Alphabetical Movie – Iron Man
To the few folks who enjoy my Alphabetical Movie Blogs, sorry for the lengthy dry spell. Fringe and the Renaissance Festival tend to slow down my movie viewing. For everyone who isn’t reading them anyway, this preamble was completely unneccessary.
I actually talked quite a bit about Iron Man on Episode 5 of Geeks Without God. My feelings about the recent slate of Marvel movies have been quite positive but having re-watched most of them recently, I feel Iron Man continues to be the best.
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.
New Geeks Without God Available!
Greetings my friends! If you haven’t heard already, we have a new Geeks Without God podcast available for your enjoyment! It must be Tuesday morning or something!
This week, we have guest Laura Okagaki-Vraspir talking to us about her work as a biologist. We got her to tell us about zombie ant fungi, which we all thought were unbelievably cool. You should take a listen!
Shit that pissed me off this week – 8/24
Todd Akin says “Legitimate Rape” Rarely Results in Pregnancy
Yeah, yeah, a lot of people are talking about this one so it may seem pointless that I even bring him up so late in the week. Ignoring his messed up statistics and knowledge of biology for a moment, what really has me upset is the concept of “legitimate rape.”
Now by this I assume he meant to insinuate that many women who claim to have been raped are lying. That is a pretty common tactic. Point out that some cases of rape are not legitimate (which is true) and you cast doubt on all claims of rape.
Because we’re stupid, we think that if one woman lies about rape, any claim of rape must be viewed as suspect. That’s what Akin taps into here. He is trying to diffuse the question of abortion in the case of rape by suggesting that women are lying about rape in order to get an abortion.
He may have issued an apology but the language was no accident. He knew exactly what he was saying and to whom he was speaking.
Note that Akin has brought all sorts of other stupid people out of the woodwork who have interesting thoughts about pregnancy and “legitimate” rape.
What I should have said
You know, Minnesotans for Marriage were out at the State Fair today. We all know that I don’t have a lot of respect for them and I suppose I should have gone up to them and said something. They all wore bright green T-shirts and they were very cherrfully chatting up the small contingent of people who came to their booth while dozens of folks with orange “Vote NO” fans streamed past. I should have gone up and talked to them. I should have told them that I feel their position is untenable and if they win in November, they have committed what I would consider to be a wholly evil act.
What’s the point, though? If you are so convinced that marriage equity is a horrible thing, I’m not going to say anything that will change your mind. If I come up and ask some sort of “gotcha” question, they will just smile and answer me with the same idiotic excuses they have been using to justify their beliefs for the last several months. The net result will be that I wasted fifteen minutes in which I could have been eating a Pronto Pup.
If I had walked up to them, though, here are some questions I might have asked:
Some Stuff for Guys to Think About
Hey guys – this post is for you. I know that some of us atheist guys don’t know what to think about the feminist movement in atheism right now. Some of us might feel a little bit threatened by it. Being a guy, I think I have a pretty good idea where you are coming from.
Ladies, I’m afraid this isn’t for you. I’m going to be talking about guy stuff. I don’t want you to feel excluded, though. You are totally welcome to read if you want.
But this is really something that I need to share with my boyfriends out there. We’ll be talking about football and swimsuit models and stuff. You probably wouldn’t be interested.
Are the ladies gone? I’m pretty sure I just passive aggressively got rid of them…
Atheism Plus What?
I’m an atheist. We all know that. When it comes to activism and atheism, I’m on the fringes. I consider myself a comedian and because of that, I take what is going on in the atheist movement just seriously enough to joke about it.
Because what is going on right now is pretty serious and, to my way of thinking, you need to be able to joke about it just to get past all of the vitriol.
Geeks Without God Episode 7
If I’m posting about a new Geeks Without God podcast, it must be Monday! Episode 7 is a Geeky Boner* episode. We talk about Mars Curiosity, Running with Zombies and other geeky stuff, including “Atheist Voices of Minnesota.”
If I can make a personal comment about this week’s episode (of course I can – it’s my blog), I feel pretty good about how the three of us are coming together for our guest-free podcasts. It’s a learning experience to share hosting duties but we’re figuring it out. So hooray – go team Geeks Without God!
*Geeky Boner is how we refer to our latest geeky obsessions. This is all thanks to the fact Molly always talks about how she gets big old geeky boners for stuff.
New Comedy Writing
I’ve got quite a few new articles up at the Vilification Tennis website this morning.
I wrote the World News article this morning looking at doubts surrounding Mitt Romney’s Citizenship.
I also wrote a new Movie Dick article about a brand new genre in movie making – the “film in which the title character doesn’t appear” genre.
And finally, after a brief hiatus, we have a new episode of the Vilification Tennis Podcast up! We recorded it in the MN Renaissance Festival campground on Friday night and it is pretty entertaining.
So pop on over and take a look if you like!
Shit that Pissed me Off This Week – 8/17
A bit of a slow week over here at Shit that Pissed Me Off HQ. I should probably get worked into more of a froth about Paul Ryan but the guy just doesn’t interest me. It’s like Mitt Romney was looking for someone with less of a personality than he has.
Yeah, yeah, I know that Ryan wants to get rid of Medicare and all that other garbage but when you look at the guy, don’t you seriously just think that they could put two mannequins on stage at the Republican convention and most of the delegates wouldn’t notice?
Ladies and Gentlemen! The Next President and Vice President of the United States!
I’m not saying the delegates are that stupid (although Michele Bachmann will be there so at least some of them are). I’m just saying these guys could possibly constitute the most boring ticket in the history of Presidential elections (although Kerry/Lieberman is pretty close).
Anyway, on to shit that pissed me off!
Dumb-Ass shoots a security Guard at the Family Research Council
As only too many liberal groups are pointing out in the wake of this attack, I hate everything the Family Research Council stands for but violence is not the answer to the problem. You don’t change minds with a senseless shooting. Nobody looked at this event and thought “hey – I’d better start supporting gay rights because if I don’t, some nutbar might shoot me.” That didn’t happen.
Instead, all sorts of gay advocate groups had to quickly point out that this guy wasn’t with them and they didn’t support what he did. Which should have been bloody obvious.
Turns out it wasn’t, though, because Family Research Council Tony Perkins blamed the Southern Poverty Law Center for the act. Or rather, he said they should be “held responsible.”
Now, I’m guessing Mr. Perkins doesn’t think he should be held responsible when a gay kid gets beaten up in high school, does he? Nor does he think he should be held responsible when people shout hateful things at a gay couple getting married in New York. The double standard is pretty pathetic, don’t you think?
Grail Diary 