Category: Uncategorized

My, I have been remiss. Do allow me to attempt to amend matters:

On this day in 1901, Annie Edson Taylor, a schoolteacher from Michigan, becomes the first person to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel. Her husband is arrested and charged with attempted murder later that afternoon.

One notes certain similarities in the language:

“None of the freedoms which are recognized for citizens can be exercised contrary to the existence and objectives of the socialist state, or contrary to the decision of the Cuban people to build socialism and communism. Violations of this principle can be punished by law.” – Constitution of the Republic of Cuba, Article 62

“(1) Everyone has duties to the community in which alone the free and full development of his personality is possible.

(2) In the exercise of his rights and freedoms, everyone shall be subject only to such limitations as are determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society.

(3) These rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.”
– The United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 29

And I’d like to know yours. Specifically, I’d like to get your count on two things:

1) The total number of known officially atheist national governments in world history.

2) The total number of estimated officially Christian national governments in world history.

This can be trickier than it looks. For example, Sweden is commonly cited as an “atheist” country, but atheists are still a distinct minority there and it was actually an officially Christian country, complete with a state church, until 2000.

I’ll have a number of requests like these, some quite likely on the odd side, while I’m working on the book. Any assistance will be appreciated, but please make sure to provide your sources and/or rationale as well. In this case, just post it here and everyone can discuss the merits of various inclusions or exclusions.

Just to be perfectly clear, an officially atheist regime is one wherein ALL religions are legally banned and punishable by law, not just Christianity.

The OC shares a beautiful moment of irony:

Minnesota Public Radio was supposed to host a big public forum on global warming last night —

(drum roll, please)

— but they had to cancel it because of the blizzard.

I grew up in Minnesota. I’ve been outside in too many 40-below wind chills to view global warming as anything but a Very Good Thing. As for the threat to the coasts, screw them. If that means ocean swells swamping Washington DC and New York on one side and Hollywood and San Francisco on the other, I’ll start running my air conditioner with the windows open this summer.

How you like flyover country now, bitch?

Even the top lefties have serious comprehension issues:

Democratic Party boss Howard Dean demanded that Republican presidential candidates denounce conservative columnist Ann Coulter after she referred to Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards as a “faggot” during a speech Friday at a national conservative gathering.

Coulter, who was addressing the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, D.C., said:

“I was going to have a few comments on the other Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, but it turns out you have to go into rehab if you use the word “faggot,” so I — so kind of an impasse, can’t really talk about Edwards.”

Of course we all know that this was a roundabout way of insulting Senator Hairbrush, but you can’t claim that someone called someone something that they quite clearly did not. Saying “I can’t talk about X because I am not allowed to say Y” certainly allows us to deduce a desire to call X Y, but it is not the same thing as actually doing so.

It’s an open question as to whether Dean would have looked more or less ridiculous if he had more accurately complained that Miss Coulter had not referred to John Edwards with a logging slur. What is the world coming to when a leading political commentator refuses to refer to a political candidate as a collection of wood?

Not to defend Ann, she’s a big girl and perfectly capable of taking care of herself, but the ironic thing is that I find the tree-related interpretation to be more descriptive of Edwards than the sex-related one. He may be a pretty boy, but he has never struck me as being a big Pet Shop Boys fan.

You have to hand it to Ann, though. If I was John Edwards’ PR guy, I’d want to take Howard Dean out and shoot him about now; the last thing Edwards needs is a bunch of Republicans solemnly intoning their sincere belief that he is not a flamer. I mean, what on Earth is the casual political observer going to make of all that. You’d think it was Team Clinton at work, except for the fact that Edwards is such an obvious non-starter.

UPDATE: Hog on Ice calls everyone out: “You’re on the pro-slur side or you’re not. You can’t straddle the border.”

Right, put me down on the pro-slur side, twinkletoes.

PS: Just for the record, I believe that it is important that we all make a formal statement regarding our beliefs about John Edwards’ sexual orientation. So, for the record, let me state that I do not believe John Edwards enjoys having sex with men.

I suspect that for Senator Hairbrush, having a hairdresser of either sex run hands through his hair for an hour or two is all the pleasure he needs.

For humanity. But we may not even need fembots to finish us off:

A chap working for an iPhone news site claims that a reputable source who wishes to remain anonymous (it’s funny how they are always reputable and always anonymous) tipped him that WoW is coming to Apples first mobile. This source claims that they have seen a beta version of the game running on the iPhone with full touch screen functionality….

At present we here at Pocket Gamer think this is unlikely. To go from Tetris to WoW in one bound is kind of like going from warm milk with honey in it to crack. However (wait for it…) there are a few things to consider here. Believed to have (careful wording, Carlos you have made me paranoid) at least one ARM11 processor on board, the iPhone could easily be capable of outperforming something like the Nintendo DS in the graphics department and certainly has its share of processing grunt under the hood.

I have to admit, after the first flush of technoptimism wore off and I realized that the iPhone wouldn’t do half of what I require in a mobile device, I had decided to stick with the Treo line. But I’ll admit, WoW or any decent MMO onboard would make me switch in a heartbeat.

