Been busy, so here’s a few links of interest:

• The denial of human nature: Christ Against the Multiculturalists. How “higher” education destroys our humanity through false equality:
   

  Here is how the game is played: They will first try to convince you that you are a racist, a sexist, and an enemy of social justice. Then they will argue that the victims of racism, sexism, and cultural elitism have a privileged view of these issues. It is as if the victim of the crime were to be given the first, last, and only word in a trial, with no cross-examination and no other witnesses called. Your job as a student in the multicultural classroom is to grant unquestioned authority to those who come from underprivileged or marginalized backgrounds. You have to do this because, you will learn, because Western culture has exploited every other culture, and your experiences are so shaped by Western culture that you cannot question those who criticize you. And thus you will become a good cultural leftist (which is the shape liberalism takes in the academy), or, if you are not convinced by these arguments, you will learn how to fake it for the sake of getting a good grade.

• If you’re gonna moon someone, be sure to have a Trojan nearby: Did Earth once have multiple moons?
• Does Jeremiah Wright = the black church?: Examining the United Church of Christ
• The Anchoress on the loneliness of a lost generation: Progressively lonely and longing
• Gagdad Bob on the irrationality of scientism: If Darwinism is True, it Can’t Be

Take care, God bless.

 

• Shipwreck photography: The Beauty and the Mystery of the Wrecked Ships
• The lost art of grammer: What’s a Participle?
• Man is inherently good … or not: we are all capable of evil
• The medical Sopranos: The Health Insurance Mafia
• Fingerpainting in human blood: On the Banality of Abortion as Art
• Sorry, your doctor can’t see you now: As Doctors Get a Life, Strains Show
• Destroying new cars: I linked to Wired‘s story on the men who salvaged the ship recently. Here’s what they did with the cars: A Crushing Issue: How to Destroy Brand-New Cars
• So that’s what they carry in their legal briefs: What is the “sex toy controversy” at the UW Law School?. Imagine the blaring NYT headlines: “Dean Dickey disses dildos — damsels dismayed.” Best line is in the comments: “Now, now, Dean Dickey is no one to play around with. He’s a real stiff. If you play around with him he might erupt. And nobody wants to see that.” Another points to, err, inflatable sheep. Jeez. or perhaps better, ewe.

That’s all for now — God bless.

• Those hateful, racist fundamentalists: Vanderleun goes looking for racism and hate in a broad swath of fundamentalist churches — and finds it in a most surprising place: Graven Images: Racist Fundamentalist Churches of America
• Of course, you know, this means war: the intractable, insoluble problem of web standards and OS upgrades: no winners, no matter how they’re handled — Martian Headsets
• Hand these suggestions to your doctor at your next visit: How to Improve Your Rapport Development — after he’s checked your prostate, if you’re wise.
• Not just for programmers: 10 Ways to Improve Your Programming Productivity
• Shattner before paunch and Priceline: CBS puts full videos of the early seasons of Star Trek online — as well as another favorite: Twilight Zone.
• One safe cat: How Apple’s new Leopard OS is more secure: How Leopard Will Improve Your Security
• Unweb motherhood: … And Baby Makes Two
• Fragile families research: Fragile Families
• The Anchoress on race: Obama, Psychic duality & the churches
  

  It has been exceedingly difficult to discuss race in this nation for about 30 years, because anytime anyone – white or black – has tried to make a serious point, the word “racist!” is immediately flung out; lasting and damaging labels are instantly attached to people, and so everyone just shuts down. People guard their words and swallow provocative debating points – even if their aim is to generate a real, open and honest forum of ideas – because no one wants to be called a racist. This happened to Bill Clinton and to Bill Cosby; it happened to Rush Limbaugh and Geraldine Ferraro, and driving today I heard the word spat out at Sean Hannity. It happened to me, actually, last week, when I was called a “racist” on another blog for writing this; I was also deemed “hypersensitive” about being called a racist.

• Bombed by grace: One common argument against the existence of God is the existence of evil: how can an all-powerful, all-good God permit evil? But the knife cuts both ways: without a good and merciful God, how can goodness arise out of unspeakable evil? Grace’s Great Raid
• Well, there’s always at least one person who will listen to you …: Talking to yourself

That’s all for now, God bless.

“Charlie bit me!”

 

• To Whom It May Concern: How to Write a Business Letter That Gets Results
• The second Jerusalem temple: Cool video of a recreation of the site.
• The environmentalists clever plan to make earth human-free: Famine watch
• … and if that doesn’t work, population control will: The Demographic Winter and the Barren Left
• But at least the sexual revolution is going well: At Least 1 in 4 Teenage Girls Has an STD
• Kunta Kinte, I found you!: Women who support legalizing prostitution are like moderate Muslims — everybody talks about ’em, but nobody seems to be able to identify one. But, Lo! I’ve found one! Megan McArdle, it turns out, won’t turn tricks herself (“It’s not my bag, baby!”) … but thinks it’s fine if others do: What’s sauce for the goose.

This last demonstrates well the thin gruel which so often constitutes libertarian thinking on this topic — Megan’s one bright cookie, and very level-headed on many subjects (see this discussion of gay marriage, although she flinches in the end and stays neutral). She points out, on legalizing prostitution, the problem of the widespread social stigma against it:

… can we all concede that at least part of the reason that women do not want to be prostitutes is that there is a severe social stigma attached to women who are promiscuous, and particularly to women who rent their promiscuity to men — a stigma far, far greater than that which attaches to their clients? … If I’d grown up in a culture that thought of “prostitute” as a job like “CPA” (another job I’d hate), I probably still wouldn’t want to be one. But the fact that I am repulsed by the idea of turning tricks, having grown up in a society that thinks there’s something deeply wrong with turning tricks, is not actually proof that there is something deeply wrong with turning tricks. … Your gut is not a good replacement for reasoning from first principles.

