New blogger finally

I finally got it. Now I have to figure out what to do with it. I've started adding labels to my posts. I'm giddy.

flip a switch

In never stops bothering me how when you try to talk to otherwise normal and intelligent people about certain things, they instantly flip a switch and become irrational, unreasonable, dishonest, abusive, combative, defensive, evasive and generally ridiculous.

Bush's detachment from reality should be disturbing to everyone, but no, you're just anti-Bush and you love to bash him. You're such an asshole, criticizing the man. Do you think it is easy being President? He's trying his best! I can't fault a man for trying, can I? Huh? Huh? CAN I?!!

We're on the brink of a war that would be even more of an unmitigated disaster than Iraq, which is difficult to imagine, but what else can we do? We can't trust that crazy person over there, so we should attack, otherwise he might attack us! What are you, some kind of terrorist sympathizer?! When another 9/11 happens you'll be saying Bush should have done more!!!!

And while they're pouring money into a black hole halfway around the world, they aren't even making corporations pay their taxes. Uh... double taxation, right? uh... ... umm... I gotta go... I'm not running away though, don't think that. I just don't want to talk about it.

Back home, pretty much every government organization is spying on United States citizens whenever they want, but we have to disrupt the terrorists! Besides, why do you care unless you have something to hide?!!

"This exposes the right's total intellectual bankruptcy as nothing else has, in my opinion. They are nothing more than rich authoritarian thugs whose only real mission is to maintain their prerogatives. One of these days somebody is going to find a reason to think they are unamerican too --- and they are probably going to use that very same police state power against them. Then they'll screaming too --- but it will be too late."
- Digby

Total intellectual bankrupcy indeed. Somehow they think these responses of theirs are meaningful when every one of them is just empty rhetoric. Who are you to say what is right? You think you're so smart and everyone else is so stupid! Listen up, boy, there's more to this world than being right all the time. Have some respect, you pompous asshole.

Idiots in charge

How it is possible that we could have a brand new Secretary of Defense, appointed in the middle of a military campaign in Iraq, say the following? How is this even conceivable?

At one point Gates, just three weeks on the job, told lawmakers, "I would confess I'm no expert on Iraq." Later, asked about reaching the right balance between American and Iraqi forces, he told the panel he was "no expert on military matters."

My eyes are bleeding.

KILL KILL KILL RAPE BURN (yay America!)

The Iraqi people love us and greet us as liberators

Punish the right, Reward the wrong: YAY AMERICA

Our media sucks. People who got everything wrong about Iraq are still regarded as expert pundits and get even better jobs than before. Shouldn't major media be seeking out people who got everything right with their Iraq predictions?

We're so fucking backwards.

everything is totally fucked parts 4 through 17,438

Iraq has been a complete disaster, and it is basically inevitable that now we're going to war with Iran too, which will be much much worse. I don't even know what to say.

Iraq is going so well, why not Iran too!

Greenwald full article today (go to his site and read everything else he's ever written):

The President's intentions towards Iran need much more attention

Iraq continues to receive the overwhelming bulk of attention in the media and among political analysts. But the fate of Iraq, tragically, is all but sealed -- the President will send more troops and order them to be increasingly brutal and indiscriminate, and they will stay through at least the end of his presidency. That is just a fact. The far more attention-demanding issue now is what the President's intentions are with regard to Iran.

As Think Progress notes, the White House took multiple steps yesterday to elevate dramatically the threat rhetoric against Iran. Bush included what The New York Times described as “some of his sharpest words of warning to Iran” yet. But those words could really be described more accurately not as “threats” but as a declaration of war.

He accused the Iranian government of “providing material support for attacks on American troops” and vowed to “seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies.” But those networks are located in Iran, which means that search and destroy missions on such networks would necessarily include some incursion into Iranian territory, whether by air or ground.

Hours before the speech, the White House released a Powerpoint presentation with details about the president’s new policy. “Increase operations against Iranian actors” was listed in the “Key Tactical Shifts” section. As The New York Times reported: “One senior administration official said this evening that the omission of the usual wording about seeking a diplomatic solution [to the Iranian nuclear stand-off] ‘was not accidental.’”

But these were merely the latest in a series of plainly significant events over the last several weeks that, taken alone, are each noteworthy themselves, but when viewed as a whole unmistakably signal a deliberate escalation of tensions with Iran by both the U.S. and Israel:

• Israel's Prime Minister "accidentally" ending decades of nuclear ambiguity by unambiguously acknowledging Israel's nuclear arsenal;

• New Defense Secretary Robert Gates's extraordinary departure -- the very same week -- from long-standing protocol by explicitly describing Israel as a nuclear power;

• The arrest by the U.S. military of senior Iranian military officials in Iraq;

• The announced build-up of forces in the Persian Gulf back in December, the purpose of which -- according to Bush officials -- "is to make clear that the focus on ground troops in Iraq has not made it impossible for the United States and its allies to maintain a military watch on Iran";

• The leaking by the Israeli military that Israel was developing plans for an attack on Iran using small-grade, limited tactical nuclear weapons. Though the leak was done in such a way as to create plausible deniability as to its significance -- the leak was to a discredited newspaper and leaks that a country has "planned" for a certain type of attack are commonplace and do not mean they are actually going to attack -- the leak was nonetheless deliberate and caused the phrases "Israeli nuclear attack" and "Iran" to be placed into the public dialogue, at exactly the time that tensions have been deliberately heightened between the U.S./Israel and Iran -- the purpose of which is almost certainly not a planned nuclear attack by Israel on Iran, but a ratchering up of the war rhetoric;

• Increasingly explicit advocacy by neoconservatives in the U.S. for a war with Iran, as reflected by the recent Washington Post Op-Ed by Joe Lieberman in which he really did declare that the U.S. is already at war with Iran ("While we are naturally focused on Iraq, a larger war is emerging. On one side are extremists and terrorists led and sponsored by Iran");

• in the later stages of 2006, the President's most prominent neoconservative supporters becoming increasingly explicit about their advocacy of war with Iran;

• The transparent and deliberate use by the President throughout the last several months of 2006 of highly threatening and accusatory language towards Iran that is identical in content and tone to the language he used towards Iraq in the months immediately preceding the U.S. invasion -- often verbatim identical.

I think there is a tendency to dismiss the possibility of some type of war with Iran because it is so transparently destructive and detached from reality that it seems unfathomable. But if there is one lesson that everyone should have learned over the last six years, it is that there is no action too extreme or detached from reality to be placed off limits to this administration. The President is a True Believer and the moral imperative of his crusade trumps the constraints of reality.

