Nothing Says Cheer Up

like Soviet-era Latin rhythms.

Or something like that.

Which Is More Dangerous?

A. Running with pancakes

B. Using a hot tub

C. Letting Islamist nutjobs get nuclear weapons

Pencils down, please.

How to evaluate your score:

C: You are sane

A or B: You are an infantilized liberal or a left-wing government official.

Drawing the Line on Freedom of Religion

Freedom of religion is a founding principle of our culture and our country. But it is not a “Get out of Jail Free” card to let you do anything you want. I have no problem with religions teaching their beliefs of various and sundry deities, or teaching their followers how they should live. Religions should be able to preach and proselytize in the free market of ideas.

But when a religion seeks to impose itself by force, or usurp the rule of law, it has crossed the line and deserves no constitutional protections. As Andy McCarthy puts it:

Implementing sharia is the purpose of jihad. Sharia is antithetical to our Constitution in fundamental ways.

So if you want to preach sharia in your mosque, my country has both a right and a duty to listen in and to do something about it.

Citizens United Good News for Progressives, Too

Will Wilkinson lays out the case.

Progressives are right to worry about corporatist government. But they locate the problem in the wrong place, which is why their proposed solutions repeatedly miss the target. It would be a great tragedy for democracy if a commonsense reading of the First Amendment’s protection of free speech truly undermined democratic freedom. Thankfully, it does not. Ultimately, the Citizen’s United case will change very little about how our political system works. Election-season speech was never the chief means by which special interests did their dirty work. But in some modest measure, the decision actually sets the right example. By limiting government power, it protects our freedom.

Of course a deliberately dishonest, illiterate reading of the Constitution is a requirement for being a “progressive”.

Yesterday in Azerbaijan

Because your Friday isn’t weird enough yet.

An Open Letter to Senator Orrin Hatch

Dear Senator:

I don’t want your kind of help. Please just go home to Utah and shut the hell up.

Sincerely,

Me

Habanera

And, after that, habanother!

The Mount Vernon Statement

I signed it. Will you?

Ain’t That Typical

Keith Ellison calls out Daniel Pipes and then vanishes when challenged to a debate. Doesn’t that just seem like an Islamist thug and/or Liberal Democrat? (Have you noticed how hard they are to tell apart some times?)

Update:

Andy McCarthy also seems to doubt that Ellison will accept the challenge.

Maybe Ellision, the great supporter of Israel and interfaith dialogue, can enlighten us about his activism on behalf of Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam; his support for Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael) to speak at his law school on the subject “Zionism: Imperialism, White Supremacy or Both?”; or, in more recent times, his support for Sami al-Arian, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad leader convicted for conspiring to support terrorism. Maybe Ellison, the great believer in peaceful resolution of conflict, can address his support for convicted cop-killers (including leading one courthouse demonstration with the chant of “We don’t get no justice, you don’t get no peace”), and for the “flying imams” who terrified the passengers and crew of a U.S.Airways flight in 2006. Maybe Ellison, the great believer in religious tolerance, can explain why he recently berated Dr. Zuhdi Jasser — an authentic Muslim moderate who opposes Islamist groups like CAIR who flock to Ellison — for being a traitor who licenses anti-Muslim bigotry.

Maybe . . . but I doubt it.

Can Atheists Be Good People?

This is an old trope of many religious people. To them, their religion or their deity is the source of morality, in which case those who reject gods and religion must be immoral.

New research shows that morality developed in humans independently of religion.

Considerable debate has surrounded the question of the origins and evolution of religion. One proposal views religion as an adaptation for cooperation, whereas an alternative proposal views religion as a by-product of evolved, non-religious, cognitive functions. We critically evaluate each approach, explore the link between religion and morality in particular, and argue that recent empirical work in moral psychology provides stronger support for the by-product approach. Specifically, despite differences in religious background, individuals show no difference in the pattern of their moral judgments for unfamiliar moral scenarios. These findings suggest that religion evolved from pre-existing cognitive functions, but that it may then have been subject to selection, creating an adaptively designed system for solving the problem of cooperation. (Emphasis added.)

Note that this sense of morality is found in children who have not yet had the possibility of religious indoctrination. There was a good episode of WNYC’s Radio Lab, Morality, dealing with this also.

Caption Contest

Over at the freethinker they’re having a caption contest.

