stcynic

3 years ago two Congressmen, Bob Ney of Ohio and Walter Jones of North Carolina, pushed through a rule changing the name of french fries and french toast in the Congressional cafeteria to "freedom fries" and "freedom toast" (liberty cabbage, anyone?). Now, the names have suddenly changed back, and…

Harrah's has announced the official figures for the World Series of Poker main event: 8773 entries for a total prize pool of $82.5 million. First prize will be a record $12 million, with the top 12 players all guaranteed at least $1 million. That should make it the richest competition of any kind…

Fellow scienceblogger Chad Orzel has a post about ESPN, which is itself a reaction to this post from another blog. I can't say I disagree with some of the reasons from the original post: You took away David Aldridge and foisted Screaming A on me. From a thoughtful, insightful, coherent reporter to…

This is an unbelievable story. Just when you start to think that maybe there is sanity in the world, you see a story like this. For J.R. and Robin knight, owning a bed and breakfast is everything they've always wanted. "We came here in search of our dreams, my wife always wanted a bed and breakfast…

Prediction #1 has come true. Here's Paul Nelson on why yesterday's loss in Kansas doesn't matter: Once upon a time, there were a whole bunch of people who thought that what really mattered in thinking hard about design and evolution were state science standards. And school board elections. Along…

Jay from Stop the ACLU posted one of his "blogbursts" about HR 2679, which is going to be the subject of hearings in the Senate (designated SB 3696), yesterday and his post linked to one of mine in an attempt to refute it. That post was picked up by many other blogs, all of whom appear to have…

Kansas City, KS, has dropped charges they filed against street preacher Michael Wheeler for preaching on a public sidewalk in May. He was represented by the Alliance Defense Fund, and rightly so. They will undoubtedly be applauded by the anti-ACLU crowd, as I think they should be, for defending…

I was contacted a couple days ago by the folks who run the acluprocon.org webpage. It's an interesting page, devoted to presenting both sides of the debate over various issues and the ACLU position on those issues. They came across my writings on the subject and added my biography and some links to…

Ancient Brit left a comment on a thread below, and the answer became so long and involved - and important, in my view - that I decided to move it up here to its own post. He wrote: I find it interesting that while Europe has exercised moderate control over hate groups, America has not, and is fast…

Now that the primaries are over in Kansas and ID has been rejected even in its most sanitized "critical analysis" form, we can really only look forward to two inevitabilities: 1. The DI will put out a statement declaring it no big deal, even though they thought it was a big enough deal to pump an…

The primary elections for the Kansas State Board of Education took place today and the results are slowly trickling in. It's far too early to predict the finish this early, but at this point all but one of the pro-science candidates are either winning or in a dead heat in the early returns. Here…

ABC, in a stunningly obvious move, has pulled the plug on a forthcoming Mel Gibson-directed miniseries on the holocaust. No word on whether they will also be cancelling David Duke's series about slavery or Osama Bin Laden's documentary on the evils of religious extremism.

Barbara Forrest has a new article at CSICOP about the Dover trial and Dembski's "vise strategy". This is a fun read as we watch Dembski's predictions collapse upon him: Grousing that "only the evolution critics are being interrogated," Dembski was "waiting for the day when the hearings are not…

I've written before about the 9th circuit case Harper v Poway Unified School District, which I think the court got wrong. The case involved a student who wore a t-shirt to school on the day after the pro-gay Day of Silence event that said "Be Ashamed, Our School Embraced What God Has Condemned" and…

Dan Savage had a compelling op-ed piece in the Sunday New York Times about the recent rulings against gay marriage in New York and Washington. Some of the better passages: What the New York and Washington opinions share -- besides a willful disregard for equal protection clauses in both state…

I agree completely with Eugene Volokh that the furor over Mitt Romney's use of the term "tar baby" in a comment about the Big Dig the other day is a pointless tempest in a teapot. He sums up the reasons perfectly: "Tar baby" is one of many words that has a standard and common meaning that is not…

The Scotsman is reporting that the Anti-Defamation League is calling for criminal charges to be filed against Mel Gibson for his anti-semitic remarks: Calling for a criminal investigation into the Oscar-winning actor and director's remarks, Abraham Foxman, the national director of the US Jewish…

From the Card Player live updates from yesterday at the World Series of Poker main event. One guy, William Thorsson, has been running incredibly hot and is the chip leader. How hot? This hot: William Thorsson raises to $700 from the cut off and the button re-raises to $1,200. The small blind makes…

As a perfect follow up to my earlier post about the IDers dishonest claim that the Kansas science standards have nothing to do with getting ID into public schools, take a look at this post at Dembski's place. Dembski's research assistant, Joel Borofsky, spills the beans completely in two comments…

One of the standard talking points from ID advocates these days is that us evolution advocates are just plum crazy to even suggest that policies requiring schools to teach "critical analysis of evolution" are a way to get intelligent design into the classrooms. DI shill Casey Luskin even coined a…

For sheer volume of nonsense, it's hard to top Judith Reisman, the religious right's favorite anti-sex crusader. In this Worldnutdaily column, she's responding to this article by Glenn Reynolds at MSNBC.com. It's filled with all the usual distortions and illogic one has come to expect from Reisman…

I'm sure everyone knows by now that Mel Gibson was arrested for drunk driving on Friday. When he was arrested, he was apparently quite belligerant and ranted at the officers arresting him, threatening them and hurling anti-semitic slurs. Even more important, the LA Times is reporting that the LA…

A man walks up to a woman in a bar and asks her to dance. She says no. He says, "What are you, a lesbian?" She replies, "What are you, the alternative?" So goes the old joke. You may know by now that the other day, Ann Coulter said that Bill Clinton was harboring homosexual tendencies, as evidenced…

The New York Times has an article about the situation in Indian River, Delaware where a Jewish family has filed suit over a long list of instances of Christian intimidation of their children. Some of the examples are absolutely stunning. Mrs. Dobrich, who is Orthodox, said that when she was a girl…

Daniel Negreanu has a video blog on his website, and if you go to the entry for 7/26/06 you'll hear his take on the lawsuit against the World Poker Tour from 7 top players. It contains some interesting information that may pave the way for a settlement. Lyle Berman, who owns the World Poker Tour,…

Joseph Farah has a column at the Worldnutdaily about the drought in Lubbock and the resolution from the city council there to ask residents to pray for rain. It's standard religious right rhetoric - the media is full of pagans who laugh at Christian faith, but they all have their own religions like…

This one is a high school equivalent of the various college cases going on involving whether a school can refuse recognition of a religious group because it restricts its membership to members of that same religion. It involves a public high school in Kent County, Washington that refuses to…

Here is an absolutely textbook example of that simplistic binary thinking that comes up so often in political discourse. It's from David Bass, a "20 year old homeschool graduate" who writes for several of those ubiquitous conservative commentary sites, and it's published, predictably, in the…

Yesterday was the first first day of the main event of the World Series of Poker. I say first first day because there are 4 first days. This year may have as many as 8800 players, with 2000 players plus 200 alternates going on each of the 4 first days (the 200 alternates replace the first 200…

Jon Rowe and I have spent much of the last two years pointing out the numerous false quotations and false claims about the religious views of the founding fathers that are tossed about by both sides in debate over church/state separation. While false quotes are not as common on the separationist…