The AEI/Weekly Standard/National Review/Fox News neonconservative warmongers are mocked because of how extremist and deranged their endless war desires are, but the President is, more or less, one of them. He thinks the way they think. The war in Iraq has collapsed and the last election made unmistakably clear that Americans have turned against the war, and the President's response, like their response, was to escalate. How much more proof do we need of how extremist and unconstrained by public opinion and basic reality he is?

For anyone with ongoing doubts, here is how the President thinks, as expressed in an October, 2006 interview with his with his ideological soulmate, Fox's Sean Hannity:

Hannity: Is this a struggle literally between good and evil?

Bush: I think it is.

Hannity: This is what it is? Do you think most people understand that? I mean, when you see the vacillating poll numbers, does it discourage you in that sense?

Bush: Well, first of all, you can't make decisions on polls, Sean. You've got to do what you think is right. The reason I say it's good versus evil is that evil people kill innocent life to achieve political objectives. And that's what Al Qaeda and people like Al Qaeda do.

Bush means all of that. That's really what he believes. And he isn't constrained by the things that constrain rational people because his mission, in his mind, transcends all of those mundane limitations. Is there anyone who still doubts that?

More importantly, a war with Iran can happen in many ways other than by some grand announcement by the President that he wants to start a war, followed by a debate in Congress as to whether such a war should be authorized. That is the least likely way for such a confrontation to occur.

We have 140,000 troops (soon to be 20,000 more) sitting in a country that borders Iran and where Iran is operating, with an announced military build-up in the Persian Gulf imminent, increased war rhetoric from all sides, the beginning of actual skirmishes already, a reduction (if not elimination) on the existing constraints with which our military operates in Iraq, and a declaration by the President that Iran is our enemy in the current war.

That makes unplanned -- or seemingly unplanned -- confrontations highly likely, whether through miscalculation, miscommunication, misperception, or affirmative deceit. Whatever else is true, given the stakes involved -- the unimaginable, impossible-to-overstate stakes -- and the fact that we are unquestionably moving forward on this confrontational path quite deliberately, this issue is receiving nowhere near the attention in our political discussions and media reports that it so urgently demands.

For all the pious talk about the need to be "seriously concerned" and give "thoughtful consideration" to what will happen if we leave Iraq, there is a very compelling -- and neglected -- need to ponder what will happen if we stay and if we escalate. And the need for "serious concern" and "thoughtful consideration" extends to consequences not just in Iraq but beyond.

Philippines trip

I meant to post this link a long time ago, but here are a bunch of pictures from our trip to the Philippines.

anyone?

Did anyone read this yet, as per my pathetic request?

Oh how funny and clever!

Oh how funny and clever!

ADELAIDE, Australia, Jan 9 (Reuters Life!) - An Australian zoo has put a group of humans on display to raise awareness about primate conservation -- with the proviso that they don't get up to any monkey business.

Over a month, the humans will be locked in an unused orang-utan cage at Adelaide zoo, braving the searing heat and snacking on bananas. They will be monitored by a psychologist who hopes to use the findings to improve conditions for real apes in captivity.

100 years earlier...

Oh how funny and clever!

The first day of the "exhibit", September 8, 1906, visitors found Benga in the Monkey House.^[2] A sign on the exhibit soon read:

The African Pigmy, "Ota Benga."
Age, 23 years. Height, 4 feet 11 inches.
Weight, 103 pounds. Brought from the
Kasai River, Congo Free State, South Cen-
tral Africa, by Dr. Samuel P. Verner. Ex-
hibited each afternoon during September. ^[3]

Bronx Zoo director William Hornaday saw the exhibit as a valuable spectacle for his visitors, and was encouraged by Madison Grant, a prominent scientific racist and eugenicist.

I'm like a Ninja Turtle

I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.

-Michelangelo

I get giddy about every new post at Man Beard Blog. My wife says that's because I have ridiculous self-love, but I have a different explanation. I really don't think of Man Beard Blog as my creation, even though by any standard of objective reality it is. I really think of Man Beard Blog as something I'm discovering. Every post there has flowed out of me effortlessly, in contrast to posts here which routinely take hours to put together. Hell, the first week of Man Beard Blog I put up like 12 posts with all kinds of self-references and themes and metaphors and whatnot. I'm more like Columbus than DaVinci. Instead of sailing, I just start writing, and Man Beard Blog is my New World. It is like I have some direct cosmic connection to a higher comedic power; all I can do is serve as a conduit from the humor gods to the blogosphere. I can't help feeling giddy and laughing hysterically at my own work my discovery, because it is fucking awesome.

My wife also says I'm insane.

Outrageous

Outrageous

Great Presidential Moments, #25

From Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States (emphasis added):

In December of 1898, the peace treaty was signed with Spain, officially turning over to the United States Guam, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines, for a payment of $20 million.

There was heated argument in the United States about whether or not to take the Philippines. As one story has it, President McKinley told a group of ministers visiting the White House how he came to his decision:

Before you go I would like to say just a word about the Philippine business… The truth is I didn’t want the Philippines, and when they came to us as a gift from the gods, I did not know what to do with them… I sought counsel from all sides – Democrats as well as Republicans – but got little help.

I thought first we would only take Manila; then Luzon, then other islands, perhaps, also.

I walked the floor of the White House night after night until midnight; and I am not ashamed to tell you, gentleman, that I went down on my knees and prayed Almight God for light and guidance more than one night. And on night late it came to me this way – I don’t know how it was, but it came:

1. That we could not give them back to Spain – that would be cowardly and dishonorable.
2. That we could not turn them over to France or Germany, our commercial rivals in the Orient – that would be bad business and discreditable.
3. That we could not leave them to themselves – the were unfit for self-government – and they would soon have anarchy and misrule over there worse than Spain’s was; and
4. That there was nothing left for us to do but to take them all and to educate the Filipinos, and uplift and civilize and Christianize them, and by God’s grace to the very best we could by them, as our fellow men for whom Christ also died. And then I went to bed and went to sleep and slept soundly.

The Filipinos did not get the same message from God.

Perhaps as many as 1,000,000 Filipinos died as a consequence of their resulting revolution for independence, and countless attrocities were committed.

I guess I'm making progress

I read Sam Shulman's empty critique of "the new atheists" (posted here on Richard Dawkins' site). I used to get pretty fired up when I read stupid shit like that, but this time I just laughed and knew that it would be properly shredded soon enough.

Shulman's entire point seems to be that modern atheists are terrible people because they aren't ashamed of and reluctant about their atheism the way nonbelievers used to be back in the good-old days. Plus he throws in the same old meaningless accusations about close-mindedness and failure to appreciate the finer points of moderate religiousness.

But I saw through all of that right away and didn't feel compelled to rush out and do something about it. I guess that's progress.

