Day: May 10, 2005

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This reader sings!

Christine, of Morning Coffee and Afternoon Tea, honors my humble ode to the Holy Bean with a recording…
 
…and made the recording available here as an mp3 download. Very nice voices, genuinely interesting voicing variations, well-sung.  All musical mistakes are mine in the manuscript.  All else in the recording is perfectly in character for the piece.  A fun interpretation.
 
Thanks, Christine! You’d have been welcome in any choir I ever directed!
 
BTW, if you want a visual tutorial in lucious blog design, trip on over to Christine’s place for that reason alone.  Easy on the eyes design.  Information-dense. Nice.
 
Another note: since starting out as an Insignificant Microbe in the TTLB Ecosystem last weekend, Morning Coffee and Afternoon Tea has evolved to Crawly Amphibian.  Be sure to wave as she passes you going up the evolutionary ladder!  *VBG*
 
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Not a fisk, but a lament, and maybe a bit of a rant…

It’s the little things: conflation (compounded with “straw man”), assuming the predicate, ad hominem (compounded by “poisoning the well”),  fallacy of composition,  and just plain getting the facts wrong…
 
…and all in one post!  That’s quite an achievement!  Of course, when I offered an opportunity for the post’s author to correct his facts, he avoided doing his homework and simply commented back that the statement I criticized was right.  Apparently without bothering to even check the pedigree his “facts”.
 
*sigh* Sad to see, really.
 
What am I talking about?  This post, where the author inaccurately conflates Intelligent Design with Creationism. 
 
[Just deleted a rather long post dealing with the issue of the poor argument in the post referenced above.  Unecessary. So, the bit of a rant, deleted.]
 
The Politburo Dictat contributor “Stephen” makes an assertion.  The “Comissar” backs the assertion up with one citation of a self-proclaimed Intelligent Design team.  All that is necessary to falsify the assertion that Creationism=Intelligent Design is one case in exception.
 
I offer: the  father of the Big Bang theory , Sir Fred Hoyle, confirmed agnostic. [I don’t know why I said that.  Stupid slip. Everyone knows Fred Hoyle coined the term “Big Bang” in one of his flip, over-the-top moments summing up some of his mathematical arguments detailing problems with the theory, while noting that the Steady State model he preferred addressed those issues. Famous story.  Silly of me. BTW, the problems he noted have only recently begun to be addressed by “Big Bang” proponents in modifications to the theory that are eerily… Hoyle-like.  heh]
 
Fred Hoyle was smart enough to seriously push the envelope of human knowledge—it’s why he was “Sir”-ed, you know—but he was often snarky enough to go a little too far in making provocative statements, as some of Intelligent Universe demonstrates.  At least he succeeded in provoking a lot of thought on the subject. Though not much by either creationists or the current crop of evolutionists, IMO. Still, Hoyle and many other thinking about the subject of intelligent design creationists?  In a pig’s eye. Indeed, Hoyle’s proposal of a panspermia hypothesis for the genesis of life on earth is as much anathema to creationists as his mathematical analysis of evolutionary theories is to evolutionists. See:
 
 
Admittedly, the various intelligent design discussions do seem to have greeater numbers of religious folk—not all from Judeo-Christian backgrounds, BTW—but their voice is no more respected in the discussions than that of scientists and philosophers. Of course, “greater numbers” of folks who have any religion except for post-modern accedie would be hard to come by in current evolutionary circles. (As would discussions of epistomology—a frequent topic as far as I can tell in intelligent design circles—which would fall flat on the ears of those who cannot, or will not, even see when they commit an error of conflation, eh?)
 
Ignorance is easy to remedy. But “…against stupidity, the gods themselves contend in vain.”
 
 
Here’s an example of the kind of disingenuity among some creationists that’s as annoying as the dishonest polemic I lament above. From a Creationist site that I hesitated to link because it’s just so damned annoying *sigh*:
 
“In contrast, two of England’s leading evolutionary scientists, *Hoyle and *Wickramasinghe, working independently of each other, came to a different conclusion than *Bernal’s: The chance of life appearing spontaneously from non-life in the universe is effectively zero! (*Fred Hoyle and *C. Wickramasinghe, Evolution from Space ). One of these researchers is an agnostic and the other a Buddhist, yet both decided from their analyses that the origin of life demands the existence of God to have created it.” [emphasis added]
 
Now, that’s a damed lie.  Not just an inaccuracy: a lie. Hoyle for one never said any such thing. And any “god” Wickramasinghe may have mentioned (although I can’t recall it or find authoritative references to a such statement) would certainly not have been the deity the author of the quoted paragraph was referring to.
 
