George Will has an excellent column on Gore’s revisionism and his recent statements. I was
pretty tired two years ago hearing the lies about counting all the ballots when
it was only an attempt to recount the ballots in heavily democratic districts.
The hatred of Western Civilization, and the corresponding
urge to glorify anything outside it, especially if it can be depicted as a
victim of the West, is a well-known phenomenon of the contemporary liberal mind.
One of the forms it has taken in recent years is the attempt to artificially
inflate the historic achievements of other civilizations beyond what the facts
support. The noble savage myth is a commonplace; what is more complex is the
myth that has been bandied about concerning the supposed “golden age” of Islamic
civilization during what we know as the Middle Ages.
….In the exact
sciences the contribution of Al-Khwarzimi, mathematician and astronomer, was
considerable. Like Euclid, he wrote mathematical books that collected and
arranged the discoveries of earlier mathematicians. His “Book of Integration and
Equation” is a compilation of rules for solving linear and quadratic equations,
as well as problems of geometry and proportion. Its translation into Latin in
the 12thcentury provided the link between the great Hindu mathematicians and
European scholars. A corruption of the book�s title resulted in the word
algebra; a corruption of the author�s own name resulted in the term
algorithm.
The problem with turning this list of intellectual
achievements into a convincing “Islamic” golden age is that whatever flourished,
did so not by reason of Islam but in spite of Islam. Moslems overran societies
(Persian, Greek, Egyptian, Byzantine, Syrian, Jewish) that possessed
intellectual sophistication in their own right and failed to completely destroy
their cultures. To give it the credit for what the remnants of these cultures
achieved is like crediting the Red Army for the survival of Chopin in Warsaw in
1970! Islam per se never encouraged science, in the sense of disinterested
enquiry, because the only knowledgeit accepts is religious
knowledge.
[Full story]
Read Karl Schudt of Summa Contra Mundum post on contraception and the natural law which ends with the
Chestertonian statement “The teaching on contraception hasn’t been rejected as
much as it has never been taught.”
Sean Gallagher offers an excellent
post at Nota Bene on the
origins of the words chapel and a capella.
At googlefight.com you enter in two key
words and it gives the results of the number of hits for each. Here are some
that I tried:
God (7 020 000 results) versus Devil (6 360 000 results)
United States
(5 860 000 results) versus Iraq (4 780 000 results)
Catholic (6 140 000
results) versus Atheist ( 14 700 results)
Grace (7 030 000 results)
versus Sin (21 300 000 results)
I demand a recount here, must be because of
Palm Beach voters.
Also must not have taken Romans 5:20 into
account.
Truth (10 200 000 results) versus Lie (5 510 000 results)
Pope (2 020 000 results) versus Antichrist ( 72 500 results)
Bush (4 190 000 results) versus Clinton (3 560 000 results)
Republican (3 060 000 results) versus Democrat (1 550 000 results)
Bible (14 100 000 results) versus Playboy ( 623 000 results)
Augustine (1 520 000 results) versus Martin Luther (1 520 000 results)
Googlefight picked Augustine as the winner in this tie.
Fellow citizens of
Iraq,
Who would you like to see as your
leader?
__ Saddam Hussein
__ Saddam Hussein
__ I would
prefer to be dismembered
Thank you for exercising your democratic right to vote on
this day. Praise Allah!
[from:give
war a chance]
Saddam Hussein picked for his recent referendum as a
theme song Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You”. For some reason I can’t
imagine that this song accurately depicts his regime. Here are some
alternatives.
Vote for me or:
Every Breath You Take – might be your last
You
might be climbing a – Stairway to Heaven
You will be six feet –
Down under
More accurate theme songs:
Maniac
Sympathy For
The Devil
Beat it
Are You Gonna Go My Way
Everybody Wants to Rule the
World
Fell On Black Days
Should I Stay or Should I Go
Saddam’s alternative theme songs:
Born To Be Wild
I Will Survive
Stayin’ Alive
Saddam’s torturers picks:
Killing me
softly
Do That To Me One More Time
Whip it
Man In the Box