Lil Bush

The Lil Bush show on Comedy Central never called to me although from this clip, it appears to offer a few laughs. I suspect that this episode is funnier than most though. He does however, provide a great definition of the Bible: "A handbook for not having to know anything."
http://onegoodmove.org/1gm/1gmarchive/2007/07/lil_bush_and_ev.html

BBC4

BBC4 seems to have some good stuff.

Like the Now Show:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/comedy/nowshow.shtml
(this bit is good) http://onegoodmove.org/1gm/1gmarchive/2007/07/petulant_pricks.html

...and the text version of THE HITCHHIKER ADVENTURE GAME by Douglas Adams - 20th Anniversary Edition -- now with graphics.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/hitchhikers/

Max Blumenthal

This guy is pretty good.

max blumenthal: Generation Chickenhawk
Here you can see how certain college Republican chickenhawks think (actually, "don't think" is closer to reality).


max blumenthal: Rapture Ready.
And on his website here is an even scarier evangelical meeting where you can see Tom Delay and Senator Joe Lieberman mix it up with a bunch of folks who think that the devil is behind the Muslim religion and they can't wait for the rapture! Wow -- where do they grow these people? Must be something in the water.

Really, You Have No Idea

The Bushie politicize everything. Everything?? E V E R Y T H I N G!!!!

It's an Emergency

Haven't seen Sicko? Not sure if our current health insurance system is broken? Then read on my friend:
http://onegoodmove.org/1gm/1gmarchive/2007/07/its_an_emergenc.html

Money quote:
"I don't know how many people my insurance company waited to death that year, but I'm certain the number wasn't zero."

People need to get over themselves

What is it about people that they feel that they have a right to NOT be offended?? Sorry, that's part of living in the real world. Chances are that there's always something you can find that's somewhat offensive. Then there are the people who go around looking to be offended so they can stomp around like children threatening to hold their breath.

I'm offended by stupidity, for example. Not the kind where one can't help that they were born with a below average IQ but the kind where otherwise capable brains are allowed to turn flabby through lack of use. I think that I have the right to choose to be offended -- it's my opinion and I'm entitled to it. Perhaps I'm in error in feeling this way somehow and shouldn't be offended by this type of behavior. But there it is.

What I DON'T have the right to is to then expect the world to change in order to make me feel better. If I want to enact change then it's up to ME; not someone else to do it for me. More people need to take some responsibility for themselves and their environment and stop being a bunch of cry-babies. It seems that we're becoming a nation of wusses!

So here's a recent example where some small-minded people were offended by an unkind description from PZ Myers that I feel is otherwise accurate. Not mean; just blunt.
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/07/im_surrounded.php

Isn't this a lovely map? It shows the concentration of ignorant, deluded, wicked, foolish, or oppressed victims of obsolete mythologies in the United States, with the lighter colors being the most enlightened and the dark reds being the most repressed and misinformed. Oh, it's labeled as the frequency of religious adherents, but it's the same thing.

So he doesn't paint a pretty picture. Yeah well, the truth hurts sometimes. But to me this is a sign that you have a bit of cognitive dissonance that needs some work. Human tendency is to be weak and run away from the truth in such cases. But an adult should be mature enough to face up to the hard cold facts and learn to cope -- not rationalize it away.

After the firestorm of negative feedback, PZ responded to the more common complaints he received, in part...
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/07/in_which_the_obnoxious_atheist.php

You've been given your prescription, people of faith: you believe in a lot of goofy, stupid, ridiculous ideas. You can resign yourself to them if you aren't strong enough to part from them — I'm not going to follow you to church and drag you out with a choke-chain — or you can wake up. It's all up to you. One thing you don't get to do is silence the people who point and laugh.

It's interesting to note that while I'm offended by stupidity (and therefore try to eliminate when I find it in myself), apparently these folks seem to mostly be offended that they've had their stupidity pointed out to them (or irrationality, if you prefer) -- and from their responses they are clear that they have no intention of trying to eliminate it.

