Homophobic church to picket Heath Ledger’s funeral

January 24th, 2008 • 2 comments idiocy

They say it’s because he “promoted homosexuality” in Brokeback Mountain. I guess the line between the escapism of film and promotion of hatred is very thin. The Westboro Baptist Church made a horribly stupid flyer announcing their new scene of a hate crime. Why is it that I can call a group of drag queens a “bunch of fags” and it’s a hate crime but these people get away with it without any fear of legal retort? If God hates America, I surely hopes he hates ignorant people like this even more for “doing it” in his name.

Why can’t these idiots put their time to better things like feeding the homeless (instead of admonishing them) or doing something “good” for a change. It goes to show that humanists care more about humans than these Christians do about their fellow man.

I thought Atheists were supposed to be well informed people?

December 16th, 2007 • atheism, idiocy

It’s now days after the House of Representatives passed a House Resolution recognizing the importance of Christmas to Christianity. In those ensuing days, all manners of non-theists have been up-in-arms about it, saying it violates the First Amendment. I’ve voiced my opinion in a number of comments on various blogs on how delusional secularists have become and how hypocritical they act. I once thought secularists, and Atheists in particular, were intelligent, well read, and well informed people. The public outcry from secularists on this resolution has truly led me to believe otherwise.

The resolution does nothing more than states “Christmas is a holy holiday for Christians and we, as the House of Representatives, recognize this.” Guess what? They have one for Ramadan and one for Diwali too (where’s Hanukkah? Or Kwanzaa?). I don’t hear people bemoaning this fact at all. And why is this? Because many American secularists just want to keep the Christian church out of our government, they don’t care about the other religions. It’s purely misplaced vitriol for Christianity. I’ll admit that I was taken aback by the resolution when I first read it until I remembered that resolutions are not laws, they have no affect on national law until they pass from resolution to bill (or act) to law. My middle school Social Studies teachers would be proud at the fact that I remembered such a basic principle of our government. You secularists would be well fit to do the same.

This trio of resolutions is nothing more than pomp and a waste of taxpayer’s money. While I will agree that passing such baseless and pointless resolutions does very little to lend credibility to what being a Representative means — the function is clearly defined by the name, you represent — I can’t fathom how people have made the leap from “this is something we’re recognizing” to “the government is trying to authoritatively assert Christianity as the foremost religion of the United States”. I wish I was making this up but the general consensus from Digg to Reddit to various blogs and their comments clearly points out that people grossly misunderstand what the resolution means — and what resolutions do — and that they think Big Brother is marching with jackboots to declare some kind of state religion. I would say it’s amazing that so many people are this ignorant but it’s not amazing at all, it’s frightening.

Maybe secularists should get together, form some committees, and devise a national secularist holiday. Then we could raise hell that our important holiday isn’t recognized officially by the government and claim some kind of restitution for this gravest of omissions from national accordance. Or we could realize this was probably passed in order for them to waste time do a little more work before their session is over.

The ignorance of politics

December 9th, 2007 • idiocy

The founders proscribed the establishment of a state religion, but they did not countenance the elimination of religion from the public square. We are a nation ‘Under God’ and in God, we do indeed trust.

-Mitt Romney

I guess the founding fathers decided we should make a state religion by purposefully writing into the Constitution that there be a legal separation of church and state. Opposites attract I suppose. It’s probably never occurred to him that the Pledge of Allegiance was not written until well after the country was founded and “under God” was added in after that.

This is a man running for President of our country who, time and time again, clearly displays no knowledge our country’s history or the laws this country was founded on. I wonder if he and Dubya will venture off to Candy Mountain once Dubya’s reign of terror is over and live there in blissful and ignorant harmony with the faeries and unicorns.

Now to the ignorance of secularists and politicians alike. Romney, Dr. Clinton, and Obama are appalled by non-theists. Non-theists are appalled at this appellation of claiming that non-theists are not Americans and are, effectively, not a part of this country. Both groups are missing another point entirely: not everyone believes in God. Why aren’t the Muslims of this country appalled by Romney’s recent speech? I’ve heard of no reports of Muslims being incredibly offended by the fact that we’re “one nation under God” and our politicians forcing this down our throats. Atheists are pissed about it but not our great Muslim population. Surely they must be offended since we’re not “one nation under Allah” (or Mohammed, if you will). What about the Hindu population or the Shinto population? Or Buddhists? Are these groups not as offended because, unlike theists and atheists, they’re religiously more mature than such a petty squabble?

Being a non-theist myself, I was not offended by what Romney said about religion. I’m far more offended by what he presupposes about our country’s well documented and wholly secularist governmental history. While a number of the founding fathers were indeed religious, they argued against each other about the inclusion of a deity in our country’s founding laws simply because religion was the reason the Puritans and Protestants came to this country in the first place. They came here to escape the religious persecution outset by the empirical heads of England. This is exactly why our founding fathers argued amongst each other to leave religion out of our laws. So why are we arguing about the exclusion of religion from law and how the country was founded on the inclusion of religion into our laws.

