evolution

You know, I’m not doing anything in the immediate future. Maybe I could design you a blog template or something.

A Swedish oil broker who has lived in Iraq for a while was kidnapped some time ago by terrorists there. He was later released by the kidnappers.

Many people simply thank the Lord they’re alive, and walk into the waiting arms of their loving families. Others manipulate their ordeal (assuming, of course, it wasn’t staged to begin with) for pro-enemy propaganda purposes.

But Ulf Hjertström is not quite either of these. This man of age past 60 and of considerable financial means has hired bounty hunters to track and kill his kidnappers. Apparently, the bounty hunters have already found two of their targets, and (ahem) dealt with them.

A few days ago, the AP dug up a photo of the new Iranian president from 1979, where he appeared to be leading away American hostages at the Tehran embassy. The AP now seems to be in full apologist mode: Hostage-takers: Iran’s leader had no role.

Let’s take them at their word. That usually works.

By the way, here are two pictures of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad busily setting about the task of not participating in the taking of hostages.

The bad gets worse: After participating (some say instigating) a fight at a Lawrence bar during which he was stabbed, Jayhawk forward J.R. Giddens is going to transfer away from the University of Kansas.

J.R. Giddens will transfer from Kansas University, head coach Bill Self announced today.

Self, who stressed that this was a mutual decision and not a disciplinary action, said he and Giddens came to this conclusion around 8 p.m. Wednesday night. He added that he didn’t know where Giddens would be transfering to, but that he would help Giddens in finding another school.

“The last six weeks have been a difficult situation for all parties involved following the May 19 incident,” Self said. “J.R. and I have both taken enough time to remove the emotion of the decision and come to the conclusion that a fresh start for both parties would be best. We certainly appreciate his efforts the last two years and wish him the best in the future.”

Giddens, who averaged 10.1 points last year as a sophomore, was stabbed May 19 during a fight outside the Moon Bar. The Douglas County District Attorney’s office has said it would be sometime in July, at the earliest, before it decided whether the evidence warranted filing charges.

Be sure and get a load of the snotty comments left by Journal-World online readers, and snotty editorials that are sure to appear in the print version, and snotty remarks sure to be heard on every street corner in Lawrence. KU basketball fans are surely the most ungrateful fans in all of American sports. Witness what happened when Roy Williams left the school. Witness how every single player who transfers away is treated, no matter the reason for the transfer. Never mind that they were recruited to play there.

Suppose you were a high-school player of moderately-high talent or beyond, and you were approached by KU about a basketball scholarship. You’d learn that the University of Kansas is a good school, and that Lawrence can be a fun town for a young man. You’d learn that the program has a long history of success, where many players have found work in the NBA. Then, you read some back issues of the Journal-World and mention the names of people who might not quite have lived up to their inevitable hype as the Second Coming. See how they are treated by the media and the fans. Tell me again why you’d want to play there, when you can play for any of two dozen other top programs?

UPDATE [15:17]: Here’s the Kansas City Star story that immediately followed the incident. From this description, it seems that Giddens was himself armed with a knife. He is quite likely in very serious trouble. Many will say that KU doesn’t need this, and in that they are correct. Many more, however, will engage in a bit of revisionist history about his abilities, and still fail to recognize that they invite this upon themselves. Do you want the best players? At what cost?

A week ago I wrote about Fred Phelps and his latest disgrace, protesting at the funeral of a soldier who was killed in action in Iraq. I mentioned my theory about him, namely that he is a sadomasochist.

Many people believe that he is a garden-variety charlatan, who provokes people into assaulting him and then suing them for huge amounts of money. While it is true that he does that, I don’t believe that money is the sole reason he acts the way he does.

His hateful protests, wherein seven-year-old girls are holding graphic depictions of sex between two men, are both his form of sadism and his form of masochism. He brings this down upon himself for the sheer pleasure of it. The money is a nice benefit, to be sure, but I think that for him, the pleasure is the thing.

Well, Phelps went to Massachusetts to protest at another soldier’s funeral. His interest in Massachusetts should be obvious — it’s the only state in the Union where gay marriage is legal. His interest in this particular soldier (whom you’ll learn more about in a bit) is incomprehensible at first: he wasn’t gay and had never crossed the Phelpses. His interest in this soldier’s funeral or any other when considered in view of the sadomasochistic assumption is obvious: it’s a way to inflict as much pain on as many people as possible when as many people as possible are watching. A giant thrill for him.

But, on this particular day, he violated an important principle: don’t piss off a paratrooper. Blackfive writes that the best way to squelch him is to ignore him, and he’s almost right. It’s the only to squelch him. He needs angry people coming after him to get off.

Blackfive doesn’t plan to let him off unchallenged, however. He has a few nonviolent and quiet counter-measures, “pies in the face” if you will. Just to help us laugh a little bit until the day finally comes when Fred Phelps takes his place in the eighth circle of Hell.

1. If you’re not looking to run afoul of any copyright law, check this replacement Raging RINO logo out, and tell me if you like it better than the old one or not. It was made entirely with free stock photos from this collection and my own hands.

