Yeah, I think it’s over. Ketchum’s group — you know, the one that collected possum hairs and sequenced random garbage and called it Bigfoot — now is airing a Bigfoot video, supposedly the best evidence yet. You be the judge.
They spent half a million dollars gathering that, and they couldn’t even hand the camera over to someone who knew how to focus.
As my cohort gradually ages into that part of the population called “the old farts”, it’s good to know that that doesn’t require turning into an old bigot. Chad may have been disowned by his mother for being gay, but at least his grandfather stood up for him.
Dear Christine: I’m disappointed in you as a daughter. You’re correct that we have a “shame in the family,” but mistaken about what it is.
Kicking Chad out of your home simply because he told you he was gay is the real “abomination” here. A parent disowning her child is what goes “against nature.”
The only intelligent thing I heard you saying in all this was that “you didn’t raise your son to be gay”. Of course you didn’t. He was born this way and didn’t chase it any more than he being left-handed. You however, have made a choice of being hurtful, narrow-minded and backward. So, while we are in the business of disowning our children, I think I’ll take this moment to say goodbye to you. I now have a fabulous (as the gays put it) grandson to raise, and I don’t have time for heart-less B-word of a daughter.
If you find your heart, give us a call
Now I’m just waiting on word that I don’t have to become a WalMart greeter when I turn 65, and I’ll be free to age gracefully.
Chad Lane
This is the lounge. You can discuss anything you want, but you will do it kindly.
Status: Heavily Moderated; Previous thread
We’re fostering this wicked little kitty, and one of the things we’re trying to do is get her adopted. To do that, we’re supposed to take a photo, but there’s a problem: she doesn’t hold still. She’s running around everywhere, mauling my squid toys, stuffing her snout in her food bowl, chasing her tail, whatever entertains the tiny brain of a small cat.
So I had to use one of my superpowers. True fact: I have a magical ability to put things to sleep, as my students can attest. But also when my kids were growing up, it almost never failed, put them in my arms and clonk, zzzzz, they were out. So I have tried it on the cat. And it still works. I managed to snap a quick one just as her eyes were closing.
So if you have your own somnolence distortion field, or if you don’t mind an energetic beast, contact the Stevens Community Humane Society, and tell them you want to rescue Ivy from that hellbound Myers household.
As Ophelia has discovered, there is a facebook page titled Should Miri Mogilevsky be murdered? It claims
This page does not advocate any violence, or the breaking of any laws. It is, rather, an exercise in Free Speech.
It also asks,
Is Miri Mogilevsky, who blogs at Brute Reason at Freethought blogs! a loyal American ?
Has she ever had sex with PZ Myers ?
Has she ever had sex with Rebecca Watson ?
Because, obviously, all of those are offenses that warrant execution. It’s revealing, though: this is a person who does not understand the concept of free speech at all (it is not an idea that encourages harassment or intimidation), and also has the usual anti-skepchick/ftb obsession.
Anyway, as Ophelia suggests, if you have a facebook account, go to the page, click on the the gear icon just beneath the cover photo at the top, and select “report page”. As a bonus, you’ll discover how pathetic Facebook’s reporting mechanism is!
Have you ever wanted to enter the seminary? (I know, this audience? Probably not). I was sent a copy of the application form to enter the Mount Angel Abbey and I thought I’d compare it to the application form to enter the University of Minnesota Morris (both of those are pdfs, by the way). It was enlightening.
Here at Morris we’ve got a bunch of questions about your academic status. There’s one section that asks about your ethnic background and sex, but it’s surrounded by red border and prominently states “Request for confidential information (Optional)”. It’s appropriate and focused.
The Abbey? It’s 16 pages long and asks for all kinds of details about your private life. Do you play video games? How much money do you have? Have you ever committed heresy? Have you ever had mental health issues? Have you ever impersonated a deacon, priest or bishop? (Wait, does that get you in trouble with the Catholics? Halloween is coming up…) It goes on and on.