Surgeon General Was Muzzled, Censored by the Bush Administration

In testimony before the House Oversight Committee, former Surgeon General Richard Carmona explains how he was silenced on subjects like contraception and stem cell research.
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/video/56574/

Richard Carmona served as President Bush's first Surgeon General from 2002-2006. Today he spoke before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and revealed that political appointees in the Bush administration muzzled him on key issues such as "stem cell research, contraceptives and his misgivings
about the administration's embrace of 'abstinence-only' sex education":
[A]lthough most Americans believe that their Surgeon General has the ability to impact the course of public health as "the nation's doctor," the reality is that the nation's doctor has been marginalized and relegated to a position with no independent budget, and with supervisors who are political appointees with partisan agendas. Anything that doesn't fit into the political appointees' ideological, theological, or political agenda is ignored, marginalized, or simply buried.

You gotta love Hal Fishman

He's one of the last great newsmen still on the air. Checkout his Commentary
http://ktla.trb.com/news/local/eveningnews/ktla-news-fishman-commentary,0,5509066.storygallery?sitemap

See the Commentary on 7/11, about Chertoff's "gut" and 4/3 about the push in some UK school to stop teaching about the Holocaust or other subjects that might offend certain pupils.

First Intelligent Design and now this -- are you kidding me? Our children are already enough at risk due to shoddy education and some want to further gut the curriculum? Are we trying to educate with the hard, cold facts or pacify with comforting nonsense? Bush says "lets teach the controversy." What controversy; that some people are afraid of educating our kids? What's next, Alchemy instead of Chemistry and Astrology in lieu of Astronomy? Maybe they'd like to just burn all the books and go back to the dark ages. Frightening.

The Daily Show is Back from Vacation

...and they're on fire.

1. Hot and Fathered -- on the nearly $800M acknowledgment of gross negligence by the Catholic Church. Cardinal Mahoney apologizes for offending any of the 508 adults that he allegedly abused while they were minors.


2. We don't really expect senators, especially from Louisiana, to stay away from prostitutes do we?


3. Watch those triple-negatives, Condi -- you might pull a muscle. Not un-bad.


More clips here.

Vatican reiterates hardline on primacy of Catholic Church

http://rawstory.com/news/afp/Vatican_reiterates_hardline_on_prim_07102007.html

The Vatican set itself on a collision course
with other Christian faiths Tuesday, reaffirming the primacy of the Roman
Catholic Church in a corrective document which it said was designed to clear up
recent "erroneous" doctrine.
The document's central claim, that only the
Catholic Church is "the one true Church of Christ", is likely to revive a debate
which has dogged the Vatican's relationship with rival Christian denominations
for decades.

Strangely silent on this challenge have been the Protestant, Mormon, Jewish and Muslim Popes -- maybe they have something to hide? What, those groups don't have an infallible leader who speaks directly to the creator of the universe? Then I guess we know now who Yahweh likes better don't we?

Please, Mr. Bush... Just be Consistent

Bush, the ethicist-in-chief

IN A BRIEF ceremony in the East Room of the White House on June 2, President Bush vetoed legislation permitting federally funded embryonic stem cell research, declaring, "Destroying human life in the hopes of saving human life is not ethical."

So what are we to make of Principled George's penchant for executing human beings in unparalleled numbers during his term as governor of Texas? He's on record as saying capital punishment serves as a deterrent of possible future murders and rapes, which sounds an awful lot like he's following a principle that says, "It's OK to take a human life in the hope of saving another human life." And that just doesn't seem to gel with his lofty pronouncement that, "Destroying human life in the hopes of saving human life is not ethical." Actually, it sounds more like its opposite.

Please Don't Forget The Constitution

Too often politicians forget that they work FOR the people. They also forget that they're not swearing an oath to their political party or to the president but to the CONSTITUTION. This appears to be particularly problematic -- painfully so -- under GW (Rove, really) who is trying to turn the entire government into his personal political machine.

A Presidential flunky, Sara Taylor, shows an appalling lack of knowledge
about government service and the constitution. Patrick Leahy gives her a well
deserved upbraiding. “I know that the president refers to the government being
his government — it’s not” — Patrick Leahy

http://onegoodmove.org/1gm/1gmarchive/2007/07/the_constitutio.html

[Thanks 1gm]

Bush resists healthcare for more U.S. children

This doesn't seem like the decision of a religious, "family man." I guess money and ideology trump those issues for GW:
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/07/16/bush-resists-healthcare-for-more-us-children/

Christopher Lee noted over the weekend, “If anything looked like a sure thing in the new Congress, it was that lawmakers would renew, and probably expand, the popular, decade-old State Children’s Health Insurance Program before it expires this year.” It’s a no-brainer, right? Who’s going to balk at an established, successful program that offers health insurance for kids? As it turns out, the president is.

