That taciturn fool sitting sullenly in the corner at the party is Lord of All

Niall Ferguson, that great gallumphing Harvard clod with delusions of superiority, has discovered a new way to put his critics in their place: he has invented a Blo(g)viation Index, which purports to provide a measure of one’s competence. It is — get ready for this — your number of twitter followers divided by your number of tweets. He has 60,000 followers and has made only 140 tweets, therefore his Index is very large. Of course. He wouldn’t have mentioned it or invented it otherwise.

The one virtue of it is that it will give him, and only him, incentive to shut up on twitter, since his index favors those who say little. And it allows him to disparage his critics who engage on twitter more.

(By the way, I looked, my Blo(g)viation Index is about 7, compared to his 400+. Does he realize that every time he snipes at Paul Krugman, his score goes down?)

Oprah’s bigotry

Oprah Winfrey did it again. She did an interview with Diana Nyad, and along the way, Nyad revealed that she was — oh, horrors — an atheist. Oprah could not process that. She’s so thoroughly anti-atheist that she could not imagine that someone who had accomplished something, who was a human being right before her eyes, could actually not believe in a god, so she vocally denied the possibility. David Niose has written the best criticism I’ve read so far.

Obviously, Oprah needs needs an education. At a minimum, she needs to add some Carl Sagan titles to her book club’s reading list. An outspoken nonbeliever, Sagan was known not just as a great scientist, but for inspiring wonder and awe. Many would agree that his Pale Blue Dot commentary is more profound than any religious broadcast. Or perhaps Oprah should consider the deep message behind the monologue of Julia Sweeney’s Letting Go of God. Atheism and awe are quite compatible.

Oprah, exalted by so many but oblivious to the fact that she is dehumanizing atheists, does more to perpetuate negative attitudes toward nonbelievers than Pat Robertson or James Dobson ever could. The general public takes comments from Robertson and Dobson with a grain of salt – but Oprah, as a media tycoon and a beloved celebrity whose opinions are taken seriously by millions, has just confirmed that atheists are "the other," outsiders who just don’t belong in the in-group. (And the evidence is clear that atheists are indeed widely, and wrongly, scorned in America. With commentary such as Oprah’s, we can see why.)

Maybe she needs to devote a show to educating herself and her viewers on the awe-inspiring, wondrous aspects of atheism and secular humanism?

Yes! And of course, to illustrate that atheists are wonderful, sensitive, caring people who are delighted with the universe, she should invite ME to be on the show.

Oh, wait.

Good work, Minnesota talk radio

For once, I approve. Corey Cove, a talk radio host on KFAN in Minneapolis had that shameful and shameless psychic fraud, Chip Coffey on his show…and he shredded the kook. None of that Oprah/Larry King style simpering credulity, he just ridiculed his predictions and demanded that he back up his claims with evidence.

Coffey was upset and complained that the host was rude to him and called that unprofessional. You know, I’ve been on a few radio shows, and I never go into them on the assumption that the host will suck up to me; I expect that I will have to defend my ideas, and I actually prefer it if the host is open about any disagreement.

I guess psychics don’t get very far if they can’t demand deference.

Matthew Barnett, sleazebag and rapist

matthewbarnett

Matthew Barnett raped a 14 year old girl — he plied her with alcohol until she could barely stand up, and then had sex with her. He claims it was fully consensual (now where have we heard that before?) But the facts of the case are inarguable.

She was 14.

She was drunk.

He provided much of the alcohol.

One of his buddies videotaped the act.

He dumped the unconscious girl on the porch of her home — where she could have frozen to death.

He freaking confessed to all of the above to the police.

A 13 year old friend was also raped by another boy.

The boy said she had said no repeatedly, and he had sex with her anyway.

Open and shut, right? These boys ought to be in jail, or at the very least in the juvenile court system. This was a horrendous abuse and a ghastly crime.

But — are you ready for the ameliorating factors? — all of the boys involved were popular high school jocks. Matthew Barnett’s grandfather is a state congressman. And the goddamned town full of righteous assholes who populate Maryville, Missouri joined up to recite the sacred mantra of “boys will be boys” and to condemn and harass the victims. The victim’s mother lost her job because her employer didn’t want to go against the popular families; other kids threatened her on facebook and twitter; she was suspended from the cheerleading squad; her brother was booed at sports events; a girl showed up at a dance wearing a t-shirt that said “Matt 1, Daisy 0”.

The case was quietly dropped and never went to court. The victim’s family are still being treated as pariahs. Matthew Barnett is currently enrolled as a student at the University of Central Missouri, single-handedly bringing the average moral status of students there into the sewer of turpitude.

And he gloatingly left this message on twitter:

If her name begins with A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z, she wants the D.

He’s a disgusting human being from a corrupt little town. I’d like to see the case reopened, but he’s got trouble now.

(via Alyson Miers and Ophelia Benson)

A protest is planned for 22 October. Follow #OpMaryville and #Justice4Daisy for more information.

Also, the UCM Facebook page has been flooded with comments pointing out their rapist student.

Good taste and the Tea Party

I was reading about the “million” veterans marching on Washington DC (it was more like a few hundred) when I saw this peculiarly decorated car and learned something new.

hitler-cancer

Surely a car door so flamboyantly and colorfully decorated could not be carrying a lie — maybe smoking doesn’t cause cancer after all. I must check this out. I looked further for more details on this spectacularly informative vehicle. By the way, it’s true that Hitler was a fanatical anti-smoker, and the Nazi government had the first effective anti-smoking campaign.

smokercar

Wow! Who is this person, “Smoker on Strike”? I must learn more about such a wise and authoritative person.

