MST3K Take Two

Mike Nelson and the gang are at it again!
I saw their version of Star Trek VI last night, they've still got it.

Two of My Favorite Geniuses

Enjoyed these articles on two tremendous influences on our kind - Milton Friedman at Reason and Carl Sagan at Skeptical Inquirer. Found them both at a great source - Arts & Letters Daily.

Eugenius calls it Lob-star®

I didn't know there was a controversy about this suspect crustacean until I looked up the Captain D's site to make sure that senile dementia hadn't made me read LOBSTER on a local marquee.

Langostino @ Wikipedia
Seafood Fraud Allegations Hit Fast Food Business @ Restaurant News Resource
Lobstah Impostah @ The Grinder @ CHOW.com

The Father of the Constitution

A student left this comment on my myspace: "after you implying that James Madison is superior to jesus, you became my hero. Kudos."
Just doing what I can.

No golden statue, but Golden Army to come

I'm going to see Pan's Labyrinth tomorrow night. Not only did it provide Guillermo del Toro a HUGE amount of face time at the Oscars (not to mention emphatic praises for his genius), but it gets huge kudos from our favorite horror-homo Buzz at Camp Blood. I'm not about to argue with that queen; she'll cut ya'...hair.

Plus, it's Guillermo. He made Hell Boy. He made The Devil's Backbone. He's making Hell Boy 2, with a script he and Mike Mignola wrote pretty much wrote from the ground up. He's our people. As though Blade 2 left any doubt...

Tough questions, great answers

Ed Brayton, long-time evolution defender and libertarian (but, sadly, Duke fan), answers serious questions concerning free speech in ways I wish I could. Check it out.

Hate crime and hate speech laws disturb me to no end. Yelling "fire" in a crowded theater is not the same as yelling "flamer." And if someone causes me to physically suffer because I am gay, punishing that person for premeditatedly causing me to suffer will suffice. Like premeditated murder, the reason is irrelevant beyond the trial: you thought about it before you did it.

Into the Mind of Darkness

I'm having an absolutely hilarious debate with a christer fundamentalist on alt.talk.creationism. He states that he's a "Cyber Knight for Christ," whatever the hell that is. It's a must read. This is what happens when you don't make kids debate in school.

My high school never had a debate team, but I had the luck of being intellectually curious enough to read and learn debate tactics on my own. And I did have high school teachers who were brave enough to allow debates in their class. Then there was Mallet, of course.

Frederick Douglas pointed a finger...

...and it wasn't at atheists. It was at that old time religion, and rightly so. Excellent read. Ailes counterpoints a total hogwash WSJ opinion piece with a speech by Frederick Douglas.

Once again, christers revisionate to maintain they were always the good guys. Right.

I came across this quotation in my wanderings today. TR : a prescient badass.

The things that will destroy America are prosperity-at-any-price, peace-at-any-price, safety-first instead of duty-first, the love of soft living, and the get-rich-quick theory of life.

Theodore Roosevelt

Oh, so THAT'S why you separate church and state...

Lonnie Latham is another odious christer preacher who railed against homos...until he was caught soliciting sex from an undercover cop of, shall we say, a male persuasion. Anti-gay bigot preachers actually being homos is standard news now, but this isn't.

It turns out that Latham's lawyers are actually arguing that Lawrence vs. Texas, the Supreme Court ruling that overturned sodomy laws, also protects him from being arrested for asking a policeman to go to his hotel room for oral sex. Now I don't think he did anything legally wrong here, but he would have if his Southern Baptists had their christer theocracy in place. And the SoB's railed against that Supreme Court decision. It's just too rich!!!

Oh, and the ACLU filed a brief for Lonnie's side. The "Anti-Christian Liberal Union" as they call it. Ha! You just can't make this shit up...

Yeah, we're going to need some of these....

King Leonidas
Queen Gorgo
Ephialtes
Immortal
Spartan Helmet Prop Replica
Spartan Shield Prop Replica
Immortal Mask Prop Replica

My Review of "The God Delusion"

Overall, I really enjoyed Dawkins' latest book. While I felt some parts dragged a bit, it is a great read for any rational human being. I imagine it's a difficult read for the rest.

The book does have some empowering value, and Dawkins makes some very great points that I will take with me in all my dealings with the religious among us. My favorite point comes from the standard science fall back, "We can only explain how things happen, not why. For why, ask a theologian." Dawkins rightly points out that there is no reason to believe that a theologian would have a good answer to why, and that science is more likely to come up with the real answer eventually. So why point people to currently accepted nonsense? Why not instead ask them why no answer is worse than an unfounded (wrong) one, however convenient and satisfying having any answer may be? Why put any value in religious propositions when you could instead maintain that not knowing, and therefore investigating, is a much better path?

The take-home message is that religion, in any form, is delusional and dangerous. Why not accept reality and relish our ability to investigate it, rather than running scared from the unknown into the arms of nonexistent super-beings, subjecting you and others to all the ignorance, pain, and suffering faith in such phantoms cause.

No chimpy, that's a bad chimpy!

Chimpanzees are now on everyone's shit list. They're on the creationists' shit list, because they are capable of doing something all too human: make spears. They're on conservatives' shit list, because it's the females making the spears, and chicks shouldn't be in combat. They're on feminists' shit list for the same reason: women aren't aggressive, men are. They're on environmentalists' shit list because they're hunting--get this--cute little bush babies (insert obvious Democrat/Bush babies/Bush twins joke here; I don't do the easy ones)!

On a related note, I saw a great documentary about chimpanzee's cousins (and ours), bonobos. Christers should beware of letting their children see these things on TV and in zoos; they are immoral devil beasts. Not only do Evil-lutionists maintain that we are distantly related to these wonderful primates, but they regularly engage in promiscuous sex, including homo sex. And females are dominant. Clearly, the christer gods fucked up on that design.

The most touching moment of the documentary is when you learn that around 50 wildlife preserve rangers were murdered protecting the bonobos during the Second Congo War. People were so desparate, they were hunting the apes for food and accusing the rangers of being spies.

Blue Mars

The latest photos from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter reveal more evidence for liquid water on ancient Mars. The blue in the photo is not presumed water, but sand dunes. The halos are the interesting parts.

This orbiter is another great success for NASA, and it will be critical for future exploration.

And the rovers are still going, four YEARS past their scheduled lifetime!

In related news, christians are still waiting to get their good glimpse of Mars during the rapture, when they are pulled up through the universe to heaven by Jesus. Glad we didn't have to wait for their reports...

[Oops, the Orbiter is having some problems. So please ask any rapture-ready christer engineer you know to kindly fix them on their way out.]

Still harassing creationists

I'm still countering the rantings of the religious lunatics who believe that men came from mud and women from a human male rib. You can monitor my posts here.