Meta and Meta

Hilzoy on Haynes' Briefs

Here. You can't make this shit up. (Well, you could, but why would you?)

All Men Are Created...Homogeneous?

David Frum, from Comeback Conservatism, "[W]hat is inequality but another form of 'diversity'? And what is 'equality' but another word for homogeneity?"

Indeed, what are words but noises that mean whatever hacks want them to?

Kaus Overwears Edwards "Undernews"

Mickey Kaus writes in his Slate column about a scandal fomented by the National Enquirer, wonders why such a rumor goes unreported in the MSM ("undernews," he calls it), but contends he actually would prefer that it remain unreported.

The scandal involves allegations by a "close confidante" of one Rielle Hunter that Hunter is pregnant with John Edwards' baby. Edwards denies the allegations. Hunter denies the allegations. (She even names someone else as the father.) But "others" -- namely, the lone "close confidante" -- "are skeptical."

So, yeah, it's a real head-scratcher that reputable media outlets would ignore a story with those bona fides.

Anyway, why does Kaus want a story about Edwards' allegedly cheating on his terminally cancer-stricken wife to remain undernews? Because, he says, he wants Edwards to lose. (Kaus is just so counterintuitive, isn't he?) Naturally, then, Kaus is doing his part to preserve the story's much-deserved obscurity, namely, by not conspicuously vouching for its legitimacy in his column for Slate. Oh, wait...

Pride and Extreme Prejudice

And the moral retardation continues:

In a November 5 National Review Online column -- "Waterboarding Has Its Benefits" -- contributing editor Deroy Murdock wrote that "[w]aterboarding is something of which every American should be proud...."

Yes -- he said "proud." Proud, because

[t]hough [it's] clearly uncomfortable, waterboarding loosens lips without causing permanent physical injuries (and unlikely even temporary ones)."

At last: Wife-beaters who prefer phone books over brass knuckles can now go about their business with pride.

To Reason Like Stalin

Declares Theodore Dalrymple: "[T]he attempt [to find a way of life based entirely on reason] leads at best to Gradgrind and at worst to Stalin."

And there I was all along thinking Stalin's approach actually sort of ran counter to reason. I guess I stand corrected.

(Via Arts & Letters Daily.)

Vickers Really Satisfies

The menu of writings penned by critics of Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion offers a diet unusually high in saturated fatuity. But this fawning review of John Cornwell's Darwin's Angel (a book that attempts to rebut Dawkins' The God Delusion), by one Salley Vickers,  might just take the cake.

Since Vickers' dish contains far too much pudding to digest in a single sitting, I'll simply quote her final sentence:

Those who think that not knowing is safer and more attractive than its opposite should treat themselves to this elegant little book.

Yes, I suppose that's so.

(Via Arts & Letters Daily.)

Oops. Did I Say That Out Loud?

Shorter Mitt Romney's Foreign Policy: I agree with everything he said. But he should've kept it quiet.

Credit where credit is due: "I mean, [Obama's] gone from Jane Fonda to Dr. Strangelove in one week." Misleading and deeply dishonest? Yes. But funny.

UPDATE: This wound up being shorter Clinton, Dodd and Biden as well.

Dumb as a Rock

This article in the Independent writes of Peter Hitchens that he "question[s] whether [his brother] Christopher truly believe[s] his own assertion that there isn't a God," and quotes Peter's reasoning as follows:

There is always, in the atheistical struggle with God, the fight against temptation. If it didn't matter to you, why write a book about how wrong it is? The first person you have to convince with any book you write, is yourself. If you didn't need convincing... why go to all those lengths?

Shorter, logically formalized Peter Hitchens, then:

For any proposition p, and for any agent A: If A argues that p, then A believes that not-p.

Such a universal disproof will undoubtedly prove useful. No it won't. Yes it will. No it won't.

Wingnutty Goodness

Christian wingnuts: Evolution false unless life formed in Jif.

Other People

"Aggrieved" Christians like Tobias Jones will just never get over the fact that however "militant" a secularist Richard Dawkins is, Dawkins would never be so indecent as to put up with (much less worship and defend) a god that would consign Jones to eternal torment in Hell. (Is this personal window unto Christianity's inherent moral depravity not the source of almost all contemporary Christian ressentiment?)

But you really should read Jones' bizarre article--both as a spectacle in itself, and as a prerequisite to understanding some of the wry commentary that intermittently follows it.