Episode CCLXXXIII: Imminent holiday

I can do this thing. I’m making a big push today to get students prepared for my final exam, and I’m making myself available in the bioclub room to provide tutorials and reviews all afternoon — I kind of expect maybe 3 or 4 students to show up, which has been my past experience, so I’ve also got my big stack of term papers to grade during all the long lonely gaps. The grind will be done, though, and then aside from proctoring an exam Thursday morning and another stack of grading, I’ll be done! And it will be like Christmas! The real Christmas!

(Episode CCLXXXII: Louis C.K., Ph.D.)

Horrifyingly delusional anti-vaxxers in Australia

Take a look at the ad copy for this evil book by a friend of Meryl Dorey, the anti-vaccination kook.

i-ce4ff688bea5275423b795b5d5779041-marvellousmeasles.jpeg

“Marvellous measles”? “Embrace childhood disease”? This is rank madness. Here is what WHO says about measles:

  • Measles is one of the leading causes of death among young children even though a safe and cost-effective vaccine is available.
  • In 2008, there were 164 000 measles deaths globally – nearly 450 deaths every day or 18 deaths every hour.
  • More than 95% of measles deaths occur in low-income countries with weak health infrastructures.
  • Measles vaccination resulted in a 78% drop in measles deaths between 2000 and 2008 worldwide.
  • In 2010, about 85% of the world’s children received one dose of measles vaccine by their first birthday through routine health services – up from 72% in 2000.

Measles kills children. The reason these loons can babble about measles as if it were a harmless game that strengthens your immune system is that world-wide vaccination campaigns have been so effective in reducing the incidence of the disease, and because children who are healthy and have good nutrition are very likely to survive it. So what Stephanie Messenger and Meryl Dorey propose to do is to put sick, immuno-compromised, and hungry children at far greater risk of death, and make their own spoiled children miserable and contagious for a few days to a week, and also put them at a lesser risk of death, all so they can smugly promote their hare-brained cause.

Something else that irritates me about these people is that often they align themselves with the left — it’s gormless liberals who readily buy into this nonsense. Another scandal developing in Australia is that the Woodford Folk Festival has invited Meryl Dorey to speak. It looks like a big event, and there among the environmentalists and local foods proponents and polynesian and aboriginal singers, is this great stinking turd of a woman advocating infecting small children with awful diseases. This Meryl Dorey:

She has described measles (the disease which has killed more children than any other in the history of the world) as “benign;” she suggested the slogan “Shaken Maybe Syndrome” as a way of implying that Shaken Baby Syndrome does not exist but is always damage caused by vaccines; she provided strong support to a man imprisoned in the US for the murder of a ten-week-old boy, her support being based on the idea that the dreadful injuries to the child had to be the effects of a vaccine, not the actions of a violent man; she is on record as an AIDS denier; she said on television that “whooping cough didn’t kill us thirty years ago and it’s not kill anybody today”. If she isn’t implacably opposed to vaccinations then she hides any other position well.

The festival sounds like fun, but if I were in the region, nothing could persuade me to attend — it’s poisoned through and through by its endorsement of a child-killing monster who will be given a stage to lie from.

(Also on FtB)

Christians get a taste of how it feels to be a minority

And they don’t like it. Santa Monica had a lottery to distribute public spaces for Christmas displays — and non-Christians won almost all of them. I suspect it was because non-Christians were motivated and submitted many more applications than the Christians, but you never know, it could be because our God of Random Chance rigged the lottery to the atheists’ advantage.

Anyway, so this year the Christians only got 3 of the 14 spaces in the city park, the Jews got 1, and the atheists got 10. Now the Christians are upset, because they see themselves as oppressed, forced out of the park.

But the group that has long organized the Nativity scenes bristled at the atheists’ move, saying it upends a long-standing winter tradition for the city — and impedes their freedom of expression.

“By trying to push the Nativity scene out of the park and silence us, these people are infringing on our freedom and 1st Amendment rights,” said Hunter Jameson, a Nativity organizer, said in a statement.

It seems to me that everyone played fair and followed the rules, and the atheists were just more eager and enthusiastic about expressing themselves. The Christians weren’t pushed out — they’ve got 3 slots, and you know they’ll rebound next year and make many more applications — but are only getting a season to experience what it’s like to be the minority group. They should take advantage of the opportunity and get used to it — that’s their future fate, to be a small part of the American panoply.

