My wife has enslaved me! She wants sex without babies!

The best part of this interview with James Taranto is watching the expressions of the women doing the interviewing. You can tell they’re struggling to maintain a professional attitude while dealing with this lunatic hunk of slime.

The social purpose of marriage is to control men.

I’m actually quite fond of women. You can call me Tarantosaurus sex.

Women can have sex without the fear of pregnancy, just like men can. And this is a bad thing?

Excuse me. I have to go drink a quart of epicac right now. I could just go read the Wall Street Journal, I suppose, but guzzling a potent emetic would have the same effect, and be less painful to my brain.

(via TBogg.)

We must protect the students!

Administrators at London South Bank University have taken steps to protect the religious sensibilities of their student body, banning blasphemous portrayals of deities and important religious figures. Followers of those beliefs can’t possibly be expected to deal with ridicule, so the offensive portrayals must be taken down.

You might be wondering whose image is being redacted. Mohammed? Jesus? Buddha? L. Ron Hubbard?

Nope. A flyer that committed sacrilege by using the holy figure of the Flying Spaghetti Monster has been prohibited.

I can understand how Pastafarians might be up in arms over any portrayal of a tangle of noodles and a pair of meatballs — we have an Italian restaurant in Morris, and sometimes I too am shocked when I see a plate that has spontaneously ordered itself into a perfect simulacrum of the one true god. It’s why I’m always careful to segregate the pasta from the meatballs, to make sure no untoward activity takes place on the plate. Also, because as we all know, while meatballs are particularly blessed, pasta must always know its place as inferior and subservient (it’s so pliant, and always so seductive).

I am pleased to report, however, that London South Bank University did exactly the right thing in silencing those heretics emphasizing the silliness of the divine. It’s just as well, too, or Pastafarians around the world might have been motivated to riot. Or set sail to live a pirate’s life, with a yo-ho-ho.

Oh, wait. I have just been informed that the Pastafarians weren’t complaining, it was other religious groups trying to suppress the expression of other beliefs.

Never mind.

Blow it out your ass, Sam Zell

That title is the mildest phrase that ran through my mind listening to billionaire real estate investor whining about how the rich are so fucking persecuted.

The one percent work harder, the one percent are much bigger factors in all forms of our society

Good god. I’d like to introduce Sam Zell to my father, who spent most of his life living well below the poverty line, working overtime just to bring in enough money to feed his kids. He spent his years working with heavy machinery all day long (or sometime all night long, when he was stuck on a night shift); he would come home with hands caked with grease and oil, his back aching, often barely able to move until he had to rise for the next shift. He didn’t have a nice suit. He didn’t get to go out to expensive restaurants for over-priced meals. He didn’t fly first class everywhere — he didn’t fly anywhere, period.

And this smug asshole declares that he works so much harder than everyone else; that my father earned $10,000/year while Sam Zell gets billions because that’s what they deserve.

I’d like to introduce him to my father, but I can’t, because years of hard labor as a blue-collar grunt had their toll, and he’s dead.

Keep opening your mouths, you privileged coddled rich fuckwads. Marie Antoinette had nothing on the American upper class. If there is a revolution, what’s going to drive it is the arrogance of these parasites.

The cure for climate change

No worries, everyone! You’re not going to have to make any sacrifices, change life styles, or invest in alternative energy sources, because there is a shortcut: just ask god to fix it.

The Utah Farm Bureau asked the public to join in prayer and fasting for moisture for livestock and crops as part of its Harvesting Faith event Sunday.

Utah dairy farmer Ron Gibson told the Deseret News that farmers "can’t go to the Legislature to ask for help, (so they instead) decided to go to the guy upstairs."

Think it’ll work?

Oh, you atheists, I know you’re all thinking that it’s not nice to pick on stupid ideas, especially since this was an interfaith service.

Rajan Zed, who organized the Nevada service, says it drew Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Jewish and other faith leaders.

