Unlocking the Mystery of Life

One of the finest videos on intelligent design is one titled Unlocking the Mystery of Life. It lays out some of the early history of the ID movement and addresses two major points of conflict with Darwinian naturalism: The origin of life and the origin of specified complexity. The theoretical stuff is interesting and the computer animations are breathtaking.

For a sample of the latter take a look at this clip which illustrates just a few of the processes involved in the cell's manufacture of proteins. It's nothing short of astounding.

RLC

Bribe Me Later

For those too young to remember the Abscam scandal that resulted in six Democrats and one Republican going to jail, Ann Coulter offers a quick summary. Her purpose, of course, is to highlight the venality of a young congressman named John Murtha, who was caught on tape discussing bribes with an undercover FBI agent.

This is the man who is leading the Democrats, and our nation, up Surrender Hill. It's ironic that the Democrats would feature a congressman with one of the most questionable ethical reputations in Washington as a key leader in what they purport to be a kind of moral quest, the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq.

Read Coulter's piece to learn a little bit about the kind of man it is who is scheming to deny the president the ability to reinforce the troops in Iraq.

RLC

Evil America

Randall Hoven at The American Thinker offers a salutary, and fairly brief, history lesson for those who wonder about the claim that the United States is a dangerous, perhaps evil, force on the world stage. Hoven shows that such a claim can only be made by those who either have no idea what has transpired around the world in the last seventy years or who are being deliberately dishonest.

Students who sit in classrooms where this meme is regularly trotted out by leftist instructors will especially benefit from reading the piece.

RLC

Why We Must Win

This is yet another illustration of why we must win the war against Islamo-fascism. If we lose heart, as some already have, what happened to Zilla Usman will eventually happen to women throughout the West.

Zilla Huma Usman, the minister for social welfare in Punjab province and an ally of President Pervez Musharraf, was killed as she was about to deliver a speech to dozens of party activists, by a "fanatic", who believed that she was dressed inappropriately and that women should not be involved in politics, officials said.

Usman, 35, was wearing the shalwar kameez worn by many professional women in Pakistan, but did not cover her head.

The attack happened in Gujranwala, 120 miles southeast of Islamabad, where the minister's office is based. As Usman, 35, stepped out of her car - where she was greeted by her co-workers throwing rose petals - the attacker pulled out a pistol and fired a single shot at close range, hitting her in the head. She was airlifted to hospital in the provincial capital Lahore, but died soon afterwards.

The gunman, Mohammad Sarwar, was overpowered by the minister's driver and arrested by police. A stone mason in his mid 40s, he is not thought to belong to any radical group but is known for his fanaticism. He was previously held in 2002 in connection with the killing and mutilation of four prostitutes, but was never convicted due to lack of evidence.

Sarwar appeared relaxed and calm when he told a television channel that he had carried out God's order to kill women who sinned. "I have no regrets. I just obeyed Allah's commandment," he said, adding that Islam did not allow women to hold positions of leadership. "I will kill all those women who do not follow the right path, if I am freed again," he said.

"He is basically a fanatic," Raja Basharat, the Punjab Law Minister, said. "He is against the involvement of women in politics and government affairs." A police statement added: "He considers it contrary to the teachings of Allah for a woman to become a minister or a ruler. That's why he committed this action."

"He killed her because she was not observing the Islamic code of dress. She was also campaigning for emancipation of women," said Nazir Ahmad, a local officer.

Usman, a married mother of two sons, joined the pro-Musharraf Pakistan Muslim League after being elected in 2002. A strong supporter of the President's policy of "enlightened moderation" - designed to tackle extremism - she was appointed to her current post in December last year according to her government biography.

A culture which gives a slap on the wrist to rapists, which turns a blind eye to "honor" killings, which punishes children by driving automobiles over their arms,

which hangs teenagers for being homosexual,

and which produces people who believe they're doing God's will by killing women who don't "know their place", is not just retrograde and dysfunctional. It's diseased.

Yet it is just such a culture as this which the Islamo-fascists wish to impose on the whole world, and they are prepared to use whatever means necessary to do it.

RLC

Deep Impact

As if we didn't have enough to worry about:

An asteroid may come uncomfortably close to Earth in 2036 and the United Nations should assume responsibility for a space mission to deflect it, a group of astronauts, engineers and scientists said on Saturday.

Although the odds of an impact by this particular asteroid are low, a recent congressional mandate for NASA to upgrade its tracking of near-Earth asteroids is expected to uncover hundreds, if not thousands of threatening space rocks in the near future, former astronaut Rusty Schweickart said.

