Joe Biden has announced that he won’t be running for President. I am relieved. We really didn’t need another establishment Democrat running for the office.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
Joe Biden has announced that he won’t be running for President. I am relieved. We really didn’t need another establishment Democrat running for the office.
Fox News threw a fit over the fact that Captain America, the comic book character and movie fantasy, was just too darn liberal. In the latest iteration of the character, not only is he black, but his enemies are home-grown American fascists who hate immigrants, which is just cutting a little too close to the Republican bone.
Amanda Marcotte has a good factual rundown of Cap’s genre history, but I have to say my favorite treatment is this work of fiction, told from the point of view of Steve Rogers’ 21st century publicist.
Something else she didn’t see coming: it turned out Captain America was basically a communist.
“More of a socialist, really,” he said, when she tiptoed toward the matter over lunch on Monday. Luckily, there hadn’t been any fallout from his weekend. It wasn’t that the media had suddenly developed a sense of restraint, more that neither protest had been deemed worthy of press coverage in the first place. Of course, if he kept at it, he would become the reason for said coverage.
“Went to meetings sometimes,” he was saying now, “but I worked a lot and I was pretty much always sick so sometimes I couldn’t—” He gestured vaguely with his chopsticks, then indicated the stone bowl in front of him. “This is really good, what is it?”
“Bi bim bop,” she replied, mostly on auto-pilot, still trying to process the way he’d shrugged off the question as if it was about something totally innocuous. Ice cream flavors. Sports teams. Favorite models of car. Steve experimentally added another couple dollops of hot sauce to his rice, and then it hit her: “Oh my god,” she said, “you slept through the fifties.” He looked up from his bowl blankly. She stared at him. “The whole thing. You missed the entire Red Scare—”
It’s a strange historical phenomenon that people came out of the Great Depression appreciating the role of government in providing security, and then went through the 50s and suddenly turned paranoid against the government.
Obvs, he did it.
Larry Moran discusses some apologetics from Jonathan McLatchie, in which McLatchie briefly argues for intelligent design. I think the fact that it’s in the context of Christian apologetics already gives away the store, but at least he gives a succinct definition of intelligent design:
The study of patterns in nature which bear the hallmarks of an intelligent cause
Since you’ve all already made your travel arrangements (or wished longingly that you could make those arrangements), you all know that Skepticon is less than a month away. I’ll be there, taking it easy and just enjoying other people’s efforts…although Lauren made some noises about drafting me to do a workshop. But no! I shall be lazy!
One thing I wanted to mention, though, because it’s important, is that Skepticon is totally transparent about their financials. When you donate to Skepticon, you can see where every dollar goes — and it’s all plowed right back into the conference. It’s not a profitable fundraiser for an organization or an individual who’s up to something else, it’s entirely for the purpose of educating the public at a yearly event.
It’s a good cause, and if you can’t go this year, you should drop them a few dollars (only if you can afford it!) and try to go next year. It’s always worth it.
Even skeptics do them. Brian Dunning is out of prison, and he’s written a lengthy rationalization to explain that he wasn’t really a criminal. His excuses: he’d been suspicious, his partner in the scheme was the shady one, he hadn’t been scamming eBay at all, he was just a scapegoat, he was only sentenced to 29 months, not 20 years. He just explains that all he did was imbed 1×1 invisible pixels in his site that got eBay to willingly plant cookies on visitor’s sites, that allowed him then to reap rewards every time that visitor bought something through eBay. Not his fault!
Of course he also reveals that the 1×1 invisible pixel publishing business was astonishingly lucrative, bringing him an income of $1.1 million. But hey, that’s just about what a good corporate job would pay
. So it must have been all right!
I make nowhere near that amount at the education business, and even less at the blogging game. Maybe my mistake is that I need to make my efforts very tiny and invisible, and then I’d get rich?
Well, gosh. We thought the local Gay-Straight Alliance had won a victory, and they did…but of course the conservative status quo had to strike back. New rules have been posted in the school.
Notices of non-curricular student club meetings may be posted only on a bulletin board designated for non-curricular clubs. Such notices may include the name of the club; a brief description of the club; the dates, times and locations of meetings; and a statement indicating that students are invited to attend the meetings. Also, all notices posted by non-curricular clubs must include a disclaimer that states: “This is a non-curricular student club. The School District does not endorse or sponsor the goals, objectives, activities, or opinions of the club.” Any distribution or display of other information/materials relating to non-curricular student clubs, other than the bulletin board posting, may only be provided to students who choose to attend club meetings.
Materials related to non-curricular clubs may not be distributed or displayed in school hallways, classrooms or common areas, nor may announcements be made over the School District’s public address system or in school-sponsored publications.
The first rule of gay-straight alliance club is no one talks about gay-straight alliance club.
That’s a bit draconian. So to forestall the possibility that there might be gay signs or gay announcements over the PA, they’ve declared that no “non-curricular” club can make any announcements at all.
As a local parent points out, homecoming is a non-curricular activity. So are senior prom, pep rallies, and athletic events. I’m sure the students will enjoy the newly drab, somber, staid hallways of their institution.
That notice really ought to be signed by the proud author, so we could all know who the puritans are.
Every time I go on the damn internet there’s this terrible annoying “SQUEEEE!” noise everywhere. Some new movie trailer is playing on half the computers on the network, I think.
I confess, I felt a strange Force tugging at me too when I saw that — I saw the original on opening day in 1977, I enjoyed The Empire Strikes Back, felt the disappointment of Return of the Jedi, although I had a kid then who was totally into it. And then came the horrible, awful, tedious prequels, and now JJ Abrams is in charge? Bleh. I’m not expecting much, which means I might actually enjoy it, thanks to diminished expectations.
But then there is other optimistic news: the racists have announced a boycott, because it features a black character in a leading role. I approve. Just stay home, racists, from everything.
Apparently the two leading characters are a black man and a woman. Can we dare to hope that the MRAs will also announce a boycott? If all the awful people would just withdraw from the world and sit and stew and fume all by themselves in hermitic isolation, the world would be a better place.
I mentioned before that there was a rally yesterday for the Morris Area High School Gay Straight Alliance. This organization has been in limbo for about 3 years as school officials resisted acknowledging the existence of gay students…and also ignored the bullying that goes on.
As is common in small towns, this has been a hot topic in letters to the editor in our local paper. There have been strong letters in favor, and weasely legalistic letters urging caution. I haven’t seen any anti-gay letters, which is a real sign of progress, but just whining stuff as opponents try to find a way to avoid approval, despite the fact that it is required that they allow it.
So they rallied last night, the school board met, and the school board voted to approve the Morris Area High School Gay Straight Alliance at last. There were only two votes against, although the school board chair did try to sour the whole thing by reading out a statement that they’re only approving it because federal law requires them to do so — a kind of graceless confession that they’ve been in the wrong, and that they’re not happy about having to do what is right.
But still…it’s a victory for goodness and justice and equality. I’ll have to check out the Morris paper this weekend to learn how other members of the community react.
John Oliver explained the Canadian elections for us.
I’ve been having the Canadian Election results running in the background. I don’t quite understand everything that is going on, but I’m hoping everything turns liberal soon.
