Unidentified Sea Creature Found After Typhoon

It was first seen by villagers on July 20, according to Mei who breeds fish nearby, and is nearly 12 meters long and weighs around 2 tons, according to district sea and fishery bureau staff.

The animal reportedly has a long thin head and a snout nearly one meter long.

Partly rotten, with its spine exposed, it has been impossible to identify, but has been described as having some hair, and orange stripes across a three to four-meter wide belly. The skull, which alone weighs over 100 kg, and coccyx of the creature have fallen from its body.

Mei said four young people took away a 100 kg piece of the corpse to study and many experts have come to inspect it, but all in vain.

From the degree of putrefaction, the animal may have been dead for a week and beached by Typhoon Haitang several days ago, said Hu from Beilun’s sea and fishery bureau.

He said its overall structure means it’s unlikely to be a fish, but the shape of its head is like a crocodile’s.

(Full story: China.org)

As "neato gee whiz" as it would be to have dragon type creatures still around I'm kind of glad that the serpents of so many legends are dead or supposedly only lived in the vivid imaginations of ancient peoples of all nations. I suppose I could put a little dragon head on the prow of my windsurfing to scare away the sea serpents like the vikings and other sailors did. But somehow I doubt that doing that actually worked.

Generally, the establishment argues that the recurrent event of big unidentifiable carcasses washing up on shore are generally basking sharks, adolescent whales or even sea lions. E.g. "...every ten years or so a carcass is claimed to be a 'dinosaur' but always turns out to be a basking shark or adolescent whale."

Of course, a lot of those do wash up, it's all debatable.

The tenth planet...

The tenth planet has been found...so only two [Edit: Oops, I guess it would be one more as they included the moon as a celestial body or planet.] more have to be found to match ancient texts, the zodiac, and twelve.

Odd, how the ancient texts might be right, as according to half-wits all ancient texts were written by those closer to Darwinists' supposed Ape-man.

Perhaps....


What is the evolution of Ape-man's writing, does civilization seem to burst on the scene or is there more of an evolutionary sequence in the use of symbols? How is it that the farther back one goes in history the more the ancients seemed to know? Despite the modern myths they knew that the earth wasn't flat, the sun is in the center, they wrote of the planets, their orbits, their number, that Neptune has water on it and so on. How could that be known?

Some things to think about:

The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also afterward—when the sons of God went to the daughters of men and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown. [Perhaps many mythologies were written of such "gods," in all nations.]

Genesis 6:4

No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. [...]

Immediately after the distress of those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; the stars will fall from the sky, and the heavenly bodies will be shaken.

(Matthew 24)

Perspective, you see...just as you say the sun "rose" today or that you saw a shooting star it can appear that stars fall from the sky, perhaps because of some meteor showers preceding something else.

On another note, it seems that Congress outlawed the making of chimeras recently, an early attempt to stop a defilement typical to those with the urge to merge. This might get interesting.

Life in a matrix?

It seems that there is more to sight than meets the eye and more to the I than sight. What is real and what is an illusion?

Yes, I know I sound like a mystic beginning to surround whatever it is I'm going to say with the mists of mysticism, as even a fool will sometimes be thought wise if he makes a few riddles out of answers. But I'm not about to say anything other than that there are some mists in day to day "real life" that are mysterious indeed. After all, everything we see is veiled in our own misty perceptions, with our brains constantly blurring, filling in blind spots, painting and processing the electrical signals we send into it for us to see.

Try looking at this example to see what you think of how your brain works.

He's a pinball wizard

Blind Teen Amazes With Video-Game Skills:

...he easily dispatched foes who took him on recently at a Lincoln gaming center, the affable and smiling Mellen remained humble.

"I can't say that I'm a superpro," he said, working the controller like an extension of his body. "I can be beat."

Those bold enough to challenge him weren't so lucky. One by one, while playing "Soul Caliber 2," their video characters were decapitated, eviscerated and gutted without mercy by Mellen's on-screen alter ego.

"I'm getting bored," Mellen said in jest as he won game after game.

(Continue at Yahoo News)



The Who, Pinball Wizard

He stands like a statue
Becomes part of the machine
Feeling all the bumpers
Always playing clean
He plays by intuition
The digit counters fall
That deaf, dumb and blind kid
Sure plays a mean pinball

Related posts:
(Man without legs runs faster than you or I run with legs, creates questions.)
(Not much to write today... )

[Edit: I saw this before Worldmagblog. Ha!]

The Pajamahadeen

In the election year of 2004, the new media turned up the heat. It put CBS right at the center of an even more significant controversy: Rathergate, the liberal media’s götterdämmerung. On September 8, CBS News anchor Dan Rather famously took to the air on 60 Minutes II trumpeting “newly obtained” Texas Air National Guard documents from the early 1970s, which purported to show that President George W. Bush had neglected his guard duties three decades ago. In a close election, the revelations hurt W.’s reelection hopes—or would have, had they been true.

Rather’s “scoop” began to unravel almost instantly, thanks to intrepid bloggers. CBS posted the documents on its website the night of the 60 Minutes II broadcast. “Buckhead,” a conservative lawyer writing in to the conservative FreeRepublic.com site, called the memos forgeries a few hours later, arguing that no machine from the early 1970s could have produced such fonts and spacing. From there, political blogs Power Line (named Time’s first annual blog of the year) and Little Green Footballs took over. On the morning of September 9, Power Line’s Scott Johnson posted a few paragraphs headed “The 61st Minute,” agreeing with Buckhead that the story seemed fishy, and trudged off to his day job as a lawyer. When he got to the office, dozens of reader e-mails were waiting for him, offering evidence as to why the guard documents had to be fake. By late morning, Power Line “had an arsenal of arguments attacking the memos—typographical, logical, procedural, historical,” as Time put it.

Later that afternoon, Little Green Footballs host Charles Johnson, a webpage designer by trade, used Microsoft Word default settings to create a seemingly exact replica of one of the memos. At this point, any one following the blogosphere sleuthing knew that CBS’s story was bogus. These sites had readerships of thousands. But when Drudge linked to Power Line—”60 Minutes Documents on Bush Might Be Fake” blared the headline—millions learned of the rising scandal.

CBS dug in, calling the bloggers “partisan political” operatives. Former CBS News exec and now CNN news head Jonathan Klein, appearing on FOX News, sniffed that the typical blogger was “a guy sitting in his living room in his pajamas writing what he thinks,” nothing like CBS’s professional news operation, with its “multiple layers of checks and balances.” (Klein’s comment inspired Jim Geraghty of NRO’s campaign blog the KerrySpot to dub the agents of the blogos phere the “pajamahadeen.”) NBC anchor Tom Brokaw accused bloggers of waging a kind of "political jihad against Dan Rather and CBS News."

But CBS couldn’t suppress the truth—not in 2004. A few years ago, noted InstaPundit’s law prof host Glenn Reynolds, “CBS would have flashed the documents on TV for a few seconds and no one would have seen them again. Even the people with doubts would have assumed that CBS had done its legwork.” Now the blogosphere—NRO, HughHewitt.com, BeldarBlog, RealClearPolitics, RatherBiased.com, and other sites that had picked up the story—kept fact-checking, reporting the analyses of experts on typography, National Guard practices, and other aspects of the controversy. Talk radio started to cover Rathergate “like a blanket,” says veteran radio host Mike Siegel. FOX News did too.

At last, the pressure grew so great that mainstream outlets ABC News and the Washington Post began reporting the story. The New York Times held out a bit longer—it so wanted to believe that the story would hurt Bush that it actually ran a headline proclaiming the memos “Fake but Accurate.” But even the Times, which had been embarrassed the year before by the blogosphere’s role in uncovering reporter Jayson Blair’s in-print fabrications, started to snoop around.

What emerged under this new-media and old-media spotlight wasn’t pretty. CBS, it turned out, had received the memos from notorious Texan Bush-hater Bill Burkett. The network’s own document experts refused to authenticate the memos, and Rather’s crew had ignored rel evant sources—and anything else that countered the story’s anti-Bush thrust. Worse still, CBS producer Mary Mapes had urged a campaign aide to Democratic presidential hopeful John Kerry to contact Burkett about the story—the old media conspiring with the Democratic Party to bring down a Republican president. It was a paradigmatic case of liberal media bias—mendacity, even.

