Nastiest Wife On Television

Interesting short article on real estate, contains a link to a very creepy Century 21 ad.

Swing And A Miss

The recently published (and hyped in the NYT) experiment which purportedly demonstrates the Darwinian evolution of irreducible complexity does no such thing. Paul Nelson explains. As does Mike Behe.

The Dynamics Of War

More and more, I'm getting the feeling that the 21st Century is going to be far, far, different than the global village group hug envisioned in the 90's.

Victor Davis Hanson:

And then there is Israel. All sane observers hope it is not drawn into this crisis, and for a variety of reasons. The emboldened Iranians count on this. Yet they do not realize the extent of the dilemma that their rhetoric and nuclear brinkmanship force on an Israeli president. To do nothing, a mere 60 years after the Holocaust, would imply three assumptions on the part of an Israeli leadership — “wiping us off the map” is just theocratic rhetoric; if the Iranians ever do get the bomb, they won’t use it; and if they use it, it won’t be against us.

Those are, in fact, three big “ifs” — and no responsible Israeli can take the chance that he presided over a second holocaust and the destruction of half the world’s surviving Jewry residing in what the radical Islamic world calls a “one-bomb state.”

History would not see such restraint as sobriety, but rather as criminal neglect tantamount to collective suicide, and would reason: “An Israeli prime minister was warned by the president of Iran that he wished to wipe Israel off the map. He was then informed that Iran was close to getting nuclear weapons. And then he did nothing, allowing a radical Islamic regime to gain the means to destroy the Jewish state.”

So for all the lunacy of Mr. Ahmadinejad, it is time for him to sober up and do some cool reckoning. He thinks appearing unhinged offers advantages in nuclear poker. And he preens that unpredictability is the private domain of the fanatical believer, who talks into empty wells and uses his powers of hypnosis to ensure his listeners cannot blink.

Iran, of course, is still an underdeveloped country. It seems to profess that it is willing to lose even its poverty in order to take out one wealthy Western city in the exchange. But emotion works both ways, and the Iranians must now be careful. Mr. Bush is capable of anger and impatience as well. Of all recent American presidents, he seems the least likely to make decisions about risky foreign initiatives on the basis of unfavorable polls.

Israel is not free from its passions either — for there will be no second Holocaust. It is time for the Iranian leaders to snap out of their pseudo-trances and hocus-pocus, and accept that some Western countries are not merely far more powerful than Iran, but in certain situations and under particular circumstances, can be just as driven by memory, history, and, yes, a certain craziness as well.

Ever since September 11, the subtext of this war could be summed up as something like, “Suburban Jason, with his iPod, godlessness, and earring, loves to live too much to die, while Ali, raised as the 11th son of an impoverished but devout street-sweeper in Damascus, loves death too much to live.” The Iranians, like bin Laden, promulgate this mythical antithesis, which, like all caricatures, has elements of truth in it. But what the Iranians, like the al Qaedists, do not fully fathom, is that Jason, upon concluding that he would lose not only his iPod and earring, but his entire family and suburb as well, is capable of conjuring up things far more frightening than anything in the 8th-century brain of Mr. Ahmadinejad. Unfortunately, the barbarity of the nightmares at Antietam, Verdun, Dresden, and Hiroshima prove that well enough.

So far the Iranian president has posed as someone 90-percent crazy and 10-percent sane, hoping we would fear his overt madness and delicately appeal to his small reservoirs of reason. But he should understand that if his Western enemies appear 90-percent children of the Enlightenment, they are still effused with vestigial traces of the emotional and unpredictable. And military history shows that the irrational 10 percent of the Western mind is a lot scarier than anything Islamic fanaticism has to offer.

So, please, Mr. Ahmadinejad, cool the rhetoric fast — before you needlessly push once reasonable people against the wall, and thus talk your way into a sky full of very angry and righteous jets.

