OK, so… April. Yeah, that wasn’t a party. First there were the two weeks in a four week period that I was on the road for work–that’s more being away from home than I like. Then there was the massive and literally stunning workload–I don’t want to go into detail about my job here, but the scope of my responsibility… Read more →
Category: Head-Explodes
Head explodes again
The Texas Board of Education will vote this week on a new science curriculum designed to challenge the guiding principle of evolution, a step that could influence what is taught in biology classes across the nation. The proposed curriculum change would prompt teachers to raise doubts that all life on Earth is descended from common ancestry. Texas is such a… Read more →
Peaks of rage
You know, if I posted every time Harper’s government took and action, or announced a policy direction, that I disagreed with or found repugnant, this blog would be one long bile-laden rant. So I mostly take the “ignore them and hope they go away” strategy, coupled with the occasional rant when something particularly ludicrous or vile happens. Here’s a couple… Read more →
Cheney’s Assassination Bureau
You’ve probably seen the story by now: Hersh replied, “After 9/11, I haven’t written about this yet, but the Central Intelligence Agency was very deeply involved in domestic activities against people they thought to be enemies of the state. Without any legal authority for it. They haven’t been called on it yet.” Hersh then went on to describe a second… Read more →
To treat with excessive leniency, generosity, or consideration
I was not particularly indulgent with the Catholic Church and Pope Inquisitor, when I last discussed plenary indulgences on here. (Quoting Hitchens doesn’t count.) I see that the indulgences are newsworthy again, with some discussion this week of a piece in the Times. I’m mostly amused that part of the point of the piece is that most Catholics apparently don’t… Read more →
Aside
Wow. 22 minutes. He’s right, they do live on shamelessness and motivated amnesia.
Aside
Wow. Some people are so dumb it would take them an hour to make minute rice. I want to get that site’s customer list so I can do a tour and just slap people upside the head. Or possibly sell them them my air purifying apparatus, which takes advantage of non-commutative loop space in M5-branes to make air vibrationally harmonic.
UPDATE: That page appears to have disappeared, but you can still see some of the madness at the root page of the domain. Or, at lots of other domain names all for the same thing.
Dude has no fear of CSIS
You know, my feelings about our current PM, and his ideological associates are no secret around these parts, but my ability to rant certainly takes a back seat to that of Canadian SF author, and scientist, Peter WattsWatts has been mentioned here lots of times.. And more than being a better ranter, he appears to have no fear at all… Read more →
Way To Go America, Part 2
While I’m at it, here’s a little something Will clued me in to. There are other human rights that the UN is trying to craft declarations of, as part of its continuing efforts to establish some baselines for civilized national behaviours. These are two quotes from what are essentially meeting minutes from a committee meeting wherein 8 such new resolutions… Read more →
War Crimes And Justice For All.
OK. Let’s start by quoting Glenn Greenwald, who I love to read at Salon, in an interview with Bill Moyers (himself much lauded around these parts). Let’s just quickly describe in the most dispassionate terms, as few of euphemisms, as possible, where we are and what has happened over the last eight years. We have a law in place that… Read more →
Good idea, let’s lower the bar.
And now, from the “dumbest thing I’ve read today” file: Bournemouth Council, which has the Latin motto Pulchritudo et Salubritas – beauty and health – has listed 19 terms it no longer considers acceptable for use. They include ad hoc, bona fide, status quo, vice versa and even via. Its list of alternatives includes ‘for this special purpose’, in place… Read more →
Still Processing The Election
What may end up disgusting me the most is actually the turnout number. Here’s some background from an article, “Voter turnout: democracy’s dirty little secret“, that ran during the campaign: In 1988, a healthy 75 per cent of the voters cast their ballots, but no turnout since then has come close to that level. — 1993: 70.9 per cent. —… Read more →
Raging Out: DVD designed to create xenophobia works
So, the Clarion fund, which exists to “educate the public about the threat of Islamic terrorism” has massively distributing their DVD, which sure seems designed to make Americans afraid of brown people. Interesting, the fund seems to have done this massive distribution in the swing states only. I wonder what objective they could hope to achieve by fanning the flames… Read more →
Raging Out: No One Cares About Torture
It is now a matter of record that Bush, Cheney, Rice, Ashcroft, Rumsfeld, Tenet, and Powell were all directly involved in authorizing the use of torture. The group called itself the National Security Principals Committee. It held dozens of top-secret decisions in the White House. This according to an ABC News investigation, sourced with unnamed, high-ranking officials. The Principals included… Read more →
I like Art
I also the The Arts. Of course I’m an elitist liberal scum, but this just gives me one more reason to despise Stephen Harper. I could rant, but let’s let George at BookNinja do it instead, since he’s so good at it: First, he tried to set up arts and culture producers, from dance companies to music groups to writers… Read more →
