Category: Uncategorized

PZ doesn’t find it funny, but I sure do:

The one that sticks out was when Randy took me behind closed doors and said he had just learned of a situation where he just found out why Lindy was such a bitch. That he just learned she not only was a lesbian. She was an atheist.

As we’ve learned from Wired Magazine and the copious evidence presented around the Internet, most atheists are socially autistic. This isn’t the result of believing there is no God, that’s backwards, they believe there is no God because they’re assholes. Or in the case of the female variety, bitches. It’s a causal relationship, and yes, there are certainly exceptions, but the atheist=social autiste equation is almost mathematically reliable.

You see, there’s a word to describe pleasant and likeable people who don’t believe there is sufficient evidence to allow them to believe in God, and that word is “agnostic”.

What’s tremendously amusing about all of this is that atheists are very excited about Sam Harris, whose primary recommendation for them is intolerance. (We’re supposed to believe that he doesn’t mean that evil, kill-you-all intolerance, but merely conversational intolerance.)

So, in other words, atheists have chosen as a champion a man who recommends that they attempt to behave as even bigger assholes (and bitches) than they are already. But at the same time, they’re deeply offended that no one likes them….

And that’s just one of the many reasons the book is entitled “The Irrational Atheist”.

It’s hard to see Henry go, but I have absolutely no doubt that this is the right time, in fact, last year would have arguably been even better. Arsene Wenger is a master at buying low and selling high; Henry had his opportunity to lead the team to a European title and he demonstrated that for all his brilliance, he couldn’t quite get it done. If he finishes better two years ago, Arsenal are European champs….

But he’s had a phenomenal run at Arsenal, he’s given the club his best years and I’m sure every Gunners’ fan wishes him well at Barca. In any event, it was really in the best interests of Arsenal FC that he go now, while he still commanded a high transfer fee.

They’ve got the new stadium, the Henry issue is resolved, now if they can just get Arsene signed to a long-term contract….

And this time there will be no voting, because it’s just a treaty, you see, NOT a Constitution:

An analysis of the deal suggests that almost all of the key elements of the EU Constitution are to be reintroduced including an EU diplomatic service and EU foreign minister.

I wonder what the hurry is. Usually, they just keep making the people vote until they get it right. And yet strangely, no votes to reduce central power ever seem to take place.

Pay attention, folks. This is the process currently at work in the North American SPP.

Spacebunny’s admirer puts his celebrity to good use:

In an unusual move Clooney, who lives almost as a recluse at the villa, hosted a meeting this week of the Laglio protest committee, which has so far gathered 400 signatures. Even more unusually he invited a local journalist, who duly recorded not only the meeting but also the actor’s clothes – beige linen slacks with a blue-and-white shirt – and the “heady smell of jasmine” from the lakeside terrace. Manuela Nuti, head of the residents’ committee, confirmed that Clooney had added his name to the appeal.

She said that the actor’s signature was “worth a hundred other signatures”, and the committee hoped that his support would sabotage a plan that was “invasive for our town and our lives”.

This is being portrayed as a hypocritical celebrity “not in my backyard” thing, but that’s completely unfair as this is not at all the case. The locals don’t want the development, only the business interests who want to increase tourism do. There’s plenty of parking by the lake near the city; I’ve never seen the ramp there completely filled, so creating a new parking location is only going to create a bigger problem then they’ve already got. Where Lake Como could actually use more parking is on the mountain side of Cernobbio, as people are forced to park their cars all the way up the mountain; the last time we had dinner at Il Gatto Nero, it took me fifteen minutes to walk down from the first parking place I found.

Il Giorgio is well-regarded by nearly everyone and he deserves to be, as unlike many celeb and non-celeb expats, he has made every effort to accomodate himself to the local life. A little effort goes a long way in Italy, and he’s put in a lot more than the average individual.

You have to love Ridgebacks:

I couldn’t make this up if I tried, guess what came flying over the six-foot privacy fence? A FUCKING PIT BULL. A large, fence-jumping, snarling, foaming-at-the-mouth gray pit bull. WHICH LANDED ON SUNNY.

I shit you not. She was a few feet behind me, resisting the moving-on that I was enforcing, and that psycho pit bull came down right on her hind end. I wish I could truly convey to you the unholy terror I felt for about two seconds. I’ve never seen such a thing in my life and it was incredibly startling and genuinely scary. Pit bulls are not my favorite dogs. I don’t like the way they look, and waaaaayyyy too many lazy fuckers own them and don’t have even a sliver of the gonads to know how to handle them, so they get a bad reputation as killing machines. Which may or may not be fair; all I know is that a crazed snarling pit bull leaping over a fence and landing on your dog is extremely frightening.

But I have to tell you the truth: I am fantastically pleased that it happened, in retrospect, because I learned something about my sweet baby Sunny that I’d never had the chance to know before: That bitch is bad to the bone.

As soon as the pit bull landed on her hindquarters, she immediately spun around and the two of them were suddenly facing each other – Sunny’s butt to me and the pit bull facing me. I walk her on a short leash, which was yanked out of my hands as soon as this happened. They were doing that posturing/threatening thing to each other – cheek to cheek and all growls. And here’s what scared the living crap out of me: that pit bull was staring ME in the eyes. And growling in a very aggressive way.

