The Blog of Lon

Losing My Religion asks if there is a stand a Christian should take on politics:

We have this huge political race down in America and it seems to me most Christians want to vote Republican - again. Meanwhile we take a look at either sides platforms and I have to admit - you take the good with the bad on both sides - but neither of them are reflective of the gospel message and honestly, at the end of the day, they are the same one’s when in power whom we will also oppose on many an issue.

This post triggered several thoughts in my mind: We allow our politicians to lie to us, our politicians increasingly act in ways that are antithetical to the definitions of the conservative/liberal labels applied to them, politics and religion shouldn’t be mixed at all, and that Christians very rarely display any competence whatsoever at selecting leaders. (more…)

From a semi-recent posting on Very Important Stuff, I see that a Republican strategist, Christine O’Donnell, made a claim on The O’Reilly Factor that scientists were “cross-breeding humans and animals and coming up with mice with fully functioning human brains”.

The scary part isn’t that some random talking head on a political show misunderstands current scientific research (especially that particular political show), although it should be noted that Christine is a product of the same educational system as millions of the people who heard her speak. A system that quite obviously doesn’t instill any level of critical thought to be applied to things you hear. One doesn’t have to be the sharpest tack in the box to realize that even if one could put human brains in animals, there’s a little space issue going on with the human→mouse thing. But this isn’t a rant about education in the USA.

The scary part isn’t that someone involved in career politics is this clueless about science, although there’s plenty there to be afraid of. The sins against science under this administration are Legion, and we absolutely cannot stand for this demon to continue to possess our government. But this isn’t a rant about politicians’ ignorance of science.

The scary—and exciting—thing is that given time, this isn’t as laughable as it sounds, and humanity as a whole is preparing for a long period of moral issues that makes things like the death penalty and abortion seem quaint. (more…)

Once again, I have a miscellaneous collection of various things I’ve found on the net which are interesting, but I either don’t have time to write an entire post about or think that they warrant their own post. (more…)

So much to blog about, so little time to blog. Here’s a roundup of interesting links that I’d considered writing about, but they’re beginning to back up (I’ve currently got 21 firefox instances running on my computer, each one having 4-8 tabs open). So here’s the latest roundup of stuff to frustrate, annoy, enrage, and enjoy:

• First, here’s a very cool list of frequently confused words. Wish the schools taught this stuff.
• Google’s Blogger has a neat little thingy called Blogger Play that will threaten to consume too much of your time; it’s basically a website which presents random photos from the blogs they host. Very addictive.
• Which way do you see the dancer spinning? I see her spinning clockwise, and can’t for the life of me see it in any other way…even after utilizing the spinning dancer hack site, which includes helpful lines drawn for perspective. A fun experiment, even if Scienceline.org discredits it.
• While poking around for good Christmas/Advent messages on the net, I encountered a piece by Marcus Borg on beliefnet.com, entitled Christmas in the Present Tense.
• The government is at it again, looking to avoid the need for pesky search warrants, and pressing civil servants, in this case firemen, to report people who express discontent with the government. Remember kiddies, thoughtcrime is bad.
• The putrid debate over teaching creationism in the schools reached a new low as the Texas state director for science curriculum is forced to resign simply because she forwarded an article thought to be critical of creationism.
• A new report arrives saying that Iran suspended the nuclear weapons program four years ago. A dismayed GW Bush says it doesn’t matter.
• Christopher Hitchens continues to prove he’s atheism’s smartest evangelical prophet a rhetorically skilled idiot by assuming there’s only one meaning to Hanukkah and using his dimwitted interpretation to bash the entire concept. Fortunately, in stark contrast to my last post on this blog, he gets called on it.
• What is it with Texans? My theory is that since some of the prettiest girls in the USA are grown in Texas, it makes everybody turn into blubbering fools. Anyway, an Austin police officer, in accordance with his departmental policy, refuses to taser an elderly man. His reward was to get fired.

As of next month, China is going to begin regulating “the procedures by which one is to reincarnate“.

As the article states, it’s really simply so they can gain more control over the selection of the next Dalai Lama. Of course, that’s if the current Dalai Lama chooses to reincarnate at all. He has already said he would not reincarnate in Tibet (or any Chinese-controlled land), and has expressed thoughts that the work of the Dalai Lamas may complete, thus no further need to return.