There Is No Controversy, And We Are Debating It

Paul Nelson:

In tomorrow'’s issue of Science, researchers Jamie Bridgham, Sean Carroll and Joe Thornton of the University of Oregon claim to have shown how an irreducibly complex system might have arisen by a process they call "molecular exploitation." Their paper, "Evolution of Hormone-Receptor Complexity by Molecular Exploitation," Science 312 (7 Apr 2006):97-101 and an accompanying commentary by Chris Adami are sure to stir lively discussion. Mike Behe has already weighed in, arguing that Bridgham et. al. haven't even come close to answering the challenge of irreducible complexity. Tomorrow we'll provide a detailed scientific response to the paper as well.

For the moment, however, we want to point out something that should be obvious, but may escape notice at first glance. The publications by Bridgham et al. and Adami will appear in Science, the flagship journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). The AAAS has taken a prominent public stance on the intelligent design controversy. And therein lies a mystery, of sorts.

What Scientific Controversy? Oh, That One…

Like nearly all national science organizations, the AAAS has repeatedly insisted that there is no scientific controversy about intelligent design. That must explain why Science this week will publish two scientific articles taking positions on the controversy. The one that doesn’t exist.

There is no scientific controversy about ID. But, just in case, here’s a new primary research publication claiming to test one of ID’s key concepts, irreducible complexity.

Skeptical observers might say that leading journals such as Science or Nature are happy to publish research articles addressing the intelligent design controversy, as long as those articles claim that ID is wrong. Skeptics might also note that the senior author on the Bridgham et al. paper, Joe Thornton, states on his University of Oregon webpage that one of his main research goals is “to illustrate how a complex, tightly integrated molecular system -- one which appears to be ‘irreducibly complex’ -- evolved by Darwinian processes hundreds of millions of years ago.” But of course we must remember that the concept of irreducible complexity has stimulated no research, which is why Professor Thornton is working hard to solve the problem.

Skeptics could feast on a rich buffet of such ironies. Or absurdities. The plain fact is that since the publication of Darwin’s Black Box (1996) and The Design Inference (1998), the problems, concepts, and arguments of intelligent design have steadily been making their way into the scientific (primary research) literature, brought there by scientists themselves as they respond to ID arguments. “There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about,” quipped Oscar Wilde, “and that is not being talked about” -- and the central concepts of ID, such as irreducible complexity, are in no danger of not being talked about in science. The problems ID raises for theories of naturalistic evolution are genuine, and must be solved if undirected natural processes really did bring about biological complexity. Either those problems will be solved, or they will not. But the problems are not going away any time soon.

Thus, ID casts its shadow across the current scientific literature, very much like someone standing just outside a window, silhouetted by bright sunlight. Those who perceive themselves as safely within the house of science are carrying on a vigorous debate with the alarming figures they see as standing outside. There is no scientific controversy about design or Darwinian evolution, say the inhabitants of the house -- but skeptical onlookers can hear the noisy, through-the-window conversation all the same. Scientific papers are being published trying to refute arguments made by someone. But who?

Welcome to the scientific controversy that doesn’t exist. Pull up a chair, and take a look at this new paper. Just remember -- there’s no controversy here. Now, what do you think of Bridgham et al.’s counterargument to Behe?

We'll give you some thoughts tomorrow. In the meantime you might want to catch up on some reading around irreducible complexity. Here are a few things to whet your appetite...

See original article for embedded links.

Missing Link

NYT article about the newly discovered transitional fossil between fish and land animals. Doug TenNapel has a bit of fun with it.

The Future Lies Ahead

Just started reading this, but it looks pretty good. Science fiction story in which a time-traveller tells the present-day protagonist about the 100 year war with Islam that is just starting. Written by Dan Simmons, a science fiction author. H/T The Anchoress.

There Are Almost No Real Muslims

Orson Scott Card:

Poor Abdul Rahman. He lived in Germany, where there is freedom of religion. He forgot that freedom of religion only applies to non-Muslims who convert to other faiths. Muslims aren't allowed to follow their individual consciences. If you're born a Muslim, then in your entire life you will never, never have a choice about what religion to belong to.

