Month: May 2005

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Defending Our Borders

Two significant posts and a link—heed them all
 
This post, at The Sunnye Side of Life, quotes an article detailin eight myths concerning illegal immigrants.  Read it and com on back for the next post on the subject. Well, what are you waiting for? Go.  Read it.
 
Back now? Good.  Here’s your next important reading assignment, at Whizbang!
 
“A prelude to war?” outlines the case of an illegal immigrant arrested and charged with… trespassing.  Read it.
 
Now, CLICK on the link HERE or in my sidebar (The “Secure Our Border” graphic) and sign the petition urging President Bush to take all legal and prudent means to decure our borders.
 
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A tribute by Blonde Sagacityâ„¢

Ala looks “In the Sandbox… ” and offers a prayer for what she sees
 
Head on over to Blonde Sagacityâ„¢ and read Ala’s prayer for those placing themselves in harm’s way to serve their country.
 
Then CLICK HERE to download/listen to “Mansions of the Lord” from the same movie as the prayer she quotes.  The fire off an email to one of the guys serving in harm’s way, preferably someone from your own community, someone you should be connected to. And then why not watch a decent movie portraying honorable men serving their country in difficult circumstances, such as “We Were Soldiers” (from whence both the prayer Ala offers and “Mansions of the Lord“).
 
Are there any military families in your community? Spouses and clindren coping with a dad or mom in Iraq?  Retired military who served with honor?  Look them up.  Be their friend and neighbor.
 
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Drive by posting: Oh! the humanity of it all!

Evolution just ain’t what it’s cracked up to be…
 
Slithery Reptile last week and Adorable Rodent this week.  I am not pleased.  I do NOT want to be an Adorable Rodent! If anything, I want to be a Wascally Wabbit!  What is wrong with this Ecosystem?!?
 
*sigh*
 
[Updated: Well, I guess N.Z. Bear heard my plea.  I’ve slid back down the evolutionary ladder to Flappy Bird.  MUCH better than being an Adorable anything. When someone looks at me, if they see “adorable” instead of ROUS (gratuitous Princess Bride reference) or thinking “That’s one mean rodent” (Gratuitous Monty Python “Search for the Holy Grail” reference) then I’ve failed in one of my life’s goals.
 
 
[Updated yet again: the silly N.S. Bear ecosystem has bumped me back to the place where the script says “I’m a [sic] Adorable Rodent… ” Blech. Labeling me “adorable” and then the error with the article… Well, those who know me will just have to think of me as “One mean R(OUS),” and go on their merry way.
 
Right.]
 
 
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A “True Story”

Well, as likely as any on the front pages of the NYT
 
Hillary Visits an Elementary School
  
 
So, like, Hillary Clinton goes to an elementary school in New York to talk  about the world. After her talk she offers question time.
 
One little boy puts up his hand. The Senator asks him what his  name is.
 
“Kenneth.”
 
“And what is your question, Kenneth?”
 
“I have three questions: First – whatever happened to your medical health care plan?
 
Second – why would you run for President after your husband shamed the office?
 
And, Third – whatever happened to all those things you took when you left the White House?”
 
Just then the bell rings for recess. Hillary Clinton informs the kids that they will continue after recess. When they resume Hillary says, “Okay where were we? Oh, that’s right, question  time. Who has a question?”
 
A different little boy puts his hand up; Hillary points him out and asks him what his name is.
 
“Larry.”
 
“And what is your question, Larry?”
 
“I have five questions: First – whatever happened to your medical health care plan?
 
Second – why would you run for President after your husband shamed the office?
 
Third – whatever happened to all those things you took when you left the White House?
 
Fourth – why did the recess bell go off 20 minutes early?
 
And, Fifth – what happened to Kenneth?
  
[I do not know the source of this little cautionary tale. While I doubt it is literally true, I feel it meets the journalistic standards of the NYT and CBS, so I’m “reporting” it here. Obviously, since it’s already all over the web (example), it simply must either be true or “close enough” for a CBS memo report featuring Dan Blather or a front page report by the NYT. And if it’s good enough to meet their stringent standards for reportage, I guess it’ll just have to do.]
 
[Update: And no kidding with this update. I’ve gotten some mail about this post that indicates I need to make something clearer: when I said I did not know the source of this tale, I meant it.  I did find other sites that repeat this story (one linked above), but I have found no attribution I could verify, either, so we’re left wondering this: did this information  come from Bill Burkett or some other equally reliable source?  I simply do not know. Do you?  That’s the current state of Mass Media Podperson ethics—”If I think it sounds like something my own biases verify, then it must be true… “—so I guess if I hold myself to their standards, it’s perfectly fine.]
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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.Â