It almost seems like the WSJ is actively promoting atheism by running criticism as empty as this. "Without God, Gall is Permitted." HOW DARE THEY HAVE SO MUCH GALL! If that is the best they can throw at us, we're in pretty good shape.

food for fuel and hungry eating delicious

I used to be a very picky eater, but over the years I've become more open to trying new dietary options. Foods that I never would have touched 6 years ago that are a major part of my diet now:

1. Chipotle (~2001)
   
2. Chinese food (~2003)
   
3. Sushi (~2007)
   

I first tried Chipotle some time in my junior year of college. I remember that it was a deal with Erm that I'd eat a burrito if he would listen to some kind of goofy music, but I can't remember what it was. Maybe Wesley Willis or Tenacious D. Whatever it was, in retrospect it is obvious that we both were ridiculous in our prior refusals.

I don't remember exactly when I first started eating Chinese food, but now I couldn't live without Kung Pao. It might have had something to do with living with Jeff when his mother and aunt bought a Chinese restaurant. Actually it might have been randomly meeting up with people at Panda Express before seeing The Two Towers in Bethesda.

Sushi is my new obsession. I don't exactly know how it started, but it was within the last month and now I can't stop eating it. I still know very little about it, and I'm not even sure exactly what I'm eating, but I do know that raw fish wrapped up with rice in a sloppy cylinder is damn tasty.

Other prominent food items that I still avoid:

• coffee (although I recently drank some kind of frozen sweet beverage from Starbucks that was tasty)
• fungus
• beans
  

Saddam for Science!

I've had some discussion about the execution of Saddam Hussein, but this is the first time I've heard this idea: Saddam should have been kept alive to be studied. I love Richard Dawkins.

Dennett

I just read the first 25 pages of Darwin's Dangerous Idea, and found it quite inspiring. Maybe that's because I'm acutely aware that I'm in desperate need of some inspiration right now, or maybe Daniel Dennett's book is just that good on its own regardless of the mental state of its reader. Anyway, I keep thinking that going back to school and getting a PhD and being some kind of career academic is the most appropriate career path for me, but I'm still not sure exactly what to study. Richard Dawkins calls Dennett "that scientifically savvy philosopher" and after 25 pages I'm optimistic that his brilliantly articulated insights into philosophy and science will help me sort things out a bit.

Dennett summarizes Aristotle's four basic "causes" of human curiosity:

(1) We may be curious about what something is made of, its matter or material cause.
(2) We may be curious about the form (or structure or shape) that that matter takes, its formal cause.
(3) We may be curious about its beginning, how it got started, or its efficient cause.
(4) We may be curious about its purpose or goal or end (as in "Do the ends justify the means?"), which Aristotle called its telos, sometimes translated in English, awkwardly, as "final cause."

The fourth, telos, is most associated with the question "why?" Concern with the telos of things seems to me (and to Dennett) to be a common feature of humanity. We want to know "why." Dennett relates the question of "why?" to Darwinism:

Whenever Darwinism is the topic, the temperature rises, because more is at stake than just the empirical facts about how life on Earth evolved, or the correct logic of the theory that accounts for those facts. One of the precious things that is at stake is a vision of what it means to ask, and answer, the question "Why?" Darwin's new perspective turns several traditional assumptions upside down, undermining our standard ideas about what ought to count as satisfying answers to this ancient and inescapable question. Here science and philosophy get completely intertwined. Scientists sometimes deceive themselves into thinking that philosophical ideas are only, at best, decorations or parasitic commentaries on the hard, objective triumphs of science, and that they themselves are immune to the confusions that philosophers devote their lives to dissolving. But there is no such thing as philosophy-free science; there is only science whose philosophical baggage is taken on board without examination.

I'm very impressed with this insight (and so are others). This idea is similar to Dawkins' notion that understanding Darwinism is a consciousness raiser, a powerful example of how the appearance of design can be misleading. I think why Dennett's phrasing seems so brilliant to me is that it specifically distinguishes the science and the philosophy, the philosophical implications of Darwin's idea being that there is a good way to answer a repeated chain of "why" questions instead of the resignation of ending with "because of god."

So, I'm inspired for two main reasons I think. First, I'm hoping to clear up some of my muddled thinking about academic options, and Dennett already seems like he'll be a hot knife through muddled butter. And second, I like how he's is explaining how an extremely powerful idea is commonly underappreciated, because I have a list of ideas that I think are underappreciated.

Not that I expect anyone to understand based on this disorganized gushing how one thing leads to another, but this kind of helped me realize that more important than picking the right thing to study is to just get back in school and studying anything and let it all work itself out. Philosophy and science, psychology and anthropology and whatever else, they're all connected. I should just get in somewhere, and just go wherever it takes me.

Plagiarism?

I'm working on another post about Daniel Dennett's book Darwin's Dangerous Idea. In that post I'm going to quote the following paragraph from page 21 (of the edition I own anyway):

Whenever Darwinism is the topic, the temperature rises, because more is at stake than just the empirical facts about how life on Earth evolved, or the correct logic of the theory that accounts for those facts. One of the precious things that is at stake is a vision of what it means to ask, and answer, the question "Why?" Darwin's new perspective turns several traditional assumptions upside down, undermining our standard ideas about what ought to count as satisfying answers to this ancient and inescapable question. Here science and philosophy get completely intertwined. Scientists sometimes deceive themselves into thinking that philosophical ideas are only, at best, decorations or parasitic commentaries on the hard, objective triumphs of science, and that they themselves are immune to the confusions that philosophers devote their lives to dissolving. But there is no such thing as philosophy-free science; there is only science whose philosophical baggage is taken on board without examination.

Look at this link, specifically the second paragraph under the heading "What are the implications of evolution?" Look familiar? Am I missing something or is this just blatant plagiarism? If it is, what, if anything, should I do about it?

Shape-shifters

Do these people not realize that their words are permanently recorded somewhere, and that people will point out when they contradict themselves? What is going on their heads that they just think they can change everything they've said without anyone noticing?

Senator John McCain, considered a leading candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008, seems oblivious to this. Today he claimed that he knew the Iraq war would be long and tough, after having made numerous quotes before the war about how quick and easy it would be.

I used to reflexively support every candidate from that party, basically because my parents did. I wonder if I would have supported this shape-shifting asshat. I wonder if my parents will.

[By the way, as I'm gearing up for the exciting new blogger upgrade that I'll probably never actually get, I'm starting to think about what exciting new categories I'll be able to tag my entries with. So some obvious categories I'll be using will be "poker" and "atheism" and "movies." But I could go for cooler tags like "life-sucking cards" and "god-slaying" and "life-sucking media." In this case I'm experimenting with "shape-shift" as a tag for liars or dishonesty or inconsistency or whatever. How do we feel about "shape-shift"? Or any of those others that I just made up off the top of my head. Clearly "everything is totally fucked" is a lock for its own tag.]