But do you know what? I didn’t have to worry about it because Sunny – fat dumb lazy Sunny who will never be insulted by me that way again – showed that dog how things are DONE. They stood face-to-face for a few seconds, sizing each other up, and suddenly the pit bull made a move to attack her and tried to bite her neck. However, Sunny had apparently decided she was, in point of fact, the superior dog, and as soon as the pit bull started attacking, she channeled the souls of all her ancient lion-hunting ancestors and brought holy hell upon Mr. Pit Bull’s head. She didn’t even bark or growl any more, she simply ATTACKED like she was Mike Tyson and that stupid pit bull was Woody Allen. It wasn’t even close to a fair fight, partly because she outweighed him by about 20 pounds. She simply threw her bulk into the little shit and chomped in the general vicinity of his snout, and do you know what that pit bull did? HE TURNED AROUND AND RAN IN THE OPPOSITE DIRECTION AS FAST AS HE COULD.

Apparently a neighbor with a pit bull just moved in across the street and I’m hoping a similar situation won’t unfold, because the Dainty Flower and I aren’t quite as forgiving as Sunny and Rachel. I like dogs, so I doubt there will be any problem, but if the pit bull is dumb and aggressive enough to attack, the only question will be if the little girl crushes its head before I break its backbone.

The Viszla, of course, will be busy lying in the sun, looking good, watching everything with complete aristocratic disinterest. Don’t hate him because he’s beautiful, it’s just how he rolls.

Spacebunny’s pets tend to be very protective; her Rottweiler once slashed another dog’s ear just for pushing in between them. But I’ve never seen anything like the Ridgeback’s combination of speed, athleticism and power, they’re truly awesome animals.

Vice President Dick Cheney has asserted his office is not a part of the executive branch of the U.S. government, and therefore not bound by a presidential order governing the protection of classified information by government agencies, according to a new letter from Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., to Cheney.

Interesting. Although I wouldn’t have thought that they were already prepared admit publicly that the White House is now a part of the North American Union, not the Constitutional government.

Toast has some brave fighting words over at Brent’s place:

Bring it, bitch. I’d love it if a Bible Thumper threw down on me. I’d wreck their shit in an Old Testament hurry. The thing about Wingers that pisses me off more than ANYTHING else is their assumption that the rest of us are all pussies. I would relish the opportunity to demonstrate the erroneous nature of that assumption.

Toast is forgetting two things. First, one of the most common arguments made by atheists is based upon the presumption of inherent atheist pussiness. Remember, atheists are supposed to be less likely to fight, less likely to start wars and to make inferior soldiers because they don’t want to risk losing their lives, unlike those crazy theists who think they’re going to paradise. You can’t have it both ways. And there’s no point arguing with me about it, you’ll have to take that up with Dawkins and company.

Second, I really have to question the wisdom of picking a fight with those you believe to be fundamentally more warlike and fearless, and who also happen to outnumber you about fifty to one. Where is the logic in that, O mighty champion of Reason?

Don’t atheists claim to be the inordinately smart ones? It often looks rather more like social autism to me. I don’t agree with the entirety of Brent’s take on the matter either, as there’s plenty of evidence that those books aren’t quite as innocently harmless as he describes, but I fully concur with his conclusion: “This is shaping up to become the Crazy Years.”

Wave Three, baby. Wave Three.

I note that since “The End of Faith” came out, the willingness of Americans to vote for an atheist has actually dropped four percent in the same Gallup poll. It’s even worse according to Newsweek, their recent poll shows the willingness to vote for an atheist to have dropped from 37 percent to 29 percent in the last six months.

It appears that shrieking at people about how evil and stupid they are may not be the best way to convince them to agree with you, let alone permit your kind to hold office.

I do rather like the idea of conversational intolerance, though. If the tiny fraction of Americans who are militant atheists are going to voluntarily stop talking to the rest of us, I know I won’t miss hearing the same superficial talking points over and over and over again.

I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed, but the comments at Pharyngula make a lot more sense if you read them in the voices of Beavis and Butthead. I still can’t fathom how they manage to get so worked up about the supreme importance of teaching evolution in the public schools when more than half the kids in the system can’t read. We could be teaching them that the human race was created by evil garden fairies and it wouldn’t make any difference at all.

There’s no secret about which party is preferred by the mainstream media:

MSNBC.com identified 144 journalists who made political contributions from 2004 through the start of the 2008 campaign, according to the public records of the Federal Election Commission. Most of the newsroom checkbooks leaned to the left: 125 journalists gave to Democrats and liberal causes. Only 17 gave to Republicans.

I always wonder how that famous training to be objective works. Do they all wear a shock collar in J-school that zaps them every time they express an opinion? And how long does the objectivity training last? Do they ever take refresher courses?

Can anyone find me a copy of Domitius Ulpianus’s actuarial tables? I keep finding references to them, but I need the actual tables.

Thanks.

Another request: from what book or article does this Dawkins quote come? I need the page number too.

“If you want to do evil, science provides the most powerful weapons to do evil; but equally, if you want to do good, science puts into your hands the most powerful tools to do so. The trick is to want the right things, then science will provide you with the most effective methods of achieving them.”