Like father, like son?

Ben Stein: Intelligent Idiot

Most people are familiar with Ben Stein.

If they don't know him as a former Nixon speech writer, an Emmy award winning actor or an economic columnist for The Wall Street Journal, they'll probably recognize him as 'that lecturer dude in Ferris Bueller's Day Off.'

Ben Stein is a seriously clever man. He's a graduate of Columbia University in New York, was voted valedictorian of his class at Yale Law School and has been a professor of law, politics, economics and civil rights at prestigious universities on both coasts of the USA.

Rarely has a single man excelled in so many varied fields.

That being said - and admitting that Ben Stein is probably one of the smartest men in America - it's important to realize: He's an idiot.

Yes, Ben Stein is the dumbest smart guy I know.

Earlier this year, Ben Stein wrote and hosted an independent documentary film called Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. It was a movie about Intelligent Design - and how Ben Stein, amongst others, contends that Intelligent Design is being 'suppressed' by the mainstream scientific community and the popularity of the theory of Evolution has led directly to evils like communism and the Nazi Holocaust.



The problem with this film - and what makes Ben Stein's involvement in it so astonishing - is that it's a pack of lies. Crooked film-making even the likes of Michael Moore would be ashamed of.

The New York Times dismissed it as a "conspiracy-theory rant masquerading as investigative inquiry" and "an unprincipled propaganda piece that insults believers and nonbelievers alike."

The American Association for the Advancement of Science declared that the film was nothing more than "dishonest and divisive propaganda, aimed at introducing religious ideas into public school science classrooms."

If you want to find out more about Expelled's ridiculous claims - and the evidence that refutes ever single one of them, you can read this article at the Scientific American.

Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed is nothing more than a propaganda piece, aimed at getting Intelligent Design into the classroom.

You want proof?

Did you know that the producers of Expelled offered American schools $10 for each student they managed to send to see the film?

When you have to pay people to go and see a movie, it's a pretty good indication that it's no good.

Palin Speaks

The lovely Tina Fey reprised her role as Sarah Palin in this Saturday Night Live skit.

When I first watched it, I thought they were being a bit cruel - but it turns out that the jibberish speech Fey (as Palin) gives about the economic bailout was actually taken VERBATIM from the real Palin's interview with Couric.



You can CNN discuss the similarities in this short clip...

Death Dealt the Hand by John E. Bailor

The development of affordable Print On Demand self-publishing is both a blessing and a curse for aspiring writers. On the one hand, it's easier and cheaper to see your work in print. On the other, it's easy for your novel to get lost in an ever-growing tidal-wave of crap.

Because, let's be honest, most self-published books are crap. Badly written, poorly edited and inadequately proofed, the majority are literally unreadable.

But that's the majority. There are some gems in there. Great books like A Year in the Merde started life as POD, but soon sold enough copies and earned enough acclaim for a 'real' publisher to take note.

So, in the interests of give Print on Demand books a fair crack of the whip, I took a stab and read one. In this instance, a James Bond style spy thriller called Death Dealt the Hand.

Written by Pennsylvania resident John E. Bailor, Death Dealt the Hand stands out from other self-published books by having some pretty enthusiastic reviews online, including this one which promises that the book contains: "some good hand-to-hand fighting scenes... ...forced sodomy, naked hotel employees waiting in his hotel room..."

Author John Bailor ambitiously promises: "Thriller fans, including those of Ian Fleming's James Bond novels, should appreciate Trevor Byrne, a modern American hero who gets into incredible situations and survives using his wits and training."

Sign me up. Sounds like a riot!

I dived into Death Dealt the Hand with a healthy dose of skepticism, not expecting much from a self-published book that slotted so neatly into such a derivative genre. James Bond rip offs - just like any self published book involving vampires or werewolves - tend to be bloody awful.

Fortunately, low expectations resulted in a pleasant surprise. John Bailor's book wasn't half bad!

Death Dealt the Hand is dripping in Flemingesque touches - most obviously in the characterisation (or rather lack thereof) of 'modern American hero' Trevor Byrne, a 'Mary Sue' if ever I've seen one.

Trevor is clearly a stand-in for the author - fair enough, since Ian Fleming often admitted that he based James Bond after himself (and it's not tough to guess the inspiration for ginger-haired, leather-jacketed and Firebird-driving Adventure Eddy.)

Just like the old James Bond books, rather than give the main character too much personality, Death Dealt the Hand features pages and pages of 'product placement', mentioning the liquors, foods, cars and toiletries Trevor Bryne favours - clearly trying to establish him as a sophisticated man who appreciates the finer things in life.

James Bond favoured Tiptree 'Little Scarlet' strawberry jam for breakfast, smoked custom-made Morland cigarettes (containing a special blend Balkan and Turkish tobacco, with three gold bands on the filter) and drank Bourbon on ice, in addition to his more famous 'shaken, not stirred' martinis.

Trevor Byrne, on the other hand, likes 12 year old Chivas Regal and smokes Honduran cigars - although he commits cardinal crimes by mixing his scotch with ginger ale and polluting his Baccarat cigar by lighting it with a Colibri lighter, instead of a match [Actually, a Colibri uses clean-burning butane, which is an acceptable alternative to regular lighter fluid. - Editorial Bear]

Plus, he's got a pet rabbit. Yes, this bad-ass, James Bond substitute has a pet rabbit. Not only that, the bunny manages to save his life at one point. That's worth the sticker price on it's own.

Similar to the James Bond books, Trevor soon finds himself given a 'mission' - in this case, to investigate a German pharmacist trying to hurry a treatment for HIV and AIDS through the FDA approval process. As Trevor gets closer to his target, he discovers than this so-called 'humanitarian' secretly has a very murderous agenda.

It's a merry little chase to the climax of the book - featuring some really unique touches (the bad guy abuses and then executes Trevor's lover in a very sadistic fashion) in addition to some tired old James Bond clichés (I'm officially ordering a mortiorium on secret agents crawling through air-vents from this point on, y'hear?)

All in all, Death Dealt the Hand ended up being surprisingly satisfying. There's more good then bad here - and it definitely showed promise.

The good? Well, the book's got the sex, the violence, the car chases and the 'product placement' I demand from a good spy-thriller.

