Thunderf00t/Phil Mason, treacherous hack

Fuck Thunderf00t/Phil Mason. The accounts that Zinnia and Natalie and Ashley have revealed are true: for the past month, Thunderf00t took advantage of a security exploit to hack into our private mail server; when the hole was closed, he tried multiple time to use the same exploit to get back in. He knowingly and willfully violated a confidential email list. And worse, what he has since been doing (and this is how we discovered the security flaw in the first place) is disseminating some of this email to third parties.

Yeah, this is the guy who expressed such outrage at people ‘dropping docs’ on him, but he has absolutely no qualms about breaking legally binding confidentiality of an LLC, and thinks it’s just fine to hold hostage personal information on pseudonymous posters who, under the promise of privacy, had discussed personal matters and job-related issues. He is a colossal hypocrite.

Just to make matters even worse, I woke up this morning to find some reassuring email from some friends of his, who had basically staged an intervention, trying to get him to back off from his unethical behavior. I was told that he had listened and agreed, and piously assured everyone that he thought the goals of the freethought movement were most important, and that we should all step away from the petty divisiveness and concentrate on education, science, secularism, and politics. His friends wrote to me and they sounded quite convinced that he was sincere and high minded.

And then he turned around, no doubt chortling to himself, and posted another slimy, sneering, lying article about freethoughtblogs. It’s appalling. Not only has he stabbed FtB in the back, but he has no qualms about lying to and betraying the people he still regards as friends.

Yes, we want to make Thunderf00t/Phil Mason a pariah in the atheist movement, and for good reason: he’s a dishonest scumbag. The nice thing for us is that he’s making it easy: Phil Mason is destroying his own reputation with his sleazy behavior. Who in their right mind would ever trust that guy with any confidence at all?

Don’t go into the light…until I’ve milked this story for another book

A while back, I wrote a couple of articles on near-death experiences: The NDE delusion and Near-death, rehashed. It’s a topic I’ve been following off and on for quite a few years.

So I was quite surprised to see this name popping up in the news lately: Melvin Morse. Morse is one of those gullible paranormalists who has a couple of sloppily breathless books out about NDEs — he gets mentioned a couple of times in this nice article debunking a couple of well-known cases. His specialty is describing NDEs in children.

Yeah, children. Which adds a little extra disgust to the news.

He has been arrested for waterboarding his own daughter, punishing her by holding her head under a running faucet so she couldn’t breathe.

The daughter told police she “could never understand what she did to be punished” and felt scared, court documents reported. Once, she said, her father told her he “was going to wrap her in a blanket and do it so that she could not move.” In another instance, she said Melvin Morse told her that “she could go five minutes without brain damage.”

…

After her father did these things, the girl said she would “go outside and cry,” prompting Melvin Morse to come outside and then “hold her nose and mouth with his hand,” police said in court records.

“He would tell her she was lucky he did not use duct tape,” police said in the documents. “He would not let go until she lost feeling and collapsed to the ground.”

It sounds like he was trying to do a little “research” on his own child. There’s good money in almost-dead children, you know.

What do you mean, we can’t shoot Canadians?

This is an actual letter to the Calgary Herald from an American tourist.

I recently visited Calgary from Michigan. As a police officer for 20 years, it feels strange not to carry my off-duty hand-gun. Many would say I have no need to carry one in Canada.

Yet the police cannot protect everyone all the time. A man should be al-lowed to protect himself if the need arises. The need arose in a theatre in Aurora, Colo., as well as a college campus in Canada.

Recently, while out for a walk in Nose Hill Park, in broad daylight on a paved trail, two young men approached my wife and me. The men stepped in front of us, then said in a very aggressive tone: “Been to the Stampede yet?”

We ignored them. The two moved closer, repeating: “Hey, you been to the Stampede yet?”

I quickly moved between these two and my wife, replying, “Gentle-men, I have no need to talk with you, goodbye.” They looked bewildered, and we then walked past them.

I speculate they did not have good intentions when they approached in such an aggressive, disrespectful and menacing manner. I thank the Lord Jesus Christ they did not pull a weapon of some sort, but rather concluded it was in their best interest to leave us alone.

Would we not expect a uniformed officer to pull his or her weapon to intercede in a life-or-death encounter to protect self, or another? Why then should the expectation be lower for a citizen of Canada or a visitor? Wait, I know – it’s because in Canada, only the criminals and the police carry handguns.

Walt Wawra, Kalamazoo, Mich.

The letter has been confirmed as genuine by the newspaper.

I’ve been to Calgary several times. I never knew I should have shot those pushy Canadians who tried to say hello to me.

Next time!

I think I might have second thoughts about visiting Kalamazoo, though.

A wee scrap of Mormon madness

These are the words of Apostle Joseph Fielding Smith of the Church of Latter Day Saints, uttered at a conference in 1961.

