Owner: Hell's Handmaiden URL:http://www.hells-handmaiden.com Join Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2007 14:02:09 -0500 Rating:0 Site Description: Politics, philosophy, religion, science... and their collisions with the real world. Site statistics:Click here
Worrying about a nannie state 2007-06-06 09:59:26 I was asked recently, “Do you really want freedoms restricted because it would prevent people from “worrying”?? Whose standard of “worry” do we go by? My grandmother worries about me walking to the mailbox. I wouldn’t want to live under a system that alleviated all of her worries.”
The question is a little misguided, I think. Or misleading. The question really ought to be about the role of government. And yes, I do expect government to alleviate worry, up to a point. That is really its purpose. It is too easy, sometimes, to forget that.
Government exists to protect, or exists as a means for the protection of, the governed from outside attack. That is, it alleviates the fear of foreign invasion. It exists to ensure that contracts are honored even over great distance and between parties with vastly disparate strengths. That is, is alleviates fears of being cheated in business. Government exists to protect citizens from crime and to provide a means of seeking justi
China doesn’t like me 2007-06-05 21:02:01 Looks like Hell’s Handmaiden is blocked in China
, at least according to GreatFireWallofChina.org. I must have said “democracy”, or “freedom”, or “liberty” one too many times. Oh, damn! I did it again.
The Burden of Proof is on the Atheist 2007-06-05 09:28:54 Why worry about the burden of proof… why argue about the burden of proof when all you really plan to do is assert what you want to believe and call it true?
If he does, he may be saying only that he has as much right to take ‘God exists’ as basic as his critic does to take sense data or truths about the world as basic. Perhaps that is all Plantinga wishes to do. The upshot is then to claim that the believer and his critic are in the same boat. They agree on some formal account-that there are basic propositions and propositions derivative from them-but there is no way to adjudicate claims as to what propositions, materialiter loquendo, can function as basic. The skeptic is simply wrong if he thinks some version of empiricism is beyond dispute or, worse, that it is part of the formal theory.
Why the Burden
of Proof
is on the Atheist
Ah… yes, Plantinga– champion of the modern Biblical Irrationalist, ever the goto man for nonsense. And, of course, the ugly
Churchill had “Never Surrender” 2007-06-04 09:14:07 In US politics, the battle cry seems to be &ldquo
;Never, never, never tell the truth&rdquo
;.
Paul: “Have you ever read the reasons they attacked us? They attacked us because we’ve been over there; we’ve been bombing Iraq for ten years…”
Questioner Wendell Goler: “Are you suggesting we invited the 9/11 attack, sir?”
Paul: “I’m suggesting that we listen to the people who attacked us and the reason they did it. They don’t come here to attack us because we’re rich and we’re free. They come and they attack us because we’re over there.”
Emo Mom - All God’s children got angst… GET OVER
Ron Paul states the bleeding obvious, and it is a scandal. Paul’s fellow politicians swooped in like sharks. Reporters had a field day. EmoMom suggests he’ll invite Bin Laden to the White House for tea. And he did what?
He said that if you beat the crap out of a people for fifty to a hundred and fifty years, depending upon how you calculate and which r Read more:Churchill
, Surrender
Machiavellian Genius 2007-06-09 18:46:35 I hadn’t thought about it much, really. Places like FaceBook and MySpace annoy me something awful. But if you were a plotting, scheming, conspiracy-theory style, dictatorship minded, villanous government official then something like FaceBook or MySpace would be sheer Machiavellian Genius– The dark and ugly side of Facebook.
Guns on campus 2007-06-08 10:04:32 Sheriff Jim Alderden of Larimer County, Colorado– also home to Colorado State University where I’ll soon begin a master’s program– has published an editorial in which he states that “One of the real tragedies of the situation at Virginia Tech is that misguided administrators created a gun-free zone” and in which he applauds CSU’s policy of allowing concealed firearms on campus, saying that the administrators “recognize that a firearm in the hands of a law abiding citizens who frequent the campus is not a risk but could be a deterrent to violent criminal activity.”
The idea is that if the bad guy starts shooting, the good guys can shoot back and put a stop to it. It may well play out that way sometimes. In fact, given enough crazed mass killers, it is bound to play out that way eventually. How often it would work out that neatly is a matter of debate, and one that is tangential to my point this time around.
The sheriff attributes the
Habeas Corpus 2007-06-07 08:59:31 Democrats.com is asking for support for S. 185, otherwise know as the Restore HabeasCorpus
act.
In short, S. 185 strikes…
(e)(1) No court, justice, or judge shall have jurisdiction to hear or consider an application for a writ of habeas corpus filed by or on behalf of an alien detained by the United States who has been determined by the United States to have been properly detained as an enemy combatant or is awaiting such determination.
