Political Objectives? Tippytoeing around the truth

From the AP:

Bush didn't repeat the reference to "Islamic fascists" at the State Department today, referring instead to "individuals that would like to kill innocent Americans to achieve political objectives."

To whom is Bush referring? These people want to kill innocents for religious objectives. (Oops, he can't say that out loud.)

Although ... their religion encompasses the political as well ... so perhaps he's accurate, in a roundabout way.

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Foiled Plot

The AP writes:

While al-Qaida's call for global jihad clearly acted as inspiration, there has been no direct evidence that bin Laden or his No. 2, Ayman al-Zawahri, had advance knowledge of those attacks, that they helped plan them, or that they provided financial or logistical help to those who carried them out.

Question: do we care if it's "genuine al-Qaida"? Why this obsession over confirming this? Because we can't face reality?

The reality is this: there are thousands (optimistically) of people who are trying to kill us because of their belief system, not because of an al-Qaida membership. That's all. No ties to terrorist groups are needed - just, for example, a lone gunman who has bought into a religious system. (Whether it's a distorted one or not can be debated at www.answering-islam.org.)

Second, why this tippytoeing about those religious beliefs?

Sky News' Crime Correspondent Martin Brunt said those under arrest are mainly young, British-born men of Asian origin.

As a Chinese, I find this extremely offensive. Journalists are so afraid of offending Muslims that they are willing to cast all Asians in the role of potential terrorist. But why the kid gloves? Doesn't anyone with at least half a brain already know the religious beliefs of anyone wanting to blow up anything with innocent people inside? Do they seriously think they can prevent any sort of backlash against Muslims by describing the terrorists as British-born men of Asian origin?

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The Final Solution

Sigh. Those who cannot learn the lessons of life from Ben Hur, will never learn. Hezbollah (and Islamist terrorism) is based on an idea, the idea that their actions will earn them eternal pleasures.

How do we fight an idea? "With another idea."

Solution: videotape the IDF (or someone to whom the handling of the substance suggested is not taboo) spraying Hezbollah bodies with pig fat, denying them entrance into their paradise filled with "young boys." (For some reason we keep forgetting that part of the verse. Are we just not inclusive enough?)

After the initial uproar from both the peaceful and non-peaceful Muslim (?) communities, they'll get the message.

Why the peaceful Muslims would get upset is another question altogether.

V for Vendetta: Preachy Pop Pontifications

I watched it knowing what I was getting into. Having "read" the "book", too. But I couldn't resist seeing what the Wachowski's could do with the material.

Well, it turns out, not much apart from conjuring a fantasy world. By that I mean one that has absolutely no connection with reality. Islam is repressed (instead of being the opressor, as in the real world today); gays are repressed (instead of being endlessly celebrated and deified in movies like this one); priests are pedophiles (well, OK, I'll give them that - although the book "Goodbye Good Men" suggests another aspect to this we've been ignoring); and a murderous fascist, probably "Christian" fanatic is in charge, but not quite - in the movie's most laughable moment (well, one of them), he fails to take the most obvious course to ensure that Stephen Rea's detective does not reveal his biggest secret. Instead of killing him, he ... makes him promise not to tell.

It's such puerility that pervades this pop parsing of Moore's teen-angst plot. Doubtless to some it is still "BRAVE" and "HARD-HITTING" to cast Christians in this light*, but it only reveals the shallow knowledge of history - and even of the present day - that infuses our cultures. Or perhaps the sad lack of questioning that the "Question Authority" bumper sticker types seem to exercise in fact.

Oh. They also ruin the movie by adding a sappy love angle to the story that adds nothing and gooeyizes (and confuses) everything you've seen in the last couple of hours.

Anyway, the movie conveys important, timely messages: the Church is your enemy! Islam is a totally benign religion in danger of being lost forever! Gays are brutally oppressed! And see how I made McCreedy look like Rush Limbaugh (or Frank Rich)! It's such subtlely that makes this film a deep viewing experience for those "in the know", for those who UNDERSTAND that these things might actually, like, happen.