We will never get a man into space. This earth is man’s sphere and it was never intended that he should get away from it…

The moon is a superior planet to the earth and it was never intended that man should go there. You can write it down in your books that this will never happen.

He also wrote this in a book called Answers to Gospel Questions.

When man was placed on this earth it became his probationary, or mortal home. Here he is destined to stay until his earth-life is completed….There is no prophecy or edict ever given that mortals should ever should seek dominions beyond this earth while they dwell in mortality. Here we are, and here we should be content to stay. All this talk about space travel and the visiting of other worlds brings to mind vividly an attempt long ago made by foolish men who tried to build to heaven.

This belief that Mormons have that they were given Earth, and that the faithful can someday get their own planet, has consequences and implications.

Now you might be thinking, that was 1961…boy, did NASA show that Fielding was wrong 8 years later. But I was sent this link to a poll from 2009, where the LDS Freedom Forum is considering the problem.

What do you think about Joseph Fielding Smith’s moon prophecy?

He spoke out about something quasi-political. As a Church official, he should have known to leave well enough alone. 3%

It was his personal opinion and he was wrong about it. Big deal. 28%

I think this is proof he was a “false prophet.” 1%

He’s human…sometimes even Prophets or Apostles get stuff wrong. 17%

Joseph Fielding Smith was right about the moon, and still is to this day. 50%

Yep, 50% thought Fielding was right, humans couldn’t travel to the moon, and much of the following discussion is about how the moon landing was faked.

(It’s an old poll, and I think it’s closed, so don’t bother trying to change it. I just thought it was amusing.)

Flaming Cheerios: a weapon of mass destruction

The Smoking Gun has a hilarious video of a guy with a blowtorch and a box of Cheerios. It turns out that cheerios burn really well, and he set the lawn of General Mills on fire.

But there’s also a sad part. The event took place in Minnesota; I hate being reminded that I’m surrounded by stupid people. The guy with a blowtorch is Mike Leisner, and wouldn’t you know it…he’s doing this to protest the policies of tolerance practiced at General Mills, because he has a hard-on for the gays; he hates ’em, and thinks we all ought to, too. He’s been preaching hatred on youtube for some time.

He had a youtube channel called “Live4Chr1st” (wouldn’t you know he’d have to be a raving Christian nutcase?), but no more. It’s been taken down. He works as a real estate agent for Greater Midwest Properties — it’ll be interesting to see how long that lasts.

But I will try to look on the bright side. We have a referendum coming up in November on gay marriage in Minnesota; it helps that the opponents are such embarrassing fools. I’m also thinking that when the Revolution comes, I should stock up on boxes of Cheerios, rather than molotov cocktails.

Nothing can stop Pat Robertson from leaping to a foregone conclusion

Oh, wow: guess who was to blame for the Sikh temple shooting? According to Pat Robertson, it was atheists!

I love how he piously deplores all violence against anyone worshipping god, without concern for which god they’re praying towards. As long as they’re not Muslim, I guess!

By the way, the murderer was “a neo-Nazi skinhead in the very thick of the white supremacist movement” who talked about racial holy war. I don’t think atheism was his motive.

I think I’m beginning to hate gun culture

I haven’t even glanced at that awful Instahack’s blog in years, and now I am reminded why. Here’s what he has to say about the recent murders at a Sikh temple:

The 6 Sikh temple shooting victims identified; Satwant Singh Kaleka died trying to fight off shooter. Heroic. But it’s too bad he didn’t have a gun.

What? So it’s Kaleka’s fault because he wasn’t carrying a gun? In a temple?

In Instahack’s world, are we supposed to be armed everywhere?

Creationist sophistry

Did you know that only animals are alive? Bacteria, fungi, and protists…also not alive. This is according to Henry Morris III, creationist. He makes this argument by specifying certain criteria, rather arbitrarily and independent of anything biology has to say — the four things that determine whether something is alive are:

  • It’s unique. I know, that sounds like it ought to apply to plants, but that’s not really the criterion: after saying “Life is unique”, he explains that it’s because the Bible used the Hebrew word “chay” 763 times, and never applies it to plants. Therefore, the reason plants aren’t alive is Hebrew word use patterns.

  • Life has independent movement. So things that twitch and crawl are alive, plants don’t, therefore they aren’t. Also, the Bible uses the Hebrew word “ramas” for movement 17 times, and never applies it to plants. Therefore, the reason plants aren’t alive is Hebrew word use patterns.

  • Life has blood. God sent a clear message by rejecting Cain’s offering of plants — He demands blood sacrifice, nothing else will do. The more potent blood comes from people; the blood of bulls and goats was not sufficient to take away human sins, which was why Jesus had to be sacrificed.

