A little more about Salami--since this quote from the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (http://www.defenddemocracy.org/) came to my attention.

Referring to Bin Slobberin's latest recorded refuse, this article notes:

[T]he tape asserts that anyone who participates in the upcoming Iraqi or Palestinian elections is an "infidel," in effect demanding that Iraqis accept bin Laden as the supreme Islamic religious authority.

My reaction is, as we say in my country, "Who died and made you God?" IIRC, this gobbler never even studied theology. He thinks he can buy the caliphate with his family fortune--that, and his long beard, plus a turban. Aside from deluded disciples, that's all he's got. Whether he even believes his own rantings is questionable. Maybe he's just in it for the power trip. Personally I don't care.

It's like this bit I thought up in perhaps a different context: sort of Thomas Jefferson meets (the old Johnny Carson character) Art Fern: "Want to preach no god? We don't care! Want to preach 20 gods? We don't care! Want to sacrifice poultry and goats? We don't care! Want to kill people? That's when we care!"

Seems every time I start an entry, I feel like apologizing. Well--yes, I've ignored this blog for more than a month now. Tonight I'm ready for something different. For better or worse, I'm joining an organized blogospheric movement:

www.blogsagainsthillary.com/

There it is, folks, a current Noble Cause. It may not come as much of a surprise to Hohenblogger's readers--if it has any yet! By way of confession, I'm a member of the Republican National Committee, though I also have ties to the Libertarian Party. At any rate partisan activity is probably less fundamental to me than to a major portion of the politically active.

As for the Clintons--well, I'm not so violently opposed to them that I wouldn't associate with them myself if I thought it might advance my career! Not that I'd be up to misrepresenting myself, but if (in my estimation) it did no harm, I'd be ready to exploit their standing. More of this later, maybe. I'd prefer, of course, that the reviled Rodwoman not become President.

At any rate I'm aware that we have more dangerous enemies. Like many of you all, I'd be happy to personally put Salami been Slobberin and his Islamofascist pals, as well as their current Saddamite allies of convenience, out of our misery. Lacking the means, we mere Netizens can at least attack electronically, if only to mock these deluded dorks.

Almost seems I need to begin with an apology again. It's been over a month once more since I started my last entry--and some month it's been, eh?

Before going further, since I started this post on 20 Nov, I'd like to salute the Archduke formerly known as (Crown) Prince: Dr. Otto von Habsburg, grand old man of Europe, who now turns 92. I'm slowly catching up with him; about two years ago I reached half his age!

Meanwhile, so long to Ol' Stubblemug, grand old Moloch of the Middle East, at 75--it's been nice losin' ya! One hopes the practice of child sacrifice will now wane, though such optimism has yet to be justified.

I apologize for devoting so much of this log to criticism of dopey media output, but the subject matter's all too easy to come by--and unfortunately it doesn't have a lot of competition. Anyhow, I regettably mentioned this forensics-spinoff show, which nowadays boasts other siblings as well. This time my mistakenly paying attention to the living-room tube revealed a fine target for conservative types to blast away at: This stupid-sode's villain turns out to be a chaplain who's obsessed with the 1950s. There were formulaic details I also found offensive (maybe there always are), but this implied anti-moral--the '50s were evil, & religion is bad--is about as subtle as one of that era's monster films, and about as realistic.

Flash: CBS News stands by its error.

Well, folks, I'd hoped to be writing up an account of a trip to New York City and the Republican National Convention. Author and readership (if any!) can relax; no such piece will appear, because I wasn't invited and ultimately couldn't afford it anyway. (I was invited to serve as an alternate four years ago but passed on that opportunity.) Then, as if to rub it in, came this mailing, of which my journal reads:

A GOP outfit invited me to a private St. Paul reception & dinner with the First Lady. Dinner alone costs $10K. Wish I had that kind of money.

My financial picture has turned rather bleak of late--ironic, considering how my family has long known me as a frugal spender. Unfortunately I've never been so great on the earning side and am still working on Plan B. (Plan A is the common standby involving a lottery win! :-))

Here's a curiosity, to put it mildly.

