RationalWiki:To do list

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RationalWiki's To do list

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Contents: New article suggestionsOngoing mini-projectsCover story nomineesArticles requiring attentionArticle writing resources

If you are really bored, you can help RationalWiki by writing stuff for us.

This is a place where:

  • You can add topics that you think might be good article subjects.
  • You can draw people's attention to articles which you think are mission-critical and/or need work.
  • You can find articles that are nearing front page status and bask in the reflected glory of getting "your" article on the main page.
  • You can find bits of random wikicruft that fitted nowhere else.

When tasks are completed, please remove them to the archive.

At this point the headers are merely suggestions, and will surely evolve under pressure from the mob.

Start a new article

New article suggestions

[edit]

[edit] New articles

These articles have recently been added by the RW community. There may be plenty left to do.
16The 2012 Benghazi attack, which has spawned wingnut conspiracy theories so ridiculous that Truthers might look tolerable.
6Richard A. Gardner, the creator of the term parental alienation syndrome. He was involved in the satanic ritual abuse panic (as a defender of the falsely accused) and is sometimes accused of being pro-pedophile and his research of being pseudoscientific (although I think a search will disprove both assertions).
4The Zeal of the convert -- it explains both why many New Atheists are so vocal and why the fundamentalist claim that young people are flocking to join them is so worrying.
10Vidkun Quisling, humanitarian turned Nazi collaborator. He founded the fascist Nasjonal Samling in 1933.
14The Voting Rights Act, so people can have an idea of the situation surrounding the national/voter ID clusterfuck in the US for those...well, not living in the US.
6Norman Finkelstein, noted anti-Zionist.
7Misandry
3Daniel Estulin, main proveyor purveyor of anti-Bilderberg crankery outside the USA.
4Kermit Gosnell, or what happens when you don't promote pro-choice education and awareness.