`(2) Except as provided in paragraphs (2) and (3) of section 1005(e) of the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 (10 U.S.C. 801 note), no court, justice, or judge shall have jurisdiction to hear or consider any other action against the United States or its agents relating to any aspect of the detention, transfer, treatment, trial, or conditions of confinement of an alien who is or was detained by the United States and has been determined by the United States to have been properly detained as an enemy combatant or is awaiting such determinatio Read more:Habeas Corpus
‘1′ for English 2007-06-12 18:38:04 Ever heard of Josephine Alicia Saenz, Esperanza Diaz Ceballos, or Maria del Pilar Pallette? Read more:lsquo
, prime
, English
A Tale of a Talk 2007-06-12 14:58:39 … about abortions from Mrs. Robinson Catherine Durkin Robinson from OutinLeftField, a blog I only just tripped over.
The weird logic of Gay Hate 2007-06-12 10:37:51 So I’ve gotten a few angry emails and pissy comments from some presumably bull-dyke lesbians regarding my debut message about why shaving your vagina is a pain in the ass. As a matter of fact, I think they might have actually intended to hurt my feelings. Instead, all they did was prove my point that lesbians are simply the most retarded, cunt-backward creatures in the world, and give me even more hope that in the coming apocalypse they will be destroyed in — ironically — balls of fire.
Why I hate Lesbians, Part 1
Lesbians strive to deviate from normal society so much it’s almost nauseating. They cut their hair short to single themselves out as butch, they put rainbow stickers on the back of their Miatas, and those with nice enough tits to make it to celebrity status broadcast their sexuality (or lack thereof) to every corner of the world whenever possible. And amusingly enough, those who fit within this box-eater stereotype are doing just what they shun the mos
Dad’s Right to not Abort 2007-06-11 23:59:21 I sympathize with some arguments for allowing a man some legally recognized say in decisions to abort a fetus, but Rapists’ Fatherhood Right
s? I think not.
The Middle East is Ripe to Explode? Really? 2007-06-11 23:49:13 I get Ken Salazar’s newsletter once in awhile. Salazar is a Senator from Colorado, and while I’ve not decided whether or not I am a fan, he does say some things I like. For example:
I worked to promote accountability and a new direction of our efforts in Iraq; ensure adequate armor and other resources to better protect our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan; develop a coherent, long-term plan for fighting terrorism at home; improve federal cooperation with local emergency officials, especially in the area of interoperable communications; help craft a comprehensive strategy to better secure our borders, enforce our immigration laws, and address the economic reality of undocumented immigrants in our country; ensure the destruction of our nation’s chemical weapons stockpile, much of which is located right here in Colorado; and help local law enforcement with resources and training to fight the methamphetamine scourge, drug trafficking, and other challenges facing our country’s Read more:Explode
More Firepower? Less Crime? 2007-06-10 22:22:35 In an article in the Journal of Legal Studies, John Lott and David Mustard present evidence that when ordinary citizens are allowed to carry concealed weapons, some forms of crime drop. The argument that guns reduce crime is not new. Gun lobbies have been using the purported connected for quite some time now and gun manufacturers have been using it to sell product, though as of 2001 the public was unconvinced. John Lott then went on to publish, in 2000, a book titled “More Guns, Less Crime: Understanding Crime and Gun Control Laws” in which the same arguments are presented to a more lay audience. His book also incorporates some responses to critics. That book is probably the single most cited source in arguments in favor of concealed carry legislation, and could possibly change the public perception of gun control.
Now…
Take a look at this from Gun-Nuttery. Take your time. Watch it through. Think about it.
Then take a look at this.
The nation’s homicide rate r
Extraordinary Renditions 2007-06-10 10:12:22 “We learn that there were two main prisons, in Poland and in Romania; that at least 70 people were kept in detention where they were interrogated, i.e. tortured, without any recourse to lawyers or the Red Cross; and that among the detained was a child of seven years old. CIA agents reported directly to the national executives’ office - Nato countries offered blanket exemptions to usual legal process under anti-terror laws.” — Blog of Funk: ExtraordinaryRenditions
: Prisons Identified
What Would Jesus Tolerate? 2007-06-15 10:49:19 Damn sure wouldn’t tolerate you! Not according to Dave Daubenmire.
Why is it that the media wants to focus on Christian leaders who are so accepting of everyone? Is there an agenda at work here? Are they trying to show us that Christian men are tolerant and loving of everyone and everything? WWJT? What would Jesus
tolerate?
Dave Daubenmire — Why did Jesus Come?