The bad? Well, it definitely reads like a first draft. The whole books needs to be seriously reworked before it could be considered ready for publishing. Some of the characterisation is wafer thin as well - just because the bad guy's a German, it doesn't automatically make him a bad guy. Also, if you're going to feature explicit sex and sadistic torture, be explicit about it. There's nothing worse than ending a scene when we're getting to the 'good bit' or using euphemisms like 'manhood' instead of the real (read: dirty) words!

That being said, the fundamentals of Death Dealt the Hand are pretty good. With a bit more thought, I think John Bailor could certainly rework this into something publishable.

I'll admit, I approached Death Dealt the Hand with nothing but scathing skepticism, so it's pretty impressive that Bailor's vivid imagination managed to overcome that. I'll certainly be keeping an eye out on what this aspiring author does and wish him nothing but the best of luck for the future of his writing career.

Wee Biarn...

Knight Rider Season Premiere

Back in February, NBC produced a slick television movie reinventing the Knight Rider franchise - and you know what? It wasn't half bad.

The producers had enough sense to stick with what made the original series so popular - a cool car, a competent hero and some low-key bad guys who possessed enough wherewith all to actually poss a threat to the indestructible talking super-car.

Sadly, last night's premiere of the new Knight Rider television series indicated that somebody had taken all those lessons they'd learned from the well-received movie and flushed them straight down the toilet. What we got instead was a derivative mish-mash of CGI special effects and limp scripting.


The episode kicked off mid-mission, with David Hasselhoff stand-in Mike Traceur (played by soap-star Justin Bruening) undercover at an embassy. Unfortunately, our square-jawed hero looked like a chimp poured into a badly fitting tuxedo and his champagne-quaffing and womanising quickly lost him the vital package he was supposed to be recovering.

NBC Fatal Mistake #1: David Hasselhoff, for all his cheesiness, at least looked pretty good in a tuxedo.

NBC Fatal Mistake #2: Incompetence and petulance does not a heroic protagonist make, so it would have been nice if Mike Traceur wasn't such a dumbass.

Fortunately, the shiny Knight Industries Three Thousand is parked outside and helps Mike get his act together to rescue his accomplice, the lovely Deanna Russo (playing Mike's old girlfriend - and daughter of KITT's creator - Sarah Graiman.)

NBC Fatal Mistake #3: If you're going to try for a James Bond style espionage scene, try filming it somewhere more exotic than the basement of the nearest shopping mall.

NBC Fatal Mistake #4: Generally, the aim is to improve the look and feel of a reinvented series. This show has the production values of Saved By The Bell.

After rescuing Sarah, Mike gets a bail out by KITT, who evades the embassy guards by transforming himself from a Ford Mustang into a F-150 pick-up truck.

Yes, he turns into a pick-up truck.

NBC Fatal Mistake #5: He turns into a freakin' pick-up truck? Are you kidding me? At least the original Hasselhoff-era KITT had gadgets that were vaguely believable.

So off Sarah and Mike zoom, whisking through the streets thanks to inglorious CGI effects.

NBC Fatal Mistake #6: If your computer effects team is churning out stuff that looks worse than Grand Theft Auto on a Playstation 2, you might want to think of raising the bar a little.

Then, horrors of horror, an enemy helicopter fires a missile at our retreating heroes! Fortunately, despite the fact that the missile is travelling at 1,000mph and KITT is cruising, like, 150mph, it takes bloody forever (well, five minutes or so) to hit - plenty of time for the crew back at the 'KITT Cave' to hypothesise how to avoid it.

Well, maybe not plenty of time, since the missile does actually hit them - and covers KITT in sticky napalm, which threatens to choke Sarah and Mike to death.

NBC Fatal Mistake #7: A KITT Cave? Really? Like the Bat Cave?

NBC Fatal Mistake #8: Have your scriptwriters ever heard of the escalation of tension? An indestructible super car isn't all that indestructible if random baddies can blow it up before the credits have even rolled.

NBC Fatal Mistake #9: Why did you just let the napalm choke Sarah and Mike to death? Really? Would it have been that tragic?

Fortunately, the crew of geeks at the KITT Cave come up with a solution to save our plucky heroes, despite the fact that everything threatens to go tits up when the nerd with sixteen million degrees in astrophysics is unable to open a simple bloody door...

Everything ends well, though, so Mike and Sarah are saved (oh, did I mention they'd stripped to their underwear for no apparent reason?) and the crew of Knight Industries plots their next move to recover the package.

You know, that package. The one that was mentioned in passing in the first scenes of the show, but hasn't been talked about since. The disinterested minor detail that apparently the entire plot hangs off.

NBC Fatal Mistake #10: Plot - ur doin it rong.

Despite the urgency of their mission, we get some time to meet the new Knight Rider crew. There's Mike and Sarah, of course. Then there's Sarah's father, Dr Graiman, who invented KITT. A very dodgy pair of FBI agents, played by Sydney Tamiia Poitier (Sidney's daughter) and Yancey Arias.

Finally we have the two techies - nerdy Paul Campbell and utterly gorgeous Asian sensation Smith Cho, playing impish Zoe Chae.

I'm a firm believer of finding one bright spot in a TV show and sticking to it, so despite everything, Knight Rider's got my loyalty thanks to this flirty little minx and her innuendo-laden techno babble.

She's great - cute and smart and with easily the best lines. Whereas most of the other cast members deliver their script in a robust sort of way, only Cho makes her lines zing.

Anyway. Unfortunately the scriptwriters aren't nearly as enamoured with Smith Cho as I am, so before we know it, the plot's up and running again and we're all off to Washington DC (which incidentally looks an awful lot like Southern California, even down to the palm trees.)

Mike and KITT drive off to find this 'package,' which turns out to be a person with a secret cipher embedded in his DNA. Before Mike can 'rescue' him, however, a saucy little lovely in a souped-up sports car appears on the scene and kidnaps 'the package.'

With surprising ease, I might add.

NBC Fatal Mistake #11: Seriously, if you're going to entrust a secret agent to save the world, at least pick one who isn't a TOTAL imbecile.

