That's TOO MUCH Moore!
A Scrappleface prediction has been posted at Moorewatch.com. It is, of course, based upon the Dixie Chicks' recent semi-nude pose on the front of Entertainment Weekly. And it's quite funny.

(By the way, the Dixie Chicks may be nimrod singers, but at least you don't have to avert your eyes in utter disgust!)

  posted by Stephen @ 9:03 PM

 
Ketchup Or No Ketchup On Your Crow?
A link has been found between Saddam and Al Qaeda! While it certainly wasn't necessary to need such a link to topple Saddam's despotic regime, maybe it'll shut a lot of people up. At the very least, it'll make their anti-war arguments seem that much more asinine.

  posted by Stephen @ 8:57 PM

 
I Spell "Inhumanity" N-O-W
The gifted and insightful Shonda of Diotima has more fortitude than I. She has the stomach to actually browse NOW's and Planned Parenthood's websites. I've taken snippets of the quoted nonsense from their respective sites. (Respective, not respected. Far be it from me to have any respect for such iniquitous organizations.)

Here's a bit of what Shonda quoted from Planned Parenthood's comments relating to Senator Santorum's recent comments:

"[Senator Rick Santorum] also declared that Americans have no constitutional right to privacy....In Sen. Santorum's ideal world, women and men would once again face state bans and restrictions on contraception."

"...if we can't cope or don't want a pregnancy we're made to feel guilty about abortion..."

 
Mr. Fleischer, Remember Who You're Dealing With
In 2001, the House of Representatives passed a bill that would make killing or injuring an unborn baby a crime. (This, of course, excludes the mother of the unborn baby. She has a "right" to kill the baby. If she's a PUKE, she also BELIEVES she has that illegal, patently immoral "right" to kill another human being just because the human being grows inside her.) The Senate has yet to pass such a bill. Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer had this to say about the potential Senate law:

''...when an unborn child is injured or killed during the commission of a crime of violence, the law should recognize what most people immediately recognize, and that is that such a crime has two victims.''

 
Why Didn't You Listen To Yourself, Ted?
Ted Turner opened his big mouth on Thursday and called Rupert Murdoch, owner of News Corporation and Fox News, a "warmonger." You know, CNN was the ONLY news channel that covered Gulf War I. Perhaps that could be viewed as glorifying the war.

Turner also claimed that Fox News promoted the war. No, actually, Fox was just upbeat about everything. If I want to hear doom and gloom I'll turn to CNN, though.

Turner also said this:

"The media is too concentrated, too few people own too much."

 
Crazy Times, Crazy Children
Unfortunately, there was another school shooting yesterday morning in Pennsylvania. A 14 year old--an 8th grader--with a gun shot his principal and then shot himself. To me, this is especially sad because there seems to be no real motive. With all the violence in our society, impressionable minds pick up on it and act on it. What else could be the cause?

I'm sure he was an unpopular kid who was sick of school. So, he felt that it was okay to pay the school back for his trouble. What the poor kid didn't realize is that school isn't life. It gets better after junior high and high school (at least in my opinion). Now, though, two people are dead. That includes a great principal who they say loved children. And it's all for absolutely NOTHING.

What's interesting to me is that crazy shooters often kill themselves after they kill their victims. Shouldn't it be the other way around? Reverse the scenario. I'm not advocating suicide, but if you absolutely must kill, kill yourself and spare everyone else from needless death. Most of us want to live. If you don't, don't take everyone down with you. You won't be around to see the aftermath, so why does it matter to you?

  posted by Stephen @ 1:28 PM

 
Debate! Evolution: Round 1, Part 2

Here's another evolution-related post by Will at Baudes Blog. He, too, didn't insult me personally, which I appreciate. He can give me a rebuttal, too, if he wishes.

--

Me: The theory of evolution has more than just "reasonable doubt" associated with it. It is only a mere educated guess at how humans and animals came to exist upon this planet. Nothing more. It is neither fact nor very reliable, and it continues to be a capricious theory. Every time another fossil is discovered, it seems, a huge part of the theory radically changes.

Will: And it gets worse, much worse. Now I should let somebody more expert in these things than myself take this simplistic argument to task, but in a nutshell:

My understanding is that punctuated equilibrium isn't a particularly necessary part of the main theory of evolution.