A roundabout investigation of a newly-discovered and interesting website led me to the pages of an individual with much to say. (Sorry, folks, I'm posting no links and don't feel like including too many specifics.) What particularly got my attention was a reference to a certain unpopular church I regarded highly in my youth. One residual opinion of mine: Maybe these people were wrong for the right reasons--though I've naturally wondered how that might compare with being right for the wrong reasons! Anyhow, this other blogger described in some detail her experience with an outfit ("cult," to use her fashionable pejorative) she described as an offshoot of this church after its partial breakup in recent decades. In retrospect, she didn't have much positive to say about the guys running it, which is not entirely surprising.

What did surprise was the religious system of her own she apparently assembled to replace her earlier faith. I found it off-putting enough without the inclusion of what she presumably considered her inspired prophecies--and then there was her recognition of her own virgin birth. Folks, I think we can agree that this is kinda weird--over the top, in fact. No thanks.

Here's something I almost included in the previous post before running out of time. Just as well--it's not fit to be mentioned in the same space as Apollo 11 material.

I'd considered noting that the "cyberjerk" seemed to have vanished from the science newsgroup where he'd long annoyed readers, though I've seen indications elsewhere that he's still around. Unfortunately I found someone worse on an unrelated group, motivating me to set down a few relevant remarks here. It started when someone unknown (to me, anyway) presented a request for certain info. I wouldn't have responded, even though the item referred to a popular conspiracy theory, except that the author--who claimed to be a US resident--larded it with uncalled-for anti-US sentiment and cheap-left slander against our leadership and the UK's (plus a few mundane goofs). So I replied with relatively mild ridicule/contempt for the passages in question and left it at that. A French guy responded, and we discussed a germane subject over the next few days.

It may have been a week after the initial incident that the original clown popped up again, mad as hell; perhaps it took this person that long to write the overly-long rant. The fool more or less began by accusing us (?) of racism--as if anybody could tell anybody else by race in this context! The topic had never even come up. Well, maybe this demonstrates a truism about the Left: contradict these people, and, rather than argue, they prefer to call you names--"racist" being Name No. 1. Ironically this character came across as a racist him/herself, of the non-white variety. These views apparently extended to religion, which the offender evidently maintained a warped version of; threatening us supposed enemies with damnation was only the most twisted aspect. This party also promoted a website whose mere title hinted at a laughable exclusivism: This oracle alone had a monopoly on truth!

I felt like dissecting and refuting the lengthy rant point by point--but, maybe because it was so blasted long, my newsreader kept blowing up! Well, I checked out the site and found a message announcing it had been taken down due to offensive content. (Now that's convincing.) Finally I contented myself with adding "Forget it" to the thread title, noting "Serious crank..." and posting the web message. I never even read most of the creep's article--and don't regret it. This lesson reinforces a stereotype of the Net crank, which I see may be widespread: the hostile, paranoid, obsessed individual who believes he alone is right. Our distinguished cyberjerk shared these traits, but he was more refined.

At least they're not all lefties.

I guess it behooves me to comment on Apollo 11's 35th anniversary. I've noted people's sharing memories online, of course, so here's mine: Outlasting Walter Cronkite while viewing coverage of the landing and, later, first moonwalk on a black-&-white set in the same corner of the same house where I now live, and where a TV still resides--only now it's high-definition with surround-sound--and it belongs to someone else. That was before CBS became the Evil Eye Network and W.C. revealed himself as a superfluous lefty. (Maybe I watched too long, since I recall getting a headache.)

I was twelve, and naturally much enthused about space exploration. Within two months I would be trying to cope with the scary environment of junior high school. FWIW, this year most of the building making up the scene of that crime was reduced to rubble; aside from the P-E facilities no one wanted it. My brother the TV master says that place looks better every time he sees the remains.

In retrospect one of the most amazing facts about Apollo 11 is its position on the historical timeline. Only 30 years separate Hitler's storming into Poland from Armstrong's boot on the Sea of Tranquillity--less time than has passed since the last men left the Moon. Yikes.

I don't even want to start on the subject of what we haven't accomplished in space since then.

