Films show terrorists as people!

As opposed to what?

Oppose the war on white people!

Brad Templeton has a very funny post. I'm quoting the whole thing -- but don't let that stop you from checking out Brad's blog, which really is reliably full of really interesting stuff.

Major retail chains Target, Wal-Mart and others announced today they will end the so-called war on white people that had resulted in most stores posting signs welcoming “shoppers” or “customers” instead of “white patrons”, even though white people represented a considerable majority of their business. “I’m white, and I’m here shopping for gifts for my white friends, and I’m offended that the store has been pressured into making some generic greeting that doesn’t reflect me.” said William O’ Reilly, a concerned caucasian shopper. “If they’re not going to welcome me and my race, I am going to take my business somewhere else.” O’Reilly’s complaint, echoed by dozens, perhaps scores of other shoppers, has led the chains to alter their policies. Signs declaring “Look good with today’s colors” will be replaced next year with “Look good in colors designed for white skin.” The “Happy holidays” sign, recently changed to “Merry Christmas” will be further changed to “Merry Christmas for White America” to reflect the ethnicity and religion of 80% of the shoppers in the stores.

President Bush

Brian Williams asked the President about Iraq.

Williams: A lot of people have seen in this series of speeches you're giving on Iraq, a movement in your position. They call it an acknowledgement that perhaps the mission has not gone as it was originally planned — three points: That the U.S. would be welcomed as liberators, that General Shinsecki, when he said this would take hundreds of thousands of troops in his farewell speech, might have been right. And third, that it wasn't a self-sustaining war in terms of the oil revenue. Do you concede those three points might not have gone as planned? President Bush: Review them with me again. Williams: Number one — that we'd be welcomed as liberators? President Bush: I think we are welcomed. But it was not a peaceful welcome.

(link.)

7x7

This might be my first blogger meme ever, I'm not sure. Clayton hit me, and like Shieva, I'm procrastinating. So here I go. 1. Seven things to do before I die

1. Run a marathon.
2. Write my very last required term paper.
3. Win a poker tournament.
4. Earn a Ph.D.
5. Get paid to sing.
6. Live in England.
7. Write the seminal work in imagination and epistemology.

2. Seven things I cannot do

1. Convince people that a picture of a logical impossibility is a picture of a logical impossibility.
2. Sing tenor roles.
3. Instantiate triangularity in my thoughts about triangles.
4. Win the Super Bowl three times in four years.
5. When I have a full house, and another player in the same game has four of a kind, and neither of us folds, win.
6. Be really dryly ironic without being taken seriously.
7. Reliably predict whether indeterminate future-tense sentences will become true. (Damn sea-battles!!!)

3. Seven things that attract me to my spouse/best friend (I'll answer for spouse.)

1. Her endless patience with all my little adventures and misadventures.
2. Her comfort with polyamory.
3. Her ability to do all -- yes, all -- of the things I can't do.
4. The skillful and sensitive way she handles our hypothetical children.
5. Her status as a self-actualized, independent woman, demanding of and receiving the respect and admiration of those who encounter her.
6. Her bazoomies.
7. Her complete and utter perfection (with the single possible exception, if being is necessary for perfection, which it probably isn't, of there being no such spouse).

4. Seven things I say most often

1. "I think that insights from the philosophy of imagination can shed some interesting light on this issue."
2. "Right on."
3. "I'll raise."
4. "It is, it is, a glorious thing to be a pirate king!" (typically sung)
5. "I guess I worry that [insert decisive argument against the view here]."
6. "It's cool."
7. "Rock on, dude. Yeah!"

5. Seven books I love

1. Yeomen of the Guard vocal score.
2. The World of the Imagination, Eva Brann
3. Conceivability and Possibility, Gendler & Hawthorne, eds.
4. Santa Lives! Five Conclusive Arguments for the Existence of Santa Claus, Ellis Weiner
5. The Butter-Battle Book, Dr. Seuss
6. Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, Susanna Clarke
7. The Constitution of the United States of America

6. Seven movies I would watch over and over if I had the time

1. Beauty and the Beast
2. The Princess Bride
3. Topsy-Turvy
4. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
5. Finding Neverland
6. Moulin Rouge
7. Clue

7. Seven people I want to join in, too

1. Aristotle
2. Augustine
3. Descartes
4. Locke
5. Hume
6. Carnap
7. Wittgenstein

Paranoid?