Blech.  A pox on the creationists and the evolutionists.
 
 

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Another fav–Kipling Tuesday

More than thirty years ago, I “lost” a book of verse I  “gifted” to someone* with a just–discovered love of poetry, a book that had this poem that demands being read, as most good poetry, aloud.
 
The Last Chantey
Rudyard Kipling
 
“And there was no more sea.”
 
 
Thus said The Lord in the Vault above the Cherubim
 Calling to the Angels and the Souls in their degree:
  “Lo!  Earth has passed away
  On the smoke of Judgment Day.
 That Our word may be established shall We gather up the sea?”
 
Loud sang the souls of the jolly, jolly mariners:
 “Plague upon the hurricane that made us furl and flee!
  But the war is done between us,
  In the deep the Lord hath seen us —
 Our bones we’ll leave the barracout’, and God may sink the sea!”
 
Then said the soul of Judas that betray]\ed Him:
 “Lord, hast Thou forgotten Thy covenant with me?
  How once a year I go
  To cool me on the floe?
 And Ye take my day of mercy if Ye take away the sea!”
 
Then said the soul of the Angel of the Off-shore Wind:
 (He that bits the thunder when the bull-mouthed breakers flee):
  “I have watch and ward to keep
  O’er Thy wonders on the deep,
 And Ye take mine honour from me if Ye take away the sea!”
 
Loud sang the souls of the jolly, jolly mariners:
 “Nay, but we were angry, and a hasty folk are we!
  If we worked the ship together
  Till she foundered in foul weather,
 Are we babes that we should clamour for a vengeance on the sea?”
 
Then said the souls of the slaves that men threw overboard:
 “Kennelled in the picaroon a weary band were we;
  But Thy arm was strong to save,
  And it touched us on the wave,
 And we drowsed the long tides idle till Thy Trumpets tore the sea.”
 
Then cried the soul of the stout Apostle Paul to God:
 “Once we frapped a ship, and she laboured woundily.
  There were fourteen score of these,
  And they blessed Thee on their knees,
 When they learned Thy Grace and Glory under Malta by the sea!”
 
Loud sang the souls of the jolly, jolly mariners,
 Plucking at their harps, and they plucked unhandily:
  “Our thumbs are rough and tarred,
  And the tune is something hard —
 May we lift a Deep-sea Chantey such as seamen use at sea?”
 
Then said the souls of the gentlemen-adventurers —
 Fettered wrist to bar all for red iniquity:
  “Ho, we revel in our chains
  O’er the sorrow that was Spain’s;
 Heave or sink it, leave or drink it, we were masters of the sea!”
 
Up spake the soul of a gray Gothavn ‘speckshioner —
 (He that led the flinching in the fleets of fair Dundee):
  “Oh, the ice-blink white and near,
  And the bowhead breaching clear!
 Will Ye whelm them all for wantonness that wallow in the sea?”
 
Loud sang the souls of the jolly, jolly mariners,
 Crying:  “Under Heaven, here is neither lead nor lee!
  Must we sing for evermore
  On the windless, glassy floor?
 Take back your golden fiddles and we’ll beat to open sea!”
 
Then stooped the Lord, and He called the good sea up to Him,
 And ‘stablished his borders unto all eternity,
  That such as have no pleasure
  For to praise the Lord by measure,
 They may enter into galleons and serve Him on the sea.
 
 Sun, wind, and cloud shall fail not from the face of it,
 Stinging, ringing spindrift, nor the fulmar flying free;
  And the ships shall go abroad
  To the Glory of the Lord
 Who heard the silly sailor-folk and gave them back their sea!
 
 
*As with most things given, while the book may be “lost” to me, what it contained is not. 
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100 days and still counting

Maybe it’s “new math”
 

Today, it’s been 100 days since John Kerry (AKA Jean Fraud sKerry)   promised on national tv to sign an SF-180. Maybe he just can’t locate one. 
 
 
I wonder why the good senator hasn’t made good on his promise yet. Perhaps he’s having trouble getting the form? To help him out, you could fax him a copy of the form. It’s only 3 pages, and is available online here.
 
Here are the fax numbers for the senator’s offices:
 
Washington D.C. – (202) 224-8525
Boston, MA – (617) 248-3870
Springfield, MA – (413) 736-1049
Fall River, MA – (508) 677-0275
Just download it, print and fax.  And check the suggestions for a polite cover letter.
 
h.t. Ogre.  (And thanks for the link to Cao’s Blog, period.  Looks like it’ll be a daily read.)
 
 
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