Pun Salad

• Scott "Dilbert" Adams loves to be provocative on his blog. Much of the time he irks me—that's what being provocative means, after all—but sometimes he and I are on the same wavelength. Today is one of those days, as he takes on atheism.

  In order to be certain that God doesn't exist, you have to possess a godlike mental capacity—the ability to be 100% certain. A human can't be 100% certain about anything. Our brains aren't that reliable. Therefore, to be a true atheist, you have to believe you are the very thing that you argue doesn't exist: God.

  This seems to me to be a knock-down argument. Because if there's one thing we can be certain of, it's uncertainty.

  Perhaps you will argue that being 99.999999% certain God doesn't exist is just as good as being 100% sure. That strikes me as bad math.

  Me too.

• Also being provocative is one Stanislav Shmulevich of Brooklyn, NY. He's in a heap of trouble for ("allegedly") putting a copy of the Quran in a Pace University library toilet. You might think this could be treated as ordinary vandalism. So did Pace officials, but that was before they reversed themselves (apparently under pressure from the Council on American-Islamic Relations [CAIR]) and reported the incident to the New York Police Department's hate crimes unit. And Shmulevich found himself arrested on felony charges.

  This is something to keep in mind for the current debate about expanding hate crime legislation. To the extent that Shmulevich's action was about expressing his opinion, rather than vandalism, he's under threat of being punished for it.

  As might be expected, Little Green Footballs is all over this. Probably the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education won't be far behind. (Ironically, FIRE recently polished off a case against Pace for refusing to recognize a religious student organization—but that was a Christian organization, so ho hum.)

• The "good point" award for today goes to Michael Brady at the "Majority Accountability Project," who recently witnessed the spectacle of a local news conference where New Hampshire Democrat Chairman Raymond Buckley hailed the recent increase in the minimum wage.

  "While Representatives Shea-Porter and Hodes are being a voice for New Hampshire families, it is a shame that (U.S. Senators Judd) Gregg and (John) Sununu voted to eliminate the federal minimum wage entirely," Buckley said.

  Fine, right? But, um, wait a minute:

  Buckley seemed unaware that Hodes and Shea-Porter voted against legislation that allowed the minimum wage hike to become law, while both Sununu and Gregg voted in favor.

  This mysterious behavior is explained at the link, but it's still amusing. Via Doug at Granite Grok.

And now off to the movies! Pun Son and I have a choice between Sunshine and Transformers. Continuing the summer's intellectual tradition, we're leaning toward Transformers.