Stephen Meyer, the director of the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture, spoke the other evening at a forum called “Socrates in the City.” Normally it’s in New York City, but tonight it was at the University Club in Washington, D.C. The founder, Eric Metaxas, gave a great introduction. He’s someone who doesn’t follow the intellectual herd. The author of an influential book, Signature in the Cell , Meyer addressed the question, “Is there a scientific controversy about the theory of evolution?” He made a strong case that there is. A few days later, I also interviewed him about the prospects for intelligent design. In his talk, inquiring how life first appeared from simpler pre-existing chemicals, Meyer emphasized the concept of biological information, which is embedded in DNA. Think of it as analogous to software code. Bill Gates said that “DNA is like a computer program but far, far more advanced than any software ever created.” Software contains instructions that direct computers to accomplish various functions. Likewise, DNA contains instructions for the assembly of tiny machines called proteins, which perform vital functions within every cell. In the 19th century the cell was thought to be simple. Darwin and his contemporaries had no way of knowing just how complex it is. Today it is compared to a high-tech factory. (Except it’s much more complex than that—factories can’t replicate themselves.) So how did the information get into the DNA in the first place? Without it, the first cell wouldn’t have been constructed, and life would not have begun. In Expelled , when Ben Stein asked Richard Dawkins how life began, he said he had no idea. We still don’t. Nucleotide bases along the spine of the DNA molecule—in effect the characters in the genetic text—direct the cell’s molecular machinery to link specific amino acids into proteins. If the sequence is incorrectly arranged the protein doesn’t get assembled. Watson and Crick described the double helical structure of DNA. But no one has yet explained the origin of the information it contains. “So that’s a huge stumbling block for evolutionary explanations of the origin of life,” Meyer said. Just as computer code comes from programmers, so functional information comes from intelligence—from mind. Intelligence, or conscious activity, is the only known cause of the kind of sequence-specific, information-rich code that we see in biology. We infer that the ultimate origin of biological information is an intelligent agent, or agents. All other proposed explanations have failed. Some think natural selection can get the job done. But as Meyer said, processes such as natural selection can’t take place until life is already up and running. Until we have a living and self-replicating cell, natural selection doesn’t enter the picture. Thus, it does nothing to explain how life first evolved from non-living chemicals. Meyer also argued that biological evolutionary theory, which “attempts to explain how new forms of life evolved from simpler pre-existing forms,” faces formidable difficulties. In particular, the modern version of Darwin’s theory, neo-Darwinism, also has an information problem. Mutations, or copying errors in the DNA, are analogous to copying errors in digital code, and they supposedly provide the grist for natural selection. But, Meyer said: “What we know from all codes and languages is that when specificity of sequence is a condition of function, random changes degrade function much faster than they come up with something new.” He mentioned the Cambrian explosion—the geologically sudden appearance of most major animal forms. It’s a dramatic event in the history of life. Animals with new body plans—arthropods, brachiopods, chordates—appeared suddenly about 530 million years ago. Nothing resembling a precursor appears in the strata below the Cambrian. So the same problem arises: What would it take to build one of those new body plans? You’d need a big instruction set, just for one body part. The trilobite had a compound, lens-focusing eye. “Each new cell for each new tissue had dedicated proteins,” Meyer said. “The proteins in turn need instructions to be built.” The problem is comparable to opening a big combination lock. He asked the audience to imagine a bike lock with ten dials and ten digits per dial. Such
…which is why, of course, I am asking it. The background… comes in three parts: Vice President Joe Biden, when he was Senator Joe Biden, happened to be a sponsor of the Violence Against Women Act. We’ll pass to one side for a moment the current (as in, this week) controversy over the latest iteration of the law – it’s up for reauthorization – to specifically note, again, that this was Biden’s baby, as it were. Charlie Wilson is known mostly for three things (four, if you count the fact that he’s often confused with the infinitely better Democratic Charlie Wilson from Texas); he was the former Congressman from OH-06; Charlie Wilson of Ohio is an admitted wife-beater ; and Charlie Wilson of Ohio is unaccountably running for Congress again . Guess where Joe Biden will be stumping for the President, this week? That’s right! OH-06! Also OH-17 (Youngstown), but Thursday Biden will be making a speech Thursday at an auto dealership in Martin’s Ferry . Which, as has been privately pointed out to me, leads to a fascinating set of questions. Will Charlie Wilson be making an appearance at this event? If Wilson does show, will we be treated to the spectacle of seeing the Vice President and sponsor of anti-spousal abuse legislation praise a guy who was a poster child for why we might have needed the legislation in the first place? If Wilson does not show, will the administration come clean about why the wife-beater wasn’t invited to his party’s own in-district campaign event? In either case, will the press bring up the inherent rhetorical contradictions that this entire scenario represents? No, wait, I know the answer to that last one already. Moe Lane ( crosspost ) PS: Hey, you know something? Bill Johnson (R, OH-06) STILL doesn’t beat his wife!
