I wonder if all the people who send me nasty emails are using this keyboard?
Comic sans on the keys, and it’s yellow. I’m really curious about who would buy such a thing.
Imagine getting your morning cup of coffee and discovering this nonsense splattered all over it.
Since gods don’t exist, that’s far more depressingly nihilist than anything any Gnu Atheist ever wrote — we prefer to find meaning in what is real.
(via Toni Marano)
It’s all very confusing, and I’m not quite sure how they managed all these years…all those Irish children must have been the product of some amusing and peculiar accidents. At least the quacks are profiting from the confusion — here, for instance, is a mysterious bottle of an over-the-counter “organic” menopause relief remedy.
It’s the limitation that is the stumper: “Do not use if pregnant.” Are there many women bumbling about in the pharmacy thinking that they need to be relieved of this problem of menopause?
And then there’s this headline, “I’d lost my baby then somehow fell pregnant thanks to acupuncture“. There are clear and unambiguous causes of pregnancy — “somehow” isn’t usually a word associated with the process — and, well, acupuncture isn’t any of them. Although I suppose it could be an insulting reference to her partner’s penis size.
Little Dougie (aka Ian Murphy) has hit the big time: he punked the Governor of Wisconsin, Scott Walker, by calling him up and pretending to be über-Rethuglican puppet master David Koch…and Walker believed him and babbled like a little kid on Santa’s lap. It’s a self-aggrandizing embarrassment, with Walker bragging about how he was Reaganesque, that he was pitting stereotypical blue-collar workers against the unions, and how he has a baseball bat in his office that he’d use to enforce his demands with the Democrats. It’s dreadful stuff, and when caught with his guard down it’s very clear that Scott Walker is against us, the people of this country, and sides entirely with the plutocrats and oligarchs. As Murphy sums it up:
So there you have it, kids. Government isn’t for the people. It’s for the people with money. You want to be heard? Too fucking bad. You want to collectively bargain? You can’t afford a seat at the table. You may have built that table. But it’s not yours. It belongs to the Kochs and the oligarch class. It’s guarded by Republicans like Walker, and his Democratic counterparts across that ever-narrowing aisle that is corporate rule, so that the ever-widening gap between the haves and the have-nots can swallow all the power in the world. These are known knowns, and now we just know them a little more.
But money isn’t always power. The protesters in Cairo and Madison have taught us this–reminded us of this. They can’t buy a muzzle big enough to silence us all. Share the news. Do not retreat; ReTweet.
The revolution keeps spinning. Try not to get too dizzy.
Good work, Mr Murphy.
Oh, wait…that name sounds so familiar. I got a phone call once from Ian Murphy, too! And he interviewed me! At least I don’t think I was as big an idiot as Scott Walker.
The Rethuglican governor of Maine, Paul LePage, has been dismissing the health risks from Bisphenol A, an additive to plastics which is known to be an estrogen mimic. His remarks take “Not even wrong” to whole new levels of crazy:
The only thing that I’ve heard is if you take a plastic bottle and put it in the microwave and you heat it up, it gives off a chemical similar to estrogen. So the worst case is some women may have little beards.
Hey, I’ve heard that high densities of homeopaths and other quacks in your state gives off fumes that cause severe mental retardation in civil servants. Could it be?
Ladies of Pharyngula, who knew that if only you increased your estrogen levels a bit more, you too could sprout a lovely beard like me? I’m sure there are better ways to maximize your beauty than stuffing milk jugs in your microwave, though. I don’t recommend ever taking health advice from a Republican.
Have you ever actually read Leviticus? It’s madness. It’s full of instructions on how to slaughter a goat, what to do if someone spits on you, how to tell baldness from leprosy, and of course, lots and lots of instructions on what you must never ever do. There was something deeply wrong with the people who thought Leviticus 18 was a reasonable set of guidelines — they dwell rather obsessively on nakedness before they get to the one part that all the right-wingers quote.