UPDATE: Another shape-shifter.

UPDATE 2: More McCain dishonesty

UPDATE 3: Sweet, a whole boatload of shape-shifters.

Virgil Goode keeps on rolling in stupid

Here's elected representative, Virginia Republican Congressman Virgil Goode, in USA Today (via Dispatches):

I believe that if we do not stop illegal immigration totally, reduce legal immigration and end diversity visas, we are leaving ourselves vulnerable to infiltration by those who want to mold the United States into the image of their religion, rather than working within the Judeo-Christian principles that have made us a beacon for freedom-loving persons around the world.

This is beyond satire but I'll try anyway:

We need to promote Judeo-Christian principles to protect our country from religious takeover!

We need to restrict rights in order to be free!

JESUS SAVE US FROM BROWN PEOPLE AND THEIR EVIL WAYS!!!!!

Yeah that's not really satire since it is exactly what he said, except he was dead serious and not trying to be ironic.

(Everything is totally fucked.)

More evidence that everything is totally fucked

Look at this list of complete wrongness. Everything he says is completely and undeniably wrong. Every single word. He's never gotten a pronoun right even. And his career has never been better. He's shooting straight to the top. This is the country we live in. We eat this shit up and ask for seconds. Another huge heaping pile of steaming shitty wrongness please! Only the most ridiculous wrongness will do!

Also, I feel like I've been pretty profane lately. That is what happens when I get pissed off. I should hire another intern to track my profanity per 100 words over time and see if it correlates with my blood pressure or something.

Am I insane or is everything totally fucked?

I read this yesterday and it made me feel insane. Please read it. Seriously, I just don't want to be the only insane person. I want you to read it at my recommendation and comment here that now you feel insane too. It is long. If you print it out, it takes 24 pages. It probably takes about 45 minutes to read. You should really read it though. Please someone read it and help me feel better. This is the most pathetic request, I fully acknowledge.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/19720


I have a few scattered thoughts now that I've given my brain 24 hours to recover.


[RWA Bush]

If you want insight directly into the mind of George W. Bush, read everything you can about Right Wing Authoritarianism. Read the "significant correlations" section. Pretty much the entire list jumps out at you as describing our President. Highlights from the RWA wikipedia that the opening link include:

• Uncritically accept insufficient evidence that supports their beliefs.
• Uncritically trust people who tell them what they want to hear.
• Use many double standards in their thinking and judgments.
• Weaken constitutional guarantees of liberty such as the Bill of Rights.
• Be prejudiced against racial, ethnic, nationalistic, and linguistic minorities.
• Be bullies when they have power over others.
• Help cause and inflame intergroup conflict.
• Be highly self-righteous.
• Use religion to erase guilt over their acts and to maintain their self-righteousness.

I just don't understand why this research isn't more popular, because it explains so much about American politics. (There is an outstanding series by Sara Robinson called Tunnels and Bridges that first exposed me to the concept.)


[Incompetence in Charge]

I'm just dumbfounded by how incompetent Bush is on every level. It literally is like everything he touches turns to shit. And not only is he totally inept, he surrounded himself with more complete ineptitude. His entire administration is full to the brim with unqualified yes-men who are incapable of performing in their jobs. There are endless stories about how political loyalty interview questions were more important than insignificant details like education or experience. The shit in that article is just mind-blowing; not only are his key players morons, they're morons who hate each other and are constantly squabbling. How the hell did this happen??

This leads to my next thought.


[Most of this country doesn't really give a shit about politics, and this is what we've let happen]

Nobody really pays attention. A huge percentage of voters just vote with their feelings, not with any actual analysis of the issues. We're just too fat and addicted to television to engage in complex thought about these kinds of issues. A central theme of Howard Zinn's People's History of the United States: 1492 to Present (which deserves 5 blog entries worth of heaping praise based on the half of it that I've read so far) is that a large middle class buffers the controlling elites from rebellion by the repressed poor. I'm sure I'm grossly simplifying it, but America just doesn't give a fuck what our leaders do as long as we're well-fed and comfortable.

And like John Wilkins, I have to wonder what will ever come of this. Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney, and all the other neocon bastards are never going to be held accountable for their misdeeds. Yes, Rumsfeld got fired, but I'm sure he can get any kind of high-paying consulting job he wants. But all of these guys are just going to get away with it.

It reminds me of how the recently late Gerald Ford decided to spit on the face of justice and pardon Richard Nixon. How does that make any sense at all? This quote from the link is how I feel about Bush and company:

"The tragedy is not that those who rose so high should fall so low. The tragedy is that those who had so low an appreciation for our government should have risen to such high positions in it."

How did anyone stand for Ford's pardon of Nixon? I just have to conclude that they were too fat and comfortable to care about justice. How can we stand for what Bush has done to our country?


[Poorly Educated Public]

Another reason we, the American public, let this all happen is because we're terribly undereducated. In most of the 5 tributes that I owe Howard Zinn, I'll be mentioning that it is a national disgrace that we don't learn Zinn's kind of history in our schools. I think most of the 7 people who read this far will already realize that the American public is terrible at math and doesn't understand the scientific method, and has terrible reasoning skills. But we are also ignorant of all but the most self-serving home-team pseudohistory that is peddled to us in middle school.

PZ Myers points out a list of disgusting shit our country has done (a link to the same site that hosts Sara Robinson's work that I mentioned earlier), and rightly laments that "we are a nation of monsters." We are monsters, but we think we're noble. If we learned real history, Zinn's history, we'd know what monsters we are, and maybe we'd be a little more humble and take a little more care than to elect a monster like Bush.

The more poorly educated we are, the more it fuels this anti-intellectual streak we have in us. We make fun of the smart kids in elementary school, then in high school, and then when they run for President (this is another long read that I'd strongly urge). Instead we elect a simple fella who seems like he'd be fun to hang out with, and had no clue what the difference was between a Sunni and a Shia. We want a high school class president for a national President, a guy we can party with on the weekends and who doesn't make us feel like the dumbasses we are by using big words and fancy-schmancy scientificizing.


[Denial of Reality]

Maybe this last one brings it all together, or maybe it should have come first. Or maybe I'm the one missing reality. I just feel insane because nobody acknowledges basic reality. Its like absolutely no facts of the natural world register with Bush, with America. Bush just doesn't realize that we can't "win" in Iraq. Bush, like the rest of America, just doesn't understand that we're incapable of simply accomplishing anything we want with the sheer force of our will.

I mean, I already knew this, having read The Republican War on Science and seen the way the public and politicians can just deny global warming or evolution despite mountains of indisputable evidence, but it is just infuriating to see that denial of reality costing thousands of American soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis their lives. And a million other ways it messes everything up.

