If you aren't worried, you must not be paying attention. Of course, you could be a neo-liberal, and believe everyone except a heterosexual white Christian male has the right to speak freely. In that case, you'll probably think it's great if someone decides to "de-platform" this website under the premise that it's "hate speech" to state the obvious, which is to say that people born with an "Y" chromosome (formerly known as biological males) have significant physical advantages when engaged in athletic competitions against people without "X" chromosomes, a.k.a biological females. Or, if I really wanted to throw caution to the wind, I might even have the audacity to say that fetus is nothing more than a fancy word substituted for the phrase unborn baby to assuage the guilty consciences of millions who want the legal right to kill them. I know, I know...the word "fetus" is a technical, scientific term, and I'm using the vernacular of the unwashed, uneducated (and uber-religious) masses to describe the exact same thing. However, the point of this little diatribe isn't to rail specifically against transgender athletes or legal abortions, but to demand the freedom to criticize them without having to live in fear of retribution. The First Amendment guarantee of free speech does not require that a private business should have to provide services to customers they do not wish to serve. Because I supported the right of Colorado businessman Jack Phillips and his Masterpiece Cakeshop to refuse to bake a cake for a gay wedding on religious grounds, I must also, albeit … [Read more...]
Every day reaches a new low
Social media becomes more problematic for me to use by the day. Liberals can say whatever the hell they want with absolutely no fear of censorship. Conservatives can't tell the truth without Facebook or Twitter slapping some half-assed "fact checking" claim that is usually a pathetic joke of biased interpretation passed off as truth by a lazy press corps. Politics cannot be avoided, but only half the conversation is being allowed. I've always used Facebook and liked the interface until I began to realize how intrusive their data mining has become. For example, somehow Mark Zuckerberg found out that I took a business trip to Ireland in 1998. Facebook wasn't launched until six years later, so I could not have posted photos of my trip or published my travel itinerary, not that I would be stupid enough to advertise to burglars when I'm not around to protect my home. I am 99.9999+ percent certain that I have never mentioned that little tidbit of information on Facebook. So, the question is, how did Facebook find out about my trip and mention it as one of the fun facts about me that others can learn without my intentional consent. Ah, but there's the rub, isn't it? To what have I consented, when I clicked "Agree" to their book-length terms of service agreement? I understood that the social media application was going to use information learned about me from my use of Facebook and the internet itself to help advertisers market products to me while I'm using their product. Again, information about my travel to Ireland can't even be on my own computer, because my laptop … [Read more...]
Crazy talk
I'm a writer, so it should be no surprise that my preferred means of communication is to put it in writing, especially for any really important information. You can't edit a conversation. It's easy to forget a crucial point to be made when the words are allowed to flow freely from our mouths. When we speak, we might say too much, or not say enough. We might choose our words hastily and only create more confusion instead of clarifying a point. We might make the same mistakes in written form, but we have fewer excuses because the act of writing (and especially proofreading) gives us the best opportunity to organize our thoughts into concise and clear rhetoric that is coherent and persuasive. By nature I'm a very verbal (and often verbose) person, and have little problems giving a speech or presenting arguments in formal debate when the situation calls for it, but I will painstakingly prepare and organize my thoughts even to the point of scripting the jokes, for one simple reason--my mouth often gets me into trouble. Even though I'm a Southerner and speak with a drawl, the words can come out of my mouth considerably faster than my filter's capacity for screening them. The problem has never been getting me to speak, but my knowing when it's time for me to shut up. Like Clint Eastwood famously said in a scripted line for a movie, "A man's got to know his limitations." This brings me to attorney Lin Wood, who recently has been shown encouraging Georgia Republican voters to boycott the runoff elections unless David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler call for a special … [Read more...]
Enemy of the People
Everybody's read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, right? The mainstream media today reminds me of the marketing department of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation, which Douglas Adams described as "a bunch of mindless jerks who'll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes." Okay, so maybe the "against the wall" bit was a little harsh, but "mindless jerks" is right on the money. The mainstream media have forgotten what their jobs are: to report the news. Instead, the media have been acting as the marketing department for the Democratic Party. And the phrase "mindless jerk" does conjure up a mental image of CNN's Jim Acosta. Without any corroborating evidence for the infamous dossier produced by Christopher Steele, the media pretended for most of four years that there might be some substance to the idiotic "Russian collusion" conspiracy nonsense that was used to undermine the Trump administration. Yet when evidence of compromising behavior by Hunter Biden was revealed shortly before the election, the media refused to investigate the story. Ideally, the media should be non-partisan. Yet they behave like ravenous wolves in pursuit of conservative politicians, and obsequious boot-lickers to liberals. No reporter complained when Joe Biden mysteriously disappeared for days at a time from the campaign trail; the toughest question he was asked in the days leading up to the election was not about Hunter's laptop or the emails suggesting he'd received millions of dollars in Chinese money, but what flavor ice cream he'd purchased, or what sort of cat he … [Read more...]
Abiogenesis: The Origin of Life Problem
The two greatest mysteries in regard to our existence are the origin of the universe and the origin of life. The origin of the universe posed the problem of how something as large and complex as our universe could have been created out of nothing, and the origin of life the problem of how inanimate matter became a living cell. Scientists understand how living cells create new cells (technically known as biogenesis), but the question of how all the building blocks necessary for the creation of a new cell came to exist when they were needed has been (and remains) a virtually unsolvable problem. The scientific term for any hypotheses about the chemical origin of life is abiogenesis. In his book The Way of the Cell Molecular biologist Franklin Harold wrote: "Prehistorians, with little more than scraps, shards,.and analogy, to go by, do not reconstruct the past so much as imagine a plausible version of it." Harold, Franklin. The Way of the Cell. Page 244 Also known as synthetic chemists, one problem is these "prehistorians" must guess about the environment on an prebiotic Earth. And even if they guessed correctly, assembled all the necessary ingredients, and created an environment that allowed for the creation of a living cell de novo, it wouldn't be exactly the same as if nature did it without any intervention, would it? How would that be any different that the scientist playing the role of a creator god, just not "the" creator God? We cannot create an artificial universe in a lab as a proof of concept. We cannot create life in a lab. The closest science has … [Read more...]
