Wanted: women to test new orgasm machine. No, really. An American surgeon who has patented a device that triggers an orgasm has begun a clinical trial approved by the Food and Drug Administration in the United States and is looking for female volunteers.
What A Coincidence
Yesterday I agreed with Calpundit twice. Today I find myself in total agreement with Barbra Streisand:
Barbra Streisand says she finds listening to her own songs is so boring that it was one of the reasons she gave up public performing three years ago.
I find her songs so boring I can’t listen to them either.
Eye Candy
If you want to see something beautiful, go take a gander at Michael Totten’s pictures of Oregon. To hell with your bandwidth, post more, pls.
Al Franken
Ace Columnist Cosmo Macero sums up my thoughts regarding Al Franken:
Al Franken is a humorist. And a humorist is a comedian who isn’t funny.
But he hates Republicans, so in some circles, that adds to the humor quotient. Here is Al being funny:
Franken doesn’t merely denounce conservatives. He harasses them, provokes them, gets right up in their faces. He once called up National Review Editor Rich Lowry and challenged him to a fight in a parking garage. Lowry declined.
I’m in stitches. Really. And Let’s not forget the real truth about Al Franken- he isn’t just some comedian who happens to have ‘turned liberal’ because of the evilness of Bush. Al Franken is a party hack.
And at bottom, that reveals what Franken really is: a party hack, a very good, and at times quite entertaining one, but a hack nonetheless. Because he fits a poorly defined niche in American politics
Not That Innocent
Stop the presses- Britney is not a virgin. Who woulda thunk it?
She should have spent the time on singing lessons.
This is Truly Excellent
Via Calpundit, a computerized “Twenty Questions.”
I stumped it, in a sense, even though I gave it credit. My thing was a vodka tonic, and the machine guessed “Gin and tonic.” It shockedthe hell out of me because the questions seemed to be getting broader and I was starting to become convinced it would never get it. Then it guessed, and Iwas so shocked that it was that close that I just gave it credit. After all- how is it supposed to know my drink of preference?
Logical Fallacies
Arthur Silber has a thoughtful post on the debasement of the debate that is worthy of your time. Arthur views the War in Iraq through a different lens than I do, but he is correct in many of his assessments about the problems with the current discussion:
The state of intellectual debate about political/ethical isues, and related policy concerns, has been coarsening for a number of decades. But now, certain vices and failures of thinking have become very, very widespread, and almost everyone seems to engage in them. As a very good friend of mine described it recently in an email, these problems (which he calls “insanity” with considerable justification) have truly become a “pandemic.” And so they have. In the course of identifying several elements of what I consider the major flaws in most analysis and discussion of current events, I will offer a few examples related to the war with Iraq, which has unfortunately provided a number of especially virulent expressions of these problems.
You should go read the examples Arthur lists, pay attention to them, and make sure you are not engaging in these tactics. One interesting thing about the discussion Arthur provides is that all of his anecdotes are from an anti-war perspective, in that all of the examples of people engaging in fallacious thinking is from the pro-war perspective. Let me give an example:
I have not seen a better description of the causes and manifestations of the tribal mentality — and it perfectly captures, as just one example, why many supporters of the war will engage in the most complicated mental gymnastics to explain the growing questions about our intelligence regarding Iraq’s WMDs (whether one regarded that as crucial to supporting the war or not), when they condemned the same kinds of mental trickery when Democrats used them in defense of Bill Clinton. The message clearly is: “Bush is always right, at least on everything important and everything related to the war. How dare you question him in this manner? You must be a monster. Why, you must be a…a…a Saddamite!” And thus we see how the tribal mentality oozes out to include the Argument from Intimidation: if you dare even to ask certain questions, you must be profoundly morally deficient, at the very least — and you are certainly not a member of our gang. Once again, this tactic seeks to end the debate before it has even begun — and it seeks to avoid ever having to answer the questions that have arisen, even though the same people would be only too happy to raise identical questions if the president in question happened to be a Democrat (as most of them did, in fact).
What Arthur fails to acknowledge is that many of the people who are raising these accusations are so fiercely partisan, obnoxious, and vindictive that every question comes across as a personal attack on the individual and President Bush. Go read the comments boards on the left. Hell, read some of the things commenters say here. There is a significant portion of the Democrat left who is so violently and reflexively anti-Bush, that in manyinstances, particularly those when I would usually be sympathetic to the Democrat position, that I find myself defending Bush even when I disagree with him. This debases the debate (both the mindless and incessant accusations leveled at Bush, and my reflexive defense of Bush) just as much as anything else.
Another point- just because you were against the war does not make you a traitor or a Saddamite. It would be refreshing for people on the other side of the spectrum to remember that those in favor of the invasion of Iraq are not necessarily kncukle-dragging, mouth-breathing war-mongerers.