All for what?

So, am I insane or is everything totally fucked?

Keith Ellison is the winner

Virgil Goode constituent bequeaths Koran to be used by Ellison

Ellison To Be Photographed With Koran Owned By Thomas Jefferson

Virgil Goode and Dennis Prager, you lose.

So uh... eh then, eh?

I'm thinking of moving to Canada. Thoughts?

Mega super bonus points for anyone who can tell me where the post title came from. Good luck using google even.

Martynas Andriuskevicius and his Deputy God

About a week ago, an awkward 7-2 prospect in the Chicago Bull organization named Martynas Andriuskevicius was knocked unconscious with a brutal sucker-punch by a teammate on his NBADL team the Dakota Wizards. He sustained a concussion and some of his doctors are telling him he might never play basketball again.

ESPN reports today that Andriuskevicius will not press charges against his attacker because Ares, the Greek God of Bloodlust, will handle the situation for him:

"It's not going to help me anyway," Andriuskevicius said, according to the Tribune. "Ares is going to take care of it."

Maybe he isn't fully recovered from that punch. What does he think Ares is going to do, send a vulture after the guy?

Oh wait, I got my deities mixed up. He actually said that "God is going to take care of it." Clearly this is a much more reasonable thing to say. Declining to involve the police because you believe that Ares will avenge you is bat-shit crazy, but believing that the God of Abraham is going to settle scores in a life-after-death is perfectly fucking normal.

Imaginary friends aside, young Martynas says the reason he doesn't want to press charges is because he won't benefit from them. What about the rest of us? I want him to press charges. I don't want thugs like Awvee Storey to be able to criminally attack people without facing legal consequences.

Perhaps the kid is worried that he'd be violating some implied locker room code where you don't betray your teammates no matter what. I'd somewhat understand if that was a reason (and in that case this rant would be about how stupid such a culture value is), but he didn't say he was worried that pressing charges would reflect negatively on him, he just said there's nothing in it for him.

What about the satisfaction of doing the right thing? Of standing up for yourself against a fucking asshole who attacked you when your back was turned? What about providing a high-profile example to deter future sports-related assaults? What about justice? Maybe we should disband all police forces and the entire criminal justice system, since today's fashionable deity is going to take care of everything.

Nope, there's nothing in it for Martynas and Ares will take care of it. What a selfish prick.

Virgil Goode update: still an asshole

The more he says the stupider he sounds.

I liked this

20 brilliant of 2006

No Victory

On the Saddam execution

Government in a nutshell

Head of the LAPD Internal Affairs unit had an affair with a subordinate whose job it was to investigate inappropriate sexual relationships.

LINK (use bugmenot.com to login if you really want to read it because you don't believe me since I'm a godless heathen anti-Bush liar)

Also, Jaime Gold is a piece of dooooooooo

Sam Adams Winter Classics Mix Pack

I've become something of a beer snob, but I'll always have a soft spot in my heart for Sam Adams (other soft spots include Chipotle, Cal Ripken Jr., Bob Dole, The X-Files, Steve Francis, and my mom), as it was the beer that first started me on the transition towards enjoying good beer. So even though I don't really find the beers in this mix pack to be anything especially wonderful (though my first sip of a fresh cold Boston Lager still makes me weak in the knees) , I'm always excited to pick up the Sam Adams Winter mix.

A few years ago I rated the Winter Lager as probably my favorite beer, but while I still enjoy it, it has fallen far down that list. I really like the Old Fezziwig ale, and would probably now call it my favorite in the mix. I'm always weirded out by the Cranberry Lambic. Sam Adams describes it:

Samuel Adams® Cranberry Lambic is a Belgian-style fruit beer that draws its flavor not just from the cranberries it is brewed with, but also from the unique fermentation character imparted by a rare, wild yeast strain. The result is a flavor rich in fruitiness and reminiscent of cranberries, bananas, cloves, and nutmeg. A subtle cereal note from the malted wheat reminds the drinker that, as fruity a beer as this is, it is still very much a beer. It is made with native cranberries and tastes delicious with traditional holiday favorites such as roasted turkey.

Maybe I'm missing the subtle cereal note.

Jimi Haha?

Is Jimmie's Chicken Shack cool?

Hungry

I already ate a sandwhich at 12, but I'm going to Chipotle anyway. You can't stop me.

I want the new blogger!

The new blogger is somehow out of beta and yet I still don't have the option to switch over. I've been wanting labels for so long, and now google is just straight c-teasing me. My efforts to categorize all of my posts fell apart long ago, but the librarian in me wants to go on an archive labeling binge.

Sigh.

Remember Dennis Prager?

See For Yourself #1 heckler 'check my ip' made his first appearance in response to a post in which I included the words "Dennis Prager" and "brain-dead" in the same sentence. At the time I hadn't mentioned the more well-known proof of Prager's brain-deadness, this brain-dead column about Keith Ellison. (I'm not going to bother responding to it. Here's Ed Brayton on the matter, and I'm sure you can find plenty more criticism of it.)

I bring it up now because the Holocaust Memorial has condemned Prager's remarks. I eagerly await 'check my ip' pointing out how biased the Holocaust Memorial is and saying that it should respect Prager's beliefs.

That's about right

Anyone who criticizes Bush or Cheney should be locked up. This sounds like some people I know. Fascist asshats.

misc 'check my ip' garbage

This entry is to pick at a pair of little bullshit ideas, and should not be confused with my popular series "Rejecting the nonsense from 'check my ip' / part 1 / part 2" which was devoted to tearing down his 5 primary terrible ideas.


Bullshit Idea #1: Everyone who doesn't worship the supreme-alpha-male-in-the-sky is united by some common dogma and/or leadership

'check my ip' says:

In making this useless fight noticeable in every conversation you have just lumps you in another arrogant athiest who wants to shout from the rooftops what he/she belives. Why is this necessary? Why is the lack of respect for any arguments to your contrary necessary? Where did anyone in athiesm teach you this?

Where did anyone in atheism teach me this??? Huh? What on earth is this question supposed to mean? Do you think there's like an atheist gospel? Do you think there's some central leadership? Do I take orders from atheists ranked above me and command a force of lower ranking atheists? Maybe we should set up a goofy little country inside a large European city and command that our blind followers in AIDS-ravaged third world countries never use condoms. Oh wait you already said that because you once bumped into a guy in college who didn't believe in god, it is clear to you that atheism isn't a religion. Clearly.

As Sam Harris has pointed out, "atheist" shouldn't even have to be a word. There are no aZeusists or aThorists or aFlyingSpaghettiMonsterists. But because most of the world is still plagued with superstitious nonsense, we have to have a special word for people who refuse to deny obvious reality. But just because we have a word for people with a common embrace for rationality doesn't mean they all agree on everything.