Reply: It's a simplistic argument because it's a simplistic problem. Evolution just doesn't make a whole lot of sense on many levels.

It's not "a particularly necessary part," but it's one of many specious small theories that try desperately to credibly explain the bigger theory. To no avail, of course. Punctuated equilibrium is just a particularly funny one because it's "FAST" evolution! Try not to laugh!

--

Will: Calling a doubt of the "theory" of evolution "reasonable" is a lot like calling a doubt of the "theory" of relativity "reasonable".

Reply: Relativity was proven by Einstein beyond a reasonable doubt. Demonstrable evidence. Evolution hasn't come close to that. It's science versus pseudo-science.

--

Will: Now maybe you can marshall some evidence for some other scientific theory of creation, though it won't do much to explain away the bulk of evolutionary evidence. But since when is evolution a religious theory?

Reply: Where's the bulk? I mean, honestly, show me the bulk! I need examples! There is limited, ambiguous evidence. That's about it.

--

Will: Really, there's just too much wrong with this post to go on. I'm just going to stick to Diotima.

Reply: There's too much wrong? Perhaps there's too much RIGHT with it and you just can't handle the truth! (Did I just quote a movie?)

Anyway, I disagree with PUKE (pro-unborn-killing-exemption) people, so you'd be advised to keep reading my blog for great commentary concerning the preservation of life instead of the slaughter of it!

  posted by Stephen @ 3:49 AM

 
Debate! Evolution: Round 1

At least I know that a FEW people are reading my blog. I'm excited! I get a chance to debate somebody! The topic is evolution.

Lovely Amy at The Crooked Heart decided to "fisk my blog" and so I'll "fisk" back! (I'm a new blogger, so I'm not even sure what "fisking" is.) She said fisking me would be as easy as clubbing a baby seal, though, so I might need to contact PETA about that. I worry about Amy and her seal-clubbing practices.

Seriously, though, I thank Amy for not being mean or insulting me personally (at least, I don't think she did) and I tried to do the same in my response. I gladly welcome her rebuttal if she so chooses.

--

Me: The theory of evolution has more than just "reasonable doubt" associated with it. It is only a mere educated guess at how humans and animals came to exist upon this planet. Nothing more.

Amy: The theory that the New Testament was written in the first centuries AD to record the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth is only a mere educated guess at how this text came to exist upon this planet. Nothing more. After all, we weren't there to see it for ourselves. We have to rely on evidence, and the evidence could all have been concocted by a gaggle of medieval pranksters. Is this a reasonable doubt? But can you prove it isn't true?

Reply: I mentioned nothing about the New Testament, the Old Testament, or the Bible! We're talking evolution! Let's stay on topic. Evolution cannot be reproduced. It's a theory. An educated guess at how we came to exist on this planet.

--

Me: It is neither fact nor very reliable, and it continues to be a capricious theory. Every time another fossil is discovered, it seems, a huge part of the theory radically changes.

Amy: A huge part? Like the huge part that explains why fossils don't look like animals that are around today? While is is true that the proper placement of fossils on the evolutionary tree is a hotly contested subject, it remains fairly obvious that such a tree should exist.

Reply: A huge part...such as finding some bones and saying, "Well, new evidence (i.e. one skeleton) suggests that humans didn't come from Africa anymore." It's hotly contested because there's a lot of unknowns and educated guessing going on...as I stated. Lots of conjecture. It doesn't remain "fairly obvious" that such a tree should exist. Now, if you PRESUPPOSE that divine creation isn't possible, then it's "fairly obvious." That's what one of my points was in the whole blog entry: evolution is humanistic dogma.

--

Me: I personally got a kick when I heard about "punctuated equilibrium." This is a counterintuitive sub-theory that was dreamed up when the fossil record couldn't be explained.

Amy: Ever seen a gyroscope? If so, do you still want to claim that the workings of nature are intuitively understandable?

Reply: I've seen gyroscopes. You know why? They're observable! Punctuated equilibrium is a theory that is not explicitly observable. To me, it seems like circular logic: "Punctuated equilibrium is true because the fossil record proves evolution."

