    Michael Z. Williamson takes a page from the true faithful of global warming and Keynesian economics by attempting to defend what is supposed to pass for science with pure rhetoric:

    Watching Creationists criticize evolutionary theory is like watching the Brady Bunch criticize the Heller Decision. It would be cute if they didn’t take themselves so seriously, and pose a serious threat to society.

    What I find amusing about this is that I was an evolutionary skeptic long before I was a Christian.  And one of the primary reasons I was a skeptic is because as absurd as some of the arguments presented by the creationists struck me, no evolutionist ever demonstrated an ability to address the questions posed to them.  Instead, they always – always – attempted to discuss the Book of Genesis, the age of the Earth, Christianity, the public school system, or some other topic totally unrelated to the one at hand.

    That is why I am still a skeptic concerning the secularism’s epic myth, despite having read every book ever published by Richard Dawkins, despite having read Wilson, and Gould, and Shermer, and Hauser, and a number of other well-regarded evolutionary popularizers.  At this point, it might be more accurate to say I am an evolutionary skeptic because I have read those books and been astounded by the obvious logical flaws, evasions, and handwaving that I have encountered in them.

    But since Mike is a Standout Author, and therefore capable of exceeding the customary limitations of discussion point-repeating progressives, I assume he is able to rise above the mere rhetoric and actually defend evolutionary theory.  Let’s find out by asking him six simple questions that should be no problem for any man with a solid grasp of the subject.

    1. How do creationists “pose a serious threat to society”?
    2. There are an estimated 1,263,186 animal species and 326,175 plant species in the world.  Assuming the age of the Earth is 4.54 billion years, what is the average rate of speciation?
    3. How many mutations, on average, are required per speciation?
    4. What scientifically significant predictive model relies primarily upon evolution by natural selection?
    5. Which of the various human sub-species is the most evolved; i.e. modified by mutation and natural selection from the most recent common human ancestor? Which is the least evolved?
    6. Is the theory of evolution by natural selection strengthened or weakened by the claim that most DNA is devoid of purpose?

    And Stickwick, who happens to be both a Christian and a physicist, beat me to showing how Mike’s attempt to tar all religious people as simplistic binary thinkers was not only demonstrably false, but amusingly inept:

    One of the (many) major problems with religion is that its followers insist there has to be a right and wrong answer, and only one of each.

    2 + X = (more than 5). Solve for X. One answer only, please.

    “There is only one answer: X > 3. Every other possible answer is wrong: it’s not X = 3 and it’s not X < 3.

    It’s
    absurd to point to our limited understanding of nature and say that
    since one person had it partially right and someone else had it
    partially right, therefore there is more than one answer. You don’t know
    that. And you’ll be hard pressed to build a convincing case, let alone
    prove, that there is ultimately more than one right answer to something.
    Science doesn’t proceed that way. Also, since when have religious
    people insisted there is only one wrong answer?”

    Mr. Williamson, with all due respect, you don’t appear to realize that you are not only dealing with a number of people here who are smarter than you are, but are also better educated in science than you are. It may help to keep in mind that at Vox Popoli, those who live by the rhetoric tend to die quickly and brutally by the dialectic.

    Here the rhetoric is only used to dance on the grave afterward.

    Second bomber surrounded

    Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was found alive under a boat in a backyard in Watertown by police using thermal imaging. Police are trying to figure out how to get him to surrender.