Caribou Barbie, Flintstones Barbie

K-Lo at NRO
relays
a bit from the Katie Couric/Sarah Palin interview:

Couric: And when it comes to establishing your world view, I was curious, what newspapers and magazines did you regularly read before you were tapped for this to stay informed and to understand the world?

Palin: I've read most of them, again with a great appreciation for the press, for the media.

Couric: What, specifically?

Palin: Um, all of them, any of them that have been in front of me all these years.

Couric: Can you name a few?

Palin: I have a vast variety of sources where we get our news, too. Alaska isn't a foreign country, where it's kind of suggested, "wow, how could you keep in touch with what the rest of Washington, D.C., may be thinking when you live up there in Alaska?" Believe me, Alaska is like a microcosm of America.

I can understand a politician trying to dodge a question like “Did you
have sex with that person?”, “What happened to the missing funds?”,
“What’s your plan for getting us out of this mess?” and the like.

But “Which newspapers were you reading two months ago?”?! FFSMS,
woman, even if you’re a terminally oblivious clothhead who pays no
attention to anything in the news that isn’t about you, you can still
make up something plausible: “Well, I get the Wasilla Journal and
Juneau Times delivered at home [if true; subscription lists can be
checked], but I also subscribe to the NY Times, WaPo, and dozen other
news sources in my RSS reader. And of course I’m always adding Google
News alerts.” See? Simple, plausible, and hard to disprove.

Dinosaurs and humans coexisting
But speaking of newspapers, the LA Times
passes on
the story of a Wasilla resident who asked Palin about her religious
beliefs:

Palin told him that “dinosaurs and humans walked the
Earth at the same time,” Munger said. When he asked her about
prehistoric fossils and tracks dating back millions of years, Palin
said “she had seen pictures of human footprints inside the
tracks,”

It sounds like she’s talking about the
Paluxy River tracks,
about which young-earth creationist organization Answers In Genesis
wrote:

Some prominent creationist promoters of these tracks
have long since withdrawn their support. Some of the allegedly human
tracks may be artifacts of erosion of dinosaur tracks obscuring the
claw marks. There is a need for properly documented research on the
tracks before we would use them to argue the coexistence of humans and
dinosaurs.

Caribou Flintstones Barbie: more ignorant than AiG. That’s impressive.

Wednesday Playlist (Financial Meltdown Edition)
  1. God Spoke Through A Burning Bush, Klutæ
  2. Sleeper in Metropolis, Anne Clark
  3. King Money, ABC
  4. Take the Money and Run, Steve Miller Band
  5. Money for Nothing, Dire Straits
  6. Money Changes Everything, The Smiths
  7. Alarm Call, Anne Clark
  8. Wots… Uh the Deal, Pink Floyd
  9. Start of the Breakdown, Tears for Fears
  10. Don’t Bring Me Down, Electric Light Orchestra
  11. Don’t Fall, The Chameleons
  12. I Fall Down, U2
  13. Falling Free, Tom Smith
  14. Free Falling Divisions, Wire
  15. Crashing, Gravity Kills
  16. Burn, Deep Purple
  17. Crash and Burn, Ministry
  18. Where’s the Money?, Holger Czukay, Jah Wobble, Jaki Liebezeit
  19. Self Destruct, Anne Clark
  20. Shot Down in Flames, AC/DC
  21. Drag it Down, New Model Army
  22. Mr. Self Destruct, Nine Inch Nails
  23. House Burning Down, Jimi Hendrix
  24. Babylon’s Burning, The Ruts
  25. Dreams Burn Down, Ride
  26. Burn Your Money, Mojo Nixon & Skid Roper
  27. The Deal (No Deal), Chess: Soundtrack
  28. You Never Give Me Your Money, The Beatles
  29. I Do Not Want This, Nine Inch Nails
  30. Don’t Argue, Cabaret Voltaire
  31. Black Market Dealers, Funker Vogt
  32. When the World Is Running Down, You Make the Best of What’s Still Around, The Police
A Nation Party of Whiners

Unfuckingbelievable.
Literally. If I hadn’t seen the video myself, I would’ve thought this
was the left-wing spin machine blowing things out of proportion.

Yeah, I know C&L is on the left, but ignore the title and
commentary and just watch the video.

Summary: House GOP leaders said that the bailout bill failed because
of a “partisan speech” by Nancy Pelosi. Quoth John Boehner:

I do believe that we could have gotten there today had it
not been for this partisan speech that the speaker gave on the floor
of the House. … The speaker had to give a partisan voice that
poisoned our conference

Roy Blunt:

We worked together well to try to come up with a
compromise that could pass today, that the president could sign, that
would do what needs to be done on the economy, but every time you’d
turn on television or read an article about the press reports of what
the other side was saying, it was all about how either Republicans
were unpatriotic, were there too late, or whatever.

Mommy, they’re saying bad things about me in the papers! Make them
stop!