Mike dutifully zooms off after the kidnapped chump in KITT, who does most of the driving while Mike gets all angsty and has an argument with Sarah over the intercom. All of these shenanigans are only ended when the evil lady hacks off her prisoner's thumb and chucks him by the side of the road.

The quest to recover the stolen thumb gets underway (yes, the plot hangs around a stolen digit. Don't look at me like that. I didn't write the damn thing.)

Mike manages to track down the evil thumb-stealing seductress in the Washington DC subway system and KITT transforms into a pick-up truck to zoom along the rails to capture her. Since, clearly, driving over the subway tracks in a Mustang would have just been silly.

After rescuing the missing thumb, things seem to be finally going Mike's way - until Sydney Tamiia Poitier turns up (making this her second scene in the episode) and blows Mike away with a 9mm.

Mind you, if my prize secret agent had been outwitted by a brunette with too much eye-liner and knee high boots, I'd have been tempted to execute him as well.

As it turns out, ol' Sidney was just faking Mike's death, so he could avoid all the people hunting him down under the name 'Michael Traceur.' As the show wraps up, Mike chooses a new name (Michael Knight, sounds familiar?) and the whole crew settles down for next week's exciting, convoluted, irrational, disorganised and presumably incompetently performed mission.

It only lasted an hour, but Knight Rider was a painful experience. From such a strong start with February's mini-movie, I'd had high hopes that they'd have kept a winning formula and delivered something that was a worthy successor to the classic 80s TV show.

But instead, they took the lazy route and cobbled together a package that resembled Team Knight Rider more than Hasselhoff's old warhorse.

What, you don't remember Team Knight Rider?

There's a reason for that...

Knight Rider - I know this is only your first episode, but you've REALLY got to pick up the pace, otherwise you're going to kill the franchise all over again.

Knight Rider

I almost completely forgot that the new Knight Rider series starts tonight!

Catch it on NBC at 8pm Eastern.

Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory!

A new report announced that better sex education, along with increased access to free and affordable contraceptive services, have helped reduce abortions by a whopping 33% - most significantly, amongst teenagers (who are experiencing fewer unplanned pregnancies.)

Now, you'd think the conservative Christian movement would be thrilled at this - if this trend keeps up, it's possible the number of abortions performed can be cut down even further, perhaps to negligible levels.

This would represent a real victory for the anti-abortion crusade - actually ending abortion, instead of merely implimenting an utterly meaningless constitutional ban that would merely drive abortions underground.

But NO. No sooner had this report been produced than members of the religious right started criticising it.

Vice President of Concerned Women for America Wendy Wright complained that this report was 'designed to get more funding for contraception and education about contraception.'

*faceslap*

Yes, this silly woman (who works for an organisation that strives to 'bring Biblical principles into all levels of public policy,' which should tell us everything we need to know about her) is actually complaining that this report proves that proper sex education (teaching kids not to get pregnant) is helping reduce abortion rates.

So abortion rates are down, but that's not good enough for her?

No, of course not. I've long argued that some of the core anti-abortion crusaders aren't fighting to reduce abortion - that's merely a ploy.

Their real agenda is to mandate their narrow minded, old-fashioned 'Christian morality.' They want America to adopt 'old fashioned Christian values' like no sex until marriage, no 'recreational sex' with contraceptives... In fact, any type of sex that isn't for procreation (and performed in the missionary position, with the lights off.)

If they had their way, any sexual activity that didn't immediately result in the production of a good, white, Christian child would land you with a fine or a prison sentence.

It's idiots like Wendy Wright who give sane, principled, rational Christians a bad name...

Weighty Issues

Back in June, I was lamenting my expanding waistline. Fortunately, the six pounds I'd gained over my 'acceptable limit of chubbiness' have evaporated thanks to the rigors of baby wrangling - but I'm still packing some porkiness I'd rather not have.

To be honest, I'd pretty much abandoned my quest to return to the weight I was in my early twenties. Back then, I was subsisting on a diet of dry martinis and cocktail peanuts and walking five miles a day through the streets of Paris or New York.

Now I'm a 'grown up' - this means I can afford to eat on a regular basis and my work life consists of extended periods sitting on my rump. That equals a surplus of calories and a deficit in exercise and nothing short of a drastic lifestyle change is likely to change that.

That is, until I discovered this website: Calorie Count Plus.

It's a free website that lets you sign up and keep track of the two most important things in a weight-loss regimen - the amount of calories you eat as compared to the amount of calories you expend. It's got a neat little database so you can 'point and click' at brand name food and quickly calculate your daily intake.

Not only that - it also calculates how nutritious your diet is (and I was gratified to find out I scored a 'B' which wasn't too bad for a vegetable-phobe.) I know it says 'alcohol intake 0%' but I think that's because the ethanol contained within the two beers I drank with dinner didn't equal a percentage point. Either that or the 'smart' database thinks Heinekin is non-alcoholic.

This all sounds pretty clever and flashy, but doesn't actually help you lose weight... Except it does. By looking at the instant analysis, I see that I consumed 2,977 calories and burnt 2,909 today. That gives me a daily surplus of 66 (which equates to gaining about a pound every fifty days.)

By looking at the foods I consumed, it's easy to spot what I need to remove to turn that surplus into a deficit. If I skipped those delicious Oreo cookies I had for elevenses and ditched the late-night glasses of chocolate milk, I'd save 665 calories and THAT translates to losing a pound in just five days.

I think the benefit of cataloging your consumption - and working out how many calories you consume - makes it much easier to snip off the bits and pieces that might make all the difference to losing weight or not.

Will it start me on the track to becoming a slimmer, trimmer Roly?

Only time will tell!

My Dad: John McCain by Meghan McCain (illustrated by Dan Andreasen)

I'm not entirely convinced that My Dad, John McCain hit the New York Times bestseller list entirely on it's credentials as a children's book. The fact that it's about Republican presidential candidate John McCain - and penned by his daughter, Meghan - might have given sales a push!

But that doesn't mean it should be relegated to the realms of political puffery. My Dad, John McCain is a cute kid's book (that promises to be quite a collector's piece if John McCain actually wins the Presidency.)

