T Minus 1 Day Till Draw Mohammed Day!

Thursday, May 20 is Draw Mohammed Day!

News From Around The Blogosphere 5.17.10

I'm Miss USA now. Suck on that, bitches!

1. A Muslim and liberal declared Miss USA – This is a nice step up from Carrie Prejean. Of course the right-wing loonies who last year defended Carrie Prejean as having a right to her idiotic opinions have now come out swinging against the new Miss USA Rima Fakih. Fakih is an Arab-American (are we still doing the hyphen thing?) of Lebanese decent. Of course the right-wing pundits are all claiming liberal bias again because Miss Oklahoma Morgan Elizabeth Woolard lost after saying she was “perfectly fine” with the new Arizona immigration policy.

Of course once again, their over the top outrage seems to coincidentally be against someone who just happens to not be white. So what did my personal favorite insane righter-winger Debbie Schlussel and other pundits say about this trivial little pageant decisions?

– Conservative radio host Debbie Schlussel blamed Fakih’s win on a supposed “politically correct, Islamo-pandering climate” in America and labeled her a “Lebanese Muslim Hezbollah supporter with relatives who are top terrorists.” [5/16/10]

– Right wing pundit and Fox contributor Michelle Malkin ranted that “Fakih’s cheerleaders are too busy tooting the identity politics horn to care what comes out of her mouth” and that “the Miss USA pageant didn’t want to risk the wrath of the open-borders mob.” [5/16/10]

– Conservative author Daniel Pipes, who was briefly appointed by former President George W. Bush to the U.S. Institute of Peace, opined that “this surprising frequency of Muslims winning beauty pageants makes me suspect an odd form of affirmative action.” [5/16/10]

– Fox News’s Gretchen Carlson complained that Woolard’s “informed opinion” may have cost her the crown, and said that Fakih may have won because we live in a “PC society.” [5/17/10]

I’m taking bets on how long it takes for them to call into question her nation of origin and start demanding to see her birth certificate.

2. Vatican’s latest legal strategy – I’m not sure if blaming others and denying any responsibility technically qualifies as a “new” strategy though. Now they’re denying priests at American dioceses are employees  of the Catholic Church and denying what their own “crimes of solicitation” document says in plain Latin, that they are under no obligation to report sexual abuse among their ranks to the proper authorities. This is the equivalent of, say, Toyota denying the defective vehicles were theirs.

3. Another great article on Texas School Board’s war against education -

Cynthia Dunbar does not have a high regard for her local schools. She has called them unconstitutional, tyrannical and tools of perversion. The conservative Texas lawyer has even likened sending children to her state’s schools to “throwing them in to the enemy’s flames”. Her hostility runs so deep that she educated her own offspring at home and at private Christian establishments.

And that’s just the first paragraph!

Why no hospital may be preferable to a Catholic hospital

Yup, you can tell I'm a douche just by looking at me

A woman who was 11-weeks pregnant was suffering from severe pulmonary hypertension and was at risk of heart failure that could lead to the death of both herself and the fetus. Ultimately, with everyone in agreement, the staff aborted the fetus and saved the life of the mother. Now considering the alternative was letting both fetus and mother die, this would seem to be a no-brainer decision, right? Wrong.

Enter Thomas Olmsted, a bishop who decided to excommunicate a nun, Sister Margaret McBride, who was an administrator at St Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center and who served on the ethics board that ok’d the abortion. She was also demoted:

“I am gravely concerned by the fact that an abortion was performed several months ago in a Catholic hospital in this diocese,” Olmsted said in a statement sent to The Arizona Republic. “I am further concerned by the hospital’s statement that the termination of a human life was necessary to treat the mother’s underlying medical condition.

“An unborn child is not a disease. While medical professionals should certainly try to save a pregnant mother’s life, the means by which they do it can never be by directly killing her unborn child. The end does not justify the means.”

No, you fucking asshole. The fetus was doomed either way. By not aborting the fetus, you’d be callously letting another human die who could otherwise be saved. At best this route would be considered unethical by any rational human being and at worst it’s criminal negligence. Maybe you’d know that if you were a doctor instead of some backseat driver who dresses in pajamas by choice. But how about this? Why don’t you go in your little church or whatever and pray for your “god” to miraculously revive the fetus? God can perform miracles right? Therefore if the kid doesn’t revive, we can only assume that “God” wanted the fetus dead.

