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

April 2010
Everything becomes clear now. Facts make conservatives less likely to believe you. Tim Minchin: The Pope Song. Not safe for work, due to salty language and cartoons of genitalia. Lyrics. Read about an idiot Dana Ullman on homeopathy.(PalMD warning) "Reality has been around since long before you showed up. Quantum physics is not 'weird'. You are weird." Despite science contributing to a massive proportion of the UK's economy, the government just doesn't seem to care. Tom Tancredo has a new theory regarding President Obama's birth certificate. (Before you read this, take a deep breath and brace yourself for the paranoid stupidity that is about to assault your eyes and your brain.) Ready? Obama is intentionally hiding his birth certificate to make the Tea Baggers look crazy. Ben Goldacre on evidence based voting PalMD is asking for a little help with social media. The 13th Congressional District of Ohio is represented by Betty Sutton, a Democrat. So the Ohio Republican Party sent a fundraising letter to 15,000 members saying "Let's take Betty Sutton out of the House and send her back to the kitchen." Nevada GOP senate candidate Sue Lowden proposed last week that we pay doctors like our ancestors did. We should return to the barter system -- specifically, we should trade chickens or house painting for housecalls. There is now [http://lowdenplan.com/ a website that tells you how many chickens to bring with you on your next hospital visit. (Example: one MRI = 462 chickens.)]  Think this kind of ridicule would discourage other Republicans from jumping on the barter bandwagon? Think again. A surprisingly insightful article from Cracked: 5 creepy ways video games get you hooked With it being a very real possibility, a hung parliament explained "Imagine if the Tea Party was black. (I.e., "Imagine that hundreds of black protesters were to descend upon Washington DC and Northern Virginia, just a few miles from the Capitol and White House, armed with AK-47s, assorted handguns, and ammunition.")  Oh, yeah.  Just imagine that. Stephen Hawking says that we should fear aliens.  (Video included)  The Telegraph has more here. Why do some Christians insist Hitler was an atheist? Fortune Magazine rejected artwork for its May 2010 cover as being too "beautiful and Marxist." Not to mention a dead-on accurate depiction of the financial crisis. Here's a hi-res version. <vote poll=blog944 closed="yes">The problem with facts, is that they change. <vote poll=blog943 closed="yes">VIDEO: The 2000 year history of the Catholic Church Sex Scandal. <vote poll=blog942 closed="yes">How many companies want you dead? <vote poll=blog941 closed="yes">James Randi's TED talk from 2007, well worth watching. <vote poll=blog940 closed="yes">From Psychology Today Magazine: "Atheistic liberals ARE smarter, but for a funny reason" <vote poll=blog939 closed="yes">Bernie Goldberg thinks Jon Stewart is right. UPDATE: Mr. Stewart responds. <vote poll=blog938 closed="yes">The head of a right wing political action committee calls on equally right wing Senator Lindsay Graham (R-SC) to come out of the closet. <vote poll=blog937 closed="yes">Flight restrictions in the UK and Europe continue; but can we live without air travel? <vote poll=blog936 closed="yes">Adam Savage of the Mythbusters speaks Secular Humanism to a Harvard Humanist group <vote poll=blog935 closed="yes">Everybody believes (with justification) that you caused the worldwide banking crisis. In the US, the federal government has charged you with fraud. Britain and Germany want their pound of flesh, too. How do you repair your public image? [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/18/goldman-sachs-bonuses-ban_n_542006.html Screw our public image! Full speed ahead with another $5 billion in bonuses!] Whoo-hoo! Bonuses! <vote poll=blog934 closed="yes">SLIDE SHOW: "15 Mind-Blowing Facts About Wealth And Inequality In America" <vote poll=blog933 closed="yes">Scott Adams makes his views on homeopathy abundantly clear. <vote poll=blog932 closed="yes">VIDEO: A Republican senator recently refuted multiple Fox News claims that the recent health care legislation includes jail time for people who don't pay into the system. Bill O'Reilly has taken said senator to task, claiming that after extensive research, Faux Noise staffers couldn't find any evidence that anybody at the network made such a claim. Like, for instance, the time Glenn Beck said it to O'Reilly's face on The O'Reilly Factor. So, if Foxy researchers can't find this evidence at their own network, will this discredit them in the eyes of their viewers? (Of course, you know the answer to that one.) <vote poll=blog931 closed="yes">Be afraid. Be very afraid. The Teabaggers now have military weaponry at their disposal. <vote poll=blog930 closed="yes">(Not really a blog post. Just something unexpected.)  Did the Kids in the Hall predict Glenn Beck 20 years ago? (As if the characterization wasn't eerily prescient on its own, there's the line "Crazy like a fanatic -- 'Fox,' I mean!") <vote poll=blog929 closed="yes">Jon Stewart introduces Union Victory Appreciation Month. <vote poll=blog928 closed="yes">An analysis of the uncut "Collateral Murder" video. <vote poll=blog927 closed="yes">The whole world turns upside down in 10 years, you turn upside down with it - This story isn't true, but if it happened tomorrow, would you be surprised? <vote poll=blog926 closed="yes">Need to screw your employees out of disability or unemployment benefits? Need to delay or inveigle state hearings into your wish to deny benefits? Well, there isn't an app for that (yet). But there is a company cobbled together like a Frankenstein monster created during the Bush Administration (big surprise) that'll do the work for you. <vote poll=blog925 closed="yes">The Internet In 1969: How We Imagined The Future. Promo film predicting e-commerce, e-mail, but not an end to patriarchal households. (And, holy crap! Look at all those RCA plugs on the back of the computer near the end of the film.)  Link to original YouTube page. <vote poll=blog924 closed="yes">"If you voted for Obama ... seek urologic care elsewhere. Changes to your health care begin right now, not in four years." <vote poll=blog923 closed="yes">Hadron Collider II planned for Circle Line. Meanwhile, in other LHC news, Dimensional Portal Incursion At The LHC! <vote poll=blog922 closed="yes">Is there still vulcanism on Mars? (see also entry above)