The Root of All Evil?

http://www.cbc.ca/bigpicture/evil.html

Great discussion, if you've not seen it. Good links, quotes, facts, etc. Here's a primer:

"Religious faith discourages independent thought, it's divisive and it's dangerous." Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion.

Famed UK scientist Richard Dawkins delivers a scathing indictment of religion's growing power in the post 9-11 world. Dawkins travels the physical and spiritual landscape of three great religions with pointed questions about the "process of non-thinking called faith."
He believes fundamentalist American Christianity is attacking science and he takes on Ted Haggard, one of America's most powerful Christian evangelists. He then travels to the heart of the Middle East, to Jerusalem to meet Jews and Muslims who defend their faith against his assertion that "irrational faith is back on the march" and harmful to modern civilization. Richard Dawkins holds a chair in the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University and is Britain's best known atheist. His impassioned defence of Darwinian evolution has earned him the nickname "Darwin's rottweiler."

Stick up for your country!

[In case you missed this -- from a 2005 news story]

CANBERRA AUSTRALIA: Muslims who want to live under Islamic Sharia law were told on Wednesday to get out of Australia, as the government targeted radicals in a bid to head off potential terror attacks. A day after a group of mainstream Muslim leaders pledged loyalty to Australia at a special meeting with Prime Minister John Howard, he and his ministers made it clear that extremists would face a crackdown.

Treasurer Peter Costello, seen as heir apparent to Howard, hinted that some radical clerics could be asked to leave the country if they did not accept that australia was a secular state and its laws were made by parliament. "If those are not your values, if you want a country which has Sharia law or a theocratic state, then Australia is not for you," he said on national television. "I'd be saying to clerics who are teaching that there are two laws governing people in Australia, one the Australian law and another the Islamic law, that is false.

If you can't agree with parliamentary law, independent courts, democracy, and would prefer Sharia law and have the opportunity to go to other country which practices it, perhaps, then, that's a better option," Costello said. Asked whether he meant radical clerics would be forced to leave, he said those with dual citizenship could possibly be asked to move to the other country.

More here http://www.snopes.com/politics/religion/australia.asp.
___________

Now if we could only get a current politician with the guts of Jefferson or Madison to make the same statement about American values. They're all so spineless though; Kucinich is probably our only hope...

"Our values are:

1. democratic government
2. an independent judiciary -- not a politicized one
3. goverment by the people, for the people -- with transparency to the people
4. checks and balances
5. separation of church and state (secular state)
6. fair application of the rule of law
7. equality
8. freedom
9. privacy

If you don't value these things; if you can't come together and share them with the rest of us; then America is not for you."

Jesus & Mo discuss relativism

http://www.jesusandmo.net/2007/07/05/reply/

CNN Gets Blitzed by Michael Moore

Wow, Moore tears CNN a new one! Rightly so. His follow-up on CNN and Olbermann have more content but aren't nearly as fun or as worthwhile. Checkout
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-XQ8nfnye4

Bill Moyers interview E.O. Wilson on the obliteration of nature.

He says that given our rate of environmental destruction we are approaching a "bottleneck" that we must work very hard just to get through and survive as a species. Population expected to hit 9 billion, increased per capita consumption, pollution, over fishing, decimated ecosystems, etc, etc. Note that this is on top of the very real threats from global warming.

The U.N. recently reported that in just 30 years, one quarter of all mammals will be extinct. By the ned of the century, it's estimated that we'll lose half of ALL species of animals.

Quote:
"If we could change our world-view, it would be somewhat radical, but it would mean seeing ourselves as a biological species in a biological world. That we are a species exquisitely well adapted to this planet and that we originated here and that our peculiarities including the ones that threaten us all the time, that threaten your own-- threaten our own existence are-- can be understood by the history of the way we originated in that living world. And if we could just place ourselves realistically in that context and stop thinking of ourselves as semi angels, you know, on the way that this is just a weigh station on a way on up to-- an idealized existence-- change that. Then, I think we would get pretty serious about peace and long term security and saving the rest of life. And-- and-- keeping our options open for the future."

