I tried to pay attention to what Kauffman was saying. I really did. The problem is that when you read closely into what he's saying, he isn't saying much of anything at all.

Living systems obey mathematical laws? For those of us working in bioinformatics, the response to this is a resounding "duh." No one seriously disputes the idea, which Kauffman is advancing as something new and revolutionary, that complex molecular interactions lead to emergent behavior. But his leap from that to something he apparently defines as "God" -- which is, I have to note, very different from the way true believers define the word -- is in the realm of philosophy, and it is an act of shameful deception to use his credentials to present it as science.

... is going to be "too liberal" for Kyl and a lot of other Republicans, guaranteed. To that crowd, anyone who believes that anyone has any rights at all is a dangerous left-wing radical.

If not, he's not your commander in chief. He's your President-elect, and in a little while will be your President, but he is not and will not be your CIC. Soldiers have commanders, up to and including the CIC. Civilians do not.

I know, this article is a puff piece, and it's probably silly of me to try to make a serious point here. But the common usage of "commander in chief" by civilians -- that casual acceptance of military authority, not only ovr the armed forces, but over the entire country -- chills me to the bone. It's a legacy of the militarism of the Bush years, and that is one of many things we desperately need to get rid of in the new administration.

Glad you liked what I said.

FWIW, I don't think this article (or series of articles) is crap, necessarily. One of the things I've always liked about Salon is its broad definition of what constitutes "news" -- what goes on in the world around us consists of a lot more than politics and business, after all. Many of the more "human interest" pieces, including this one, capture my attention and I don't mind paying for them with my subscription dollars. And, you know, as a guy I'm always interested to know what women find sexy. ;)

I just felt that this particular point had to be made. When right-wing chickenhawks talk about the "commander in chief" (which I bet they'll be doing a lot less after January ...) it's pretty much what I expect; their entire worldview is built on a militarist fantasy. When my fellow liberals do it, then as a veteran and as an American, I feel the need to speak up.

Conservatives alwsys celebrate income inequality until they think a liberal is getting a better deal than they are. First it's "pull yourself up by your bootstraps, if you don't have enough it's your own damn fault" and then it's "hey, that guy* got a bigger slice of pie than I did, WAAAH!" Cognitive dissonance, much?

*Particularly when the person you're talking about has significantly higher melanin content than you do, in which case "guy" is not the word you use.

You know what else is a sin and an abomination?

Eating shellfish.

And yet somehow, the Church in very Catholic south Louisiana doesn't seem to have any trouble reaching out the the shrimp-eating community.

Also an abomination: wearing cloth of blended fabric.

Are you now going to explain to us how the poly-cotton community is just a bunch of hopeless sinners? Cast out the warp in thine own weft before thou takest out the lint in thy brother's!

But pro-gay-marriage writers like to talk about how the Old Testament forbids stuff like shellfish and mixed textiles. Well, yes they do -- and those laws are taken very seriously by Orthodox Jews. But even amongst the most Orthodox, these are minor violations of the Law, and not considered with the seriousness of a violation of one of the Ten Commandments.

You're doing a bit of bait-and-switch here. It may well be that Orthodox Jews take violations of the prohibitions against homosexuality more seriously than they do violations of the dietary and clothing laws; not being Orthodox, I don't claim to know. (My grandfather, the Orthodox rabbi, could probably tell me if I really wanted to ask him; I don't.) But if this is the case, then they do so as the result of Talmudic writing on the subject, not because of anything found in Torah. Reference to homosexuality is found nowhere in the Ten Commandments; the prohibitions against homosexuality are found in the same list of minor commandments in Leviticus, and given exactly the same weight, as the prohibitions against eating unclean animals and wearing blended cloth.

And for Christians, who do not generally accept Talmud as a guide to interpretation of Torah, it makes even less sense to be virulently anti-homosexual but ignore the rest of Leviticus pretty much at whim.

The question is, how do you define "Catholic?" If you mean someone who obeys every single one of the Catholic Church's laws, then indeed, you cannot be both gay and Catholic. But if you use that restrictive a definition, then I suspect the vast majority of people who call themselves Catholics don't really qualify. The same can be said of almost every religion and denomination.