More:
Will VAWA sponsor Joe Biden campaign with wife-beater Charlie Wilson in OH-06?
As the 2008 November election loomed, it appears that then-Senator Barack Obama was traumatized — by Sean Hannity. Author Edward Klein, whose new Obama book The Amateur is just out, has a startling piece in Sunday’s New York Post . As revealing for what it says as for who it doesn’t mention. Klein had interviewed the president’s controversial ex-pastor the Reverend Jeremiah Wright for the book. Wright claims he was offered $150,000 by an Obama supporter to silence himself during the presidential campaign. And that there was a secret meeting between Obama and Wright that took place in the parsonage of the Trinity United Church of Christ, a meeting in which Obama asked Wright to stop preaching sermons until after the November, 2008 elections. Wrote Klein in The Post, beginning with a direct quote from Wright: “Man, the media ate me alive,” Wright told me when we met in his office at Chicago’s Kwame Nkrumah Academy. “After the media went ballistic on me, I received an e-mail offering me money not to preach at all until the November presidential election.” “Who sent the e-mail?” I asked Wright. “It was from one of Barack’s closest friends.” “He offered you money?” “Not directly,” Wright said. “He sent the offer to one of the members of the church, who sent it to me.” “How much money did he offer you?” “One hundred and fifty thousand dollars,” Wright said. “Did Obama himself ever make an effort to see you?” “Yes,” Wright said. “Barack said he wanted to meet me in secret, in a secure place. And I said, ‘You’re used to coming to my home, you’ve been here countless times, so what’s wrong with coming to my home?’ So we met in the living room of the parsonage of Trinity United Church of Christ, at South Pleasant Avenue right off 95th Street, just Barack and me. I don’t know if he had a wire on him. His security was outside somewhere. “And one of the first things Barack said was, ‘I really wish you wouldn’t do any more public speaking until after the November election.’ He knew I had some speaking engagements lined up, and he said, ‘I wish you wouldn’t speak. It’s gonna hurt the campaign if you do that.’ “And what did you say?” I asked. “I said, ‘I don’t see it that way. And anyway, how am I supposed to support my family?’ And he said, ‘Well, I wish you wouldn’t speak in public. The press is gonna eat you alive. “Barack said, ‘I’m sorry you don’t see it the way I do. Do you know what your problem is?’ And I said, ‘No, what’s my problem?’ And he said, ‘You have to tell the truth.’ I said, ‘That’s a good problem to have. That’s a good problem for all preachers to have. That’s why I could never be a politician.’ “And he said, ‘It’s going to get worse if you go out there and speak. It’s really going to get worse.’ “And he was so right” Two points. An offer of hush money that appears to be connected in some fashion with an Obama donor? Is this not exactly what former North Carolina Senator John Edwards is on trial for as we speak? The use of campaign donor money as hush money for his mistress? What’s the difference, in terms of campaign finance laws, between using campaign donor money to silence a mistress and a minister? Second point. While neither Wright nor Klein mention it here…who specifically was “the media” that both Wright and Obama were so concerned about? When Obama said ” The press is gonna eat you alive” — who exactly in the press was he talking about? That’s right. It was none other than our friend Sean Hannity. The same Sean Hannity who first brought Reverend Wright to national attention through writer Erik Rush — and then brought Wright on Hannity and Colmes . Hannity was relentless in bringing Wright’s controversial sermons (like this one , Wright’s infamous “Goddamn America!” sermon) to national attention — while the mainstream media was quiet as a church mouse. Eventually ABC’s Brian Ross woke up to the controversy, but it was Hannity who took the heat — tons of it — for repeatedly exploring the potential links between Wright’s far-left Black Liberation Theology, socialism and a would-be Obama administration. Now, according to Klein, we know that Obama himself was so concerned about what was in fact Hannity’s continuous reporting on Wright that the then-Senator personally had a secret sit-down with Wright to ask his pastor to, well, shut-up. Again. Campaign donor hush money offer to Jeremiah Wright? Who else from Obama’s past did the campaign or its donor friends try and hush with big bucks? And who took it? And what is the difference between mistress hush money and minister hush money?