Visit http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/07062007/profile.html for video and transcript.

The Little Lad Dance

The Starburst Berries & Cream commercial is disturbingly funny...
http://youtube.com/watch?v=wYX_zhlTDr8

but this? Well, it's mostly just disturbing:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=Ik8xpHdItrE

Dramatic Chipmunk

Sure, you've watched this more times than you'd like to count but do you know what really scared this poor prairie dog? Here's the original post:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=SZjPvoYeZRI

As a small animal I too would equally scared by a bunch of screaming Japonese girls.

The Republican War on Science Rages On

Former Surgeon General Richard Carmona’s testimony has once again highlighted the extent to which the Bush administration suppresses and manipulates science to fit their narrow ideological view. Whether it’s stem cell research, global warming, the Plan B contraceptive, or abstinence-only education, they consistently put appeasing their extremist, fringe base over the interests of the country at large. CNN’s Christine Romans details the many battles in Bush’s War on Science.

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/07/12/the-republican-war-on-science-rages-on/

Another great Sam Harris speech

Believing the Unbelievable: The Clash Between Faith and Reason in the Modern World by Sam Harris
http://richarddawkins.net/article,1411,n,n

Amazing Hubble pictures

Wow -- this is really amazing! It sure makes you feel insignificant, though.
http://hubblesite.org/gallery/wallpaper/pr2003001a/
http://hubblesite.org/gallery/wallpaper/pr2006023a/

Check out the other pictures. They're all great.

Stomp

A mix of their work.

The Hoff

Sure you've seen him drunk.
Of course you've marvelled at "Hooked on a Feeling."
You probably don't want to miss the cheesy "Looking for Freedom" that can't even be saved by constant Kitt stunts.
Lip synching in German adds a whole new twist.
It's hard to improve upon "Secret Agent Man" -- at least not for the money they didn't spend.
But nothing is quite as disturbing as "Get in My Car." He pulls out all the stops and the result is ... breathtaking.

Swiss Top Secret Drum Corp

Huh? The Swiss have secrets that don't involve hiding people's money? Doesn't seem like much of a secret if they perform in public, though.

Okay, well let's take a look then:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVMiHC2Bj6k

Now you know why they're a secret. It takes a special talent to take a group of really good drummers, have them endlessly practice precision marching and timing stunts but then turn it all into a snoozefest by dressing them as Muskateers and have them enact faux swordfights with their drumsticks.

I'll bet that Drumline or Stomp the Yard is better (sorry, missed those). Certainly, you can't go wrong with STOMP:
Stomp Out Loud
STOMP - Basketball & Kitchen
Brooms
Stomp: Pail Drummers

Something to consider in the next election

High court has entered a new era
The chief justice, with help from fellow Bush appointee Alito, carries big rulings to the right -- a generational shift

"It is not often in the law that so few have so quickly changed so much," Justice Stephen G. Breyer, 68, said in the courtroom on the final day of the term.

Said Steven R. Shapiro, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union: "The Roberts court has moved with lightning speed to roll back fundamental rights. Having begun with a promise to respect precedent and seek consensus, the Roberts court has so far done neither."

Several Democratic presidential candidates have said the court is emerging as a major issue in the next election. The two most senior justices — Stevens and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 74 — are its steadiest liberals. They will probably be replaced by the next president.

Roberts and Alito probably have at least two decades ahead of them, along with like-minded conservative Justice Clarence Thomas, 59.

"If a conservative Republican president has the opportunity to replace a mainstream justice with one more right-wing vote, this country would be in a lot of trouble," former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, a Democratic candidate for president, said in a statement last week.

He continued: "We can't take that chance."


...read more in this LA Times article.

The Republican War on Science

http://www.waronscience.com/excerpt.php

Aaargh!

You know who's now done more jail time that Scooter Libby? Paris Hilton.

More searing pain can be had here http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2007/07/04/notes070407.DTL&nl=fix. Sometimes you have to cut yourself to know that you can feel.

