I'm too worn out today to write anything original. So, I think I'll just send you to some I've been reading that I found linkworthy.

There's an interesting post over at Transterrestrial Musings about a lecture Simberg attended at Cal Tech. The speaker was Dan Dennett. Go read the the whole thing.

A snippet: "Dennett is kicking the ladder out from under this philosophical balancing act by saying that while humans are special, and they do have a "soul" in some sense, that they are only somewhat more special than their non-human ancestors, who also possessed the same property--just to a lesser degree.

That doesn't grate in any way on those of us who are provisional transcendental materialistic reductionists, but for those who believe that man is unique among all animals, it is not just unsettling--it is indeed heresy and unreconciliable with the foundation of their beliefs, because it doesn't draw a bright line between man and ape. Or aardvark."

I was saying something similar a while back, discussing, of all things, my Mercedes, Otto. "...despite my distaste for most things of a "spiritual" nature, I'm fairly anthromorphic about some things, particularly cars and computers. I always give them a name, and truly think of them as partaking in that quality that we call "life" to a greater or lesser degree.

In fact, I believe everything around us, from dirt to dahlias to Dells to dolphins to Dubya, is alive, in varying degrees, (with the possible exception of dogmatic yellow-dog Democrats :-) and that between the quick and the dead there lies not a dichotomy, but a spectrum.

I don't know how often y'all ever go hit the link over there on the right, under "obligatory blogrolling" but I do every day. You should too. I don't put a link there just cause someone else has linked to me, etc., but because I enjoy their writing. I even link to a freaking liberal, for Pete's sake.

As an example, go read this by Bill Whittle, the most recent edition to my blogroll

From a girl that won't dance, to Saturn, to the Evil Empire and back again, all in the comfort of your chair. Really.

Finally, I just finished taking a test online that looks at unconscious racial bias. You can find it here. This isn't one of those goofy tests that litter the internet like trashy talk shows do the local TV listings, but a serious study conducted by the folks at Yale.

I ended up in that small minority of folks, (12%) that showed no significant bias. Who'd a thunk it, me living in Texas and all?

I wonder if that's why I think that brown people in 2003 (i.e. Iraqis) are as deserving of our efforts to free them as if they were, say, Frenchmen in 1944.

... Link (0 comments) ... Comment

One of my online friends, marya is appearing in a play entitled "The Laramie Project." This drama has as it's subject the death of a gay man at the hands of some muderous homophobes.

I had never heard of it until such time as she had mentioned her audition and subsequent casting in the play. However, serendipity rules the web world.

Today I ran across this link. It tells of a Xian group that is evidently on the road protesting the performance of this play. Some of these harbringers of the the gentle love of Jesus are pictured here:

One of my other good online friends, macker, a devout Xian, though of a very different flavor, has stated that he probably could not make it through a performance of that play without having an overwhelming urge to borrow a pistol from me and use it to whip a homophobe or two.

My responses are multiple:

First, go buy your own damn pistol, macker, every man that loves his family will have available the best possible means to defend them. If you can't get a handgun where you live, go get a cheap twelve gauge pump.

Second, no you can't borrow mine, as a titanium revolver with a two-inch barrel is not the best choice for smacking someone around. You'll probably hurt your hand in the process. You need something with a little more weight and a longer barrel, like a S&W 629 or even just your garden variety 1911 Model .45.

Third, no pistol works as well for just smacking somebody around as something like a crowbar or a tire iron, which have the further advantage of actually being legal to own in all states, even New York.

Finally, you should never draw a weapon unless you intend to use deadly force, and these spirit-filled whackos don't deserve to be immediately shot unless you happen to catch them in the process of recreating the crime that they are so opposed to seeing re-enacted on stage. Be sure to have lots of ammo, though, as this particular brand of Jeebus Freaks cowards seem to run in packs.