(South Park Conservatives
By Brian C. Anderson :xi-xii)

Jihad?

If it is the plight of the Palestinians that drives them, why, everytime it looks as if Israel and Palestine are making progress, does thesame ideology perpetrate an outrage that turns hope back into despair? If it is Afghanistan that motivates them, why blow up innocent Afghans on their way to their first-ever election? If it is Iraq that motivates them, why is the same ideology killing Iraqis by terror in defiance of an elected Iraqi government?

--British Prime Minister Tony Blair

In view of these...repeated acts of terror, the incitements against all things Western, Jewish and Christian in who knows how many mosques in Britain and the U.S., the teaching of seditious ideas in radical Islamic schools funded by our 'friends' the Saudis, and the refusal of most Muslim communities to assimilate and learn the language, history and practices of their host countries, why do Britain and the United States continue to allow such things to exist within their borders? Unless we are prepared to accept continued terrorist attacks as 'normal' because of some sick understanding of tolerance and pluralism, we had better do whatever is necessary to root out these radicals and to forbid any more from entering our countries.

--Cal Thomas

The fact that native-born Muslim Europeans are committing terror acts within their own countries shows that this Islamist malignancy long predates Iraq, long predates Afghanistan and long predates 9/11. What Europe had incubated is an enemy within, a threat that for decades Europe simply refused to face. Early news reports of the London bombings mentioned that police found no suspects among known Islamist cells in Britain. Come again? Why in God's name is a country letting known Islamist cells thrive, instead of just rolling them up? ... Decadence is defined not by a civilization's art or music but ultimately by its willingness to simply defend itself.

--Charles Krauthammer

Progressives voice views blinded by hatred:

[Republicans have] done a p***-poor job of defending us. They want to kill us. They want to kill me and my children if they can, but if they just kill me and not my children, they want my children to be comforted -- that while they didn't protect me because they cut my taxes, my children won't have to pay any money on the money they inherit. That is bulls*** national defense, and we should say that.(Emphasis added)

--Paul Begala addressing young Democrats at the Campus Progress National Student Conference (The Federalist)

If he said that Muslims "want to kill us" I wonder what would happen on campus? The question of how the Democratic party came to be a National Party No More is bound up in the answer.

That's a picture that will probably haunt a fellow.

(John G. Roberts (L) stands next to President George W. Bush as Roberts' son John dances. )

Imagine a graduation party slide show: "That's John in the bathtub. Now here's John dancing in front of the president..."

Anyhow, the Leftists don't seem to be going all craaazy yet but they'll probably come up with something or other in the process as an excuse to get all craaazy. One new problem (Besides that little matter of losing elections.) is that their faithful Old Press is not going to be able prop up the notion that their hysteria actually matters. If history is any measure they will work to find something as an excuse to get hysterical and the Old Press will focus on that because it is sensationalistic.

But the combination of the New Media and the fact that the Left is losing elections undermines the old patterns.

So dance, little man, dance!

The story of the Protos and the Lepts

The three Proto scouts moved closer. They saw what looked like a Lept camp up ahead but wanted to make sure. Soon they were close enough to spot the entrance and, sure enough, there the Lepts were, going in and out, carrying food. The Protos had been right: It was a medium-sized Lept camp and near enough to their own for a quick attack. This must be the camp of the Lepts they had been encountering in recent days. Two of the Proto scouts turned back toward home to gather reinforcements, while the third stayed behind to guide the raiding party to the camp entrance.

The two scouts made good time returning home and announced their news at once. Excitement ran through the Proto compound as the story spread. A Lept camp only a short distance away! For as long as anyone could remember, the Protos had kept Lepts as slaves, and like slave-owners everywhere they needed to renew their supply of captives from time to time. For the Protos, nothing really worked well without Lepts. Without an ample supply of slaves, their whole society would disintegrate. It was not merely that the Protos were lazy, but they had kept slaves for so long that they were truly unable to care for themselves. The slaves could raise young, gather food, and keep the place clean, whereas the Protos themselves really excelled only at capturing Lepts. Otherwise, they spent a great deal of time lolling around their camp, acting bored, and asking the Lepts for something to eat. Lept slaves did all the work and were remarkably faithful to their Proto masters, even becoming ferocious participants in slave-raids on their own kind.

As the scouts made their report, a well-armed raiding party of both Protos and slaves gathered around them. When the group was large enough, the scouts led it out toward the Lept camp. One scout led the way over the carefully marked trail, the eager party briskly following in an orderly column. They soon made their way to the Proto scout left behind earlier and grouped excitedly for the assault.
Intimidating the few Lepts encountered on the way, the raiders advanced directly to the entrance. They forced their way through the entrance, attacking and pushing their way into the camp. The Lepts did not give up easily, and soon the fighting was fierce. As the battle proceeded, the distinctive fighting styles of master and slave became apparent. The Lept slaves fought hard, slashing and stabbing the free Lepts who were defending their home. As Lept struggled against Lept, combatants were equally matched, and the clashes often ended with one or both participants injured or dead. Encounters between Lepts and Protos, however, were generally quite different. Though the Lepts were brave, they rarely attacked the Protos. The Protos themselves almost never struck a blow. If a Lept did strike a Proto, the fast-moving Proto slipped neatly away. Instead of direct physical combat, the Protos preferred using an im pressive chemical weapon that each one carried. The Protos needed to spray only a few drops of this chemical and the Lepts were re duced to panic and confusion. They forgot about challenging the invaders but turned instead on one another, suddenly fighting among themselves in chaos and turmoil. All Protos carried this unthe battle. In fact, the Protos generally had no trouble defeating Lepts even when there were no slaves in the raiding party.
Meanwhile, as the conflict continued, several raiders pushed deep into the camp, searching out the Lepts’ communal nursery. Here, where the Lepts kept their young, was the Protos’ real goal. Because adult Lepts would never adapt to enslavement, the Protos had no interest in them. A Lept captured at birth, however, and raised among the Protos would accept servitude without question. Thus the raiders began removing infants from the nursery for the trek back to the Proto compound. Lept nurses rushed about trying to save their wards, grabbing up as many as they could and run ning for the camp entrance and the safety beyond. Many reached the entrance, but two Protos stationed just inside barred their way to freedom. These guards did not harm the nurses but allowed them to escape only after they released their precious loads. In this way, the young Lepts were captured and the adults were either destroyed or cleared from their camp and dispersed.
After the battle, several Protos carried the little ones back to the Protos’ camp, making repeated trips until the Lept nursery was emptied. They installed the captured infants in the Proto nursery where, under the eye of slave nurses, the little Lepts would learn their place in the world. This Proto home would be the only one they would ever know, and they would grow to adulthood un aware of what might have been. Any free Lept they met they would recognize only as an enemy.

For the Protos, it had been another successful raid. Several slaves had died, but the Protos themselves suffered few injuries. Owing to their chemical weapon, the Protos could raid the Lepts with little loss of life to themselves or their victims. If any society based on slavery could be characterized as “advanced,” the Protos certainly seemed so. Other slave-raiders that preyed on Lept nurseries killed as many adults as possible during their assaults. Some even ate their victims. In comparison, the Protos could pass as relatively civilized.
[...]
From this portrayal, we might condemn the Protos as barbarous creatures, but as you may have known all along the Protos are not wicked slave-keeping humans. Protos and Lepts are tiny ants that live out their entire lives in a world no larger than a dinner table. A Proto camp consists of one or two dozen indolent masters cared for by perhaps twice as many Lept slaves, all sheltered in an empty milkweed stem or perhaps within a hollow acorn. Free Lepts form similar colonies of two or three dozen individuals. The Protos’ formal name is Protomognathus americanus, and the Lepts they enslave are Leptothorax curoispinosus and two other closely related species. Their little domains occur throughout the broadleaved woodlands of eastern North America, from Ontario to Virginia and as far west as Ohio.

(Thieves Deceivers and Killers: Tales of Chemistry in Nature
By William Agosta :3-6)



Jesus often used animals as symbols of something else for the sake of a spiritual message. E.g. pigs for half-wits who will always be so, pearls for wisdom, scorpions as symbolic of demons and so on and so forth. Nature is what you have in this debate, so use it. One would think that the cold toads would understand that, yet they do not seem to.

