Darwinism Vs. Intelligent Design

Christianity, Pseudoscience, Reason, Religion, Science

C-Span broadcast a book forum at the Cato Institute, featuring the author Michael Shermer, Director of the Skeptics Society, with comments by Jonathan Wells, Senior Fellow at the Center for Science and Culture at the Discovery Institute. Wells is also the author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design. That tells you all you need to know about his position.

It’s probably safe to say that I come down on Shermer’s side. I’ve always admired his work. However, evolution is one topic I’m agnostic about. Joy! I love a good intellectual debate (although this one was a tad short)—all the more so when I have no dog in the fight.

Both men are extremely bright and cordial. I question Wells’ inability to come up with a theory that’ll fill the lacunae he finds in Darwinism. He claims he is not obliged to fill in the gaps. My knowledge of the theory of science is limited, so I can’t tell you whether the onus is on him to furnish a competing, overarching explanation.

Enough of the No-Fault Forgiveness Already

Hollywood, Psychology & Pop-Psychology, Race, Racism, The Zeitgeist

I’ve never been able to watch an entire episode of “Seinfeld,” an insipid and dull skit, with annoying, utterly contrived characters. By contrast, I’m quite capable of enjoying the odd “Everyone Loves Raymond” episode (Doris Roberts as Marie Barone is marvelous). But Seinfeld, including the apparition that went by the name Kramer, was crappy TV.

Now it transpires that actor Michael Richards is every bit as grob as Kramer, the creep he played. (Grob means “coarse, crude, profane, rough, rude� in Yiddish.)

TMZ.com reported that, after being heckled mildly:

“Michael Richards exploded in anger as he performed at a famous L.A. comedy club last Friday, hurling racial epithets that left the crowd gasping… The camera started rolling just as Richards began his attack, screaming at one of the men, ‘Fifty years ago we’d have you upside down with a f***ing fork up your ass.’ Richards continued, ‘You can talk, you can talk, you’re brave now motherf**ker. Throw his ass out. He’s a nigger! He’s a nigger! He’s a nigger! A nigger, look, there’s a nigger!'”

To his credit, the man Richards assailed responded in a rather muted manner: “You’re not funny. That’s That’s un-f***ing called for, ain’t necessary.”

Later, the apology factory went into action, and Richards, who should have been banished forthwith from polite company (that doesn’t include mass media), was beamed via satellite into David Letterman’s “Late Show,” where he gruffly proclaimed: “For me to be at a comedy club and flip out and say this crap, I’m deeply, deeply sorry…I’m not a racist. That’s what’s so insane about this.”

No, what’s “so insane” about these episodes is the apology ritual that follows, and the notion that saying sorry is somehow redemptive; what’s “so insane” about these regular installments of pigs behaving badly is the readiness to believe the bifurcation the scumbag will offer up—that somehow an entity other than himself possessed him for the duration of the tirade. Why would the “black community” even want to engage with this sewer rat?

As I see it, the hatred and unwarranted verbal aggression Richards displayed were far less disturbing than his gutter manners and lack of inhibitions in expressing his foul repertoire.

If the pack of pigmies in the press and TV simply shunned Richards, he’d retreat into the septic tank whence he came.

O.J.'s Manual For Murder

Crime, Criminal Injustice, Media, The Zeitgeist

What a performative contradiction: cable’s point men and women have been contorting like Cirque du Soleil contortionists because of the despicable antics of HarperCollins publisher, Judith Regan, in publishing the sociopathic rants of the killer, O.J. Simpson. Yet they’re all giving this uninteresting, idiotic development time—almost as much time as they devote to the bubblehead with the double chin and chubby cheeks, Britney Spears.

From an impassioned interview Mark Fuhrman gave Hannity & Comles, it transpired that Allan Colmes is a pretty weird gnome; he believes O.J. is innocent, and has written as much in his “book.” On the program, Colmes attacked Fuhrman furiously.