--

Me: (Obviously, evolution is true, so the fact that evolution never took place is not an option to consider). Punctuated equilibrium essentially postulates that evolution is slow for a while, and then it speeds up for a very short time: the environment FORCES a crocodile to turn into a bird in a few thousand years. If you believe in magic, evolution is for you.

Amy: When you think of it, punctuated equilibrium is actually a fairly intuitive theory. The basic idea is that when the environment is stable, species are also reasonably stable. They've found their niche, they fill it effectively, and most changes to the formula are maladaptive. However, when the environment changes, species are no longer well adapted to current conditions. Most of the population will die off, but what is left will change rapidly, not because the environment forces it to change, but because mutations are much more likely to be adaptive. For instance, polars bears with a mutation leading to thin coats would be very maladapted for life in the Arctic, and one would not expect to see these animals reach maturity. However, if a catastophe (like a meteor) were to warm the globe enough to make the arctic regions temparate, one would expect to see such a mutation become highly favored, and for the appearance of polar bears to change drastically within a few generations.

Reply: If it's so intuitive, why'd it take so long to develop? The answer: it's a recent theory based upon the fact that the fossil record is completely unexplainable by traditional Darwinistic evolution. Mutations are another huge weak point in evolution: they're almost completely deleterious to an organism. People tend to think of mutations as a good thing like from "X-Men" or something like that, whereas in nature they're almost entirely detrimental. I agree that selective pressures can cause microevolution and local speciation. But on a gross scale, there's not enough evidence to support, say, humans coming through the same common ancestor as fish. It's circumstantial at best.

--

Me: Sadly, evolution is "gospel" in scientific circles.

Amy: Actually, this is a fairly apt description. As my high school biology teacher explained to me, science is based on the premise that material events have material causes. If a scientists observes a material event that seems to have no cause, he should conclude not that it had a supernatural origin, but that we have not yet observed the material causes responsible. This is what it means to be a scientist, and this is why we no longer believe in spontaneous generation, action-at-a-distance, or the miasma theory of diseases. So just as it's rather difficult to call yourself a Christian if you don't believe the Gospels are true, it's rather difficult to call yourself a scientist if you're not willing to accept evolution.

Reply: Yes, but science is by nature ill-equipped to handle certain things. Evolution is an attempt to go against that. It tries, but there are too many unknowns. Evolutionists fill in all the gaps and ASSUME. "We're here...it's obvious!"

--

Me: If you don't believe in it, you're condescendingly viewed as a non-thinking moron who obviously knows nothing about science.

Amy: Right. Because if you did know something about science, you'd understand that creationism is not a scientific explanation.

Reply: Neither is evolution. Both creationism and evolution are dogmas that cannot either be supported adequately with science. I was a Chemistry major in undergrad with a minor in biology. I'm attending grad school this fall. I love science. Science is great. But it reaches a limit of applicability. Science is a tool used by humans to explain aspects of the world we live in. Observable aspects. It's simply inadequate to explain certain things like our origins.

--

Me: It is scientific dogma, and it's not a surprise that many are dogmatic when it comes to evolution. It's a scientific religion with many, many adherents. Question it, and you're generally laughed at, patronized, and ostracized.

Amy: Oh. I'm sorry. Am I patronizing you?

Reply: No, but I'm sure you're laughing at me because you think I know so little. I'm the wacko when you're the one who believes that, given enough time, an amoeba can turn into a human? I mean, that's completely counterintuitive and ludicrous! Just in the human body, there are too many complexities that could not have evolved. It's that simple.

--

Me: Those two paragraphs were an intro to a story I saw today. A "smarter-than-everyone-else" type professor at Texas Tech University was using it as a litmus test in order to write students recommendations in order to get into medical school, and the Bush administration began to probe the McCarthy-style Darwinist. Well, the Bush administration has chickened out and dropped the probe.

Amy: So supporting evolution makes you smarter than everyone else? Wow. Finally something we can agree on.

Reply: Are you patronizing me? This guy has the nerve to ask students wanting to get into MEDICAL SCHOOL about their personal beliefs. It's irrelevant and shows his arrogance and intolerance. If I was a professor, I wouldn't try to shunt atheists away from medical school. I'd judge them on academia alone. And, I certainly don't believe people just because they're smart and in positions of power. Example: I never believed much of what "Slick Willy" Clinton said!

