The U.S. House Intelligence Committee has issued this report on the strategic threat from Iran. It doesn't contain much beyond what you've probably already seen in the news -- in fact, it contains many accusations that are similar to those the Bush Administration made about Iraq before the invasion, though without the…
Maybe I’m the last to find out, but I just today stumbled upon an incredibly . . . well . . . provocative . . . wiki site: uncyclopedia.org. How I got there I can’t actually recall. Perhaps I stepped into a space-time warp. The article I first encountered was an official-looking article about that well-known scientific theory, “malevolent design.” I hadn’t before encountered this theory, so I eagerly read the article:
Malevolent Design (or M.D.) is one of the leading theories in micro-miracology, the division of Creation Science which deals with the origin and development of microorganisms, including bacteria, viruses and fungal parasites. Beginning with the fundamental insight of Creation Science that the complexity of life is such that it must be the result of divine intervention, and employing the micro-miracological observation that pathogenic organisms change rapidly in order to defeat or circumvent the human immune system, the theory of Malevolent Design posits that the adaptation of human pathogens is the result of malevolent actions taken by an intelligent designer. Put simply, the theory explains that humans continue to become sick because God hates us.
Quite interesting, I thought. I’ll have to tell mention this to grumpypilgrim, who thinks he is well read. But why stop there? I moved on to another topic that theory grumpy often does discuss, Intelligent Design:
…Intelligent Design, or as the French would say, L’Intelligent Design, is the absolutely true and totally scientific theory that the Universe is so gee-whizzy fantastic and
Letting the media just do its job just isn't enough for the Bush administration. It's hard enough to find honest aggressive media when only FIVE corporations now control the majority of all forms of the media in this country (this includes ALL the media: TV, movies, music, newspapers, magazines). So…
What does it meant to “lead”? According to dictionary.com, to “lead” means “to go before or with to show the way; conduct or escort: to lead a group on a cross-country hike.”
Based on this criterion, the websites of prominent Democrats display a stark lack of leadership on Iraq. A review of the websites of these Democrat “leaders” shows that they have no plan for dealing with the current occupation of Iraq.
I’ll cut to the chase. It seems as though we are headed for a repeat performance of the November 2004 election, where the plan of Democrats was to attack Bush as incompetent. That strategy will work even less in 2006 than 2004, because Bush is a lame duck, already thinking about packing his cowboy boots to retire to Crawford. Who cares about your concerns about a guy who is already on the way out?
The Democrats have certainly had lots of time to develop a plan on Iraq. After all, the war has been going as long as WWII, as indicated by this article from the Chicago Tribune:
The United States has been fighting in Iraq since March 19, 2003, when President Bush launched Operation Iraqi Freedom with air strikes against Baghdad. Monday marks the 1,245th day of the Iraqi conflict. By that reckoning, Americans troops will have fought in Iraq for as long as they fought Germany in World War II.
But back to the failure of prominent Democrats to develop any plan. A “plan”…
A week or two ago, Erich provided a link to a page entitled, “Why Won’t God Heal Amputees?”. The site has a number of excellent videos, among them a 10-minute short that equates prayer with any other form of superstition. If not equal in terms of dogmatic obedience, prayer and superstition at least share the same degree of efficacy: absolutely none whatsoever. So why do superstitions form, and in spite of their pointlessness, stick?
For some background, let’s rewind to the 1940’s. In this decade B.F. Skinner, the psychologist who essentially founded behaviorism, conducted the most groundbreaking studies on behavioral conditioning this side of Pavlov’s salivating dogs. Even if you can’t recite his findings from rote-memory like a Psych 101 student, you know some of the terminology his studies created- positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement, and the concept of “behavioral conditioning” itself.
Not as well known, Skinner’s research on pigeons also suggested one way superstitious behavior comes into practice. Skinner placed some of his infamous pigeons in a cage attached to a mechanism that delivered food at a totally random interval. The birds soon began to associate their own behavior with the food delivery, and kept repeating whatever they had done at the time food entered the cage, as though this would initiate more food.
The conditioning led to a variety of bizarre bird “superstitions”. Skinner reported birds that “turned counter-clockwise about the cage”; “thrust [their heads] into one of the upper corners of the cage”; and …