[edit] Recent suggestions

These are the most recent ideas for new articles. Remove if downvoted to death.
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0Manchukuo, Japanese puppet state in Manchuria, 1931-1945. (On Wikipedia) P.S.: We've already got Vichy France.
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-1The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, or how Japan "wanted" to "liberate" Asia during WW2. (On Wikipedia)
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1Hideki Tojo, Japanese prime minister/dictator during World War II. (On Wikipedia)
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1The White Panther Party, an actual thing. An actual anti-racist thing. (On Wikipedia)
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1NESARA (National Economic Security and Recovery Act), a economic reform proposal that later was appropriated as a conspiracy theory/scam by victims of the Omega Trust scam as the "National Economic Security and Reformation Act". (NESARA on Wikipedia.) We can also comment on the "feasibility" of the actual idea.
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1Racialist Jason Richwine, namely because every conservative pundit leapt to his defense. Is there something they aren't telling us?
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1Mars One and the multitude of private space initiatives that resemble scam sites. (Or just an all-in-one article on private spaceflight.)
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4The October Surprise conspiracy theory, or how Ronald Reagan supposedly won the presidency in 1980.
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1Francisco de Sá Carneiro, Portuguese prime minister who was the victim of a deadly air plane attempt. There are several conspiracy theories around him, most notably related to the Iran-Contra affair and the October Surprise conspiracy theory.
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0Gavin Menzies, who promotes the idea that the Chinese got to America before Colombus. Fu Sang or 1421 theory might be better titles.
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-1Hygiene, a popular component of anti-vax arguments..
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0Van Jones, if you still remember him.
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1The Cult Awareness Network (CAN), aka Old Cult Awareness Network (Old CAN), an anti-cult group, and its doppelganger, the New Cult Awareness Network (New CAN), a Scientology-controlled fake anti-cult front group. (See: wp:Cult Awareness Network and wp:New Cult Awareness Network.)
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2This looks like an awfully fun website to add to our media section. (American Vision)
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5La Griffe du Lion, the pseudonym of a (pseudo)sociologists beloved by white nationalists, the "human biodiversity" crowd, and other assorted racist nutters. [1]
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6Immune system boosting, a ubiquitous CAM marketing slogan.
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63D Printing which, despite being an inefficient-but-mostly-harmless nerd hobby, has recently become popular with the gun nut crowd, supposedly offering the future promise of "making gun control literally impossible even in the countries that already have it."
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7Western esotericism; the broad category encompassing alchemy, Freemasonry, Gnosticism, Hermeticism, Kabbalah, Rosicrucianism, Satanism, Thelema, Theosophy, Theurgy, Wicca and everything in between. The similarities, differences and interconnections between all the above ought to be laid out for dummies.
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0Vincent Cheung, yet another sociopath Calvinist with a god complex.
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1The faith healer João Teixeira de Faria, known to his followers as John of God, particularly now that Oprah did a special on him.
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7A stand alone Bioshock article?
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-1Stigler's Law of Eponymy, the law proposed by Stephen Stigler that no discovery is ever named after its real discoverer (a law first proposed by Robert Merton, 25 years earlier).
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6Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, a Romanian politician who founded the Iron Guard, an extremist far-right political movement.
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9There's No Tomorrow, a 30-minute animation on peak oil. Add legitimate criticism of infinite growth forever and some environmentalism with fair amounts of poorly-masked Rotschild conspiracy and survivalism (especially towards the end). Their site, with the video.
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-9Syamsu, a long-time Internet crank fixated on free will and its relation to religion and science. ("Internet" includes RationalWiki, if someone has missed it.) Has a history of posting on talk.origins and other newsgroups and Internet fora.
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10The Liberal Arts; a stock pet peeve of right-wingers—but are they truly as useless as said right-wingers claim they are?
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-5Rumpology, the "science" of examining a person's buttocks in order to predict their future. Rumpology: how to read asses
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2The American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine, an organisation with a journal and website (worldhealth.net). Worldhealth.net apparently has a group promoting orthomolecular medicine as a partner. Their forum seems to reference NaturalNews frequently and there's a thread by a doctor which bashes HFCS, GMO foods, and aspartame. Review on about.com
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2Kefir, a fermented dairy drink. The bacterial cultures used to make it are said to have originated with Mohammed. Also promoted by Mercola.
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4Quo Vadis?, Henryk Sienkiewicz's famous pro-Christianity novel.
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8Thor Heyerdahl, known for his Kon Tiki[wp] expedition and his theories of Polynesian migration.
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1Leonard Horowitz, DMD -- self-help author and AIDS conspiracist, coined the term "Solfeggio frequencies[wp]" for healing tones attuned to the music of the spheres, and capable of repairing DNA. TOW article has a "reference" to a self-published (by AuthorHouse[wp]) book by one D.D. Hulse, whose blurb includes: "...how I went from being a fundamentalist preacher to being a developer of healing techniques using tuning forks."
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16Daylight Savings Time -- yet another thing that Americans stubbornly persist in keeping despite evidence that it's inefficient and not such a good idea after all.
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9Light woo -- things like the sun preventing melanoma and curing everything.
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3We need an article on the emergency managers being used in Michigan. There's hardly a more authoritarian position in American government. They have no real oversight, and they can do whatever they want to the city, regardless of the will of the people or their elected officials. They're essentially mini-dictators installed to control townships.
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0Zeta potential, a chemistry-related topic adopted by alternative medicine pushers. See this.
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-3Ervin Laszlo, a promoter of new age quantum woo. Respectful Insolence article [2]
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7Joyce Meyer; yet another televangelist who begs for money from her followers under the ostensible penalty of God's disfavor and spends it on private jets and Mercedes-Benzes.
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10Boiling frog — particularly the idea that introducing beliefs or political measures gradually is likely to meet less resistance than doing so abruptly. See Wikipedia article.
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9I can't believe we don't have an article on that horrible 90s-style page Holocaust deniers hate, the Nizkor Project.
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2Bill Gaede (already in the list of Internet kooks) and the Rational Science Method
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4Richard Swinburne, one of the more sophisticated apologists.
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4The American Council on Science and Health (or ACSH), a "consumer education consortium" funded by various large corporations. SourceWatch article Added: See also the mess on Talk:Skepticism.
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0Bruce Ames claims synthetic pesticides aren't so bad because most pesticides we ingest are a natural part of the foods we eat. He says no synthetic pesticides means higher vegetable prices, making people eat less nutritious food. These studies may be useful. He also says people should get certain vitamins for aging.
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13Fair trade. Would be interesting if we critically analyzed it.
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14Blood types. We have blood type diet, and they're believed related to personality traits in Japan. Sugar-coating red corpuscles has never been so interesting!
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9Irreligion, or the state of simply not having a religion - atheism, agnosticism and antitheism are subsets of irreligion; agnosticism and antitheism are not subsets of atheism.
P.S.: Irreligion on Wikipedia; also it needs to be more than a redirect.
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9We need an article on Morris Berman.
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-5Do you think Plutocracy should be its own article distinct from Plutonomy?
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6Fathers' rights, a movement related with the MRAs but much much more mainstream.
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-5Glenn Sacks, a damn librul, a Jew and an MRA (actually, more into fathers' rights).
