Being out of power really is making the Dems loony. Of course, they were in power for so long they still can’t quite get used to the idea that they’re no longer the majority party, and they continue to believe that they were entitled to rule forever. Even nine years after losing the House, they still don’t know how to act like a minority and behave themselves.

Sheesh.

Being out of power really is making the Dems loony. Of course, they were in power for so long they still can’t quite get used to the idea that they’re no longer the majority party, and they continue to believe that they were entitled to rule forever. Even nine years after losing the House, they still don’t know how to act like a minority and behave themselves.

Sheesh.

Being out of power really is making the Dems loony. Of course, they were in power for so long they still can’t quite get used to the idea that they’re no longer the majority party, and they continue to believe that they were entitled to rule forever. Even nine years after losing the House, they still don’t know how to act like a minority and behave themselves.

Sheesh.

It must be moron day.

A man in a police chase called 911 on his cell phone repeatedly, to ask the cops to stop chasing him.

Apparently, they didn’t comply.

A DMV refused to issue a man a driver’s license because his signature was upside down.

What do they care? The important thing about a signature is not that it be legible (mine certainly isn’t) but that it be difficult to forge. Sounds like a good technique to me.

Sandy Szwarc has an interesting series at TCS on obesity. In the current article, she points to disturbing, and plausible, data that indicate that it may be caused by dieting.

I have to say that the more “wisdom” I read from professional nutritionists, the more I think that the entire field is rife with ignorance and quackery (though I suppose the former ameliorates the latter to some degree–are you a quack if you don’t know that you are?).

Jay Manifold has some updates on our prospects for getting hit by asteroids.

This post is based on a previous one, in which I criticized Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum for his views on homosexuality.

A number of people disputed my position in the comments section, but one of them was particularly dogged, and I’d like to continue the discussion here, in a post that will have more visibility, for the moment…

I can see that you and I simply do not agree. You look at homosexual activity in the prisons and see it as evidence of repressed sexuality. I look at it and see it as a behavior caused by the conditions.

I see it as both. There is no bright line between people of differing sexual orientations, but however fuzzy, many are far over it on one side or the other. Some, indeed most, are born heterosexual, and you can’t get them to do it with the same sex at the point of a gun (at least the men, who literally wouldn’t be able to get it up). Put me in that camp.

Some (a very unfortunate few) are capable of feeling sexual attraction only to those of their own sex.

The rest (not the majority, but a significant minority) can do it either way, but most behave heterosexually under standard circumstances, because that’s the path of least social resistance.

In an environment in which the only sexual option is homosexual (e.g., to use your example, prison) those who are…flexible…will do what they need to. Those who are homosexual (assuming they are also the Big Man On Campus, or at least Prison) will be in hog heaven. Those who are heterosexual will commune with themselves, with the ugly and brutal exception of physical rape, which is all too prevalent in such environments.

To answer your question, I don’t foresee any reasonably “normal” circumstances under which I would engage in homosexual activity. I would like to think I wouldn’t even in outrageous circumstances like those in prison because of my faith.

I’m not going to let this question go, because it is at the crux of the issue. I’ll repeat it from the previous thread, just to make the point.

I asked:

Are you saying that you can imagine circumstances in which you would willingly, even eagerly, engage in homosexual activity? If not, why not, and why do you think I would?

Your response is “I don’t foresee any reasonably ‘normal’ circumstances under which I would engage in homosexual activity. I would like to think I wouldn’t even in outrageous circumstances like those in prison because of my faith.”

Really? You “would like to think”?

I don’t have to like to think.

I know.

Interesting. So, you’re saying that under those circumstances you might find yourself attracted to men, and the only thing preventing you from indulging yourself in that attraction is the fact that it would be immoral, according to scripture? Because it would be opposed to your faith?

If that’s the case, you’re much different than me, because my “faith,” such as it is, has nothing to say about with whom I should or shouldn’t have sexual relations. Despite this, I can confidently state, notwithstanding rape or some otherwise extreme duress, that I will never, ever, engage in sexual relations with a man. I can state with absolute certitude that I will never do so willingly, because men don’t turn me on, in any sexual way.

No man, no way.

On the other hand, I have to infer from your statement that, in your case, they at least might. What does that say about you?

However, that said, I also would say that I would never commit murder. Yet given the right circumstances, I think there are many rational people, like myself, who would. To me, homosexuality and other assorted sins are not mere matters of genetics but more of environment. I don’t believe anyone is born a killer any more than they are born gay. I think there are genetic factors that may predispose you to these things but they are more often than not highly influenced by your environment.

So, you don’t believe that people are born to love the same sex, and you don’t believe that people are born to murder.

Well, I don’t have any reason to disbelieve either. Talk to any family therapist, or juvenile detective about the number of children who were torturing and killing animals from an early age, and how many of them ended up doing the same to humans. Sorry, but I do believe that some people are born predisposed to be sociopathic, and utterly indifferent to (or who even take pleasure from) the suffering of other sentient beings, and to whom murder is not only inconsequential, but enjoyable. Despite the fact that I’m neither Christian or Catholic, I am in fact capable of appreciating the concept of evil, and that some people are, sadly, born that way.

That said, I think that the comparison between sexual orientation and proclivity to cause pain and death to innocents is not only irrelevant, but odious, and I have to wonder at the mind of a person who would make such a comparison.

You are comparing, on the one hand, intimate consensual interactions between two people with the intent of eliciting joy, to the taking of life, often in a callous and brutal way.

Think about it.

So I believe you when you say you are irredeemably heterosexual. I think because of your upbringing and your natural genetic disposition that you probably have not had these desires. Neither have I. But I do believe that human sexuality is mutable and that under the right conditions it can be changed.

Do you not understand the fundamental dissonance between these two sentences? Either I am irredeemably heterosexual, or my sexuality is mutable. You cannot have it both ways.

How are you going to resolve this profound logical conflict (absent resorting to illogic and “God says it’s so”)?

Raul strode through the dark night, his way lit by twinkling stars as if the gods at some celestial concert were all flicking their lighters at the same time in appreciation of the drum solo-like beat of his boot heels against the pavement, occasionally accompanied by the steel-brush-on-a-cymbal sound of a splash as he kicked through a puddle, the plip-plop of water dripping from leaves like someone playing staccato on a two-note piano gone flat, and the wind blowing a bluesy tissue-paper-on-comb harmonica through the trees.

That’s one of the many entries in the latest Bulwer-Lytton bad-writing contest.

Enjoy.

[via Kathy Kinsley]

It’s been seven years since TWA Flight 800 went down off Long Island, another investigation that, in my opinion (as well as in that of many others) didn’t really resolve it. Scott Holleran wonders if it was (perhaps like Oklahoma City) another jihadist terrorist strike on US soil that the Clinton administration found politically inconvenient.