Links (most recent first) that caught my eye, but did not warrant full-blown blog entries ….
- I got on my soapbox today. :Apex Book Company – On violence in video games, and restricting same from sale to minors.
- DC Women Kicking Ass – The real DC story yesterday? More nails in the coffin of the direct market – Not particularly pleased at the direct comic book market further fading away, but it’s a reasonable interpretation of the events.
- Favorite Cover Artists Countdown # 5: James Jean – James Jean’s art on Fables covers has been (appropriately) fabulous.
- Shariah justice – Some interesting info on Islamic law, from an historic perspective.
- Better Book That Italy Trip: House of Gladiators Collapses, Monuments In Danger – TIME NewsFeed – All the more reason to be glad we’re going there next spring.
- Futurity.org – No explosion of skeletal animals – Cool. And nice example of the iterative discovery process of science, where “received knowledge” can be challenged and, if appropriate, updated.
- NGC 4452: An Extremely Thin Galaxy – What strikes me is all the other galaxies — GALAXIES! — sprinkled liberally in the background. “It’s a great big universe, and we’re all really puny …”
- Justice – Calvin and Hobbes for November 11, 2010 – Yeah …
- Axelrod signals surrender on tax policy – “Dems could have brought the package to the floor and dared the GOP to vote against tax cuts. I was actually looking forward to the headline: ‘Republicans kill tax cut compromise; higher rates kick in Jan. 1.’ Apparently, that’s not to be.” Why the Democratic leadership (especially the White House) is unwilling to actually LEAD, rather than simply cave, is a maddening mystery to me.
- Pentagon report to bolster DADT repeal – I have no doubt the GOP minority in the Senate will find more straws to grasp at to block the repeal, or at least hold it up long enough that the Democratic majority there will back away from it. Idjits.
- CoD: Black Ops commercial “There’s a soldier in all of us.” – I saw this yesterday and laughed and laughed. Almost made me want to go out and get the game.
- Cash Only – The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan – Those who dislike cash payments — from the Right or the Left — do so with a crypto-authoritarian bent (we know better than they how they should spend their money), which does nothing to build a wise economy and, like most economic dabbling, creates as many problems as it solves. It would be interesting to ask those skeptics how many of them would prefer to have their employers decide their own home budget.
- Earth Turns On its Christmas Lights For ISS Astronauts [Space]: Kat Hannaford
- ACTA will force your ISP to censor your work if someone lodges an unsupported trademark claim – Because what we need is more power in the hands of corporations to, at whim, take down Internet material they don’t like.
- Secret Brooklyn subway station revealed – Lovely. Waiting for Richard Mayhew to wander past …
- A Radical Will-to-Stupidity – One would think there might be a middle ground — I believe X by faith, but cannot prove it, THUS I will not expect you to believe it on my say-so. Or I believe X by faith, and will act motivated by that belief, BUT that doesn’t mean I engage in snake handling or declaring the sky is yellow not blue when my eyes tell me otherwise. While some theists (et al.) take understandable offense at those who get in their face about their faith, far too many go beyond that to a screeching defensiveness that not only tries to hold onto their faith-based beliefs, but extend them into arenas where they simply do not belong (e.g., debate over climate change).
- Misconceptions – Full Frontal Nerdity by Aaron Williams – I first played in college out of a couple of the small Original D&D booklets, and we had no descriptions to go with the monster stats. Which was fine, we just made them up. The Ear Seeker was, as I recall, particularly imaginative.
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17. I think you meant to link to this comic.
I think you are correct.
A middle ground? Would this at all work:
I think in the debate about faith, it is often overlooked that seems to be a clear distinction between (1) having faith that is incompatible with logic and evidence, and (2) having faith that does not violate logic and evidence.
Faith that climate change is not occurring, or that evolution does not happen, goes against logic and the weight of evidence. But faith that a deity exists does not necessarily go against logic and the weight of evidence.
At least, that’s how I see it, Dave. And I think of that position as some sort of a middle ground.
That seems perfectly reasonable (and much of what I was trying much more clumsily to say).