When I say he's a damn librul, it's because he's left wing (I'm being ironic BTW); when I say he's a Jew, it's because he professes the Jewish religion or is of Jewish ethnicity; when I say he's into fathers' rights, I mean he's a leader in that movement.
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6The Robin Williams movie Patch Adams. While it doesn't directly push pseudoscience, it pushes an attitude and pseudoskepticism towards medical science indistinguishable from most alternative medicine promoters.
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11The "Olduvai theory" that blackouts became normal last year and we're going to hell in a handbasket. Refuting chart.
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10Chemical castration, increasingly considered as a crime policy.
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1There's nothing here about Eugene Podkletnov? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_Podkletnov
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9Antigravity. It ties in with a variety of crankery, like John Hutchison, "lifters", UFOs, Podkletnov, super secret aircraft, etc.
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3Since we have an article on Satoshi Kanazawa, we may as well have one on Shintaro Ishihara-- basically the Japanese equivalent of the pundits on Fox News. Also Tarō Asō, who wants the elderly to die.
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11We don't have an article on general Misanthropy yet? For shame...
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1ManBoobz.com, a website (run by proud card-carrying Mangina David Futrelle) dedicated to documenting and commenting on the many instances of idiocy, misinformation and misogyny within the MRA and PUA movements. A terrific piece of work. Receives payloads of hate mail.
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2Contrarians, associated with cranks but there are some slight differences.
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6Arab — currently a fork page, but we should have an article. Arab ethnic & cultural identity is pretty important in Middle Eastern politics (e.g. the Arab League, Arab Spring, Pan-Arabism), plus there are a few misconceptions to be debunked (e.g. it's not synonymous with Islam). Plus it would complement our articles on other ethnic groupings (caucasians, black people, Jews, Native Americans).
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2Tim Ferriss, perennial slinger of high expectations of success for low effort in works such as The Four Hour Workweek and The Four Hour Body.
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15We Seriously don't have an article on Causality??
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8John Mackey, current CEO of Whole Foods for accepting GMO foods at an organic store, Obamacare comparison to fascism and Type #5 global warming denialist.
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8Hurricane Sandy denialism. Yes, this is a real thing, I kid you not. Hell, we have an article dedicated JUST to the hurricane. You know, the cocktail of conspiracy theories, global warming denialism, and just general Congressional vileness.
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15Operation Fast and Furious, the ATF's unusual method to track Mexican crime lords by handing guns to them. Has led to one American death. Hilariously opposed by the NRA, who in their masturbatory fantasies would have armed the entirety of Mexico anyway. Or maybe not.
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16The taxonomic clusterfuck that is the Ediacaran biota. (Aliens and creationists, anyone?)
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5The argument used by racists that George Washington Carver stole his ideas from Edmund Ruffin should be debunked if possible.
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3The disgrace to civilized society that is Mark Steyn.
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6Right-of-NRA gun autoerotics Gun Owners of America and their director Larry Pratt.
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1We tend to mention Roger Ebert a lot around here.
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3John Bolton deserves to be mocked for a long, long time.
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7Missing Universe Museum (http://missinguniversemuseum.com). Found this retarded YEC website by way of Something Awful.
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7Dr Brad Harrub of Focus Press and YouTube. A Ph.D. 'scientist' who only seems to do Christian apologetics
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7The utterly terrifying duumvirate of reactionary state representatives, Charles Davidson and Charles Fuqua. Both of them support slavery and theocracy. In the 21st century, I might point out.
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4Wafa Sultan. Her criticism of Islam is probably genuine. Her support of batshit fucking crazies, not so much.
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12Really, we've nothing on real nuclear fusion (v. cold fusion and other such woo. Nuclear power's mainly on fission.
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8The born alive rule, an interesting little bugger.
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4Warren Farrell, top MRA and believer that male-dominated societies don't exist.
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22An Inconvenient Truth should be more than a redirect.
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10The Politically Incorrect Guide to... series, especially The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design, by Jonathan Wells. It rehashes all the usual tripe.
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1Oryx and Crake - together with its sequel, The Year of the Flood, in which Margaret Atwood shows a near-future dystopian view of bio-technology and religious eco-activists. Move over, Handmaid's Tale, you need bringing up to date with a whiff of cyberpunk.
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3Halos, another art staple that Christianity totally ripped off.
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5Sheldon Adelson - single largest private donor in history... all 8 of the candidates he backed lost, costing him some $50 million.
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6Creation Evidence Museum - [3]
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8Consumer Reports - The magazine that on occasion exposes woo.
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10Front National, the biggest far right party in France. It's also needed to disambiguate from National Front
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7The shit-stirring on Elevatorgate is enough to be expanded into its own comprehensive article.
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16Long Island Medium - Insufferable Popular psychic du jour with the housewife crowd
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2Vegetables. Is the tomato a vegetable or a fruit? What about pizza?
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9Former Eagle Chickenhawk Joe Walsh (this one, not this one), current IL GOTP rep seeking re-election for anti-abortion nuttery and criticizing disabled female veteran Tammy Duckworth for talking too much about her military service and her two X chromosomes.
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8Michael Moore Hates America. The title implies that the film consists of an angry wingnut ranting about Moore being a commie and verbally-fellating George W. Bush, but interestingly, the film isn't really anything like that. It's tone is actually very collected and sensible, and most of its criticisms of Moore are valid. Not all people who criticise liberalism are like Limbaugh and Coulter.
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7History of atheism/freethinking/agnosticism etc., rather than just a lowly stub. Also Ibn al-Rawandi.
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4Naomi Wolf.
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18"Neti pots" and the crapload of woo surrounding them.
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2Scaremongering "documentary" The Demographic Winter.
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5Ordo Templi Orientis. Transformed by Aleister Crowley into an anti-Christian Horus-worshipping cult, this secret society is basically Freemasonry meets Wicca. It's this, by the way, and not Freemasonry and Wicca, that paranoid fundies should actually be concerned about.
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2Jean K. Lightner, a hard-working creationist, baraminologist and Answers Research Journal contributor.
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8The Ahnenerbe, a Nazi pseudo-archaeological group
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6beliefnet (lower case), a blogging site composed of erudite fuzzy-mindedness, much-referenced in RW articles.
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18America's War on Sex: The Attack on Law, Lust and Liberty, by Marty Klein. It's about the desperate efforts of the American Right to stop any form of sexual activity except vaginal intercourse between married couples in the missionary position with clothes on, the lights off and no birth control from taking place.
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17Spanish American War and/or the Philipines War. The parallels with the Iraq War are uncanny and disgraceful. Nevar forget.
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13Genetics of race: Mostly because it never seems to fail to shock people that Arabs and North Africans are white people and that there are more genetic divisions of Africans than almost every other 'race' combined.
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3Aurangzeb: Thanks a lot for taking the most then-advanced civilization on earth and setting back Middle Eastern and Indian civilization for several centuries, you fundamentalist jerk.
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18Andrew Jackson: For racism, permanently fucking up the U.S. banking system, firmly setting U.S. politics towards political nastiness and bellicosity, and finally for having an unwarranted reputation of being a badass despite being an enormous twat.
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3PowerLung, Elevation Training Mask and similar knockoff products. Could all be in one article. Woo products claiming to exercise your lungs and diaphragm and simulate higher altitudes. Actually they are just expensive ways to breathe through a straw.