--

Me: Here's what the professor, Michael Dini, still says:

"If you set up an appointment to discuss the writing of a letter of recommendation, I will ask you: 'How do you account for the scientific origin of the human species?'" Dini states on his updated Web site. "If you will not give a scientific answer to this question, then you should not seek my recommendation."

I don't get it. Why is this even a question? It's completely irrelevant to becoming a physician. Maybe he should ask, "Do you believe in the latent heat of fusion?" Why evolution?

Amy: Why not evolution? Why shouldn't Dini be able to ask whatever questions he wants before he writes his recommendation? When you ask for a recommendation from a professor, you're asking for a favor that he should be able to grant or refuse as he sees fit.

Reply: Okay, I will grant you that Mikey, in theory, has the right to ask whatever he wants. However, it comes awfully close to religious discrimination. If a student believes that God created him and evolution is not true, that's a religious belief protected under law. That's the reason the Bush administration was looking into it.

--

Me: I'll tell you though, here's the answer: it's a religious belief, and some evolutionists like Dini want an inroad to try to shove God out of intellectual and professional circles (and then trickle down through society). Trying to keep out doctors who don't believe in pseudo-science would help that process.

Amy: Trying to keep out doctors who don't believe in pseudo-science probably isn't going to do much to remove religion from America, but it would do a whole lot to improve the quality of the medical profession. Should we perhaps return to the era when medical care was the province of quacks and faith healers?

Reply: You just proved how out of touch you are! Religious hospitals are everywhere. And why would believing in evolution as a dogma improve the overall quality of the medical profession? It's irrelevant. Believing in God, though: I would argue that it would help a doctor connect better with patients. Now, removing arrogant, intolerant, leftist professors might improve the quality of education in this great country!

--

Me: Now, I could maybe see asking, "Are you a humanist? That is, do you care about the well-being of humans and humanity?" Even that's borderline, but that'd be a more fair question because of what doctors do.

Amy: Actually, doctors do more than care about the well being of humans and humanity. They apply science to help humans and humanity overcome their medical problems. Would you rather have a misanthropic surgeon or a caring, loving, generous poet performing your appendectomy?

Reply: Huh? The humanist question supports YOUR side. Humanist, skepticism, secular humanism, etc. I also don't care who performs my surgery as long as the surgeon is qualified.

--

Me: Mikey, keep your religious beliefs to yourself, okay? Teach the theory in class, but don't use it as a litmus test. Lots of doctors look to God for the strength to allow them to deal with so much illness, disease, and death. I want qualified physicians. If they'll give me the care I need, I don't care what they believe in. You shouldn't either.

Amy: Professor Dini, however, is not assessing whether or not a physician is capable, but whether or not a student is likely to become a capable physician. These are two different tasks. A physician looking to God for strength and support is one thing, a physician looking to Leviticus for the cure for skin diseases is something I certainly don't wish to see.

Reply: You're making lots of straw man arguments. I never even mentioned the Bible in my WHOLE post about evolution and you keep referring to it. You're trying to label me as a crazy Bible-thumper when my actual point was only that evolution is a shaky dogma and professors shouldn't use it as a litmus test.

--

Amy: But how strong, actually, is the evidence in support of the theory of evolution? That depends upon what you mean by theory of evolution.

My introductory biology textbook defined evolution as change in the frequency of an allele in the gene pool over time. That such changes occur in response to natural selection has been overwhelmingly established. Most creationists I know are willing to concede this definition of evolution.

Reply: Yes, the frequency of an allele does change over time. Will that cause gross speciation over millions of years? That's the problem. I don't believe it will, and there's not much evidence to counter me. Where are the transitional fossils? They're nowhere to be found because there ARE no transitional species. You show me some good evidence and I'll believe it. Darwin himself said that if transitional fossils cannot be found, evolution is invalid. I tend to agree with Darwin.

--

Amy: Things start to get sticky around speciation, which is the proccess whereby one species evolves into another species. This process has been well-documented in plants, somewhat less so for animals, but nonetheless there are several pretty persuasive instances of speciation being observed in the laboratory. (See this website for more info.)