The message is clear. You need to apply to the University of Minnesota Morris instead of the seminary. We don’t give a damn about what video games you like to play.
Leo Igwe has an op-ed on an African problem.
Some months ago, the aviation authorities in Swaziland issued a statement which surprised many people around the globe. They warned that high-flying witches would be penalised. High-flying witches? Be penalised?
Swaziland Corporate Affairs Director Sabelo Dlamini actually said, “A witch on a broomstick should not fly above the [150-metre] limit.” Wow!
Of course, on hearing this directive one may think it was something made up by someone bent on discrediting Africa’s last absolute monarchy. Far from it, it was a policy statement from the aviation authorities in Swaziland to regulate ‘witch-flights’ in this 21st century.
He concludes by setting a goal for Africans.
We must break the spell of ignorance that hangs over Africa. Fearful ignorant minds wasting precious resources fighting imaginary witches in winnowing baskets must be replaced with educated, honest people administering the forward progress of an emerging continent with real needs.
Are the authorities in Swaziland and Zimbabwe listening to the future calling?
I hesitated to post this, because it’s all too easy to turn this into a vindication of racist bigotry. But let me remind you that here in mighty America, we have white people claiming to have fought demons, legislators denying global climate change because a god promised not to ever flood us again, and of course, the perennial insistence that we must swear an oath to an invisible boogey man to take public office.
So I have to revise Igwe’s suggestion a little bit: We must break the spell of ignorance that hangs over humanity.
I’ve kind of wondered, since I’m always getting called one — and while not really thinking hard about it, I’m aware of the homologies in male and female genitalia and mentally pictured something discrete and reasonably placed. I guess I must have low self-esteem or something, because science fiction authors imagine something grand and huge and dangerous, instead.
John Scalzi has a sketch of the Kaiju Mangina, and it is awesome and terrifying and silly. And then Howard Tayler drew the Brobot reaction, and it is perfect.
By the way, the drawing is by KB Spangler.
Sometimes, the British get very silly in their defense of religion. The Muslim groups got very very offended when the atheists slapped a label on a pineapple calling it “Mohammed”, and now the LSE has outright banned atheist groups, and is harassing them for wearing Jesus & Mo t-shirts.
I don’t have a pineapple, I am sad to say. I was tempted to run out and buy one. But I can do one better.
Meet Mohammed.
As an added bonus, he’ll keep longer than a piece of fruit would.
Do you have a Mohammed at your house? You should get one.
Another crank is haranguing me on twitter. This one’s conceit is that he’s writing emails from God. They’re bizarre: they’re anti-clerical and pro-god, and from them we learn that God has lousy grammar and spelling, and despite being anti-religion, is still pushing the same old tiresome patriarchal beliefs that religion does. Take, for instance, GOD eMails.info: eMail III, Subject: Women.
My dear women, I made you with pre-existing matters. I created you to honor, nature, share, and preserve life. I made each one of you with your own unique beauty. Nothing that walks on earth is more admirable than you women. Men of wisdom and science would respect you and protect you. And there is nothing men can do to stop him from falling in love with you women.
You noticed that your bodies will experience a change when you become pregnant, and your vagina would go through a painful trauma at the time of giving birth. The pain caused is something you women would never forget after you had experienced it. Its serves as a reminder not to choose as the father of your child any man insisting on you to fallow any organized religion.
Sincerely;
God. Your God.
It’s condescending bullshit that trivializes women by putting them on a pedestal and acting as if their great virtue is being beautiful for “men of wisdom and science.” And then leaps immediately into pregnancy, because after all, that’s what women are for and find most important in their lives.
What? The Genesis crapola about pain in childbirth twisted to be a reminder that you shouldn’t join a church? I’m going to have to have a talk with my wife; she sure put on a good act with all the sweating and straining and grunting and crying, but she couldn’t have felt any pain during labor, since the father of her children was consistently steering the family away from organized religion.
Religious kooks, please note: I despise you. God is now blocked.
