Speaking of incremental testing for the Falcon, Iain McClatchie has come up with a plan.
Cap And Space
The late defense secretary may have saved the manned space program. I’m not sure that that’s necessarily a good thing, in retrospect, but it puts the Nixon administration in a different light than the popular perception.
Supersized Idiot
I heard an interview with Morgan Spurlock on NPR when his crdocumentary on McDonald’s came out, and thought him a fool as a result. The basis of the movie (as I understand it, based on the interview–I haven’t actually seen it) was that fast food was bad for you. He apparently, and admittedly demonstrated this by ordering the worst possible things from the McDonalds menu for weeks on end, and foregoing exercise. I leave the illogic of his thesis, and means of proving it, to the reader.
Now we find out that he’s been giving insulting and obscene speeches to high-school students, including making fun of the special ed students. His “apology” is pathetic, as many of his commenters note.
[Via Joanne Jacobs, whose important new book on education
A New Holocaust
Well, not so new–it’s probably as old as history, and it’s against women. And it’s aided and abetted by the cultural relativists, who can never bring themselves to judge anything, except the (obvious) evil that is Amerikkka:
Cultural and moral relativists sap our sense of moral outrage by claiming that human rights are a Western invention. Men who abuse women rarely fail to use the vocabulary the relativists have provided them. They claim the right to adhere to an alternative set of values – an “Asian,” “African” or “Islamic” approach to human rights.
This mind-set needs to be broken. A culture that carves the genitals of young girls, hobbles their minds and justifies their physical oppression is not equal to a culture that believes women have the same rights as men.
So-called “feminists” who complain about western gender oppression and “dead white European males,” but turn a blind eye to this out of a misguided but fashionable leftist sensibility, brutally betray the ideals they pretend to, and their supposed “sisters.”
Can The Euro Survive?
I’ve always doubted it. As many have predicted (and long before it was even implemented), it may be starting to die from its own internal contradictions.
An Anglotopia
Jim Bennett describes one.
Keeping It Clean
We aren’t doing a very good job of it:
Nearly three-quarters of Americans questioned last week
Condolences
…to Professor Reynolds, who has a sad explanation of why he posted nothing since before noon today. His grandmother died. It sounds like she had a good life, well lived. We should all aspire to that.
“Creationists’ Best Recruiting Sergeants”
Madeleine Bunting, on how the militant atheism of Dawkins and Dennett may be backfiring:
…while Dembski, Dawkins and Dennett are sipping the champagne for their very different reasons, there is a party pooper. Michael Ruse, a prominent Darwinian philosopher (and an agnostic) based in the US, with a string of books on the subject, is exasperated: “Dawkins and Dennett are really dangerous, both at a moral and a legal level.” The nub of Ruse’s argument is that Darwinism does not lead ineluctably to atheism, and to claim that it does (as Dawkins does) provides the intelligent-design lobby with a legal loophole: “If Darwinism equals atheism then it can’t be taught in US schools because of the constitutional separation of church and state. It gives the creationists a legal case. Dawkins and Dennett are handing these people a major tool.”
There’s no room for complacency, urged Ruse over lunch in London last week. Last December’s court ruling against the teaching of intelligent design in some Pennsylvania schools may have been a blow, but now the strategy of the creationist/intelligent-design lobby is to “chisel away at school-board level” across the US. The National Centre for Science Education believes that as many as 20% of US schools are teaching creationism in some form. Evolution is losing the battle, says Ruse, and it’s the fault of Dawkins and Dennett with their aggressive atheism: they are the creationists’ best recruiting sergeants.
Yes. Too many people believe in God for this to be a successful debating tactic. People have to be made to understand that religion and science don’t have to be incompatible, and that we don’t have to abandon science (as the “science” of intelligent design does) when the going gets tough. As Galileo said, the one tells us how to get to heaven, the other describes of what the heavens are made. Of course, with modern science and rocketry, perhaps science will allow us to do both.
“Creationists’ Best Recruiting Sergeants”
Madeleine Bunting, on how the militant atheism of Dawkins and Dennett may be backfiring:
…while Dembski, Dawkins and Dennett are sipping the champagne for their very different reasons, there is a party pooper. Michael Ruse, a prominent Darwinian philosopher (and an agnostic) based in the US, with a string of books on the subject, is exasperated: “Dawkins and Dennett are really dangerous, both at a moral and a legal level.” The nub of Ruse’s argument is that Darwinism does not lead ineluctably to atheism, and to claim that it does (as Dawkins does) provides the intelligent-design lobby with a legal loophole: “If Darwinism equals atheism then it can’t be taught in US schools because of the constitutional separation of church and state. It gives the creationists a legal case. Dawkins and Dennett are handing these people a major tool.”
There’s no room for complacency, urged Ruse over lunch in London last week. Last December’s court ruling against the teaching of intelligent design in some Pennsylvania schools may have been a blow, but now the strategy of the creationist/intelligent-design lobby is to “chisel away at school-board level” across the US. The National Centre for Science Education believes that as many as 20% of US schools are teaching creationism in some form. Evolution is losing the battle, says Ruse, and it’s the fault of Dawkins and Dennett with their aggressive atheism: they are the creationists’ best recruiting sergeants.
Yes. Too many people believe in God for this to be a successful debating tactic. People have to be made to understand that religion and science don’t have to be incompatible, and that we don’t have to abandon science (as the “science” of intelligent design does) when the going gets tough. As Galileo said, the one tells us how to get to heaven, the other describes of what the heavens are made. Of course, with modern science and rocketry, perhaps science will allow us to do both.