Xtian Love

Now that Christopher Hitchens is gone, the xtian crazies are coming out of the woodwork. Bryon Fisher of Focus on the Family stated that "God sent Christopher Hitchens to hell" (because he loves him, dontcha know). Apparently he has a hot line to god.
I realize of course that Hitch could be very acerbic; once, on "Countdown" with Bill Maher, the audience tittered at one of his statements and shot them the bird.
I didn't always agree with the man. I found his support of Bush II and the Iraq war to be very misguided. But there is no doubt he was a true intellectual giant: I certainly wouldn't want to debate him. Nonetheless, I found his atheism quite inspirational and his logic on this topic unassailable. It was quite a kick to watch him shred the xtians who dared to argue with him, and I will miss that. He generally knew more about the bible than his opponents.
But these so-called "Christians" are quite vile in their condemnation of the man. And to wait until he's gone, as Fisher did, to critizice him is cowardice of the highest (or rather, lowest) order. Take, for instance, the asshat Albert Mohler, ninth president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, KY, and board member of Focus on the Family: "The point about Christopher Hitchens is not that he died of unbelief, but that his unbelief is all that matters now. Unspeakably sad." How can one die of "unbelief?" Is that in the DSM-IV?
And if anyone wants to post on this thread saying, 'Oh, but these people aren't true Christians and they've misunderstood what Christianity's all about' - please don't bother. It's them you need to tell, not me.

Einstein the Creationist : Dispatches from the Culture Wars

Einstein the Creationist : Dispatches from the Culture Wars

Scopes II

It will be 86 years this summer when a Tennessee public school teacher, John Thomas Scopes was convicted of violating Tennessee's Butler Act, which made it unlawful to teach evolution in the state. The trial at the time was a bit of a publicity stunt: the town business men wanted the trade they assumed would come from a high-profile litigation. The case famously pitted the two great legal minds of the era, Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan. With reportage from H. L. Mencken of the Baltimore Sun, the event ended up bringing the town of Dayton a lot more than it bargained for. 
And now, nearly 90 years later, the Tennessee State Legislature, in its unassailable wisdom, has passed yet another anti-science law, this time by a margin of 70 - 23. The pertinent language:

This bill prohibits the state board of education and any public elementary or secondary school governing authority, director of schools, school system administrator, or principal or administrator from prohibiting any teacher in a public school system of this state from helping students understand, analyze, critique, and review in an objective manner the scientific strengths and scientific weaknesses of existing scientific theories covered in the course being taught, such as evolution and global warming.


Weaknesses that do not exist. Throw in that word "theories" for sure. And make sure your example covers the two things the right hates most: evolution and global warming. 


We are doomed. 

Clarence Thomas is . . . something

In the case of Connick v. Thompson (and yes, that's Harry Connick Jr.'s dad, a District Attorney in New Orleans), the court has apparently taken the teeth out of Brady v. Maryland, which says prosecutors must turn over exculpatory evidence to the defense. In this case, they sat on it for 20 years, and the petitioner, Thompson, sat in prison for over 14 years for a crime he did not commit. The trial court awarded Thompson $15 million, which was upheld by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. But that is vacated now; the court has guaranteed that nobody can be held responsible for even the most shocking civil rights violations. 

Unbroken

I just finished Laura Hillenbrand's new novel, "Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption."
The narrative tells the tale of Louis Zamperini, an Army Air Force Bombardier on a B-24 in the Pacific. But of course Louis is far more than that: a distance runner, he competed in the 1936 Berlin Olympics. As the author says:

It was a horse--the subject of my first book, Seabiscuit: An American Legend--who led me to Louie. As I researched the Depression-era racehorse, I kept coming across stories about Louie, a 1930s track star who endured an amazing odyssey in World War II. I knew only a little about him then, but I couldn’t shake him from my mind. After I finished Seabiscuit, I tracked Louie down, called him and asked about his life. For the next hour, he had me transfixed.

Growing up in California in the 1920s, Louie was a hellraiser, stealing everything edible that he could carry, staging elaborate pranks, getting in fistfights, and bedeviling the local police. But as a teenager, he emerged as one of the greatest runners America had ever seen, competing at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, where he put on a sensational performance, crossed paths with Hitler, and stole a German flag right off the Reich Chancellery. He was preparing for the 1940 Olympics, and closing in on the fabled four-minute mile, when World War II began. Louie joined the Army Air Corps, becoming a bombardier. Stationed on Oahu, he survived harrowing combat, including an epic air battle that ended when his plane crash-landed, some six hundred holes in its fuselage and half the crew seriously wounded.

On a May afternoon in 1943, Louie took off on a search mission for a lost plane. Somewhere over the Pacific, the engines on his bomber failed. The plane plummeted into the sea, leaving Louie and two other men stranded on a tiny raft. Drifting for weeks and thousands of miles, they endured starvation and desperate thirst, sharks that leapt aboard the raft, trying to drag them off, a machine-gun attack from a Japanese bomber, and a typhoon with waves some forty feet high. At last, they spotted an island. As they rowed toward it, unbeknownst to them, a Japanese military boat was lurking nearby. Louie’s journey had only just begun.

That first conversation with Louie was a pivot point in my life. Fascinated by his experiences, and the mystery of how a man could overcome so much, I began a seven-year journey through his story. I found it in diaries, letters and unpublished memoirs; in the memories of his family and friends, fellow Olympians, former American airmen and Japanese veterans; in forgotten papers in archives as far-flung as Oslo and Canberra. Along the way, there were staggering surprises, and Louie’s unlikely, inspiring story came alive for me. It is a tale of daring, defiance, persistence, ingenuity, and the ferocious will of a man who refused to be broken.

Hello World

Once more, I'm going try this blog business. 

Let this be an electronic "All Things Considered."