Meghan McCain penned a very touching book that oozes love and admiration for her father. She reverently retells the story of his days as a troublemaker in the naval academy, his heroics on the flight deck of the USS Forestal and his resilience as a prisoner of war - arguing that this strength of character makes him an exceptional candidate to become the President of the United States.

Except she doesn't use all those long words.

Meghan writes for children well - she has a very effective way of illustrating difficult concepts through examples that youngsters will relate to. For example, she explains that McCain got into trouble at Naval Academy for 'skipping school' (leaving out the drinking and hell-raising) and illustrates the horrors of McCain's incarceration by the Viet Cong by telling us how he once found a chicken's foot in his lunch (which is more kid-friendly than telling them about the beatings, whippings and torture he endured.)

The story is brought to life through full colour illustrations by Dan Andreasen, who does a serviceable enough job, although the pictures lack the details kids love to peer at and some of them - especially his illustration of the fire on the USS Forestal - are a bit vague and confusing. The clouds of noxious smoke he painted looked more like trees in the background, making the whole picture look like it was set in a park, rather than the deck of an aircraft carrier.

All in all, though, the book is a satisfying package and I think young kids will enjoy learning a bit more about the grumpy-looking 'McCain' guy they see on television (and who their parents are always talking about.)

Meghan's book highlights McCain's character strengths - his honesty, his bravery and his resilience. For kids (and quite a few registered Republicans) it's values like this that make a man a good candidate to run the country - not his politics and policies.

Is Capitalism to blame for the economy?

Scrappy socialist Neil Clark is clapping his hands in glee at the economic woes befalling Wall Street - which is pretty typical, since Neil is one of Britain's leading champions of Schadenfreude.

But does his take on the economic situation stand up to examination?

"We are now back in 1989- but the system that is collapsing before our very eyes is not Soviet communism, but Anglo-Saxon turbo-capitalism™. In the end, this most rapacious of economic models was destroyed by its own greed. It's time for everyone... ...to pop the champagne corks."

Greed, dishonesty and a very short-sighted agenda certainly contributed to the crisis on Wall Street - but they aren't exclusively to blame. Capitalism isn't the problem - the government's meddling is.

One such example is the Government's involvement in mortgage giants Frannie Mae and Freddie Mac - entities Neil Clark incorrectly identified as private industries. In reality, they were anything but.

The Federal National Mortgage Association (FNMA, hence 'Frannie Mae') and the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (FHLMC, hence 'Freddie Mac') are both Government Sponsored Enterprises - corporations created by the government and intricately linked to activities on Capital Hill.

Frannie Mae was created as part of Franklin D. Roosevelt's 'New Deal' in 1938 and was an entirely nationalised industry right up until 1968, when it was turned into a allegedly private corporation (enjoying a virtual monopoly on America's secondary mortgage market.)

Freddie Mac was created in 1970 to expand that market and offer competition to the newly privatised Frannie Mae. (No, two government sponsored companies in competition with each other doesn't make much sense to me, either.)

Despite being hypothetically privatised, both Freddie Mac and Frannie Mae enjoyed many things other private corporations didn't - including an unwritten reassurance that the securities it issued would be guaranteed by the Federal Government. What The Economist called; "the implicit government guarantee."

In addition to that, other private financial institutions had to maintain a capital/asset ratio of at least 3% to the mortgage backed securities they sold. Freddie and Frannie were exempt from that requirement, only having half as much cash to back those securities up.

The final icing on the cake? Both Freddie Mac and Frannie Mae were exempt from local and state taxes, giving them another massive advantage over 'real' private industry.

So Neil's suggestion that Freddie and Frannie were private corporations is pretty short sighted. They weren't - and that makes their collapse even more inexcusable.

Where did Freddie and Franny go wrong?

Neil Clark blames the entire collapse of Wall Street on the 'turbo capitalist' model (no, I have no idea what that means, either.)

With Freddie Mac and Frannie Mae, the blame can actually be directed towards politicians.

The management and accounting practices of Frannie Mae and Freddie Mac were known to be pretty shifty for at least a decade before their collapse.

The House Banking Subcommittee On Capital Markets, Securities And Government Sponsored Enterprises were holding hearings on Frannie Mae as early as 2000, to question how the companies were being run.

In 2001, the Bush administration called for more accountability because Frannie Mae and Freddie Mac posed 'a potential problem' because 'financial trouble of the large GSE could cause strong repercussions in financial markets, affecting Federally insured entities and economic activity.'

In 2004, the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight published a report highlighting accounting 'errors' that shifted losses around the balance books so the senior executives could award themselves millions of dollars in bonuses.

The Bush government again called for more regulation: "The Administration has determined that the safety and soundness regulators of the housing GSEs lack sufficient power and stature to meet their responsibilities, and therefore…should be replaced with a new strengthened regulator.”

John McCain himself highlighted the crooked management back in 2006, telling George Bush: "Mr. President, this week Fannie Mae's regulator reported that the company's quarterly reports of profit growth over the past few years were "illusions deliberately and systematically created" by the company's senior management" to justify those enormous bonuses.

In 2003 and again in 2005, Bush's government tried to bring about legislation that would make the management of Freddie Mac and Frannie Mae more accountable and transparent - and both times, this legislation was shot down by Democrats in congress.

Why?

Because the Democrats received enormous campaign contributions from Freddie Mac and Frannie Mae to help make sure no legislation like that ever came into being - legislation which could have put an end to the Government sponsored cash-cow that allowed them to cook the books and rake in millions of undeserved bonuses.

The evidence is pretty clear: Did you know that Barack Obama raked in over $126,000 in campaign contributions from Freddie and Frannie? In just two years?

Or that Hillary Clinton collected over $75,000 herself?

Even House Speaker Nancy Pelosi - one of the most vocal opponents of Bush's legislation - took over $56,000 in campaign contributions from Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae.

What does this mean?

The disastrous collapse of Freddie Mac and Frannie Mae had very little do to with the capitalist system and a lot to do with two government backed organisations being driven into the ground by crony management.

The left-wing politicians who were meant to be rallying against such forces of 'unregulated capitalism' sat idly by and let all this all happen (counting the money they'd accepted to turn a blind eye.)

