At least the F-35 program is going pretty much as planned. The Air Force (fuckstains that they are), Navy, and Marines all need this fighter. The Marine V/STOL version is shown here.
It's not just a warplane, it's a transformer! And I like how, after the fart-faced Air Force changed the name of the F-22 to the Raptor, the military decided to name this fighter the Lightning II (the F-22s original, and much cooler, name).
When talking about the creationists to people who don’t follow these controversies closely, I have found that the hardest thing to get across is the shifty, low-cunning aspect of the whole modern creationist enterprise.I haven't posted anything on the creationist Expelled movie, mostly because the whole thing bores me really. The movie presents no new arguments (no surprise); and that creationists can be a bunch of deceitful, amoral hypocrites is century-old, arguably millennia-old, news.
And now here is Ben Stein, sneering and scoffing at Darwin, a man who spent decades observing and pondering the natural world — that world Stein glimpses through the window of his automobile now and then, when he’s not chattering into his cell phone. Stein claims to be doing it in the name of an alternative theory of the origin of species: Yet no such alternative theory has ever been presented, nor is one presented in the movie, nor even hinted at. There is only a gaggle of fools and fraudsters, gaping and pointing like Apaches on seeing their first locomotive: “Look! It moves! There must be a ghost inside making it move!”All of the arguments made in Expelled are debunked here, should you want to take a look. I find it telling that my local theater only showed it for a week. Bring it home, Derbyshire...
Which other of our civilizational achievements would you like to sneer at? What else from what Waugh called “the work of centuries” would you like to “abandon … for sentimental qualms”? You call yourself a conservative? Feugh!
"Here’s a radical idea: maybe those who wear the uniform and put their lives on the line for their country should be able to read whatever they want."And I think it's time to bring up my list of things men and women 18-to-20 years of age can and can't do in the military:
All your sad and lost apostles hum my name and flare their nostrilsIt's such a great album if you're a homo or homo-sympathetic. And what a great "FUCK YOU!" to the religious right.
Choking on the bones you toss to them
Well I'm not one to sit and spin
'Cause living well's the best revenge
Baby, I am calling you on that
A Star Tribune newspaper column has prompted a state investigation into a charter school. A substitute teacher said a school in Inver Grove Heights is blurring the line of separation of church and state.
Being a charter school Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy, or TIZA, is supported by tax dollars. The teacher told 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS the presence of religion she observed at the school took her by surprise.
TIZA Executive Director Azad Zaman insisted the school follows with state and federal laws.
"TIZA does not endorse any religion," he said.
[No, it just practices it]
However, TIZA Academy is sponsored by Islamic Relief USA, based in California.
The questions came after substitute teacher Amanda Getz taught at TIZA last month and told the Star Tribune about things she observed that day that shocked her.
"I've been in a lot of schools and I've never been in a school where they had washing rituals, or they had prayer, or where they had a room where you had to take your shoes off," Getz said.
"It is most likely that this substitute teacher was sadly mistaken," said Zaman.
[My Weasel-Word-O-Meter just went off the scale]
He said the school follows state and federal guidelines when it comes to religion.
"We're required under the federal guidelines to allow students to pray when they wish to do so. And as Muslim students, they're allowed to pray around 1:30 p.m., so we allow them to do that," Zaman explained.
[So where are YOUR school's prayer rugs, Eugenius?!? Can you get Department of Education funding?!?]
The State Department of Education said they would conduct more site visits and write to the State Department to find out more about the school’s sponsor.
TIZA requires all students to learn Arabic as a second language English.
State law requires the school to fly an American flag during school hours, however no flag flies outside of TIZA Academy.
Zaman told 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS he didn’t know how to work the flagpole.
[Don't get me started]
Tarek ibn Zayed Academy, which receives public funds but has been accused of being an Islamic school, doesn't endorse any religion -- so says its Executive Director. Got it. But it just happens that the Executive Director and everyone else involved with this school is an adherent of a supremacist creed that disdains national allegiances, preaching that one owes no loyalty to the state, especially to the infidel state, but only to the global community of believers. Now of course, maybe the Exec Dir and his staff and all the students reject those elements of their religion, and are fervently patriotic and loyal citizens of the United States, firm believers in the Bill of Rights who -- by an amazing coincidence -- just can't figure out how to work the flagpole.
I'm sure there are already many defenders of this school who are ready to believe just that.
old-school R.E.M. idioms + new-school hip punk (ex, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, The Kills, The Liars, etc) + awesome rock-n-roll "Frank Black" rowdy guitar + angry homo lyrics = too close to homeI wept, I rocked, I did both again...sometimes at the same time
