Hypocrisy to the fourth power

Jud McMillin has resigned from his position as a Republican representative in the Indiana legislature. I know this bothers you — another promising political career cut short — but the hypocrisy of this one is positively enthralling. Rarely does a politician engage in such furious foot-shooting.

  • He’s resigning because he sent explicit sex videos recorded on his cell phone to a large number of people. Oh, excuse me, his cell phone was stolen and “his cellphone sent a sexually explicit video to an unknown number of recipients”. This is what the passive voice was intended for by the good Lord Above, people!

  • This is the second time he’s resigned because of the escape of sexually explicit images of himself from his phone (AI researchers: look into this. It may be a sentient device). He previously resigned from his job as an attorney because he’d been taking advantage of a client who was a victim of domestic violence. How did he get elected to high office after that? I don’t know. Indiana?

  • A highlight of his legislative record was working to pass a “2015 “religious freedom” law allowing businesses to ban gay customers”. Because, of course, he’s very concerned about public and private morality, since God frowns upon men who touch penises, except of course, when that man is making a masturbation video to send to his mistress. Oh, wait, I just got kneemail from Jesus, and he says Dad disapproves of that, too.

  • I think this one should count as irony, rather than hypocrisy: he also helped stall a bill to outlaw revenge porn, so any Hoosiers who have copies of his porn video, there’s nothing but your conscience to prevent you from disseminating it wildly. And if you’re the kind of person McMillin counts as a friend, there’s a good chance you don’t have one of those!

But don’t you worry about Jud, he has announced that he is resigning to spend more time with his family. You all know about Republican families, right? The family is a versatile institution that both provides an excuse to sanctimoniously moralize at the public, and acts as a perfect, untouchable refuge when you’re caught violating your own moral code.

spiritual but not religious

Just think. You’re sitting at home (or possibly sleeping in), playing video games or surfin’ the web (or possibly taking care of that horrible stack of grading glowering at you on your desk), when you could be attending the Church of the Spiritual But Not Religious.

Doesn’t that look like fun and a great way to spend a Sunday morning?

I might need something to excuse procrastination and putting off grading, but I don’t think I’ll stoop that low.

Stop citing Newslo or Politicops or Ifyouonlynews, please

They are not trustworthy news sites. They throw in satire and outright lies mingled with straight news, so that it becomes difficult to sort them out.

Here’s the latest that is suddenly popping up all over my social media. Louie Gohmert is a goddamn dumbass who says some of the most godawful stupid crap, and these “news” sites are highlighting a recent speech complaining about a bill that would support women in STEM careers. They “quote” him from his speech:

Gohmert also added that “women were created for one thing and one thing alone,” as well as that “we are insulting the Lord by allowing women to act like men.” “Women are beautiful creatures, no doubt about that. We marry them, we look after them, we provide for them and we love them, but that does not mean they are the same as us. It is the job of a woman to stay at home, to maintain the household, to bear children and look after them after they’re born. Nowhere in the scriptures does it say that women should be chasing after fancy titles and knowledge. The only knowledge they need is the one we men allow them to have.”

Outrageous, yes? Incredibly idiotic? It sure is. Only one problem: he didn’t say any of that. Really, I’d love to catch this fool saying something so blatantly inane, and so would a lot of other people…which Newslo relies on, so they made up the quote. Some of the cites quoting Newslo even include a video of the talk, which they apparently never bothered to listen to, because those words aren’t in there.

He says a lot of other stupid crap in there: he somehow thinks Martin Luther King Jr. would oppose the bill, because it discriminates on the basis of something other than the content of the character. He seems to think that racism is over. He is very concerned that supporting women in science would harm boys. And he riffs ridiculously on the idea that it sure is good that Marie Curie was not supported by this bill, because it promotes entrepreneurship, and apparently government support for that would somehow deprive women of the ability to do basic research. Gohmert is one of the lowest wattage bulbs in congress and needs to be shuffled away somewhere where he can’t do any more harm, but he did not say what was quoted.

There are lots of these lying “news” sites out there that rely on making shit up to stir up interest, because apparently the real idiocy going on in the Republican party is just not enough. Shut them off.

And jebus, if you’re going to quote something from a video, watch the video first to see if it’s actually in there.

