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General interest

September 12, 1683: Jan Sobieski Day . . .

For, on that day, Poland — personally led by its king — rode to the rescue of our Civilisation at the gates of Vienna. (Details — and movie, here; also see on Complacency Day, here.) Be it solemnly moved that from this day forward, we shall remember: Complacency Day, Sept 10; 9/11-01, Sept 11; Sobieski Day, Sept 12. Seconds? I close with a paraphrase from Santayana and others: those who refuse to learn the lessons of history are doomed by that folly to repeat its worst chapters. END PS: Summary video on the charge: [youtube aL0GieO5Rj8] This gives broader background: [youtube pc-RWtovrqg]

“Complacency Day” — Sept 10, 2001 — plus 15 years

I briefly discuss here. Notice the 100-year global subjugation map I first found online on an IslamIST site on the following day: And also, this sketch of history from the 630’s on (i.e. the last IslamIST 100-year expansion): Sky News coverage on that fateful following day: [youtube fswg0uEbzC0] Note, too, this outline of global geostrategic challenges c 2016: (Relevance to our time, fifteen years later, should not be under-estimated. We need to ask ourselves some sobering questions and look at questions on straight and sound thinking and response to a media ever more blatantly driven by spin in service to various agendas.) END PS: Nor, should we overlook the relevance of the Benghazi attacks on Sept 11, 2012 [cf article Read More ›

Prominent Atheists Fundamentally Misunderstand First-Cause Arguments

Recently, a debate was held in London between theist philosopher Rabbi Daniel Rowe and atheist philosopher A.C. Grayling. The subject under dispute, unsurprisingly, was God’s existence. It’s a very interesting debate to watch. I’d never heard of Rowe before, but I was familiar with Grayling, who is sometimes referred to as the Fifth Horseman of New Atheism. Generally speaking, the “New Atheists” haven’t shown any natural genius for philosophy. Grayling, though being a professional philosopher, does not prove to be the exception here. Instead, he shows that even when they have the benefit of philosophical training, it does them very little good when they engage in debates over God’s existence. I think it would be pretty uncontroversial to say that Read More ›

BREXIT! — initial concerns and impacts

. . . including, regarding major trends of our civilisation vis a vis the IslamISTS, also as a civilisation, we face “seven mountains of influence” issues. Drudge headline: The initial fall of the Pound off the cliff on the announcement from Sunderland that was the first clear indicator of which way the referendum would go: Sky News live: [youtube y60wDzZt8yg] Key initial impacts: UK Prime Minister, David Cameron has resigned, staying on as a three-month caretaker Former Mayor of London Boris Johnson (leader of the Brexit campaign) is tipped a likely successor A 2 – 4 year estimated Lisbon Article 50 leave process is likely to begin under Cameron’s successor. The Governor of the Bank of England has promised liquidity Read More ›

Science: The Victim of Ideology ‘Uber Alles’

Here’s a link to an article from American Thinker that details how, in Ohio, the Univ. of Cincinnati did a three year study on the effects of oil-well “fracking,” the results of which demonstrate no contamination of ground water had occurred because of “fracking.” And then the study was quashed. Read More ›

Krauss vs Meyer: Debate opponents disagree not only on Origins but on the intellectual capacity of their audience

Quite expectedly, the Krauss vs Meyer debate got off to a poor start. Krauss has a few go-to moves during a debate and most of them were on full display in his opening remarks (one can hardly call them arguments). He opened with an ill-informed and misrepresentative attack on the Discovery Institute and on the person, character and honesty of Stephen Meyer himself. During his diatribe, Krauss informed the audience that Meyer and his ideas are not worth debating and that Meyer himself is something of a dishonest marketing man for Intelligent Design. And what exactly is Krauss’ justification for this claim? Well, you see, several years ago, at a school board hearing in Ohio, Krauss, having failed to inform Read More ›

New at MercatorNet

O’Leary for News’ other blog Defamation law must catch up with internet age. Any blogger who linked to a website held to contain defamatory material—whether the blogger knew the fact or not—could be at risk. Android apps to control your teen’s brain? This’ll never beat the bicycle Ban the cell phone monster from normal conversation Everywhere we go, people tippy tap devices, paying little attention to the people who surround them. What really underlies five-star reviews? Often a possibly illegal publicity campaign Do poll results matter in the Internet age? Probably not, and it is worth knowing why not. How many kids have smartphones? And what difference does it make?