Also, look at the photo of the displays: they’re hideous, walled off behind chain-link fencing. And no, lacing Christmas tree lights around the fencing does not make it look more festive.

Why I Am An Atheist – “Big Ugly” Jim Martin

I struggled with my faith for a long time, but it was a religious program that ultimately shattered it. It was a Sunday in the early afternoon, and these guys were talking about the story of Samson, and how he was God’s avenging fist against the Philistines. The story never sat well with me, because Samson really comes off like a prick to me. Sure, he’s killing the enemies of God, but they weren’t his enemies until he gave them his ridiculous and impossible riddle to solve. He then, to continue his tantrum, burns the crops of the innocent people who didn’t actually have anything to do with threats to his wife, then murders 3000 more people, and that’s just the start of the story. He didn’t seem to me to be motivated by God so much as an incurable and disgusting rage that just happened to work out good for the Jews.

That got me thinking about all of the stories, and none of them really makes any sense. I don’t mean in the “it seems nonsensical to have a talking snake tempting Adam and Eve” sort of logistical sense, I mean that almost all of the stories can be explained easiliy away as the stories of an uneducated people who were largely living in slavery and dreaming of the time when their God was going to fix everything for them. And I get that. They are the stories you tell at the end of the day when your life feels like crap, and you just want to have something to believe in that keeps you going and offers some hope. The Lovely Lady and I talk at night about our future, how we’re going to take over the world and make everything better. Some of it is legitimate planning (not to take over the world, but how to get to where we want to be) and some of it is pipe dreaming.

That afternoon, watching that show, I recognized the Bible for what it is. It’s a collection of pipe dreams from a broken people wishing for something better. In a sense, that’s very beautiful, so long as you avoid the angel rapists, the instructions on slavery, the murder of homosexuals, the wrath of God, the ridiculous fables of floods, the horrifying letters to early Christians admonishing them for every last mistake they made, the brutality of the crucifiction, and pricks like Samson. Oh, and you need a pretty big stomach for swallowing all the suspension of disbelief you need to employ to accept a resurrection, miraculous healings, manna from heaven, talking snakes, guys murdering armies with no better weapon than a donkey’s face bits, repopulating the entire world from a small stock of animals and people, people surviving a lion’s den, and a loving God murdering the first born of Egypt.

Suddenly, I felt very, very foolish. I accepted my atheism that day, and I became a loudmouthed atheist at the same moment. I wanted the people I loved to see how foolish they were being, buying into all of this rubbish. I couldn’t help it, and still can’t. I’m proud to be an atheist and I want to unshackle the minds of everyone I know. It’s just who I am.

“Big Ugly” Jim Martin
Canada

Horrifyingly delusional anti-vaxxers in Australia

Take a look at the ad copy for this evil book by a friend of Meryl Dorey, the anti-vaccination kook.

“Marvellous measles”? “Embrace childhood disease”? This is rank madness. Here is what WHO says about measles:

  • Measles is one of the leading causes of death among young children even though a safe and cost-effective vaccine is available.
  • In 2008, there were 164 000 measles deaths globally – nearly 450 deaths every day or 18 deaths every hour.
  • More than 95% of measles deaths occur in low-income countries with weak health infrastructures.
  • Measles vaccination resulted in a 78% drop in measles deaths between 2000 and 2008 worldwide.
  • In 2010, about 85% of the world’s children received one dose of measles vaccine by their first birthday through routine health services – up from 72% in 2000.

Measles kills children. The reason these loons can babble about measles as if it were a harmless game that strengthens your immune system is that world-wide vaccination campaigns have been so effective in reducing the incidence of the disease, and because children who are healthy and have good nutrition are very likely to survive it. So what Stephanie Messenger and Meryl Dorey propose to do is to put sick, immuno-compromised, and hungry children at far greater risk of death, and make their own spoiled children miserable and contagious for a few days to a week, and also put them at a lesser risk of death, all so they can smugly promote their hare-brained cause.