Ever since 9/11, there have been endless calls to the mainstream Muslim world to renounce the radical violent sects of that faith. I will have much more respect for the Xian religion when it's followers unite to ostracize such whackos as Fred Phelps and his ilk, and see their marches stopped by a phalanx of guys like you standing in their path, tire irons in hand. Gimme a call - if you don't mind a heretic in your midst, I'll join you.

If you believe, as I do, that the religious intolerance of such sects as the Taliban and the other assorted IslamoFascists is rightly opposed by force of arms, then you and I should be willing to strike down Xian fascists in the exact same manner.

... Link (2 comments) ... Comment

I suppose that given their demonstrated lack of ability to influence anything that actually matters in relation to local education, public school administrators decide to, instead, focus their efforts on meaningless dress codes.

Same as it ever was.

As a kid going to high school in the early to mid 70's, the war between the students and the Powers That Be centered on a few meaningless measures - to wit: the length of one's hair, and the clothes one wore. I was required to wear a coat and tie all through high school, and keep my hair short.

We obeyed the first law by making a mockery of it - we wore our forest green coats with purple shirts and green and yellow paisley ties, knotted so that the knot looked like a malignant goiter dangling under our chins, with the dangly part of the tie barely reaching to the third button of our dress shirts, the collars of which were invariably rumpled and turned up

We teased, sprayed, and poofed our hair into giant protein helmets to keep it off our collars, as the reg said that those collars, and our ears, need be untouched by human hair - the lazier among us tied it into ponytails, stuffed the tails down the back of those unkempt collars, and then plotted our routes between classes to avoid the Prefect of Discipline (which was what we called the Enforcer known in most public schools as the Asst. Principal)

Oh yeah, we also published an underground newspaper, run off on the school mimeograph machines while the Man wasn't looking, known as "The Ax." The subtitle under the banner on the front page was "Give 'Em the Ax." Among it's pseudononymously authored content, decorating muckraking paragraphs comparing the administrators to Fascist Dictators, Hitler, or even worse, to Nixon, would be a few cartoons showing the student body's current foes (said Prefect of Discipline, strict teachers, etc.) in a graphic depiction of being beheaded, with the masked executioner being labeled the Student Body, and the stump upon which their heads had lately been rested, before flying off trailing tails of blood, as "Destiny," or some other suitable symbol, I actually forget which, after all these years.

In short, it was rabble-rousing demagogic propaganda of the most amateurish implementation imaginable.

Here's the punch line - the year I graduated from this all-male, Jesuit school, my class of 120-odd classmates had twelve of us as National Merit Scholars, more than any of the much larger public schools in the city, and on a pro-rata basis, among the best in the nation.

Seems as if for all of our dissent, we still managed to learn something.

The school is still in business today, with, if anything, an even stronger record and reputation, though all the dress restrictions that the school fought to uphold in those days are dead.

Stupidity has a long half-life, though, and still lives on in schools across the nation.

Evidenced by this.

A local Houston school, in fact, the one which I would have attended had I not gone to that Jesuit school, has suspended an 18 year-old student for having dyed her hair a bit too red for their taste.

(Sigh)

The school's rationale?

"The student handbook states a student's appearance cannot be a distraction in class. "

Heavens to Mergatroid, then, if you wanna ban the distractions...

Segregate the sexes - the churning pots of raging hormones that are teenage brains spend more time distracted by the opposite sex than they ever have or will do about their studies.

This was true decades before high school girls started coloring their hair, or high school boys started growing theirs - seems as though a few generations of American kids were able to learn something despite it.

True Fact: A pretty girl with big knockers bouncing around in her skimpy cheerleader's uniform at the pep rally is gonna distract waaaaay more boys from Shakespeare and calculus than some skrawnky goth chick with purple and green hair, in a black jacket festooned with more chains than Marley's ghost, and safety pins through her nose, a-clanking around at the local peace rally.

Hey, you wanna ban distractions from learning, fine. But do it right.

Start with the Pretty People.

... Link (4 comments) ... Comment