So let me ask 'check my ip' if I would be correct in assuming that you don't believe in Thor. Assuming that you don't, my next question would be: who in aThorism taught you to spout loads on nonsense on my blog?

Bullshit Idea #2: If you don't do them in a 100% religious way, you shouldn't do holidays at all.

'check my ip' says:

Also, I trust you will be telling everyone at work that you wish to be left out of any holiday activities, right? I mean, even the "Season's greeatings" thing came out of a PC tolerance for other religions. So don't accept any gifts or anything silly like that.

Once again I have trouble even trying to guess what some of this means, but one thing that is clear is that this guy must think that Santa Claus and stockings over a fire and Rudolph and electronics wrapped in shiny paper came straight from the gospel of Matthew. Can you tell me which verse that was?

By the logic of your statement, I should assume that aThorists like you don't acknowledge a weekday between Wednesday and Friday, right? Since "Thursday" is just a tribute to the Norse God of Thunder, I trust you'll be telling everyone at work that you wish to stay at home on Thor's day, right?

Oh wait, things that start out as superstition can become part of culture and gradually lose the original meaning? What an amazing concept!

Virgil Goode (R-VA) = asshole

Greenwald is cutting back on his blogging to work on his next book, but he still knows how to expose a Republican asshole.

SMACK!

Michael Crichton, jurassic prick

The assholes who run this country deserve to be locked up in Gitmo. They'd be among the few people there who actually did anything to hurt America.

Huge obvious jokes

All of these things are absurd hypocrisy or otherwise pathetic:

• "In God We Trust" on US currency
• "Under God" in US Pledge
• Columbus Day celebrated as a national holiday
  
• "Redskins" as the name of the US Capital's NFL football team
• "War on Drugs" but alcohol is legal

They're all so fucking obviously ridiculous. Shouldn't this be embarrassing for everyone?

Best Christmas Song ever

Artist: Trans-Siberian Orchestra
Album: Christmas Eve and Other Stories
Track: Christmas Eve/Sarajevo 12/24

You might recognize it as "that badass version of Carol of the Bells."

Man Beard Blog

Man Beard Blog has taken on an intern and conducted its first product review.

more for 'check my ip'

I've taken a break from rejecting his nonsense, and I'm not sure if I'll continue. But for now, Cara raises some questions for 'check my ip' that I'd also be curious to hear a response about. I kind of doubt I'll get one, but might as well ask.

My rephrasing of Cara's questions for 'check my ip':

1. What is your opinion of the large number of evangelical christians in the US who aggressively seek to impose their faith on others, and who would fully embrace the idea that they're defined by their faith?
2. Are these people worse than adspar? If so, how? If not, how?
3. Do you think they're arrogant ("somehow they know better than all the jews, muslims, other christians, hindus, jains, voodoo-ers, etc and find it necessary to tell us all loudly about it.")?
4. Are these people's actions somehow more defensible because they're trying to "save us"? Do you not think that adspar's intentions are more noble ["warning people that they're wasting their time/money/mind and allowing the "freaks" who do bad things to continue do those things (by not allowing an honest analysis/critique of religion)"]?

As my own followup, I'd be curious to hear what he thinks about the millions of more moderate people who don't actively push their views on others, but who also would say that they are "defined by" their religious views. Are they a problem too?

media sucks

More excellence from Glenn Greenwald as he continues to rip the mainstream media for their Bush-enabling abandonment of their journalistic responsibilities. I particularly love this quote from his link in update 2:

I wonder how the corporate media would react if Bush denied the Holocaust. Maybe something like:

The politically charged controversy over whether Nazi Germany engaged in the large-scale killing of European Jews during World War II, an alleged historical event referred to as the "Holocaust" by those who believe it occurred, became the subject of partisan bickering after a reporter asked President Bush for his view on the subject. Never afraid to take a stand, the president stated firmly that "If the Nazis were really killin' all them Jews, my granddaddy wouldn't have stood for it."

Democrats eagerly pounced on Bush's statement in an effort to score political points by claiming that the "Holocaust" did in fact occur and is well documented. But the president's press secretary countered that some people also believe evolution is well documented, even though the jury is still out. Senator Joseph Lieberman, who is Jewish, said that he personally believes that the "Holocaust" may have occurred, but warned Democrats not to "play politics" with the issue by criticizing the Commander in Chief in a time of war. Lieberman also pointed to Bush's support for Israel as evidence of the president's high regard for Jews, notwithstanding the "honest difference of opinion" regarding the fate of some Jews many years ago.

Also disagreeing with Bush was Sophie Wasserman, 89, who claimed to have personally witnessed the murder of her husband and children in a Nazi "concentration camp" in the German city of Dachau. However, conservative humorist Ann Coulter disputed Wasserman's account. Coulter, using her trademark tongue-in-cheek cleverness, described Wasserman as a "vicious, senile whore" whose husband and children "probably committed suicide to get away from her."
Gator90 | 12.14.06 - 10:46 am | #

Jason Bourne

If you could be any movie at all, you might have some confusion about how to select which movie you'd be. Let me make it easy for you. You should be The Bourne Identity. You'd rather have amnesia than not, right? You'd contain Mr. Eko and Goodwill Hunting, which is the top two characters to contain, by vote of the citizens of 17 first-world democracies. I don't work for the Americans any more, but if we stay here we die. COME ON, WHAT ABOUT THIS DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND??! Remember the homophobic gay neighbor from American Beauty? He's in you. How is this not a good thing? You've got a black-ops agent off the reservation, and we will burn for this. Team up, motherfucker! Matt Damon can carry a movie now; we all know this. Bypass that shit! Tell me what is going on at those locations where Bourne might be at. The only possible confusion would be if you wanted to be Bourne Supremacy or the Bourne Ultimatum. I could respect that if you wanted to be one of those movies. You'd be wrong, but at least I could support it. But you just need to ask Matt Damon. When he was interviewed by Working Moms Magazine (2003), Hebrews for Halloween Magazine (2004), and Mormon Retards Quarterly (2006), he repeatedly asserted that Bourne Identity is the movie that anyone should be if they were to be a movie. How can you possibly argue with that?

Yao Ming!!!!!!