Jesus, you see, came to “destroy the works of the devil”. None of this ‘being nice’ BS. “Nice” doesn’t even appear in the Bible, god-damnit! Oops… strike that “God’s name in vain” part. Hmmm… come to think of it, God being non-existent as he is, taking his name at all, under any circumstances, is taking his name in vain. My God! We’re doomed!
Oh… and “He didn’t come to die for you.” He came to kick ass– your ass, you sinful bastard.
It isn’t that I care about the theology, per se. It’s that this th
Inflamatory Language. Rape. Court. 2007-06-14 14:26:38 I understand that our justice system is biased toward the accused due to concepts like ‘the presumption of innocence’ and ‘better a guilty man go free than an innocent man be jailed’. I can’t argue with those ideals, broadly speaking, but they should not be translated into bias against the victim, as it seem they have been in at least one case. Read more:Court
Was the Chicken Alive? 2007-06-14 10:37:52 I’ve read a number of time about Mike the Chicken
. I remember his story from when I was a child. He is something of a legend, really. He even has his own statue.
Mike the Chicken– rooster really– lived on a farm in Fruita, Colorado in the 1940s. There was nothing special about Mike during his early years. I wonder if he even had a name. One day, though, Mike had his head chopped off. This, also, is none too unusual for a chicken, but Mike did not go quietly into that long goodnight. Mike walked around for another 18 months.
He couldn’t see. He couldn’t eat or drink unassisted. I imagine he still had a sense of touch, but I wonder to what extent. He certainly couldn’t think. He’d lost that ability to an ax. All Mike had was a brain stem, and thus retained a tolerable set of basic reflexes. He couldn’t have possessed any higher– to the extent that such can be applied to a chicken– cognitive capacity, however. That capacity, appa Read more:Alive
Map of Intolerance 2007-06-13 23:18:12 The US ties with most of the world on this one but you’d think we could do better than South Africa. I remember apartheid. I never thought I’d see that nation trump us on a civil rights issue.
Read more:Intolerance
GOP Bloggers… oh, and the Attorney General 2007-06-13 20:09:20 Why is it that so many right wing blogs go for names that ring of ‘bossy’, ‘dogmatic’, ‘go tell it on the mountain’, and just plain ‘arrogant’? Take, for example, The Cold Hearted Truth, Great Minds Think Right, The Right Stuff, Obviously Right (Because we’re Right, obviously), and The Bull Speaks. Doesn’t this violate the dictum that the comedian not laugh at his own jokes? I mean, if you’ve got to tell people right in the headline that you are right about being right and trump up the truthiness of your ‘truths’ by telling everyone that those truths are true, then maybe you just aren’t as right about it as you think? Could be? Maybe?
You don’t see those kinds of gung-ho, chest beating blog titles at the Independent Bloggers Alliance or at Liberal Oasis. You find some tongue-in-cheek there. You find some ’shock value’. But little of this ‘I’m a great big silverback hear me Read more:hellip
, Attorney
, General
, Attorney General
Blogs, and creationists, for Global Warming Ended in 1998 2007-06-19 11:30:27 Both Mark Noonan of Blogs
for Bush and DaveScot of Uncommon Descent reference the same Bob Carter article as evidence that global warming just ain’t happening.
The salient facts are these. First, the accepted global average temperature statistics used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change show that no ground-based warming has occurred since 1998. Oddly, this eight-year-long temperature stasis has occurred despite an increase over the same period of 15 parts per million (or 4 per cent) in atmospheric CO2.
High price for load of hot air
It would have been interesting to have a direct link to those “accepted global average temperature statistics used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change” because, funny, it doesn’t look that way to me. A graph from page 6 of the IPCC’s 2007 Summary for Policymakers (PDF) looks to be in direct contradiction to Carter’s statements. And so does this:
It doesn’t take a lot of thought to recogniz Read more:Global
We are done with them, so why help? 2007-06-19 09:26:56 By this spring, the number of vets from Afghanistan and Iraq who had sought help for post-traumatic stress would fill four Army divisions, some 45,000 in all.
Cemex. Lyons. Dust in the wind. 2007-06-19 09:20:47 Not 45 minutes from where I live is a cement plant run by Cemex. I first heard of Cemex– I first noticed Cemex, at least– about a year ago because they were petitioning to burn tires in their kilns.
This weekend a group of activists popped up at my door asking for support in their campaign against Cemex’s Lyon’s plant. There is quite a bit written about this online already, so I’m not going to be terribly verbose.