Because if you convert from Islam to another faith, good Muslims have a right -- no, a duty -- to kill you.

Oh, wait. How can I say that? I keep forgetting -- we've been assured ten thousand times since 9/11 that Islam is "a peaceful religion."

Many -- probably most -- Muslims who live as citizens in the United States no longer accept the idea that Islam gives anybody the right to kill anybody.

But enough Muslims do believe there is a death penalty on the crime of converting away from Islam that it remains a dangerous thing to do.

Remember that when poor Abdul Rahman went home to Afghanistan, it was his own parents who turned him in and set him up for the death penalty.

You know: Tough love. Maybe a nice beheading will help our son get his head on straight.

Now the international pressure has led the Afghan court to back down. Suddenly there is "not enough evidence." I wonder how that could be. His parents can affirm that he was born and raised Muslim. He himself has openly stated that he converted to Christianity and has no intention, even under penalty of death, to renounce that conversion. Hard for evidence to get much clearer than that.

Obviously, Afghanistan's government recognized a couple of facts that had clearly been pointed out to them by Condoleezza Rice:

1. Americans are willing to let their soldiers fight in Afghanistan as long as we're bringing them freedom. Specifically, freedom from the religious intolerance of the Taliban, which enforced the most rigid, ridiculous interpretation of Sharia.

2. If Abdul Rahman had been executed for no worse "crime" than converting to Christianity, then a huge portion of the support for the war in the US would evaporate. In short order, American troops would be home and Afghanistan would be on its own.

I would have been one of the most fervent in demanding the immediate withdrawal of US troops. Not one more American life should be risked to sustain a system of law in which someone who changes religion can be murdered by the state -- or even by a religion tolerated by the state.

Freedom of conversion is at the core of freedom of religion -- indeed, at the core of freedom of any kind. If you cannot change your mind, your stated beliefs, and the religious community you choose to associate with, you are not free.

What I find most amusing is the widespread belief among Muslims that this Sharia law is essential in order to preserve Islam.

Don't they see that it is exactly this law that destroys Islam wherever it is enforced?

To the degree that the law demanding the death of anyone who converts away from Islam is actually enforced, to exactly that degree the nation that enforces it is not a Muslim nation.

Indeed, there are no Muslims at all, wherever that law is enforced.

Because religion is absolutely not about mere outward compliance with the law. It is about belief -- it is about what a person believes in his heart. But in a nation where conversion away from Islam means death, then no believer can be sure that his own obedience is purely a matter of conscience.

If a person "believes" in Islam, but there has ever been a moment when he thought, "since I can't convert to another faith anyway, what's the point of learning about any other way of thinking?" then that person is not a Muslim.

There is no faith under compulsion. Any nation where Sharia is enforced is not a Muslim nation, and none of its people are Muslims. If they cannot choose not to be Muslim, then they have not chosen to be Muslim. Without freedom not to believe, faith is a sham even if you think you are sincere...

Much more follows, such as:

To those who have never known religious freedom, it is difficult to understand that, when faith is voluntary, it grows more robust among those who freely adhere to it. Because it can be heartbreaking to watch your child turn from the faith of his family. Few parents desire it -- even those with faith in atheism are appalled when a child of theirs converts to a religion that has a god in it.

The answer, though, is to teach them well, and make sure your religion actually works in the real world -- that compliance with its law really does make people happier, that the doctrines really do explain what matters in the real world. A religion that refuses to compete on a level playing field with other ideologies is a religion that confesses its own inferiority.

If Muslims believe Islam can only be defended by blood or exile, then obviously they doubt Islam's strength. They are afraid that Islam is not actually true enough to compete for the hearts and minds of its own believers.

To insist that those who would leave Islam must be killed if they do not revert is to insist that Islam is not, in fact, true.

The truly faithful of any religion will insist on the right of people to lose faith and leave the religion. Any other position is, in fact, a confession of one's own lack of faith.

