A Freethinker's Paradise

The Disposable Life

The Boomers have had the disposable life so far.  In only one generation we've seen oil use skyrocket, which makes everything disposable.  Now the boomers are about to get whacked:

The trend by companies to freeze or end their employee pension plans may have a big impact on baby boomers now on the cusp of retirement.

Boomers with pension plans have counted on monthly retirement checks at the end of their career, but more employers are ending their plans or halting future benefit accruals. Those at greatest risk include boomers in their late 40s and early 50s, who are still at least a decade from retirement but too old to save enough to make up the difference in their pension benefits.

An August survey by PricewaterhouseCoopers showed that nearly half of companies that expect to change their pension plans in the next year are considering freezing benefits for all employees. More than a third that offered pensions have already pared back these benefits over the past three years.

"This will definitely be a problem for baby boomers," says Karen Friedman at the Pension Rights Center. "You've been at a company under the plan and worked for years with that expectation, and then it's taken away."

Did you really think your employer cares enough to make sure they can pay?  They can just get the government to ok the FOAD they give you with your Gold Watch.

What is the AFA thinking?

From the AFA site:

The problem with the state's current treatment of biological evolution in the classroom, Fair contends, is that South Carolina science teachers "are delivering axioms rather than an encouragement or even framework for students to critically analyze the subject matter. It isn't that there's a huge outcry to kick Darwin or Darwinism out of the public schools."

In fact, the senator says he hopes the revisions in the state biology education guidelines will stimulate more discussion and debate about evolution and other origin theories in the classroom. However, he acknowledges that the changes have angered some philosophical materialists in higher education.

"Those professors are just falling out of the trees, as it were, complaining," Fair says, "because we're trying through the public schools to encourage the classroom teacher, through the curriculum, to be more rigorous and more relevant and to critically analyze information to determine what is fact and what is fiction on this subject of Darwinism."

It was for that purpose that Fair, a creationist, introduced a bill in the South Carolina legislature last summer requiring state schools to expose students to the "full ranger of scientific views that exist" on biological evolution. Nevertheless, the conservative lawmaker has found many proponents of Darwinian evolution uncomfortable with and resistant to the introduction of competing theories.

Haha. 'Fact and fiction.'  That's why its in textbooks published by companies you've actually heard of.  Because 'Darwinism' is a lie.  Not only that, but what other science-based theories are there?  I don't just say this for snark.  I'm quite serious.  Does anyone know of alternate scientific theories that you can test about evolution?

Brazil finds Oil

This could make Brazil self-sufficient for its oil needs for awhile.  Which means it can potentially tell the world to go play in a corner without any ill effects.

The AFA wants to ban presents

Lovely:

 

Conservative religious leaders are so pleased with their campaign against the "war on Christmas" that they're going to rev it up next year.

Look for more lawyers ready to pounce on Christmas disses, they say, more teachers ready to tattle on silencings of "Silent Night" and more boycotts of stores for yanking the "Christmas" out of the season.

But one influential group of evangelicals has something else in mind that is causing a division in the religious ranks:

It wants to ban presents.

The American Family Association is suggesting that adults buy nothing from stores for each other next year. Sliding an Xbox 360 to a child would be OK, said association president Tim Wildmon, but adults should funnel their consumer cash to a charity that helps the poor -- preferably one friendly to "Christian values" such as the Salvation Army.

Gotta love that AFA.  Maybe the next year they'll ban anything that feels good.

‘Exhausted’ Bush, GOP scale back ambitions

Ruining America is 'hard work,' I suppose:

For the White House and the Republican-controlled Congress, the tumult of 2005 has been an object lesson in the political risks of thinking big.

Bush began the year with grand ambitions to overhaul the sacrosanct Social Security program, rewrite the entire tax code, retain expanded law-enforcement powers to fight terrorism and bring stability to war-torn Iraq — and fell far short, dividing his own party and taking a beating in the polls.

Chastened by the experience and eager to play it safe in an election year, Republicans now are preparing for a new year of thinking small.

Instead of reworking the entire tax code, Republicans will be gratified if they can just make current tax cuts permanent . A bill to tighten border security is in the works, but a more ambitious plan to curb illegal immigration is in doubt. One of Senate Republicans’ early priorities next year? The arcane issue of asbestos litigation.

If we take business as a metaphor (and for politics its a good one), either you're expanding or you're dying.  And the GOP isn't expanding, so that means its in a die-off mode for awhile. Until the Dems sweep in and at some point become corrupt and get kicked out again...

All your mosque are belong to US

In search of a terrorist nuclear bomb, the federal government since 9/11 has run a far-reaching, top secret program to monitor radiation levels at over a hundred Muslim sites in the Washington, D.C., area, including mosques, homes, businesses, and warehouses, plus similar sites in at least five other cities, U.S. News has learned. In numerous cases, the monitoring required investigators to go on to the property under surveillance, although no search warrants or court orders were ever obtained, according to those with knowledge of the program. Some participants were threatened with loss of their jobs when they questioned the legality of the operation, according to these accounts.

Federal officials familiar with the program maintain that warrants are unneeded for the kind of radiation sampling the operation entails, but some legal scholars disagree. News of the program comes in the wake of revelations last week that, after 9/11, the Bush White House approved electronic surveillance of U.S. targets by the National Security Agency without court orders. These and other developments suggest that the federal government's domestic spying programs since 9/11 have been far broader than previously thought.