If you like to worry about things you can do nothing about you can read the rest of the article here.

RLC

Pro/Con

This month's edition of First Things has a very interesting pair of essays by Joseph Bottum and Michael Novak, both of whom are conservative Republicans (I'm surmising), on the competency of George W. Bush. Bottum takes the view that W. is in over his head, Novak is much more lenient in his judgment.

FT is offering the article for free here, and it's well worth a read whether one is a supporter or a foe of the president.

RLC

ATP Synthase

In yet another tribute to the skill displayed by blind mechanistic processes in constructing what anyone but a Darwinian true-believer would recognize as an engineered machine, Telic Thoughts offers a simulation of the operation of the enzyme that synthesizes ATP in the body's cells.

RLC

If It Should Come to War

The BBC reports on the American plan of attack should Iran persist in its pursuit of nuclear weapons. Here's part of the BBC story:

It is understood that any such attack - if ordered - would target Iranian air bases, naval bases, missile facilities and command-and-control centres. The US insists it is not planning to attack, and is trying to persuade Tehran to stop uranium enrichment.

The UN has urged Iran to stop the programme or face economic sanctions. But diplomatic sources have told the BBC that as a fallback plan, senior officials at Central Command in Florida have already selected their target sets inside Iran.

That list includes Iran's uranium enrichment plant at Natanz. Facilities at Isfahan, Arak and Bushehr are also on the target list, the sources say.

BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner says the trigger for such an attack reportedly includes any confirmation that Iran was developing a nuclear weapon - which it denies.

Alternatively, our correspondent adds, a high-casualty attack on US forces in neighbouring Iraq could also trigger a bombing campaign if it were traced directly back to Tehran.

Long range B2 stealth bombers would drop so-called "bunker-busting" bombs in an effort to penetrate the Natanz site, which is buried some 25m (27 yards) underground.

The BBC's Tehran correspondent Frances Harrison says the news that there are now two possible triggers for an attack is a concern to Iranians.

It should be of concern to everyone. One of the interesting things about these plans is that they have been somehow made available to the BBC at the same time that the Bush administration is adamant in its denials that any attack on Iran is being planned. We appear to be playing mind games with the Iranians. Let's hope it works.

RLC

The Blasphemy Challenge

Something called the "Rational Response Squad" is soliciting people, mostly young people, to make a commitment to condemn themselves to eternal damnation by videotaping themselves denying the existence of the Holy Spirit.

Set aside the callowness of the project and the dubious theology that underlies their interpretation of blaspheming the Holy Spirit and explore for a moment the psychology of what these kids are doing. They are proclaiming that they don't believe that God exists, but for what purpose? Someone may believe that space aliens don't exist but most people would hardly bother to send in videos to You Tube declaring the fact. If one doesn't believe that God exists why go to the trouble of videotaping an affirmation of one's doubt? What is it about denying the existence of something that is a source of such pride in the denier?

For some of these kids, moreover, it seems that they're not so much denying God's existence but rather banishing the God they suspect exists from any role in their lives. In other words, it's not an intellectual or philosophical position they're voicing, but an act of defiance or rebellion against the concept of God that they've come to hold. In the very act of denying God's existence they seem to be admitting that they know He's there, but that they resent that He is.

If this is a correct interpretation of what at least some of these kids are doing, then, for all of their pretense at intellectual sophistication, they're making themselves look silly. It's foolish, after all, to deny the existence of what deep down you know to be real. It's foolish to despise what deep down you believe to be the source of all that's good and right in the world. In their attempt to be "rational" they make themselves irrational. In their attempt to be "cool" they make themselves dumb. It's very sad.

RLC

Supporting the Troops

Michael Ramirez sums up what the Democrats in congress mean when they say that they "support the troops":

RLC

They Mean No Harm

We're expecting Softball's Chris Matthews to feature this news report when next he blasts the Bush administration for allegedly hyping intelligence that points to Iran as the source of weapons being used in Iraq to kill Americans:

(2007-02-12) - Mahmoud Ahmadinejad today confirmed U.S. allegations that high-ranking Iranian officials provide Shiite militias in Iraq with armor-piercing explosives, however, Iran's president said the devices are for peaceful purposes only.

"No one can deny the right of the Iranian people to develop technology that improves our lives," said Mr. Ahmadinejad. "Although we cannot control how our Iraqi customers use our products, we make these armor-piercing devices to generate energy."