Of all religions, Islam, with a firm belief that all that happens in the world happens as a result of the will of God, should accept that when someone leaves the faith, it is clearly permitted by the will of God, for God is not so powerless as to need bloody-handed men to enforce his will!

If You Are Against Electrocuting Kittens, Then You Are A Democrat

The wisdom of Jimmy Carter:

John F. Sugg interviews Jimmy Carter for Creative Loafing Atlanta:

Carter fittingly used a parable to illustrate how he'd like to see the political/religious debate unfold.

"I was teaching a Sunday school class two weeks ago," he recalls. "A girl, she was about 16 years old from Panama City [Fla.], asked me about the differences between Democrats and Republicans.

"I asked her, 'Are you for peace, or do you want more war?' Then I asked her, 'Do you favor government helping the rich, or should it seek to help the poorest members of society? Do you want to preserve the environment, or do you want to destroy it? Do you believe this nation should engage in torture, or should we condemn it? Do you think each child today should start life responsible for $28,000 in [federal government] debt, or do you think we should be fiscally responsible?'

"I told her that if she answered all of those questions, that she believed in peace, aiding the poor and weak, saving the environment, opposing torture . . . then I told her, 'You should be a Democrat.' "

The Academic Shafting Of Francis Beckwith

Detailed in this FrontPageMag article.

Nice Coulter Rant

She's great when she doesn't overdo it. I liked this one.

Sorry, But Death Is Not A Creative Force

Despite what Darwinists think. Some quotes from a Crisis Magazine article:

Everything we know about DNA points to the fact that it programs a species to remain what it is. … Darwinists can make up stories (they call them “inferences”) about how random beneficial mutations, which alone are highly improbable, can accumulate in an organized manner to bring about genuine evolutionary advances… But Grasse (who was no creationist) dismisses such narratives as “daydreams.”

Natural selection simply eliminates what doesn’t work. That’s all it can do. But the destruction of the unfit does not explain the origin of the fit. As biologist Hans Driesch pointed out long ago, to say that natural selection “creates” anything is a bit like answering the question, “Why are there leaves on the tree?” with, “Because the gardener didn’t prune them away.” Or, as Arnold Lunn put it, it’s like calling the Nazi air strikes creative because they left standing Westminster Abbey.

On Thin Ice

Vanderleun weighs in on the "Jesus May Have Walked On Ice" story.

Right. That Must Be It.

Jesus could have walked on ice.

Folks, no need of repentance after all.

Vat Time Iz It?

Time to unpimp ze auto!! Some funny VW ads. (H/T Peeve Farm)

The Obvious, Analyzed

Dennis Prager:

Here are three questions comparing liberals and conservatives:

1. During the 2004 elections, which car was more likely to be "keyed," i.e., deliberately scratched -- a car with a "John Kerry" bumper sticker in an overwhelmingly conservative area, or a car with a "George W. Bush" sticker in an overwhelmingly liberal area?

2. When speaking at colleges, do right-wing or left-wing speakers need and receive police protection?

3. In a debate between a right-wing and a left-wing speaker before an audience equally divided between left and right, which audience group is more likely to boo and hiss at the speaker with whom it disagrees -- the liberal or the conservative?


Here are the answers:

1. Where I live in liberal Los Angeles, drivers of most vehicles with Bush-Cheney bumper stickers have told me (and I have often seen) that their cars (and mine) were deliberately scratched. When I have asked about the fate of cars with Kerry-Edwards stickers in equally conservative areas in, for example, Orange County or even the Bible Belt, no Democrat has reported such intentional damage to his car. This does not mean it never happens, only that it is far more rare. I would bet a lot of money -- and I am not a gambler -- that cars displaying conservative messages in liberal areas are far more likely to be defaced than cars with liberal messages in conservative areas.

