Posts by WH
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Dawkins too closely resembles Ann Coulter for mine - glib, bitter, divisive, and arrogant. This isn't to say Dawkins is wrong however, even if I personally consider his doubts to be more illuminating than his certainties:
DAWKINS: There could be something incredibly grand and incomprehensible and beyond our present understanding.
COLLINS: That's God.
The choice Dawkins poses between science and religion is a false dichotomy, and not a particularly sophisticated one IMO. I think his take on religion collapses to a low quality straw man argument - even if his conclusion, that there is no God, may ultimately be the right one.
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Its good to see the American people decide for themselves that the Republican Revolution was a mistake. Awesome.
It now falls to the Democrats to try and fix things, and I guess the hard work begins today. There is already a long list of things to do - among them balancing the budget, reforming the institutionalised corruption that is campaign financing, and developing policy that isn't motivated by an irrational aversion to the public sector.
And, as Al Gore has said, perhaps borrowing money from China to buy oil from the Middle East isn't a great an idea either. Alternative fuels offer the US a chance to reduce carbon emissions while advancing their geo-strategic objectives. Maybe a policy that offers something for everyone?
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Interesting statistic from the Nelson/Harris CNN link that Alastair posted:
Breakdown by HOW GEORGE W. BUSH IS HANDLING HIS JOB
(Proportion of voters) Voted Nelson/Voted Harris
Strongly Approve (25%) 23% 76%
Somewhat Approve (20%) 35% 63%
Somewhat Disapprove (12%) 78% 21%
Strongly Disapprove (42%) 94% 4%Early doors I suppose, but lets hope this holds.
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Things seem to be coming together for the Democrats. After two 50/50 presidential elections, it looks like they are finally going to clinch a majority in a branch of the US government. From what I've read in the US media, this seems to represent a confluence of at least three factors:
Firstly, the Democrats' revised national strategy is pairing socially conservative candidates with socially conservative districts (fixing whatever has been the matter with Kansas).
Secondly, the US establishment (as opposed to the critics of that establishment) has concluded that Bush's presidency has been a disaster, helping move political independents to the left.
Thirdly, the religious right is slowly becoming disillusioned with the Republicans, although I suspect that the late pickup in Republican fortunes has a lot to do with the fears of these voters being preyed upon.
I hope the Democrats can ultimately dismantle this last bastion of Republican structural electoral advantage. I'd wager that this means providing left wing religious alternatives, and not, as onegoodmove would have it, sending Richard Dawkins on a southern state book tour.
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Tse Ming is right to say that Simon's article does not contain evidence for the claim that there is support for the Mufti's comments within New Zealand's Islamic community.
However, I am unpersuaded by her implication that the Mufti of New Zealand and Australia is to Islam as Garth George is to the science of climate change.
It won't surprise anybody to learn that Garth George does actually represent a large number of more literally-minded, Republican-voting Christians. Without wasting space parsing the Mufti's remarks (or his subsequent clarifications of them) it strikes me that people might be forgiven for assuming that the head of Australia's Islamic community made his remarks in exactly that capacity. I think it is good to see people publically distance themselves from his comments.
Clearly what this problem needs is more gay sex and crystal meth.
"I know this is obvious and not terribly witty, but it is really objectionable to randomly pick out crazy talk by idiots and present them as valid representations of collective group opinions – and to consistently do this on Muslim issues is unfair"
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/82995203-1D5E-4706-A6A2-1B3DBA61342E.htm
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/27/AR2006102700239.html
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Shane Bond yorker to Adam Gilchrist in game 8 of the VB series is my favourite single piece of international cricket. Bondy is a champion.