Well, Blogger betrayed me last night.

I worked a good while on what was to be my next post. Then, somewhere along the line, I lost cursor function--and it got worse after that. The text execrably disappeared. I'd thought our newer, more improved Blogger was better than that! Rather than attempt to recreate my lost text, I'll try summarizing it before completing this entry.

I'd recently run across some online info about Mr. Sureman's book, The Science of Good and Evil. My suspicions about it were correct, and in order to recognize his apparent eagerness to subsume ethics under the philosophy of materialism, I decided to rename him Cocksure.

Mr. Cocksure's major points reportedly are that morality can be seen as derived from evolutionary biology, that it doesn't require religion, and that we can subscribe to a jury-rigged system of ethics such as he supplies. I haven't seen it and so won't evaluate his code, but I still don't view science as a source of moral authority. This isn't to deny that the discipline maintains its own ethics: Basically, good science requires honesty. The amoral universe the scientific establishment describes, however, cannot replace the Transcendent, however we may conceive of the idea.

It's like this: Years ago I came up with this--satirical--commandment:

Thou shalt not believe in any purpose, for purpose is an abomination unto EVOLUTION thy God. Thou shalt acknowledge chance, and chance alone.

If this "principle" applies to one's outlook on the world, then I'm not interested in the "morals" that might result.

Here's a sort of counterexample I'd originally intended to give. An old acquaintance, professor emeritus of biology here, has on occasion publicly defended evolutionary biology itself--but he's also gone on record proclaiming his belief that his studies have given him insight into the mind of God.

As a postscript, this subject matter tends to provoke the question: What kind of person might I be if I shared the materialist view? On the other hand, it may be too difficult to separate me from my tenets.

I've heard that this month marks the hundredth anniversary of Times Square. In local history, the Lake Traverse Travesty (no, there's no Travesty Plaza here) reminds us that the 20th was the centennial of our town's first leading citizen's passing. The man's name was Shaynowishkung, meaning "he jingles/rattles." On being widowed, evidently around the time of the Civil War, he left his then-home and moved to this river-lake junction in the wilderness. In 1888 he was here to welcome the first European types to settle. (A British trading post allegedly stood across the lake a century or more earlier, but there's no obvious trace of it.) People dubbed him "Chief" out of respect, adding the lake's Ojibwe name signifying waters lying crosswise. The French called it Lac Traverse.

Since then, of course, hordes of Big Knives have done quite a number on the region's resources. Once the good timber was cut, farming proved marginal, so our land never became quite civilized. Still, I wouldn't blame any residents who might long for the great hunting/fishing/gathering of Shaynowishkung's day.

One further historical perspective: The day the "Chief" died, a certain Austrian kid named Adolf, son of a Schicklgruber who'd taken the surname Hiedler, turned 15.

I can now report having accomplished an online exchange with none other than the "cyberjerk" I've complained of before. Another of his harangues penetrated my filters. This time he made some valid points, plus a few errors I thought deserved pointing out. Didn't expect him to respond. Followed up with a perhaps charitable reply and am left to wonder whether he regarded this as satisfactory (not that that's important). He still has an attitude problem.

Having noted my obscure appearance on the local paper's front page, I've neglected to mention that I've cropped up visually on the Web too. In this case the photo's poor quality hides my ID, as does the rudimentary caption. Hey, I'm not complaining.

Then there's the latest available baloney from the Evil Eye network. I'd like to comment on A. Looney, the clown who pops up toward the end of the Giant Stopwatch (as in Stop Watching?) show. He used to be funny, at least sometimes, though he could also be annoying. (Beavis and Butthead took him on once: "Why do they call it taking a dump? I mean, you're not taking anything...") Now he's blown it with his wanton hostility toward some peoples' faith--because of a contoversial film he hasn't even seen. Well, I'd say it's time to put him out to pasture; he's become a liability to his employer. I haven't seen the film either and don't intend to evaluate it. But I've seen enough of the insulting Mr. Looney to decide he's not worth viewing. (Update: For a nice response to the guy, go to dumbcelebs.com and scroll about halfway down the page. [OK, to the 2/23/04 entry.])

