So apparently, Lauren Ashley, who is this year’s Miss Beverly Hills, takes a rather Old Testament view of homosexuality.

Carrie Prejean isn’t the only beauty queen open to expressing her objection to same-sex marriage. Miss Beverly Hills 2010 Lauren Ashley is also speaking out in support of traditional nuptials.

“The Bible says that marriage is between a man and a woman. In Leviticus it says, ‘If man lies with mankind as he would lie with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination. They shall surely be put to death and their blood shall be upon them.’ The Bible is pretty black and white,” Ashley told Pop Tarts.

“I feel like God himself created mankind and he loves everyone, and he has the best for everyone. If he says that having sex with someone of your same gender is going to bring death upon you, that’s a pretty stern warning, and he knows more than we do about life.”

I have to say that I’m very impressed with Miss Ashley, because it’s rare to find people these days who take the words of their sacred religious texts so seriously. However, it appears that Miss Ashley has been remiss in her Bible study, as it’s become apparent that she has missed some vital portions of the Old Testament. In the interest of saving her immortal soul, I believe that there’s a few verses she needs to be made aware of.

1) Deuteronomy 22:5

Here is a photograph taken last year of Miss Ashley. Do you see the abomination that she’s committing? She’s wearing pants–a clothing that only men should wear. For as it says in Deuteronomy 22:5:

A woman shall not wear anything that pertains to a man, nor shall a man put on a woman’s garment, for all who do so are an abomination to the LORD your God.

For the sake of her soul, I hope she stars wearing more modest, gender-suitable clothing.

2) Leviticus 19:19

It’s inevitable that, as part of the Miss California competition, that Miss Ashley will have to participate in the swimsuit competition. Most swimsuits manufactured these days, though, are a blend of spandex and nylon. This poses quite a problem, because it violates Leviticus 19:19, which states:

Do not wear clothing woven of two kinds of material.

Hopefully, she’ll pick a swimsuit made from one material only.

3) 1 Timothy 2:9-10

Finally, I think that if Miss Ashley truly believes that the Bible shows that God “knows more than we do about life,” then she should heed 1 Timothy 2:9-10:

I also want women to dress modestly, with decency and propriety, not with braided hair or gold or pearls or expensive clothes, but with good deeds, appropriate for women who profess to worship God.

In other words, she should quit the beauty pageant racket entirely and go out into the world and do great things, instead.

I opened up my browser this evening to the Drudge Report headline “The Great Climate Change Retreat!”, which led to this Daily Mail article, which is entitled (take a deep breath), “Climategate U-turn as scientist at centre of row admits: There has been no global warming since 1995″

The scientist in question is Professor Phil Jones, who is the head of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia. Suffice to say, this has made quite a hubbub around the blogosphere. The article is based on an interview that Jones gave to the BBC. Of course, delving into the article itself, it’s clear that Professor Jones did not say that there is no global warming since 1995. He says that there is no ’statistically significant’ global warming since 1995. Which still sounds bad.

Unless, of course, you actually read the interview.

B - Do you agree that from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically-significant global warming

Yes, but only just. I also calculated the trend for the period 1995 to 2009. This trend (0.12C per decade) is positive, but not significant at the 95% significance level. The positive trend is quite close to the significance level. Achieving statistical significance in scientific terms is much more likely for longer periods, and much less likely for shorter periods.

That’s hardly the same as “no global warming since 1995″ and certainly does not represent a “retreat” or a “U-turn.” (For a good primer on statistical significance and what that means, check out this link).

There are several other flagrant misinterpretations of Jones’ statements in the Daily Mail article, as well, but they’re pretty easy to spot simply by comparing the article to the interview and its companion piece.

Heck, reading the Daily Mail, one might come away with the impression that Jones was renouncing the hypothesis of anthropogenic climate change. To correct that impression, let me just quote one more part of the interview:

E - How confident are you that warming has taken place and that humans are mainly responsible?

I’m 100% confident that the climate has warmed. As to the second question, I would go along with IPCC Chapter 9 - there’s evidence that most of the warming since the 1950s is due to human activity.

Whether you accept the hypothesis of global climate change or not, I’m sure we can all agree that shoddy reporting like the Daily Mail article ought to be repudiated. It’s a deliberate misinterpretation of a fascinating interview (I’d highly recommend reading the interview, though–the reporter asking the questions clearly knows his stuff and it is not a softball).

Frankly, I think this provides an excellent example of why, when it comes to scientific topics, you’re much better off going to primary sources than you are trusting a newspaper reporter.

“If only the media had as much contempt for lying, thieving, corrupt politicians as they do for sports stars who use steroids.”
– Radley Balko

I like to take vacations from the Internet on the weekends. Well, okay, not vacations from the Internet, but vacations from political blogs and news. (It’s good for your sanity to not read about politics on Saturday. Trust me.) Of course, this past weekend was a long weekend, so I spent a good deal of time last night catching up. Only to discover that half the political blogosophere is obsessed with this.