You’ll find my entry if you scroll down far enough.

A Skeptic, not a Denier

And being a skeptic I want good data and open research. I also evaluate the credibility of sources when deciding on plausibility. The IPCC is part of the United Nations. The United Nations is a systemically-corrupt left-wing political organization. That is why I pretty much discount everything it has said about AGW.

As well you may imagine I am shocked — shocked — to read this.

“The temperature records cannot be relied on as indicators of global change,” said John Christy, professor of atmospheric science at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, a former lead author on the IPCC.

and

“We concluded, with overwhelming statistical significance, that the IPCC’s climate data are contaminated with surface effects from industrialisation and data quality problems. These add up to a large warming bias,” he said.

Oh, and this.

Professor Jones also conceded the possibility that the world was warmer in medieval times than now – suggesting global warming may not be a man-made phenomenon.
And he said that for the past 15 years there has been no ‘statistically significant’ warming.

AGW may be real. But I’m still skeptical.

Good Science is Open Science

As I mentioned before, the “Climategate” emails were not such a big deal. The computer code, on the other hand, was.

Here’s a good explanation (in The Guardian, of all places) of why it’s important to release the code.

Hatton and other researchers’ work indicates that scientific software is often of poor quality. What is staggering about the research that has been done is that it examines commercial scientific software – produced by software engineers who have to undergo a regime of thorough testing, quality assurance and a change control discipline known as configuration management.

By contrast scientific software developed in our universities and research institutes is often produced by scientists with no training in software engineering and with no quality mechanisms in place and so, no doubt, the occurrence of errors will be even higher. The Climate Research Unit’s “Harry ReadMe” files are a graphic indication of such working conditions, containing as they do the outpouring of a programmer’s frustrations in trying to get sets of data to conform to a specification.

You wouldn’t trust your encryption to software that wasn’t open. There’s no reason to trust any other critical software that isn’t, especially if the results might be influencing policy.

I think I’ve been to this store

Fortunately, I didn’t buy anything.

Two Brazilian Soldiers Killed

The President was just informed that two Brazilian soldiers were killed in Afghanistan.

He collapsed into a state of shock, slumping over his desk. Once He regained his composure he tearfully asked, “So exactly how many is a brazilian?”

You’re Welcome

Simply Brilliant

Cracking Down on Supplements At Last?

A glimmer of hope over at SBM. The DSHEA, the deadly child of a couple of lame-brained Senators, may be getting a much-needed patch thanks to another Senator not normally known for his deep thinking.

Last week, I learned that yet another effort is being made to strengthen the DSHEA and close some of its loopholes. This effort comes in the form of a law under consideration, the Dietary Supplement Safety Act of 2010. It is a law proposed by, of all legislators, John McCain.

I’ll say it again here for the search engines to find: Orrin Hatch is an idiot. Of course, Tom Harkin is a moron, but our expectations are naturally set a bit lower for Democrats.

Meanwhile, here’s your Buttle’s World health tip for the day: If a product says “Supplement” on it anywhere, don’t buy it. You don’t need it, and it may well harm you. Especially if it’s made in Utah.

Lucky His Name Isn’t Bush

Can you imagine the reaction if Bush had said anything as embarassingly ignorant as “corpse-man”? This clip would have been in heavy rotation all weekend.

You’d think the Dumb Bastard would have someone on staff who has, you know, actually met someone in the military before.

Little Girl, Big Voice

Penn Jillette found this video from a couple of years ago, when Nora Foss Al-Jabri was only eleven years old. As he put it on his Facebook page, “How does an 11 year old make me cry my eyes out with music? Well, it helps to have Leonard find the tune and words for you, but still.”

I’ve watched it thrice now. I cry a little more each time. Have a hanky handy.

She’s clearly got a career ahead of her. Here she is at twelve:

And thirteen.

Avatar Review

The same guy who did those great Prequel reviews is back, and this time Avatar is in his sights.

Same language warning as before. But, again, you’ll actually learn a lot about film making. And the review is dead-on accurate.

Part 1:

Part 2:

iPhone Thieves Beware

Many iPhone owners are nobody you want to mess with.

In Case You Thought Chemistry Was Dull

You don’t have to know any chemistry at all to enjoy this geek humor, thanks to the highly reactive writing style of Derek Lowe, PhD.