The Iranian leader noted that the devices are "especially useful for bringing light to confined dark places, like the inside of an Abrams tank or Humvee, as well as for providing a plentiful source of instant heat."

Unconfirmed reports coming out of Washington indicate that Ahmadinejad's claims were well-received by congressional Democrats who considered them to be perfectly plausible.

RLC

Bird Brains

Go to Telic Thoughts and watch the video of a crow trying to get food out of a container with a wire. The bird can't manage it so it bends the wire into a hook. It's astonishing.

TT also links to a fascinating article at Neurophilosophy on how birds navigate. There are evidently at least two separate mechanisms employed, one for measuring the strength of the earth's magnetic field and one for assessing its direction. These mechanisms are incredibly "engineered" and certainly suggest intelligent input. But maybe not. Maybe they arose by blind forces acting by trial and error over millions of years, just like your computer might have if nobody had ever designed one.

RLC

Worst Country in the World

According to this report Britain is the worst place in the developed world for a child to grow up. Perhaps it's because of all that evangelical religion afflicting England.

RLC

Warming or Cooling?

NASA has a graphic which shows the global temperature deviations from seasonal averages for every month since 1979 through 2003. The most striking thing about the graphic is that although it seems like some places are consistently warmer than the seasonal average other places are consistently cooler. In other words, to the extent that warming is occuring it appears to be occuring locally or regionally and not uniformly around the globe.

Canada and the arctic seem to be warming while the southern states, Central, and South America seem to be cooling.

The bottom graph is the average global deviation from the long-term mean. You can select any month by moving the cursor across the graph. It appears that the average global temperature fluctuates around the mean spending as much time below it as above it (except for a bit of a spike in May of 1998).

So what's it all mean? I'm not sure, but it certainly suggests that the situation is more complex than the global warming people are letting on. The ambiguity of the data causes us to wonder what motivates those like The Weather Channel's Heidi Cullen who are so eager to have everyone believe that the earth is getting warmer that they want to forcibly silence all dissent from that opinion by having dissenters stripped of their scientific credentials.

HT: Uncommon Descent

RLC

Banning Hate Speech

WorldNet Daily has a very disturbing report on how hate speech legislation is being used in Australia and Europe to muzzle and intimidate anyone who would criticize minority individuals or groups:

Two Christians in Australia have been indicted for criticizing Islam, and another for criticizing Zionism. A filmmaker has been threatened with arrest for using the word "homosexual" rather than "gay." Now a German priest faces jail time for publicly criticizing abortionists, and in Holland, "fornicators" and "adulterers" are protected classes and cannot be criticized.

All courtesy of the concept of federal "hate crimes" legislation, which unless defeated soon could be mandatory in the United States, warns a rising chorus of critics.

There's much more on this proposed legislation at the link and all of it is frightening.

Here's a question: If the legislation passes and it becomes illegal to use any language that communicates hate or even mere disapproval, will we be putting liberals in jail for expressing their feelings about George Bush and Dick Cheney? Just wondering.

RLC

Comes the Dark Horse

The more astute political pundits are beginning to discern a dark horse in the Republican race that few in the media have been discussing. In fairness to the pundits they haven't been discussing him because he is not yet a declared candidate. Nevertheless, he polls consistently high in almost every survey of Republican voters and for good reason. He is probably the most conservative of the viable candidates and certainly the deepest thinker of any candidate of either major party.

Dick Morris has taken note and writes about him at The Hill.

RLC

Myth of Sisyphus

There's an ancient Greek myth about a man named Sisyphus who, having offended the gods, was punished by being condemned to push a heavy stone up a hill. When he finally reached the summit the boulder would roll back down to the bottom. Sisyphus would then have to push it back up again only to have the same thing happen every time he got to the top. This was this poor man's fate - to push that stone up the hill over and over again for eternity.

The Greeks thought this to be a wonderful metaphor for absolutely pointless, mind-numbing absurdity. If they were alive today they'd have an even better metaphor. Sisyphus, in the modern version, would be strapped into a chair in front of a television and given a remote, but no matter which of the 100 channels he selected there would be somebody talking about Anna Nicole Smith. Forever.

I can't imagine how empty must be the lives of those celebrities who live like Ms Smith lived, but even worse, I can't imagine how shallow must be the people who devote their days to reporting on the lives of such as Ms Smith. At the end of the day what exactly have they done to make the world a better place? What have they accomplished? How is going to their job in the morning any different than Sisyphus leaning his shoulder against the rock one more time?