So if these are the kinds of ass-clowns who will be making executive decisions at Catholic hospitals, no thank you.

Why do space aliens love New Jersey so much?

It has long been observed that my home state of New Jersey is the preferred space port of inter-stellar travelers across the universe. First the Martians invaded Grovers Mills, New Jersey on October 30, 1938 (though that turned out to be just Orson Welles’ radio broadcast of War of the Worlds). Then in January of 2009, a UFO was famously spotted near Morristown, New Jersey (though that turned out to just be a hoax by my friends Chris Russo and Joe Rudy).

And now another UFO was spotted near Sumerset County, New Jersey. This was a long, tube-like structure that nobody could identify.

The Air Traffic Control Tower in Morristown did not have any pilot reports of the object, nor did officials at Solberg Airport in Hunterdon, Somerset Airport in Bedminster and Blairstown Airport in Warren County.

Chris and Joe, is this you guys again?

Australian Skeptics debunk Applied Kinesiology

Richard Saunders, Dr. Rachie Dunlop, and the rest of the Skeptic Zone gang (who featured a short interview with me in episode 51) have made a great video debunking the scam that is Applied Kinesiology that everyone should see:

News From Around The Blogosphere 5.15.10

1. One thing I never could stand about New Zealand was all the damned vampires – Two people in New Zealand have been arrested and charged with “wounding with intent to render a man unconscious” following a report from a man who claims he was attacked by vampires after waking up in a park after a night of drinking to find bite marks on his neck. But don’t worry. They totally had a good excuse.

2. New fossil find reveals secrets of ancient marine life -

Paleontologists have discovered a rich array of exceptionally preserved fossils of marine animals that lived between 480 million and 472 million years ago, during the early part of a period known as the Ordovician. The specimens are the oldest yet discovered soft-bodied fossils from the Ordovician, a period marked by intense biodiversification.

And for those keeping track, that’s between 479,994,000 and 471,994,000 years before the existence of the entire universe, according to Young Earth Creationists.

3. Australian church rejects vaccine denialists at the AVN – Meryl Dorey and her goons at the misnamed Australian Vaccination Network (AVN [snicker]) were told to get lost by a church after the AVN requested to use their church as a venue for spreading propaganda about the evils of vaccines. It turns out that prominent church members are experts in the field of ethics and public health, and they felt the AVN is not in line with the ethos and values of the Uniting Church of Australia. And so no Uniting Church venue will be made available to them.

4. Mirin Dajo had a lot of guts – This guy didn’t just swallow a sword; he had himself run through with numerous fencing foils…to entertain people!

I’m reminded of Todd Robbins, one of the few remaining sideshow vaudeville acts from the Coney Island tradition. I’ve seen Robbins swallow swords, perform the human blockhead (pounding a nail up the nose – I’m told not actually that hard), and most impressive of all, eating glass for your amusement. But I’d say Marin Dajo deserves recognition as an indestructible bastard except that he died at the age of 35.

5. Revenge is a dish best served with pubic lice – A British website has come up with a pretty badass way to help people get revenge on those who have wronged them…by selling pubic lice. The site, crabrevenge.com, has a disclaimer but a pretty insincere one:

While the disclaimer says the website creators “do not endorse giving people lice,” and the lice are for “novelty purposes only,” the website talks about using them for revenge.

. . .

The website says the company was started “by a group of fellows who happen to know a thing or two about biology and revenge.”

Well I can’t argue the revenge part. So please, don’t give me crabs.

6. New book further blows the lid on $cientology – Escaped and recovered $cientologist Amy Scobee has released a new book called Abuse At The Top, where she reiterates the now ubiquitous claims of leader David Miscavige’s violent assaults on members and gave some fun stories about Tom Cruise.

Father Barron says I’m too happy to be an atheist

There’s a new popular argument against atheism that’s surfacing. Now we’re accused of being too joyous about it and not being morose enough to be atheists.