Don’t you know that if you gather together a diverse enough collection of idiotic ideas, they magically become sensible? If only they’d brought in the Satanists, the Scientologists, a mob of ghost hunters, some ancient astronaut fanatics, Bigfoot, and a crack team of dedicated UFOlogists, they would have reached critical mass and it would be raining buckets in the West right now.

LMR?

What is it with MRAs and PUAs and MGTOWs and their endless acronyms? Here’s a new one on me: LMR. “Last minute resistance”. It’s how the acronym-ridden ones refer to women’s efforts to prevent them from sticking their penis into their vagina. It’s all about rape, in other words.

One of the odious PUAs at RoK tried to publish an e-book titled LMR Exposed: How To Overcome Her Last Minute Resistance To Sex, Turn ‘No’ Into ‘Yes’ And Get The Lay! It’s been yanked off the virtual shelves once the ‘bot slaves at Amazon realized what it was about. It wasn’t hard. Quotes like this…

I’ve had situations where a girl is lying naked with me on my bed, still loudly proclaiming that we’re not having sex… Other times, I just forcefully removed the hand, stuck my dick inside, and she welcomed it eagerly once I was in.

…make it clear that we’re talking about a rape manual.

Tauriq Moosa and Jezebel. have more, including the author’s reaction to “cuckoo social justice warriors”.

Biblical slavery was such a lovely and tolerant experience

The clueless goons at AiG are confident about the outcome of Ken Ham’s debate with Bill Nye, claiming that the scientific facts of the Bible will win the day. Of course, you have to understand that what creationists call “fact” and what rational people call fact are rather different things. For example, when confronted with the Biblical support for slavery, here’s what they have to say:

What do you mean by slavery? Biblical slavery (servitude) was much different from what most people today think of as slavery (e.g., what some Europeans and Americans shamefully did with some African peoples, which is a recent example of forced slavery in the Western world).

Slavery (servitude) in the Bible was when someone was overextended in debt and could not pay it off. They would sell themselves into slavery for a seven-year term to pay off that debt to a wealthier person. During that time, they were given room and board, were paid a small wage that they could put into savings, and were taught a vocation. Then when they came out of this seven-year servitude, they could enter the culture with means and a profession.

Oh, really? That was only sometimes true, and then, only for the men, and only if they are Hebrews. Read Exodus 21.

2 “If you buy a Hebrew servant, he is to serve you for six years. But in the seventh year, he shall go free, without paying anything. 3 If he comes alone, he is to go free alone; but if he has a wife when he comes, she is to go with him. 4 If his master gives him a wife and she bears him sons or daughters, the woman and her children shall belong to her master, and only the man shall go free.

5 “But if the servant declares, ‘I love my master and my wife and children and do not want to go free,’ 6 then his master must take him before the judges.[a] He shall take him to the door or the doorpost and pierce his ear with an awl. Then he will be his servant for life.

7 “If a man sells his daughter as a servant, she is not to go free as male servants do. 8 If she does not please the master who has selected her for himself,[b] he must let her be redeemed. He has no right to sell her to foreigners, because he has broken faith with her. 9 If he selects her for his son, he must grant her the rights of a daughter. 10 If he marries another woman, he must not deprive the first one of her food, clothing and marital rights. 11 If he does not provide her with these three things, she is to go free, without any payment of money.

This idea that slaves were all happy Hebrews who were going through the ancient equivalent of bankruptcy court is amusing, but atypical. Where did many slaves come from? It’s just a real shame if you happen to be a woman, or for instance, a Midianite, because you were spoils of war. Read your bible, Numbers 31.

7 They fought against Midian, as the Lord commanded Moses, and killed every man. 8 Among their victims were Evi, Rekem, Zur, Hur and Reba—the five kings of Midian. They also killed Balaam son of Beor with the sword. 9 The Israelites captured the Midianite women and children and took all the Midianite herds, flocks and goods as plunder. 10 They burned all the towns where the Midianites had settled, as well as all their camps. 11 They took all the plunder and spoils, including the people and animals, 12 and brought the captives, spoils and plunder to Moses and Eleazar the priest and the Israelite assembly at their camp on the plains of Moab, by the Jordan across from Jericho.

