Tom Morris

Prometheus 6 is reporting that Rick Santorum is disenchanted by Intelligent Design, realising perhaps that it’s a political impossibility now that a judge has said it’s total bullshit.

Oh, man, that horrible story is back!

The Guardian are talking about American Express RED, a “conscience consumer” credit card.

The 50 Most Loathsome People in America for 2005. I have a funny feeling that they’re going to continue being loathsome in 2006, especially Pat Robertson (via Stupid Evil Bastard).

Boris Johnson has a rather odd version of academic freedom. When people criticise, say, media studies or other “Mickey Mouse courses”, they aren’t necessarily saying the government should do anything. He does say this, though: “Sometimes in our thinking about higher education, we’re too narrowly confined to a utilitarian calculus about what it’s doing to the bottom line of UK plc.” Yes, because economic benefit doesn’t always mean beneficial for the FTSE 100. Something can be economically beneficial without necessarily affecting the outside world. While I support a certain kind of utilitarianism in this, the utility determination is skewed towards a mercantalist version of capitalism.

Plastic.com are discussing “In God we trust”. Of course, it’s thanks to America’s trust in God that it is now spending millions hunting after the vapour of WMD, supporting a dictatorial president who is willing to kick civil liberties and American life back to the configuration that made the Middle Ages successful. Come on gals, chastity belt time!

Pete Dunkelberg reports on a debate between Thomas Woodward and Michael Ruse. Good catch on the Behe vs. Henry Morris quotes.

Les Jenkins points to a scary cyberpunk future.

Educational podcasts.

Dave Winer has a “State of the Union” address. I’ve never seen The West Wing, but there’s almost no television actor who’d be worse than W.

Chris: The Religious Hatred Bill “is just another example of New Labour’s worrying authoritarianism”. Damn right.

Rex Hammond is right: Hollywood is clueless and doesn’t even try to justify their stupidity. A good lesson for all is written in Hollywood’s impending destruction. “;->”

Eirepreneur is talking about the future of OPML. I’m not sure about the contention that the mobile phone is going to be the solution. A lot will have to change for that to happen. It’s a closed network. The PC has a long stretch of usefulness left in it. But, then again, I’ve just invested in a MacBook, so I may be, what do they call it, projecting? As for Reading List? I prefer Feed List or Feed Bundle. Portmanteaus and the like annoy me.

When I start using OS X 10.4, I’ll be needing this tip. Very cool, and some interesting stuff in the comments.

Pharyngula documents all the latest, fun anti-ID hijinks. Good going guys.

If you want to see an example of what Kierkegaard calls the Aesthetic Stage, take a gander at Salon’s interview with Abercrombie & Fitch’s CEO Mike Jeffries. Highlights: “the brand’s loyal fans will gladly pay whatever he asks”, “While feigning casualness… Abercrombie actually celebrates the vain, highly constructed male”, “the company has mostly remained focused on pleasing the all-American college boy”, “there is also something oddly emasculating about it”, “it’s not gay, and it’s not straight… It’s all depicting this wonderful camaraderie, friendship, and playfulness that exist in this generation” (M.J.), “That’s why we hire good-looking people in our stores. Because good-looking people attract other good-looking people, and we want to market to cool, good-looking people. We don’t market to anyone other than that… Candidly, we go after the cool kids. We go after the attractive all-American kid with a great attitude and a lot of friends” (M.J.) and “He’s got more attitude. We love attitude.” (M.J.). I can see the torrent of Ph.D’s in ‘theory’ just dropping right in.

Also at Salon, I found this: “If you were a priest or a minister, your duty would be to try to bolster his faith, to turn him away from doubt and toward devotion. As a representative of the tradition of intellectual inquiry and rigorous examination of ideas, your duty is just the opposite. Your duty is to prod him toward doubt. Because doubt is the basis of critical thinking.”

Kent Newsome follows up on a link I posted a while back. Message boards are okay, but, as I may have said, they don’t scale as nicely as blogs do. A message board is a far bigger time committment than a blog, because it’s another thing I have to remember to do, another ball to juggle. Adding a blog’s RSS feed is a bit like adding a grain of sand to a ball I’m already juggling. Adding a message board is adding another ball.