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29 June 2003  

The Faces of Victory

Of all the spectacles at the parade today, this is the sight I kept returning to. Jonah Goldberg is right: the gays have won.

10:39 PM |

And It Gets Better

As the Jayson Blair scandal has demonstrated, they are getting very lax at the New York Times. Now we have more evidence: in a blatant violation of their style guide, today a full-length article about an Ayn Rand devotee appears in the Magazine and it contains not one single sneer.

10:45 AM |

28 June 2003  

Pride

It's Pride Weekend here in Toronto and in addition to the equal, legal same-sex marriages that started taking place on 10 June (the demand for which City Hall has had to remain open all weekend to accomodate), and the US Supreme Court ruling making legal what gay people do in their bedrooms, I have my own personal reason to celebrate: This morning I broke 20 minutes in the 5K. Happy Pride!

02:03 PM |

27 June 2003  

Is "Bright" Beyond the Pale?

What is behind all of this outrage at Richard Dawkins' "Brights" article? I mean, I can see someone finding the whole idea a bit silly, and perhaps the implied antonyms make it a bit ill-mannered, but those evaluations would hardly warrant the scorn-fest we're seeing. As Dean Esmay notes, "a lot of people [are] angrily denouncing a very trivial thing. I find that fascinating." Dawkins is being labeled an arrogant boor by theists and atheists alike. Worse, all of them are on an ideological axis of the blogosphere where I usually place myself. It's more than a little ironic that this axis identifies itself as "anti-idiotarian." In fact, all but one of the sites linked above who find "bright" so uncouth a term appear, unashamedly, on this list. Really now, if you're OK with explicitly calling your political opponents idiots, whence comes your high dudgeon over someone merely suggesting it in another realm?

That realm — religion — does appear to be the key to this mystery. The memo that Dawkins didn't get is the one that said religious beliefs are off limits for criticism, or at least off limits for the kind of bluntly negative characterizations of opposing views that one is allowed to throw around liberally in the rough-and-tumble fray of any other domain. If a tacit proscription of this kind were being enforced in a different ideological camp, it might be called political correctness.

Whatever it is, I'm not playing along. Belief in religion may have been excusable thousands of years ago as mankind first tried to make sense of the world. In the 21st century, it just betrays a lack of clear thinking. And no one has explained to me why this particular brand of irrationality should get a free pass.

At the risk of appearing to make a "some of my best friends..." kind of qualification, I have to add that none of the above means I regard all religious people as stupid. First of all, some people don't take their religion that seriously — it's more cultural than anything else. Others are predominantly sharp individuals who have for some reason compartmentalized religion as a logic-free zone. They literally don't practice what they preach, and in this case I'm all for it. None of this changes the fact that qua religious believer, they've made a mistake in my opinion, an obvious one and a dangerous one.

Since a wickens.ca post without a mention of Ayn Rand is like a Corner post without a gay reference, let me note finally that Dawkins is in good company having people all aghast at the idea of him stepping over this invisible line of religion-respecting decorum. It's reported that Ayn Rand's first words upon meeting William F. Buckley were "You're too intelligent to believe in God." Buckley wasn't as flattered as he ought to have been.

12:07 AM |

25 June 2003  

When Mail Merge Goes Bad

Apparently, I don't rise even to the level of "just a number" with these guys.

08:13 PM |

Goddess Knows

Here's one deity I can get behind (even if she doesn't have permalinks; see the "6/25/03" entry). (Via InstaPundit.)

04:00 PM |

23 June 2003  

Mark Geeks Out

I'm blogging this from my iPAQ while sitting on my living room window sill, completely untethered. My new wireless CF card arrived tonight and I am loving it. I think I wasted my money on the router, though: three other networks show up in my list, only one of which seems to require authentication. My neighbors are geeks (if not terribly security-conscious ones), too, it would appear.

09:05 PM |

Blatch Joins Grope & Flail

The Globe has a new staff member and will have at least one new subscriber soon. The question is whether I can justify keeping my Post subscription. If Steyn is officially gone (is he?!), the decision will be easier.

12:53 PM |

22 June 2003  

Bright and Gay, That's Me

Richard Dawkins has a bright idea for rebranding those of us whose "worldview is free of supernatural and mystical elements." (Via ALD.)

01:11 PM |

16 June 2003  

The Blog That Is His

Check out this new blog from one of the smartest guys I've ever had the pleasure to work with.

10:41 PM |

Help, I've Got WSP!

Sorry, all you "marginalized racialized people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, queer or questioning", but this U of T event has passed already. Somehow, I doubt it would have been much fun anyway. Not that I could have found out for myself:

ALL LGBTQ and questioning people of colour are welcome. People with white skinned privilege, please respect this request.

10:12 PM |

12 June 2003  

Or Philip, Perhaps

From the NY Daily News:

At least one member of Martha Stewart's family isn't in tears over her predicament. Her brother, Frank Kostyra, says: "Jail will be good for her, because it will humble her." The 58-year-old Kostyra tells this week's National Enquirer, "It will mellow her and instill in her a more sincere, heartfelt experience towards others."

