July 19, 2008
Category:
Okay, Friday was an absolute blast. It is Friday, isn't it? I'm losing track a bit. We slept in this morning and headed down to the conference around noon. The science panel started at 1:30. After some initial technical difficulties, everything went great. Speech was well received. After the speech, I went to the blogger's lounge to catch up on some posts for the next few days.
Tonight I had dinner with the group from the Center for Independent Media. Got to meet some folks from the New Mexico group, which was cool. Dinner was at Manuel's and the food was fabulous (really good Mexican food). After that, a few of us headed over to the Huffington Post/GQ party (by invitation only; I got in by pretending to be my editor, Rayne). Nothing much going on there, so I headed out.
Read on »
Posted by Ed Brayton at 9:34 AM • 4 Comments
Category: Politics
A commenter on my latest response to Chuck Norris' absurdity, Josh Darville, left a comment and I'm moving it up here to reply to it so it won't get lost. He writes:
What a load of crap you spew out, the only good point you make is about size coralated to representitives. However if you look at Calafornia, it going back to limited goverment, and limited control, it really should be more then one state. North and South, would be a start... try 5 or more.
Read on »
Posted by Ed Brayton at 9:23 AM • 36 Comments
Category: Politics
This is so absurd that words escape me. Elizabeth Dole has proposed an amendment to rename a bill that would help fund AIDS research and outreach around the world after Jesse Helms. The man who opposed any and all funding for AIDS research. Words fail me.
Posted by Ed Brayton at 9:16 AM • 13 Comments
Category: Politics
Vox Day, aka Brother Theodore, has weighed in on PZ's threat of sacrilege. It's precisely the kind of inane blather you'd expect from him, including the inevitable "he's a coward because he won't come on my radio show." This git would be out of his depth in a mud puddle.
Posted by Ed Brayton at 9:09 AM • 10 Comments
Category:
Back in the day, Janeane Garafalo was a very, very funny stand up comedian. Here's a really old clip from Mtv's Half Hour Comedy Hour that shows how good she was before she became really self-indulgent. You can find a bunch of older stand up clips from her here.
Read on »
Posted by Ed Brayton at 9:02 AM • 1 Comments
July 18, 2008
Category:
Day two of Netroots Nation went brilliantly. DarkSyd and I arrived at the conference, got our badges and goodie bag, went into the exhibition hall and tracked down Virginia Hughes, the ScienceBlogs manager. She was representing ScienceBlogs at a table, giving away goodies, and she had a prime location right at the entrance to the hall. It was great to finally meet the boss in person.
When we left the exhibition hall, we promptly ran into Rayne, one of my bosses from the Center for Independent Media, decided the three of us were going to go to lunch, then on the way to lunch we ran into Ali Savino, the really big boss from CIM. That gang is going out to dinner together tonight. The ScienceBlogs group is going to dinner tomorrow night.
Read on »
Posted by Ed Brayton at 11:43 AM • 11 Comments
Category: Politics
The Worcester (MA) Telegram has an article about Matt LaClair, the courageous young man who recorded his history teacher flagrantly violating the constitution, telling students that they had to believe in Jesus or they would burn in hell and much more. The sad thing about his story is that so few people in his community were on his side. Most people took the side of the teacher, who was obviously wrong. Speaks volumes about our culture, I think.
Posted by Ed Brayton at 9:30 AM • 43 Comments
Category: Politics
Pam Spaulding (who is here in Austin and I hope I get a chance to meet her) has the story of a man in Massachusetts who had a business teaching men how to cross dress.
Several years ago, he started offering a service for straight men who liked to cross-dress, tutoring them in makeup skills while videotaping them, and the client could then take the instruction video home to use in private. After putting an ad in the Boston Phoenix:
"Curious about cross-dressing? Professional makeup artist, totally non-sexual video instruction. Totally discreet."
Brian booked over 39 appointments the first week @ $300 a session. Eventually he received a call from a man staying at the Copley Plaza hotel (right next door to Brian's studio), who was southern, very nervous and worried about discretion. And the story goes on from there...
Read on »
Posted by Ed Brayton at 9:23 AM • 46 Comments
Category: Politics
Mitt Romney is going to eat $45 million in loans he made to his presidential campaign rather than ask for donations to pay them off. But remember, his big claim to the presidency was that he was an experienced businessman. Guess he didn't recognize what a bad investment his candidacy was. I'm still laughing at the Letterman line for why he wasn't elected - he thought there were far more Osmonds than there really are.
