Woo Kills

Along with creeping socialism and Islamic jihad, one of the great dangers facing our culture is the advance of the anti-science “woo”: So-called “alternative” medicine, cultish beliefs in “detoxification”, anti-vaccine activism and all manner of quackery are invading our institutions and threatening to drive true, science-based medicine out the door.

This is not merely a matter of personal preference. It is the fight between reality and wishful thinking. As John Derbyshire said, the opposite of science is not religion, it is wishful thinking.  Wishful thinking can kill you. It can kill your child. And your belief in woo can kill the rest of us.

Science is the only way to know reality. Denying reality is perilous.

Blazing Saddles

goes to Washington.

Infidels Quagmired!

Jules Crittenden on the Taliban’s press agency, the Associated (with terrorists) Press.

I’d advise the Taliban just to reprint AP articles, or have mullahs read them out in the mosques, whatever. The version linked above doesn’t even include AP’s own 3,800 dead Taliban tally that was included, apparently as an afterthought, toward the bottom of a later version … but only after a lengthy, somehat irrelevant tangent of how U.S. estimates of Taliban and civilian death tolls sometimes change following investigations. It’s a given that small-scale American errors will always trump large-scale intentional acts on the part of the Taliban and al-Qaeda in AP and much of the other media coverage. In this case AP neglects to note, as usual, that the Taliban is responsible for the vast majority of nearly 2,000 civilian deaths last year, either through suicide bombs or through hiding and firing from civilian positions. Because … one more time … the AP sucks.

Pillowhead!

You got to learn to be nice!

Ever wonder what a Copy Editor does?

Apparently many writers at The Nation don’t know, either. But a good one can deliver quite the smackdown.

A Modest Proposal

I was just reading about Congress’ nice little pay raise. Gosh, they sure did a swell job this year, huh? I think they all deserve an extra freezer-full of cash. Well, it got me thinking about how congressional pay should be determined.

So here’s a crazy idea: Tie congressional pay to Federal tax revenues.

“What?” you cry! “That will just motivate them to jack our taxes up even farther!”

It might. At first. But when they realize that their pay is tied to the reality that lower tax rates mean higher tax revenues…

Well, it’s a thought. Can’t be much worse than now, at any rate. What do you think?

Department of Homeland Bullies

As if the white-shirted goons at TSA (Too Stupid for Arby’s) weren’t bad enough, Michael Yon writes of an encounter with a moron from the so-called Department of Homeland Security’s ICE (Idiots Coercing Everybody) which will make your blood boil.

While the U.S. Immigration officer named Knapp rifled through all her belongings, Aew sat quietly.  She was afraid of this man, who eventually pushed a keyboard to Aew and coerced her into giving up the password to her e-mail address.  Officer Knapp read through Aew’s e-mails that were addressed to me, and mine to her.  Aew would tell me later that she sat quietly, but “Inside I was crying.”  She had been so excited to finally visit America.  America, the only country ever to coerce her at the border.  This is against everything I know about winning and losing the subtle wars.   This is against everything I love about the United States.  We are not supposed to behave like this.  Aew would tell me later that she thought she would be arrested if she did not give the password.

Yet another part of the Bush Legacy which we’ll live to regret. If we survive the Obama Legacy, that is.

Use an Ambulance as a Troop Carrier?

Now, who would do a thing like that?

Update:

Maybe the same kind of losers who would do this.

News Flash: MSM Still Thinks You’re Stupid

Yes, the Fauxtography Follies continue.

In other news, I heard that a guy got bitten by a dog.

The Moral Battleground

Melanie Phillips, as is her wont, rocks.