You know what, Father Barron? You don’t get to dictate how I’m supposed to feel. I don’t believe in your imaginary friend and I have no interest in believing in it. And I thank the Flying Spaghetti Monster every day that I’m not enslaved by your death cult. I am free in all the ways that you are not and that fills my heart with elation. Maybe YOU find reality depressing but I don’t.

And neither did Sartre. I’m reminded of this great scene from the film Waking Life:

The reason why I refuse to take existentialism as just another French fashion or historical curiosity is that I think it has something very important to offer us… I’m afraid were losing the real virtues of living life passionately in the sense of taking responsibility for who you are the ability to make something of yourself and feel good about life. Existentialism is often discussed as if it were a philosophy of despair, but I think the truth is just the opposite. Sartre, once interviewed, said he never felt once minute of despair in his life. One thing that comes out from reading these guys is not a sense of anguish about life so much as a real kind of exuberance, of feeling on top of it, its like your life is yours to create. Ive read the post modernists with some interest, even admiration, but when I read them I always have this awful nagging feeling that something absolutely essential is getting left out. The more you talk about a person as a social construction or as a confluence of forces or as being fragmented of marginalised, what you do is you open up a whole new world of excuses. And when sartre talks about responsibilty, he’s not talking about something abstract. He’s not taling about the kind of self or souls that theologians would talk about. Hes talking about you and me talking, making descisions, doing things, and taking the consequences. It might be true that there are six billion people in this world, and counting, but nevertheless -what you do makes a difference. It makes a difference, first of all, in material terms, to other people, and it sets an example. In short, I think the message here is that we shouuld never write ourselves off or see eachother as a victim of various forces. It’s always our descision who we are.

Thanks but no thanks, Father Barron. I choose reality. You can keep your condescending, superior, holier-than-thou attitude, shove it up your ass, and go fuck yourself!

News From Around The Blogosphere 5.14.10

1. Another kid excluded from Catholic school due to lesbian parents – This is the second time in just the last few months that a Catholic school has decided that children of lesbian parents don’t deserve an education. This time it’s in Massachusetts. It’s just a shame the kid’s parents weren’t child rapists. Cause otherwise he’d get right in.

2. News anchor duped by YouTube video of people running on water - He says it couldn’t be a visual trick because he watched it in slow-mo (cause you can’t trick in slow-mo, right?) and his explanation is centrifugal force (even though that involves rotation). The actual explanation is that this video is a viral ad for Hi-Tec Sports, an athletic shoemaker.

3. Central African Republic courts overwhelmed by witch trials – Many alleged witches are facing criminal punishment for hexing their enemies or assuming the shape of animals. I hate when that happens. About 40% of all cases here are over witchcraft. And the rights of the accused are violated regularly in witchcraft prosecutions, because the charge carries enormous pressure to confess. And the alternative to these prosecutions is mob justice from people convinced witches are hexing people with impunity. I’m so glad we live in the 17th century.

4. Priest tries exorcism on handicapped girl – The girl was both physically and mentally disabled. The priest spoke in gibberish and then started demanding the girl to speak:

“The girl would not have even been able to comprehend, let alone follow instructions. It was very undignified for the young lady and she was just crying, howling at the altar.”

Suffice it to say, it didn’t work. The church’s excuse for this unseemly affair is that the priest was a foreigner. So I guess that means they’d have let him get away with virgin sacrifices too.

5. 13-year-old Somalian rape victim stoned to death – Yeah, that will teach her not to be raped. All in a days work for the religion of peace we call Islam.

6. Polish pop singer faces 2-years in prison for blasphemy – In a television interview last year, 26-year-old Dorota Rabczewska, known as “Doda”, said she found it far easier to believe in dinosaurs than the Bible; “it is hard to believe in something written by people who drank too much wine and smoked herbal cigarettes.” And for that, this pop star and Mensa member may go to jail for 2 years because she hurt the feelings of Catholics. Under Poland’s blasphemy law, simply offending someone’s religious sensibilities can earn you hefty fines and even imprisonment. And while I hate to invoke Godwin’s Law, it needs to be said. And to think I thought Poland got rid of the Nazis.