The P-Cock network, on its often-good SNL, similarly insulted the unfashionably-conservative cinematographer and his take on Christianity with a cartoon crudely mocking both and essentially depicting him as a Jew-baiter. (Real animosity directed against Jews tends to flourish on the Left, where the mainstream media won't cover it.)

Back to See BS: The other day its prime propaganda program found fault with the US President for making fun of himself, displaying photos of himself in the Oval Office, apparently searching, while voicing lines about seeking the notorious missing WMD. The Evil Eye agitprop chief pompously questioned the President's taste in jokes, ostensibly because of the danger our military faces--then produced someone from a military family who, predictably, objected to W's eforts at humor. Bad taste?! Look to your own glass house, you moral morons! And don't tell us your coverage isn't biased.

From Big Ideas we descend a bit, back to the old Lake Traverse Travesty, this community's journal of record. In January Yours Truly actually appeared on the front page of a Sunday edition, though in the picture's background, partly obscured and not IDd in the accompanying caption--just as well, I thought. What most stood out was my forehead; I hadn't realized it was so prominent, though maybe this shouldn't have surprised.

A few weeks later the Sunday Travesty featured a guest editorial by an area Catholic priest. Having previously in these pages gone after a local Lutheran lefty, I'm just as inclined to find fault with the words of Another Leading Denomination's preacher when they seem to go politically astray. I still have the time for this, so here goes:

Father M's point of departure is the ongoing flap over the Pledge of Allegiance. Rather than argue over the "under God" clause, he admits to trouble with the "liberty and justice for all" part. OK, I'll confess right now I was never a big fan of the Pledge, which first appeared in a late-19th-century publication. The reference to the Deity amounts to a mid-20th century afterthought, while the liberty/justice wording suggests the achievement of some perfect society, which I don't think anyone would insist already exists, though it might well describe our ideals.

Unfortunately the padre elaborates with a list of reasons why he thinks "we do not, as a nation, believe in 'liberty and justice for all'." (He apparently counts failure to attain them as evidence of our not desiring these objects.) First is the claim that one in five US children is born into poverty. Offhand I don't know the official statistics, but I can say that "poverty" in this country may compare favorably with the way most people live in much of the world! And it's largely preventable anyway; the primary cause here is single motherhood. Moreover, government reckoning, as I recall, doesn't include transfer payments as income.

Next comes this hackneyed complaint: "The gap between the rich and the poor is still increasing." No figures to back it up--and they'd probably be suspect anyway, as this assertion commonly seems made to mislead. Once again, these terms are relative!

"Over 43 million people in the United States cannot afford health insurance." I'm not positive about the details myself, but this type of argument has been explained as misleading. "These people do not receive equal health care." Equal to what? And how do liberty and justice translate into health insurance? Liberty and equality are to some extent mutually exclusive--not an original thought--and we can't have it both ways.

Father M goes on to lament the inadequacy of efforts to help "millions of homeless in our land." Notwithstanding the probability that their numbers are routinely exaggerated, there is a matter of liberty here: Too much for the mentally ill and drug-ridden, whom certain courts, in their superior wisdom, have mandated not be confined.

"Racism," he says, "is deeply rooted and widespread throughout our nation." So when was this not the case? A man of the cloth should hardly marvel at the human capacity for nastiness. Racism, Padre, is deeply rooted and widespread throughout the world!

Subsequently he whines about tax and program cutting, demonstrating his ignorance of political economics and prompting me to overwrite "BULL$#|+!" when I first read it. Then it's the old saw about women not earning equal pay for equal work. How does he know (particularly in his profession)?

"Workers," he charges, "are exploited by corporations and private businesses through minimum wages." What the purgatory? I thought required minimum wages were supposed to help workers--though some economists think they actually harm segments, notably youth. His possibly-confused wording called forth this penciled note: "Mere leftist SCREED & DRIVEL!"--which is what it looks like.