The moral inversion in the west is so egregious, so monstrous, that the better Israel is shown to behave the worse the vilification that rains down upon it. What other country in the world would show such restraint in the face of more than 6000 rocket attacks upon its citizens – 6000! – that it took seven years before going to war to put a stop to it? What other country would treat individuals – including proven terrorists – from that enemy territory in its own hospitals? What other country would continue to provide essential foodstuffs and other supplies to those enemies who continued to fire rockets at it? What other country, when finally forced to go to war to stop the attacks, would show such concern to avoid the loss of civilian life that it contacts the population in enemy territory — even households containing identified terrorists – to warn them to flee from the imminent bombardment? And what other country would, for showing such unparalleled moral scrupulousness, be vilified and libelled as Israel is? Israel’s behaviour is moral, legal and proportionate. This conflict is revealing just who is on the side of morality, decency and sanity and who is not.

Shortest Honeymoon Ever?

Oh, dear. He can change the levels of the oceans, but He can’t make them like us. Nor Him.

Algore’s Climate Lies

They’re not news, but reading about them in the Huffington Post is.

The ocean-atmosphere system is not a simple one that can be “ruled” by a trace atmospheric gas. It is a complex, chaotic system, largely modulated by solar effects (both direct and indirect), as shown by the Little Ice Age.

So why would the HufPo suddenly allow this heresy? Gee, that’s a toughie.

“If Ah Had a Hammah”

“Ahd do fuh housin’ what I did tuh th’ cuntry“.

April Charney, a lawyer representing many of the 85 homeowners in Fairway Oaks, said she had no problems taking on Habitat for Humanity, despite its status as a “darling of liberal social activists”. She said the charity should have told people that part of the estate had been built on a rubbish dump.

The New Brown Shirts

Jihad comes to America’s streets.

As Glenn Reynolds often notes, they’re not anti-war. They’re just on the other side.

Like these “Palestinian” morons in San Francisco.

Well, I’m sure that once The One takes office later this month and unpreconditionally sings kumba-ya with the world’s Islamic terrorists that peace will prevail. Nothing to worry about here.

But stockpile ammo just in case.

Yes, We Can!

Depending, of course, on what the question is.

Or how much history you know.

Ray Bradbury: Seer

I gave my daughter a nice edition of Fahrenheit 451 for Christmas, and she just let me read it for the first time in more years than I can count. Many of Bradbury’s incidental predictions, like giant television screens replacing walls, and people wearing earbuds all the time, are pretty amazing. Then there’s this moment just before Montag frightens his wife’s friends with a book of poetry. Mildred asks to speak of politics.

“Sounds fine, said Mrs. Bowles. “I voted last election, same as everyone, and I laid it on the line for President Noble. I think he’s one of the nicest looking men ever became president.”

“Oh, but the man they ran against him!”

“He wasn’t much, was he? Kind of small and homely and he didn’t shave too close or comb his hair very well.”

“What posessed the ‘Outs’ to run him? You just don’t go running a little short man like that against a tall man. Besides–he mumbled. Half the time I couldn’t hear a word he said. And the words I did hear I didn’t understand!”

“Fat, too, and didn’t dress to hide it. No wonder the landslide was for Winston Noble. Even their names helped. Compare Winston Noble to Hubert Hoag for ten seconds and you can almost figure the results.”

“Damn it!” cried Montag. “What do you know about Hoag and Noble!”

“Why, they were right in that parlor wall, not six months ago. One was always picking his nose; it drove me wild.”

“Well, Mr. Montag,” said Mrs. Phelps, “do you want to vote for a man like that?”

Except for the bit about the names it looks pretty prescient. I may well be using President Noble, Hoag and ‘Outs’ as code words for the next four years.

Fifty Weary Years

In an article so true I can’t believe it’s in the New York Times, fifty years of Castro are marked with a reminder of the real reason we have the Second Amendment.

She said her son had done all he could to change Cuba from the inside. “How can Cubans confront the government, with rocks and sticks?” Ms. Garcia said. “Everyone has nothing, and the people are afraid.”

A Meditation

on the banal, utterly interchangeable nature of pop music.

The Elements of Spam

Strunk and White for spammers.

Comprise.

Means “include” or “embrace.” Not to be confused with constitute. Your free online pharmacy comprises no-prescription Lunesta, herbal Ecstasy, and a secret formula that will make her moan all of the night. These items constitute your online pharmacy.