Eric Cantor:

Right here is the reason, I believe, why this vote
failed. This is speaker Pelosi’s speech

What do you think they served at their cheese-and-whine party? I’m
guessing Waahmontillado.

The sooner these crybabies join the Federalist and Whig parties in the
dustbin of American politics, the happier I’ll be. They can cry all
the way to the bank if they like, but they’d better hurry before the
bank collapses.

Political Photoshop O’ the Day

McCain Defeats Truman

Creative Commons License

(Explanation for anyone who isn’t a political wonk with no life and doesn’t get it. And for those who don’t remember history.)

Reminder: Pulpit Initiative Today

For those who weren’t paying attention, today’s the day of the
Alliance Defense Fund’s
Pulpit Freedom Sunday,
in which pastors are protesting the fact that their churches’
tax-exempt status comes with strings attached, namely rules against
endorsing political candidates, same as any other non-profit
organization.

From what I’ve seen, the news coverage is mostly unsympathetic. The
Post’s On Faith column has a
guest post
in which the author tries to defend this act of civil disobedience,
and gets smacked down in the comments.

So it looks as though most people recognize that the participating
churches are trying to have their cake and eat it too, and can cry me
a tax-exempt river.

It’s Amazing What Passes for Persecution These Days

According to
this story
in the Post, the Virginia police superintendent issued a directive
saying that police chaplains have to conduct non-denominational
services, i.e., not invoke Jesus’ name. This is in response to a
federal court ruling about prayers before city council meetings.

Del. Charles W. Carrico Sr. (R-Grayson), a former state trooper, said he is organizing an online petition to get the State Police to reverse its decision. Carrico said he will submit a bill to overturn the action when the General Assembly returns in January.

“Col. Flaherty needs to abandon this attack on Christianity,” he said.

So as I read this, troopers can practice whichever religion they like
in private. They can pray on the job, if it doesn’t affect their job
performance. Troopers who are also chaplains can also perform
religious services on the taxpayer’s dime. But when a line is drawn,
saying that they have to include non-Christian theists while on the
job, suddenly it’s an attack on Christianity.

Perhaps they’d like to call the EMTs to bring a waahmbulance.

Regulation

By newly-enacted federal law, everyone on the blagotubes has to write
a post about the ongoing financial meltdown before civilization (and
the Internet) collapses, so here’s mine. Of course, since I wouldn’t
know a 401(k) from a 386zx, take my uninformed ramblings with a big
rock of salt.

I’ve compared
free market capitalism to natural selection
before. They’re both powerful forces that work surprisingly well and
often come up with unexpected solutions to problems. I can
metaphorically (and in many neighborhoods, literally) stand on a city
street waving a $20 bill and shout “I’m bored/thirsty/lost!” and
someone will come along and fix that problem for me, whether by
offering me a Coke, a taxi ride, or acts that would make Larry Flynt
blush.

It works because it matches up people who want something (stuff) with
people who want something else (money), and rewarding those who do it
best. But what happens when the interests of the people who want stuff
and those of the people who want money aren’t aligned?

Read More

Wanted: Calendar Feature

PDAs have solved or simplified a lot of the problems I used to have
before I started carrying around a backup brain. But there’s one type
of reminder that they still can’t deal with: “do X under when Y
happens”. E.g., “Return Paul’s book next time I see him” or “Look up
Janice if I’m ever in London.”

Read More

Front-Loading: I Do Not Think It Means What You Think

One of the ID creationists’ favorite words is “front-loading”. From
context, I gather that it means that the output of an algorithm is
inherent in the algorithm itself. In other words, if you write a
detailed program that calculates the square root of 16, then that’s
just a long-winded way of having it print “4”. You could have saved
yourself a lot of time by just having it print “4” in the first place.

Front-loading comes up in two arguments: 1) evolutionary algorithms do
not demonstrate that evolution works, because the solution is hidden
in the code, and 2) the fact that complex organs exist is evidence of
the unfolding of God’s an unspecified intelligent
designer’s plan; the appearance of limbs and organs in the fossil
record is part of the unfolding of God’s the
designer’s plan and was front-loaded at creation some
unspecified point in the distant past.

Read More

Skin Conductance and Political Affiliation

Ed Yong has an
article
up at
Not Exactly Rocket Science
about a researcher who found a correlation between involuntary startle
responses and support for various political/social programs:

When we’re suddenly confronted with a shocking image, our skin becomes moist and we blink strongly. These actions are automatic and unintentional; they happen without conscious thought. So it may come as a surprise that they can also predict some of our most seemingly considered beliefs – our political attitudes.

According to a new American study, the stronger these responses, the more likely people are to support the Iraq War, Biblical truth, the Patriot Act and greater defence budgets. Conversely, people who show weaker “startle reflexes” are more likely to support foreign aid, immigration, gay marriage and abortion rights.

He calls the connection surprising, but I’m not so sure.

Read More