13 Moses, Eleazar the priest and all the leaders of the community went to meet them outside the camp. 14 Moses was angry with the officers of the army—the commanders of thousands and commanders of hundreds—who returned from the battle.

15 “Have you allowed all the women to live?” he asked them. 16 “They were the ones who followed Balaam’s advice and enticed the Israelites to be unfaithful to the Lord in the Peor incident, so that a plague struck the Lord’s people. 17 Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, 18 but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man.

I am not so confident of the outcome of this debate. You can see what the liars at Answers in Genesis will do; not even the words of their Holy Bible are safe, but will be twisted and misrepresented to produce a false picture of their claims. I do wish these loons who so enthusiastically endorse the “literal interpretation” of their Bible would actually acknowledge what it says. If you’re going to claim that the Earth is less than ten thousand years old because you are forced by logic and consistency to accept every word of the Bible, then you must also accept that your daughters are your possessions to be bought and sold into slavery, and that the rape and genocide of foreigners is God’s will.

Funny Looking Rock found on Mars!

When last we heard from Rhawn Joseph, he was playing with photoshop and trying to sell off his online journal, the Journal of Cosmology. The Journal of Cosmology has been plugging away, claiming to have found bacteria in meteorites and then diatoms in meteorites — give them a blurry, vague photo of some shapeless blob, and they’ll claim it looks just like something biological on Earth. Either that, or they’ll photoshop my head on to it.

Rhawn Joseph’s latest struggle: he’s suing NASA for suppressing evidence of life on Mars. His evidence is this pair of photos taken by the Mars Opportunity rover, 12 days apart, and released by NASA.

sol3540

Look! There’s a rock in the later picture that wasn’t there earlier! How did it get there? NASA’s explanations were first, speculation that it could be a meteorite, but now they seem to think that it was most likely flicked by the rover itself, as it was making a turn. That sounds reasonable to me.

But not to Rhawn Joseph! We’re missing the most obvious “fact” of all, that what appeared in the later photo was no rock at all, but a mushroom. He demands that NASA investigate thoroughly, using the power of a legal writ.

In Re RHAWN JOSEPH’S PETITION FOR A WRIT OF MANDAMUS COMPELLING NASA TO PERFORM A DUTY TO THOROUGHLY SCIENTIFICALLY EXAMINE AND INVESTIGATE A PUTATIVE BIOLOGICAL ORGANISM ON MARS IDENTIFIED/DISCOVERED BY PETITIONER AND REFERRED TO BY NASA AS: “UNLIKE ANYTHING WE HAVE SEEN BEFORE.”

How can you doubt it? He has since published his results in a “scientific journal” — his own online website — complete with side-by-side photos of the Martian Funny-Looking-Rock and earthly apothecia.

Apothecia

The “mysterious” bowl-like structure which appeared on Mars does not resemble a rock or a meteor, but a lichen fungus which on Earth is known as “Apothecia.” A magnification of the structure Sol 3540 reveals the presence of numerous “paraphyses” which are spore producing organs of Apothecium. On Earth Apothecia are commonly observed on rocks, tree limbs, or growing on the ground next to open road. Related species are known by a variety of names, such as Eastern Speckled Shield Lichen (Punctellia Bolliana). The term “shield lichen” is applied to a variety of foliose lichens. An important characteristic is their bowl-shaped growth with brown inner surfaces. These bowl shaped structures are “apothecia” and appear basically identical to the “mystery” structure depicted in Sol 3540 but which NASA wishes the public to believe is a rock or meteor which suddenly sprouted on this slab of Martian real estate.

In case you missed the similarity, here’s a photo of the Mars FLR with big red arrows and bold text pointing to the “paraphyses” — you know, just in case the visual similarity might not be as strong as Joseph claims.

paraphyses

Joseph says that if you “magnify” the image the similarities to the paraphyses of apothecia are even more apparent, which is kind of amusing: you can’t magnify the raw pixel data. All the information you get is right there. You can make it larger, but that’s not at all the same as increasing resolution.

