I’ll be there, talkin’ evolution. You should come. Details in the latest Minnesota Atheists newsletter (pdf).
We’re coming into the big city on Saturday to putter around in some parks, so if you see me around, don’t be surprised. I’m hoping to catch some sun for a change, although I hear it’s going to be cloudy all day. Probably for the best, I should ease myself gently into this springtime nonsense.
Listen to the judges on this Ecuadorian talent contest. They say they respect
the opinions of the contestant, they aren’t judging her, but the bottom line is that they declare that she can’t win a singing competition because she doesn’t believe in god. They use her disbelief as an excuse to hector her and act all pious and sanctimonious.
Arrogant hypocrites. Don’t ever let these kinds of assholes call atheists arrogant — just show them this clip. Then puke on their shoes.
We all remember this event, in which policeman John Pike casually hoses down students at UC Davis with pepper spray. Not only is it memorable, but if you google “UC Davis” the story is going to pop up on the first page of results.
The administrators at UC Davis are a bit touchy about the whole incident and wanted to do something about it. So what did they do? They hired one of those shady ‘reputation management’ companies to somehow expunge the story and image from search results, at a cost of at least $175,000. Those things never work, and you’re a fool to try them.
Except…maybe they did accomplish something.
Now when you search for UC Davis, the first results are all about the university’s dodgy, clumsy, ill-planned, and wasteful attempt to whitewash their reputation.
The lesson you should learn is that trying to cover up your sins with worthless SEO is going to only change your search results to a) remind everyone of the bad thing you did, and b) let them know that you’re desperate to cover it up.
Good work, administrators at UC Davis! You’re working hard to further stain the reputation of a very good school.
Pretty damned ignorant.
Paleontology is what is classified as a hard science. I’m not a fan of the distinction being made, though: sociology also involves some demanding statistical work, so even if the basis of the stereotype is a lack of math, it’s wrong. Also, anthropologists don’t study dinosaurs.
I’m also amused by the claim that no tissue
from dinosaurs has been found. Guess what? Bone is a tissue!
Before you indignantly explain that this has to be a spoof, that creationists believe dinosaurs were on the Ark, I have to tell you: Ken Ham is not mainstream. Answers in Genesis argues that dinosaurs existed (because the Bible says so, although it doesn’t), but there are a lot of creationists who reject all the fossil evidence, rather than trying to mangle and distort it. There are conspiracy theorists who think dinosaurs were an invention, and that the evidence is all made up.
Some of these dino-deniers are hilarious. “Mike”, for instance, is truly oblivious.
Think about it. I live in New Jersey. One of the shittiest states in the Union besides Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Connecticut. Why is it that there are no dinosaur fossils anywhere near the United States? If this whole Pangaea nonsense is in fact true and the entire world was connected together at one point, wouldn’t the fossils be spread around evenly? So they typically only find fossils in Canyon-like areas in the Middle East or Africa or Australia. But never in North America? Hmm. That seems a bit off to me. Needless to say, archaelogists have also never found an entire dinosaurs’ remains. And don’t you dare say because it’s 34,000,000 million years old. It’s because they never existed.
Hmm. New Jersey, you say? It’s too bad nobody ever mapped the distribution of dinosaur fossils.
Since some Republicans want to criminalize masturbation, we’re going to have to come up with an alternative for lonely, frustrated people. Now there are lots of dead people around (and surprisingly, necrophilia is not illegal in some states), but I wouldn’t recommend sex with corpses — they are not at all responsive and tend not to be good partners — but what about spectrophilia? It turns out that some people think you can have sex with ghosts, and this has not been criminalized anywhere, yet.
Here’s how to do it.
1. Be in a great personal space — clean, happy, good mood. Be in your good senses.
2. Prepare your space: candles, incense, mood lighting, sexy music (just as if you were inviting in a living lover). Do NOT burn sage; that will keep spirits away.
3. Define your space and set its boundaries (i.e., bedroom only).
4. Protect your space in whatever way works with your belief system.
5. Start doing some slow deep breathing. Begin visualizing your ghostly lover — what it/he/she feels like, etc. ASK the universe (or whomever) to send you a ghostly lover. Be very clear that you want it to be positive, good, loving, and light — as well as hot, of course!
6. Softly add a chant to your deep breathing — something short that you can repeat easily, like “Come to me, loving spirits.”