So I found her CV. It is amazing. Did you know she’s looking for work as a web designer?

She designs the most beautiful websites in the world. She says so herself.

By the way, I’m all puked out this morning, so I can safely navigate to those links and suffer barely a ripple of the dry heaves. If your stomach is more robustly occupied right now, you might not want to look.

That is a good cartoon

The Digital Cuttlefish has found an excellent expression of religious thought.

show-me-a-sign-cartoon

That isn’t photoshopped or fudged in any way — that is the actual, complete cartoon that Ken Ham has happily encouraged everyone on the internet to share around.

It’s perfect. We ask for evidence of their god, they point to one of their own silly texts. And we really are stunned, shocked, and surprised, just like the guy in the cartoon…because we had no idea anyone could be that stupid.

Yell at ’em until they believe!

Wow. Glenn Beck really is an authoritarian tool. Watch this clip; he’s ranting at the microphone at children, insisting that they must learn that their rights come from god.


Push them. Well, they’re going to cry, I’ll hurt their feelings. PUSH ‘EM!, because if you don’t do it now, it’s going to be much worse when they’re pushed and they’re shoved and they’re shot. Push them! Teach them! The need to know the truth and the need to be pushed up against the wall once in a while so they know they can defend themselves. They know they can survive. They don’t run around like little girls crying at the drop of a hat. Push them!

You’ll be relieved to know that his tirade is directed only at little boys. You little girls out there are free to laugh at his magic god and recognize that your rights represent privileges and responsibilities conferred by your fellow human beings.

And I hope that the rest of you all see that bullying kids into guilt is also a bad thing. You don’t want to be like Glenn Beck, do you?

How can smart atheists be bamboozled by Joseph Atwill?

Atwill is this guy who claims to have evidence that Jesus wasn’t real: Christianity was a cunning product of a Roman imperial conspiracy, intentionally designed to placate those troublesome Jews, and he claims to have a Roman confession that he’ll reveal next week.

I think a few too many atheists are seeing “Scholar Says Jesus Was Fake” and are not thinking any more deeply than that. The whole idea is ridiculous.

The Roman idea of social engineering was to plant a legionary fortress, or retire a bunch of legionaries, into an area that they wanted to pacify. Incorporating regional gods into their pantheon by synonymizing them, sure; far-fetched long-term plans that would require centuries to mature into a tangible result, no.

Has there ever been a religion that was created by a government that actually caught on? Most religions die young; they have a very low success rate. It’s not a smart investment — it’s like buying a lottery ticket. If Romans had been in this game of inventing religions to win over the natives to Romanism, we’d see more examples of failures than long term success.

What would you think of a conspiracy theorist who announced that Joseph Smith had been a secret government agent with the mission of persuading a large number of people to settle that barren Utah territory? Or that L. Ron Hubbard was J. Edgar Hoover’s boy, part of a plan to provide an alternative to the Communist Party for impressionable youth? There are always people to whom a conspiracy theory is attractive, but more rational people would just laugh at the very idea.

Finally, as Russell Glasser points out, real scholars don’t spring the evidence on their audiences by press release or by public lecture — it is first reviewed by independent scholars for authenticity.

If you’re one of the many atheists who gleefully forwarded this to me or credulously mentioned it on twitter…hello, there. I see you’ve already met the good friend of so many half-baked wackos in the world, Confirmation Bias.

Richard Carrier demolishes Atwill in detail.

How cute

Answers in Genesis has gotten in the billboard business, just in time for Christmas.

To all of our atheist friends: THANK GOD YOU'RE WRONG

To all of our atheist friends: THANK GOD YOU’RE WRONG

To which I can only say…but I’m not wrong, there’s no god to thank, so why are you talking to yourselves so publicly and loudly? It’s a bit embarrassing, actually.

Just in case you think you’re talking to us, I’m sorry — that message isn’t going to change our minds in the slightest.

Isn’t there a dank dark hole you should be crawling into somewhere?

Frat culture is rape culture

I attended a few fraternity parties a few decades ago — and even in my callow, impressionable state, I found them largely unpleasant: too much drinking, too much dudebro scorekeeping, too much stupidity. So I was neither surprised nor impressed by this letter advising frat brothers on how to party.

It starts out kind of…OK. It’s a bit gushy with dumb jargon, but all right, some bits don’t sound so offensive.

Midnight or after, if you have been talking for awhile and they’ve had a couple drinks, ask if they want to dance. If you see an untalked to group or a solo girl, go up to her and ask if she wants anything to drink. If she says yes, get her a drink and then ask if she wants to dance. If she says no, ask her to dance. DANCING IS FUN!!!!! Always try to dance. If she does not want to dance and is with friends, say “aw thats no fun” (or something like that) and then ask one of her friends.

Dance? Hey, I like that! Very sweet. Do more of that.

Uh, wait. Next sentence:

Here is how to dance: Grab them on the hips with your 2 hands and then let them grind against your dick.

And from there it’s all downhill, culminating in ejaculating and shooing them out of your room. And if they don’t go for it, MORE ALCOHOL.

Man, fraternities haven’t changed a bit since the 1970s.

That isn’t a compliment.