Lev 18:6 No man shall draw nigh to any of his near kindred to uncover their nakedness; I am the Lord. Lev 18:7 Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy father, or the nakedness of thy mother, for she is thy mother; thou shalt not uncover her nakedness. Lev 18:8 Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy father’s wife; it is thy father’s nakedness. Lev 18:9 The nakedness of thy sister by thy father or by thy mother, born at home or abroad, their nakedness thou shalt not uncover. Lev 18:10 The nakedness of thy son’s daughter, or thy daughter’s daughter, their nakedness thou shalt not uncover; because it is thy nakedness. Lev 18:11 Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of the daughter of thy father’s wife; she is thy sister by the same father: thou shalt not uncover her nakedness. Lev 18:12 Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy father’s sister, for she is near skin to thy father. Lev 18:13 Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy mother’s sister, for she is near akin to thy mother. Lev 18:14 Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy father’s brother, and thou shalt not go in to his wife; for she is thy relation. Lev 18:15 Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy daughter-in-law, for she is thy son’s wife, thou shalt not uncover her nakedness. Lev 18:16 Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy brother’s wife; it is thy brother’s nakedness. Lev 18:17 The nakedness of a woman and her daughter shalt thou not uncover; her son’s daughter, and her daughter’s daughter, shalt thou not take, to uncover their nakedness, for they are thy kinswomen: it is impiety. Lev 18:18 Thou shalt not take a wife in addition to her sister, as a rival, to uncover her nakedness in opposition to her, while she is yet living. Lev 18:19 And thou shalt not go in to a woman under separation for her uncleanness, to uncover her nakedness. Lev 18:20 And thou shalt not lie with thy neighbour’s wife, to defile thyself with her. Lev 18:21 And thou shalt not give of thy seed to serve a ruler; and thou shalt not profane my holy name; I am the Lord. Lev 18:22 And thou shalt not lie with a man as with a woman, for it is an abomination. Lev 18:23 Neither shalt thou lie with any quadruped for copulation, to be polluted with it; neither shall a woman present herself before any quadruped to have connexion with it; for it is an abomination.
Does anyone else imagine some horny, dirty old goatherder sitting in a tent imagining all the things that inflame him, from his hot sister-in-law to the cute and willing goat in the fold (and…oh, god…his hot sister-in-law with the cute goat!), and furiously scribbling down condemnations of every lustful thought that is getting him steamy and bothered? There’s a kind of growing, frantic sexual tension there as he goes from just imagining his dad naked to the real kinky wild stuff.
You have to see the anti-gay verse in context to appreciate the tattoo this wrestler got.
So, does he also have a tattoo that reads, “Neither shalt thou lie with any quadruped for copulation, to be polluted with it”? It’s just odd and revealing that he singles out this one verse to sweat over so much that he has to get it permanently inked into his arm.
I have a recommendation for his left arm, though—something from Leviticus 19.
Lev 19:26 Eat not on the mountains, nor shall ye employ auguries, nor divine by inspection of birds. Lev 19:27 Ye shall not make a round cutting of the hair of your head, nor disfigure your beard. Lev 19:28 And ye shall not make cuttings in your body for a dead body, and ye shall not inscribe on yourselves any marks. I am the Lord your God. Lev 19:29 Thou shalt not profane thy daughter to prostitute her; so the land shall not go a whoring, and the land be filled with iniquity.
Uh-oh. So even if this wrestler avoids the temptation to lie with a man, he’s damned by Leviticus 19:28. Heck, at this point he might as well go get funky and wild with a quadruped.
I have concluded that Jerry Coyne is the Imelda Marcos of evolutionary biology. I want to see a photo of the boot wing of his palatial mansion…or maybe he has a dedicated Boot Garage attached to his home, accessed by a fireman’s slide and a bullet train?
I confess to some disgraceful philistinery, in contrast. I tend to buy one pair of cheap tennis shoes and wear them into the ground, at which time I throw them out and buy another cheap pair. Some day I might have to acquire some style, I suppose.
My wife will be relieved when I tell her I don’t think I’ll make chocolate covered squid for her. It’s not that I’d be unwilling to try such a concoction, but 1) I have doubts that that combination of flavors is particularly copacetic, 2) she isn’t a big fan of seafood in the first place, and a gift should be to her taste, not mine, and 3) where the heck would I get squid on short notice in Morris, Minnesota?
I am very excited about this new technological development. The pope has blessed an iPhone app to help you figure out what to say in confession. I’m not at all interested in throwing away a whole $1.99 on it, but what’s interesting is the potential. Next: an app for priests to guide them in the appropriate penance to deliver. Then we add a little bluetooth/wireless capability to the apps, and confession becomes a matter of walking up to a priest and bumping your cell phones together — instant exchange! Next step: an app that reads your penance — say you’re supposed to say 25 Hail Marys — which then does it all for you, and maybe even broadcasts the recitations to a central repository (Can we call this app iRosary?). Automated contrition, perfect redemption, and all while demanding minimal effort on the part of the over-taxed, ever-dwindling population of Catholic priests.
You may be wondering why I, an atheist, would think this would be a fabulous development. I’m dreaming of the day when I buy a network ready Confession app, fill out its list of sins honestly and accurately, and walk up to a priest running iFather and do a confessional bump…and watch his cell phone detonate in his hand. It’ll be awesome.
While I can agree with much of their philosophy, the phallocentric attitude of this new religion of dudeism is unacceptable, so I can’t really endorse them.
Although I do hear that their prayer rugs really tie the room together.