09:12 PM |

CBC Bias Watch

Even the fact that the Guardian, which originated the Wolfowitz Iraq-was-all-about-oil quote misrepresentation, has admitted their error does not cause the CBC to shrink from participating in its perpetuation. No, in their warped world, the truth and an outright falsehood are merely different opinions. According to today's National Post:

Last Thursday, the national [CBC Radio] morning show [The Current] credulously reported the original Guardian story -- even though it had already been widely discredited. Numerous listeners wrote in to point out the mistake. But Current producers simply could not admit they had broadcast a phony report. Rather than fess up, as we urged in an editorial last Friday, they provided a vague "clarification," noting only that the German reports of Mr. Wolfowitz's speech were disputed by U.S. officials. "There are two different versions of Wolfowitz's quotation," the host said, citing an e-mail the show had received. Which "version" was correct? Listeners were left to wonder.

Of course, there is no doubt which version is correct. As the Guardian reported, the U.S. Department of Defence's version was precise, while the version reported by The Current was "wrong." The Current producers knew this full well. But apparently, the prospect of Mr. Wolfowitz validating the left's cherished war-for-oil conspiracy was simply too tantalizing for them to disavow.

10:32 AM |

11 June 2003  

Dirty Thirties

OK, that was the easy part. The hard part is finding someone to marry. Unfortunately, this site is of no help for an "old fart" of 37 (who, it must be admitted however, does "need to be getting out more").

01:30 PM |

6 June 2003  

Creative Differences

Agenda Bender responds on the topic of Lawrence Lessig's copyright abandonment proposal. Lessig's blog also has some back-and-forth with PhotoDude (Reid Stott).

I am sympathetic to the goal, but am still uncomfortable with the method. If I create something, I think it should be mine — no if, ands, or buts — until I die, at the very least. I'm no lawyer, nor even someone well-acquainted with this issue, but it doesn't sound like an unreasonable starting point does it?

01:10 PM |

5 June 2003  

Newspaper Notes

What is this, Integrity in Journalism Day? Raines resigns and The Guardian corrects the record. Kudos all around.

12:26 PM |

4 June 2003  

Dowdism Spreads

Lileks writes today about how outright falsehoods can become commonly-believed "facts" (a phenomenon Josephine Tey referred to synecdochically as Tonypandy). Here's another example: Paul Wolfowitz has admitted that the war in Iraq was all about oil.

Oil was the main reason for military action against Iraq, a leading White House hawk has claimed, confirming the worst fears of those opposed to the US-led war.

The US deputy defence secretary, Paul Wolfowitz - who has already undermined Tony Blair's position over weapons of mass destruction (WMD) by describing them as a "bureaucratic" excuse for war - has now gone further by claiming the real motive was that Iraq is "swimming" in oil.

The United States hopes to end the nuclear standoff with North Korea by putting economic pressure on the impoverished nation, U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said Saturday.

North Korea would respond to economic pressure, unlike Iraq, where military action was necessary because the country's oil money was propping up the regime, Wolfowitz told delegates at the second annual Asia Security Conference in Singapore.

"The country is teetering on the edge of economic collapse," Wolfowitz said. "That I believe is a major point of leverage."

"The primary difference between North Korea and Iraq is that we had virtually no economic options in Iraq because the country floats on a sea of oil," he said.

(Via MetaFilter)

Update: Andrew Sullivan points to The Belgravia Dispatch which has more on this, including a Wolfowitz quote from the transcript of another, more recent press conference:

The notion that the war was ever about oil is a complete piece of nonsense. If the United States had been interested in Iraq's oil, it would have been very simple 12 years ago or any time in the last 12 years to simply do a deal with Saddam Hussein. We probably could have had any kind of preferred customer status we wanted if we'd been simply willing to drop our real concerns. Our real concerns focused on the threat posed by that country -- not only its weapons of mass destruction, but also its support for terrorism and, most importantly, the link between those two things.

02:20 PM |

Lileks Speaks

Have you been pronouncing "Lileks" wrong, too?

10:56 AM |

3 June 2003  

Copywrong

Agenda Bender says I should sign this petition advocating a law that would require a copyright holder to pay $1 to maintain ownership of their work beyond 50 years. PhotoDude does, too, but I think he's less serious.

Read where the petition says, “This legislation would strengthen the public domain without burdening copyright owners,” then imagine me at the age of 76, sorting through hundreds of images, trying to decide which ones I can afford to shell out a retirement buck for in order to retain the copyright, then dealing with the paperwork to file. And wondering why my property is subject to transference when the property of other 76 year olds is not.

Then go sign his petition.

11:07 PM |

1 June 2003  

Convention Confidential

The Canadian Oxymoronic Party leadership convention was held this weekend (Colby Cosh has a few paragraphs on the event). The favored candidate, Peter MacKay finally won in a fourth-ballot contest against his remaining rival, Jim Prentice, but only after promising protectionist opponent David Orchard that NAFTA's effects on Canada would be reviewed by a panel whose participants Orchard would have a hand in selecting. This has understandably not gone over well in the party that orchestrated the passage of NAFTA.

But what has my attention is a quote on the controversy from Scott Brison, another MacKay opponent. Brison, it is not irrelevant to mention, is gay.

"It seems more like rough trade than free trade. I think that Peter was willing to cut a deal that Jim (Prentice) wasn't willing to cut," Brison said.

"This is a very strange business we're in."

02:31 PM |