Shit that Pissed me Off – 5/3
Iowa Legislators want to Punish the Iowa Supreme Court by Cutting Their Pay
Let me start by saying that this particular law doesn’t stand a chance of passing. I’m not annoyed that it could actually become law.
I’m annoyed that it is being discussed. At issue is the fact that the Iowa supreme court, in a unanimous decision, declared that banning same-sex marriage was unconstitutional. That’s why same-sex marriage is legal in Iowa right now.
Well a few Legislators feel the court overstepped their bounds by interpreting the state constitution (or – to re-state – “doing their job”) in a way that these particular Legislators felt was wrong. So they have proposed to cut the pay of the “activist” justices until such a time as same-sex marriage becomes unconstitutional.
It’s like a bribe in reverse!
Just those justices, by the way. Any new justices would come in at the regular, pro-homophobic pay rate.
I’ve got a better idea, how about the Legislators cut their own pay until they understand you don’t cut the pay of another branch of government just because you don’t like their conclusions?
Shit that Pissed me Off This Week – 3/15
I get frustrated when science is doing something cool – in this case sampling water from a lake buried under four kilometers of ice to see if there is life there – and the results are less than thrilling.
I mean, it should be enough that they drilled through four kilometers of ice and took a sample of the lake water to begin with. And I admit, that is pretty fucking cool.
I was really hoping they would find something else there. Maybe they still will but for right now, it looks like the only thing they discovered was water.
Admit it. It would have been way cooler if they’d found one of these!
I don’t want to sound bitter but I’ve seen water before.
*Note: It isn’t over yet. There is a lot more scientific work to be done. For now, though, there are no ice monsters in Antarctica. Dammit.
Shit that Pissed me Off This Week, 12/7
Bill O’Reilly says Anyone who Thinks Christianity is a Religion is “Stone-Cold Dumb”
In his latest tirade against the “war on Christmas” he insists that the biggest problem is all of us idiots who think that Christianity is a religion instead of a philosophy. We are, in fact, “so stupid, it’s painful.”
Well I’m sorry to cause Mr. O’Reilly so much pain but I’m going to have to ask him in what way Christianity does not meet the following definition:
The belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, esp. a personal God or gods.
Now perhaps Mr. O’Reilly thinks that Christianity is also a philosophy. That is a different conversation but it isn’t what he said.
The problem, in fact, is not what he said but the fact that when he says it, thousands of people adopt his position as truth. Instead of saying to themselves “holy shit – that is the most fucked up description of Christianity I’ve ever heard,” which they should because most of them are Christians, they are instead saying “he’s right! I don’t accept the divinity of Jesus Christ as part of a religion! It’s my philosophy!!!!”
However, let them believe that because if they want to argue that Christianity is a philosophy, then their churches need to start paying taxes because they are no longer exempt. And they can’t get all pissed off about people saying “Happy Holidays” either because we aren’t attacking their religion any longer. Since they don’t have one. They also can’t demand freedom of religion either. The first amendment doesn’t provide freedom of philosophy.
Let’s all celebrate Rene Descartes day! We’ll all spend the whole day thinking and therefore being! Thanks for opening the door to making it a Federal holiday, Bill!
You keep going with this one Bill. I hope you convince everyone who is watching your show that you are right.
Note: He backed off that claim a little bit when a Catholic Priest corrected him. Damn! I really wanted him to re-define Christianity as a philosophy.
Shit that Pissed me off This Week – 11/30
Kentucky Law Forces People to Acknowledge that Only God Can Protect us from Terrorism
To be fair, I’m expecting most people in Kentucky believe this anyway. Forcing the dept of Homeland Security to post a plaque acknowledging the contributions of God really feel like a violation of church and state, though, doesn’t it? The Kentucky courts, for some reason, don’t actually see it that way.
Actually, the Kentucky supreme court has refused to hear challenges to the law so it becomes difficult to determine exactly how the courts see it.
But let’s be clear here, if god is responsible for protecting us from terrorism, we have put our faith in the wrong guy. I don’t know if anyone else was paying attention on Sept 11th, 2001 but I didn’t see a big divine hand inserting itself between those airplanes and those buildings.
Let me catch that for you!
Passing a law saying god will protect us from terrorism after god has already failed to do so is like hiring a guy to stop people from shoplifting at Wal-Mart after you watched a video in which he was ignoring his friends who were shoplifting at Wal-mart.
