RationalWiki:What is going on in the blogosphere?/December 2009

December 2009
If you are tired of the major banks' lobbying power, tired of them turning Wall Street into the Las Vegas Strip, and tired of them hoarding bailout money meant for small business loans, then make a New Year's resolution to move your money to a community bank. (Or credit union.) If you believe that lie detection is accurate, you should know that most "tells" are inaccurate and that children have fewer "tells" than adults. Even the President of Russia is against glossing over the crimes of Stalin, but there are groups in Russia trying to anyway. A certain college professor only uses a pen to sign credit card receipts (and her son is having trouble learning handwriting). Therefore, we should stop teaching handwriting in the schools, thereby making students dependent on big complicated machines to express themselves ditching this artificial way of making letters and democratizing the schools. Radical environmentalist Derrick Jensen: Individual acts of eco-consciousness could not have stopped assorted right-wing nasties; therefore, the Big Nasty Corporations are responsible for all environmental damage. An argument for why the current fuss over the deficit is misplaced at best, and in many cases just for pure political gain. Many have theorized that extreme religious beliefs and practices are brought on by childhood trauma and/or mental illness. Meet a woman with OCD who can't stop praying because as a child she thought her late aunt's sins killed her. More rank hypocrisy from the Republican Party, as it attempts to filibuster the war spending bills, not out of any new attachment to peace or other such concerns, but as a method to delay health care reform. "Scientology. A lot of people would say it is a bullying cult." And if you want some visual proof, watch Nicole Kidman's face when the word "Scientology" crosses Andrew Marr's lips in this outtake from his BBC show. Ben Goldacre on why climate change is so difficult for people to think about.  So what if some new Chanukah songs were written by a Mormon, Irving Berlin wrote a whole bunch of Christmas Music. "As you may recall, planes didn't fall out of the sky, nuclear power stations didn't explode and digital watches didn't suddenly develop sentience and turn on their owners, blinking savagely as they tightened around unsuspecting wrists." - 10 years on from the Millennium Bug Talk show hosts on both the left and right are all hawking gold. However, buying gold at its peak -- i.e., now -- may be no better than having an interest bearing checking account. In the soft periwinkle glow of the Alaskan morning, why not read the results of the "Write Like Sarah Palin" contest? The FDA seem to get a little confused over an apple. Rupert Everett's advice to other gay actors: Stay in the closet. <vote poll=blog451 closed="yes">The Daily Mash takes a satirical, but strangely accurate, look at what it's like in Afghanistan. <vote poll=blog450 closed="yes">A climate change skeptic shows how the science was able to convince him! <vote poll=blog449 closed="yes">Need atheism offend? <vote poll=blog448 closed="yes">[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/11/30/goodwill-store-receives-n_n_374791.html Duuuuude! Thanks for the donation! Got some Doritos to go with it?]