Yao Ming is probably my favorite NBA player now, behind Juan of course. He's 7'6" and 310lbs. What a fucking beast. Plus he's a good shooter and he's Chinese. You know what else? He plays with Shane Battier. I've hated that guy for so long that now I love him. That's another notch on Yao's massive Chinese belt. Yao is a nice guy and he lives in Houston. If you were Yao and you were my friend, you'd be my best friend. Yao likes to shake hands with small white men who seem amused by his massive size. Yao loves to make brilliant passes, using his supreme vantage point to create unprecedented geometrical angular situations. If you were 7'6" tall and you were my friend, you'd create angular situations and be my best friend. Plus you might get dizzy if you stood up too fast. I wonder how much Yao eats. I wonder if Chinese women love Yao as much as I do. Yao's feet bare a massive burden. You know how Denver is like a mile high and that makes it hard to respirate? Do you think that means it is harder for Yao to breathe than for Earl Boykins? Earl is my least favorite NBA player, except for Duke Jason Williams. If I was Yao, I'd smite them both. But Yao is a fucking pacifist, which is why I have so much respect for him. Plus he's Chinese.

Rejecting the nonsense from 'check my ip' / part 2

Someone calling himself 'check my ip' typed lots of words and posted them in reply to this post. I summarized his disorganized ideas into 5 general themes, which I posted in those comments. The purpose of this entry is to respond to point #3. Perhaps I'll have 5 posts eventually, or maybe I'll get bored with this.

I asked him if it would be fair to say that one of his main points is "3.) There is a proper way to discuss such matters and treat other people, and adspar violates it."

His response was that this is "true."

The following quotes from his comments supported this idea. I don't believe any of these quotes are being taken out of context, but feel free to read the original and decide:

1. "This is not a way to have a fair and meaningful discussion."

2. "“Be aware, kind and respectful to others and you will receive such treatment in return."

3. It seems to me that all the quotes in part 1 are also intended to provide examples of the way I violate the proper ways of discussing things.
   

My immediate reaction to this idea of his is that the irony of him telling me how to have a fair and meaningful discussion is so ridiculous that it barely deserves acknowledgement. But since in this context he's 'check my ip' and not someone with a real name and a personal history with me, I'm going to have adspar respond and leave Adam Sparks out of it.

One idea he has that I agree with is "Be aware, kind and respectful to others and you will receive such treatment in return." And I agree with the implication that if one fails to be aware, kind, and respectful, one shouldn't expect to be treated well.

Let's talk about how 'check your ip' has decided to have a "fair and meaningful discussion". He writes:

Nobody wants to hear anyonein your position coming off as a victim of society's distrust. I wonder how that distrust has ever hurt you? I wonder what the heck that has to do with the conversation you want to have with your parents?

One of his main points was about "playing the victim card"and I'll hopefully address that in another post. But for now I'll simply note that of course nobody wants to hear that they've been unfairly victimizing someone else. Nobody likes to think of themselves as a bad guy and nobody likes it when their misdeeds are brought to their attention. But sometimes it needs to be said, and hopefully people who are basically good will be able to swallow their pride and accept constructive criticism. If not immediately, in the long run a good person will appreciate someone who is willing to tell them a hard truth (popularized by the hanging booger theory).

He goes on to obnoxiously wonder how I'm personally a victim, and what that has to do with my looming conversation with my parents. His questions seem to imply that he thinks I'm not a victim and that he thinks it doesn't have anything to do with my conversation with my parents. Well, I am and it does. I find his line of questions so offensive because it is immediately followed with:

I wonder why, if you are an athiest, you can't just let the Christians be. Nope, you have to set out to mock (yes, you do) and try and prove people wrong and defend yourself.

So he seems to be implying that my conversation with my parents is just some part of my greater plan to attack and mock and prove everyone wrong (although I'll allow that there is a possibility that his poor organization had him asking genuine questions and following them with this offensive bullshit, though it seems far more likely that the questions were not genuine and that they were part of this offensive bullshit).

As I clearly laid out in my last post, I only mock or attack people who deserved it based on their words or deeds. A privately held personal belief in a supernatural deity is a bit goofy, but I'm not going to attack someone just for that, although I might lightly mock them. As I said, I don't have to respect everyone's beliefs; respect for someone is a willingness to hear them out, not a guarantee of respect for what they say. What I will attack without apology are words or deeds that violate me or someone else.

Then he gets even more ridiculous and out of line:

DO you think people would really care if John Doe became an athiest? No, they wouldn't.

What a presumptuous asshole 'check your ip' is being here. People do care that I'm an atheist, and they treat me like shit because of it, just based on hearing about my atheism, before I've even said a word to them about it.

A fair and meaningful discussion is characterized by things like intellectual honesty, genuine attempt to understand the other's message, and avoiding words that are primarily intended to provoke or hurt someone. I emphatically reject his idea that I've violated any rules of fair and meaningful discussion, and I assert that 'check your ip' is the one who has violated those rules.

He rejects, out-of-hand, the idea that atheists could be victims. He rejects, before even considering it, that I could have been treated unfairly because of my atheism. He simply assumes that I'm attacking my own parents out of some ego-fueled quest to prove that I'm right and they're wrong.

What kind of person visits someone's personal blog and decides to write such offensive bullshit, and then on top of that has the gall to suggest that I'm the one who doesn't know how to have a fair and respectful conversation? I think it offers great insight into the mind of 'check your ip' that he makes baseless accusations about me in the same post as he demonstrates on of the very same characteristics he is allegging.

Is he so consumed with emotion and his own ego that he doesn't realize this is happening? Does he need to feel like the good guy and need to paint someone else as the bad guy so much that he can't see the obvious projection that is happening here? This is some ugly shit.

Rejecting the nonsense from 'check my ip' / part 1

In case you didn't notice all the excitement in the comments, someone calling himself 'check my ip' typed lots of words and posted them in reply to my last post. I summarized his disorganized ideas into 5 general themes, which I posted in those comments. The purpose of this entry is to respond to point #1. Perhaps I'll have 5 posts eventually, or maybe I'll get bored with this.

I asked him if it would be fair to say that one of his main points is "1.) adspar can't handle when people have different ideas than him and he attacks anyone who disagrees with him. One should have respect for the beliefs of others, and adspar clearly doesn't."

His response was that this is "clearly true."

The following quotes from his comments supported this idea. I don't believe any of these quotes are being taken out of context, [I've added contextual helpers in brackets] but feel free to read the original and decide:

“You can't even stand when someone thinks different than you. It frustrates you. I saddens you. It angers you. It drives you crazy.

I am not playing the underdog in some big attention-desiring battle to tell everyone what I believe and why I think it is the right thing to believe. [... unlike adspar]


Why is the lack of respect for any arguments to your contrary necessary?

You have zero respect for any ideas other than your own

You have to have respect for what other people believe [;] you clearly do not.

Other beliefs drive you nuts.

My response to this line of criticism it that it simply isn't true. I certainly can handle it when other people have different ideas than me. I don't attack anyone who disagrees with me. And I reject the notion that one simply must have respect for the beliefs of others.