*It's brave because ... Christians may get upset but you know they won't blow up your building? Won't saw off your head? Wow, that's really brave taking on people like that.

Why Cut and Run?

I don't know if it's been said elsewhere, but I think it's clear why so many liberals are advocating cut and run. And it's not because they think our strategy there is failing.

It's because they think it will succeed.

And what a nightmare that will be for all the naysayers who scoffed at the "cowboy" from Texas. What an embarrassment for those who consider themselves the enlightened. And what a disaster for upcoming elections.

It's repugnant, I know, to think that they may be doing this - denying freedom to the Iraqis, allowing the insurgency to flourish - for such crass and selfish reasons. But I can see no other explanation for their constant cries to cut and run. Are they really concerned about our soldiers? Well, then why advocate surrender? Why bring all their efforts, and the sacrifice of their fallen, to naught? Why save their lives and sell their honor? No, it's not for them.

Is it because it's a bad plan? Well, it's the same plan Bush offered at the beginning - just badly executed, truncated before the underlying security infrastructure is in place.

Is it for the American people? To save on the cost of war? Well, what about the cost of a few more 9/11's? Because that's what cut and run will bring.

So they intend to nip Iraqi democracy in the bud before it can succeed. At any cost. Before it can vindicate the man they hate above all others. Because it will embarrass Bush.

And no price is too great for that.

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People Who Thank George Bush/America (2)

From someone who really counts:

"Anybody who doesn't appreciate what America has done and President Bush, let them go to hell"

—Iraqi Citizen, voter Betty Dawisha

For those mathematicians who are apparently still unaware of how their discipline says evolutionism is rather silly

... here is a link to some info on the Wistar Institute Symposiums:

The ascription of all changes in form to chance has long caused raised eyebrows. Let us not dally with the doubts of nineteenth-century critics, however; for the issue subsided. But it raised its ugly head again in a fairly dramatic form in 1967, when a handful of mathematicians and biologists were chattering over a picnic lunch organized by the physicist, Victor Weisskopf, who is a professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and one of the original Los Alamos atomic bomb group, at his house in Geneva. `A rather weird discussion' took place. The subject was evolution by natural selection. The mathematicians were stunned by the optimism of the evolutionists about what could be achieved by chance. So wide was the rift that they decided to organize a conference, which was called Mathematical Challenges to the Neo-Darwinian Theory of Evolution. ...

A number of mathematicians, familiar with the biological problems, spoke at that 1966 Wistar Institute. They clearly refuted neo-Darwinianism in several areas, and showed that its "fitness" and "adaptation" theories were tautologous—little more than circular reasoning. In contrast, some of the biologists who spoke at the convention could not see the light. They understood bugs and turtles, but could grasp neither the mathematical impossibilities of evolutionary theory nor the broad picture of how thoroughly defunct evolution really is.

For example, one of the mathematicians, *Murray Eden of MIT, explained that life could not begin by the "random selection," which is the basic pillar of evolutionary teaching. Yet he said that if randomness is set aside, then only "design" would remain—and that would require purposive planning by an Intelligence. ...

For four days the Wistar convention continued, during which a key lecture was delivered by *M.P. Schutzenberger, a computer scientist, who explained that computers are large enough now to totally work out the mathematical probabilities of evolutionary theory—and they demonstrate that it is really fiction.

*Murray Eden showed that it would be impossible for even a single ordered pair of genes to be produced by DNA mutations in the bacteria, E. coli,—with 5 billion years in which to produce it! His estimate was based on 5 trillion tons of the bacteria covering the planet to a depth of nearly an inch during that 5 billion years. He then explained that the genes of E. coli contain over a trillion (10¹²) bits of data. That is the number 10 followed by 12 zeros. *Eden then showed the mathematical impossibility of protein forming by chance. He also reported on his extensive investigations into genetic data on hemoglobin (red blood cells). ...

It was decided that no record would be kept of the sessions, in order not to give ammunition to the creationists. The rapid accumulation of evidence against evolutionary theory had brought a crisis of such proportions that most of those in attendance decided to repudiate a cardinal Darwinian doctrine; they agreed that small changes from generation to generation within a species could never accumulate to produce a new species. ...

