Month: March 2005

  • Some small comfort, infinity . . .

    What’s life? What’s death? One of these days I ought to pontificate. The problem is, I’ve seen much too much death — more than most people my age. I’ve known death up close and personal. Familiarity with it does not qualify me as an expert though, so I should probably shut up and let this…

  • Delink is deleast I deserve!

    Via this radio show (transcript here, via the YodelMeister), I just heard that a blogger I’d never wanted to hear of — one Malachy Joyce (sex unknown, but who has been described as a “pissy little Buchananite“) — has started an official delinking campaign, and he or she has accordingly delinked the following blogs (what…

  • I will defend to the death your right to make me vomit!

    There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part; you can’t even passively take part, and you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to…

  • I am not “we” (and you probably aren’t either . . .)

    Terri Schiavo died this morning. While I don’t think that removal of the feeding tube was right (and have said so repeatedly), I think it should be remembered that it was Michael Schiavo who wanted the tube pulled, and the courts which ordered this carried out. It wasn’t the ill-defined “Culture of Death.” (Often referred…

  • Dial The Message To Medium

    Over at More Than Human, Ramez Naam has a few sensible observations to make regarding the term “transhumanist“. I tend to take the view that almost everyone is a closet (or at least potential) transhumanist. That is to say, when presented with a biotech product that will produce a clear improvement in their lives and…

  • Science is elementary, my dear . . .

    This is a post which really should have been written by Justin. Justin might have even called it “Meet Dr. Watson.” Anyway, one Robert T. Watson has managed to steal the global warming show today with a huge, Drudge-linked, incendiary doom-and-gloom headline along with plenty of Chicken Little predictions: Two-thirds of world’s resources ‘used up’…

  • Foolish vanities!

    The “2nd Annual Flim-Flam-Fabulous April Fools Edition of the Carnival of Vanities has been posted by Eric Berlin. The entries are supplemented by fictitious, made-up posts. Each set of five Carnival entries you see below consists of four real and true postings from all around the Web. And one entry in each set is a…

  • Some communities are more gated than others . . .

    Joe Gandelman’s (via Glenn Reynolds) very thoughtful piece made me think about a question I don’t think about too much: am I a journalist? While there’s a huge debate going on among and between MSM journalists and bloggers over whether the latter are really “journalists,” I think there’s something being missed. At the risk of…

  • Making sense now?

    Speaking of free speech, I’m trying to make sense over what Houlin Zhao, director of the ITU’s Telecommunication Standardization Bureau, said about the Internet: People say the Internet flourished because of the absence of government control. I do not agree with this view. I argue that in any country, if the government opposed Internet service,…

  • No closets for free speech !

    Via InstaPundit, I see that more controversy (see last night’s post) has developed over the use of the expression “gay terrorist“: Gay activist Michael Rogers, of Blogactive.com, continues to target critics in an ongoing saga of an online jihad within the blogosphere. This time the target was LimeShurbet.com, a blog whose site was taken down…

  • This pushes my button!

    I never had the, um remotest idea that such a thing would happen, but alas! Glenn Reynolds is promoting a device which enables censorship. Perhaps we should have seen it coming. After all, he has previously defended copyright-infringing technology, as well as guns. It’s a slippery slope down the remote path. I never thought I’d…

  • Saying “NO” to reality!

    In the latest outbreak of zero tolerance, a school has forbidden a student from bringing to school a picture of her Marine Corps brother — because he is holding a gun in the picture: If a student wants to share a photo of her brother’s chosen career, the Marine Corps, it stands to reason that…

  • Victory from the jaws of death

    Here’s Andrew Sullivan on the Schiavo case: It’s been striking lately how the rhetoric of some conservatives has morphed into revolutionary tones. Bill Kristol, at heart an ally of religious radicalism, calls for a revolution against the independent judiciary we now have. Fox News’ John Gibson has argued that “the temple of the law is…

  • Enemies of sexual freedom strike again!

    Via InstaPundit, I see more confirmation of what I’ve been warning about for some time: war on gay conservatives [and non-conforming gays generally]. Thanks to the efforts of two noted practitioners of a form of stalking they euphemistically call “outing,” GayPatriot (who started his blog to oppose such tactics) has quit blogging — apparently to…

  • Compromise at last! Confidential gay marriage!

    Did gay marriage exist while Ronald Reagan was governor of California? Boi from Troy, citing the Sacramento Bee, says yes: In May of [1972], a brief item appeared in The Sacramento Bee, saying that three lesbian couples would share in a “holy union” ceremony at the predominantly gay Metropolitan Community Church, which today has more…

  • Stumped by stubborn Barbarian stubble

    I hate to talk about personal issues, but just this once I’ll make an exception, and weigh in on the great razor debate now rocking the blogosphere. I’m with Michael Demmons: ….if you use a blade, stick with it. Here?s why. Men, in general, always had smoother skin when they became older because they shaved…

  • Slicing It Fine

    Tuesday, October 29, 2002 Dr. Schaub: The cloning of human beings would be the triumph of the Machiavellian project to conquer fortune and bring everything within the power of human choice and calculation…It shows how human dignity is bound up with the lottery of nature and how the ground of human dignity could be imperiled…

  • Going To Mass

    Great news from Randall Parker. The Germans are now officially fatter than Americans… The International Obesity Task Force estimated that Finland, Germany, Greece, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Malta have exceeded the United States figure of 67% for overweight or obese males. Good news indeed. As a “Person of Weight” myself, I feel no…

  • Rambling Disconnected Thoughts

    Ray Radlein at Science Fiction Blog made a cogent point regarding Diana Schaub. He refers to her use of Star Trek as a springboard to wisdom? …one may well wonder about the qualifications of Professor Schaub, who is neither an Ethicist nor a Biologist, to sit on the President’s Council on Bioethics. Well, thanks to…

  • HAPPY EASTER!

    No time for an egg hunt!