Frankly, I tend to dislike activists even if I support their cause. I find them reactionary and one-sided, unbalanced in their presentation and generally partisan despite the facts. I’m not going to talk about the people who showed up at my door. To be honest, I avoided them and let my girlfriend and her mother chat. I did look into the cause, though.
Cemex has been running a dirty plant in Lyons
, and they’ve been running it dirty for quite awhile now. The evidence for that is overwhelming. It is barely even worth my time to provid
Blogs for Soldiers don’t do Bad Things 2007-06-18 11:24:25 Coming on the heals of my post about Gen. Taguba’s Report and coming on the heals of years of Pentagon, Defense Department, and Bush Administrations lies, cover-ups and scandals, Mark Noonan argues with fabulous irony that we ought to trust the Multi-National Force Iraq news service because, well, the soldiers have been given orders not to lie.
The MSM has all too often been proven liars - meanwhile, the soldier-reporters assigned to MNF-I are under orders not to lie…and they’ll get in a lot more trouble if they do than, say, Dan Rather got with his “fake but accurate” news…MNF-I is just more worthy of our trust.
Blogs
for Bush: The White House Of The Blogosphere: A Word to Our Lefty Readership
Truly staggering. Read more:Soldiers
, Bad Things
I described a naked detainee… 2007-06-18 10:57:05 The New York Times, The New Yorker, and The Washington Post all have recent articles on Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba, the man who investigated Abu Ghraib.
In the meeting, the officials professed ignorance about Abu Ghraib. “Could you tell us what happened?” Wolfowitz asked. Someone else asked, “Is it abuse or torture?” At that point, Taguba recalled, “I described a naked detainee lying on the wet floor, handcuffed, with an interrogator shoving things up his rectum, and said, ‘That’s not abuse. That’s torture.’ There was quiet.”
Annals of National Security: The General’s Report
Hmmm&hellip
; “things” shoved up his rectum? Why that isn’t torture! That’s just another wild night at the Republican National Convention (complete with the blanket denial).
Taguba made the mistake of telling the world “that ‘numerous incidents of sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses were inflicted on several detainees’ at Abu Ghraib by soldi
An Endangered River 2007-06-17 19:14:56 This is why I worry about global warming.
“This may be the first place on Earth where global warming could hurt our very religion. We are becoming an endangered species of Hindus,” said Veer Bhadra Mishra, an engineer and director of the Varanasi-based Sankat Mochan Foundation, an organization that advocates for the preservation of the Ganges. “The melting glaciers are a terrible thing. We have to ask ourselves, who are the custodians of our culture if we can’t even help our beloved Ganga?”
A Sacred River
Endangered by Global Warming - washingtonpost.com
Why am I worried about the destruction of a religion? That doesn’t sound like me. The collapse– the rapid collapse– of a religion due to outside forces rather than to willful abandonment of the faith by the faithful would cause some nasty disruption which would effect all of us. Besides, that global warming could catastrophically effect a religion is an angle I hadn’t considered.
It looks as though I’ve won something. 2007-06-17 16:05:19 Justin, from Politics and Religion, has created a new web log award. It looks as though
I am one of the first set of five winners and I am happy to be on the list.
This award is given to Blogs that demonstrate respect towards others, research and consideration of opposing views, free-flowing conversation with commenters, and an overall spirit of civility and openness. It is time we recognize such commendable behavior on the internet.
Open Mind Award « Politics & Religion
Well, I aim for respect and civility, though I fail more than I’d like, and I always hope for conversation with people of opposing views. Really, there is no other good reason for this blog.
It is hard to catch one’s owns mistakes, though. So I stick my neck out, hoping someone will bite. Argument, you see, is not competitive. It is not a clash of armies. Everyone is on the same side in the search for the truth. Or, everyone should be, otherwise someone is just being dogmatic.
Why the hell would you wan Read more:something
Colorado’s Cancer 2007-06-17 11:38:46 I’ve been in Colorado
only a few years now. I am still not always sure which city I am in at any given time. This may seem a bit strange. It may seem that I am a bit strange, not knowing what city I am in, but I haven’t always had this problem. Generally, I’ve always known, pretty much, where I was. Not so any longer.
Now, a warning. I am going to linking to some very large (mostly PDF) files. Click at your own risk.
Let’s take a look at a few city maps. I spent most of my life in Texas, so lets pick a few from there. Let’s take Houston (PDF) , San Antonio (PDF), the capital city of Austin, and the college town of San Marcos. I don’t pretend that these cities are representative. These are just the cities I know. Honestly, I’m not sure what the national trend is.
What strikes me about these cities? Generally speaking, they are round, especially when extra-territorial jurisdictions are included. Maybe ’round’ is the wrong word. Maybe Read more:Cancer
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