You Don't Know Dick

See more installments at http://www.comedycentral.com.

iPhones are great!?

Friday Flotsam - July 6

ShiftHappens – Everyone should watch this … it changes your perspective (for the better)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMcfrLYDm2U

ShiftHappens wiki site

This guy gave a great keynote at a recent conference. Slides here:

http://www.slideshare.net/mcleod/2007-cali/

He has a great technology/education blog here:

http://www.dangerouslyirrelevant.org/

_____________________

Have you seen the Battle at Kruger?

http://youtube.com/watch?v=LU8DDYz68kM

Survival of the fittest is never pretty but sometimes it can be interesting to see who the bigger badass is: a few lions, a couple of alligators or a bunch of water buffalo. Place your bets.

_____________________

Scientists and engineers simulate jet colliding with World Trade Center

http://www.rcac.purdue.edu/news/news_wtc.cfm

"Current findings from the simulation have identified the destruction of 11 columns on the 94th floor, 10 columns on the 95th floor and nine columns on the 96th floor," he said. "This is a major insight. When you lose close to 25 percent of your columns at a given level, the building is significantly weakened and vulnerable to collapse."

_______________________

POLITICS

Kucinich has good ideas -- I hope that people are listening:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3w4aDFH450Q

It's too bad that he's not as "camera-friendly" as Edwards.

_____________________

Fareed At Last

By Harry Shearer

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/harry-shearer/fareed-at-last_b_53729.html

Fareed Zakaria, a friend of a friend (so this post is written with the love and the respect and everything), last came into my consciousness when he told George Stephanopoulos on May 20 that Tony Blair would go down in history as the most significant Labor Prime Minister of the UK since Lloyd George. (For the record, Lloyd George was a Liberal, not a Laborite) Now (ht--Kevin Drum) Fareed writes a piece in Newsweek about the reality of the jihadist situation in the modern world:

...The split between Sunnis and Shiites -- which plays a role in Lebanon as well -- is only one of the divisions within the world of Islam... Rather than speaking of a single worldwide movement -- which absurdly lumps together Chechen separatists in Russia, Pakistani-backed militants in India, Shiite warlords in Lebanon and Sunni jihadists in Egypt -- we should be emphasizing that all these groups are distinct, with differing agendas, enemies and friends. That robs them of their claim to represent Islam. It describes them as they often are -- small local gangs of misfits, hoping to attract attention through nihilism and barbarism.

Fine as far as it goes, but doesn't one have to ask: in the face of this reality, what benefit does the Bush administration derive from ignoring such reality-based advice? Would it have something to do with advancing their fear-based argument about "the enemy" coming here? After all, if these were "small local gangs of misfits", they would hardly pose a continuing, unique threat to the homeland that requires war without end, and government without anything except what Dick Cheney wants.

[True. Looking at it another way, given the various factions that can’t be all made happy at the same time, how do we keep them from getting angry enough to find some way to detonate a nuclear device? What are we doing to help sow peace, democracy, and prosperity throughout the world?]

_____________________

_____________________

In Defense of Witchcraft

By Sam Harris

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sam-harris/in-defense-of-witchcraft_b_53865.html

Imagine that the year is 1507, and life is difficult. Crops fail, good people suffer instantaneous and horrifying turns of bad luck, and even the children of royalty regularly die before they have taken their first steps. As it turns out, everyone understands the cause of these calamities: it is witchcraft. Not all witchcraft is at fault, of course -- there are "white" witches who use their powers to heal -- but there is no question that some witches have formed an alliance with the Devil. Happily, the Church has produced many learned and energetic men who are equal to this challenge, and each year hundreds of women are put to death for casting spells upon their innocent neighbors.

Imagine being among the tiny percentage of people -- the 5 percent, or 10 percent at most -- who think that a belief in witchcraft is nothing more than a malignant fantasy. Imagine writing a book arguing that magic spells do no real work in the world, that the confessions of bad witches are delusional or coerced, that the claims of good witches are self-serving and unempirical. You argue further that a belief in magic offers false hope of benefits that are best sought elsewhere, like from scientific medicine, and lays the ground for false accusations of imaginary crimes, leading to the misery and death of innocent people…

[see link for full text]