Something interesting to note about our sense of Nature as a Book and a story of Good and Evil is that a spiritual sense of right and wrong is a universal sense. Even a half-wit like Richard Dawkins lectures about "selfish genes" on the one hand and the beauty of his Mommy Nature on the other, as he is a rather confused little fellow in that sort of sense. It's the darkness of her womb, don't you know. Those who deny common senses often prove soon enough that they have not succeeded in denying their reality or "existence," only in perverting a spiritual reality that is just as real as physical reality. Entire cultures can engage in such denials of spiritual truths, and yet the way in which they do so reveals the same type of self-evident and common senses yet again.

I will probably write more on the revenge of Conscience in another post sometime. It has to do with the way that the sentence: "This statement is a lie." is constantly eating its Logos with its words. If it is true then it is false, if it is false then it is not true. The Anti-Word is like a snake that eats its own tail so that it has neither a tail nor a tale. So you can try to disagree with the fact that our sense of right and wrong regarding Nature is universal and an absolute self-evident truth that is evident in the Self. Yet then all you have done is prove that you have a sense of right and wrong that has been perverted into a sense that being wrong is right.

One of the favorite arguments of Darwinists is to plead to our sense of what is wrong in Nature, so they would take the above tale of the ants that go marching on and combine it with prissy Christianity to argue something like: "How can a Good God allow the evil of slavery in ant colonies...and humans too! How? How, I say?! Well, since a Good God can't allow it then that means that natural selections explains it all better." That is a classic Darwinist argument, yet it is ignorant and stupid for many reasons. Is it really the Christian view of God that God will not allow evil to happen? Faith is the answer to evil, that seems to me to be the Christian view. The Christian answer is not some half-witted argument about how Nature has selected all things because would you just look at how evil things are. The natural theology behind such Darwinian sentiments or arguments is not Christian, although prissy Christians on the Left seem to tend to think the same way as Darwinists.

On the other hand, the notion that natural selection and random mutation can, by the "chance" selections of the Blind Watchmaker, create an ant may be equally ignorant on the how question as the Darwinian answer to the why question. Example, how the ants go marching on:

There are dozens of examples where advances in technology have emphasized the ingenuity of biological design. One fascinating example of this was the construction of the Soviet lunar exploratory machine, the Lunakod, which moved by articulated legs. Legs, rather than wheels, were chosen because of the much greater ease with which an articulated machine could traverse the uneven terrain likely to be met on the lunar surface. Altogether, the Lunakod eerily resembled a giant ant, so much so that it was no longer possible to look on the articulated legs of an insect without a new sense of awe and the realization that what one had once taken for granted, and superficially considered a simple adaptation, represented a very sophisticated technological solution to the problem of mobility over an uneven terrain. The control mechanisms necessary to coordinate the motion of articulated legs are far more complicated than might be imagined at first sight. As Raibert and Sutherland, who are currently working in this area, admit.

It is clear that very sophisticated computer-control programs will be an important component of machines that smoothly crawl, walk or run.

(Evolution: A Theory In Crisis
By Michael Denton :333)

The insect as anthropomorphized metaphor:

Bush to announce court nominee tonight

White House press secretary Scott McClellan said the Bush administration was asking television outlets to broadcast the speech live when he speaks at 9 p.m. ET with his nominee by his side.
[...]
McClellan said the American people expected that the Senate confirmation process would be a dignified one.(MSNBC)

Uh huh, I'm sure the Democrats will make sure that the nomination process is just full of dignity!

It's too bad, really. But if the liberals in the Judiciary had not politicized themselves by making their decisions based on what is currently politically correct instead of what is legally or morally correct, then the nomination process would not be so political. Surprising but true, they're actually not supposed to be taking into account "the mood of the people" or trying to read into the law what the current political status of a viewpoint is. The nomination process is what it is because of liberals. You won't read that in the Old Press though. They are typically too busy reporting on how the Republicans need to reach out and so on and so forth and not how liberals need to change the way they have been abusing the Judiciary.

As far as the Republicans go, if conservative Republicans cannot get Republican politicians too concerned with the opinion of the Old Press and liberals (e.g. John McCain) to support some of the basic principles they were elected to represent (such as textual limitations on the Judiciary) then they may not get elected next time. What more do they expect besides the Senate, the House and the Presidency, as well as many governorships? Does the Judiciary's play for power have something to do with the election of the only party that may limit them? What does concern over "morality" stand for? I would note that failure is not really the conservative Republicans fault although the principled people get lumped in as "Republicans" with middling moderates and the moderates are not held responsible for their type of passive agressive decisions by the time an election comes around. I think that this specific issue may be different though, people seem to be taking names over this business with the Judiciary. It's important to them, although perhaps it should not be as important as some make it.

As far as the liberal side of things, it's going to be almost passé when liberals go all craaazy over these nominations. Does it really matter that much, as much as they seem to feel it does? Will the abortion industry really go right on out of business, will irresponsible sex suddenly come to a halt, will men in their twenties really have to stop having sex with teenagers and then having them kill their offspring? To listen to progressives you'd think that the entire culture hinges on the decisions of some judges. But no, it will not change by judicial diktat. Abortion is nothing new and has gone on in America for centuries ever since its beginning. The laws making it illegal only came about after a cultural renewal at the roots of a newly cultivated culture, civilization rises and falls in generations and such laws can only last until a wicked and adulterous generation comes along.

The laws are only a culture's symbols, not its substance. I like getting words right or upholding a principle with them as much as the next fellow. But making judges serve the law as an end in itself instead of having the law serve the political will of the judge will not change the nitty gritty substance of the culture, no more than textual degenerates emitting some penumbras to make abortion "legal" prevented teenagers from going to a hotel and trying to perform their own back alley abortion. Didn't abortionists argue that those would disappear because of changes in the law? What about the teen mother who tried to flush her baby down the toilet at her prom as well as others? Didn't they know that the law had been deformed and penumbras emitted to stop such abortions?

It seems that our oligarchs in black robes flatter themselves in thinking that their decisions about what is or is not "constitutional" have some mystical power to define a culture and a nation. They do not have such power, you do.

The modern Humanist

It's interesting what they are saying and how soft they are going in some ways. I remember debating them in the 90s and they were not like this. (I found it on uncommon descent.)

E.g.

...the number of debates I have engaged in has diminished to a trickle over the years, reflecting a change of heart I have had about the whole approach. Once again, Genie Scott was right...debating head-to-head against creationists is a bad idea because most debate formats favor sound bites, and sound bites are easier and more effective for people who wish to attack science than for those who want to defend it. It is relatively easy to throw hundreds of apparently damning questions to a scientist in the span of a few minutes; it is very difficult for a scientist to seriously address even a few of those or, more importantly, to explain to the public how science really works (as opposed to the caricature presented by creationists).

I.e., "We just lost a lot of debates and we got tired of it. I still like to think that it has to do with being scientific or somethin' though. Why, I feel downright scientific saying so right now! Yeah, I've still got it baby. I'm still scientific, yay!"

...the best strategy we have is to talk to the public directly, on our terms, and using the arsenal of tools available to science educators.

If you lose a debate then problem is with you or your incorrect position and not with the public or how scientific you are being. I'd hate to see what they'd do if they actually won debates or found much empirical evidence to support mythological narratives of Naturalism.

So, please, don't call me again for future debates, OK?

It seems that some little fellows are running back into Mother Nature. I guess she can only select for them to argue about how scientific they are, naturally enough. That doesn't do one much good when the issue being debated is origins.

Lastly, let's talk about this "Brights" thing. As some readers may know, the Brights are a recently emerged movement within the general area of freethought. Brights decided to call themselves that way because they (rightly) realized that most other terms (e.g., atheist, skeptic, etc.) tend to carry negative connotationsthat can stigmatize non religious people and justify discrimination against them.

So that was serious!

But there they go again, the Left keeps discriminating against my Discriminating People.

