Two small thoughts:

1. Holy crap, when CSS reset says you are responsible for everything, they mean it! I'm going to have to start over even with flatpages!
2. Somewhere out there, a sysadmin at a small corporation has named all of the Sun boxes in his NOC after AIs from the Journal Entries.

Ben Stein: A Collection Of His Greatest Hits!

Ben Stein is whining today, "It's not my fault!" Unfortunately for Ben, yes it is.

Ben begins with this classic piece of deception:

The first real super problem I had was when the movie I narrated and co-wrote, Expelled--No Intelligence Allowed, was in progress. ... Expelled was a plea for open discussion of the possibility that life might have started with an Intelligent Designer. This idea, that freedom of academic discussion on an issue as to which there is avid scientific disagreement has value, seems obvious to me. But it drives the atheists and neo-Darwinists crazy and they responded viciously.

Ben is simply lying, but I can't tell if he's lying to himself along with his readers. After all, there is no "avid scientific disagreement"; it would seem that even the most ardent Intelligent Design advocate has given up and instead has taken to whining that the very definition of "science" is unfair because it doesn't allow for supernaturalism. This whining focuses on biology because it's combinatorially difficult to analyze biological systems and so it's the easiest place to find gaps in which God might hide; these people never talk about the intelligent design of physical or chemical systems.

Ben is mendacious when he implies that that's all Expelled was. It was a polemic, one that (again with the Godwin alert) interspersed images of Darwin and Hitler and mis-stated the various "persecution" cases of Robert Sternberg, Nathaniel Abraham, and others. It's well-documented that he lied to many of the biologists he interviewed about the nature of the film he was making in order to get "gotcha" editables that could be chopped up to present their subjects in the worst possible manner.

Ben's whining is particularly hilarious given that Intelligent Design founder William Dembski's class in ID at the Southwest Baptist Theological Seminary gives credit for internet trolling: "provide at least 10 posts defending ID that you've made on "hostile" websites, the posts totalling 2,000 words, along with the URLs (i.e., web links) to each post (worth 20% of your grade)." (This is just one of several gems, including the precious "Why are materials so ready to embrace Darwinian evolution, eugenics, abortion, infanticide, and euthanasia as a package deal?") Dembski graciously offered PZ Meyers the deal that he would tell his students to stop trolling if Meyers' people would stop responding in nasty ways to the trollers. PZ mockingly declined.

Ben was fired because of his association with a "free credit score" group that, he claims, has a "perfect record" with consumer protection agencies. A simple search for "Freescore.com scam" will show up dozens of public complaints about the company he shilled for. Freescore is so bad Reuters editors let Felix Salmon go all-out in ripping Stein a new one, and leads us to note that Freescore.com is a member of the "Adaptive Marketing" group, which apparently specializes in this kind of nonsense. (Holy Chao, Adaptive Marketing is the info clearing house for ${ETHICS_VIOLATION}! And the WaPo editors let it go! Man, I'm glad I didn't go to work there now.)

While Ben states that he never once mentioned the company in his column, the fact that he put his weight as the "Everybody's Business" NYT columnist behind his appearances for a credit product certainly does seem like a conflict of interest.

Ben closes with this thought:

It's sad that the Internet has become a backyard gossip freeway for the whole world's sick people to pour out their neuroses. Too many sick people out there on the web for comfort.

I have made as many mistakes as a person not in custody can make. I make no claims to anything even remotely like perfection or even desirability as a role model. It is just that in this case, I didn't do anything wrong. In my life, I have done plenty wrong. I am not the master. I am the servant and a poor one at that.

Waaaah! It's not my fault!

Yes, Ben, it is your fault. You've made poor choices. You've been mocked repeatedly for your failure to understand the basic macroeconomics you purported to write about, and you even illustrated your terrible judgement as a parent more than once. Remember this?

I very much fear that my son, more up-to-date than I am in almost every way, is more of a modern-day American than I am. To hustle and scuffle for a deal is something he cannot even imagine. To not be able to eat at any restaurant he feels like eating at is just not on his wavelength. Of course, that's my fault. (I have learned that everything bad that happens anywhere is my fault.) (NYT, Jan 24, 2008)

Uh, yes, Ben, that is your failure.

In related news, Matt Taibbi has been getting a lot of praise and blame in which he used Goldman Sachs as a proxy for all that is wrong with Wall Street culture. Dean Starkman warns people not to dismiss him-- he's doing the work economics journalists are supposed to do, except all of them are too close to the power and money now to do the yeoman's work Taibi has done.

I mention this because in December of 2007, Stein declared that yes, Goldman Sachs runs the universe, and when Sach's cheif economist said that bad days were looming, Stein scoffed and claimed that Sachs was using its phenomenal size and power to drive stock prices in the direction in wanted. Stein pointed to a paper about what would happen if a bank's losses were so great it had to cannibalize its capital to survive and that such an event would bring down the heavily interconnected market. Stein called the paper "not a serious overview of the situation." He also claimed (in August of 2007) that "the stock market is cheap on a price-earnings basis, profits are fabulous... and in the long run, both here and abroad, stocks are a lovely place to be," and in April of 2008 said, "as a matter of definition, we simply cannot be in a recession at all." Accuracy and insight are not requirements to be a New York Times columnist, I take it.

As an economist, a pitchman, and an ideologue, Ben Stein will simply go down in history as one of the Stupidest Men Alive.

In this case, I'm perfectly happy to be one of the "sick people" cheering as the SS Ben Stein goes down, flaming, with no desert island in sight.

Powerless!

The transformer outside our neighborhood blew up this morning. Puget Sound Energy is telling us six to eight hours, at least, to deal with it.

Internet access will be highly sporadic and nomadic as Omaha and I wander around libraries and cafes, looking for WiFi and power. Don't expect quick responses.

Kids are funny...

Omaha and I were discussing the upcoming A Magickal Life presentation that she and a bunch of other local pagans are putting on for the local community. They've invited Maxine Saunders, a founder of some sect of paganism with which I am not too familiar, to come and speak. As we were talking, Omaha said, "And the Sunday after that she'll be giving a lecture to everyone."

Kouryou-chan, who was sitting on the couch behind us reading a book, looked up and said, "Why would she give a lecture to everyone?"

Omaha and I looked at each other and it dawned on us that the only context Kouryou-chan knew for the word "lecture" was being lectured to when she was in trouble for something. We quickly told her that was not the case and there were other uses for the word "lecture," and she understood that and went back to reading.

Metaphorically Shiny

Omaha and Kaelisinger were chatting, and I heard the following exchange (after an incident regarding, I'm sure, something I did): "I know guys are supposed to have terrible peripheral vision, except for 'Oooh! Shiny!'"

Omaha said, "And tits."

"Are tits shiny?"

"Metaphorically, yes."

Coincidence? Or DESTINY?

Word of the day:

Palingenesis: Political doctrine typically found in facist ideology that the facist state is the rebirth or restoration of the nation to some mythical but commonly held Golden Age.