Yearly Archives: 2007

Romney Has a Big Tent

But there is only room in it for Christians.

“There are some who may feel that religion is not a matter to be seriously considered in the context of the weighty threats that face us. If so, they are at odds with the nation’s founders…. In John Adams’ words: ‘We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion… Our constitution was made for a moral and religious people.’

Notice that Adams at least said “Moral and Religious” … Romney, on the other hand, clearly implies that true morality comes only from religion. Don’t believe me? Read on…

Continue reading Romney Has a Big Tent

Talk Radio vs. Islam

Conservative Radio Talk Show Host Michael Savage is suing the Council on American-Islamic Relations for using a 4-minute bit of his show “The Savage Nation” to raise awareness of his conservative politics among potential advertisers. Savaged called the Queran “a throwback document” and a “book of hate.” I wonder what Savage things of, I don’t know, the Old Testament, for instance?

“What kind of religion is this? What kind of world are you living in when you let them in here with that throwback document in their hand, which is a book of hate,” Savage said during the portion of the broadcast highlighted by CAIR. “Don’t tell me I need reeducation. They need deportation.”

In an interview with The Associated Press on Monday, Savage said he was talking about Iran president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his dangerous and violent brand of Islamic extremism, not about the religion in general.

Savage said he strongly supports freedom of speech, but “it’s another thing to take away a man’s millstone and try to put him out of business.”

A CAIR spokeswoman… called the suit,… “bizarre, sloppy and baseless.” …”We expect to prevail based on the facts, the law and the Constitution,” Amina Rubin said.

Its fun watching religious people and conservatives beat each other up.

Preaching Eugenics

Brian Larnder, bless his soul, has written an overview (maybe a book review) of Preaching Eugenics: Religious Leaders and the American Eugenics Movement

From Brian:

… the concept of eugenics found a very welcome home among the christian faithful of the day from the late 19th Century through the first few decades of the 20th Century. The American Eugenics society sponsored an annual contest for the best eugenics sermon of the year and apparently many clergymen participated, readily supplying biblical quotations to make the case for eugenics.

AHA! I say! (see)

Go and read Brian’s post! He concludes with…

To blame it all on Darwin (and by extension all of modern biology) is ridiculous and deceitful. To take that a step further and insist that without Darwin, Hitler would never have carried out the holocaust is the absolute height of dishonesty.

Blood from Stones

Certain ceremonial objects from the Dogon and other cultures of West Africa are known for their dark patina. There is plenty of ethnological evidence that the thick coating on these wood sculptures, which are often in human or animal shapes, contains blood from animals sacrificed as part of the ceremonies. But the presence of blood had not been proved through chemical analysis.

Now, don’t get too excited yet … I’ve seen this a half dozen times before. The indicators of blood are everywhere in the environment. It is almost impossible to chemically test an artifact and not find evidence of blood on it (if you use the right test). So, let’s see what this new find, just reported in the New York Times, may turn out to be…. Continue reading Blood from Stones

Woman Wakes During Surgury, Gets 11 Large

A court on Wednesday awarded $11,000 to a woman who said she woke up during major abdominal surgery but was unable to tell doctors she was in terrible pain. … The 62-year-old retiree in the southern Austrian province of Carinthia had demanded more than $57,000 in compensation for mental and physical suffering during the October 2002 operation, public broadcaster ORF reported.

Then they spilled coffee on her… Ouch.

Philippe Starck: Why design?

Legendary designer Philippe Starck — with no pretty slides behind him — spends 18 minutes reaching for the very roots of the question “Why design?” Along the way he drops brilliant insights into the human condition; listen carefully for one perfectly crystallized mantra for all of us, genius or not. Yet all this deep thought, he cheerfully admits, is to aid in the design of a better toothbrush.

TED