2. When Ann Coulter goes to college campuses, she is accompanied by a bodyguard. And colleges routinely bring in police to protect her and to guard against student violence. No bodyguard or police contingent is necessary for Al Franken. Another leftist, Noam Chomsky, a man who has devoted his life to attacking America, goes from campus to campus without worrying about having so much as a pie thrown at him, something regularly done to conservative David Horowitz.

3. Whenever I have debated representatives of the Left before politically mixed audiences, I have been hissed and booed far more than my opponent was. Others who debate leftists report identical experiences. Why? Because in general, conservative members of the audience are more civil and less angry.

There are a few reasons for this discrepancy. One is that the more left one goes, the more one is likely to encounter people who substitute "social justice" for personal morality. Another is that in the eyes of most leftists, people who oppose their "progressive" views on the environment, the war and taxes are such morally inferior people that they are not owed decent behavior.

But the biggest reason is the most obvious one: Liberals hate conservatives far more than conservatives hate liberals...

The Barbarians Are Not Joking

Excellent overview article in the WSJ on the history, nature, and true intentions of Islam. Here is the conclusion:

Whether or not any such structure exists or can be forged, the fact is that the fuel of Islamic imperialism remains as volatile as ever, and is very far from having burned itself out. To deny its force is the height of folly, and to imagine that it can be appeased or deflected is to play into its hands. Only when it is defeated, and when the faith of Islam is no longer a tool of Islamic political ambition, will the inhabitants of Muslim lands, and the rest of the world, be able to look forward to a future less burdened by Saladins and their gory dreams.

United 93

Looks like there is finally, finally going to be a theatrical release dramatizing the events of 9/11. Ed Driscoll has an excellent post about the hysteria this is starting to cause among blue staters. Also, be sure to check out the trailer.

A Nice Piece Of Enemy Propaganda

Highlighted here. Outrageous. Also check out the comments.

Unspinning And Detriangulating

Excerpts from the latest Mark Steyn column:

The line here is "respect." Everybody's busy professing their "respect": We all "respect" Islam; presidents and prime ministers and foreign ministers, lapsing so routinely into the deep-respect-for-the-religion-of-peace routine they forget that cumulatively it begins to sound less like "Let's roll!" and too often like "Let's roll over!"

Jack Straw, the British foreign secretary, gave a typical Western government official's speech the other day explaining that "a large number of Muslims in this country were -- understandably -- upset by those cartoons being reprinted across Europe and at their deeply held beliefs being insulted. They expressed their hurt and outrage but did so in a way which epitomized the learned, peaceful religion of Islam."

"The learned, peaceful religion of Islam"? And that would be the guys marching through London with placards reading "BEHEAD THE ENEMIES OF ISLAM" and "FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION IS WESTERN TERRORISM" and promising to rain down a new Holocaust on Europe?

...

To win a war, you don't spin a war. Millions of ordinary citizens are not going to stick with a "long war" (as the administration now calls it) if they feel they're being dissembled to about its nature. One reason we regard Churchill as a great man is that his speeches about the nature of the enemy don't require unspinning or detriangulating.

If I had to propose a model for Western rhetoric, it would be the Australians...More recently, the prime minister offered some thoughts on the difference between Muslims and other immigrant groups. "You can't find any equivalent in Italian or Greek or Lebanese or Chinese or Baltic immigration to Australia. There is no equivalent of raving on about jihad," he said, stating the obvious in a way most political leaders can't quite bring themselves to do. "There is really not much point in pretending it doesn't exist."

Unfortunately, too many of his counterparts insist on pretending (at least to their citizenry) that it doesn't exist. What proportion of Western Muslims is hot for jihad? Five percent? Ten, 12 percent? Given that understanding this Pan-Islamist identity is critical to defeating it, why can't we acknowledge it honestly? "Raving on about jihad" is a line that meets what the law used to regard as the reasonable-man test: If you're watching news footage of a Muslim march promising to bring on the new Holocaust, John Howard's line fits.