I’m not sure what version of the Constitution Romney has read (or Obama for that matter) but I know the one read that I’ve read clearly defines a separation of church and state. It clearly defines that there is no place for religion in the political public square. While Atheists are arguing for the removal of religion from the public square, we understand the freedom of speech — a right afforded to Americans at one point in time by our founding laws — but it seems the candidates at hand do not understand we want it removed from the political public square. Not because of our beliefs but because our country’s oldest laws dictate it’s meant to be separate. It’s spelled out in plain English, in modern English we can all read.

I’ve always heard, by those in law enforcement of any level, that “ignorance of the law is no excuse” so what’s Romney’s excuse for his ignorance?

BREAKING NEWS: Teens in abstinence programs having sex

December 6th, 2007 • chatter, idiocy
Tags: abstinence, stupidity

I know this is a complete shocker to everyone and it’s certainly a shocker for me. I thought this only happened to those kids that went to those crazy purity balls!

Decreased condom use and increased sexual activity are two likely explanations for the higher teen birth rate. But not all data supports those theories, said John Santelli, a professor of population and family health at Columbia University’s school of public health.

That guy’s a professor, probably with some fancy PhD. He gets to make jaw-droppingly obvious comments about why there are more teen births. More sexual activity? Why no, this would have no effect on increased birth rates. I would have never linked `sex – condom == more babies`. This man needs an award, possibly the Darwin award. However, the article does go on to state that many “experts” agree that abstinence-only programs are waste of money. I could have told them that solely based on the girls at my neighbor’s middle school (yes, that’d be 6th to 8th grade) that have gotten pregnant this year alone, even after having gone through the bulletproof and infallible abstinence-only sexual “education” class they’re required to take. 13 and 14 year old girls getting pregnant because they have no idea about contraception, shocking news indeed.

Conservative advocacy organizations (meaning Christian organizations) state contraceptive-based education is the reason for the increase in pregnancies. Jess made a very good point about this kind of backwards thinking:

It’s like teaching kids to drive cars. Teach them how to do it safely because no matter what you do, they’re going to do it anyway so at least give them the tools to do it safely and properly

Unintentional pun there but the point stands. Teaching kids nothing about contraceptives and telling them to “just wait until marriage” is very useful. Spreading ignorance is definitely not the reason standardized test scores are going down and we’re ranked right above Latvia in the recent PISA reports.

Yahoo AP via firedoglake.com

Now Catholics hate Kathy Griffin like the rest of us

September 11th, 2007 • 2 comments idiocy

Because she told Jesus to suck it and proclaimed her new award as her god.

Bill Donohue found her comments “vulgar” but who cares, Catholics know less about vulgarity and “right from wrong” than anyone else.

Teen tries to cool Xbox with water

August 27th, 2007 • chatter, idiocy

I’ve heard of kids — and adults as well — doing some pretty dumb things in an effort to cool down hot electronics but this takes the cake: Teen immerses powered on Xbox in bowl of water. The poor kid is going to be ridiculed for at least a month about this and rightfully so. I guess he was so busy playing Gears of War or some other shooter to read the manual where it will plainly state that electronics and water do not mix. In fact, all electronics carry this warning…for this very reason. Maybe kids in North Carolina aren’t being taught to read any more? I know they were back in ’98 when I was in school in Elkin, NC.

Just another reason I will never move to Texas

August 8th, 2007 • 2 comments christianity, idiocy

Here’s a link to a mathematics course description from a Christian high school in San Antonio.

I don’t know about you but someone got a bit too carried away with the copy/paste love in all of these “descriptions” which, aside from half of “Geometry”, are almost exact replicas of each other. Why bother even having math and teac forcing students through these classes when God invented math and all of its consistencies. I guess he was too busy with mathematics to bother correcting all the inconsistencies the scribes of the Bible since it’s probably not that important in any life-affirming or life guiding aspects.

How can we be sure that God got Pythagoras’ theorem correct? I mean, God created all mathematics known to man so why did he let a known blasphemous heathen steal a heavenly theorem and plaster his sacrilegious name all over God’s hard work?

Why be afraid of offending Muslims?

August 1st, 2007 • idiocy, intolerance

I’ve thought about this for the last few days while pondering over something Christopher Hitchens wrote. Should we — whomever ‘we’ constitutes — be afraid of offending Muslims? In the terms of non-theists, should we be afraid of offending Muslims? I do not think so, I mean, we’re busy offending Christians so why stop with Muslims? But more on my thoughts in a moment. The religion of Islam should not be set atop a pedestal for no one to poke fun at or offend its constituents and this is what Hitchens thinks as well. After reading this, I realized that should God or Allah ever be proven to actually exist, Christopher Hitchens would be the most amazing apologetic father that ever lived because he’s such a pompous idiot.