So I need a better reason than “it’s icky” or “there’s something wrong with a woman who would do that” to justify either a moral or a cultural ban on the practice. … I’d take some pretty strong convincing that prostitution is so inherently damaging to society that we should declare war on it. I start with the principles that sex has equal moral significance when performed by a man or a woman; that it isn’t anyone’s business how many or what kind of partners you choose; and that government intrusion on private, voluntary exchange should be sharply limited to a) practices which produce demonstrable harm to third parties, and b) you can reasonably expect to control. This quickly leads me to “don’t you have something better to do than poke your nose into someone else’s hotel room?”

I’ve covered this topic at greater length here and here, and a full response would require more time than I have at the moment. But one can make a very robust case that taking the most intimate relationship between man and woman, the means by which we both bond parents together as one and engender our very future, and turn it into a crass, exploitive, often abusive business transaction, is well worthy of its “severe social stigma” (yes, even more so than being a CPA) and illegal status.

And there’s lot’s of times when you want the government in your bedroom or hotel room — say, when someone’s there to rape or attack you, or bags of money are being exchanged to bribe politicians, to name just a few. The integrity of our private lives is an extremely valuable part of freedom, but it is not absolute. Undermining our foundational dependence as a society on the integrity of marriage and the raising of children — although perhaps more subtle than others — is one reason to intrude, in the very specific instance of prostitution, into this realm.

‘Nuf said — take care, and God bless.

• Saving sinking ships: I’ve heard of flipping houses, but flipping ships? A massive, 55,000 ton super-freighter packed with cars from Japan nearly capsizes off Alaska. Who ya’ gonna call? These guys: High Tech Cowboys of the Deep Seas. This is an amazing story, superb narrative, photos and illustrations. Don’t miss it.
• Cain-ing the neo-atheists: R.R. Reno proves himself more than, err, Able to the task: The Offense of Piety
• The most important man you never heard of: Henry Okah
• Honor thy father and thy mother — or not:
   

  One pill makes you larger
  And one pill makes you small
  And the ones that mother gives you
  Don’t do anything at all

  — Jefferson Airplane, “White Rabbit”

  Francis Schaeffer was one of the great intellectual minds in Christianity in the 20th century. His son Frank, however, has left the fold, and written a tell-all expose (Crazy for God) dissing his parents as crazy fanatics, while playing to the secular audience so receptive and fawning to fallen-away Christians. Frank has clearly taken the first pill, and made himself much, much smaller in the process: Crazy for God

• David Warren nails another fine essay on postmodern culture: Science v. wisdom

That’s all for now. Take care, God bless.

Here’s some good links for your consideration:

• Cloaking technology: Their Deepest, Darkest Discovery
• He writes real good: Another short but elegant essay at Sippican Cootage: Infinite Calculus. Read it just for the shear pleasure of beautiful writing.
• Your health insurance company has your best interest at heart — no, really!:

  California Insurers Canceling Policies

  The City Attorney … is also opening a criminal investigation into Health Net’s practice of ‘paying employee bonuses based in part on canceling policies of people who have submitted substantial medical claims.’

  Of course, they’re now scrambling to address the PR disaster: Health Insurers Address Issue Of Nixed Policies

• Here we go again: Screening for cancer is an appealing idea, but fraught with difficulties, as I explained here.

  Researchers at Yale School of Medicine have developed a blood test with enough sensitivity and specificity to detect early stage ovarian cancer with 99 percent accuracy.

  There’s a lot unsaid here: how many people without cancer had a positive test? How much does the test cost? Is every cancer so diagnosed significant? What’s the cost of diagnostic procedures and surgeries done for a false positive test (i.e., positive test but no cancer present). Etc. Etc.

• Negotiations, diplomacy, and economics will surely end all wars: Richard John Neuhaus:
  

  Carnegie was a great believer in what he viewed as the sacred bonds of commerce, joined to the force of religion, in advancing human progress. The purpose of the Church Peace Union was the abolition of war.

  On February 11, 1914, Carnegie gave the organization $2 million, a great deal of money at the time, and addressed a letter to the trustees, a copy of which I kept posted in my office. In that letter, Carnegie said: “After the arbitration of international disputes is established and war abolished, as it certainly will be some day, and that sooner than expected, probably by the Teutonic nations, Germany, Britain, and the United States first deciding to act in unison, other powers joining later, the Trustees will divert the revenues of this fund to relieve the deserving poor and afflicted in their distress.”

  Needless to say, the deserving poor and afflicted are still waiting for their share of the endowment. The first big international project of the Church Peace Union was a conference aimed at the abolition of war to be held on the shores of Lake Constance in southern Germany on August 1, 1914. That week, Mr. Fukuyama’s “more durable and productive” basis of rational interests gave way to the war to end wars. The conference was cancelled. Or, as the organizers said, postponed to a more propitious time. For that, too, the world is still waiting.

• David Warren: His essays on the conflict between postmodern, secular society and religion are always excellent. This one’s no exception: Science v. wisdom

That’s all for now, God bless, back soon.