You know, the good thing about Discriminating People is that they can discriminate between dumb and dumber. The Gay© business of the 90s was dumb and this Brights business is dumber. Yes, yes, we know the propaganda! Mother Nature selected your entire life for you, naturally enough. So Gays© are just the hapless Victims of their environment and genetics while the main argument of Darwinists is that all things are selected by Mother Nature anyway. Why are they the same type of arguments and why is there such an affinity between them? Why didn't "America conquer its [supposed] fear & hatred of Gays in the 90's"? He goes on:

So, the proponents of the Brights movement said, why not emulate the success of the Gay community and use a positive word to describe who we are?

A few of the successes of such identity politics:

"The very experience of acquiring a homosexual or bisexual identity at an early age places the individual at risk for dysfunction. This conclusion is strongly supported by the data."
(G. Remafedi, “Adolescent Homosexuality: Psychosocial
and Medical Implications,” Pediatrics 79, no. 3 (1987), pp. 331—37)

" . . For each year's delay in bisexual or homosexual self-labeling, the odds of a suicide attempt diminish by 80 percent."
(G. Remafedi, J. A. Farrow, and R. W Deisher
“Risk Factors for Attempted Suicide in Gay
Bisexual Youth,” Pediatrics 87, no.6(1991), pp.869—75)

But nevermind, that is empirical evidence and for all the talk about how much the Left loves its Gays©, they love their own moral vanity more.

The initial response from many authors (including myself, in an earlier Rationally Speaking column) was very positive, even enthusiastic in the case of Dan Dennett and Richard Dawkins. The problem, of course, was pointed out immediately, and even the brave proponents of the Brights movement themselves acknowledged it and wrestled with it: going around affirming one's "Brightness"...isn't exactly the best way to diffuse the image of intellectual snobbery that afflicts skeptics and freethinkers (the latter being another word of questionable usefulness in this context).

Generally you'd need a much better identity, marketing campaign, and a better understanding of how to manipulate human psychology. So, that's true. It would actually be possible to use the Bright idea if science geeks had a better sense of style, a sense of image and image control. I suppose he could try reading the writings of Gay© activists and then he'd understand it better. You use what you have and not what you don't, and the weak minds all bundle together in a Herd anyway. Those stuck in Plato's cave (i.e. the womb of mommy Nature) focus on images, so image control is key. Something said of Nazism was that it was the triumph of the image over the word. I.e., it is an attempt to put the perceptual before the conceptual and the deed before the thought, a triumph of the will, if you will.

Indeed, I have never actually introduced myself as a Bright to anybody. .... As Carl Sagan once put it, be careful not to be so open minded that your brain falls out!

Yet the average Leftist mind does seem to be open enough that almost anyone can come along and put some crap in it.

NASA may find life on Mars

The US space agency believes the two rover spacecraft scuttling across the red planet are carrying bacteria from Earth.

The bacteria, bacillus safensis, were found in a chamber in California that had been used to test the rovers. Officials believe it is likely that some of the microbes, possibly from scientists' skin, were on board when the mission left. (News.com.au)

So there may be life on Mars after all.

Just think if the scripts of Darwinian scriptures and narratives were correct and all the improbability and impossibility of such stories could be overcome....then millions of years from now some martian form of life might look up at the sky and wonder about its existence. I bet that if Earth had finally suffered an extinction event that wiped out all terrestrial life then few such life forms would think that the trail of cause and effect in their existence included some little space ship with some bacteria on it.

Would they link themselves back to a vast and ancient civilization or mythological gods who came from the sky? Would some ask the ultimate question, "Well, then why was that civilization there? Why is there something instead of nothing? Where do all stories begin?" I'm sure that someone would come up with something or other, as creatures that can think always seem to come up with something instead of nothing. There does not seem to be anything the matter with pure thought.

For better or worse,

(Related post: Martians, ID and Evolution)

Update...

From Iraq is the Model (English is his second language.):

Sadly, some stand reluctant and [are] afraid [...] that calling things with their real names might approximate them with the side they oppose politically.

This kind of people usually find it easier to blame America or the Iraqi government as that would preserve their pride, and all we hear are things like "there would have been no terrorism if there were no Americans in Iraq...bla bla bla".

They hate to admit the fact that terrorism existed in Iraq long before America came to Iraq; terrorism and the regime were one hand committing a genocide against the people of Iraq, only it was broader and crueler than today's war but the difference is that no one could hear of that genocide; concrete walls and basements that housed countless torture chambers and the bodies were buried in secrecy and under the cover of the night. (The full post)

Is he writing there about the general anti-American prejudice and ignorance of the Arab street or the prejudice and ignorance typical to American progressives?

After September 11, 2001, a horrible date in our history when close to 3,000 people perished, Americans once again came shining through; there was a rejuvenation of the American spirit as we responded with patriotism, anger, and a determination to make sure such an attack would never happen again. We were reminded of every reason why we should be proud and protective of this country.

The reaction on our campuses, however, was quite different, with an amazing refusal by both students and professors to recognize right and wrong, good and evil. It gave average Americans a shockingly clear picture of the effects of moral relativism at institutions ranging from the local community college through four-year state colleges to the most prestigious universities. The American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA), a nonprofit group dedicated to academic freedom, reported on a whole host of extraordinarily revealing comments made by faculty and staff at respected universities across the country. If you’re wondering what mentality drives those who have been charged with developing and molding the minds of the next generation, here are some examples:

“Anybody who can blow up the Pentagon gets my vote.” —professor of history, University of New Mexico

“[W]e should be aware that, whatever its proximate cause, its ultimate cause is the fascism of U.S. foreign policy over the past many decades.” —professor of English, Rutgers University

“[The American flag is] a symbol of terrorism and death and fear and destruction and oppression.” —professor of physics, University of Massachusetts—Amherst

“{I]magine the real suffering and grief of people in other countries. The best way to begin a war on terrorism might be to look in the mirror.” —professor of anthropology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

These comments fairly represent an Intellectual Elite that is completely out of touch with the attitudes and values of the average person in this country. When faced with a monumental tragedy, those in charge of higher learning exposed their moral vacancy by blaming America first. The Left are no longer able to see the simplest of truths embodied by 9/11: America stands for progress, equity, and
freedom. We educate people (both men and women, thank you), help make dreams for the future come true, and create a society in which individuals can thrive. Radical Islamists, as a cultural phenomenon, cut people’s throats [including charity worker's], destroy buildings, murder huge numbers of people, and condemn the future. Anti-Americanism persists, in the face of such obvious signs of right and wrong, because it is a requirement of moral relativism. If a student, or any one else, is to be successfully indoctrinated with the idea that all cultures and ideas are equal, then pride and loyalty to our nation, her past, and our heroes be comes anathema and must be eradicated. The special history, achievement, and greatness of America prove, simply by counterpoint, the existence of good and evil, right and wrong. Our history and accomplishments are the antithesis to the moral relativism of which today’s professors are so enamored.

(The Death of Right and Wrong (Random House: 2003)
By Tammy Bruce :159-161)

In a way it is a backhanded complement to America that the usual Leftist egalitarians feel the need to bring America down. If it did not stand for higher principles then moral degenerates would not need to bring it down for the sake of equality.

Perhaps America does not hold principles as high as it should all the time, indeed it cannot. Yet it often holds them higher than the supposed "world opinion" that progressives are so fond of trying to hide themselves in.

(I know a watchful fellow who seems concerned with world opinion and saftey. Saftey first!)

Apeman revisited...

...one can't forget about this fellow. Unlike the ancient mythologies with their Bullman, Goatman and Crocman as well as those beings revisited in modern movies like Spiderman, there are those who believe in Apeman.

Poor Apeman, Mother Nature just didn't select for him to survive through her natural selections, naturally enough. I wonder what story Mother Nature wrote for this mythical creature, a sad one perhaps. It was probably a shortage of bananas that caused a struggle for survival.



...and after a while of Nature's selections here we are, banana shortage be praised! That's the miracle of millions of point mutations for you.

I did some writing.

It's a few posts down under "Fun with Darwinists."

Philosophy and science on the Farside

Like the parable of Yellow and Pink I think that the answer to a lot of philosophy cannot be "proved" with physical evidence from inside the system. Yet it seems to me that a lack of physical proof does not mean that an answer cannot be sought and found.