I have used all the powers bestowed upon me with my Ph.D. to squint even harder than Rhawn Joseph at that rock, and I’m sorry, it’s a rock. It’s not a fungus or a lichen or a Happy Meal toy or Rhawn Joseph’s lost marbles, and if you look at the raw image rather than one that Joseph has pseudocolored to tint it green, it doesn’t look particularly biological.

Also, NASA already seems quite happy to investigate further.

Mr Squyres said scientists believe the rock, named "Pinnacle Island," got there when the aging rover did a pirouette turn in the dusty Martian soil and knocked loose a chunk of bedrock that rolled a short distance downhill.

"We think that in the process of that wheel moving across the ground, we kind of flicked it, kind of tiddly winked it out of the ground and it moved to the location where we see it," Mr Squyres said.

Still, scientists have not found the divet the rock would have left behind. They think it is hidden beneath one of the rover’s solar arrays.

The Opportunity team plans to manuever the robotic vehicle around a bit more to see if they can find the spot from which the rock emerged.

As to why it is such an unusual color [it’s a darker red than the surface], Mr Squyres said it may be that humans are witnessing a surface that has not been exposed in a very, very long time.

"It appears that it may have flipped itself upside down," he said.

"If that is the case, what we are seeing is we are seeing the surface, the underside of a rock, that hasn’t seen the Martian atmosphere for perhaps billions of years."

Already, an analysis of the rock with the Opportunity’s spectrometer has shown a "strange composition, different from anything we have seen before," he told reporters.

The rock has a lot of sulphur, along with very high concentrations of manganese and magnesium.

"We are still working this out. We are making measurements right now. This is an ongoing story of discovery," he said.

Ah, but I think you see the real problem: NASA has used data from other instruments on the rover to come to a conclusion that differs from Rhawn Joseph’s far-fetched speculation of Martian mushrooms.

“The New Atheists as Secular Fundamentalists”

My delightful evening of fun and intellectual stimulation continues shortly, with a guest lecture on my campus from Chris Hedges, who threatens to berate atheists with his typical ignorance. I’m hoping for full-bore hand-waving purple-faced screaming, but otherwise, it’s going to be a failure of a night.

I’ll try to live-blog it, if he says anything interesting.

His introduction is all about his Harvard Divinity School professor’s experiences in Nazi Germany, and how Christianity was coopted by fascists, which led to his book, Christian Fascists, and his concern with the origins of totalitarianism. He also talks about how megachurches absorb people into the fold, and the nonsense at the Creation Museum.

Then he debated Harris and Hitchens. He was upset and angry at how Dawkins and Dennett and Harris and Hitchens replicated the authority structures of the Christian Right. What?

7:45. Suddenly we’re talking about genocide in Serbia. Where’s the connection to the atheists?

Now he says that like like the Christian Right, atheists can only argue against a caricature of religion: they haven’t studied theology! They have gods of reason and science. And this meme stuff is an example of the misuse of science, reflecting the desire of atheists to engineer ideas, and control the way people think.

He really doesn’t like Sam Harris, quoting him on torture and nuking Islamists. I know this would surprise Hedges, but there are an awful lot of atheists who dislike Harris’s ideas, too.

But no: both atheists and the Christian Right embrace the dehumanization of Muslims. We do? I keep hearing things that I reject, being told that this is what I believe to be a New Atheist.

Weird. Now we’re being told of the bizarre practices of Christian Right anti-abortion activists. What drives people into these movements is despair. Relevance? I don’t know. It seems he doesn’t have enough horrible stories about totalitarian atheists so he has to drag in tales of the religious to tar us with their sins.

The New Atheists misuse Charles Darwin and the theory of evolution. It’s not a theory about politics or culture, and Dawkins and EO Wilson abuse it to make false claims about society. What? The Dawkins who has said that selection is an inappropriate ideal for human behavior? Freakish. And now he has brought up Social Darwinism. He’s sounding a bit like the loons at the Discovery Institute.