Neil Clark might blame 'turbo capitalism' for the Freddie and Frannie disaster - I think the opposite is true. These two mortgage giants illustrated the flaws in the socialist system he advocates. When a government monopoly is backed by taxpayer's money, the inevitable result is corruption and profiteering by the minority in charge.

Right now, the collapse of Freddie Mac and Frannie Mae has resulted in the American taxpayer being saddled with up to a trillion dollars in 'bailout' money - and the crooks who'd 'cooked the books' and walked off with millions in crooked bonuses?

Well, former Chairman and CEO of Frannie Mae, Franklin Delano Raines, is an advisor to Barack Obama's presidential campaign on economic matters.

In the capitalist system, a scandal like this would have resulted in criminal investigations that would have made those of Enron pale into insignificance.

But thanks to the pseudo-socialist system that supported Frannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the crooks who collected millions in bonuses (more than $20 for Franklin Raines) didn't get busted and imprisoned - they got recruited by the Democratic party to help with their election campaign.

["Turbo-capitalism" trademarked Neil Clark, 1996, all rights reserved. Quotes butchered and taken out of context to maximise effectiveness - Kitty Copy Editor]

Atheists are clearly the deluded ones...

The Onion

Obama Promises To Stop America's Shitty Jobs From Going Overseas

Evolution will be postponed...

After a couple of emails from less-than enthusiastic readers, I've decided to shelve my evolution project. Apparently reading pages and pages of me regurgitating Evolution for Dummies was not nearly interesting as pictures of my baby doing amusing things!

In any event, all that research I did into evolution did teach me a lot of things and really expanded my perspective.

Evolution's a pretty incredibly thing and thanks to more and more fossils being discovered, plus the wonders of DNA, scientists can now plot more and more of the evolutionary path life on Earth took.

It really isn't just a theory. Aside from the fact that fossils have been discovered that show almost all the important transitional phases of evolution, DNA now confirms how life on Earth developed. Doubt that idea that birds descended from dinosaurs? Take a look at their DNA - it proves that they're relatives.

I think the biggest question the doubtful have about evolution is the concept of one creature becoming another. How did a fish become a bird, for example?

Well, it took hundreds of millions of years, but we have fossils that explain the process step by step. How fish became 'tetra pods' and ventured onto land. How those tetra pods became reptiles. How, as the millenia progressed, some reptiles stayed in the form of lizards, while others became more bird like.

Ever seen Jurassic Park? The 'bad guys' in that movie were the man-eating 'Velociraptors.' The movies had made them a bit bigger than they were in real life, but we have fossils of 'raptors in museums to prove they existed.

Although they were bigger and incapable of flight, it was creatures like the Velociraptor that would eventually evolve into the predatory birds we know today - eagles, kestrels and the like (all from an avian family called, just to highlight the link, 'raptor'.)

As I've said before, evolution doesn't rule out the existence of a higher power. Many people believe that a higher power laid a 'blueprint' for evolution that wound up with the development of mankind.

I think that's a valid theory - but my research actually strengthened my belief that there isn't a God. Cornell University, doing a study in a big cauldron, discovered that protobionts, the precursor to life as we recognize it, could spontaneously appear in conditions like those on Earth four billion years ago. There didn't need to be a God to put life on the planet.

Life on Earth might seem miraculous, but it might not be! There are millions of planets in the universe - many others must have Earth-like properties. We might never know for sure, since they're too far away, but it's perfectly possible - even probable - that life exists on them as well.

Life on Earth isn't an incredible coincidence. It's merely an inevitable coincidence.

As for the idea of a heavenly 'blueprint?' Well, there were plenty of evolutionary experiments that failed. Fossils reveal that there were all sorts of 'dead ends' that died out (from early forms of segmented worms to human-like creatures such as neanderthals.)

Darwin's idea of 'survival of the fittest' left a lot of casualties.

There are still unanswered questions - like how the universe began in the first place. But when it comes to the beginning of life on Earth and how it developed, more and more of those questions are being answered every single day.

Evolution is a theory that fits all the observations. Any other theory, like creationism, relies on some of the data being 'false.' If you have to cover up the facts to shoehorn your theory into credibility, it's clearly not a very good one.

But for those of you who still insist that God created the Earth in strict accordance with scripture (like, in six days, six thousand years ago), I'd like you to ponder this question: If we discovered life on other planets, how would that fit in with Scripture?

The Journey of Life Part 1 (Life begins on Earth.)

Scientists have proven that the Earth was formed about four and a half billion years ago.

The formation of the Earth was called the Hadean Era - after 'Hades,' the mythical Greek version of Hell. This was because the Earth resembled Hell - with surface temperatures of 230°C. Even as early as then, however, scientists know that Earth had liquid water oceans.

Scientists know how old the Earth was and what it was like in the beginning because of zircon crystals discovered in Greenland. They date back 4.4 billion years and could only have been formed under certain geological conditions.

This was followed by the Archean Eon, when the Earth as we know it today was formed. There is plenty of evidence about this era, as rock formations have been discovered in Greenland, Canada, Scotland and India that date back this far.

The Archean Eon was when life appeared on Earth. Interestingly, it was also a period in which lots of extrasolar debris struck the Earth. Some people have suggested that life on Earth was carried there by a asteroid or meteorite. Others hypothesis like life started with protobionts.

Protobionts are organic molecules surrounded by a membrane. They're not life, exactly, but they mimic many of the properties of life - like being able to reproduce and react to their environment. Most importantly, Cornell University proved that in an environment like Archean Eon Earth, they could have formed spontaneously.

Over the course of 400 million years, protobionts evolved into prokaryotes - bacteria and archeaea. Basically, the first form of life on Earth. We know projaryotes existed on Earth at this time because we have fossils of them dating back three and a half million years.

Now to accept protobionts became prokaryotes, you have to accept that very primitive forms of life are capable of evolution.

Fortunately, that's been proven by scientist Richard Lenski. He took a very simple Escherichia coli bacteria and, in his lab, proved that bacteria is capable of evolutionary adaptions in order to react better to their environment.

Basically, in order to better suit their environment, bacteria adapt and become different. In Lenski's experiment, a culture of bacteria that learned to feed off citrate (which E. coli normally can't) enjoyed a population explosion. In keeping with Darwin's theory of natural selection, had this occurred 'in the wild,' the E. coli that had adapted would have had a distinct advantage over the unadapted bacteria.

The same proof exists in most British hospitals - Staphylococcus aureus bacteria has evolved to become resistant to antibiotics. Because antibiotics kill the non-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, Darwin's theory of 'survival of the fittest' explains the success of antibiotic resistant bacteria, the famous Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus or MRSA bacteria.

Just like the bacteria we witness evolving today, prokaryotes thrived on Earth during the Archean Eon. As E. coli and Staphylococcus aureus prove, prokaryotes still exist today.

Prokaryotes were one path of evolution. The other path, which separated at this point, were eukaryotes. Whereas prokaryotes were single cell organisms, eukaryotes had more than one cell. They're what would evolve into plants and animals - basically, anything that isn't a bacteria.

The earliest fossils of eukaryotes date back over a billion years. They show that eukaryotes were very similar to prokaryotes. In fact, it was like two prokaryote cells decided to occupy the same membrane and exist in a symbiotic relationship.

Now exactly HOW this leap occurred is open to discussion. Was it a mutation? Perhaps a prokaryote divided itself to reproduce, but the cell division failed and created a 'Siamese' bacteria - one that flourished! However it worked, it worked.

We have fossils that show the arrival of a new form of life that was remarkably closely linked to the form of life that had existed before it. One form of life evolved into another and we have the fossils to prove it!

The next stage of the Earth's development was the Proterozoic Eon, starting about two and a half billion years ago and finishing about a billion years ago.

Life during the Proterozoic Eon consisted of single celled organisms (the bacteria) and the new multi-cellular organisms. Oxygen started to fill Earth's atmosphere (we know from all the geographical evidence) which caused a lot of changes for life on Earth. Oxygen was poisonous to a lot of the existing life forms and a lot of them were wiped out. 'Survival of the fittest' saw the ones that could cope with oxygen flourish.

During this period, hundreds of different fossils were left for us to discover, which neatly illustrated the development of eukaryotes. Fossils exist showing the development of simple multi-cellular organisms into more complex forms of life, like algae, plants, and 'bags.'

We know that this process was evolution because of the fossil trail. The eukaryotes might have become more complex, but they didn't just spontaneously turn from one form into another. The links between the original form and what they evolved into are quite obvious, like fingerprints.

The next stage on Earth was the Palaeozoic Era, which began about 550 million years ago. This was the era that saw life on Earth explode with diversity. It's this stage which makes people query evolution. After all, in four billion years, evolution developed nothing more sophisticated than multi-celled plants and algae. Suddenly, everything would change over the course of a (relatively) short space of time!

But I'll get to that later. The important things to take away from this first of my posts on evolution are:

1. We can prove the Earth is four and a half billion years old.
2. We can prove that life (in the form of bacteria) existed three and a half million years ago.
3. Fossils prove that single-celled creatures evolved/mutated into multi-celled creatures over a billion years ago.
4. Fossils prove that a wide diversity of simple life forms, all with similar roots to the first multi-celled organisms, existed on earth almost a billion years ago.

Next time, I'll take you on the journey that sees a few multi-celled algae and 'bags' become dinosaurs and people...

To Be Continued...

Evolution Prologue

During the Cenozoic Era, the chickens would fry you!

The reason I started my scientific shenanigans was due to enraged arguments I'd been having with some particularly stubborn Christians over on An Uneducated Housewife's Guide to Politics.

The argument was about evolution - something I grew up being taught was a 'theory' only in the same way gravity was a theory.

There is a mountain of evidence proving that evolution was the journey life on Earth took. Yet in America, I'm astonished to find that millions of people don't believe in evolution - and some of them even adhere to the six day 'creation story' from the Bible!

Over on Coffee Bean's blog, things have got pretty heated. One woman dismissed evolution as an "outlandish claim" and another chap claimed: "There is not one fossil that has ever been discovered that supports Darwin's theory. Not a single one on the entire earth!"

Well, that's just rubbish.

So what I'm going to do it tell the story of life on Earth, as I've come to understand it - based on the evidence presented to me.

As I've said before, I'm not a scientist. I might muddle a few things up on the way - but at least what I'll present will be based on science and fact, not the pages of a storybook written two thousand years ago.

How did the Universe Begin?

One of the big theological questions is: "How did it all begin?"

Well, that much is still a mystery. It's entirely possible that some higher power created the universe with one click of his (or her) fingers.

What we DO know is that the universe was created about 14 billion years ago, in an event that most scientists describe as 'the Big Bang.'

Why do I believe this?

Until recently, scientists believed in a 'static' universe - that the current configuration of planets, stars and galaxies were fixed. In 1912, an American called Vesto Melvin Slipher discovered something revolutionary. Peering through his telescope, he realised that objects in space (in his example, a spiral galaxy) were actually moving further away from Earth.


Scientists and astronomers realised that the planets and galaxies weren't moving away from Earth, but rather away from a universal central point.

By calculating the speed and trajectory of the voyaging galaxies' outward journey, scientists worked out that fourteen billion years ago, all the moons, planets, suns and galaxies must have started out from one location, in the center of the 'radius' of the Big Bang. They've been expanding outwards in a 'ripple' ever since.

The Big Question:

This is where my ignorance of scientific matters reveals itself.

I don't know why the Big Bang happened. I've tried reading the theories of primordial nucleosynthesis and it all seems wildly complicated.

I get the impression the big brainiacs are saying that the mass of the universe was squished and scrunched into such a tiny, atom-sized scale that all that pressure and heat created a spontaneous nuclear reaction that 'exploded' the existence into creation.

I don't understand physics enough to know if that makes sense, it's just as easy for somebody like me to imagine that it was a higher power who lit a 'universe firework' that detonated reality as we know it.

Some conjecture that the universe started with a 'cosmic egg,' which was the prior universe, having expanded to its maximum reach, collapsing in on itself in something called the 'Big Crunch.' This makes sense as it's what scientists hypothesise will happen once our current universe has reached the limits of its expansion.