It isn't that someone thinks differently than me that frustrates me, saddens me, angers me, or drives me crazy. To the contrary, I'm eager to hear from people who have different views from me. I like to be exposed to new perspectives.

What I can't stand is dishonesty. What drives me crazy is hypocrisy. What frustrates me is irrationality. What saddens me is ignorance. What angers me is when someone actually takes pride in their dishonesty, hypocrisy, irrationality, or ignorance. And what drives me crazy is when all of that comes from my friends or family.

I don't attack anyone who disagrees with me, though I might challenge their views. I see nothing disrespectful about this.

Except for using the word in the sense of "acknowledgement of their existence" I see no reason why I have to "respect" beliefs that are not worthy of respect. (Belief that the world was created from nothing 6,000 years ago is an example of a belief for which I have no respect. Belief that someone who rejects Islam should be beheaded is another example of a belief for which I have no respect.) Respect for someone's belief is a separate matter from respect for the person who holds a belief. I'm more than willing to respect someone who holds an un-respectable belief, until they start to be dishonest. Then I start to have less respect for them. If they're hypocritical, or if they make irrational arguments, they'll lose a little more of my respect. Ignorance by itself doesn't necessarily mean they'll lose my respect, but if they're proud of they're ignorance that's tough to overcome.

For the record, I also have disdain for when these same faults are demonstrated in those whose views I share. If I start to see a pattern of dishonesty, or irrationality, or hypocrisy in people who share my ideas, that makes me start to question my ideas. In fact this is precisely what happened over the last year or two as I gradually shifted from a position of moderate support for Bush and the Iraq war to an extremely critical view of Bush and the Iraq war. Similarly, if you took the time to search through my archives for all my comments about Bill O'Reilly you'd see a graduate trend from general respect, to "usually I agree with him, but..." to generally disliking him and disagreeing with his views now, all because I saw increasing evidence of O'Reilly's dishonesty, hypocrisy, and irrationality.
----

I find it revealing that 'check your ip' was so eager and enthusiastic (at least 6 different statements on the matter, not to mention the emphatic "clearly" true) to conclude that my attacks and my scorn and my ridicule is aimed at anyone who disagrees with me. He seems quite anxious to cast me as someone who cannot tolerate disagreement.

I would think it should be obvious to any objective observer that my frustration in the specific post (involving the exchange between Prager and Harris) was with Prager's illogic, his dishonesty, his hypocrisy. I would think that anyone who follows this blog generally would be hard-pressed to cite an example where I "attack" someone who disagrees with me who hasn't demonstrated one of the negative traits I've mentioned.

One might perhaps dispute that the subject of my ridicule has been hypocritical, dishonest, or whatever. But I don't think it is difficult to realize that I think those flaws are there, and that is why I'm being harsh in a criticism. One might argue that I'm only claiming hypocrisy or dishonesty because these people have beliefs that I don't share. First, there are examples of posts where I've been quite respectful of differing views. Even if one found many more examples of negative posts than respectful, all that would demonstrate is that I'm more inclined to write about negative things I encounter, not that I react negatively to all opposing views. Even if I saw hypocrisy or ignorance in every single opposing view I've every written about, I generally explain how their words or actions are worthy of ridicule, how they're being irrational or ignorant. And furthermore, if I've slipped into a pattern of just presenting someone's rejection-worthiness as self-evident, I'd always be willing to discuss the matter if someone were to say for example that Prager wasn't dishonest in his responses. The bottom line is that I react negatively to things that deserve negative reactions, and that this should be obvious to any reasonable reader of my blog, or to anyone who knows me fairly well.

So, why would 'check your ip' be so quick to conclude that I shut out all opposing views? Could it be because he himself shuts out all opposing views and so assumes everyone else does? Could it be that he has some psychological defense mechanism where he won't have to confront ideas that challenge his sacred cows if he can find a way to discredit those who voice such ideas? Could it be that he's so deep into the confrontational "us versus them" mentality that is fostered by religion, partisan politics, and even team sports that he's unable to see any disagreement in any other terms?

Perhaps those questions will be further addressed if I respond to his other 4 criticisms.

On the topic of atheist discussion

What I just read, a debate between Sam Harris and Dennis Prager (this page contains links to each of 8 total pages of the back-and-forth debate), makes me so sad, angry, and scared. This guy Prager seems to be completely brain-dead, and yet he has a national radio show that presumably has a large audience or other brain-dead people who live and vote and operate heavy machinery. Over and over and over again Prager takes Harris's flawless logic and ignores it, distorts it, laughs at it, or just falsely calls it illogical. It is painful to read this stuff at times, but for me the most painful was this exchange:

Prager: You are right that this moral clarity and courage among the predominantly religious does not prove the existence of the biblical God. Nothing can prove God's existence. But it sure is a powerful argument. If society cannot survive without x, there is a good chance x exists.

Harris: No, Dennis, this moral clarity is not a "powerful argument," or even an argument at all; please keep your x's straight. If humanity can't survive without a belief in God, this would only mean that a belief in God exists. It wouldn't, even remotely, suggest that God exists.

Prager: You write: "If humanity can't survive without a belief in God, this would only mean that a belief in God exists. It wouldn't, even remotely, suggest that God exists." This statement is as novel as the one suggesting that Stalin was produced by Judeo-Christian values. It is hard for me to imagine that any fair-minded reader would reach the same conclusion. If we both acknowledge that without belief in God humanity would self-destruct, it is quite a stretch to say that this fact does not "even remotely suggest that God exists." Can you name one thing that does not exist but is essential to human survival?

Prager offers pathetic argument, Harris easily refutes it, and Prager repeats his original nonsensical argument without acknowledging that it had been definitively struck down. Whether this is because he's too dumb to understand it, too blind to see it, or because he has no regard whatsoever for intellectual honesty is anyone's guess. Harris' first message contained the following statement, and Prager certainly delivered on the request:

Against these plain truths religious people have erected a grotesque edifice of myths, obfuscations, half-truths, and wishful thinking. Perhaps you, Dennis, would now like to bring some of that edifice into view.

Bring it into view he did.

A related aspect of this so-called debate that pushed my damn buttons was Prager's transparent dishonesty and his inconsistent wavering in his views towards academia. One day he's bowing in reverence to academic achievement, as if a man's scientific accomplishments somehow suggest that he's incapable of irrationality in other areas (despite a book by Francis Collins that proves otherwise), and the next minute he's dismissing all of academia as being full of intellectually confused PhDs who grow more foolish with every year of exposure to higher education. I have a tough time seeing this as anything other than pandering to his ignorant, anti-intellectual fan base, cultivating the kind of "us-simple-folk vs. those-know-it-all-fancy-pants-idiots" mindset that pervades modern discourse, for which George W. Bush is the poster boy.