7. Believe.
8. Hopefully you will start feeling sensations. You may hear something, smell something, notice orbs of light or shadow. Hopefully the physical sensations are coming — often a feeling of pressure on the body, the feel of a soft touch, and then different forms of sexual stimulation. Enjoy it!
9. Throughout your encounter, communicate with the spirit. Make sure there is mutual respect and that NOTHING is done or allowed that YOU are not happy or comfortable with.
10. When it is over, thank the spirit (you can decide it you want to invite it back or not) and CLOSE THE VEIL or portal that you opened. Consciously, verbally state that all entities must leave and you are closing the veil.
A couple of people tried it, and there’s only one small problem: ghosts don’t exist. But if they did, it’s nice to see that they expect consensual, respectful sexytimes.
Digby finds some interesting quotes. Did you know that this presidential election is about masculine vs. feminine values?
Harry Enten: I think it has more to do with society overall. A ridiculously high 68 percent of Trump supporters say society is becoming too soft and feminine. Cruz and Kasich supporters come in with 57 percent and 52 percent, respectively. Now compare those numbers with the Democratic side, where Sanders supporters were slightly less likely than Clinton supporters to say that (28 percent vs. 31 percent).
I don’t even…my first objection has to be the equation of “feminine” and “soft”, which is simply taken for granted in the question. I don’t even know what “feminine” means, or should mean — the women I know have all sorts of personalities, as do the men, and it’s simply silly to assign one stereotypical set of traits, especially an implicitly negative set, to an entire group of people and the entirety of society.
In a country where only 19% of the members of the house of representatives are women, 20% of the senate are women (an all-time high!), a third of the Supreme Court are women, and no woman has ever been president, I fully support the increasing “femininization” of our government until representation is fair and equal.
And then Digby finds another quote from a 2003 article that elevates the stereotyping to a new level of ironic absurdity.
In the House, Dennis Hastert is the Republican speaker, Nancy Pelosi the leader of the Democratic minority. Mr Hastert, a hulking former wrestling coach, is a fairly straightforward conservative: he is against abortion, gay marriage, the Kyoto protocol; for the invasion of Iraq, the death penalty. Ms Pelosi, a tiny bird-like woman, is an unabashed, card-carrying liberal.
So is child molestation one of those masculine qualities we want to increase in society?
I’d also like to know how a high school wrestling coach became a multi-millionaire. Perhaps corruption is also manly?
Yet another study has been done to show that homeopathy doesn’t work.
After assessing more than 1,800 studies on homeopathy, Australia’s National Health and Medical Research Council was only able to find 225 that were rigorous enough to analyze. And a systematic review of these studies revealed “no good quality evidence to support the claim that homeopathy is effective in treating health conditions.”
The verdict is in — actually, it’s been in for over a century. It doesn’t work. It can’t work. It’s been shown over and over again to not work. It ought to just be done with.
But it isn’t. I can still walk down to my local grocery store, and there next to the real over-the-counter medicines that actually relieve pain, clear up congestion, make my nose stop running, and reduce fevers, there are little bottles of homeopathic pisswater that claim to do those things, but don’t, and would still cost me $7 if I were stupid enough to buy them.
I take that back. Pisswater would have more substance to it than these things, and cost less.
The latest in absurd prudishness to come out of the Republican party is Ted Cruz’s opposition to masturbation, which is exactly what you’d expect of an advocate of small government.
In perhaps the most noticeable line of the brief, Cruz’s office declared,
There is no substantive-due-process right to stimulate one’s genitals for non-medical purposes unrelated to procreation or outside of an interpersonal relationship.That is, the pursuit of such happiness had no constitutional standing.
You have no right to touch yourself. I don’t know how he would intend to enforce such a prohibition. but all I could think of was the work of another Texan who, unfortunately, is no longer around to respond appropriately to this nonsense. Molly Ivins is the exception that probes the rule about Texans.
That woman was a treasure.
Ken Ham is still babbling about the giant fake boat he’s building with taxpayer support in Kentucky.
The creationist said the ark — which will be the largest timber structure in the world when it’s completed — is a
jaw-dropping experiencefor visitors who have been able to see it already.
These guests often stop in their tracks. They contemplate the massive beams and the craftsmanship,Ham said.They talk to me about the obvious complexity in the Ark’s engineering and architecture. In doing so, they begin to think about Noah in a correct way. You see, many people have (even unwittingly) adopted an evolutionary view of history, thinking that ancient people were less intelligent and less advanced than we are today. They wondered how Noah could have built such an impressive ship.
