RationalWiki:What is going on in the blogosphere?/January 2010

January 2010
A takedown of an obnoxious pro-"Don't Ask Don't Tell" editorial. An anti-abortion TV ad is slated to run during Super Bowl XLIV. The ad claims that in 1987, Heisman Trophy winner Tim Trebow's mother was advised to abort him after she fell ill while visiting the Philippines. The only problem is that the Philippines outlawed all abortions in 1930. Could it be that this is just another case of Christians Focus on the Family tellin' lies for Jeebus?. Bonus points! The 1989 New York Giants tell women what to think about reproductive rights. Tabloids make shit up. Who knew? John McCain apparently believe it honors American troops to dismiss them from service. Fuck him. Role-playing game panic sets in again in a Wisconsin prison, probably as a mask to just further squash the spirits of the incarcerated. Every blog post, ever Hint, ladies: if you want anyone to buy the line that you have a sense of humor, stop printing columns about how all humor is political and dumb-blonde jokes are a massive conspiracy to keep women in line and flatter anyone who doesn't march to your tune. People who need to be addressed with apologies like this are in serious trouble: I'm not a far-right person or anything, but, um, shouldn't people try to live within their means? The Amazing Randi on the ADE-651. Facebook has a new group We can find 1,000,000 people who DO believe in Evolution before June. It's a response to we can find 1,000,000 people who don't believe in Evolution befor June. As of 23 Jan 10 at 11:34am CST, its 36,608 to 10,106. Update: 25 Jan 2010, 62,495 for, 14,730 against. Who know Facebook users could be rational? Maybe we should put a hold on those Obama Presidency obituaries No one's really racist these days, not even the commissioner of a white's only basketball league. /endsarcasm What do torture and Stabbing Westward have in common? Oh, great. Now Glenn Beck is worried about Scott Brown, the newest senator from Massachusetts. After Brown said in an interview that his two daughters are "available," Beck now thinks that Brown could be a closet pervert. Bonus: "Libertarian" Beck wants Brown fitted with a chastity belt and put under surveillance. Memo to bloggers at Utne Reader: Now that a Democratic administration is in power, it's the wingnuts' job to whine about the eternally imminent loss of civil liberties. It should be obvious to everyone, but it's really improper for the US military to be using equipment with explicit references to Bible verses calling on people to spread the word of Jesus. <vote poll=blog849 closed="yes">It seems that the right wing feels that covering the Haitian earthquake is trivial and/or un-American. On 13 January, the three top talk shows on librul MSNBC -- Hardball with Chris Matthews, Countdown with Keith Olbermann, and The Rachel Maddow Show -- devoted just over two hours of airtime out of their three scheduled hours to coverage of Haiti. Meanwhile, "Fair and Balanced" Fox News devoted less than seven minutes of coverage on its three most popular talk shows starring Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly. That's seven minutes total out of three hours. But Beck was able to devote almost a full hour to interviewing Sarah Palin. <vote poll=blog848 closed="yes">On the back of one of the coldest winters (and one too many "so where's this global warming thing, eh?" jokes) Dr Richard Betts of the UK Met Office suggests that climate researchers need to take more responsibility in presenting their work to the public. <votecp poll=blog847 closed="yes">Thunderf00t has started a mini research project to test a hypothesis that communal religious activity goes up as society becomes more threatened. <vote poll=blog846 closed="yes">Ben Goldacre covers a great example of the Texas sharpshooter fallacy. Churches and sites of ancient and medieval sites line up in geometric patterns... but so do old Woolworths stores. <vote poll=blog845 closed="yes">Eric Martin pulls together a bunch of excellent blog posts to explain exactly what the War on Terror should be trying to accomplish, and the reason why the "rule of law" is so valuable. Read the whole thing and all the ones he links to. <vote poll=blog844 closed="yes">Just what English punctuation needs - the sarcasm point <vote poll=blog843 closed="yes">During the Great Depression, about 25 percent of American workers were unemployed. Back then, the government did their best to count every unemployed man. Today, women (who currently have a lower unemployment rate then men) are included in unemployment statistics. But those who have given up looking for work and/or have run out of unemployment benefits, and the "underemployed," are not. So, although 20 percent of American men are now unemployed, the way Washington currently counts unemployment figures shows that only 10 percent of Americans are unemployed. And that's good, right? <vote poll=blog842 closed="yes">Fundies take note: a Christian, and religious historian, explains the difference between real persecution and made up persecution. <vote poll=blog481 closed="yes">As an organization with such a good civil rights record, it sucks to see the same tired arguments used against diversity in the military. Here's a quick takedown. <vote poll=blog480 closed="yes">Giles Coren is getting sick of "Global Warming Jokes" - if a lowly food critic can understand the less than subtle difference between climate and weather (and grasp the basics of ocean current effects on equatorial-polar temperature distribution) then why can't all newspaper columnists? <vote poll=blog479 closed="yes">Why doesn't the Brady Campaign realize that Gilbert Arenas was just being Gilbert? <vote poll=blog478 closed="yes">It is a travesty to suggest that women not be permitted to abort babies they do not want. But it is, of course, perfectly all right to require men to spend 18 years supporting babies they do not want. <vote poll=blog477 closed="yes">Americans need to learn to embrace multiculturalism in the form of foreign languages in pop songs. To start, Utne Reader has provided a lovely multicultural download: African-style music sung in Hebrew by an Iraqi. Hint, fellows: Next time you squawk about "appreciating other cultures," put your money where your mouth is. <vote poll=blog476 closed="yes">Good riddance to superfluous features of English, like that unutterably stupid past tense; let's all welcome Newspeak Internet English with open arms! Coming up: The translation of Shakespeare into this lovely new English. We kan haz MacDuff's sword on warlike shield nao plz? <vote poll=blog475 closed="yes">Mr. Grawert(who he?) gets his nose in on PalMD's blog.(not self promotion warning) <vote poll=blog474 closed="yes">A thoughtful post on why intended messages are not always received, and what it means for foreign policy. <vote poll=blog473 closed="yes">Well, blow me down! One more thing to add to the list of "sexual perversions" that moralists think only humans do: Female Chinese short-nosed fruit bats (Cynopterus sphinx) perform fellatio on their mates in order to prolong sex.  Oh, and walruses are, uh, like the man from Nantucket. <vote poll=blog472 closed="yes">The Case of the Customized Christ. People will try to portray Jesus's political views as identical to their own. But the schismatic Catholic Ched Myers spends 500 pages arguing that he was a Red. <vote poll=blog471 closed="yes"> The US courts have finally put limits on the use of Tasers, hopefully reminding police that they are an alternative to lethal force, not for hurting people you think are sassing you. <vote poll=blog470 closed="yes">Oh Dubai is there anything you won't waste your money on? <vote poll=blog469 closed="yes">Goldman Sachs board member (and Harvard Business School professor) tells website -- on video no less! -- that bankers deserve their obscene bonuses because "shareholder value is made up in people and you need the people there to do the job and if you don't pay them for their performance you'll lose them and it's much like professional athletes and movie stars I think." So the St. Louis Rams should expect hefty bonuses for that wonderful 1-15 season they just completed. Ditto Ben Stein for Expelled <vote poll=blog468 closed="yes">Is it possible for someone trying to join the military to be a radical pacifist? A take down of a silly NRO post.