The following year [1984], still another important meeting of evolutionists was held. At this meeting, held at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, *Colin Patterson, senior paleontologist at the British Museum of Natural History, in a paper that he presented to the assembly, declared before his peers that evolution was "positively anti-knowledge," and added that "all my life I had been duped into taking evolution as revealed truth."

The same year another scientist wrote this:

"An increasing number of scientists, most particularly a growing number of evolutionists . . argue that Darwinian evolutionary theory is no genuine scientific theory at all . . Many of the critics have the highest intellectual credentials."—*Michael Ruse, "Darwin's Theory: An Exercise in Science," in New Scientist, June 25, 1981, p. 828.

W.R. Bird documents the great confusion reigning over almost every area of evolutionary biology in his excellent The Origin of Species Revisited. And of course creationsafaris gives a good taste of how "the dead hand of Darwin" continues to muck up real science.

Violent Peacenik Watch

From the Australian:

NOBEL peace laureate Betty Williams displayed a flash of her feisty Irish spirit yesterday, lashing out at US President George W.Bush during a speech to hundreds of schoolchildren.

Campaigning on the rights of young people at the Earth Dialogues forum, being held in Brisbane, Ms Williams spoke passionately about the deaths of innocent children during wartime, particularly in the Middle East, and lambasted Mr Bush.

"I have a very hard time with this word 'non-violence', because I don't believe that I am non-violent," said Ms Williams, 64.

"Right now, I would love to kill George Bush." Her young audience at the Brisbane City Hall clapped and cheered. ...

It's disturbing that hundreds of schoolchildren would be clapping and cheering this ... isn't it? Maybe I'm just not "peacenik" enough.

Is the Nobel Peace Prize just a Piece of Crap?

So why does NAS endorse evolutionism?

Maybe for its wondrous benefits to mankind, such as Nazism and Marxism. As we've seen, it's certainly not for any love of science or inquiry.

Derbyshire, Unhinged Again

Poor John Derbyshire can't seem to understand the difference between Intelligent Design and Creationism (in this case Muslim creationism, whatever that means):

"Teaching the Controversy"... [John Derbyshire]

...in Tehran. The current (7/21/06) issue of Science has an article on science in Iran. From which:

A glance at the evolution exhibit at Tehran's museum of natural history reveals the tension below the surface. Wave after wave of schoolgirls in matching headscarves file past a row of glass cases containing meticulously arranged fossils. A label next to a trilobite, for example, says that the specimen, discovered in the nearby Alborz mountains, came from the Devonian, a period 400 million years ago when those sediments were submerged in a shallow sea. Along the opposite wall, a diorama chronicles the evolution of life on earth. Painted scenes of ancient life look as if they've been copied directly from the latest biology textbooks. But the exhibit takes a sharp detour from science in the final display case where evolution is summed up. In an open tome representing the Koran, phrases in calligraphy proclaim that 'God willed an atmosphere created from gases' and 'God created man from water.' Above that is a poster—published by the Creation Evidence Museum in Glen Rose, Texas—describing how Earth was created in a few days by an omnipotent being.

For the benefit of other mathematicians who feel compelled to comment on matters in which they have decided to remain poorly read, let me recap: creationism is when you try to interpret the data through the lens of Scripture. ID, on the other hand, draws conclusions from scientific observations only, not from sacred texts. It's not a terribly subtle or complicated difference. I cannot explain Derb's continued obtuseness on this issue, except to surmise that his condition is purposefully self-inflicted.

Betty Williams, an Inspiration to Idiots Everywhere

Yes, even if you're a violent-tendency nutcake, you too could win a Nobel Prize:

NOBEL peace laureate Betty Williams displayed a flash of her feisty Irish [I think "Idiot" was meant? - Ed.] spirit yesterday, lashing out at US President George W.Bush during a speech to hundreds of schoolchildren.

Campaigning on the rights of young people at the Earth Dialogues forum, being held in Brisbane, Ms Williams spoke passionately about the deaths of innocent children during wartime, particularly in the Middle East, and lambasted Mr Bush.