Paint like an Egyptian

I knew that ancient sculptors would paint their statues, rather than leaving them as plain stone, as we usually see them — the Philadelphia Museum of Art, for instance, is adorned on the outside with classical-style sculptures painted in lifelike colors, and they are amazing. It’s too bad the colors of winged Nike and Venus de Milo and all those statuary busts aren’t restored as well.

Pediment_Philly_Art_Museum

The Metropolitan Museum of Art is doing something interesting, though. Egyptian art was also painted in bright colors, so what the Met is doing with the Temple of Dendur is painting it with light, using projection mapping, to hint at what it looked like in its glory days.

Gorgeous. I want to see it. I want a time machine so I can really see what it was like, too.

It’s too early in the morning to peek at the ugly underbelly of the internet

Thanks, Dave Futrelle! Now I’m sleepy and nauseated!

It seems that Allum Bokhari and Milo Yiannopoulous (and an army of unmentioned, unpaid interns), those darlings of the discredited ‘news’ site, breitbart.com, have churned out a defense of the alternative right. It’s tedious and stupid and tries very hard to gloss over reality, but here’s Shorter Breitbart:

We aren’t racists, we’re just frustrated intellectuals who enjoy shit-posting!

Hilariously, the Daily Stormer has responded. Shorter Stormer:

We are too racists, and we hate you degenerate gay jew-boys and mud people! Heil Hitler!

A pox on you both.

I’d go back to bed, but now I’m wide awake and disgusted.

Louisiana, where even the Democrats are science denialists

Watch State Sen. John Milkovich make his case for creationism before the Louisiana legislature. He’s a Democrat. I’m so embarrassed.

This guy just sits there and lies his ass off, supremely confident that the truth doesn’t matter in the least.

Scientific research and developments and advances in the last 100 years — particularly the last 15, 20, 10 years — have validated the biblical story of creation by archaeological discovery of civilizations in the middle east that seculars said did not exist …

No, science has not validated Genesis. The Earth is not just a few thousand years old, there was no global flood, all animals were not created in a single week. Finding evidence of a civilization mentioned in the Bible that “seculars” never heard of is not evidence for all the miraculous poofing described in the book.

And what civilization is that? It seems entirely reasonable to me that the authors of the Bible would have good knowledge of contemporary cultures, and it wouldn’t surprise me if some obscure people mentioned in the Bible were confirmed by trustworthy evidence. On the other hand, some of the treasured stories of the Bible are being found incredible and lacking in evidence. The Exodus almost certainly didn’t happen, for instance.

there is some published research that a large boat or ark was found on top of Mt Ararat …

Published…where? On the web pages of Ron Wyatt? Because no, there is no credible evidence of a 4000 year old big boat sitting on a mountaintop in Turkey.

But hang on, here comes my favorite part of his argument.

the notion of instantaneous creation has been validated by the scientific study of heliocentric circles in rocks which is consistent with an instantaneous…I guess I’m asking this. Are you aware that there’s an abundance of recent science that actually confirms the Genesis account of creation?

He doesn’t say instantanous what — he just lurches off into more assertions. But still, I’m amazed at heliocentric circles in rocks. What does that even mean? Is he saying something in the rocks circles around the sun? Or is this some strangely garbled version of Gentry’s bogus polonium halos claim, which, even if you believed it, does not say anything about instantaneous anything — he uses them to claim that the earth is young.

I think he’s just pompously pleased at being able to seem wise by babbling out a 5-syllable word. Incorrectly. Which makes him look like a world-class fool.

And no, there is no recent science that actually confirms the Genesis account of creation. All of the science says that the literal interpretation contradicts the evidence.

Friday Cephalopod: Squid in Spaaaaace!

The Squid Scientists take a photo of their baby animals, and unwittingly reveal what they’re actually doing.

spacesquid

Look behind the squid — I know it’s hard, why would you want to look past cephalopods? — and what do you see? That blurry poster in the background? It’s a space shuttle launch.

And now you know. This is a top secret program to train Euprymna scolopes to pilot spacecraft. They’d probably be better at 3-dimensional thinking than us, so it’s only natural. Quick, reboot Star Trek with a more appropriate cast!

Oh, I think it’s been done–the Thermians from the Klaatu Nebula in Galaxy Quest. Man, that was a prescient movie.