Everyone’s already seen this, but I just wanted to keep it for the record. I saw it in several places, but this one is from the Guardian on September 3.

At one point Friday, the evacuation was interrupted briefly when school buses rolled up so some 700 guests and employees from the Hyatt Hotel could move to the head of the evacuation line – much to the amazement of those who had been crammed in the stinking Superdome since last Sunday. ‘How does this work? They (are) clean, they are dry, they get out ahead of us?’ exclaimed Howard Blue, 22, who tried to get in their line. The National Guard blocked him as other guardsmen helped the well-dressed guests

This … Read the rest

Ah – things become a little clearer. I became curious about a commenter who keeps conflating theism with theology, so I googled and found a blog, where conflation turns up again.

Early in the month, a friend called my attention to this Salon interview with philosopher of science Michael Ruse, talking about evolution-vs-creationism. Ruse is pointing out some of the argumentative excesses of science (for example, the rantings of Richard Dawkins, which I’ve blogged about before) and he’s trying to stake out space to allow someone to endorse both science and religious faith. I liked what he had to say. As I’ve seen argued elsewhere, atheism didn’t exist before the Enlightenment.

Just by the way, that’s not true. Consider … Read the rest

So the truth is out. The well-kept secret that there is a large and growing gap between rich and poor in the US has suddenly tumbled out of the bag and into the spotlight. Well whaddya know – you mean all those people working in Walmarts and motels and chicken-processing plants and McDonald’s aren’t earning enough to buy a big house in the suburbs and an SUV? Well I’ll be damned – I coulda sworn everybody who did an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay in this country got to be a millionaire in a couple of years or so.

As President Bush scurries back to the Gulf Coast, it is clear that this is the greatest

I just feel compelled to point out a couple of items from this Guardian article on the Bush team’s effort to undo the damage, because they’re funny.

On Saturday Mr Bush ordered 7,000 more troops to the Gulf coast. As important as the content of the speech was its sombre tone. It was clear the White House realised that making a joke about his young hell-raising days in New Orleans in the course of a flying visit to the flooded city on Friday, was a mistake that reinforced allegations he had failed to take the disaster seriously enough.

Gee, you think?

The second element of the White House plan is to insist, in an echo of the September 11

And not only why is it deeper, but why is it considered a level of explanation? That’s a serious, literal question. I really don’t understand what it means – to talk of a deeper level of explanation based on unsupported assertions as opposed to a shallower level of explanation based on warranted assertions. How can explanations that float free of any rational epistemic requirements and checks and standards be deeper than those that are constrained by what we are able to figure out about the real world via tested methods? To put it more bluntly, how can explanations that are simply made up be deeper than those that are the result of careful inquiry and investigation? Is that what … Read the rest