"I have a very hard time with this word 'non-violence', because I don't believe that I am non-violent," said Ms Williams, 64.

"Right now, I would love to kill George Bush." Her young audience at the Brisbane City Hall clapped and cheered.

Note how clueless she is about how Saddam kept medical supplies and food from his people, not to mention the UN-led scheme to profit from their misery. So, yes, you too can win the Nobel Prize, as long as you're full of clueless hate but can get a petition signed. And get this:

"There can be no sustainable peace while military spending takes precedence over human development."

Well, I suppose there's peace - sort of - when all us infidels have been suicide-bombed to smithereens, but I'm not sure there'll be any "human development."

Happily for her, though, there'll be plenty of "idiot development."

Doesn't speak well for her young audience either ... clapping at such a demented statement.

Science vs. Evolution - Again

What happens when science meets Darwinian fantasy:

As a long-time devotee of science fiction, I have always been excited by the possibility that mankind might encounter extraterrestrial life. But I have always tried to apply the rules of logic and reason to those prospects. And it is becoming increasingly clear to me, and others, that merely wanting to believe is not enough.

Now don't get me wrong. It's touching, maybe cute, like how children want to believe in Santa Claus or the tooth fairy. But it's time for any scientist with an inquiring - and open - mind to grow up and start questioning why Darwinism always seems to lead them wrong:

"The final results of all my investigation and study, namely that the idea of evolution, tested by experiments in speciation and allied sciences, always leads to incredible contradictions and confusing conseqeuences, on account of which the evolution theory ought to be entirely abandoned, will no doubt enrage many; and even more so my conclusion that the evolution theory can by no means be regarded as an innocuous natural philosophy, but that it is a serious obstruction to biological research. It obstructs -- as has been repeatedly shown -- the attainment of consistent results, even from uniform experimental material. For everything must ultimately be forced to fit this speculative theory." -

Dr. Heribert Lars-Nilsson, "after 40 years of scientific research" attempting to validate evolutionary theory, Synthetische Artbildung Lund Sweden (1953), 11. As cited by Ankerberg.

DNA Design

From Creation Safaris.

Amazing Facts Dept: the Information Storage Capacity of DNA    08/16/2002

Here's a cool factoid to impress your friends with this weekend.  On the DVD version of Unlocking the Mystery of Life, molecular biologist Dr. Dean Kenyon claims that a cubic millimeter of tightly packed DNA can store 1.9 x 10¹⁸bits of information (nearly two quintillion, or two billion billion).  Put your thumb and forefinger as close together as you can without touching, and visualize a cube that height filled with DNA.  We wondered, how many DVDs would it take to store that many bits?  So we ran the numbers.

A standard DVD stores 4.7 gigabytes, which is a little over 40 billion bits.  A DVD is about 1/20" thick.  If you transcribed the information in one cubic millimeter of DNA onto DVDs and started stacking them up, by the time you were finished you would have a stack over 37 miles high.  If you placed six Mt. Everests on top of each other, then three Empire State Buildings on top of that, the stack of DVDs would be taller by more than 200 feet.  That's the information storage capacity in just one cubic millimeter of DNA.

Next headline on: The Cell and Biochemistry. • Next amazing story.

There are so many discoveries listed at this site that have scientists surprised or befuddled because expectations and predictions based on evolutionism were rudely contradicted by facts, it's hilarious. But it's also tragic you love science, and hate to see astronomy, cosmology, biology, geology, etc. - not to mention so many otherwise fine, inquiring minds - hijacked by this "useless theory." But evolution muddles on, unfalsified, because ... well, it's a religion of the worst kind, complete with high priests, harassment, intimidation, and censorship.

People Who Thank George Bush/America

http://www.theotheriraq.com/

A Hard Truth?

We've all been wincing at the civilian casualties in Lebanon. It seems nasty of Israel to be willing to risk civilian casualties.

Even though they've been warned to evacuate Hezbollah strongholds.

