Everyone had opinions on Sean Combs, but few defended him. Evolution—discussed in this "Frame Game"—is always the biggest post magnet in the Fray. This time it brought in 4,000 messages.

Subject: NARAL Replies
Re: "Politics: Fetal Mistake"
From: Kate Michelman, President of the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League
Date: Tue Feb 26 2:38 p.m. PT

[Jefferson] Morley urges women to take comfort in the assumption that the president will not actually do what he has repeatedly stated he intends to do. But his record to date … provides ample reason for believing, in contrast to Mr. Morley's theory of a cloak-and-dagger political gambit, that President Bush simply means what he openly says. Mr. Morley notes that the administration could not undo Roe v. Wade with a regulation. Well, of course not. But it can, and is attempting to, do so step by step. The last step in that process is the appointment of a single anti-choice justice to the Supreme Court, an opportunity President Bush almost certainly will have. …

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Subject: True Fame, Fake Fame
Re: "Assessment: Sean Combs"
From: The Bell
Date: MonFeb 10:07 a.m. PT

The problem with Puffy, like all the Zsa-Zsa [Gabor]s of the celebrity world before him … [is that they] view celebrity as something they can earn thorough working at it. Once achieved, they see their outward success as proof of an inner deservedness. ... In truth, of course, celebrity is never earned but is always a gift bestowed upon the recipient based on the public's admiration for either potential or actual accomplishments in a given field. … Real long-term celebrity achievers—think Sinatra, Elvis, even Muhammad Ali—never once rested on their laurels. Indeed, they seemed far more likely to view anytime they were anything less than Number One as a sure sign they were washed up and forgotten. Their biographies are always full of triumphal comebacks. That is the reality of celebrity. …

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Subject: What Can't Be Proved
Re: "Frame Game: Unintelligible Redesign"
From: Roger Hipp
Date: Thu Feb 14  7:12 a.m. PT

Under Saletan's definition of a theory (a system with "predictions, scope modifiers, or experimental methods of its own"), we'd have to throw out a lot more than I[ntelligent] D[esign]. In psychology, for example, we've made precious little progress since Freud's time precisely because psychological models do not lend themselves well to predictions, experimentation, and falsifiable assertions. Ditto economics, where the cause of the Great Depression is still debated 80 years later because it is for the most part impossible to conduct controlled experiments on a national economy. … [And] evolutionary psychology is about applying logic to an incomplete universe of facts in an effort to draw sound conclusions. Sort of like psychology, economics, or ... intelligent design.

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