Posted by Ed Brayton at 9:16 AM • 5 Comments
Category: Politics
AP reports that King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia is once against calling for the world's major religions to work together. The words sound innocuous enough:
King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia exhorted followers of the world's leading faiths to turn away from extremism and embrace a spirit of reconciliation, saying at the start of an interfaith conference Wednesday that history's great conflicts were not caused by religion itself but by its misinterpretation.
"My brothers, we must tell the world that differences don't need to lead to disputes," Abdullah said, speaking through a Spanish interpreter. "The tragedies we have experienced throughout history were not the fault of religion but because of the extremism that has been adopted by some followers of all the religions, and of all political systems."
Abdullah's comments came at the start of a Saudi-sponsored gathering that aims to bring Muslims, Christians and Jews closer together at a time when the world often puts the three faiths at odds.
Read on »
Posted by Ed Brayton at 9:09 AM • 47 Comments
Category: Politics
The Jewish Observer reports on new accusations of unconstitutional religious activities at Wright Patterson Air Base in Ohio. The report is based on work done by the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, which has received 100 complaints from people who've worked at that air base over proselytization and worse going on by military officers. Here's a story from one person on that base:
Read on »
Posted by Ed Brayton at 9:02 AM • 15 Comments
July 17, 2008
Category:
There's some good and some bad to report. I went to Detroit on Tuesday night and got a hotel room so I could get a good night's sleep before my flight on Wednesday. The problem was that I couldn't connect to their wifi. I spent an hour and a half on the phone with their tech support and they couldn't get me connected. Then I had to spend a half hour arguing with the manager to refund my money so I could go to another hotel. Finally got that done. I had work to get done last night and had to be online.
Today got better. Got upgraded to first class for my flight to Austin - go me. That made the flight to Austin much more pleasant and we actually landed a half hour early. Ran into Josh Rosenau by the baggage claim, which was good because he'd forgotten his cell phone back in San Fran and I wasn't gonna be able to reach him if I hadn't run into him. Good fortune for both of us since we had to speak together later.
Read on »
Posted by Ed Brayton at 9:35 AM • 6 Comments
Category: Politics
Casey Luskin takes a brave leap in the dark and lands with a resounding thud. Carl Zimmer covers it here; PZ does so here.
Posted by Ed Brayton at 9:23 AM • 8 Comments
Category: Politics
Ooh, what could it be? Child porn? A peeping Tom? Nope. Scott Conover was arrested for taking a picture of a police officer during a traffic stop.
A Johnson County sheriff's deputy arrested Scott Conover for unlawful photography.
"He says you took a picture of me. It's illegal to take a picture of a law enforcement officer," said Conover.
Conover took a picture of a sheriff's deputy on the side of the road on a traffic stop. Conover was stunned by the charge.
"This is a public highway," said Conover...
"He said if you don't give it to me, you're going to jail," said Conover.
Read on »
Posted by Ed Brayton at 9:16 AM • 44 Comments
Category: Politics
I really should send Joseph Farah a gift for putting together a publication that goes above and beyond the call of duty to provide me with maximum fodder for this blog. It suddenly occurs to me that Joseph Farah is the Hal Needham of right wing political commentary. Who is Hal Needham, you ask? He was the writer and director of the legendarily bad movie Cannonball Run 2. And just like that bad movie, the Worldnutdaily is so awful that it becomes campy fun; you can't stop watching (or reading) because you can't wait to find out what vacuousness comes next.
In his wonderful book Red Lobster, White Trash and the Blue Lagoon, Joe Queenan determines that Cannonball Run 2 is the single worst movie ever made and he praises Needham's understanding that a truly bad movie is like a shark - it has to keep moving or it dies. Thus, if you're going to start out with Jamie Farr as an Arabian prince and Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr. impersonating priests, you have to follow that up with Jackie Chan and the big goombah from James Bond.
Read on »
Posted by Ed Brayton at 9:09 AM • 41 Comments
Category: Politics
There seems to be a myth going around, foisted primarily by the Republicans and by those Democrats who caved in on the new FISA "compromise" law, that says the new amendments to FISA were vital because they reigned in the power of the president to engage in warrantless wiretapping. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, the new law further undermines even the barely minimal safeguards built in to the original FISA law and continues the grand Bush tradition of treating the 4th amendment as an inconvenience that can be set aside at his whim.
Ask yourself this question: why would the Bush administration, which has so loudly and zealously declared that FISA was preventing the gathering of intelligence (without any evidence or logic, of course) and that they must have the authority to engage in warrantless wiretapping, have supported this bill if, in fact, it did away with their power to do what they have long declared is so vital? Answer: they wouldn't. This bill does not prevent warrantless wiretaps, it endorses them and provides a means for their continuation.
Read on »
Posted by Ed Brayton at 9:02 AM • 6 Comments
Ed Brayton is a freelance writer and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of 