But is this a case of reaping what they sow? I know it sounds harsh, but they did elect Hezbollah to their goverment, knowing that they're cowardly, deluded, civilian-bombing, conscienceless piggies bent on destroying Israel. I mean, isn't what's happening to them exactly the same thing they tacitly approved of, except they're given advance notice? They obviously approve of the concept of explosions in civilian areas; they just don't like it when it happens to them.

Of course, not every casualty voted for Hezpiggy, you say. But what unjustified violence did the Israeli casualties ever vote for?

Israel-Lebanon Media Watch

For those who doubt the anti-Israel bias in the media, take note of how casualties are reported.

• Why do reports of casualties in Lebanon usually mention women and children, while casualties in Israel are simply "people"?
• Why are Lebanese casualties called civilians, even though it's been acknowledged that Hezbollah operatives ... look like civilians?
  

No More Mr. Nice IDer, Please

Dear IDers,

As someone with a longtime interest in ID, it seems to me that ID is always too much on the defensive. Ironically, since ID is scientific to the core and Darwinism is metaphysical naturalism with some assorted science-like talk tacked on, you should bring a lawsuit against the teaching of the religion of Darwinism in schools. So IDers should call for a "Return to Science" - to real science, not evolutionary fairy tales. There's a reason they don't want any debate to be allowed; Darwinism should be laughed out of court.

It's child's play to show

• how after one Darwinistic prediction after another has failed, Darwinists (not "scientists") still consider it unfalsified; (http://creationsafaris.com has a great running review of how this keeps happening - not that you need the help)
• how Darwinism is unfalsifiable;
• how Darwinists "win" arguments by dubious tactics, including censorship and harrassment;
• how some atheists (Berlinski, Stove, Flew, etc.) have come to agree that Darwinism is not scientific (and how some even accept ID in a nonreligious context);
• and so on.
  

We need to get people talking about Darwinism's religious undertones. It's time to expose Darwinism for what it really is.

Derbyshire Dementia?

I see John Derbyshire is getting all bent out of shape about Intelligent Design again - "they don't do any science", etc. etc. I suppose if he says it often enough, people like Michael Behe might actually begin to think it's true.

It's sad that a mathematician can be so ignorant of the conclusions of his colleagues at the Wistar conference, where the chance beginning of life (and the current state of living things) was shown to be mathematically, statistically, and logically ... well, silly. And it's sad that his anti-ID fanaticism - probably stemming from a fear of ridicule - has prevented him from actually daring to read enough ID literature to discover his meme is entirely without basis.

Pro-Terrorist Arrogance

So we've been hearing about how terrorism will stop if only we listen to their grievances, improve their economic situation, etc. On the other hand, the terrorists tell us clearly what their grievance is - we're infidels, and we're alive.

Now it seems to me the height of cultural arrogance to keep saying that this is in fact NOT their real complaint - that, like most Americans, all the terrorists need is a little attention and more than a little money thrown at them. Here they are telling us plainly that their goal is our destruction (or conversion - same thing), and here we hear pro-terrorists tell us no, these terrorists don't know what they're talking about. Underlying this claim is the belief that these terrorists are just Americans (whatever that means to them) under the skin; that it's not possible for any culture to be otherwise; that they just have to be as reasonable as we are, and want the same things that we want. And all the while they keep telling us otherwise.

If that's not cultural imperialism - not to mention a lamentable inability to parse statements of intent or to understand the world - I don't know what is.

CSI

So I've been watching CSI whenever it turns up during my channel surf. Of course it's interesting, but sometimes very annoying.

What's annoying? When they insert little bits of backstory or character development - who's dating who, who collects stamps, and other totally irrelevant trivia to try to humanize the CSI characters.

Why is it annoying? Because I don't care about them at all, except as empty vessels that propel me through the story.

And why is that? Assuming I'm not a sociopath, it's because most of them come across as extremely arrogant and smug. They're just not likeable human beings. So we don't care for them. So, writers, please don't waste your time and especially ours by telling us how this one collects catalogs, that one just broke up with someone, and so on. We don't care about these "people." The characters on "King of the Hill" are more human and likeable.