We’ll grab a couple of them today: Will Shetterly talking about Mormon underwear: Here’s one way to tell a faith from a racket: If it makes you think you’re better than everyone else, it’s a racket, not a faith. I kind of love that. It’s the answer to all the “One True Religion” and “Chose People of X” things that… Read more →
Category: Head-Explodes
Bipolar linking
Chris is Angry: “Judge Rules That U.S. Has Broad Powers to Detain Noncitizens Indefinitely“. Almost nothing in “rights” legality angers me more than divisions between the rights of humans and the rights of citizens. The judge here, and anyone who agrees with him should learn a little history. The line was “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all… Read more →
The wilder their claims, the more the debate shifts right…
Okay, let’s review. First, three prisoners at Guantamao commit suicide. Then the camp commander of the camp, Read Adm Harris, where this happened is quoted as saying this suicide is “an act of asymmetrical warfare waged against us“. Then we have the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy, who we could perhaps assume might actually be, you know,… Read more →
Holy @#$%
It’s a truism in Canada that socialised medicine is just better than the American system, except among rabid neocons. (Actually the truism is a bit more nuanced, but certainly the perception is that the average person is much better off here…) Every once in a while you hear a story about some family in the U.S. without insurance that are… Read more →
Specter’s compromised.
Specter’s compromise: “You can have everything you wanted, Emporer Bush, sir.” Specter Offers Compromise on NSA Surveillance The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee has proposed legislation that would give President Bush the option of seeking a warrant from a special court for an electronic surveillance program such as the one being conducted by the National Security Agency. […] Another… Read more →
Quickies
Darwin strikes again: Kung fu fan tries to stop train. I swear I am totally going to learn how to pronounce “Xianglongshibazhang!”, and I am totally going to yell it out whenever I see someone being unutterably stupid. Ha-ha: Roy Moore Loses. Not a judge anymore, not a governor either. Apparently even in Alabama there’s some people who can’t get… Read more →
Darwin wins
Hahahahahahahahahaha… Lioness in zoo kills man who invoked God A man shouting that God would keep him safe was mauled to death by a lioness in Kiev zoo after he crept into the animal’s enclosure, a zoo official said on Monday. “The man shouted ‘God will save me, if he exists’, lowered himself by a rope into the enclosure, took… Read more →
Things that are pissing me off today
Well, Heather Reisman, the CEO of Canada’s nigh monopolistic corporate bookstore chain is marking up our country with her censor’s marker again. You might remember that in the past she’s banned such things as Mein Kampf (although, amusingly, not the “sequel“), books by famous whack-job David Icke, and gun magazines. None of them things I have any interest in reading,… Read more →
I can mock the hick parts of my own country too.
Yes, there are crazy religious people-that-time-forgot in Canada too: CBC Montreal – Darwin’s theory not allowed in North Quebec schools Teachers in some northern Quebec communities are being told not to talk about the evolution of humans because Darwin’s theory offends some Inuit people. Alexandre April is a teacher in Salluit, Que., who says his school principal told teachers not… Read more →
So that’s the 31% who still approve
Someone to claim us, someone to follow Someone to shame us, some brave Apollo Someone to fool us, someone like you We want you Big Brother, Big Brother Illegal taps of US phone calls. Check. Secret compilation of the phone records of Americans. Check. Using this secret data to intimidate investigators and political opponents, while forwarding personal and political agendas… Read more →
46% of Americans “not too bright”
So, just to review: Adminstration fabricates evidence and knowingly misleads the country into a way: OK Administration tramples civil rights several ways: That’s fine Administration’s crazy war kills 1000s of Americans and 1000000s of brown people: No problem Supposedly ‘conservative’ Administration cuts taxes and raises spending to result in record deficits even though they started with record surplus: Sure Administration… Read more →
For All Intensive Purposes
I thought my little brother was the only person who thought the expression “for all intents and purposes” was actually “for all intensive purposes”, but it appears not. TNH, in a post that follows on nicely from the Guardian article I linked to yesterday, has a giant list of such mistakes, in what is clearly an attempt to make my… Read more →
Living “Up” To Stereotypes
So, some concerned parents in Gwinnett County, Georgia are try to get Harry Potter taken out of school libraries. Sigh. It’s like they really want us to think of it as Jesusland…. Laura Mallory of Loganville filed an appeal last week to get the best-selling book series out of the schools’ media centers. She is an evangelical Christian who has… Read more →
Colour me unsurprised. Atheist, and unsurprised.
Hm. Apparently I am deeply distrusted by most Americans just because I don’t need mythology to get through the day. American’s increasing acceptance of religious diversity doesn’t extend to those who don’t believe in a god, according to a national survey by researchers in the University of Minnesota’s department of sociology. From a telephone sampling of more than 2,000 households,… Read more →
More head-shaking… but with an optimistic ending
Well, the news today on the Feingold thing is pretty amusing, in a “laugh so I don’t cry” way. Democrats are literally scampering for cover, and avoiding the question, in an attempt to avoid upsetting people. I know it’s been said almost to death, but they are never going to amount to anything until they stand for something. Here’s snippets… Read more →