I'll give him half a point when he objects to executing underage and mentally deficient criminals, To my limited knowledge, this practice isn't widespread. One can easily name places, however, where the young and stupid are encouraged to blow themselves up while killing others (often children) who merely belong to a hated ethnicity--or ordered to fight their elders' deadly battles more conventionally.

Father M follows up with a series of lame, rather vague accusations about police brutality, pollution, "corrupt" elections and a foreign policy dominated by (the horror!) self-interest--which has (gasp!) failed to solve the world's problems--plus "Unbridled market economy" (where?!) which "exploits the Third and Fourth World." I scrawled across these paragraphs "BULL$#|+ LEFTISM"; the poor padre is clearly out of his depth.

But he's not done showing his ignorance. Before making his single valid point, that abortion snuffs out millions, he accuses some of us of maintaining luxurious lifestyles, depriving many of necessities. Folks, it just doesn't work that way. I labeled the page here "IDIOT BLATHER." He then wraps up his bogus indictment with the point that we allegedly waste so much in resources and lives on wars not approved by "most churches and theologians"--as if the Founders had set up such a constitutional check.

Lamenting the phony picture of our country he's painted, the padre refers to Matt. 25:31-45. I disagree with his understanding, but that's a religious subject beyond the scope of my criticism. In the end, he flounders in some kind of wishful collectivist thinking, suggesting that we could somehow achieve some kind of ideal social justice if we just weren't such naughty hypocrites. Concepts such as individual responsibility for the consequences of one's actions (instead of blaming society--or, as he seems to prefer, all of us) complicate matters. Ultimately he proposes adding the word "equality" to the Pledge, claiming it appeared in the original version but was deleted for racist reasons. I'm not sure how much of a canard this is, but--as noted above--an excess of equality is not something most of us would accept. It's also been said that, in contrast to the United States, if you want equality at the expense of liberty, there's Europe.

One more thing about the Pledge: While I don't really like it myself, the fact that a single dyspeptic atheist, without standing to sue, can dishonestly bring it before the Supreme Court (where, according to the saw about self-representation, he has a fool for a client), strikes me as pathetic. Move to Europe, dummy!

Well, I managed to post--and re-edit--the last entry without including a few items I afterward realized I'd meant to stick in.

Here's one: It's been said that religious unbelief requires as much faith as its opposite. To this I'd like to add that, while religious beliefs are often regarded as "comforting" by those who regard all such as obsolete, a *lack* of beliefs can also be seen as comforting in its own way.

On a related subject, I wish to recognize what I call the "Feuerbach test" for atheism. It seems 19th-century theologian Ludwig Feuerbach (or "Frazzlebeard the Great," as I wrote next to his encyclopedia portrait years ago) said something to the effect that he who believes in moral right and wrong is no true atheist.

Time for a little cultural criticism. (Has this guy nothing better to do than criticize? Actually I do, but I also have opinions, and the Net, as we know, is a handy place to nail up one's theses! [Who really *reads* them is another question.])

This goes deeper than usual. Anyhow, it happened recently that an MSNBC science site featured, among other temporary links, one leading to a page of dialog with a dude famed in "skeptical" circles; I think he runs a publication I'd like to call the Cynical Inquisitor. I believe it was this outfit that, not long ago, sponsored a series of spots on one of the relatively interesting cable channels where a presumed spokesman would appear to give their take on a subject, an introductory voice-over proclaiming, "Turning up when you least expect him...." which made me want to respond, Monty Python-style: "NO one expects the Cynical Inquisition!" Well, our honcho, whom I'll call Mr. Sureman, has a book out titled Why People Believe Weird Things. That begs the question, doesn't it? "Weird" is evidently defined as unorthodox, or perhaps I should say heterodox--as in "ideas unapproved by the dominant intellectual elite." It's hardly an objective term. There's no standard scientific definition for weirdness, although science has certainly discovered some seemingly strange phenomena, and physicists themselves may sometimes refer to "quantum weirdness." To paraphrase one of the Haldanes (I forget which one) quoted by Arthur Clarke: The universe is not only weirder than we imagine, it is weirder than we can imagine.