From Darwinism to Global Warming and Back

I was reading an exchange of emails that took place between noted physcist (and skeptical warmer) Freeman Dyson and his interlocutor, Steve Conner, of the Independent of London. To my eye, Dyson is spot on in his critical thinking. But what most caught my eye was his analysis between the ‘experts’ and the general public that seems to have occurred. I think it serves as a good understanding of where Darwinism/neo-Darwinism now stands in academia. When I was in high-school in England in the 1930s, we learned that continents had been drifting according to the evidence collected by Wegener. It was a great mystery to understand how this happened, but not much doubt that it happened. So it came as Read More ›

Quick Survey – Deletion of Single Email Messages

I know this may be a bit unusual for the typical fare, but since we have a number of engineers and other tech-savvy readers, I thought I would solicit your help with a quick tech-related survey. Recently I have been in discussion with a Google engineer about gmail. The discussion began when he asked me which email address (among several that I have) I preferred to use. I replied that I would use gmail more if the mobile Android app permitted deletion of single messages, rather than entire conversations. He seemed surprised that anyone would want to delete a single message and asked me for some “use cases” that would call for deletion of a single message, rather than an Read More ›

A Merry Christ-mas to all, even as Plato’s ghost has a laugh . . .

Here’s the old, old story in animated form: [youtube LPe5T_-I5kE] (Never mind one or two odd points, quite good enough for family sharing — and note, dubbed from a version prepared in India. This, is a more traditional short acted movie. And if you want stuff on the “backative” side (as in, it’s not just a fairy tale), try here. This, here, will help on worldviews issues.) And of course, we have a hot thread that was running on is zero even and is now on mathematical abstractions. It seems, Plato’s cave parable is also appropriate: [youtube d2afuTvUzBQ] . . . especially given these remarks in Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount: Matt 6:19 “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures Read More ›

How Keith’s “Bomb” Turned Into A Suicide Mission

Keith brought in an argument he claimed to be a “bomb” for ID. It turned out to be a failed suicide mission where the only person that got blown up was Keith. (Please note: I am assuming that life patterns exists in an ONH, as Keith claims, for the sake of this argument only.  Also, there are many other, different take-downs of Keith’s “bomb” argument already on the table.  Indulge me while I present another here.) In my prior OP, I pointed out that Keith had made no case that nature was limited to producing only ONH’s when it comes to biological diversity, while his whole argument depended on it.  He has yet to make that case, and has not Read More ›

Counting Dogs

Recently, Mark Frank and I had a brief dialogue in the OP,“Didn’t everyone already know this about dogs?” I’ve decided to clean it up a bit and re-post it because after my last question, I received no responses. At the outset, I would like to say that I place no blame about lack of responses on Mark Frank or anyone else in the last OP (as my post was rather quickly buried.) Having said that, in this OP I would like somebody to address the question. After one go around where I’d suggested that “success” should be counted as an increase in genetic information, Mark Frank corrected me, writing: In biology success is breeding in the available environment. As a Read More ›

Let us remember Sept 11, 2001

Today is the thirteenth anniversary of the Sept 11, 2001 attacks. Let us remember, with the aid of some live video from CNN: [youtube rsIWPPw-JzU] Let us pause for a moment of silent reflection, and let us remember. END

On, the fallacy of worshiping the “short” and the “simple” . . . or, why good long copy outsells short copy

As UD regulars will know, it’s silly season here in Montserrat. As a result, I am facing the long vs short copy debate and the issue of the demand for excessive simplicity. Which, opens us up to be naive and easily misled — including when we indulge the fallacy of selective hyperskepticism. (As in: if you dismiss what is credible, it’s because you have already swallowed what isn’t.) I have therefore put up a few thoughts, and think they are relevant to the ID debate also. (As in, why is it so many are so willing to swallow short and clever but highly misleading barbed slogans such as: “Creationists in cheap tuxedos”?) In a nutshell: SHORT COPY GAINS ATTENTION BUT, Read More ›