Read more here:
Obama’s Fear of Hannity, and Wright Hush Money
[Posted by Karl] As usual, you are positively encouraged to engage in sockpuppetry in this thread. The usual rules apply. Please, be sure to switch back to your regular handle when commenting on other threads. I have made that mistake myself. Any discussion that is not funny where people want to get angry at each other is are strictly prohibited . Offending comments will be summarily deleted and the violators flogged. And remember: the worst sin you can commit on this thread is not being funny. — Liberals, when not spending your money, are kind of a cheap date , aren’t they? President Obama declared his personal support for same-sex marriage yesterday, but the White House chose not to push for the repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act today. “Well, party platform issues are for the party to decide,” White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said when asked if Obama would call for the repeal of DOMA and endorsement of pro-gay marriage language in the party platform. Gutsy call! Not to mention incoherent, although Jonathan H. Adler notes it: The problem with the President’s position is that it cannot be reconciled with the Administration’s stance on the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act. According to Attorney General Eric Holder , he and the President concluded that the constitutionality of legal distinctions based upon sexual preference cannot be defended. In their view, because DOMA precludes federal recognition of same-sex marriages, it violates the constitutional guarantee of equal protection under the Fifth Amendment. Further, according to Holder’s statement, they concluded that no “reasonable” constitutional argument could be made in DOMA’s defense. Yet if DOMA is unconstitutional under equal protection, which applies to the state and federal governments equally, then how could any state law barring recognition of same-sex marriages survive constitutional scrutiny? Now, legal types can be more nuanced about this, but you can be sure the folks swooning over Obama’s announcement of his personal opinion are not. And given that Obama’s opinion is that states should decide, I again wonder how the folks who think recognizing same sex marriage (and gay rights generally) to be the preeminent civil rights issue of the day embrace Obama’s embrace of states’ rights. After all, they would never accept that position regarding interracial marriage would they? If Obama took that position… maybe . –Karl
Read the original here:
Sockpuppet Friday (DOMA arigato, President Obama edition)
Now this is just silly. The Washington Post can’t be bothered to worry about Barack Obama’s college years, college transcripts, communist friends, cocaine use, or cop-killing plotters in whose living room he first launched his major political career, but they can get in the really way back machine to 1965 and Mitt Romney’s high school years. Mitt Romney cut a hippy’s hair at his preparatory high school. A day after Barack Obama caved on gay marriage, the Washington Post “coincidentally” says Mitt Romney cut the hair of a boy who “was perpetually teased for his nonconformity and presumed homosexuality.” Let’s leave out the fact that the kid who got his haircut was subsequently thrown out of school for smoking one cigarette, but we’re to believe that the assailants of his hair, witnessed by many, were ignored. Oh, and the guy who got is hair cut never, ever, ever mentioned it, including to family, and died in 2004 so it can’t be verified. But a handful of students who now probably support Barack Obama have a crystal clear memory of events from 50 years ago. The people who were adults at the time of the incident and still alive have no memory of it, but remember Romney and said he was never a disciplinary problem. N*gg*rhead rock, anybody? After four years of ignoring Barack Obama’s bullying of religious groups and others from inside the White House , it’s fair game to go after Mitt Romney as a supposed high school bully. I guess we won’t hear the left whining any more when we mention Barack Obama eating a dog since, as they are quick to point out, he was a kid when it happened. We have now had more in depth examination of Mitt Romney by the Gang of 500 than of Barack Obama. We do not really know much about Barack Obama’s constituent record in the Illinois Legislature. We still don’t know his college transcripts. We still don’t know what exactly he did for ACORN in his community organizing time. We still don’t know all the details about the depth of the cocaine use Barack Obama admitted to in his book. Likewise, we know very little about his drug use in high school beyond just a few lines of reporting from 2007. We know very little, outside of his own autobiographical spin, about how he overcame his rage at white people — something he wrote about, but again, as a politician in an autobiography. We still don’t know about just how many communists Barack Obama chose to surround himself with. We still know very little about Barack Obama’s ties to Bill Ayers and the media sure hates to talk about Barack Obama getting his major political start in Bill Ayers’ living room. But the press is perfectly happy to go back several decades to tell us every salacious detail about Mitt Romney the teenager. This reminds me of 1992 all over again. The George H. W. Bush team wanted to go focus on Bill Clinton the draft dodger from Vietnam because they couldn’t fight on the economy. Unlike 1992, Barack Obama has the media doing it for him.
See the original post here:
Communists, Cop-Killers, and Cocaine: Why the Washington Post Focuses on Romney Instead
