Category: Head-Explodes

Misc. links to things that will expand your mind

Aside

As a general rule I am entirely in favour of freedom of speech and thought, and I look askance at any government attempts to curtail them. I can go on for quite a while about how hate speech legislation is probably a mistake, especially in a country where the current government wouldn’t think twice about blasting down that slippery slope, but… well, there’s one particular group that I don’t mind at all being on the shitty end of that stick. I’m a complicated man–I can live with some shades of grey.

Picking At Religion Again

And now for your intermittently recurring muttering about the extremely religious. Christianity: The belief that some cosmic Jewish Zombie can make you live forever if you symbolically eat his flesh and telepathically tell him that you accept him as your master, so he can remove an evil force from your soul that is present in humanity because a rib-woman was… Read more →

Still more on evolution

I read the drepessing statistic today that only 58% of people across Canada will support the notion of evolution. Actually, it’s 58% more or less consistently across Canada, except in Alberta, our little bit of Jesusland here in the heart of Canada, where the number is 38%. (Note: it’s not an accident that our current minority government of Bush/Cheney style… Read more →

I am shocked! Shocked I tell you.

And in is-anyone-surprised-by-this news, the Senate intel committee’s Phase II report on pre-war intelligence on Iraq is just out. You can read the details and the reports themselves over at TPM. I’ll just list some of the choice points from Sen. Rockafeller’s press release, and if any of them surprise you, raise your hand and give yourself a firm smack… Read more →

Oh CBC, no.

I have often said that I hate hockey. That’s a product of being a kid in a family where my dad played in two leagues, and my brother played, and did hockey school all summer. That meant that I was pretty much always at the rink. At least three nights a week one of them had a game, and most… Read more →

I’ve Got The Box

Did you catch the snippet from (retired) General Sanchez’s new book that was in the WaPo earlier this week? As I was reading this bit: During a videoconference with his national security team and generals, Sanchez writes, Bush launched into what he described as a “confused” pep talk: “Kick ass!” he quotes the president as saying. “If somebody tries to… Read more →

Hemmingway said some true things too

We are turning into a nation of whimpering slaves to Fear—fear of war, fear of poverty, fear of random terrorism, fear of getting down-sized or fired because of the plunging economy, fear of getting evicted for bad debts or suddenly getting locked up in a military detention camp on vague charges of being a Terrorist sympathizer. —Hunter S. Thompson Read more →

Same As It Ever Was

I helped make Mexico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I brought… Read more →

Hypocrisy on parade

There’s an evil tableau for you: the callous torturer stands up with blood on his hands and a lie in his teeth, while the priest draped in gilt reassures him of his righteousness. How often has that scene played out in history, I wonder? You know, I wouldn’t change a word in what Paul Myers says about the President-Pope meeting.… Read more →

Russell’s Teapot

Last night my mother sent me one of those horrible “email forwards”. She’s the only person with my email address who actually passes these hideous things on to me, knock on wood. This one was one of those tedious things that abuse casuistry to snark at people who put reason above faith–you know the type, the ones that mistake use… Read more →

Today’s Must Read

TPMMuckraker | Talking Points Memo | Today’s Must Read More than five years after its composition, we finally see a copy of John Yoo’s March 14, 2003 memo to William Haynes, then the Defense Department’s general counsel. It was, as The New York Times and Washington Post report, a green light for military interrogators to use just about any technique… Read more →

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 Canada
This work by Chris McLaren is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 Canada.