[edit] In the back

  • Archive 2 - Several hundred never-made pages since 2009 because we forgot to wipe the goat down after finishing. You may find something worth doing here.
  • Archive 1 - All closed; most have their own articles by now.

Do you think the UK will leave or significantly change its status with the EU by 2018?

Yes2Vote
No16Vote
Goat9Vote
Poll updated: 14thth of May 2013 — See: Previous polls

Random wiki fact

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Random technical wiki fact #4

Most RationalWikians use the Recent changes list to see what is going on around the wiki. However if one article is receiving lots of edits in quick succession it can fill the list making it difficult to see what else is going on. By clicking on My preferences -> Recent changes and checking Enhanced recent changes, the recent changes will group edits to the same article together in a folding menu. As this will visually make the list shorter, you may also wish to increase the default number of edits the RC menu displays.

Ongoing mini-projects

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Articles people are currently working on or need completing. If you want an established article to work on, here are places people would like help.

[edit] Articles wanting to be Cover Girls

This is a list of articles that have been suggested as good topics for Cover Girls Stories, but are a long way from being ready.


[edit] Refutations

[edit] Book reviews

Cover story nominees

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These articles need just a little more polishing to be frontpage articles.

Article writing resources

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Here are lists of resources that may aid in article writing.

[edit] Quality control

[edit] Good sources for research

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