But at the risk of sounding ignorant, I don't pretend to know why or what caused the Big Bang. I only know that it happened - and that's the biggest window religious people have to argue the existence of God.

What else could explain the sudden 'detonation' of an entire universe?

I don't believe in God, so I don't believe he created the universe. However, I've got an open mind, so when it comes to the Big Bang, I'm not going to tell anybody that they're wrong for attributing the creation of the universe to a higher power.

The age of the Earth? Creationists are wrong.

Evolution vs. Creation Doctrine? Creationists are wrong again.

The existence of God? Nobody can know for sure.

How old is the Earth?

Some Christians believe the world is about 6,000 years old, in accordance with the creation doctrine outlined in the Bible.

These people are wrong.

The world is actually about four and a half billion years old.

Why do I believe this?

Well, I'm not scientist - but if I go to a museum, I can see rocks that are 3.9 billion years old. Some of these rocks contain minerals that are up to 4.2 billion years old.

If the Earth consists of rocks that are over four billion years old, the Earth itself must be at least that old.

But how do we know how old these rocks are?

Through a system called 'radiometric dating.'

Although the science of radiometric dating is very complicated, the concept of it isn't. It's based around measuring how much the radioactive isotopes in the object being dated have decayed.

The principle's much like a candle: Take a ten inch high candle made of wax. If you light that candle and leave it for an hour, it will burn one inch of wax in that time.

Therefore, if you opened a door and found and same type of candle burning, but seven inches of it were melted, you'd know that it had been burning for seven hours.

With radiometric dating, you take a rock and measure how much of the radioactive isotope within it has decayed. Based on the rate that type of radioactive isotope normally decays, you can work out the approximate age of the rock based on the result.

Scientists have found minerals on the Earth that they can prove, conclusively, are 4.2 billion years old. Therefore, the world is at least that old.

B-b-but....?

Some Christians argue that the world is not four and a half billion years old. It's actually six thousand years old, like the Bible said.

They have two common theories to 'support' this:

1: Radiometric dating is inaccurate. Since the science doesn't support their belief, the science must be wrong. This is a fine theory, except it's not true and isn't based on any factual evidence whatsoever. Just because you don't like something doesn't mean you can make it 'not true' by refusing to accept it.

Radiometric dating is just as real and observable as the wax candle I mentioned. We know that this hypothetical candle burns down one inch in one hour. Therefore, if it had burnt down seven inches, it must have been lit seven hours earlier. If you can explain how that candle could have burnt any faster (yet keep your answer within the boundaries of scripture) you might have a shot at convincing me about radiometric dating.

2: God created the Earth 'as is.' Some Christians argue that God did create the world six thousand years ago - except he created it to appear as if it was four and a half billion years old. That's a fine theory too, except it trips up.

First off, if God exists, WHY did he make the world appear older than it was?

Secondly, if God had the power to create an 'already old' world six thousand years ago, how do we know he didn't create the world (and all our memories) five seconds ago? Like the best irrational theories, this one can be neither proven nor disproved - but ultimately belongs more in the realms of philosophy than science.

Conclusion

The only rational conclusion, based on the evidence, is that the world has to be at least over four billion years old.

Science for Idiots (Idiots like me...)

Over on Coffee Bean's brilliant 'An Uneducated Housewife's Guide to Politics' there is all sorts of angry debate going on, encompassing many topics, including the perennial discussion about creationism versus evolution.

One of the angriest voices has been mine - simply because the whole existence of 'creationist doctrine' continues to astonish me.

Living in America, I'm often astonished at how similar things are to life in Britain. Oh, sure, the accent and the weather is different, but things are largely the same, aren't they?

Well, it stuff like creationism (and maple syrup on bacon, but I digress) that throws into sharp relief how different things in America actually are.

Here in the United States, people - and I'm talking about a lot of people - actually believe that the world was created in six days, exactly as it's written in the Bible.

This truly astonishes me.

For the most part, I like to think I'm fairly open minded and slip quite effortlessly into the conventions of different cultures. However, I find this particular one very difficult to swallow.

Over on Coffee Bean's blog, I haven't been altogether gentlemanly in my discussions. The words 'religious nutjob' and 'idiot' have passed my (virtual) lips more than once. This really isn't very mature of me. I should simply accept that other people have opinions different to my own (and then I should take the time to explain to them, in very simple terms, why they're wrong.)

Which is the point of the next few posts. I'm not a scientist - but I am a reasonably literate human being. I'm going to explain what I believe and why I believe it.

Now, as arrogant and opinionated as I am, I'm not always right. In fact, I'm not even often right! So there may be typos and errors in the next few posts that people should be more than willing to point out (for example, in a previous post I described the Earth as being 150 million years old. In fact, it's more like 5 billion years old.)

However, everything I write is going to be based in fact and science. I'm sorry, but evidence I can see and touch with my own two hands will always trump what's written in a two thousand year old religious text - no matter how 'inerrant' irrational people claim it to be.

Let the fun begin...

Palin Smackdown

Nobody's going to deny that there's bias in the media - just flick on Fox News and you'll see daily disinformation on a scale Joseph Goebbels would have been proud of.

But when it comes to Sarah Palin... Enough is enough.

I'll admit, I'm on the fence when it comes to Sarah. I like her plucky spirit and determination. I'm not so keen on her religious fervour or questionable opinions on the environment.

(To illustrate my conflict; as keen on hunting as I am, the 'ariel shooting' Palin advocates seems a little unfair. I mean, tracking down a wolf or moose with a high powered rifle makes hunting one sided enough. Targeting them from low-flying airplanes is just thoroughly unsporting!)

But whatever my reservations about Ms. Palin, I have noticed a landslide of negativity being sent her way by the press and media.

It's true that the media tends to have a liberal bias (with the exception of the Fox Propaganda Network.) But I can't remember it ever being quite so blatant before.

Sarah Palin is a nice enough lady. She's got a lovely family and a successful career - one she achieved all on her own, without any of the 'positive discrimination' feminists are screaming for. Sure, she's not perfect. But she's not bad, as far as it goes.

Yet the media is merciless in their attacks against her. Just this morning, I saw her being dismissed as 'a bucket of fluff.' People are openly questioning her political ability, her commitment to her family and even her dress sense.