The New Atheists believe that evolution is linear and directed towards a goal and that we believe in using it to justify genocide.

Religion is not irrational, but it is non-rational. Jebus, Hedges, focus. Make an argument and back it up. This is rambling nonsense.

8:05. My brain hurts. This is stupid. Now he’s chewing out science for fracking and global warming and pollution, and blames it on the corporate state. Fine. Do atheists align with the corporate state? Does any of this have anything to do with his thesis?

New Atheists see evil as something outside themselves that must be eradicated and that evil is largely Muslim.

Fundamentalists readily embrace violence, just like Sam Harris, therefore atheists are fundamentalists. How can I possibly defeat such lucid logic?

8:15. I don’t much like Sam Harris. Harris rather detests me. It’s getting a bit old hearing some horrible thing Harris said being pinned on atheists, including me, as a class…by a guy who’s berating atheists for demonizing groups of people.

We seem to be closing with some babble about transcendance and the struggle with the irrational and the need for the sacred, whatever the hell that is. And we get to the heart of his problem: atheists are knocking down his cherished presumptions, and replacing then with squalid monuments to ourselves…which is a form of idolatry.

8:20. He’s blathering incoherently through the Q&anp;A now. This talk has been such a mess of misconceptions and rambling nonsense that I can’t even think of a question. It’s the same feeling I get when I’m at a creationist talk: it’s wrong from word one, so where do you start?

There were two places where Hedges totally lost me with his bullshit false equivalencies. Well, more than two — but these were the big ones.

  • Just as the Christian fascists abuse the bible, the atheists abuse evolution. Dawkins argues for a linear, progressive, utopian version of evolution. Total crap. Dawkins has been quite clear that natural selection is a “clumsy, wasteful, blundering low and horridly cruel” process, and not at all desirable as a model for human relations. Hedges argument relied entirely on misrepresenting what atheist evolutionists have said.

  • Christian fascists have totalitarian authority structures, just like the New Atheists. I just wanted to ask, what authority structures in atheism? He spent a lot of time railing against Dawkins and Hitchens and Harris; one of those three is dead, and the other two are single individuals who’ve written books. I remember attending a Hitchens lecture in which he presented his odious anti-Muslim views, and the audience booed him. These guys are not our rulers. Hedges has simply inflated his animus against a few individuals into a broad brush characterization of every atheist.

It was infuriating.

The Northstar Holy War continues

Which of these things is not like the others?

  1. The North Star, the abolitionist newspaper established by Frederick Douglass?

  2. The North Star STEM Alliance, an undergraduate organization that gives minorities research opportunities?

  3. The North Star, Polaris, an important navigational guide in the Northern Hemisphere?

  4. The Morris Northstar, a right wing newspaper run by wackaloons at the University of Minnesota Morris who hate equal opportunity laws?

It’s (d). It’s an embarrassment.

I just got back from the campus police, where I was read my Miranda rights and recorded giving a statement, because the Geiger cranks have apparently made a formal complaint, accusing me of stealing their rags and adding a new charge, that I’d vandalized the latest edition, scribbling an “str” on the cover to change “right-to-life” to “right-to-strife”. So I also had to leave a handwriting sample.

It’s gone well past ridiculous. Singling me out as a scapegoat (I am not alone in my contempt for their awful paper), making baseless criminal accusations, wasting the time of the university police and lawyers…this is now in the territory of harassment.

Gun-fondler porn

Watch this video for a rather nauseating perspective on American gun culture. Whatever you do, though, don’t think about the fact that the dorks so earnestly firing their weapons in this video are showing you their “O” face, as I did — it just makes it even more icky.

So what sells this ammo is its viciousness? Sweet.

Of course, if you read the source I got it from, a military guy criticizing the dumb people who will buy this crap, you’ll also realize that its claims about the properties of their bullet are physically contradictory and obviously false. But that doesn’t matter if your market is gun-fondling idiots!