Letter to a Christian Nation

Sam Harris' follow-up book to The End of Faith is out.  Just picked up my copy, and he has delivered on the promises I've heard made about this new release.  Unfortunately, the people who need to read this book the most probably won't.

Sam Harris

Thanks Steve.

Ok. It's been about 4 days and I think it's starting to sink in. I think I can type this now.

Steve Irwin isn't romping about anymore.

I've never seen anyone quite like him. I remember the first time I saw him on the tube about a decade ago. My first reaction was "Honey! Come see what they do to convicts in Australia! They hop them up on speed, then toss them out in the wilds!" By the second commercial break, I was a fan.

He was beyond enthusiasm for what he did. His passion could barely be contained by a picture tube. He actually believed in what he did. Well, who doesn't believe in animal conservation? But he was doing it. He was a unique, often imitated but never duplicated sort of fellow.

Well, speaking for myself, I want to thank you for being you Steve. You did good.

"I'll lay my life on the line to save and protect animals."
- Steve, in a recent interview on Animal Planet.


Steve Robert Irwin.
(1962-2006)
Missing you already, mate.

God of the Gaps

To see some arguments that demonstrate the plea to incredulity fallacy to a T, look at one of the sponsoring links google keeps choosing for my blog.

Y-Origins Connection :: Intelligent Design For Everyone

Q-ray Bracelets can hurt you...

...at least, according to the company that peddles them.

These are not magnetic bracelets. Magnet therapy is bullshit. Q-ray uses another line of shit, and it's a yin and yang thing, according to the company's reply to my inquiries.

Now, let's play a little Yin-Yang advocate for a bit.

Yin and Yang, among other things, denote the positive and negative charges in your body, according to this company's R&D Team. (lol) Which is which, I dunno. It doesn't matter. If these two natural forces are present in equal quantities, you're 'balanced' - you'll have good health. And I'm going to speculate that roughly half the population is fairly evenly balanced. I think this is fair. I doubt that more than half of us are suffering from an illness at any given time, and that the average person feels fine at least half of the time.

The bracelets, however, are all 'positively charged', according to the makers. (see where I'm going with this?) So if you're among the half who are not balanced, the assumption is that your positive and negative forces are not equally present. Which force is too high is never suggested. I'm going to claim that it's equally likely that your negatives are too low to your positives being too low. Anyone wanna call me on this, go right ahead. Ok, so far, I've reasoned that 25% of the population are 'negatively challenged', 25% are 'positively challenged' (lol), and the remaining 50% are juuuust right. So, by wearing this bracelet, you have a 25% chance of improving your health, 50% chance of dropping your quality of health somewhat, and a 25% chance of making yourself gravely ill.

Starting to sound like Las Vegas, eh?