My New Year’s Dream

I don’t believe in New Year’s resolutions—they’re always so narrow and boring. I’d rather advance some bigger goals.

When I was a young fellow, and my father was teaching me how to swing a bat, he’d tell me I shouldn’t aim to hit the ball, I should try to swing through it. When he was teaching me how to play football, he’d tell me I shouldn’t aim for the lineman’s chest, I should set the goal of running straight through the guy and a hundred yards downfield. (Of course, there were other words of wisdom from my father, like “you’re a born nerd, boy, and I don’t know why we’re wastin’ time with the sports”). The point still stands, though: if you’re trying to go from here to there, don’t set your sights on there—make your goal an unreachable point far, far beyond there. Never settle for a small piece, always go for everything…and be glad of whatever you can get.

In that spirit, then, here’s what I’d dream of seeing in the next year.

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A measure of respect for a tyrant

Read the account of Saddam Hussein’s last moments—it’s a strange thing. Hussein was an evil man, but still, he carried himself at the end with strength and courage and a good amount of anger. The whole scene sounds like it was tawdry and crude; the US continues to reinforce its growing reputation for cheap barbarity. And the unseemly guards, with their chanting and sneering at a man about to die…that’s who is going to run that country after we leave? I have no confidence.

I don’t think our country did itself any favors with this act, and Hussein went out of this world a bit more impressively than he had lived in it.

She’s gone and done it now

The daughter has put up a post with her thoughts on abortion—I swear I have not given her any instruction or even talked about the subject with her, but somehow she has developed roughly the same opinion on it that I have…which means, of course, that the kooks will whine at her. I can’t even imagine what her former peers at high school will say, but it might be explosively fun. There’s a little bit of Mell in that girl.

(Speaking of Mell, you all know that this is the last day of one of my favorite webcomics, Narbonicon, right?)

Irony Alert! Kirk Cameron explains his new board game

It’s hard to believe, but there is more information on the absurd board game designed by Kirk Cameron and Ray Comfort.

Cameron said, “We are very excited about this game because it presents both sides of the creation evolution argument, and in doing so, shows that the contemporary theory of evolution is perhaps the greatest hoax of modern times.”

Uh, sure they’re going to show “both sides”: you can get an idea of what they think is the evolution side by the illustrations. There is a frog with bull horns (a bullfrog! Get it? Ha ha.), and a couple of other chimeras whipped up in Photoshop, and unless they’re using them to illustrate what evolution does not predict and what would constitute evidence against evolution—which I doubt—these are examples of utterly bogus creationist arguments, and do not bode well for the intellectual content of the game. Which promised to be pretty much nonexistent, given the identities of the authors.

I wonder if there’s a banana in the game?

Never let the facts get in the way of damning Dawkins

Ed Brayton and Mike Gene have gone over the top in accusing Richard Dawkins of wanting to coerce the religious into giving up their beliefs; as is usual for Ed, he has no problem immediately comparing an atheist to R.J. Rushdooney and calling him a totalitarian, on the basis of a rather poorly written petition that Dawkins signed.

I must say, though, that this petition is certainly strange, and I don’t quite see how it could have gotten over a 1000 signatories. I sure don’t approve of it, although I can understand the motivation behind it.

In order to encourage free thinking, children should not be subjected to any regular religious teaching or be allowed to be defined as belonging to a particular religious group based on the views of their parents or guardians. At the age of 16, as with other laws, they would then be considered old enough and educated enough to form their own opinion and follow any particular religion (or none at all) through free thought.

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What has been accomplished?

Saddam Hussein has been killed.

He was a venal little monster, but I don’t see that we’ve gained anything by stooping to the level of a third-world thug, and the unseemly haste with which an irreversible act was committed makes it even more sordid and sleazy.

He said that celebrations broke out after Hussein was dead, and that there was “dancing around the body.”

Barbarians.