Telic Thoughts

I looked up the blog Telic Thoughts because I was told that I wrote some rather telic thoughts by a half-wit who cannot think such thoughts. Maybe that was meant to be, although that might be of some annoyance to the half-wit.

This article about the usual Darwinian claim of "bad design" is based on telic thoughts, which is good.

I would note that there very well may be degeneration or even "bad design" and artifacts of malevolent intelligence in Nature. Distinguishing between malevolent and benevolent design may be an issue for philosophy, natural theology, history or UFOlogy for that matter. That is not the type of distinction that ID is about.


Don't laugh about UFOlogy, there is some good scholarship being done with respect to the study of UFOs. And I'm sure that if some "UFOs" or "beings of light from the sky" appeared over Jerusalem tomorrow then suddenly everyone would be interested in aliens, UFOlogy, mythology, the Bible or even demonology for that matter. They'd probably follow anyone given a minimum amount of signs, whether benevolent or malevolent. Heck, a generation that seeks after signs while rejecting knowledge will probably even look to salt stains under a bridge for guidance.

But at any rate, the claim of ID as a science is minimal with nothing to say of benevolence or malevolence. All the claim seems to be is that the detection of the work of metaphysical intelligence as an artifact in the physical can be accomplished through the systematic thought and empirical tools typical to what we usually call "science." If it is possible, then ID might even be used to prove that a salt stain is just that. I doubt that would be very complicated. Simple.

Note that the recognition of intelligent selection is the only way to falsify notions of natural selection, so you would think that Darwinists would be happy to have a way to verify and falsify natural selections. Yet they are not because for all the talk of science (Science!) the fundamental issue for them is not limited by the limited empirical view and precise systematic thought typical to science. They tend to believe that all things are Nature's "selection" and tend to believe and argue that such belief is the best belief for other people to have too. Therefore, they stick with the belief they consider beneficial no matter what the systematic thought as applied to empirical evidence typical to science indicates about the matter of matter. They believe that Naturalism is the best belief system and philosophy for people to have lest they kill each other over religion like some Islamic terrorists and so on. All other beliefs just aren't as safe as their own, you see...and so the fundamental issue for the average Darwinists is not one of science. (More on saftey and the Left, see post below this one.)

Yet ironically even as they discard science in favor of Naturalism and saftey most Darwinists seem quite concerned with what gets labelled as science. Their main concern and the majority of their writing is about what is or is not scientific and not with seeking after knowledge or the truth about origins. It would seem that is because what is scientific has to do with their career or vested interests as scientists while reason or what is true and epistemically sound does not. The situation seems to be similar to what goes on in the Court system where you can pay a scientific expert to testify to one story of past events and pay another to say the exact opposite. How can that be when only one version of events can be true? To at least some extent it is because there are careerists who work in scientific fields yet are not interested in what is reasonable or true. Note that if you were only allowed to pay those who told one type of unreasonable story then that is the only story that would tend to be told scientifically. There might be a few mavericks to blow careerists out of the water with empirical evidence and so on. But they would be few and only a few others would seek them out, which would make them safe to ignore. The general Herd that goes by, "Well, all experts say..." would believe the official story as long as it was surrounded with some type of jargon that sounded scientific.

In America Darwinists have succeeded in structuring a system in which only experts that tell one type of story can be payed by the State, thus the proliferation of mythological narratives of Naturalism should not be surprising to anyone.

Study finds that a lot of studies come to the wrong conclusions, new study expected tomorrow to disprove such claims.

(Study: What's good often turns out bad
By Lindsey Tanner (Seattle Post))

The refuted studies dealt with a wide range of drugs and treatments. Hormone pills were once thought to protect menopausal women from heart disease but later were shown to do the opposite, and Vitamin E pills have not been shown to prevent heart attacks, contrary to initial results.

Contradictions also included a study that found nitric oxide does not improve survival in patients with respiratory failure, despite earlier claims. And a study suggested an antibody treatment did not improve survival in certain sepsis patients; a smaller previous study found the opposite.

Ioannidis acknowledged an important but not very reassuring caveat: "There's no proof that the subsequent studies ... were necessarily correct."

I would note that it is not really that bad of a track record, being wrong 30% of the time is still being right 70% of the time.

But there are those who seem to have certain types of psychological dynamics who get a little lost in the science of it all. They tend to be all about saftey and health, healthy health. They keep stretching their supposed concern and their supposed knowledge about it all. Then here comes the State at their behest because you are not concerned about your own health enough. In fact, it turns out that the most helpful helpers are even more concerned for your safety than you are! So that's why they must help you. They're so helpful, these little helpers, all concerned for your health. Saftey first!

The current near-hysterical preoccupation with saftey is at best a waste of resources and a crimp on the human spirit, and at worst an invitation to totalitarianism

(State of Fear, by Michael Crichton :571)

I recently happened across the blog of one watchful fellow who is keeping a close watch on what is safe and what is not. Let me see what his blog says today. Well, color me surprised it seems he is concerned with saftey again. Actually, color me orange, as the watchful fellow who keeps watch over such things reports that we have been in a Code Orange Ozone advisory these past days.

So consider yourself advised of that.

But one can't forget the Homeland Security Advisory System which is usually at code blue. So we have a mixture of blue and orange codes....mixing blue and orange makes code brown. Code Brown? Yes, this combination makes for the little known Code Brown. It is on my bullcrap advisory system. And it's a real Code Brown on some days.

Well, I scanned/read the page of the watchful watcher. It's not really too bad today, some good points. Yet seeing the mind behind the text I am reminded of this quote: "The safest sin: envy, which is easily disguised as enthusiasm for equality."
(The Untamed Tongue: A Dissenting Dictionary
by Thomas Szasz :37)

There are some psychological dynamics that turn some fellows just Green with envy. Say, maybe Ralph Nader could color code that and put it in one of their advisory systems. I would like to be kept advised to keep me safe from more Code Browns.

Fun with Darwinists....

I'm having some fun at the Panda's Thumb this evening. I should probably be writing here.

(Ctrll-F: mynym to find me if you are interested.)

___________________________________

Edit: They shut down comments sections sometimes and did so on that section. I'm not sure on what criteria the decision is made. One further note about little fellows who engage in argument along these lines, "According to Christianity we should expect perfect design, perfection!" Wrong. According to a specifically Christian sort of natural theology one should expect to find remnants of perfection, not perfection.

So one fellow says:

I am also having trouble making some connections [in my neural nets] here [because connections like that would be like lightning bolts from the sky or somethin']...specifically, I am having trouble understanding how the indiscriminant Biological and Cosmological ID ramblings in your posts are even remotely compatible.

Indeed, they are mutually contradictory. The cosmological fine-tuning argument necessarily requires no evidence of further intervention by the designer to account for biological phenomena. Likewise, biological ID necessarily requires a poorly-tuned universe that would not produce and sustain life on its own without the intervention of a designer.

So which is it?

All of that seems to be based on the same notion argued throughout that thread in which a Christian natural theology would predict a sort of anthropic perfection in Nature, cosmologically or biologically. I.e., things are designed perfectly for us to live as biological beings and perfect little anthropic people and so on. Actually Christianity says the opposite about us and about Nature, it is a total worldview. So yes, on the one hand a Christian can argue from the remnants of good design and on the other from a sense of evil.




I suppose these fellows miss the fact that in the very beginning of the scripts of Scripture one son beats another to death and so on. Did the one being murdered call out to God to make things more anthropic, or at least human centered enough to save him from being beaten to death? Did his parents weep for him and wonder how such misanthropy could come to exist in their remaining son and in Nature? Of course, all of this leaves open the fact of which is more misanthropic, Nature or Man. According to some cold toads there is no distinction between Nature and Man, yet they no sooner finish saying that then they have contradicted their Selves.

At any rate, I am no theologian, but suffice it to say that the knowledge of some little fellows about what a Scripturalist natural theology would be seems to approach nil. They just do not know and so their ignorant criticisms about how perfect things ought to be given Scripturalism lacks force. Yet that is what their argument about perfection seems to be based on, i.e. some form of prissy Christianity in which no one could ever be beaten to death because God is the ultimate Nice Guy, just like the prissy Christian believes themselves to be. There is an atheism that seems to be a reaction to that sort of prissy Christianity and it shows itself in this structure of argument: "God is not a Nice Guy, just look around us at all the evil there is! Since God can only be a Nice Guy, kind of like I am, then that means God does not exist. Even if God did exist, if he cannot be made in my Nice Guy image then I won't believe in him. I'm a nice guy, so I know. I could make things better than God but God is a Big Meanie, so I don't believe in him. So take that, God!"