Something else that irritates me about these people is that often they align themselves with the left — it’s gormless liberals who readily buy into this nonsense. Another scandal developing in Australia is that the Woodford Folk Festival has invited Meryl Dorey to speak. It looks like a big event, and there among the environmentalists and local foods proponents and polynesian and aboriginal singers, is this great stinking turd of a woman advocating infecting small children with awful diseases. This Meryl Dorey:

She has described measles (the disease which has killed more children than any other in the history of the world) as “benign;” she suggested the slogan “Shaken Maybe Syndrome” as a way of implying that Shaken Baby Syndrome does not exist but is always damage caused by vaccines; she provided strong support to a man imprisoned in the US for the murder of a ten-week-old boy, her support being based on the idea that the dreadful injuries to the child had to be the effects of a vaccine, not the actions of a violent man; she is on record as an AIDS denier; she said on television that “whooping cough didn’t kill us thirty years ago and it’s not kill anybody today”. If she isn’t implacably opposed to vaccinations then she hides any other position well.

The festival sounds like fun, but if I were in the region, nothing could persuade me to attend — it’s poisoned through and through by its endorsement of a child-killing monster who will be given a stage to lie from.

(Also on FtB)

The Pluto objection

I’m so sorry, Kentucky. How do you end up with such ignorant school superintendents?

Ricky Line is concerned because his school district is teaching the facts of evolution.

“I have a very difficult time believing that we have come to a point … that we are teaching evolution … as a factual occurrence, while totally omitting the creation story by a God who is bigger than all of us,” he wrote. “My feeling is if the Commonwealth’s site-based councils, school board members, superintendents and parents were questioned … one would find this teaching contradictory to the majority’s belief systems.”

…

“My argument is, do we want our children to be taught these things as facts? Personally, I don’t,” Line said. “I don’t think life on earth began as a one-celled organism. I don’t think that all of us came from a common ancestor … I don’t think the Big Bang theory describes the explanation of the origin of the universe.”

So a school superintendent rejects all of modern science. The only novel thing here is his excuse:

The vast majority of scientists contend that evolution is an accepted cornerstone of modern science, and that there is no real scientific debate over the concept.

Line counters that “it’s interesting that the great majority of scientists felt Pluto was a planet until a short time ago, and now they have totally changed that. There are scientists who don’t believe that evolution happened.”

That argument might work a little better if Pluto had winked out of existence when it was retitled…but it still whirls about the sun. Just as life on earth keeps bubbling up, and descent with modification keeps on happening.

And just like bible-thumping American yokels keep meddling in our children’s educations.

(Also on FtB)

The Pluto objection

I’m so sorry, Kentucky. How do you end up with such ignorant school superintendents?

Ricky Line is concerned because his school district is teaching the facts of evolution.

“I have a very difficult time believing that we have come to a point … that we are teaching evolution … as a factual occurrence, while totally omitting the creation story by a God who is bigger than all of us,” he wrote. “My feeling is if the Commonwealth’s site-based councils, school board members, superintendents and parents were questioned … one would find this teaching contradictory to the majority’s belief systems.”

…

“My argument is, do we want our children to be taught these things as facts? Personally, I don’t,” Line said. “I don’t think life on earth began as a one-celled organism. I don’t think that all of us came from a common ancestor … I don’t think the Big Bang theory describes the explanation of the origin of the universe.”

So a school superintendent rejects all of modern science. The only novel thing here is his excuse:

The vast majority of scientists contend that evolution is an accepted cornerstone of modern science, and that there is no real scientific debate over the concept.

Line counters that “it’s interesting that the great majority of scientists felt Pluto was a planet until a short time ago, and now they have totally changed that. There are scientists who don’t believe that evolution happened.”

That argument might work a little better if Pluto had winked out of existence when it was retitled…but it still whirls about the sun. Just as life on earth keeps bubbling up, and descent with modification keeps on happening.

And just like bible-thumping American yokels keep meddling in our children’s educations.

(Also on Sb)

We shall wage the War on Christmas in the polls

Every year, the American Patriarchy Association puts out its hit list of naughty commercial retailers: the sole criterion is whether they use the word “Christmas” in their advertizing. And it’s not how you’d think! If the business commercializes Christ and invokes Jesus’ name to get you to buy soda pop or racy lingerie, then it’s good and listed as FOR Christmas. If it uses heathenish slogans like “Happy Holidays”, then it’s wicked and offensive.

Don’t ask me to explain Christians. They’re a weird and hypocritical lot.

So anyway, here’s a poll. Apparently, the patriarchal zealots think I should boycott Barnes & Noble because the bookstore doesn’t praise Jesus enough.

Would you boycott a store because it won’t mention “Christmas”?

No, “Happy Holidays” is inclusive of everyone’s beliefs. 54.16%
Yes, because “Jesus is the reason for the season”. 30.17%
Don’t care either way. I’m all about the sales. 15.67%