He thinks we should be out offending every Muslim we can find, just like he thinks we should be doing with Christians and this is where he clearly lodges his foot clearly in his mouth. Hitchens is clearly equating Muslims with Christians in terms of extremism and fundamentalism and thinks there’s no reason to be worried about offending anyone. I guess he’s forgotten about the centuries old wars still being waged by Muslims, against Muslims, over their beliefs because another tribe offended them. Or perhaps he’s just playing ignorant of the subject for the purpose of getting on his soapbox. Or did he forget about the beheadings of non-Muslims at the hands of Muslims for simply not being a member of the nation of Islam and thus, were offended? Hitchens needs to stick to pissing off the Christians and worrying about if he should offend them or not. He should read the intelligent and insightful comments on his Slate article.

Personally, I feel the same way Hitchens does to an extent. I can go to Georgia and offend as many Christians I want and the worst I’ll get is called names or perhaps “put in my place” by some God-fearing nutcase. If I went to Iran and did the same thing to some random Muslim I met, I’d probably be shot. Or if I went to Iraq. Or the Philippines where there is a large, fanatical, Muslim population. Or even France where the Muslim population has been booming for the last few years and they’re up in arms for just about anything.

There’s a time and place to pick your fights, Christopher, and you never know which Muslim you’re busy pissing off isn’t carrying and will shoot you without regret. Pick your fights intelligently and do some good or pick them stupidly and do nothing, think about that the next time you want to shout at the rest of us from your ivory tower.

RIAA is completely lost in a sea of stupidity

May 22nd, 2007 • chatter, idiocy, intolerance, music

Never one to want to be out of the spotlight, the RIAA — Recording Industry Association of America — is up to their tricks again this week. For years they’ve been heading down a never ending road of stupid moves from suing people without a computer to dead people to newborn babies. This week takes the cake, however. The RIAA has now decided to start suing those who made them rich in the first place: radio stations. They’re going to start suing radio stations over an exemption that allows stations to play music without having to pay royalties. Now the RIAA is clearly biting the hand that feeds. Without the thousands of radio stations across the nation, the execs of the RIAA would not be as filthy rich as they are now. So now the RIAA wants to basically negate the last 50 to 60 years of completely free promotion — and incredibly good sales — by suing radio stations.

They’re still struggling to place more blame on lack luster music sales on people downloading music — legally or otherwise — instead of realizing that the largest portion of consumers with the most money (humans ages 13-40) in their demographic are completely unhappy and unsatisfied with the choices they’re being offered today. This is the sole reason that indie labels and formerly unknown genres, such as emo and metalcore, are thriving. These offer the consumer something new to listen to and enjoy without all the overhead and politics of supporting Big Music. Do you think it’s pure chance that bands like Fall Out Boy or HIM are so incredibly popular because they’re incredible musicians? Hardly. It’s because the people with the money skyrocketed them into the spotlight by sheer buying power and word of mouth alone. This is also why bands and genres you’ve never heard of will have millions of profile views on sites like Myspace, it’s all word of mouth and grassroots viral marketing not manufactured music and personas.

When are they going to learn that business models are changing and they have to adapt and adopt, not sue and subpoena. Most Fortune 500 companies that deal with music and artists have adapted to the changing marketplace, so why is the RIAA so against it? Techdirt offers a very funny yet serious opinion on this new wholly deplorable tactic.

Telstra to block Gmail, starts idiot campaign

April 15th, 2007 • computing, email, idiocy, spam

According to The Inquirer, Telstra are starting to block all email from Gmail because of spam originating from the network. On the upside, having dealt with a ton of Telstra customers at my current job, I hear Telstra were a bunch of dolts before this. Having dealt with their customer service, I can confirm it. But that’s a tangent.

Telstra are set to block the world 3rd largest email provider because they’re too ignorant to implement proper spam filters on their network infrastructure. Gmail sending out spam is nothing new and before them, Yahoo! and Hotmail have been doing it for years with Hotmail being one of the worst free email solutions I’ve ever had the displeasure of using. Welcome to the 21st century, Telstra. Every free email service known to man can have spam sent to and from it without any intervention from the provider. With spam techniques changing almost daily, this will never stop until there’s something to supplant and replace our current — and pathetic — mail infrastructure as a whole. I receive spam from Gmail on my own Gmail accounts but this doesn’t make me implement filters to stop it, I understand that it happens and I don’t see why Telstra should be any different. All big email providers end up on blacklists from time to time and that’s the nature of email so why doesn’t Telstra implement the various RBLs in place that are widely used by everyone else is certainly beyond my feeble understanding.

But it seems Telstra are in the forefront of spam technology along with Verizon: block entire services. It’s my assumption that this is the wave of the future and will stop all spam immediately. This will ultimately stop all that direct spam, backscatter spam, sender domain/envelope spoofed spam and all that Cialis spam that we all love. Actions like this will require no need for innovation in spam blocking techniques or appliances because soon enough, Telstra customers will only be able to receive emails from Telstra/Bigpond customers so they’ll know it’s all legit.

I applaud you, Telstra, for your mighty foresight and innovation in keeping your network “usable” for your customers. You should get awards.