Here's the latest from Tony Perkins and the Family Research Council:

Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) is urging that decisions on vaccines to prevent HPV (a sexually transmitted disease that can cause cervical cancer) be "based on science not politics," and she warns ominously that "recent press reports indicate that certain organizations are beginning to mobilize against the vaccine." The senator shouldn't believe everything she reads. Despite the apparent determination of the media to paint FRC as "anti-vaccine," we have declared clearly that FRC "welcomes the news that vaccines are in development" for human papillomavirus (HPV).

Let me paraphrase the dialectic, as represented here:

Scientists: We can maybe prevent HPV. Some groups: No, if we prevent HPV, then teenagers will have sex! Hillary Clinton: Some groups are against this vaccine. That's bad. Tony Perkins: I never said I was against the vaccine!

Perkins is speaking truthfully here, but wouldn't the sensible thing to do be to interpret Hillary as referring to the horrific and deplorable right-wing groups who are opposed to administering the vaccine to all girls?

FDA

Lindsay Beyerstein points to the FDA getting caught red-handed.

The non-partisan GAO published a report yesterday saying that FDA officials rejected Plan B's application to be sold over-the-counter months before the scientific review was completed.

Shocking, and yet somehow, hardly a surprise. Sorry I haven't been around much here lately. My philosophy life and my light opera life are taking up lots and lots of my time, leaving 'social' and 'other' (including things I'd blog about here) with an even smaller piece of the pie than usual. After this week, I may be around here more.

Analysis of Texas Marriage Amendment

This whole banning all marriage thing in Texas is picking up steam, and controversy. It's now a for-real factor. My attitude toward it thus far has been mostly one of ironic amusement (partially out of self-pleasure at the thought of having been the first person ever to notice this bit of idiocy), but that's consistent with my thinking it's really a big deal. (In some respects, I'm much more ironically amused about life in general than some people realize.) So here's a serious post about a serious worry that social conservatives should have about this amendment. I have to admit, I'm a little bit surprised that now that it's gotten some public exposure, it hasn't gotten a lot of public grip. The Volokh Conspiracy has a long thread full of comments debating how big a concern this is, with an apparent majority in the "oh please, just relax about it" crowd. Focus on the Family has two warnings about liberal groups who are lying to voters, attempting to trick them into thinking the amendment would call for the end of formal legal recognition of all marriages. They do not engage -- or even mention -- the textualist argument in question, and they strongly insinuate, but do not literally claim, that the people talking to the voters about this are lying about their identities, a claim that has been denied in the Houston Chronicle. Even Charles Kuffner, my former MOB colleague and liberal Texas blogger extraordinaire, writes: I don't buy it and I don't think the voters will, either. Conservative blogger extraordinaire Jeremy Pierce wrote in a comment to my last post on the topic, the most plausible way to read this is clearly not taking 'identical' to mean strict identity but to mean "exactly similar but distinct from. I think that everybody is under-reacting. Here are some facts that seem both important and obviously true: Marriage is, among other things, a legal institution. A legislature could pass a bill or a joint resolution that would end and prohibit the legal institution of marriage. If a legislature were to do such a thing, the relevant statute would include at least two parts: a definition of marrage and a statement to the effect that marriage has no legal status. This is exactly how the proposed constitutional amendment is structured. So, the text of the amendment unambiguously ends state recognition of all marriage in Texas. It is exactly the amendment that someone would draft who wanted to abolish marriage. Now, another important question: how serious is the risk that if the amendment passes, courts will interpret it as striking down even traditional marriage? I don't really know. Probably not huge. But look at what this move amounts to: we're trusting the judges to interpret the amendment the way it was intended. I thought the whole reason people wanted a constitutional amendment was so that we wouldn't be at the mercy of judges with respect to important things like the legal status of marriage. That's why the fact that marriage is already defined as a union between one man and one woman in the Texas Family Code (along with judicial precendent a mile long to back it up) isn't good enough. The amendment leaves marriage more vulnerable than ever -- if what we're really worried about is judicial activism, then we're just inviting the judicial activists to come in and read this text as saying what it is obviously literally saying, and presto, the entire legal institution of marriage in the state of Texas has been destroyed.