Letters to the Editor
jprfrog
Published Letters: 45 Editor's Choice: 1
-
The Oddest Couple
[Read the article: Intelligent designer]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The unnatural alliance between the free-marketeers and the Biblators exposes the irony that while Darwinism is the great bogey of the latter, the dog-eat-dog, winner-take-all, devil-take-the-hindmost ideology of the former was once known, rightly in my opinion, as Social Darwinism.
I know it is a forlorn hope, but maybe someday one or the other partner in this odd couple will wake up and see the other for its natural enemy. Then perhaps we can get some common sense, and common decency, back into public life.
-
Evolution in doggerel
[Read the article: Intelligent designer]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Darwinian Evolution For Idiots (written duting the first Tyco trial)
A molecule: given, it self-replicates,
Add random mutation,that opens the gates
To wonders; selection, you see, with the time
Of a few billion years breeds a lion from slime.
Yet, pardon my doubt if that really is true
If Dennis Kozlowski's the best it can do.
-
The right-wing megaphone
[Read the article: Libby takes the fall]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"from Rush Limbaugh down" --- isn't that wrong-side up? On second thought, maybe Ann Coulter is lower, but not by much.
-
I'd love to get Bill Frist in a poker game
[Read the article: The other CIA leak case]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The minute I heard about this (and before Trent Lott opened his mouth) I thought that this is not an investigation that is going to make Republicans look good. For starters, the Frist-Hastert response tends to confirm the truth of the story, and the questions raised thereby would come to a boil smack in the middle of an election year. From a tactical perspective, it looks like an incredibly stupid play. (From the point of view of a citizen almost beyond the point of further outrage, I'm for it 110%.)
How did Frist ever get through medical school?
-
Opposite of coat-tails
[Read the article: What's the opposite of coattails?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]How about "cement boots"?
-
baby or blastula?
[Read the article: The baby and the petri dish]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Wilkow recognizes that there is no good answer to the dilemma. That is the point: when a sound argument leads to an insoluble contradiction, the proper conclusion is that ther is a false premise lurking. Then you must, if you care about logical consistency, question the premise, in this case :a blastula is a human child.
The famous Biblical prescription "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth" is used to justify capital punishnment ...i. e. a life for a life. The passage immediately following has an interesting implication. If a man in a fight accidentally causes a woman to miscarry, the penalty is a fine. Now the logic goes (and it is very simple logic) "If one takes a human life, one must give his life (a general rule) If the miscarried fetus was a life, the offender would have to die (a particular instance of the rule). But the prescribed penalty is a fine (the consequent of the implication is denied). Therefore, a fetus is not a human life (conclusion --- the classical argument form is called "modus tollens" and was known to Aristotle.)
But who cares about logic when God speaks directly to you? My question for these folks is: how do you know it's God speaking?
-
A Modest Proposal
[Read the article: Repeal the Second Amendment]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The NRA on strict construction really is insistent;
So here is my proposal, it is thoroughly consistent
With how things were in olden days : each soul may have a gun
So long as it’s the type they used in 1791.
-
A rare moment
[Read the article: The stone is cast]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]when I find myself, a lifelong atheist, really hoping there is an afterlife.
-
Bush is a dry drunk
[Read the article: Notes on "A Tragic Legacy"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I am an atheist who has been sober in AA for 18+ years. There are more of us (recovering alcoholics who do not need a conventional "higher power" to become and remain sober) than one might think. But whether one believes in "God", the Buddha, the light-bulb, or Maxwell's Equations is not the point. After having traversed the 12 steps honestly (which is not easy, not done in a few minutes) you hope that you have changed your fundamental way of perceiving the world. And the core of the change comes in accepting that all of us make mistakes, including ourselves. The 10th step says (in part) "and when we were wrong promptly admitted it".
Could anything be farther from the mode of operation of George W. Bush?
There have been persistent rumors that Bush has been drinking again. Who knows, and who cares? You don't have to actually "go out", as we say, to be intoxicated. Pride, arrogance, inflexibility, and resentment are excellent substitutes for ethanol in producing destructive behavior, and you don't escape these traits in yourself just by putting down the glass. Indeed, without that "searching moral inventory" prescribed by the 4th step, those traits are likely to lead to relapse with significant probability. And Jesus won't save you all by Himself...you have to do the work too.
Someone who stops drinking but doesn't essentially alter the way he engages reality is called a "dry drunk". And those of us who have been around for a while can recognize such, especially when it is so obvious...partly because every one of us has many times acted the same way ourselves. Fortunately, most of us when in that state are not likely to create serious harm. Unfortunately, Mr. Bush can, has, and will.
-
A side benefit
[Read the article: Vitter: "I believe I received forgiveness from God"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]of "accepting Jesus" is that you will always be forgiven no matter how many times you "fall". So keep on doing it! You're home free anyhow.
The rest of us don't get off so easily.
-
Glenn's sacrifice
[Read the article: The endless, meaningless blather from the Washington establishment]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Glenn, how can you read this stuff that you quote over and over? Doesn't it rot your brain? Don't you wan to scream and throw things? Thanks for doing it though, so I don't have to.
-
DS9
[Read the article: Credit check]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Speaking as a professional with nearly 50 years of musical experience (and TV), the opening theme music from Deep Space 9 is my all-time favorite. And the graphic design was pretty near too.