Reply: "Sticky" is a euphemism for "we really have no clue...we're just guessing." Gross evolution and speciation hasn't been well-documented in plants. You're also linking to talk.origins, a heavily biased website towards evolution. Try this one and see that the evidence, depending on your worldview, can go either way.

--

Amy: Though some creationists are willing to concede that limited speciation may occurr, the majority balk at the theory of evolution, properly called--that all life on earth is decended from a common ancestor. While this, obviously, cannot be observed in a laboratory, the evidence is pretty compelling. From traditional studies of physiology and embroyology, to the establishment of molecular family trees, and the degree of similarity, for instance, between the genomes of humans and chimpanzees, the evidence that mutation and speciation, as observed in the laboratory, are enough to account for the great diversity of life we see today. (See here for more.)

Reply: There's no compelling evidence. Much of the "compelling evidence" that supposedly points to evolution can easily point to Divine creation where God created creatures in a similar fashion.

--

Amy: Finally there is the question of the initial origins of life. Here the evidence begins to get shaky. Scientists have explained how organic molecules form spontaneously when a mixture of inorganic molecules is electrocuted. Scientists have also shown that under the proper conditions, an organic soup can give rise to incredibly interesting structures known as microspheres. These membrane-enclosed sacs of organic chemicals take in materials selectively, and spontaneously divide when they grow. However, they're still a far cry from even the simplest anaerobic bacteria, and the processes in between these two states remain a mystery. (See this site.)

Reply: Things have gotten "sticky" and "shaky," but evolution is still gospel? It's a dogma, and it's okay to subscribe to the theory, but it seems illogical to assume it's fact if there are so many weak points.

--

Amy: This has led a number of people to embrace the theory of intelligent design--that the first origins of life must have had a designer behind them. The problem with this theory is not that it's obviously false, but that finding an Intelligent Designer who operates outside of the rules of nature cannot be done by science. Hence, it is the duy of scientists to search for a material cause of life--a project that, while off to a good start, is far from complete.

Reply: Huh? That's not even logical. Let's assume God exists. We look for a material cause of life. Then we invent a theory based on the evidence we have, however scant it is, that points to a material cause of life. It seems to me that's EXACTLY what evolution represents. A bunch of presuppositions and assumptions based on limited and ambiguous science coupled with a naturalistic worldview.

And, yes, it's far from complete, alright. Too far for my tastes!

  posted by Stephen @ 3:19 AM

 
Continued North Korean Stupidity
Maybe it's just a death wish? Beats me. North Korea threatened the US again today when it claimed it had nuclear weapons AND it said it might use them depending on US actions.

They say this after we cleaned house in Iraq in less than a month?! I don't have a whole lot to add from my first post about North Korea. Honestly, you'd think they'd try to be nice to us. If they're next on the Axis of Evil List, turning up their rhetoric can't help. They gotta realize that, right? Perhaps not.

I guess I keep forgetting we're dealing with yet another evil regime. (Saddam wasn't quite so goofy-looking, though.) And they have the guts to call themselves the Democratic People's Republic of Korea! Find any country with "Democratic" or "People's" in its name, and it's guaranteed to be Communist, wacko, or both. The United States is one of the most free, democratic, and people-loving countries in the world; do we have the need to try to convince others of that fact? No...it's entirely self-evident. And about the DPRK: I'm not sure what having both words in the name means, but it can't be all that good!

  posted by Stephen @ 11:45 PM

 
Obesity: Not A Good Thing
A study shows that being overweight is a potential cause of cancer. Well, duh. Sixteen years and 900,000 people for that? I realize it's important to prove things through controlled studies, but being overweight is an obvious link to a myriad of health problems.

Another news story on USA today says this:

"Of the approximately 560,000 cancer deaths projected to occur this year, roughly 30% of those will be tobacco-related, and about 35% related to diet, physical inactivity and weight, according to the cancer society."

 
I'll Choose "The Dixie Sluts"
The Dixie Chicks are posing nude on the cover of Entertainment Weekly to somehow "answer their critics." To me, it just further shows they're idiots and should definitely stick to singing and not political commentary. Posing nude does WHAT? Shows WHAT? You still were wrong to bash the President overseas, chickadees. To prove my point in another way, here's a quote:

"It's not about the nakedness," the Post quotes band member Martie Maguire as saying. "It's about clothes getting in the way of labels."