Bush wanted complete fascist control of US government.  This isn't surprising.  I imagine it isn't exactly legal, since its a form of racial profiling (ie, Muslims are stereotypically seen as being from the ME.).  If they monitored all sites (which may seem prudent in this day and age) then perhaps a legal argument could be made for it, but I would still be against it.

Cry me a River

Aw, ID got smacked down and the fundies are upset:

A federal judge's ruling in Pennsylvania that "intelligent design" is religious fundamentalism dressed in the raiment of science has wounded a politically influential movement.

"It was a real disappointment," biochemist Michael J. Behe, who testified in the trial, said from his office at Lehigh University. "It's hard to say this chills the atmosphere, because if you're publicly known as an ID supporter you can already kiss your tenure chances goodbye. It doesn't help."

But Behe and other proponents of intelligent design emphasized that the court decision would not cast them into the political and cultural wilderness. They have pushed their theory, which holds that life is too complicated to have arisen without the hand of a supernatural creator, to the center of legislative debates in more than a dozen states, and they intend to keep it there.

Why is Behe still talking?  They can go on and on for eternity about this if they want.  It still won't change the fact that life changes.  Biochemists should know that.  I figure that if ID is true, then there would be no evolution since God would have made it all perfect, right?  Ah, so that's why Behe got tenure BEFORE he started spouting ID.

I hope they keep it at the center of debates so they can make a fool of themselves for years to come, eventually being broken like a cheap toy.

Retool This

Internal meeting notes released by a union official say Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff told employees that many changes planned for federal disaster response were a public relations ploy.

The purported statements were in typed notes issued Tuesday by a union representative for federal emergency workers. A Homeland Security Department spokesman said Chertoff considers the post-Hurricane Katrina changes one of his highest priorities and never would have made such comments.

Under the heading "Retooling/Chertoff's remarks," the typed notes said, "The re-tooling is partially a perception ploy to make outsiders feel like we've actually made changes for the better."

Translation-- if something happens, you're on your own.

Shades of Patrick Henry

Senators launched new salvos in the battle over national security and civil liberties yesterday as recent revelations of domestic spying continued to color the chamber’s stalemate on an extension of the anti-terrorism law known as the Patriot Act.

“None of your civil liberties matter much after you’re dead,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), a former judge and close ally of the president who sits on the Judiciary Committee.

Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.), who has led a bipartisan filibuster against a reauthorization of the Patriot Act, quoted Patrick Henry, an icon of the American Revolution, in response: “Give me liberty or give me death.”

He called Cornyn’s comments “a retreat from who we are and who we should be.”

Interesting. And scary.  Things seem to quickly be reaching an end-game for Bush.  Will he declare Pres for life? (and what will happen if he does?) Or will he end up like Nixon?  This sounds like simple rhetoric, but I have a feeling it isnt.

Intelligent Design smacked by Judge

In Dover.  Go read the decision.  It shows how much BS these people spew (about ID being science anyhow).  An excerpt (pg 67-68):

First, defense expert Professor Fuller agreed that ID aspires to “change the ground rules” of science and lead defense expert Professor Behe admitted that his broadened definition of science, which encompasses ID, would also embrace astrology. (28:26 (Fuller); 21:37-42 (Behe)). Moreover, defense expert Professor Minnich acknowledged that for ID to be considered science, the ground rules of science have to be broadened to allow consideration of supernatural forces. (38:97 (Minnich)).

Prominent IDM leaders are in agreement with the opinions expressed by defense expert witnesses that the ground rules of science must be changed for ID to take hold and prosper. William Dembski, for instance, an IDM leader, proclaims that science is ruled by methodological naturalism and argues that this rule must be overturned if ID is to prosper. (5:32-37 (Pennock)); P-341 at 224 (“Indeed, entire fields of inquiry, including especially in the human sciences, will need to be rethought from the ground up in terms of intelligent design.”).

The Discovery Institute, the think tank promoting ID whose CRSC
developed the Wedge Document, acknowledges as “Governing Goals” to “defeat scientific materialism and its destructive moral, cultural and political legacies” and “replace materialistic explanations with the theistic understanding that nature and human beings are created by God.” (P-140 at 4).

Scientfic Materialism and its destructive moral, cultural, and political legacies? WTF?  I suppose if the realization that our actions have reactions and effects on the world is bad, then I'm a sinner.

That, and its hilarious that even if this did pass, how would you teach it in class?

Teacher: Um, in the beginning, God created everything.

Student 1: Um, Mr. Teacher?

Teacher: Yes?

Student 1: Who created God?

Teacher: Aw, nuts.

Student 2: Mr. Teacher?

Teacher: Yes?

Student 2: Didn't Purusha create everything?

Teacher: Who?

Student 2: You know, Purusha!

Teacher: This is going to be a long year.

In other words, I don't think this is a box Theists want to open, leading to religion in science.  Because there's plenty of Christian sects as well as any other one.  And someone will force them to teach the FSM theory of creation, as it has as much evidence as all the others.

Another salient point is that evolution describes how life changes, not how it started.