Or perhaps a more accurate conclusion would be that National Review is no longer even pretending to be conservative. I shall henceforth remove it from my list of Day Trips and move it to a more appropriate venue, namely, Target-Rich Environments:

Any delay in improving the integrity of identification documents is potentially dangerous, but the administration’s move was probably a practical necessity. What’s important is that it stood by REAL ID.
– The Editors

I have never been so pleased with the well-deserved Republican massacre this past November. And I look forward to Hillary Clinton’s inevitable victory, not because I expect anything but even more national socialism from the Lizard Queen than Bush is currently pushing, but because it will demonstrate the total fecklessness of the big government conservatives as well as prove my point about the inherent self-contradiction in putting political pragmatism above political principle.

I’ll still read National Review on a daily basis, as there are writers such as John Derbyshire, Ramesh Ponnuru, VDH and Jonah Goldberg that I quite like. But it seems that I shall henceforth be reading it in much the same way that I read the New York Times, primarily as a source of cannon fodder.

Our favorite atheidiot nobly stands by his words:

I am a biologist. Like it or not, the Republican party is being led by religious zealots who are anti-biology, who publicly and vigorously oppose reason and knowledge and evidence in my field of study. This hasn’t always been true, and it may not always be true (I hope), but right now and right here, it is inarguably the case. I will not throttle my criticisms of the despicable gang of anti-intellectuals who run this country because it might irritate all those millions of people who voted for George W. Bush; they were wrong and he is wrong and it is my responsibility as a scientist to oppose ignorance, especially ignorance that has power and influence. Let them find comfort and forgiveness for stupid mistakes in their religion, because I sure as hell am not going to give it to them.

Don’t tell me to be dispassionate or less unreasonable about it all because because 65% of the American population think creationism should be taught alongside evolution, or that Americans are just responding to common notions of “fairness”. That just tells me that we scientists have not been expressing our outrage enough. And yes, we should be outraged that the president of our country panders to theocrats, faith-healers, and snake-oil artists; sitting back and quietly explaining that Bush may be a decent man who is mistaken, while the preachers are stridently condemning all us evilutionists to hell, is a damned ineffective tactic that has gotten us to this point.

I say, screw the polite words and careful rhetoric. It’s time for scientists to break out the steel-toed boots and brass knuckles, and get out there and hammer on the lunatics and idiots. If you don’t care enough for the truth to fight for it, then get out of the way.

Perhaps he means this rhetorically. In which case, I refer those atheists who whine about rhetoric labling them as amoral assholes and socially autistic future kindling to Mr. Myers.

And if he doesn’t mean it in a rhetorical sense, then I’ll certainly be more than happy to debate the matter with Mr. Myers with the aforementioned steel-toed boots and brass knuckles.

Think of it as survival of the fittest, Mr. Biology.

The amusing thing about his outrage, as I have previously and repeatedly demonstrated, is that like his fellow atheists Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris, Pharyngurl is reliably dishonest. He claims to stand for reason and knowledge and evidence, while habitually abusing the first, lacking the second and ignoring the third.

He is, in short, a complete fraud outside of his particular field of expertise. (I shall grant him the benefit of the doubt and assume that he knows what he’s talking about there.) So he can get as mean and angry and loud as he likes, it won’t do him any good because his atheism and his sciencist ideology is constructed upon a foundation of intellectual sand.

UPDATE – Sweet Darwin, they’re learning! A Pharyngurlite comments: Religion may or not be a cause of most of the wars (I think religion at least facilitates war) in humanity’s history, but they keep on telling us that it can bring us peace. It has failed miserably.

This is one of the first times I’ve seen an atheist publicly demonstrate an awareness that the “religion causes wars” assertion is a non-starter. Of course, it’s not exactly hard to demonstrate how science facilitates war.

And it’s pretty easy to demonstrate that it is the scientific facilitation does far more damage to far more people. So, obviously if humanity wishes to pursue less lethal war, the first thing it should do is outlaw scientists.

One does have to wonder about the basic reading comprehension of these highly educated atheidiots, though. They always claim to have read the Bible, and then demonstrate a complete ignorance of what it actually says. How can you possibly get the idea that Christianity “keeps on telling us it can bring peace” given Jesus Christ’s words in Matthew 10:34

“Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.”

The Telegraph publishes a helpful list:

HOW TO SPOT A TOXIC WIFE

1 Women who are secure in themselves and have a more developed emotional intelligence and personal depth do not feel the need to show off. Check whether or not she is festooned with ‘designer’ accessories. Listen carefully to what she says. How often does she name-drop?

2 On first acquaintance, she will want to find out if you’re rich or not. If you find yourself discussing your assets within the first 10 minutes you know her agenda. She is not going to waste time on you if you don’t have serious money.

3 She will flirt without first finding out if you’re married or involved with someone else. She has no scruples about stealing another woman’s man.

4 Even though she may have an impressive job, her main asset is sex. She will come on in a highly provocative manner, be wearing lots of make-up and revealing clothes. Potential toxic wives are extremely clever. Do not equate intelligence with emotional values and worth.

5 Often she will use the FSFM tactic (feel sorry for me). This will manifest itself on the second or third date. She wants to assess how generous you can be and will tell you how ”naïve” she is and how “misled” by some nasty people she owes money to.

Although I recommend staying away from career women altogether, if you absolutely insist on dating one such, I’d strongly recommend talking to her co-workers early on in the relationship. If she’s a user who relies on other people, especially men, to cover for her inadequacies, don’t waste a single day in getting out of that relationship.

Actually, this would be beneficial to women as well. You can hide your character from someone you’re dating, at least for a while, but you can’t hide it from people who work with you for more than a short period of time.

In general, if a woman plays damsel in distress, you’d be better off marrying the monster.