And so on. It's possible to make a satire of it because it is the material of satire. It is a reacionary sort of atheism. And it seems to be what is adhered to by the fellows at the Panda's Thumb, which is why the blog is named the way it is. Things should be better and if only God were as nice a guy as they are then everything would be nice! There is this little problem that they lack the capability to create anything approaching the creation and the little fact of evil in the history of man. In fact, they are just creatures. But quick, look over here so we can all blame Good for Evil once more! We all like to do that sometimes.

I wonder though, who will blame Evil for evil? Ah, but Evil does not exist as more than a metaphor for "Something I don't like." in the modern age...or it does exist in a slithery subtle way, just enough to blame Good for itself. How tricky!

Or not.

Fighting back against Darwinian proto-Nazism....

The fact that an organization is fighting politically and legally now is probably quite frightening to some cold toads. They like to hop around in the State unimpeded.

(Discovery Institute Files Public Records Request in
OSU Evolution Academic Freedom Case)

SEATTLE – Discovery Institute has filed a public records request with the Ohio State University (OSU) seeking all documents related to Darwinist attacks on OSU doctoral candidate Bryan Leonard. The request was submitted under the Ohio Public Records Act.
In June, Leonard’s dissertation defense in the area of science education was suddenly postponed after three Darwinist professors at OSU attacked Leonard’s dissertation research because it analyzed how teaching students evidence for and against macroevolution impacted student beliefs. According to a news report in The Columbus Dispatch, the professors admitted at the time that they had not read Leonard’s dissertation.

(story cited at: Uncommon Descent)

Scientists told to be careful of monkey-business...

'Human-brained' monkeys:

SCIENTISTS have been warned that their latest experiments may accidently produce monkeys with brains more human than animal.

In cutting-edge experiments, scientists have injected human brain cells into monkey fetuses to study the effects.

Critics argue that if these fetuses are allowed to develop into self-aware subjects, science will be thrown into an ethical nightmare.

(By Nick Buchan of NEWS.com.au)

Scientists said to have replied to critics, "Who, us? Why, we just got done peer reviewing ourselves to be experts last week!"

Terrorism News

Police make arrests, suspect London bombings were suicide bombings. (Nottingham Post) Olive-skinned men rummaging repeatedly in their rucksacks now viewed with suspicion.

(Olive-skinned men who want to rummage repeatedly in their rucksacks said to be self-defining as "Rummage People" and organizing marches to protest discrimination against people who are rummaging.)

A change in attitude: BBC Calls Terrorism Terrorism (CNSNews.com)

The Cliff

Once upon a time there was a cliff and a little fellow who had fallen down onto a crag in the cliff. He lay on the crag unconscious, a ways from the top. Then he woke up because a voice called down, "Hey, you've fallen and you can't get up."

The fellow rubbed his head a bit and called back, "Oh..." But being a little prideful he replied, "I can get up."

"How did you fall down there, anyhow?"

"Well...I was with all of my friends and all my friends walked off the cliff, so I tried it too."

"Didn't your mother tell you about all of your friends walking off a cliff?"

"Yeah..." the fellow replied.

"Why didn't you listen to her?"

"Because I'm a skeptic. Besides, she didn't really say not to so when Timmy said, 'Did your mommy really say not to walk off of a cliff?' I thought about it and she might not have, she only said what if they did. Besides, he said we would not necessarily get hurt and plus we could be like superman!"

The voice paused, "Are you like superman?"

"No...but maybe I can...well, the least I can do is get back up this cliff on my own."

"No you can't because little Timmy was lying. I can get you back up the cliff. I'm the owner of this property so I know how. That is the only way because there are beasts at the bottom of the cliff who will eat you if you slip down further. I would think you would have learned that you are not superman. You are just a child who didn't listen to the wisdom of his mother."

Little Tommy didn't like that answer and he shouted up angrily, "So you're the owner?! Why do you let this dangerous cliff exist on your property? And dangerous beasts too?!" Tommy stomped around the crag rather petulantly.

The voice answered, "This property is perfectly safe for boys who listen to their mothers. I am with a group of scientists studying the beasts at the bottom of the cliff. We study their behavior so that we can capture more of them and save little boys from being eaten. Tommy, we're at the point that you have to trust me to guide you back or you can continue believing Timmy about being like superman."

"Maybe Timmy wasn't right but I can stay on this crag and figure things out, the cliff isn't all that high. I'll bet my friends are at the bottom safe and you just want me to come up there to take me to the police. I think you're making up stories about beasts to scare me, is all!"

The scientist replied, "Okay Tommy..."

So Tommy began walking on what seemed to be the best path back up the cliff, it seemed safe enough, it was even looking grassy and there was not so much of a rocky edge. Then he walked on a soft spot and slipped down the rest of the way. He worried a bit but thought, "I still know the way back if I can find my friends. ...and see, it wasn't all that high or the fall that bad, just like I thought. That scientist was just trying to scare me."

But then little Tommy saw a shadow moving up the ravine toward him and his breath caught in his throat. Shaking and sniveling Tommy tried to clamber back up the slippery part of the slope, then he turned and saw something coming down the ravine toward him too. He wet his pants.

But while he was standing there wetting his pants a strong hand grabbed him by his collar and began pulling him up the cliff. He looked up and saw some scientists who had repelled down the cliff and heard a voice say, "Aw man, looks like your little skeptic wet his pants. Careful Joe..." The man pulling him up just laughed, then turned down to him and said, "You thought you were going to get torn apart by beasts? We can't have little boy's stories ending like that, now, can we?"

Little Tommy looked up gratefully and asked, "What about my friend Zed?"

Joe replied, "Some stories do end that way, Zed is dead Tommy....Zed's dead."

Index I
Index II
Index III
Not indexed yet, Science Fiction
The Extracosmosials

The Metaphoric

Mathematics is a language without metaphors. That is why it is the perfect tool for conveying precise meaning — and perfectly useless for inspiring people.

Music is a language with nothing but metaphors. That is why it is the perfect tool for moving people (as in religious or martial music) — and why it is perfectly useless for conveying any precise meaning whatever.
[...]
Ordinary language combines all of these qualities.

(The Untamed Tongue: A Dissenting Dictionary
By Thomas Szasz :57)


Half-wits engage in denying about half of all wit, to wit the spirit of the writ. The dead in the head will bear a false witness until the curse of the verse that brings their hearse is written in this, our universe. Is it not, after all, quite a Book of Death? There are only a few verses in it transcribed from a Book of Life.

Every verse has a writer, that is something that the half-wits deny.

The equivocations of moral equivalency

The Leftist tendency towards treating ideas and actions equally under the guise of treating people equally often leads to a lack of judgment. The irony is that American progressives sometimes get sanctimonious about this type of lack of judgment based on an odd view of Christianity. They honestly seem to feel that it is Christian to constantly seek a lack of judgment, as if you can have mercy without justice and forgiveness without an understanding of good and evil as its foundation.

Captain Ed notes of a European Leftist:

Drawing a moral equivalence between [Israel] building a security wall and [Palestinians] deliberately blowing up women and children demonstrates a surrender of the sense of moral outrage necessary to identify between good and evil.

The tendency towards moral equivalency is often the same with American progressives. So it is little wonder that they sympathize with Europeans and seem to worry over what Europeans will think. They actually try to draw parellels between the Founders and the Islamists as if the American Revolution is morally equivalent to Islamic revolutions. That is just ignorant. Yet it is a willful sort of ignorance and they have perfected ways of clinging to a lack of judgment, a lack of "discrimination." Sometimes they cling to their lack of judgment or ignorance by claiming that pretty much any act of definition is a "stereotype." That can be a way of stifling knowledge because knowledge is based on an awareness of distinctions and definitions. That is that and this is this.

