Politics
stoat | March 30, 2010I haven't been nice to Hobbes for a bit, so:
When God speaketh to man, it must be either immediately or by mediation of another man, to whom He had formerly spoken by Himself immediately. How God speaketh to a man immediately may be understood by those well enough to whom He hath so spoken; but how the same should be understood by another is hard, if not impossible, to know. For if a man pretend to me that God hath spoken to him supernaturally, and immediately, and I make doubt of it, I cannot easily perceive what argument he can produce to oblige me to believe it.
There. Isn't that wonderful…
pharyngula | March 30, 2010There's always someone ready to take advantage of another's misfortune, often while wearing a pious expression on their faces. Here are two bad charities:
Sean Hannity claims to support our troops, endorsing a charity called Freedom Alliance that supposedly pays tuition for the children of fallen soldiers. What they don't tell you is that 'overhead' sucks up at least 80-90% of the donations. Hannity will be riding a nice limousine to accept a community service award…
Scenar Health is one of those companies that markets a Radio Shack gadget called a Self Controlled Energo Neuro Adaptive…
oracknows | March 30, 2010I hate to write about that woo-meister supreme Mike Adams more than one time in a week. For one thing, his website, NaturalNews.com, is a font of pseudoscience and quackery rivaling the infamous Whale.to, which makes it powerfully seductive to go back to that well again and again for blogging material. Although taking on an Adams screed is almost always a lot of fun for me, it's also too easy. Mike's craziness is so strong that, while it almost guarantees an entertaining piece for my blog, going back to that well too often risks making me fat and lazy as a skeptic and potentially boring you.…
grrlscientist | March 30, 2010tags: obama, racism, America, Why Obama Is So Scary, humor, funny, satire, fucking hilarious, social commentary, cultural observation, Edward Current, streaming video
Another one of my boyfriends, Edward Current, uploaded this video today, even though he filmed it in August 2009. It's another rip-snorter, but the last few seconds is the real capper .. those last few seconds might be the reason he waited to share it with us until now ..
grrlscientist | March 29, 2010tags: freedom of speech, freedom of publishing, Philip Pullman, books, The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ, streaming video
Philip Pullman responds to the jackasses and crybabies of the world with regards to their whiny complaints about the title of his new book, The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ. His answer succinctly addresses the larger issue of freedom of publishing/presses/speech. My response? AMEN!
Philip Pullman, addressing an audience at the Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford, on 28 March 2010, was asked about whether his latest book, The Good Man Jesus and the…
pharyngula | March 29, 2010Meanwhile, the rest of us will laugh. The Republicans have been indulging in a little hanky-panky.
The Republican chairman, Michael Steele, promised on taking office that he would bring the party to corners of America it had not reached before. It is a fair bet that most Republicans did not expect these corners to include the Voyeur West Hollywood, a bondage and S&M club in Los Angeles.
It emerged today that the Republicans spent almost $2,000 last month on a visit to the club where topless women hang from nets on the ceiling and simulate sex in a glass case.
Apparently, Steele himself…
tqa | March 29, 2010
Next week, I'm going to be in the UK. My plans for the trip are centered on two things: the room I've booked in London for the week, and the 8-day rail pass I purchased a couple of months ago. This morning I hit the National Rail website to start figuring out exactly which trains I need to take to get to the destinations I've been planning to hit. After the third or fourth inquiry I ran, I began to notice a disturbing pattern: every train I might want to take had a little yellow exclamation point icon under "status". Clicking through to details brought up a notice that, "industrial action…
emjohnson | March 29, 2010Today Ed Brayton (fellow Scibling at Dispatches From the Culture Wars) is reporting in the Michigan Messenger that the mercenary company Blackwater may face federal weapons charges for "illegally stockpiling automatic weapons" at one of their US facilities. Given the slate of bad news piling on for Blackwater, I was amused to find this 2007 advertisement discovered by Zero Anthropology.
Click for larger image.
The ad campaign appeared in the May/June, 2007 edition of the Journal for International Peace Operations, a publication of the International Peace Operations Association and sponsored…
pharyngula | March 29, 2010The Moscow subways have been hit by two terrorist suicide bombers — at least 38 people are dead.
At least American terrorists have the useful property of being generally incompetent.
grrlscientist | March 27, 2010tags: How to Spot a Cult, scientology, branch davidians, religion, cults, mind control, investigative news report, mind control, mental health, beliefs, streaming video
This Inside New Zealand investigative report is long but fascinating and very well-worth watching. It includes plenty of information on Scientology as well as other cults (Branch Davidians, etc) and gives a good overview of cult warning signs.
