Christmas is over…for good

Don’t ask me why, I just found this little story hilarious, and I didn’t want to wait until Christmas eve 2011 to post it.

While we’re throwing around Christmas hilarity, this story is so ironic it made me giggle: The Next Person Who Says Happy Holidays Shall Be Punched In The Throat. It’s not a humor piece, it’s from an angry Christian who has simply taken the irrational obsession with Christmas being Christian to the unsurprising conclusion that saying something nice that does not promote his sectarian faith warrants physical abuse. Merry Christmas, crazy Christian…and I say it not because I’m afraid of being punched, but because I’m happily stealing the holiday back for the heathens.

Science as the stuff that works

I love xkcd despite the fact of the creator’s obvious physics bias, but it looks like he’s finally learning to appreciate the power of biology, too.

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Science is the tool that defines our culture, like flint handaxes or pottery beakers defined previous cultures, and it’s a generalized tool that cuts across disciplines and ought to shape our minds…and it does, even among the people who try to reject it.

I just look at the pictures

I can’t understand a word that’s written in this article, but I like the cartoon.

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Somebody should make a similar one for moderate Christians…they can tut-tut over murdered abortion doctors, they can make excuses for pedophile priests, they can go in a voting booth and pull the lever against gay rights, but an atheist puts up a billboard that says you can be good without gods, and zowee! Screaming fits on Fox News!

It’s a strange phobia

The latest xkcd is an odd one. I know some people freak out a teeny tiny bit at the thought, but it never bothers me.

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I’m a first child, and I calculated back when I was conceived, and estimate that it was almost exactly the day of my parents’ wedding — which was an elopement. The two of them ran off at a young age to Idaho where they didn’t need to get parental permission to marry, and right away they had me. I find that wonderfully romantic and have always had the knowledge that my parents loved each other very much (and were also a bit crazy and impetuous and careless…well, and also loved kids a lot). The squeamishness about parental sex has always seemed a bit weird to me — don’t people want their parents to be happy?

Of course, I don’t want to know the details, OK? That’s personal and private and should remain between the participants, no voyeurs allowed.

And I definitely don’t want to know about my kids’ sex life. I just want them to have a happy one, and that’s enough knowledge for me.

Hmmm…maybe that’s the root of the fastidiousness—a concern for the privacy of the individuals involved?