Yet in my experience seeking ways to lack judgment is something that progressives do time and time again. In fact, if there is a progressive reading this they may very well want to write, "That's a stereotype of all progressives based on the actions of a few!"

Is it?

A Delawarean progressive....

I was reading some blogs and somehow came across this one: Delaware Watch. It seems to be written by a real tie-dyed-in-the-wool type of fellow caught in mommy Nature and so on.

He has a post up on the G-8 protestors. What I don't understand is the tendency among Leftists towards dressing up as clowns to protest, although it may be appropriate. E.g:



(I suppose that she sure showed the establishment the error of their ways. Because, well...dressing up as a clown and kissing a police shield is a fine example of public policy analysis and demonstrates that she knows how to solve Africans' problems for them. If only the establishment would follow her advice because Third World thieves, dictators, fascists and assorted con-men that pretty much make the Third World what it is probably just need a kiss!)

I think I'll keep watch on this Delaware Watch since it would be good to know the perspective of a local Leftist.

The degenerative....

That the Smithsonian as an institution pulled its support is really indicative of society today. That scientists centuries ago had no problem putting science and theism on the table at the same time is historical. That we cannot do so today is degenerative or retrograde.

(Todd Peterson in Christianity Today)

The worst offenders as far as following the subpagan tendency of rebellion against transcendence often seems to be the American Judiciary and oddly enough, mainline American churches too. It's not that they explicitly deny theism, yet they separate it from anything having to do with real life. They might say that this sort of separation is what the American Founders wanted. Yet it wasn't, which is why modern pagans come to a position that would make the theism of the Declaration of Independence and numerous state constitutions "unconsitutional." How can all of this be unconstitutional, didn't the Founders know of the contradiction? For that matter, the Constitution is also "unconstitutional" based on the version of separation adhered to by the ACLU because unlike political documents of the French Revolution it followed the old expression "In the year of our Lord..." which places God as sovereign over time.

Unfortunately, the American universities in which the American judiciary is being educated apparently do not have professors that teach American history nor basic civics for that matter. Given that, we have a Judiciary which will argue that the same sort of admission that God is sovereign* to be found in the Constitution itself is unconstitutional. The curious thing is that textual degenerates want to pretend that they are in agreement with the Founders. That may be because the foresight and wisdom that the Founders had through text is still apparent to most Americans.

I should note that even if people try to follow the diktats of those who rule by textual degeneracy it will not be possible. If the texts of a textual degenerate are static then such a person has lost their power to dictate by their own will whatever decision they will. Decisions are made to be an impossible maze of principles and concepts that cannot be defined clearly so that the petty tyrant can rule by their own will alone. Example: Kansas tried to set up a display of the Ten Commandments and historical documents in a historical way to follow what seemed to be the rules of the Court, only to have it struck down. That's because increasingly the Court rules the way it will rule. It is not making rulings based on principles and the veneer of principle it places on its decisions becomes thinner and thinner.

Do people wonder at how acrimonious and political the nomination process has become? Many things are the fault of Congress, yet that is not one of them, not entirely anyway. Instead that comes about because the Court politicized itself more than it had in the past and not because the Congress suddenly politicized the Court beginning in the 70s. There were some political decisions before too, yet the Court brought the new politicization on itself by making more numerous political decisions based on its own will or its perception of the people's will. In a political decision it exchanges the legal for the political instead of making legal decisions based on the text written to limit and define its decisions. Rejecting limitation, it now sets itself up as having the authority to define the very text intended to limit its own decisions. The Courts want to make the decisions that they will make and so what brings together all the disparate legal confusion created by political decisions are that they increase the power of the Judiciary.

The surest foundation the Founders could create in having a written Constitution has indeed become a "thing of wax," just as Jefferson said it would.

* (E.g.: "...under God..." in the pledge or "In the year of our Lord..." in the Constitution or "...endowed by their Creator..." in the Declaration.)

The eyes of the sandlance...

There they are.

This little fish (2 cm long) has independent eye movements like a chameleon. It is like a chameleon in many other ways, including unusual optics where the focal point of the eye in well in front of the centre of rotation....thereby generating monocular parallax cues by pure rotation of the eye without the need to make revealing translation movements of the head.

Note also that both eyes move in alternation....a visible interhemispheric switch!(University of Queensland, Australia)

There is a problem with this sort of continuity between disparate natural categories for Darwinists. Ironically, it is not the type of continuity that they need to write their mythological narratives of Naturalism.

Although it is evidence of some type of commonality between different life forms it is not the sort of sequential commonality in common descent predicted by Darwinism and the "Tree of Life." The Darwinian prediction is that an organism can be traced back in a sequence from twig, to branch, to trunk, to root. The twigs on the tree can be quite disparate life forms, yet the prediction is that they can always be traced back into evolutionary pathways through other life forms, even back into a primordial pool as the ultimate common ancestor.



The problem with organisms like the sandlance for Darwinists, interesting little fellow that he is, is that he is a part of the empirical evidence that refutes Darwin's prediction of commonality at the root of life in common ancestry with more disparity and adaptation at the twigs. Instead what is observed empirically are these odd commonalities at the twigs as the sandlance and numerous other examples support the notion of a common design that seems to be designed to refute notions like Darwinism or the subpaganism of the ancient Asherah poles.

Although it is true that if you really want to put things in a sequence then you can arrange them in a sequence, gaps or no. Michael Denton notes in Evolution A Theory in Crisis that this is easier to do with bits of rock than it is with living organisms.

Interesting to think about what a helpful or harmful empirical observation would be for common design vs. common descent:


I suppose it depends on the order you consider things to have evolved given common descent. Don't laugh, there is not much reason that the duck billed platypus should have Mother Nature "select" its duck bill supposedly through the same environment in which other organisms do not have a duck bill "selected" by her. Other organisms have similar features which give evidence for a Designer's selections over Nature's "selections." How does the inanimate make a "selection" and why do Darwinists use such a term if they don't mean that it does?

At any rate, I think that tucan-fish would fall under evidence for common design, if it existed.

Inverted:




Fish-parrots....I know they'd certainly be counted as evidence for common descent by Darwinists. They count almost everything you can concieve of as such evidence, after all. Their heads would be labelled atavistic, etc. Unlike the incorrect sort of sequence illustrated in tucan-fish, the order is more in line with the Darwinian notion that birds have an ancestry in fish. Interesting to note, as some Darwinists count every piece of empirical evidence as evidence for Darwinism that they might argue that tucan-fish is ancestral to tucans. In a similar way, they might say that the sandlance is ancestral to the chameleon or that Nature somehow "selected" the same unlikely design twice or thrice in two or three different environments. It was not unlikely enough once?

When smarty pants feel a little tight....

People perceived as the most likely to succeed might also be the most likely to crumble under pressure.

A new study finds that individuals with high working-memory capacity, which normally allows them to excel, crack under pressure and do worse on simple exams than when allowed to work with no constraints. ...

"The pressure causes verbal worries, like ‘Oh no, I can’t screw up,’" said Sian Beilock, assistant professor of psychology at Miami University of Ohio. "These thoughts reside in the working memory." And that takes up space that would otherwise be pondering the task at hand.
"When they begin to worry, then they’re in trouble," Beilock told LiveScience. "People with lower working-memory capacities are not using that capacity to begin with, so they’re not affected by pressure."

The findings are detailed this week’s issue of Psychological Science.

(Smart People Choke Under Pressure
By Bjorn Carey, LiveScience)

A most fabulous trick...

A kitesurfer going by when I was windsurfing:











More windsurfing pictures are back in the archives.

A few notes on the American oligarchy...

"One single object...[will merit] the endless gratitude of the society:
that of restraining the judges from usurping legislation." --Thomas
Jefferson (The Federalist)

Same issue discussed in an African American Newspaper, The 19th Century:

On this subject of the power of the Supreme Court, numbers of Mr. Jefferson's letters might be quoted, to the same purport as the above. I have only time to present brief extracts. In a letter to Judge Roane, date Poplar Forest, September 6, 1819, he says, referring to the Supreme Court:

In denying the right they usurp, of exclusively explaining the Constitution, I go further than you do, if I understand rightly your quotation from the Federalist of an opinion that 'the Judiciary is the last resort in relation to the other departments of the Government, but not in relation to the rights of the parties to the compact under which the Judiciary is derived.' If this opinion be sound, then indeed is our Constitution a complete felo de se. For intending to establish three departments, coordinate and independent, that they might check and balance one another, it has given, according to this opinion, to one of them alone the right to prescribe rules for the government of the others, and to that one, too which is unelected by, and independent of, the nation.