Is it something in the water down there? Listen to Howard's Cabinet colleagues. Here's the Australian treasurer, Peter Costello, with advice for Western Muslims who want to live under Islamic law: "There are countries that apply religious or sharia law -- Saudi Arabia and Iran come to mind. If a person wants to live under sharia law these are countries where they might feel at ease. But not Australia."

You don't say. Which is the point: Most Western government leaders don't say, and their silence is correctly read by a resurgent Islam as timidity.

...

My worry is that the official platitudes in this new war are the equivalent of the Cold War chit-chat in its 1970s detente phase --when Willy Brandt and Pierre Trudeau and Jimmy Carter pretended the enemy was not what it was. Then came Ronald Reagan: It wasn't just the evil-empire stuff, his jokes were on the money, too. In their own depraved way, the Islamists are a lot goofier than the commies and a few gags wouldn't come amiss. If this is a "long war," it needs a rhetoric that can go the distance. And the present line fails that test.

If Only Real CEO's Wrote Like This

Gerard Vanderleun defends Borders Corporation from its critics (who castigate it for not carrying an obscure magazine with the Mohammad cartoons on the cover).

The "open letter" starts like this:

An Open Letter from Gregory P Josefowicz CEO/Chairman of the Board/President/Director, Borders Books to Charles Johnson, Director, Pajamas Media, CEO Little Green Foosballs, Rock 'N' Roller in the Free World, Stealth Cyclist.

Dear Mr. Johnson (or may I call you "Charles"?),

The last time I read the Preamble to the Constitution of the United States it seemed pretty clear that the government of these states is ordained and established to "Provide for the common defense," not Borders Books.

Charles, I've got a book store to run and having you sic a bunch of bloggers on me and tell them to ride my ass because we're not shelving a pip-squeak magazine from those tools at the "Council for Secular Humanism" (Jesus wept!) is just not getting it done.

Don't get me wrong. In my 26 minutes of free time every day, I read and love Glenn, and Roger, and Allahpundit and The American Thinker and all the rest of you down to the roots of my remaining hair. I respect their courage and their dedication to principle. And then, finally, Charles, we come to you....

Now I like Little Green Footballs a lot, except for those Kos-o-vite trolls that keep spraying flecks of sputum all over your comments sections. But if you and your other blogomeisters think for one split nano-second that I'm going to stop being the CEO of Borders and take on the marching Muslim morons so that Western Civilization sleeps comfy in its free-speech security blanket, you've got one deflating green football on your hands. And I respectfully suggest you regroup.

Let me lay it out for you.

I run a bookstore. A book store. I run a big bookstore. I've got 34,000 people, real people, working for me every day in lots of places around the US and in other countries too. Those people owe Borders, every day, one good day's work. Borders owes the people who work for it a safe day's work. I've got stockholders too, but let's leave them aside for now, because as much as you may think so, this is not about money. (And yes I caught that business about the fact that we're trying to open stores in Arab and Muslim countries, but as you may have noticed every country these days contains an Arab and Muslim country.)

My bookstore is in a lot of places and it has, in employment and other matters, an open door policy. It advertises its address. It's not hard to find. You can Mapquest it. If you are lucky you can park your fully-loaded van or truck right next to it and set the timer. During business hours, all our employees are "home." Call me paranoid, but you don't get to be the CEO of a big corporation and not think about these things.

Like the United States itself, we're into "Open Borders." Like the United States, Borders lets anybody in. But we're not running some sort of NSA airport check-in deal at the door. You open our door and you walk in and somebody says "Welcome to Borders." You can come as you are and wear whatever you choose under that long and suspiciously large coat. We've no dress code when it comes to our customers. You can be locked and loaded in more ways than one because, hey, its a free country with a strong Second Amendment as well as a First.

Yes, we have security, but you may have noticed that they are not wearing body armor, carrying automatic weapons and patrolling the cookbook section in an up-armored Humvee. It's just not the Borders Way, bloggers. If you ever stopped filling up your cart with clicks at Amazon.com and visited a store, that's what you'd find...