 
Spam, Spam, Everywhere, But Not A Bit To Eat
Spam, or unsolicited bulk e-mail, is becoming a huge problem on the Internet. By year's end, spam messages will surpass non-spam e-mail messages. Some say we're already past that point. To make matters worse, some idiot spammers are suing Spamhaus and SPEWS, two very respectable spam-fighting organizations. These spammers, who are spuriously and stupidly claiming that they're the victims, are the idiots that clog your inbox with Viagra ads and porn messages. Can you imagine how many millions of hours of deleting and blocking spam nationwide have been caused by these morons?! They thieve OUR time and bandwidth, but they're the victims because we try to block their theft. Unbelieveable. Pressing the DELETE key may have worked a few years ago, but it's segued from annoyance to huge, multi-faceted problem. Thus:

Never, ever, ever respond to, read through, or buy from spam e-mail. EVER!

Filters and laws are only successful insofar as they remove the bottom line: money. If Net denizens never bought anything from spammers, the spam would stop. So, if you get spam, report it through SpamCop (a highly recommended service) and delete it! Get it? Got it? Good!

  posted by Stephen @ 10:42 PM

 
Evolution: A Scientific Religion
The theory of evolution has more than just "reasonable doubt" associated with it. It is only a mere educated guess at how humans and animals came to exist upon this planet. Nothing more. It is neither fact nor very reliable, and it continues to be a capricious theory. Every time another fossil is discovered, it seems, a huge part of the theory radically changes. I personally got a kick when I heard about "punctuated equilibrium." This is a counterintuitive sub-theory that was dreamed up when the fossil record couldn't be explained. (Obviously, evolution is true, so the fact that evolution never took place is not an option to consider). Punctuated equilibrium essentially postulates that evolution is slow for a while, and then it speeds up for a very short time: the environment FORCES a crocodile to turn into a bird in a few thousand years. If you believe in magic, evolution is for you.

Sadly, evolution is "gospel" in scientific circles. If you don't believe in it, you're condescendingly viewed as a non-thinking moron who obviously knows nothing about science. It is scientific dogma, and it's not a surprise that many are dogmatic when it comes to evolution. It's a scientific religion with many, many adherents. Question it, and you're generally laughed at, patronized, and ostracized.

Those two paragraphs were an intro to a story I saw today. A "smarter-than-everyone-else" type professor at Texas Tech University was using it as a litmus test in order to write students recommendations in order to get into medical school, and the Bush administration began to probe the McCarthy-style Darwinist. Well, the Bush administration has chickened out and dropped the probe. Here's what the professor, Michael Dini, still says:

"If you set up an appointment to discuss the writing of a letter of recommendation, I will ask you: 'How do you account for the scientific origin of the human species?'" Dini states on his updated Web site. "If you will not give a scientific answer to this question, then you should not seek my recommendation."

 
Why Kill Embryonic-Stage Humans?
There's a fascinating news item circulating today. It involves a pediatric dentist who took one of his young child's baby teeth and found stem cells in some pulp in the shedded tooth. Dr. Songtao Shi and his fellow scientists call the cells SHED cells: Stem cells from Human Exfoliated Deciduous teeth. Similar to umbilical cord blood stem cells, this offers a potentially wonderful way to harvest stem cells without destroying the earliest stage of human life.

I think we do owe it to humanity to work as hard as we can to find every ethical way to get stem cells. There are people out there suffering from debilitating diseases that will greatly benefit from continuing stem cell research. Admittedly, if I had a relative suffering from such a disease--or if I did--I would honestly find it hard not to advocate embryonic stem cell research. However, like abortion, it is all too easy to take such routes. Medicine is based upon morality and doing no harm; medical research should always follow that philosophy. Dr. Mengele, the evil Nazi doctor, probably learned a great deal from his experiments, but the ends didn't justify his means. That's important to remember.

  posted by Stephen @ 3:55 PM

 
Santorum Whomped; Is Criticism Warranted?
Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum apparently initiated a Lott-style witch hunt recently by being a conservative and making non-offensive remarks. Those non-offensive remarks were subsequently blown completely out of proportion. Leftist homosexual groups are supposedly mad because he said this:

"If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual (gay) sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery," Santorum was quoted as saying. "You have the right to anything."