Come on, guys. It's not only not very nice. It's also dumb. The more the liberal left attack Sarah Palin, the more they galvanise the moderates and the right wing to back up 'that nice little Alaskan lady.'

Not to mention, some of the attacks are just damn stupid.

Seriously, why would the Democrats make such a thing about Palin's perceived 'inexperience' when she's at least as experienced as their own Presidential candidate. I'm sorry, but that's just playing into the right wing's hands.

Whichever way you look at it, McCain pulled an ace from his sleeve when he selected Sarah Palin to stand for the vice presidency. The only way the Democrats are going to trump this clever move is by shelving the attacks against her - completely.

They need to play nice - to recognize Sarah Palin's refreshing perspective, her family values and her political ambitions. They need to pat her on the head, tell everybody what a good job lil' Sarah is doing and dismiss her as a political unimportance. Only then they can concentrate on the main target - McCain.

If they play nice, they won't seen to be mean spirited bullies. It'll pull the carpet out from the Republican's campaign and put them back on a level footing.

But I don't think the liberals are capable of that level of political sophistication. They're just going to team up on this friendly, family woman and bombard her with the sort of mean-spirited maliciousness they wailed about the Republicans aiming towards Hillary.

The scary thing? This election was the Democrats to lose - and a damn fine job they're doing of exactly that.

Guest Post by Editorial Bear

Hello everybody! Editorial Bear here...

Lehman Brothers, a venerable institution that's been on Wall Street for a century and a half, folded this morning.

Merrill Lynch, a similarly illustrious financial powerhouse, was only given a temporary reprieve by Bank Of America (flush with the money they make giving financial services to illegal immigrants.)

Unsurprisingly, the markets took a nose dive after hearing this news - throwing America back into gloomy uncertainty about the financial future.

Well, worry not. Editorial Bear is here to help you.

In this day and age, it's vital to invest for the future and ensure you have a nest egg to retire on. Militant Ginger, for example, has a 401k (although I've suggested that he'd be better off cashing it in for dollar bills and flushing them one-by-one down the nearest toilet.)

If you're thinking of your economic futures, here are some good investment options:

The Short Term:

In the short term, I definitely recommend investing heavily in lottery tickets, trips to Atlantic City (always bet on red) and plenty of alcohol. When you finally do awaken from your drunken stupor, you'll realise you lost a lot less money than investing in 'aggressive' portfolios.

The Mid Term:

Take up smoking immediately. Increase your alcohol intake. Take up a dangerous sport. These tactics will quickly convert all your 'Mid Term' investment opportunities into 'Short Term' ones.

The Long Term:

Due to financial uncertainty and the upcoming nuclear Apocalypse, the only sensible Long Term investments are canned goods and shotgun shells. Diversify with your own still. Not only will you be able to produce moonshine - you can also brew ethanol fuel to power your generator.

I hope this information has been helpful to you!

Remember - invest wisely!

Regards,

Editorial Bear

Bristol Palin speaks:

Palin plays Librarian?

Currently, the Republican campaign seems to consist of blowing irrelevant things out of all importance (like 'lipstickgate') while also trying to dismiss important things as 'minor flipperies' - like Sarah Palin's impractical suggestion to declare war on Russia.

One such 'non-issue' is Palin's former quest to ban certain books from the Wasilla, AK, public library.

When Sarah Palin was mayor of Wasilla, she approached local librarian Mary Emmons on three separate occasions to ask the question: "What is your response if I ask you to remove some books from the collection of the Wasilla Public Library?"

Mary Emmons immediately answered: "The books in the collection were purchased in accordance with national standards and professional guidelines, and I would absolutely not allow you to remove any books from the collection."

As it happened, no books were removed from the library - but Mary Emmons found herself fired a few weeks later for her refusal to go along with Palin's hypothetical demands.

She was only reluctantly restored to office by Palin after the people of Wasilla protested vehemently against the popular librarian's dismissal.

Now people are asking: What books was Palin thinking about banning?

According to the Republicans, Sarah Palin never had any intention of banning books from Wasilla public library. It was a purely hypothetical question.

However, Paul Stuart, a reporter for the Frontiersman newspaper, has a different story: "Mary Emmons told me directly that Palin asked her to remove Pastor, I Am Gay from the shelves."

Pastor, I Am Gay is a book by controversial local pastor Howard Bess. He wrote it while a churchman in California, in response to what he learned dealing with gay parishioners. The book was well known in Wasilla because Bess lived in the neighbouring town.

Pastor, I Am Gay examines the misconceptions and intolerance the Christian community has for it's homosexual members and (this is where the controversy comes in) suggests that Christians should act a bit more 'Christian' towards them.

Wasilla, being a rather conservative town, was no fan of this liberal pastor's book or it's ideas. No book store in the little town would stock the book and the two copies donated to Mary Emmon's library conveniently disappeared. Bess donated a further two copies about the same time Sarah Palin started asking Mary Emmons about banning books.

The controversy here is two-fold.

First off, no Vice Presidential candidate should be going around banning books. It's not just unconstitutional - it's wrong. Censorship and book-banning is the stuff of fascist and communist regimes and a fundamentalist mindset.

Secondly, it neatly reveals that Sarah Palin isn't the fluffy 'gay friendly' candidate she claims to be ('I have gay friends,' she claimed, despite changing the Alaska constitution to limit marriage as 'between a man and a woman.') Pastor, I Am Gay was controversial in conservative Christian circles because it challenged the bigoted status quo and forced 'good Christians' to actually start looking at their own behavior and exactly how 'Christian' it was.

The 'Moral Majority' have a long history of repressing any such self examination, because what it reveals is never pretty. In trying to get Pastor, I Am Gay banned from Wasilla public library, Sarah Palin reveals just where she stands when it comes to the choice between The First Amendment and 'good, old fashioned family values.'

Of course, there is the possibility that this is just a manufactured 'non-story' like the Republicans claim. Maybe Paul Stuart is lying and Sarah Palin never intended to ban any books from the Wasilla library.

But in politics, just like in everything else, there's a a certain wisdom in remembering: 'Where there's smoke, there just might be somebody burning books.'