Friday, May 22, 2009

WTF in Texas. Again!

Texas, please secede from the Union.


Why are the dumbest always the loudest?

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More here.

45 seconds of clarity

How is Obama not a two-faced liar?

See Obama's answers to Question #10 here:

I also reject the view, suggested in memoranda by the Department of Justice, that the President may do whatever he deems necessary to protect national security, and that he may torture people in defiance of congressional enactments.

...

The creation of military commissions, without congressional authorization, was unlawful (as the Supreme Court held) and a bad idea.


Obama seems to have a different perspective on these issues now. Perhaps Candidate Obama was a disguise.

Animal Farm Friday - Homage to the Pundits

I'm sick of political commentators, but these chatterers I like:



And now for something completely different:



Seriously. Don't mess with these birds!

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Holy Bile - Catholic Rapists

Not entirely news to those in the know, but this latest report of systematic rapes, beatings and other abuse in Catholic institutions is pretty damning.

Sexual abuse was "endemic" in State-run institutions for boys and children lived in "daily terror" of being beaten over more than five decades, the long-awaited Commission into Child Abuse report has found.

The report, that runs to thousands of pages, outlined a harrowing account of the emotional, physical and sexual abuse inflicted on young people who attended schools and institutions from 1940 onwards.

It found that corporal punishment was "pervasive, severe, arbitrary and unpredictable" in the institutions where "children lived with the daily terror of not knowing where the next beating was coming from."

The report said that the level of emotional abuse of disadvantaged, neglected and abandoned children by religious and lay staff was "disturbing" and that the Catholic Church was aware long-term sex offenders were repeatedly abusing children.



Link 1. Link 2. (There are too many other links to list here, but there is the Google.)

It is fair to say that not all Catholics are kiddie rapers, and not all kiddie rapers are Catholic, but to the degree that this has gone on in Catholic institutions, and to the small degree the church has responded appropriately speaks volumes about the church, and Christianity in general.

I can't wait to hear what the anti-condom AIDS empowering Pope has to say on this.

Hope this catches on

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Raisin of Reason - JCI faiths like a bad trilogy

From a found post:

Think of [Judaism/Christianity/Islam] like a movie. The Torah is the first one, and the New Testament is the sequel. Then the Qu'ran comes out, and it retcons the last one like it never happened. There's still Jesus, but he's not the main character anymore, and the messiah hasn't shown up yet.

Jews like the first movie but ignored the sequels, Christians think you need to watch the first two, but the third movie doesn't count, Moslems think the third was the best, and Mormons liked the second one so much they started writing fanfiction that doesn't fit with ANY of the series canon.

Yep. That about sums it up.


The eighth wonder of the world!

Missing link found, and a whole lot of folks are about to hear about it.

Fossil

Scientists have unveiled a 47-million-year-old fossilised skeleton of a monkey hailed as the missing link in human evolution.

Not to over-blow this, considering that there are many links that have already been discovered. But this one seems to help make the case for evolutionary biology a little more clear (as if it wasn't already perfectly clear!!!). That this story will be finding a mass audience is a very good thing, but it won't change the minds of many creationists. Their stubbornness to facts is astonishing, as they frequently prove. I still look forward to their attempts at spinning this story.

Now once we actually discover incontrovertible life forms on another planet, then the argument will actually advance greatly. Until then, we're going to keep having the same arguments we've been having since Darwin.

Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Flawed logic of Cap and Trade debate

Interesting!

Two prominent — and iconoclastic — environmentalists argue that current efforts to tax or cap carbon emissions are doomed to failure and that the answer lies not in making dirty energy expensive but in making clean energy cheap.

Hansen was right about Waxman-Markey. It will do little to reduce U.S. emissions, will transfer billions to incumbent energy interests in the form of free pollution permits, and will send billions more to timber, agriculture, and other interests, here and abroad, in the form of dubious “offsets.” But Hansen’s analysis of why climate legislation has gone so terribly off the rails is wrong.