Yeah, click the link.

This Instapundit link is being talked about all over, and I have to say, I have no idea what the discussion is even about. From any angle, left, right, or other. It’s taking place on such a sub-intellectual level that I honestly can’t even translate.

Bottom line: I may be taking a longer vacation from politics for awhile. Doesn’t that beach look nice? I think that’s where my political brain is headed.

Image Credit: Eustaquio Santimano.

Dear Crazy Right-Wing Pundits,

In my opinion, you cannot simultaneously decry President Obama as a terrorist-loving Bolshevik and complain that he isn’t back in Washington from his vacation. That doesn’t make sense. Even by your standards.

This is because, you see, if you really believed that he was a terrorist-loving Bolshevik, you would want him away from his job as much as possible.

Think about it.

Anyways, I hope you have been enjoying your holiday season.

Love and kisses,
Alex

Diana Hsieh offers her thoughts on the Kindle, particularly her experiences when she tried to really dig into a work of philosophy.

It was a disaster — not just for the discussion but also just for my own understanding. Without physical pages, I simply couldn’t get a handle on the structure of the text. I felt lost in a Heraclitean stream of words. I couldn’t remember what was where. The more that I flipped back and forth, the more confused I got. I could make notes in the text, but not useful notes. The keyboard is too tiny for substantive notes, and I can’t implement my super-handy system of tiny little margin notes. My margin notes are a huge help to later skimming. (That’s critical for group discussion.) And they help me retain the material as I read it, in that I pause to think and process in the course of making those notes.

In short, trying to read Ayn Rand’s Normative Ethics on the Kindle felt like I was trying to remember the progression of a run done on the treadmill, where the scenery is always the same. In contrast, reading a physical book was like remembering a similar run done through some neighborhood, where the varying landscape cements memories.

This has been my big fear about switching to an e-reader. I associate a lot of my reading the the physical memories of holding a book. Flipping through pages, making notes, that kind of thing.

Also, I think that “I felt lost in a Heraclitean stream of words” is one of the best turns of phrase that I’ve read in a long time.

Julian Sanchez notes that Glenn Beck has taken a liking to Thomas Paine and comments: “I recommend a dramatic reading from The Age of Reason. Or would inducing that level of cognitive dissonance be cruel?”

I say that if Julian really wants to see Glenn Beck enter into a world of cognitive dissonance, then Beck should perform a dramatic reading of Thomas Paine’s Agrarian Justice, especially this bit:

Having thus in a few words, opened the merits of the case, I shall now proceed to the plan I have to propose, which is,

To create a national fund, out of which there shall be paid to every person, when arrived at the age of twenty-one years, the sum of fifteen pounds sterling, as a compensation in part, for the loss of his or her natural inheritance, by the introduction of the system of landed property:

And also, the sum of ten pounds per annum, during life, to every person now living, of the age of fifty years, and to all others as they shall arrive at that age.

Yes, that’s Thomas Paine, advocating old age pensions and for money to be provided to every adult upon reaching the age of majority. Why? Because he believed that the ownership of land was unjust, that land should belong in common to all, but since it did not, the owners of property owed that money to everyone, and that money was to be paid through estate and property taxes.

Read the whole essay, by the way, which is really fascinating.

“Probably the most we could ask for right now is to have the people administering the lethal injections dress as pimps so that in the event of another wrongful execution the New York Times and Washington Post treat it as an important story.”

– DougJ, on the media reaction to Rick Perry’s cover up of the fact that the state of Texas likely executed an innocent person.

Matthew Yglesias points out the strange effect that cable news has on politics:

It makes you think about the strange influence that daytime cable news has on American politics. The three networks combined have an aggregate daytime audience of roughly zero. But even though the audience, looked at nationally, amounts to rounding error the networks are hugely popular among the tiny number of people who work in professional politics. Just like traders have CNBC and Bloomberg on in their offices, political operatives are constantly tuned in to what’s happening on cable news. The result is a really bizarre hothouse scenario in which people are basically watching . . . well . . . nothing, but they’re riveted to it. How things “play” on cable news is considered fairly important even though no persuadable voters are watching it.

This is utterly bizarre to me, too. I rarely, if ever, watch cable news unless there’s a big story breaking. Well, okay, I also watch Glenn Beck when he’s on because he’s so mesmerizingly crazy.

On a related note, Jon Stewart’s takedown of CNN last night was one of the greatest things, well, ever:

Brilliant takedown.

This video is pretty dead on:

Also of interest, by the way, is this article featuring a timeline of memes leaving the Glenn Beck show and appearing in mainstream Republican discourse. It is naturally cherry-picked, of course, but there’s quite a few of them.

My own take on Beck is that I find him to be a screamingly funny entertainer who is not worth taking at all seriously. Unfortunately, a large number of people actually buy what he’s selling instead of getting a kick out of “look at what the crazy guy is saying today!”