* * *

The Constitution, on this hypothesis, is a mere thing of wax, in the hands of the Judiciary, which they may twist and shape into any form they please. It should be remembered as an axiom of eternal truth in politics, that whatever power in any Government is independent, is absolute also; in theory only at first, while the spirit of the people is up, but in practice as fast as that relaxes. Independence can be trusted nowhere but with the people in mass. They are inherently independent of all but moral law.

To Thomas Ritchie, whose name as the editor of the Richmond Enquirer, is familiar to us all, Mr. Jefferson wrote, under date of December 25, 1820, as follows:

The Judiciary of the United States is the subtle corps of sappers and miners, constantly working under ground to undermine the foundations of our confederated fabric. They are construing our Constitution from a co-ordination of a general and special Government, to a general and supreme one alone.

I should weary you if I were to quote a tithe of what Mr. Jefferson has left us on this subject. What I have presented will suffice to show you that he entertained a deep-seated jealousy of Federal encroachments upon the rights of the States, and that he utterly repudiated the modern doctrine of the party which claims to be Democratic, that the Supreme Court is the final arbiter of constitutional questions.

(THE NATIONAL ERA
April 21, 1859
Washington, D.C., Vol. XIII No. 642 P. 61)

Despite the fact that the law is based on text the federal judiciary is largely made up of textual degenerates. The Founders argued that the surest foundation of our government is its written Constitution. Those who would make all of the people's discriminations for them argue that it emits "penumbras" that only they can see. If the people are increasingly illiterate then they are textual degenerates of another sort who will tend to rely on someone else making all their discriminations for them. So they will be blind to tyranny until it has an obvious impact on them personally and by then it is too late.

(This issue is discussed from the angle of the issue of abortion over at Hyscience.)

Asians stuck in feudalism work as serfs....inside computer games

"Sack" is the only name I'm given for the person I'm supposed to contact. He lives in the Fujian province of China, but his place of business is online—he plays Lineage II. He's paid about 56 cents an hour to work in a videogame "sweatshop."

If the term sounds familiar, it's because of Lee Caldwell. The notorious MMORPG scripter got busted four years ago for admitting that his company, BlackSnow, hired workers in Tijuana to earn gold by "farming" in Ultima Online. Caldwell sold that in-game tender online for a handsome real-world profit while only paying his employees pennies on the dollar. Since 1998, the second-party market for MMORPG loot has steadily grown. Last year alone, this newfound industry grossed roughly $500 million, according to Bob Kiblinger of UOTreasures. CGW decided it was high time to go underground and find some of the key players who are going after a piece of the action.

(1up.com)
(From sweatshops to stateside corporations,
some people are profiting off of MMO gold.
by James Lee)

MMO = Massively Multiplayer Online, or something like that. They're big virtual worlds. Funny, the virtual world is like the real world for parts of the world stuck back in feudalism.

It should be noted:

For all the so-called virtual sweatshops discovered, a lot of these young men and boys don't mind their jobs, and they aren't exactly working in sweatshop conditions. There's a world of difference between making sneakers and watching bots fight all day. However, they are underpaid, or as Smooth Criminal puts it, "They get paid dirt. But dirt is good where they live."

(Ib.)

There is always some Marxist around who thinks that the solution to exploitation is to make everyone unemployed through some totalitarian system. Ironically, Marx himself argued that capitalism is a necessary step between feudalism and communism.

In related news: New Chinese clinic aims to combat online gaming addiction (GameIndustryBiz)

I rather like some cold toads.

A Book Review

I read a book over the weekend that happened to be in my parent's vacation house. It was State of Fear by Michael Crichton, the first novel I have read in a few years. Ironically, although it is fiction it deals with a form of scientism in our times, i.e. "global warming." It's like one can't escape it these days. I found the way the author paints verbal pictures of the mommy Earth type of New Man amusing. I suspect that some scientific cold toads will be hopping mad about it. Anyway, onward....an example of the New Man:

“Listen,” he said. “I have to go see Nick for a bit.”

“I’ll be fine.”

“I’ll come back,” he said, “as soon as I can.”

“I’ll be fine,” she repeated. He stood, and she stood, too. On a sudden impulse he gave her a hug. She was so tall they were almost shoulder to shoulder. “It’s going to be okay,” he said. “Don’t worry. It’ll be okay.”

She returned the hug, but when he released her, she said, “Don’t ever do that again, Peter. I’m not hysterical. I’ll see you when you get back.”

He left hastily, feeling foolish. At the door, she said, “By the way, Peter: Do you have a gun?” “No,” he said. “Do you?”

“Just a 9-millimeter Beretra, but it’s better than nothing.”

“Oh, okay.” As he went out the front door, he thought, so much for manly reassurances for the modern woman.

(page 152-153) It seems that the New Man has a hard time separating from the feminine sometimes. He also feels that he comes up short and resents her for it. By page 323 things are still pretty much the same:

...Sarah looked at Peter. He was good-looking, and he had the strong physique of an athlete. But sometimes he behaved like such a wimp.

“You ever do any sports?” she said.
“Sure.”
“What?”
“Squash. A little soccer.”
“Oh.”
“Hey,” he said. “Just because I don’t shoot guns. . . I’m a lawyer, for Christ’s sake.”

She was disappointed with him and not even sure why. Probably, she thought, because she was nervous and wanted somebody competent to be with her. She liked being around Kenner. He was so knowledgeable, so skilled. He knew what was going on. He was quick to respond to any situation. Whereas Peter was a nice guy, but...

The New Man is a nice guy. That's pretty much undeniable. By the way, I should note that Real Men don't write about what New Men or Real Men do or don't do. Yet that does not stop me!

It wasn't all so bad for the New Man in this section:
"...but...She watched his hands on the wheel. He drove well. And that was important today." (Ib.)

Well, there's the good hands and at least some sort of spatial reasoning. Maybe the New Man can be a Real Man? Maybe...but he'll probably have to quit being so prissy, die fighting evil and then be born again. Where do such scripts come from? By page 358 it was done:

He realized then that his experience in the crevasse had changed him—and changed him permanently. Someone had tried to kill him. .... [H]e could not have predicted the way that he felt changed by it now. He felt as if he had been physically moved—as if someone had picked him up and shifted him ten feet to one side. He was no longer standing in the same place. But he had also been changed internally. He felt a kind of solid impassivity he had not known before. There were unpleasant realities in the world, and previously he had averted his eyes from them, or changed the subject, or made excuses for what had occurred. He had imagined that this was an acceptable strategy in life—in fact, that it was a more humane strategy. He no longer believed that. .... The world was not how you wanted it to be. The world was how it was.

The "crevasse" was quite a wordly womb and the New Man had to be pulled on out of there to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Otherwise he'll always skirt the issue of Good and Evil by hiding behind Mother Nature's skirts or crawling back into her womb. Look carefully, he sometimes looks out from her skirts with fearful eyes! Fortunately, some New Men are born again:

She noticed that Evan's voice had lost its boyish hesitancy. He was no longer protesting everything Kenner said. He sounded older somehow, more mature, more solid.

So by page 359 he's coming along nicely! How nice. Well, you get the idea, I liked the book as a fast read and found it amusing. Also, he has apendices in the back of the book which deal more seriously with his research and so on. (No book that deals with scientism would be complete without mentioning the eugenics movement and the Nazis.)



Spoiler: There is a spot where a Hollywood half-wit type Leftist gets eaten alive by their supposed noble savages. Yes, believe it or not there are evil people living in Third World nations. It has to do with how they come to be Third World nations in the first place. Yet as much as I agree with doing away with stupid and ignorant ideas, having someone get eaten alive may have been a bit heavy handed. At any rate it is true, Rousseau's noble savage is not so noble while the New Man's typical refusal to deal with Good and Evil, Right and Wrong, is often dangerous to himself.