The article also mentions the possibility of having two concurrent Dalai Lamas; which would be an interesting repetition of Christian history during periods when more than one Pope claimed authority. Let’s hope that if there’s two Dalai Lamas, they’ll treat each other with a higher degree of civility and morality than the Popes did.

I’m sure everyone has heard that Alberto Gonzales,  head of the US Justice Department, has announced his resignation.

Y’know, many times throughout his tenure, Gonzales has been suspected or accused of deception and outright falsehoods. Typically, falsehoods if he’s not under oath, diversion and deception (or sudden amnesia) when he is under oath.

It is no surprise to the people who accuse the man of deception when they hear that Gonzales’ press secretary insisted, on Sunday afternoon, that Gonzales had no intention of leaving his post while noting that Gonzales handed in his resignation to Mr. Bush on Friday.

Wonder if he’ll ever be truly brought to Justice? Although, we need to wait until Bush is out of office before any conviction, or watch him skirt the demands of justice via the flurry of presidential pardons.

Over at Bad Astronomy, Phil has made a post which gathers together some specific citations of the damage directly caused by GW Bush & Co by ignoring science and political cronyism.

Stuff a lot of us already knew, but needs the widest possible dissemination (amongst the citizens of the USA at least).

If one believes in the supernatural, the concept of prescience is right up one’s alley.

If one believes in God, the idea of divine inspiration or revelation is the operative theory.

If one believes in humanism, the facts explained by prescience or revelation are more easily explained simply by the great intellect; one can easily predict the future if they understand cause-and-effect and think about things hard enough.

Whether the likes of Madison and Jefferson were prescient, divinely inspired, or simply a bunch of really smart guys is a fairly irrelevant issue; it reduces to one of those age-old questions that, in the best of cases, are endlessly argued by friends gathered to share a meal (or a few beers).

The question is, do we actually believe that those guys knew what they were talking about? (more…)

140,000 “warrants”. No probable cause, no judicial oversight. When the Patriot Act was passed, I remember well the eye-rolling that went on in some areas whenever it was pointed out how easily it could be abused. If you even mentioned that the FBI might abuse the incredible power, you were ridiculed, despite the Justice Department’s long, sordid history of abusing their powers. They promised us all that they’d not abuse this power. And the very minute they got it, the abuse began. (more…)

In a recent post titled “The Patriot Act: I Know What It’s Like“, Peter Chase writes:

I am a board member for Library Connections, a consortium of 26 Connecticut libraries. In May of 2005 our organization received a National Security Letter (NSL). An NSL allows the FBI to demand records, in this case our library patrons’ internet usage, without prior court approval. We were forbidden to tell anyone about the NSL, gagged from telling our colleagues, or our spouses.

So, they were ordered to cough up private records of what people were reading, without any judicial oversight. That alone goes beyond the pale and should literally scare anyone who truly believes in our form of government. But hey, that’s the whole NSL/Patriot_Act thing is all about, removing the checks and balances that try to keep government honest.

What bothers me even more, however, is the accompanying gag order. Not only have you been ordered to do something by some nameless, faceless entity who faces no oversight over the exercise of that authority or repercussions for improper use of that authority, but you are then told that you can tell no one about the abuse!

Note the bit about not telling one’s spouse, which I find particularly offensive. In essence, it means that the government believes that it has the right to govern conversations between my wife and I. I’m sorry, USA, as much as I love you, I will never accept your authority to tell me what I can and what I cannot discuss with my wife. Period. End of story. In fact, I will vigorously defend not only my right to discuss any matter I choose with my spouse, but also with my children. And parents. And any other personal friends I respect and trust. And if you want to throw around legal documents, I will demand the right to discuss those documents with any legal firm of my choosing as well.

The issue here gets even worse when one realizes that this gag order has further unavoidable ramifications. Consider having to go to a hearing relevant to something when you’re even gagged about the very existence of that something. What will you tell your employer, let alone your wife, to explain why you took the day off and vanished? How many of your personal/vacation days will you have to burn just because the only excuse you can offer is “for personal reasons”? And you’d better hope to God that your wife trusts you.