Shit that Pissed me off This Week – 11/23
Conservative Christian Commenter Shows Remarkable Lack of Knowledge about Nature
We haven’t gotten a lot of comments from right-wing Christians over at Geeks Without God yet. I guess we haven’t quite hit the big time. I’m sure that we may eventually be awash in commenters telling us we are going to hell but we’ll need to have patience for that. Someday we will be truly famous on the internet!
We did get a comment this week and what annoys me is not the comment, but the tremendous level of ignorance that it contains while being only a paragraph long.
If you are going to argue that homosexuality is unnatural, don’t start by arguing that it doesn’t happen in nature. Because it does.
No really! It was an accident! We just tried to have sex with her at the exact same time!
Now as a whacked out conservative Christian, you have all sorts of articles that will try to make the argument that sure, homosexuality occurs in other animals, but it doesn’t count. So why deny homosexual behavior exists in wild animals when you can just make excuses for it?
Please note that last link takes you to Coservapedia so beware: that way lies madness.
The point here is that the argument is useless obfuscation. Who cares if homosexuality occurs in other species? Birds can fly. Fish can breathe underwater. Humans can’t. Different species do different things that are completely natural. The presumption that homosexuality is a behavior that is somehow the only thing an animal species does that is counter to the natural order defies logic.
Humans, in fact, do a ton of stuff other animals don’t or can’t do. There is no presumption that most of those things are unnatural. Homosexuality gets special attention because one passage in a very long book has been given far too much relevance.
Alphabetical Movie – Jurassic Park
Life finds a way.
So we are told by Dr. Ian Malcom in Jurassic Park.
We will ignore the problems with the fashion in which this happens in Jurassic Park – it is Science Fiction after all – because I’m really intrigued by the concept that life finds a way.
Shit that Pissed me off this Week – 10/12
I honestly wonder if the dude even reviews law before he makes rulings. His most recent comments seem to state that since anti-sodomy laws were on the books for 200 years, that makes them constitutional.
I guess we can be pretty certain he’s not going to be terribly supportive of marriage equality, is he?
See, I understand that there are different legal interpretations of a lot of things but what I don’t understand is how one dude who is so clearly an asshole who doesn’t give a shit about anything except making sure corporations can spend money however they please can have so much power over the rest of us. Yeah, he’s one of nine but he’s one vote you can always count on.
And by that I mean, ask yourself how a jackass would rule on any particular topic and you can bet Scalia will vote that way.
Not that kind of jackass!
Shit that Pissed me Off this Week – 9/21
Rick Santorum Doesn’t Like Smart People
We all know what I think of Rick Santorum, right?
Santorum basically believes the “intellectual elite” just want to run the lives of everyone that is dumber than them. He seems to believe that smart people are all mad scientists who believe that if the world will just submit to their will, we’ll all be a lot happier.
Yes! If I am successful, I will FORCE THE WORLD to never have cancer again! BWA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA!!!
The wave of anti-intellectualism in this country is staggering. It’s the reason people with no knowledge of biology will spend hours arguing with biologists about the evidence for evolution. Santorum is not the cause of this wave. He’s a symptom.
I can’t understand why anyone, Conservative or Liberal, wants to live in a country where we dismiss the brightest among us simply because they happen to be smart. Maybe I’m the only person who views Idiocracy as a cautionary tale.
I look at people like Rick Santorum and I think that he could very well represent the smartest of our future politicians. If that doesn’t fill you with horror, you are probably already too far gone.
The Unassailable Logic of Ignorance
So the quote of the day goes to a creationist on Facebook who just said the following:
When we observe the fossil record we will see only two pieces of evidence with which to make a rational and logical conclusion:
1. Fossils of extinct creatures and,
2. Fossils of creatures that are still living today.From this observable evidence it can easily be seen that ALL the creatures still living today have not changed after “millions of years”. They have somehow mysteriously forgotten to evolve and look identical to their fossil counterpart.
If you, like me, have a logical and rational brain, your response will be something like this:
What the fuck? Are you stupid, crazy or both?????
Neil Armstrong and the Moon
One of my favorite movies of all time is The Dish. In it, a bunch of Australians running a radio telescope help relay pictures of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin’s walk on the moon. At one point, one of them observes that the first moon walk was science’s chance to be “daring.”
After Armstrong died this week, I read a tweet that observed 24 human beings have walked on the moon. 17 are still alive. The youngest is 76. (Correction – the numbers are off. The actual numbers are worse. See the correct info in the comments – serves me right for failing to double check numbers off a tweet!)
The odds are quite good that none of them will live to see the 25th.
That makes me sad.