    OK, this argument is just ghoulish. His best argument for why plants aren’t alive is that you can’t butcher them to get blood which will magically cure sins?

  • Life has soul and spirit. So this criterion is for something we can’t see or measure in any way — if recognition of my life is dependent on having a “soul”, then I guess I’m dead already. And once again, Morris pointlessly tells us that the Bible uses the word “nephesh” 753 times and “ruwach” 389 times, never applying it to a plant. Therefore, the reason plants aren’t alive is Hebrew word use patterns.

The only thing this whole mess persuades me of is that creationists are even dumber than I thought.

But I do have to say one thing to his essay’s credit: I agreed with the conclusion.

If God designed death into creation, then death is as “good” as all other factors—and the atheistic evolutionary doctrine is right. Death is the “good” force that brings about the ultimate “fittest” in our universe. Death, therefore, is not “the wages of sin,” and our Lord Jesus’ death was not necessary for salvation—it was just the wasted effort of a deluded martyr.

These teachings cannot be harmonized. Either the Bible is Truth (capitalization intended) or it is Error. The choice is clear. The message is clear. The effect is eternal!

The answer is clear. Jesus was a deluded martyr. It is Error.

The Jack D. Ripper School of Reproductive Biology

So I got in this odd twitter argument — arguing against a point so stupid, so against reason and biology, that I didn’t bother to bring it up here. The source of this argument was an MRA site, AVoiceForMen (home to the odious JohnTheOther and Paul Elam, if you recall), and the discussion was about the relative biological cost of sex. The standard biological view is that sex is cheap for men, and expensive for women; men produce numerous small, cheap gametes, most of which are disposable and thrown away, and do not have to bear the cost of pregnancy and lactation, and can often dodge the bother of child-rearing altogether, while women produce very few large, metabolically expensive gametes, and by necessity bear all the costs of pregnancy and lactation. And of course, in our culture, they also get saddled with most of the work of raising children.

The MRA argument was a perverse inversion of reality. It argued that men are the costly sex, because they have to ejaculate their precious sperm during intercourse, while the ladies just lie there and have fun.

We have this attitude toward hookup culture because we are convinced that male sexuality has no value. Not even no value, we think male sexuality has negative value.

Men sow their seed hither and yon; women guard their vaginas like Fort Knox.

But is this true?

Let’s think about it logically. With each act of sex a male ejaculates semen into the female. This is an investment of physical resources that takes time for the male to replenish. So male animals are limited in how often they can have reproductively viable sex. Female animals, on the other hand, are not. The sex act has zero cost to them.

Now, the reason this obvious truth is invisible to us is because we lump in the cost of carrying young with the cost of sex. Yes, carrying young is high female investment but the sex act itself is higher male investment.

It really is the ‘precious bodily fluids’ argument presented seriously. Men are the ones who should guard their essence, while women shouldn’t care.

Why? Because, quite simply, his sperm is in limited supply. He wants to prioritize delivery of sperm to a.) high quality females and b.) less mated females.

I don’t even…

Men spontaneously produce approximately 100,000,000 sperm cells per day. We make them whether we have sex or not. They have a limited shelf life; there is good evidence that mature internally stored sperm begin to decline in quality after about a week.

There is no sperm shortage at all.

Women, on the other hand, produce one gamete per month. If you want to make the “limited supply” argument, and an economic claim that a scarce commodity will be marketed much, much more carefully, it ought to be applied not to the menz but to the womenz. And also note that the only way the author can make her (yes, her) claim at all is by intentionally neglecting all the costs of pregnancy.

There are a couple of commenters there arguing with this patently bogus rationalization — it would be hard not to, it’s so absurd — but other commenters are just unbelievably gullible.

Epicness sauteed in awesomesauce!

As long as you ignore the fact that it’s, like, wrong.

And if you’re fond of word salad, how about this?

Best written post on Female’s Hypergamy & their polyandrous relationships, Female sexuality is pretty much distorted, When sexual revolution was forced on to become the social and cultural norm, WOMYN in majority never repelled it or rejected it, they gladly accepted it and have made it their daily routine (To fuck more men) their so called pair bonding in ancestral time was “Forced” pair bonding but with new innovations like “NO FAULT” divorce and incentives, cash prizes and child custody they are now pretty busy shaking up more dicks after breaking up with their “now” ex’s.

But overall MGTOW are catching up with that, Maybe PUA are mindless drones but even though male sexuality is also becoming more like female sexuality, Even more males are now calling out their inner “ape” or “gorilla” because of this new CULTURAL and SOCIAL Norm of sexual revolution, but as i said Women were the starter of all this insanity and they are now reaping what they sow.

I’m sorry, but I feel queasy at the thought of linking to AVoiceForMen (officially declared a hate site by the SPLC!), but here’s another article that effectively shreds their idiocy. Read that instead.