Rightful actions

Our president, the wretched villain who threw away our economy and our people’s lives in a wasteful, failed war, skulked into Iraq and tried to pretend he was a hero. Nobody was fooled, and he got a rude surprise.

Bush had just finished his prepared remarks in which he said the security agreement was made possible by the U.S. surge of troops earlier this year, when the journalist, Muthathar al Zaidi pulled his shoes off and hurled them at the president. “This is a goodbye kiss, you dog,” Zaidi shouted.

Bush dodged the shoes and was not struck. Bodyguards quickly wrestled Zaidi to the floor and hauled him, kicking and screaming, from the room. Two other Iraqi journalists were briefly detained after one of them called Zaidi’s actions “courageous.”

Catch that last line: journalists were detained for commenting on this action. I’ll comment, too: I think Zaidi was brave and right. I wish a few American journalists had the guts to throw shoes at the president — they should have started in 2001. Can we make it a new tradition?

Haeckelmas?

John Holbo is determined — nay, obsessesed — to add a new holiday to the pantheon of midwinter festivals: it’s Haeckelmas. I can actually understand this, since the artwork Ernst Haeckel masterminded is worthy of obsession, a beautiful celebration of life in a Victorian vein.

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If you’re tired of the traditional Currier & Ives, Holbo has put together a whole collection of Haeckeliana with a holiday theme.

Blizzard!

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Our first blizzard of the season is hitting us right now: snow is pouring down, the wind is howling, temperatures are in the single digits °F and dropping, and we’re nearing white-out conditions. We’re staying indoors.

I don’t think our snowflakes look anything like the picture above (from this gallery of snowflake photomicrographs). They’re tiny and powdery, and flying by horizontally at 30 or 40 mph.

Radio reminder

All the smart people in the 56267 zip code will be tuned in to Atheists Talk radio this morning at 9am, to hear about the winter solstice and godless bus signage. You can too!

Oh, and at noon we’re all going to tune in to Nic McPhee’s and Susan Gilbert’s radio show on KUMM for an eclectic mix of interesting music. We’re all planning on bunkering down today, since we’re supposed to get slammed with a major blizzard…which I can see is gearing up outside my window right now.

A brand new stupid argument for Intelligent Design creationism

Cruel, cruel readers. Everyone is sending me links to this recent episode of The View, in which four women babble inanely about something or other. In this case, it’s evolution. Do you people like to see me suffer? This was horrible.

OK, Whoopi Goldberg is wishy-washy, rather than stupid: she argues for some vague kind of deistic intervention at the big bang, then evolution is the mechanism for creating life. Elisabeth Hasselbeck, though…allow me to paraphrase. ‘Really cool handbags and shoes have, like, designers, so really cool people must have a designer, too, even greater than Gucci and Prada.’

Oh, wait…that’s not new. That’s the same old argument the ID creationists have made all along.

Here. The rest of you can suffer and despair of humanity now, too.

Good on ya, Australia!

Australia has taken an interesting step forward: they’re going to allow instruction in humanism in their schools, apparently in place of traditional religion classes.

Victorian state primary school students will soon have an alternative — religious education lessons taught by people who do not believe in God and say there is “no evidence of any supernatural power”.

The Humanist Society of Victoria has developed a curriculum, which the State Government accreditation body says it intends to approve, to deliver 30-minute lessons each week of “humanist applied ethics” to primary pupils.

Accredited volunteers will be able to teach their philosophy in the class time designated for religious instruction. As with lessons delivered by faith groups, parents will be able to request that their children do not participate.

Now the fun part. The religious are complaining, of course. The fundies are saying this opens the door to all kinds of wacko religions to get equal time in the schools.

Fundamentalist Christian group the Salt Shakers panned the idea of humanists being given religious education class time.

Research director Jenny Stokes said: “If you go there, where do you stop? What about witchcraft or Satanism?

“If you accredit humanism, then those things would have an equal claim to be taught in schools.”

To me, witchcraft and satanism are no crazier than Christianity, so I don’t see the point of the argument. What’s even funnier, though, is that the groups with a vested interest in supporting the mainstream religions have a completely different argument.

But the body that accredits Victoria’s 3500 Christian religious instruction volunteers, Access Ministries, says humanism is not a religion and so should not be taught in religious education time.
Access Ministries now teaches in about two-thirds of state primary schools. Other accredited instructors teach Judaism, Buddhism and Baha’i.

The Humanist Society does not consider itself to be a religious organisation and believes ethics have “no necessary connection with religion”. Humanists believe people are responsible for their own destiny and reject the notion of a supernatural force or God.

So they can’t let a secular ethics taught because it’s a religion, and we can’t let it be taught because it is not a religion. I say let those two groups fight it out while the secular humanists just do their good ol’ rational thing.

A truly significant poll on license plates

Yeah, and next we’ll have a really important poll on what color socks I should wear. Right now, you’ll have to settle for answering this question: What do you think of the decision to block the “I Believe” license plate? The results so far:

Good. The plates are a violation of church and state 18.16 % (69)

I disagree with the ruling. I have a right to show my faith 63.95 % (243)

They should get rid of all vanity plates and have one standard design for the state 17.89 % (68)

The second, and so far winning (but you’ll turn that around fast), choice is palpably stupid. Of course you have a right to display your faith! Slap a Jesus fish and a bunch of bumper stickers on your car. Go out and get a vanity license plate frame that is dripping with crosses. Buy some trucknutz. You can flaunt your faiths all you want, you just don’t get to demand that the state endorse them and promote them.

Why are we fighting a war on Christmas, anyway?

That’s a good question. After all, how can someone get seriously upset when they’re wished “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas”? It’s been ridiculous from the get-go. Well, Max Blumenthal has traced the meme back in an article on who started the War on Christmas, and you probably won’t be too surprised: it originated in racist kooks who blamed foreigners and Jews for all of the nation’s ills. Notice that when people talk about the War on Christmas, they rarely mention who’s waging it. It’s unspoken but understood on the far right that this is a war with Jews and immigrants.

This is clearly Orcinus territory. Dave Neiwert has often made the argument that right-wing radio and TV exists to mainstream the worst ideas of racist extremists, and that the war on Christmas can migrate from the racist founder of the odious VDare website to a daily rant on Bill O’Reilly’s cable show is a perfect example of the phenomenon.