Equally as inane, if not moreso, are the lives of those who actually find such talk to be interesting.

It's no wonder radical Muslims believe that our culture is corrupting the whole world. A lot of it is.

RLC

Defeating Iran

Victor Davis Hanson offers a prescription for Iran that sounds very much like what the Bush administration, insofar as we can tell, is already doing, except for his last suggestion. The last suggestion, lowering the price of oil through conservation, is critical to impoverishing Iran, but there doesn't seem to be much encouragement from the White House on this front. Be that as it may, what VDH recommends is a means to bring about the collapse of Iran's nutty leadership without having to resort to war, or at least an invasion. Here's the heart of it:

We can begin to do this by pushing international accords and doggedly ratcheting up the weak United Nations sanctions. Even if they don't do much to Iran in any significant way, the resolutions seem to enrage Ahmadinejad. And when he rages at the United Nations, he only loses further support, especially in the Third World. We should start another fissure by prodding the European Union, presently Iran's chief trading partner, to be more vocal and resolute in pressuring Iran. The so-called EU3 - Britain, France and Germany - failed completely to stop Iran's nuclear proliferation. But out of that setback came a growing realization among Europeans that a nuclear-tipped missile from theocratic Iran could soon hit Europe just as easily as it could Israel. Now Europeans should adopt a complete trade embargo to prevent Iranian access to precision machinery and high technology otherwise unobtainable from mischievous Russia and China.

Americans should continue to support Iranian dissidents. We need not encourage dissidents to go into the street, where they could be shot. Instead we can offer them media help and access to the West. Americans can highlight the plight of women, minorities and liberals in Iran - just the groups that so appeal to the elite Western left.

And we should announce in advance that we don't want any bases in Iran, that we don't want its oil, and that we won't send American infantry there. That would preempt the tired charges of imperialism and colonialism.

The United States also must stabilize Iraq and Afghanistan. The last thing Iran wants is a democratic and prosperous Middle East surrounding its borders. The televised sight of Afghans, Iraqis, Kurds, Lebanese and Turks voting and speaking freely could galvanize Iranian popular opinion that in time might overwhelm the mullahs.

At the same time, we need to remind the Gulf monarchies that a nuclear Shiite theocracy is far more dangerous to them than either the United States or Israel - and that America's efforts to contain Iran depend on their own to rein in Wahhabis in Iraq.

We should say nothing much about the presence of two or three U.S. carrier groups in the Persian Gulf and Mediterranean. Iran will soon grasp on its own that the build-up of such forces might presage air strikes that the United States excels in - and not more ground fighting that the American public apparently won't any longer stomach.

We must continue to make clear that Israel is a sovereign nation with a perfect right to protect itself. Sixty years after the Holocaust, no Israeli prime minister will sit still idly while seventh-century theocrats grandstand about wiping out Israel.

Let's also keep our distance and moderate our rhetoric. There's no reason to frighten average Iranians - who may share our antipathy to their country's regime - or to make therapeutic pleas to talk with those leaders in bunkers whom we know are our enemies.

Finally, and most importantly, Americans must conserve energy, gasify coal, diversify fuels, drill more petroleum and invent new energy sources. Only that can collapse the world price of petroleum.

As we have said in the past, anything would be preferable to war with Iran. Anything except allowing Iran to gain access to nuclear weapons.

RLC

More on <i>Friend of God</i>

Michael Linton offers a review of Alexandra Pelosi's documentary on evangelical christians called Friends of God about which we've written here. Linton points out that Pelosi seems very sympathetic to evangelical Christianity and that her documentary is mostly a fair presentation.

Maybe it is fair, but I have to wonder what sort of message it sends to the secular world about Christians. After reading her discussion with pastor Ted Haggard, for instance, one is left flabbergasted that someone who had risen to such a high position of responsibility and visibility in the church turns out to be such a ... well, a jerk. And this was taped before the news of his sordid homosexual sex life became public.

Read Linton's piece to see what I mean.

RLC

Rumors of Bin Laden's Death

Rumors are circulating that Osama bin Laden has died earlier this month of typhoid. This site has the details in an article by Robert Fox. The conclusion of his piece is a little strange, though. He claims that bin Laden's death would be a blow to neo-conservatives and would require a re-thinking of the global war on terror. Why this should be the case Fox does not explain, and so we're left to ponder the odd logic of asserting that bin Laden's demise will be a setback for those people who have for a decade wanted to see him dead.

At any rate, the reports are unconfirmed at this point.

RLC