These Bavarian rowdies have prepared a series of salts of the unnerving azidotetrazolate anion. As they point out, the anion was described back in 1939 (in what I hope was a coincidental association with the outbreak of the Second World War), but its salts are “rarely described in the literature”. Yes indeed! People rarely spray hungry mountain lions with Worcestershire sauce, either, come to think of it.

Yeah, Baby.

What a Difference a Year Makes

For the first time in well over a year, there is a glimmer of hope on the American political scene. Some celebration video seems in order.
Here is how you win:

And here is what happens if you back the wrong horse:

(Yes, I know. This parody has been done to death. But this one is actually pretty funny.)

Political Correctness Kills

And when PC infects the institutions that are supposed to protect us, it’s extra deadly.

The report therefore demonstrates, in its own peculiar fashion, why no one took measures to counteract the threat that Hasan plainly posed. If a blue-ribbon, brass-plated panel can’t speak honestly about Hasan after he has butchered 14 of our people, how can we expect his supervisors to speak honestly about him before the fact? As Peters says, “ain’t many colonels willing” to do that.

James Cameron Jumps the Couch

When I met Cameron years ago he impressed the heck out of me. He could quote Dark Star chapter and verse, and had great stories to tell. In the years that followed he showed that he was a master at directing the action scene.

Later I heard about his infantile tantrum when Bush was reelected, and Cameron withdrew his application to become a U.S. citizen. That showed that he had no idea how valuable citizenship is, nor what our founding principles are.

Now he’s crossed the line. He just destroyed all the good will I had for him in just one sentence.

EW: “’Avatar’ is the perfect eco-terrorism recruiting tool.”
JC: “Good, good. I like that one. I consider that a positive review. I believe in eco-terrorism.”

So long, Jim. I’m done.

Update:

Added a link to the story about his citizenship tantrum.

TSA Logo Contest

I hear that if you have one of these on your bag you get to skip right through airport security.

Or maybe you think you can come up with a better one?

That Big Head Start Study You’ve Been Reading About

America has spent $100 billion and change on Head Start, and now there’s a major study on just how effective it has been. Kathleen Sebelius says,

“Research clearly shows that Head Start positively impacts the school readiness of low-income children.”

So that’s why you’ve been reading all about it in the press.

What? You say you haven’t?

Hmm. I wonder why not.

Umm, yes Ms. Secretary, but the same research shows those effects vanish by the end of first grade. I guess that information is on a need-to-not-know basis. The public needs to not know about it or the administration hasn’t got a snowball’s chance in Kauai of getting American tax payers to throw another $100 billion or so at government pre-K, as President Obama is so very keen to do.

The Forgotten Elephant in the Room

Veronique de Rugy has a good post up about the real reason healthcare prices are going up.

It should be incandescently obvious to anybody with the slightest understanding of economic reality.

Economists have shown that if a good’s price is zero or decreasing, then the demand for this good will likely increase. In 2008, consumers were only directly responsible for 11.9 percent of total national healthcare expenditures, down from 43 percent in 1965, according to new data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. This means that someone other than consumers pays roughly 88 percent of all healthcare costs, giving consumers little incentive to mind costs and much incentive to over-consume.

But ignored in all of the current debates over health care costs is the reason why we are paying less out of pocket. As usual, when things are really screwed up you have to look to government meddling.

The first bit of bad juju in this story was the imposition of the income tax. Next was the Ponzi scheme called Social Security. Then came income tax witholdings (Milton Friedman’s one bad idea.) Once that big chunk was being taken out of paychecks, employers started offering “benefits” like health insurance to sweeten the pot. It started with “major medical”, and went downhill from there.

Not only did the taxes seem hidden once people got used to witholdings, but what once was spent out of pocket became hidden. (The subterfuge is double in the case of Social Securit. Half of what you’re paying is hidden as an “employer contribution.”) Once the HMO model got started, well, you can see the result on the chart.

Not only should the income tax be repealed (along with the XVI and XVII amendments) but, before that, tax witholdings should stop. If people had to write a check every April 15th we’d see a rapid shift toward smaller, more responsive government.

And health care costs would go down because there would be no reason to depend on your employer for health insurance.

Think about what costs you more now than it used to vs. what now costs you less. I think you’ll see a pattern.