 
Commentary: What's The Cause of Extremism?
It strikes me as being utter hypocrisy that abortion doctor killers are viewed as extremists while the actual abortion "doctors" are not. (I put "doctor" in quotes because people on a regular basis who are supposed to preserve life but actually remove it aren't very good physicians--or members of the human race, for that matter.) Killing is unequivocally wrong, and all people who kill should be held accountable. However, I think a lot of people have the cart before the horse.

Generally, I'd say it's Christian extremists who murder these abortion doctors and give other Christian pro-lifers a bad name. Most Christians are concerned with preserving life of all kinds: unborn, born, and old. And, while Christians detest abortion, they as a general rule never resort to violence to correct this modern-day Holocaust. Think about it, though: who is actually responding to whose extremism? Follow this:

1. Extremist doctor kills countless unborn babies.
2. Extremist pro-lifer kills doctor.

Who's committing the initial act of violence? Also, who is committing MORE violence? After the "doctor" is killed, then everyone left-of-center rightfully labels the killer a "dangerous, hateful extremist." But they don't attribute the correct reasons. Why would someone take umbrage at a medical procedure? The answer: no one would. However, many do take personal offense to killing babies, and some go off the deep end.

I feel very little good will towards "doctors" who perform baby-killing on demand. It's lower than low. It's scummy and they're scum. They make good money and a good living off "reproductive rights": killing unborn babies. However, violence and killing isn't the answer. It took hundreds of years to end slavery, and much of it was non-violent. Sadly, I think it may take that long to correct this evil. What's even sadder is that society's moral enlightenment went backwards. With slavery, it was legal and we made it illegal. Abortion WAS illegal and now it's legal.

Unborn Children Have Humanity?
Sharon Rocha, Laci Peterson's mom, said this, boldness added:

"I can only hope that the sound of Laci's voice, begging for her life, begging for the life of her unborn child, is heard over and over and over again in the mind of that person every day for the rest of his life," Sharon Rocha said.

 
There were a couple of interesting items in The Smoking Gun today.

First, Madonna's site was hacked. Her new album, American Life, was to be released on Tuesday, and to try to combat illegal file sharing she shared files that looked to be the songs on her new album. In actuality, they were decoys: audio loops of her saying a naughty phrase with the f-word. Some people got "revenge" by hacking her site and posting MP3s. Now, I really don't give much of a flip about Madonna, but I thought the story was humorous. It has profanity, so be forewarned. Check it out.

As an aside, I'm not perfectly sure what to think of the legalities of music/MP3 sharing. It's perfectly lawful to record something for personal use onto VHS. Similarly, it's okay to record music off the radio. However, with digital CD-quality songs, it becomes a MUCH more cloudy issue. The legality is a moot point, though. It really is. Anything they put into place is unenforceable. Much like speeding. With decentralized file sharing technology, it becomes de facto impossible to enforce such laws. They couldn't recoup the time or money they put into finding the tens of millions of people that trade music. In another few years, it'll be interesting to see what the music industry does...and how the technology grows.

Second, Scott Peterson pled not guilty to murdering Laci and "Baby Conner Peterson." I bet the PUKEs (pro-unborn-killing-exemption people) are livid! An unborn baby given a name? That's almost implying that the baby is human and therefore deserves the right not to be murdered! You'll notice that Count II of Peterson's file says "...with malice aforethought murder Baby Conner Peterson, a fetus." More lividity from the PUKEs! Fetuses can be murdered? Does that mean they're actually human? Wow, I know they hate all that. A world without Roe vs. Wade would mean less babies killed, and for a PUKE, that's not a good thing.