I admire Fuhrman. He did his job and was slimed for it. He then bootstrapped his way back into so-called polite company. There is something utterly revolting about a liberal who, bereft of an argument, reaches for his standard stock-in-trade: accusations of racism. Colmes threw everything but the kitchen sink at a guest who’d come on to speak about this latest low in the American publishing world—a How-To instructional by a murderer—because he had investigated the case.

Fuhrman told the two talking heads, whose books Regan has published, that he would no longer be dealing with said publisher. Needless to say, the two hosts did not join Fuhrman in a show of principle.

What was also of interest was Hannity’s contaminated perspective. Conservatives have absorbed the therapeutic idiom completely. Hannity expressed the view that O.J. was consumed by guilt—could no longer contain the remorse, and was using a book as a confessional. He, Hannity, wanted closure too.

My God. I don’t know if there’s anything that disgusts me more than this meaningless, immoral mumbo-jumbo. Fuhrman, far more intelligent than his hosts, tried to explain to both about the nature of evil. There are people in this world, O.J. being one such specimen, who can kill another human being (or a couple), and then pop into KFC for some chicken, he said. Murder is nothing to them. (At this stage, Rumpelstiltskin intensified the racism accusations, because of the mention of KFC. Don’t ask me why.)

Neither one of these gents got it. The root-causes rot runs too deep in both. As for publisher Regan, she says, “What I wanted was closure, not money.” Since when is every self-appointed proxy of pain in a position to seek closure (whatever that means) for pain she has not sustained?

The only two people who have the moral authority to forgive this monster have been dead for a decade, their throats slit from ear to ear. (There’s more here. Send these on to Judith Regan so she can have “closure.”)

O.J.’s Manual For Murder

Crime, Criminal Injustice, Media, The Zeitgeist

What a performative contradiction: cable’s point men and women have been contorting like Cirque du Soleil contortionists because of the despicable antics of HarperCollins publisher, Judith Regan, in publishing the sociopathic rants of the killer, O.J. Simpson. Yet they’re all giving this uninteresting, idiotic development time—almost as much time as they devote to the bubblehead with the double chin and chubby cheeks, Britney Spears.

From an impassioned interview Mark Fuhrman gave Hannity & Comles, it transpired that Allan Colmes is a pretty weird gnome; he believes O.J. is innocent, and has written as much in his “book.” On the program, Colmes attacked Fuhrman furiously.

I admire Fuhrman. He did his job and was slimed for it. He then bootstrapped his way back into so-called polite company. There is something utterly revolting about a liberal who, bereft of an argument, reaches for his standard stock-in-trade: accusations of racism. Colmes threw everything but the kitchen sink at a guest who’d come on to speak about this latest low in the American publishing world—a How-To instructional by a murderer—because he had investigated the case.

Fuhrman told the two talking heads, whose books Regan has published, that he would no longer be dealing with said publisher. Needless to say, the two hosts did not join Fuhrman in a show of principle.

What was also of interest was Hannity’s contaminated perspective. Conservatives have absorbed the therapeutic idiom completely. Hannity expressed the view that O.J. was consumed by guilt—could no longer contain the remorse, and was using a book as a confessional. He, Hannity, wanted closure too.

My God. I don’t know if there’s anything that disgusts me more than this meaningless, immoral mumbo-jumbo. Fuhrman, far more intelligent than his hosts, tried to explain to both about the nature of evil. There are people in this world, O.J. being one such specimen, who can kill another human being (or a couple), and then pop into KFC for some chicken, he said. Murder is nothing to them. (At this stage, Rumpelstiltskin intensified the racism accusations, because of the mention of KFC. Don’t ask me why.)

Neither one of these gents got it. The root-causes rot runs too deep in both. As for publisher Regan, she says, “What I wanted was closure, not money.” Since when is every self-appointed proxy of pain in a position to seek closure (whatever that means) for pain she has not sustained?

The only two people who have the moral authority to forgive this monster have been dead for a decade, their throats slit from ear to ear. (There’s more here. Send these on to Judith Regan so she can have “closure.”)