2. We are all just getting to know each other. Find out more about myself and evolution contributor Michael in our colophon. Michael was not consulted about joining the Raging RINOs, but trust me — he’s a Republican/Independent Not Overdosed (on Party kool-aid) to the core.

I am now officially disgusted with FM radio.

I’m sick to death of hearing the same forty quasi-R&B-Abercrombie-dance hits over and over again.

No, I’m not bitter because I can’t dance. In the world of sports, you hear players talk all the time about “playing within themselves,” i.e., not attempting to do things that are quite likely to turn out badly. That hasn’t stopped a great many folks from trying; however, it turns out that I’m quite a lot smarter than a great many folks as well. I realize that because girls like to dance and I do not that I am ruling out prime opportunities to meet girls, a past-time I wasn’t very good at in my late high-school/early college years, and one which I traded away for graduate school in maturity. Now that I am both mature and out of graduate school, I’d like that experience back — but I choose to do it by “playing within myself.” (I’ll let you know when that starts working.)

So I sit at Rusty’s Last Chance Saloon in Aggieville, enjoying my Bud Light, and my bad knees thank me. That leaves me to listen to the music — oh wait, I heard it already. The same soulless music they played last Saturday night, amd every Saturday night I’ve been in a bar since October 14, 1997 — the day I turned 21.

Then, for solace, I turn to the rock stations. Unfortunately for our hero, there is none to be found. The same disease afflicts them as well — replace your R&B-Abercrombie models and wannabes with skater punks and Goth wannabes, and repeat the above: you’ll still find me sitting at the bar, wondering if there is anyone like me left.

FM radio is the Maxim or People magazine of music: it attracts the dumbest and laziest people.

You know what I miss? The hard-driving rock of the 1960s and 1970s. I miss jazz music. I miss blues music. I miss old-school country and 80s new-wave and prog rock and 1970s/80s punk. Music that moves people — and I’m not talking about dancing. That’s why I’m such a huge Pearl Jam fan (as you’ll note from looking at my Audioscrobbler profile). They were a band contemporary with me who was making this kind of music. Now, it’s about getting dumb and attractive people and people who like dumb and attractive people to listen — because they’re the easiest to relieve of their money. I’m sure as Hell not dumb, and although I’m certainly not the Elephant Man, I’m no Abercrombie model either.

FM radio is dead. It wasn’t always thus. I mourn its passing.

There may be hope for audiophiles such as myself. Michael received for Christmas a Sirius satellite radio, which is quite a little service. Their on-air advertising is minimal to non-existent, meaning that more time is available to play good music. Even if one station does play a turd, you can always switch immediately to another and know that a good song is coming. Bonus: Sirius carries all NFL games on their home-market networks, so you get that game with the city’s own announcers. XM Radio does the same for baseball (therein lies a problem for me — I want both baseball and NFL).

The first music video that MTV ever played in 1981 when it went on the air was for “Video Killed the Radio Star”, by The Buggles. They were almost right — for MTV is to music what John Steinbeck’s character “Lennie” in Of Mice and Men is to a mouse: they squeezed all the life out of it.

Popular music may be dying, and there may be nothing we can do for it.

[Editor's note: There will be a lot more posts about culture and the modern single life as I finally step away from the academic world and into society. I always felt like I was missing something when I committed to study, and now I want it back. Can you get it back at nearly 30 (coming 10.14.2006)? I intend to find out. If you don't like it, scroll past to the political stuff. I still care about it, and I'll keep posting that too.]

…have to be kidding me.

At least now we know why the mullahs liked him.

George Will succinctly expresses what my view has been regarding “intelligent design” in science:

The problem with intelligent-design theory is not that it is false but that it is not falsifiable: Not being susceptible to contradicting evidence, it is not a testable hypothesis. Hence it is not a scientific but a creedal tenet—a matter of faith, unsuited to a public school’s science curriculum.

It’s not science, by any standard! If you are a Kansan possessed of moderate powers of reason, you ought to be convinced by now that this is merely a cynical attempt on the part of the minor-league-baseball-stadium-sized churches (”GET your bread of the Host heeeRE!”) in Wichita and their political-action committees to force its agenda into schools.

And its agenda is not a philosophical discussion of intelligent design theories, or anything else. It is young-Earth creationism, plain and simple.

UPDATE [06.30 17:17]: If you aren’t sure as to what makes the “intelligent design” vs. evolution an “apples/oranges” comparison, check out the Commissar’s fine post explaining the difference, as well as the distinction between “falsifiable” (a key component of a good scientific theory) and just plain “false”.

» INDC Bill sees a trend. Sorry, Bill — I saw it over two years ago. Have faith, brother. The real men will win.

» The Commissar is outraged. (A Google search of this site on the word “outrage” returned two articles, including this one.)

» From Erin O’Connor: That this situation was allowed to take place at all — in which a male professor took semi-nude photos of a female student for a class — is utterly incomprehensible to me. But, as usual, the university acts in a ham-handed fashion when it’s caught sleeping on the job.

» Rusty Shackleford turns over another rock.

» Malkin: Can’t you just go to the damn baseball game?