Theowhacks, Xmas war no more, risk taking, proof of God, and the Smithsonian "scandal"

It's official: the Iranian theocracy is run by a whackjob. Yesterday, he went on the record saying that the Holocaust is a myth (see CNN, Yahoo News, and the NTY today and yesterday.) Yesterday's NYT story is stunning in it's understatement: the headline is "Iranian Leader Escalates Anti-Israeli Rhetoric" and the EU's response is described this way:

In unusually strong comments, a top European Union official said Iranians "do not have the president, or the regime, they deserve."

They're living in a theocracy, of course they don't have the regime they deserve. That is not what we learned here. What we learned is that Iran the Iranian president is out of touch with reality and must be kept from getting nuclear weapons if it means a missle strike on their reactors. Well, some would say that we haven't learned anything. Here's Josh Rosenau on the story:

Did anyone doubt that he wanted to destroy Israel before he started mouthing off? That maybe the Iranian nuclear weapons program was meant as a deterrent against Afghanistan?

Of course it's incredibly offensive that he's denying the Holocaust, but it really seems like a "dog bites man" of a story.

Also, Orac reminds us that this stuff runs pretty deep in the region.

I've gotten tired of this "War on Christmas" stuff fast, but I think I'll do one last bit of linkage on it (last, hence the "no more" in this title). Atheist Revolution
speculates on the larger political issues:

Taken as a whole, this story supports my evolving theory that the real job of the right-wing political pundits is to make increasingly outrageous claims with no basis in reality for the purpose of preventing discussion of real issues.

Also, Lance at Eternal Revolution has some thoughts on all the fighting:

This is just the latest in a series of skirmishes in the war to save our culture from itself. The call of Christ to help rescue fellow sheep that are lost often gets tabled for bigger missions, like ’saving Christmas’ by boycotting Wal-Mart, or ’saving marriage’ by boycotting Disney.

As someone who's rather turned off by all this fighting, It's heartening to see someone on the otherside who feels the same.

Philosophy, et cetra has a post on thought experiments, which mentions an interesting real experiment involving them. If I were involved in the experiment, I think I'd say "no preference" to both questions. It's important to realize that real-life choices often aren't as subtle as hypothetical choices.

Lastly, UberKuh presents his argument from DOG, while Get Busy Livin' or Get Busy Bloggin' has analysis of the Smithsonian/Stenberg flap, where he nicely demonstrates how Sternberg went around the peer review process to get an Intelligent Design paper published (HT on the latter: Pooflingers').