Best Comment on the Downgrade

From a tweet whose source I've forgotten:

"The Tea Party has been downgraded to KK+"

The Stock Market Crash: Satan Did It

The S&P 500 fell 6.66% today. Obviously Satan did it.

Why Atheist Fundamentalist is a Nonsense Term

A lot of critics of the more vocal "New Atheists" try to in cheap debating points by poisoning the well with the label "atheist fundamentalists". The strategy here isn't too sophisticated: imply that these atheists are just as closed-minded as their opponents. The problem is the two aren't remotely similar. Oh sure, there are stupid atheists, ignorant atheists, loud atheists, arrogant strident atheists and even atheists that are wrong about the big questions. But none of this supplies coherence to the term "fundamentalist atheists". It's an oxymoron. We aren't much fond of authoritarianism, tradition, dogma, or of course faith. That's a big part of what makes us atheists in the first place. We don't herd well. We don't pledge our devotion to any particular beliefs, or hold much of anything in stone. Ask three atheists for their opinions on gods and religion and you'll get four opinions. Ask them again in six months and you'll four slightly different opinions from what you got before. There's no fundamentalism in there.

So you critics of the New Atheists, dispense with the intellectual dishonesty and these erroneous terms like "fundamentalist atheist". It only reveals your gross ignorance of how atheists think, or your dishonesty in dealing with it.

Teabaggers and Czars

Here's Ted Nugent tossing an impressively stupid word salad of Teabagger talking points:

"This president's overtly destructive, clear-and-present-danger agenda is surpassed in transparency only by his ultra-leftist public voting record and overall lifetime conduct of consorting with the enemy as a child and student of Marxism, socialist and racist community organizer, congregant of the blatant America-hating black-theology- and social-justice-spewing Rev. Jeremiah Wright and close personal friend of convicted communist terrorists like Bill Ayers, and by his unflinching appointment of an array of communist czars, including Van Jones, Cass Sunstein, Anita Dunne, et al."

OK, first of all Ted, and any Teabaggers that might be reading, the moment you say "Bill Ayers", "Saul Alinsky", or "ACORN", thinking people stop listening. It was irrelevant bullshit in 2008, and it's still irrelevant bullshit now. Secondly, all you igtards yammering about communist czars, please go take a history lesson. The Czars were absolute rulers, the Caesers of Russia. The notion of multiple Czars being appointed is, well, like having multiple all powerful gods being chosen by mere mortals. "Czar" in the US is a hokey term for certain appointed positions, has been going on since Reagan and his idiot Drug Czar William Bennett, and is another phantom issue like the three A's above. Furthermore, the communists were the friggin people that overthrew the damned line of Czars, murdered the last one and his children in cold blood. So talking about communist Czars is like talking about Nazi Jews.

And you wonder why the stereotype of the Teabaggers is an ignorant blowhard...

Women Clergy as bad as Child Rape Sez Vatican

Yep, that's right, allowing a woman to be a priest is as bad as raping children, or so says the Catholic church. I guess that means if they catch any ordainers, they'll just move them around instead of punishing them or bothering the proper authorities about it.

Fast Food Anecdote

Inspired from this discussion

It seems clear to me that fast food is hopelessly unhealthy and expensive compared to almost anything home cooked. I don't buy the "I don't have time" argument either, unless one is on the road between destinations. Nonetheless...

...while in college in 1984, drained of funds and willing to do nearly anything ethical to get by, I took full advantage of the McDonald's Olympic game. This is the one where you get free food if the Americans medal in the event printed on your free game card you get when you go in. I would wander by between classes and scoop up game cards left by those not as desperate as I. When the month to turn them in came, I did so. All of them. Every day. 3-4 times: a Big Mac, fries, and a coke, for a month. I didn't gain a pound, nor notice any ill health effects.

Then again, my main mode of transportation was my bicycle, and to say my metabolism was high would be a major understatement. The lesson I take from that is not that fast food isn't unhealthy, or can't be cheap for that matter. It's that one shouldn't do medical research with a sample space of one. Oh, and never eat 3-4 Big Macs a day for a month. It's likely to cause you to never eat one again.

Dealing with Traveling Evangelists: Preach The Boot

Here's a great story about two effective ways to deal with traveling evangelicals. You can impale them on their own spear:



Or you can satirize them:



In this second scenario, a student set up next to the evangelist and preached the word of the boot, and it's protection from the evil wetness. Shamed, the evangelist had little to say except "You're all going to Hell!". Like their cousins the Teabaggers, they have little defense from satire, because most people can't tell the difference at a glance. For the greatest example of this, read Mark Twain's The War Prayer.

The victims in the pictures are Brother Jed and Sister Cindy, who, those of you who've gone to college in the last 50 years know, travel around the country delivering their folksy fire-and-brimstone Christianity. I remember spending part of my afternoons mocking Cindy mercilessly. The big burr up her ass then was rock-n-roll, and it was going to send us to the LAKE...OF...FIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIRE!!! We'd bring a jam box and sing along to Stairway to Heaven while she ranted. I also recall one year a huge transvestite dressed for Halloween showed up and confronted Cindy, who literally curled up into a ball until the, um, guy(?) left.

Jed wasn't much fun then, looks like nothing changed. They must have found a fountain of youth somewhere, they don't look to have aged a day in 20+ years. But then, they came pre-aged.