A friend, an intelligent lapsed Jew who observes the Sabbath for reasons of cultural solidarity, describes himself as a Tooth Fairy Agnostic. He will not call himself an atheist because it is in principle impossible to prove a negative. But “agnostic” on its own might suggest that he though God’s existence or non-existence equally likely. In fact, though strictly agnostic about god, he considers God’s existence no more probable than the Tooth Fairy’s.Bertrand Russell used a hypothetical teapot in orbit about Mars for the same didactic purpose. You have to be agnostic about the teapot, but that doesn’t mean you treat the likelihood of its existence as being on all fours with its non-existence. The list of things about which we strictly have to be agnostic doesn’t stop at tooth fairies and celestial teapots. It is infinite. If you want to believe in a particular one of them — teapots, unicorns, or tooth fairies, Thor or Yahweh — the onus is on you to say why you believe in it. The onus is not on the rest of us to say why we do not. We who are atheists are also a-fairyists, a-teapotists, and a-unicornists, but we don’t’ have to bother saying so. – Richard Dawkins, following a list of excerpts from hate mail sent to the editor of Freethought Today, after she won a separationist court battle, in “A Challenge To Atheists: Come Out of the Closet” (Free Inquiry, Summer, 2002) paragraph division added ††

Source: atheist-community.org

A most excellent piece on disproving fantasies.

Ron Paul scores again — this time about Iran.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul368.html

If this guy makes it through the initial battles in 2008, I’m voting for him all the way.

A refreshing look at the issue of race and crime.

http://www.city-journal.org/html/eon2007-02-07hm.html

Now if we could just apply this type of logical thought to more than just New York, and to more than just race and crime.

Ok, that was a bit inflammatory, but it’s true; new years resolutions almost never work. Here’s why:

If you were actually capable of making that certain necessary change in your life, you wouldn’t have waited until New Years Eve to do it. The reason it hasn’t happened is because you’re too weak to pull it off. So, rather than pretending that this “resolution” will make a difference, spend your time eliminating the weakness that’s causing you to fail.

…they’re all complex systems that worked in the past but are now failing. This is true because they rely on an advanced, educated population to sustain them. We don’t have one of those anymore.

We have teachers sleeping with students, parents abandoning children in order to fornicate, and people watching reality TV instead of getting an education. Our society is failing, and it will continue to deteriorate because we are becoming mouthbreathers.

Healthy society is based on using logic and reason to create rules that benefit society. It requires that people participating in such a system place their own interests on hold in order to benefit someone else. It’s intellect vs. animal.

The animal is now winning. The society is crumbling. I have no idea what the outcome will look like, but I do know that it’s going to be ugly. The process is in motion.

A somewhat interesting concept: if you ask “why” five times — and actually reveal an additional core reason each time — you only need five answers to arrive at the root cause. This is highly disputed for a number of reasons, but evidently Toyota uses a similar technique to assist with its operations.

LINK: Wikipedia Article On The 5 Whys

Some well-meaning, albeit uninformed soul (who just got Dugg) came up with what he believes to be a great way to combat spam. The idea is to “bounce” the spam messages back to the spammer — presumably so that you don’t exist.

Interesting. So the best technique for fighting spam is to send a message to the spammer saying,

Hi, this is a valid email address (they can tell it’s not a real error). Do me a favor and don’t spam me. Oh, and one more thing — don’t spam me using the address I’m sending this from.

Outstanding. I’ve got another great idea: let’s make a list of dates of birth and social security numbers to put online that’s part of a “Identity Theft Prevention List”. This way the identity thieves can have one place to go to ensure they don’t steal the identity of someone who doesn’t want theirs stolen.

Use some logic, people. If they were willing to spam you the first time, do you really think they’re going to stop because you ask them to? Here’s another stellar crime fighting technique: go up the the friendly neighborhood rapist and say,

Hey, do me a favor, don’t ever come to 135 Elm Street where my wife’s often home alone while I’m on business. M’kay? Thanks.

Genius.

** It’s not quite this bad since it’s made to look like an error rather than a reply, but to a spammer this is a trivial obfuscation. Things like the time the spam was sent vs. the time it was bounced (as well as mail headers) illustrate very clearly whether something was actually bounced or was made to look like it did. Spammers tend to react negatively to the latter. Plus, a good portion of spam comes from spoofed addresses anyway, and responding just clogs bandwidth and freaks out the spoofed users. Don’t waste your time.

Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.