Saturday, August 06, 2005

What it’s really about

Responding to a Matt Yglesias Intellignet Design: who cares? post, Jesse Taylor at Pandegon offers up a quick primer on the evolution/creationism debate:

The real point isn’t the focus on evolution vs. ID, but instead the propogandizing of valid science and inquiry as “afraid” of challenges. It’s the same philosophy that drives abstinence-only courses, Bible classes and any number of conservative “innovations” that make education such a pain in the collective ass.

[...]

Long story short, it’s a full court press to create a vision of the educational system as fearful and intolerant because they won’t let you come and say that calling an apple an elephant is equally as valid as calling it an apple. Enough people begin to think that these poor souls are being oppressed, you create a groundswell of support for “alternative ideas” in schools, and in turn you may not be able to teach creationism, but you can teach that condoms fail 65% of the time, or that the Bible is an equal fount of scientific reason to Newton, Galileo or Einstein.

PLEASE SEE ALSO: They learned it from us, let’s learn from them.

Constitutional hypocrisy

Digby’s on a roll! So many good posts. There’s this on Patrick “The Terminator” Fitzgerald and this on “Press The Meat” Tim Russert and this on what liberals need do in light of Frist and Santorum on stem cells and Intelligent Design (I agree 100%).

Great posts each.

But this one, with gratitude and my apologies (for posting the whole thing here), I had to quote:

Good For Thee But Not For Me

The United States’ envoy in Iraq delivered a warning on Saturday to Shi’ite Islamist leaders, propelled to power by U.S. forces, not to use a new constitution to impose discriminatory laws by majority rule.

Hmmmmm.

JOINT RESOLUTION Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States relating to marriage .

Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled (two-thirds of each House concurring therein), That the following article is proposed as an amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which shall be valid to all intents and purposes as part of the Constitution when ratified by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several States within seven years after the date of its submission for ratification:

“Article --

“SECTION 1. Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman. Neither this Constitution or the constitution of any State, nor state or federal law, shall be construed to require that marital status or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon unmarried couples or groups.”

2 straight men get married - to each other

Kate calls it a “consequence that should have been obvious.” From the Toronto Sun:

The proposal came last Monday on the patio of a Toronto bar amid shock and laughter from their friends. But the two—both of whom were previously married and both of whom are still looking for a good woman to love—insist that after the humour subsided, a real issue lies at the heart of it all.

“There are significant tax implications that we don’t think the government has thought through,” Pinn said.

It seems to me that 2 straight men could, too, apply for domestic partner benefits. Marriage presents no new issue. If it was thought through for domestic partnership, let’s do that; if it wasn’t thought through for domestic partnership, let’s start thinking.

Kate’s conclusion:

Having convinced a majority of Canadian MP’s that the “ability to procreate” isn’t a defining characteristic of “marriage”, tell me - -what’s so damned special about “love”?

Which reminds me: I went to a very conservative Baptist wedding last weekend. I paid close attention to the text of the ceremony. There was nothing, nada, not one word, about children. Lots and lots about love.

I was also interested to hear that the vows of the woman precisely matched the vows of the man. No “have and obey” here. The vows, I thought, would be fine and wonderful as they were, word for word, for my own marriage, to a man.

Wikipedia editorial policy unchanged

Jimbo Wales, guest posting at Larry Lessig’s blog, says:

But a fair amount of my time was spent this morning trying to complain about a rather absurd story published by Reuters which claims that I’ve announced some major changes to Wikipedia editorial policy. It’s a fine story except for the tiny detail of being completely false.

Of course slashdot and a ton of newspapers and websites picked up the story and ran with it, causing a fair amount of speculation based on, well, absolutely nothing.

Here’s the source of his consternation.

And then there were two

I have been posting lately about the cable companies getting rich from broadband-driven monopoly profits while skimping on the product as the once powerful AOL struggles to reinvent itself in the new order and our broadband sucks.

We knew that the requirement that phone companies open up their lines to competitors so that there could be competition among providers on the single phone line going into your house was doomed. Now it’s dead:

Handing a significant regulatory victory to the Bell companies, the Federal Communications Commission said the carriers no longer had to provide rival Internet service providers with access to their lines at reduced rates. [I would call them “regulated rates” or “reasonable rates” requiring that phone companies not set the price so high that no one would buy.]

The commission said the move would foster competition by putting phone companies on an even footing with cable companies and other sellers of Internet service and would provide more incentive for phone companies to upgrade their networks and offerings.

Let there be no doubt that regulators are in cahoots with the belief that a clean orderly market with only, say, 2 competitors saves us from destructive competition.

Lucky us, we can choose whether to buy our internet service from the local phone monopoly or the local cable monopoly (neither of which is locally owned or responsive).

I count on regulators to set the rules of the game, making sure there’s a level playing field and protecting us from market excesses.

They see themselves as hands off in that area, believing the market will work on its own (though they then set terms that are contrary to competition and innovation), and meddle instead in program content (please, oh fearless FCC, save me from the Super Bowl boob!) where I would rule hands off.