Part 1:
Part 2:
Part 3:
Part 4:
Part 5:
Part 6:
Part 7:
Part 8:
Part 9:
Part 10:
oracknows | March 27, 2010Perhaps you've seen them. (Actually, how could you avoid them?) I'm talking about those annoying Omnaris commercials with the crappy computer animation in which a bunch of military-looking men in helmets ram an Omnaris sprayer into the woman's nose to fix her nasal allergies:
Something's always bugged me about that commercial, more than the amateurish computer animation and the cheesy, "Omnaris, to the nose!" battle cry of the mini-white troops. Yes, I see the obvious (and lame) homage to Woody Allen's Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask). Even so,…
pharyngula | March 27, 2010Mike Vanderboegh is one of those teabagger patriots — he's very upset about illegal immigrants, he's one of those paramilitary fanatics, he hates Democrats, and lately he's gotten completely unhinged about the passage of our watered down health care bill. He's so irate that now he's publicly inciting violence (which is nothing new, he's been advocating civil war for years):
So, if you wish to send a message that Pelosi and her party cannot fail to hear, break their windows.
Break them NOW. Break them and run to break again. Break them under cover of night. Break them in broad daylight. Break…
grrlscientist | March 26, 2010tags: coins, mint, manufacturing, technology, factory, education, streaming video
This is an interesting video showing how the â¬2 coin is made. This coin consists of two different metals that are squeezed together into one coin. Interestingly, it uses recycled copper -- I wonder how many construction sites have lost their copper piping to thieves who then sold it to recyclers for manufacture into Euros? I also have embedded a second video that discusses the history of coin making as well as describing how less complex coins are made.
Another look at coinmaking (admittedly, not as fancy as…
pharyngula | March 25, 2010As yet another examples of the derangement of conservative thought, Sean Hannity has been pushing a list of 102 examples of 'wasteful' stimulus spending. I don't quite get it; this is money the government is disbursing to encourage jobs for the sake of jobs, and if they were hiring people to dig holes and fill them in again, it would accomplish their task. However, the money is being spent sensibly on projects that also improve the nation's infrastructure in small ways and increase knowledge.
One of the targets of their scorn are science projects, including this one, improving the facilities…
drorzel | March 25, 2010I did one sketchy update from Portland last Tuesday, but never wrote up my impressions of the rest of the March Meeting-- when I got back, I was buried in grading, and then trying to put together Monday's presentation. And, for reasons that will become apparent, I was unable to write anything up before I left Portland
Anyway, for those who care, here are my impressions from the rest of the meeting:
Tuesday
In the 8am session, I went to the polymer physics prize talk by Michael Rubinstein, which was a sort of career retrospective, talking about how he wandered into the disreputable field of…
pharyngula | March 25, 2010Greece is rapidly heading towards economic collapse, and this has finally motivated tho do something that should have been done long ago:
The Greek government has announced it will start taxing churches as part of its efforts to get out of its financial crisis. A new draft bill to be tabled in parliament next week imposes a 20 per cent tax on the Orthodox church's real estate income, reportedly worth over 10 million Euros (US $14.8 million) a year, the Wall Street Journal reports.
The Greek Orthodox church is squealing like a stuck pig, of course.
However, the Greek government has a debt of…
oracknows | March 25, 2010I've said it before, and I'll say it again. I'm not really a political blogger. True, I do from time to time succumb to the blogger's temptation of being a pundit on current events or pontificating on politics, but in general I don't do that very often because political bloggers are a dime a dozen and politics isn't my area of strength. Writing about science and science-based medicine is. That's part of the reason why I really haven't said much about the massive health care reform bill that was passed on Sunday or the political process, except when on occasion the utter insanity of it all (…
pharyngula | March 24, 2010We have further information from the University of Ottawa about Coulter's non-appearance last night.
Last night, the organizers themselves decided at 7:50 p.m. to cancel the event and so informed the University's Protection Services staff on site. At that time, a crowd of about one thousand people had peacefully gathered at Marion Hall.
So…no word of violence at all, just a peaceful protest. Ann Coulter simply chickened out, and the decision was entirely hers and the organizations that invited her.
Never mind, there was no infringement of open discussion here, just another example of right…
catdynamics | March 24, 2010Blogs, that is.
Sometime in the next 10 days I need to clean my blogroll and add new links.
I have a bunch in the pipeline, but suspect I must be missing many good new blogs.
Obviously any good astro/physics related stuff, but am also on lookout for quirky good stuff on other topics: stuff comparable to Calculated Risk, Iceland Weather Report or Yorkshire Ranter.
Not looking for any pure political stuff. Quite enough of those already, thanks.
Feel free to self-promote, but do not cross the line into spamming. Please.
emjohnson | March 24, 2010Ann Coulter is a vicious and mean-spirited demagogue and I'm ashamed that I share more DNA with her than chimpanzees or bonobos. She represents the worst kind of reactionary partisanship and should be condemned by all quarters in the spirit of basic decency. That being said, however, I don't believe a government should have any role in prohibiting her speech, regardless of how offensive it is. And it's pretty offensive. Just after the Sept. 11 attacks Coulter wrote, "We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity." This got her fired from the column…