7. How chimps deal with death -

Two studies in the April 27th issue of Current Biology, a Cell Press publication, offer rare glimpses into the ways that chimpanzees deal with the deaths of those closest to them. In one case, researchers describe the final hours and moment of death of an older female chimp living in a small group at a UK safari park as captured on video. In the other, researchers observed as two chimpanzee mothers in the wild carried their infants’ mummified remains for a period of weeks after they were lost to a respiratory epidemic.

News From Around The Blogosphere 5.12.10

1. Want to give a voice to your severely disabled child? There’s an app for that – Martin Brooks’s 5-year-old daughter is severely impaired by cerebral palsy, making it very difficult to communicate with her. So he created an iPhone app called iComm, which allows his daughter, who cannot walk, talk or control her movements, to point out pictures of food, toys, activities and other day-to-day themes on the iPhone screen using her eyes. Now I don’t know enough about this, so for all I know it’s just another pseudoscience like Facilitated Communication. But it seems reasonably plausible.

2. So that’s what an exorcism sounds like – Someone recorded a video in their hallway outside where their neighbor was having an exorcism. They also left a friendly note to restrict the exorcisms to weekends as to not disturb anyone else.

3. Independent Australian senator Nick Xenophon continues fight against $cientology – I’ve written about the appropriately named senator’s fight to remove the cult’s tax exemption before. Unfortunately, he failed in his attempt to have parliament approve a public benefit test to assess the aims and activities of entities receiving tax exemptions. Given the no-brainer aspect of such a test, I can only imagine it’s because parliament officials don’t want organizations receiving tax exemptions to be tested to verify they’re legit. Kinda makes you wonder what they’re afraid will be discovered. But Xenophon vows to continue the fight.

4. Mohammed’s nation-wide tour takes him to Northwestern U – I’ve written about various universities where secular groups have taken to drawing the reclusive and camera shy Muslim prophet in chalk around their campuses to promote freedom of speech and the humorous responses by Muslim groups to censor these stick figures. And it’s only making drawing Mohammed that much more popular. Now he’s popping up at Northwestern University in Illinois. And of course the Muslim groups are declaring the stick figures offensive. T Minus 7 days till Draw Mohammed Day!!

5. Speaking of which, if you needed a reason why we do this, just look at the Muslim response to a cartoonist, Lars Vilks, who drew Mohammed as a dog. He was attacked at Uppsala University -

News From Around The Blogosphere 5.11.10

1. Psychic scams Oregon man out of $150,000 – In order to remove a demon, a man gave a “psychic” boat loads of cash and a Hummer totaling $150k and now he’s bankrupt. Let that be a lesson for you. Sometimes having a demon around isn’t that bad after all.

2. Mojave cross from Salazar v. Buono Supreme Court decision was stolen – And while I think it’s outrageous that the thing was allowed to remain there in the first place, I have to condemn the actions of whoever was responsible. If it was an atheist or atheists responsible, I apologize for them. I always criticize the religious for not condemning the bullshit actions of their fanatics, so it’d be hypocritical for me to not do the same when it’s possible fanatical atheists were involved.

3.TV stations everywhere fall for fake Yo-Yo trick champ – In one of the best executed pranks in recent memory, some dude fooled a whole bunch of TV stations to give him air time to demonstrate his amazing Yo-Yo skills…which look remarkably like the worst Yo-Yo-ing in human history. But all we really know about “K-Strass,” aka Kenny Strasser aka Karl Strassburg is that he’s gotten on TV at least six times in the past month.

4. Constance McMillen’s Second Chance Prom a huge success – After her high school held a prom without her because she was gay, the American Humanist Association and philanthropist Todd Stiefe donated money to give her and her classmates another prom, an inclusive one. Even the band Green Day donated money  Lance Bass made a personal appearance. Suck it, small-minded assholes running her school!

5. Pope blames church’s own sins for sex scandal – So does that mean then that all the other Catholics like Bill Donohue and Church leaders were lying when they claimed that it was demons, gays, and the media who were to blame?

6. Woman claims 3-D porn got her pregnant…seriously: