So it’s snowing, and my rather worn shoes got wet, and everywhere I walk I now hear this faint, hissy, squeaky noise.
Does it improve my image as a tough guy if I tell you that I’m imaging that I’m crushing baby mice between my toes as I walk? Discuss.
Watch the Fox News announcer get all pissy about Brian Flemming’s Blasphemy Challenge.
The funny thing is watching Kasich declare himself just “sick” about it and accusing Flemming of “preying on children” and getting upset because the people on youtube are not attacking Mohammed enough…and then ask a calm and smiling Flemming why he’s so angry. If people choose to deny gods, what right does a sanctimonious slug like Kasich have to tell them they can’t?
A Colorado state senator (a Republican from Colorado Springs, of course), Dave Schultheis, is pushing a draft of an absurd bill to open public schools wide to religious indoctrination, all in the name of the first amendment to the constitution. It’s a demand to create a “Public School Religious Bill Of Rights”, with a long list of religious privileges. Some of them are trivial: it ought to be OK for students to give each other holiday cards with religious sentiments (and of course, they already can), or greet each other with religious slogans (like, say, “Merry Christmas”…hasn’t the war on Christmas been done to death already?). Some sound innocuous but are prohibited for good reason; he wants teachers to be allowed to wear religious jewelry and decorate their classrooms to celebrate their religious holidays. That may be reasonable in moderation, like someone wearing a discreet necklace with a cross on it, but just wait until some fanatic demands the right to hang bloody crucifixes and portraits of Jesus all around the room — then it becomes a repressive sectarian doctrine to allow teachers to promote superstitions that are hostile to some of their students.
The general intent of the document is to clearly prioritize religion as the number one privileged subject of the school, which may not under any circumstances be gainsaid. The rah-rah for god is bad enough, but what I found most disturbing was the way it encouraged the use of religion to undermine good teaching. Here are examples:
Teachers may:
(VII) NOT BE REQUIRED TO TEACH A TOPIC THAT VIOLATES HIS OR HER RELIGIOUS BELIEFS AND NOT BE DISCIPLINED FOR REFUSING TO TEACH THE TOPIC;
School boards must set up policies that allow:
(a) A HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT TO OPT OUT OF ANY CLASS OR THE USE OF SPECIFIC COURSE MATERIAL THAT IS INCONSISTENT WITH HIS OR HER RELIGIOUS BELIEFS; OR
(b) A PARENT OR GUARDIAN OF AN ELEMENTARY SCHOOL, MIDDLE SCHOOL, OR JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT TO EXCUSE HIS OR HER CHILD FROM ANY CLASS OR THE USE OF SPECIFIC COURSE MATERIAL THAT IS INCONSISTENT WITH HIS OR HER RELIGIOUS BELIEFS.
In other words, if someone follows a religion that says the sun rises in the west and sets in the east, you are not allowed to hand them a compass and take them outdoors early in the morning, and if you are a teacher with such a belief you can ignore basic astronomy, even if you are supposed to be teaching earth science. This is a common belief among these loons, that religious freedom means you are not allowed to confront them with reality. You can see where that has gotten this country so far.
Fortunately, other members of the Colorado senate say the bill doesn’t stand a chance of passing. That’s good, and not too surprising, but take heed: this is another strategy for getting creationism and who-knows-what into the schools, by cloaking it under the veil of first amendment religious freedoms.
Just in case anyone sensible in the Minneapolis/St Paul area feels like exposing yourself to the wild and crazy world of Minnesota creationism, here are the events coming up in February.
Many people sent me links to this list of bands that will turn you gay, but I held off on posting anything—it was too fishy. David Bowie, Melissa Etheridge, and Ted Nugent, sure…listen to a couple of tracks of those guys and you’ll only want to hang out with your fellow man. But Morrissey is listed as “?questionable?” and everyone knows the Grateful Dead make you lose interest in sex altogether, so I had my doubts.
Now Orac outs the author. He’s not a formerly gay televangelist; he’s a stand-up comedian.
Poor guy. I can sort of understand why he’d prefer to be known as an insane homophobe.
D. James Kennedy, head mackerel of Coral Ridge Ministries, had a very serious heart attack last month. He seems to be recovering now, and let’s all wish him well and encourage him to relax, enjoy the rest of his life, and stop standing up in pulpits and lying.
Strangely enough, though, this opponent of godless naturalism and materialism didn’t trust in prayer and faith when physiological catastrophe struck—instead, he took advantage of the best and latest medical care. Funny, that…do you think he had a deathbed conversion? There are no theistic heart attack patients—they’re all clutching for the defibrillator, the pills, the expert medical assistance before they’ll rely on that ineffectual immaterial ghost in the sky.
The Nielsen Haydens filled my morning with horror, so I’m going to make you suffer, too. Behold, a Danish disco band pretending to be Apaches:
It goes on for an interminable 4½ minutes; seriously, you’ve done your penance if you watch 20 seconds, long enough to spot the sequins and the Groucho mustache on the keyboardist. I recommend you turn it off before the Apache maidens emerge from behind the teepee—that was just too much.
Say, that Making Light thread led me to another cheesy video by Army of Lovers, and since I was soliciting suggestions for a menacing makeover, it gave me an idea: eyeliner and frilly shirts. A busty henchperson with exposed cleavage might also help.
Apparently, I’ve been labeling the Discovery Institute incorrectly all these years. It’s not a think-tank, it’s a belief tank.
Via Bioephemera, I’ve discovered this wonderful medical illustration blog, Street Anatomy. In particular, this article on the illustrator Cvetomir Georgiev has an amazing image of a dissected torso exposing a fetus in situ…and I’ve got a new desktop image. It’s gorgeous stuff; people are so interesting on the inside.
Hey, I’m teaching a genetics class this term, and someone is taking one. I’m going to be spending part of my day setting up flies for an upcoming lab…this looks awfully familiar.