I also did a little research on the SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) epidemic. To my knowledge, it's caused by a super-souped-up version of a cold virus. That would be a "coronavirus." Anyway, I found that as of today (or yesterday), about 4,000 people have contracted the syndrome and 200 people have died. Now, I'm not trying to marginalize 200 deaths. That's a lot. But, if you calculate that, it's about a 5.5% death rate of people that contract the virus. Furthermore, I looked at the statistics from the Toronto cases of SARS. Of the 132 people who have contracted it, 14 have died. Nearly 80% of those people were 70 years of age or older! Of the Toronto cases, no one under 43 has died. It's horrible that anybody has to die, but this disease seems mostly to be killing older individuals. And they might have even been immune compromised and thus prone to illness. At this stage, I guess it's impossible to know for sure. No matter what, though, people who contract it just need to stay home so this SARS thing will stop (at least in North America)!

  posted by Stephen @ 11:34 PM

 
The Compassion Of PUKEs
Ah, yes, the wonderful compassion of pro-unborn-killing-exemption (PUKE) people. I coined a term! Anyway, read this quote from that article, and then read it again. Boldface added:

"There's something about this that bothers me a little bit," Stark said. "Was it born, or was it unborn? If it was unborn, then I can't see charging (Peterson) with a double-murder."

 
Fox News. FNC. It's the most popular cable news network out there. With fewer outlets, it beats CNN. It beats MSNBC handily. For the past couple weeks, even, Fox & Friends has beaten CBS' The Early Show. That may not sound like all that much, but it's a huge feat. Only people who have cable can get Fox, whereas everybody close to a city with a TV can get CBS.

I was watching C-Span today when Carl Cameron was on. He's a political reporter for Fox. While he was on, it seemed like every liberal that called up trashed his network. Though Fox claims to be fair and balanced, none of these liberal callers saw it that way. That, of course, was quite perturbing to me. Number 1, the establishment liberal media has been around for SO long that anything deviating from it to the right is called "right-wing" and "biased." Most of those callers would probably readily claim that CNN and the LA Times are both perfectly fair in their reporting. Naturally. After hearing him bash Bush for the past couple years, it amazes me how left-wing Walter Cronkite is. I realize some of the tripe he spews is commentary, but he still should be more even-handed about it. His legacy as a great reporter/journalist is fading every time he speaks. Number 2, Fox speaks the truth about certain issues. For instance, if I said, "We won Gulf War II hands down, and it was a success for Bush," that would be true. If Fox says it, it would be true. Seems fair, right? Not to liberals. War is bad, even when it's successful. Thus, Fox is unfair, biased, and unbalanced--even though they're speaking the truth. Number 3, even if Fox is conservative, CNN and MSNBC are WAY more liberal. Fox is way closer to center and always has been from the start. I actually should restate what I said: CNN and MSNBC have been more liberal in the past. I admit that we're starting to see a shift in both networks. They realize that a huge chunk of potential viewers are intelligent, perceptive conservatives. So, they're forced to be more fair now. (I bet they hate it!) When CNN was the lone news network, it didn't matter so much. Kinda like if you needed your car fixed and the only place in town overcharged; you'd be forced to go there. If another repair shop opened, the overcharging shop would have to lower their prices. Assuming they wanted to stay in business, of course.

Another news item worth touching concerns (potential, to be fair) wife killer Scott Peterson. He was carrying $10K when they nabbed him. You know, maybe it's me, but I wouldn't ever carry THAT much cash on me unless I was planning to hide somewhere for a while. Mexico, maybe? I'm glad they got him when they did, though. Mexico, similar to many European countries, won't extradite people back to the US if they'll face the death penalty. Ironic! They don't want to topple regimes who drop people into acid or graters feet first to watch them suffer, but they want to allow brutal killers to languish in jail for a lifetime of living off taxpayer money.

Finally, the parents of Scott Peterson say they're gonna stand by their son. They say he's innocent. You know what the sad part of all of this is? It's realizing that evil people aren't born that way. They become evil through their actions. We live in a depraved world. Unfortunately, human nature isn't good. It's bad. We tend to want to do bad things. And, if we succumb to those urges and temptations, we can potentially do horrible stuff. So, the cute little boy of theirs that they raised has, through his actions, become a (potentially, to be fair!) monstrous killer. It's sad that evil actions can affect so many lives, including Scott's. I don't mean to imply that he's a victim, because he's not. I simply mean he is one of the many people whose lives and souls are altered forever because of this. It's sad.

  posted by Stephen @ 8:20 PM