Well, someone put a query to Mr. Sureman about religion, and if it was intended to provoke, one might say that he rose to the bait. He treated the subject as if religion ought by nature to fall under the category of "weird." A major point was why so many scientists persist in holding religious beliefs (rather than adhering to the Church of Scientism, I guess). Mr. Sureman speculated that this could be because scientists are good at rationalizing. That he apparently felt the need to explain away this phenomenon speaks to an underlying--and unspoken--philosophical bias. My purpose is not to fault him for this so much as to proclaim that the much-vaunted conflict between science and religion can be boiled down to philosophical matters which are not subject to obvious demonstration. "Faith and reason" arguments tend to focus on areas of necessary uncertainty; it would be premature to declare that one's own side has won!

Had Mr. Sureman merely cited current findings suggesting that people are naturally "wired" to be religiously inclined, I wouldn't complain. Note that this assertion about human nature is itself ambiguous of interpretation; what you make of it depends on your understanding of origins--*including your underlying philosophical assumptions*.

A second observation about such a blithe dismissal of religion is that it has consequences. Now, you may not follow any particular faith and yet believe that the universe is possessed of a certain moral order. You may, of course, hold varying degrees of agnosticism on this subject. If, on the other hand, you're convinced we live in a meaningless world and are only here by chance, well, you're welcome to your opinions--which conceivably fit with your own experience. (These particular opinions don't square with *my* experience, but that's another story.) You might then, if so inclined, persist in trying to live by some moral code, or figure out a "rational" system of ethics, as some apparently have attempted. My point is this: Don't expect anyone else to take it too seriously. In other words--well, I'll let another speak to this.

I conveniently just ran across an item about a young cleric, containing a quote nicely summarizing my argument. Early in his college career a philosophy class introduced him to Nietzsche, whose famous dictum challenged his faith. "I understood," says our then-student, "that if God is dead, the consequences are tremendous--there are no rules, no binding laws, no such things as good and evil. The 'winner' is the one who is stronger, faster, cleverer at using things and other people to reach his goals. In the end it is simply me against you; but, conversely, if if God is not dead, if God is indeed alive and well, there are also tremendous consequences." While his perspective is that of traditional theism, I obviously find it applicable to other concepts of the Supreme Being. What I'm getting at, basically, is that Voltaire wasn't kidding when he said (if he did in fact say it) that "If there were no God, it would be necessary to invent one."

This is the conclusion few seem willing to admit, though occasionally you'll find a materialist who does. One such is the prominent Oxford biologist whom I'll dub Professor Meme for the sociological concept he reportedly originated...

But I digress. This "cultural criticism" has taken so long that I'll spare my hypothetical reader further comment on the subject for now. Except for one thing: The other evening Mr. Sureman surprisingly popped up ("NO one expects--oh, bugger!") on a show where I might not have thought to find him. It was almost over then, but I did learn that he'd authored a book called The Science of Good and Evil. Funny, to my knowledge science has never discovered any such phenomena. I once ran across a book titled something like Biological Origins of the Ten Commandments, but those relating to conduct toward God were missing.

Happy 2004! Another quadrennium, another big-time(!) election year.

I regret not having much more than media criticism to offer these days, but we'll go with what we've got. Later this year I hope to post an account of the Republican National Convention in New York City (how's that for exciting action?), but that's another season.

The TV program in question is another investigative-type drama of recent vintage. Now, I should emphasize that I don't deliberately follow this stuff, but where I live it's often hard to avoid it. Anyhow, this episode's back story presents a certain improbability. I know improbabilities happen--I experience them all the time, in fact--but in this case it suggests unimaginative writing. The climactic piece of unimaginative writing, however, produced a cornily-timed scene of confused characters pointing pistols, the ultimate revelation being that the main bad guy is a wealthy businessman (what a novel concept!) who also happens to have a hidden history of sexual offense.

Here's an idea: The villain should be a greedy film/TV producer!

Well, I've actually found a different subject, having just confirmed a suspicion that a certain perhaps nationally-known conservative media guy (whose name I won't mention at this point) is in fact a former student editor here at our State U. He made a name for himself bashing lefties back in the 80s. Occasionally the Little White North does produce someone famous.