I have mentioned the phrase “half way to crazy town” a few times on these pages. I had mis-remembered that it was a phrase crafted by Jerry Coyne. But I have corrected myself now, after diligently chasing down the leads, that the phrase was one that J. Coyne found elsewhere… and brought it in to put on his shelf with some other trophy finds!
There are some scattered places where it can be seen, but it gets its most triumphant display here on the column dated December 14, 2011 - - that was just a week or so away from when the Taliban blew up the three-building compound in which I worked in the Helmand Province of Afghanistan.** And it wasn’t one of Coyne’s articles… it was authored by “Sigmund” (maybe someone knows more about this fellow than I do):
LINK: Guest post: Accommodationists are halfway to crazy town « Why Evolution Is True
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It also appears as a title 2 years later:
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Ultimately, it would seem, it comes into Coyne’s mind via the June 26, 2010 column (I was in Kuwait in that month) where he defends Atheists and then quotes P.Z. Myers!:
“Atheists are such a reviled minority in our society that it’s always safe to diss them in public, especially if you want to position yourself in the “middle of the road” between “extremes”—a position that to the benighted always seems to be so reasonable.”
But, [as P. Z. Myers said (http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/06/thats_not_a_shoehorn_its_a_sle.php),
> "squatting in between those on the side of reason and evidence and those worshipping superstition and myth is not a better place. It just means you’re halfway to crazy town."
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FN**: That was another life ago… I was a civilian contractor for US AID. No Americans were killed… but several of my Afghan co-workers were killed or maimed.