I’m soon to be stuffed and mounted on the mantelpiece

Bora has put together a history of science blogging, and there I am, one of the grizzled old pioneers, chewin’ tobaccy and slapping mules around. There’s also mention of my old Tangled Bank carnival, which isn’t totally gone — I’ve got the archive stashed on my lab computer, and someday I have to figure out how to extract and resurrect an old Expression Engine blog.

Larry Moran also talks about the crucible of talk.origins, and how a lot of the early science bloggers got their start on usenet (myself included). A lot of the feisty, confrontational style comes straight out of a history of prolonged combat with idiots.

Republicans really do hate everything good and true

Unbelievable. They don’t just reject science, they don’t just despise women, they don’t just want to silence labor, Republicans hate art.

Over the weekend, the governor, Nikki Haley, destroyed the South Carolina Commission for the Arts — the cut was such that the 20 people who work there cannot show up to work today, can’t even go into their building, because of liability issues. The arts in South Carolina brings in $9.2 billion and creates 78,000 jobs at a cost of 1.9 million to the Arts Commission. It’s a phenomenally stupid cut — our state has one of the two best arts in education programs in the country! We don’t do a lot well in South Carolina, but this is one of the few we really do. And now we’re about to be the only state in the country without a public arts agency.

Read the whole thing. There’s a contact form there, you can contact the responsible idiots and tell ’em off; you should do that especially if you’re from South Carolina, but I think a world-wide show of solidarity would also be good.

Tell the philistines what you think.

Our terrible secret exposed!

I am dismayed. Freethoughtblogs has been accused of being a den of Feminazis, Femistasi, totalitarian thought, and being equivalent to a totalitarian state, by no less a person than Paula Kirby. This is terrible news!

We aren’t ready! The interrogation rooms haven’t even been furnished, all the razorwire is sitting in spools and hasn’t been deployed, and we haven’t even settled on the final design for the uniforms. I mean, we’ve picked the colors (black, of course, with blood red highlights), but we’re bickering over the retro and dapper 1940s look, or this spectacular futuristic art deco Ming the Merciless style. They both look so fabulous it’s impossible to make up our minds. We have settled on the symbol: skulls — absolutely required — and tentacles.

But it’s not enough and we’re nowhere near prepared! I’ve had to spend my evening browsing through military surplus catalogs — it’s amazing what you can buy online — to get the gear for the 1st Pharyngula Panzer Division, since as you all know, fashion is more important than guns for a good solid popular fascist movement, so we waited until the last moment. We’re going to have to settle for some rather marginal tanks, I’m afraid, but it should be adequate to roll over the Dakotas and Wisconsin, especially since they don’t suspect a thing, and once we’ve seized a few depots we can upgrade. But still! We had a goddamned timetable (you know how we fascists love our timetables), and this just messes them all up!

Oh, well.

Say, if I put up a chipin widget or create a kickstarter to build a war machine, you’ll all contribute, right? We’ll take your name off the purge list if you do!

And, well, you all know what will happen to you if you don’t.

Change of focus

I have just completed an informal survey of the community by scanning through the New York Times, the Washington Times, the LA Times, High Times, Fortean Times, and World Net Daily, and have come to the realization that this blog does not conform to the wider interests of the world around us. Most people in the world do not care much at all about science, as long as their TVs work, are completely ignorant of evolution, and find atheism completely repellent. Therefore, my interests are out of sync and not worth doing.

From now on, I’ll be changing what I write about to something more reflective of the status quo. My time will be better spent writing about stuff white people find awesome, cars, cosmetics, Charlie Sheen, Justin Bieber, cats and kittens, the attractiveness of slender women in bikinis, martinis, football, and jokes about women making sandwiches.

I understand that these are the topics of prime importance. I’ll also be yelling at everyone else on FtB that they’re wasting our time and being non-representative of people’s concerns by being all disagreeable and failing to conform and stuff.

Also, at last, all those women scribbling away here can find something more productive to do: making my sammiches.