RationalWiki:What is going on in the blogosphere?/October 2012

October 2012
Joe Biden calls transgender issues the civil rights struggle of our time. Fuck the polls, the psychics are calling the election for President Obama. Conservative David Frum gets real on abortion. Can you tell the difference between conservative Christians and Muslim fundamentalists? No Poe. The Onion: God Distances Self From Christian Right November 6th is coming up? Blackie, go work on the obituaries. Rebecca Watson weighs in on sexism, Elevatorgate. Coultergeist, apply cool water to the burn. Cracked.com: "5 B.S. Political Arguments You Hear Every Election Season." (#5: "A progressive income tax mean that you will make less money on a higher income because of tax brackets!" #3: "The death penalty costs less money than life in prison!" And #1: "Voter ID laws are the only thing that will prevent rampant voter fraud!") "The Voter-Fraud Myth: The man who has stoked fear about impostors at the polls." In 1983, a Mormon woman was advised to have an abortion after an overdose of Heparin put her life in danger. The head of the LDS church in Massachusetts supported her doctor's advice. Then her bishop arrived, and he really didn't give a shit whether she lived or died so long as she didn't have an abortion. Giving men the right to vote was a horrible idea. Homeopaths Without Borders goes to Haiti. Yes, there's a fucking organization that pushes fake cures aping Doctors Without Borders which uses real medicine to really help people. Dr. Oz, official whore, you are fucking clueless about science. Heartening story about the bristlecone pine, and the story they tell about our past and future with respect to climate change. <vote poll=blog2637 closed="yes">Didn't someone say something about no detailed rigorous explanations for how complex biochemical systems could arise by a random mutation and natural selection? <vote poll=blog2636 closed="yes">Hey, idiotic speech is better than no speech at all, right? <vote poll=blog2635 closed="yes">Troll Level: Pastor. On the flip side, another speaker references Conservapedia's homosexuality article <vote poll=blog2634 closed="yes">Find this hard to believe? You may be a skeptinazi (1,990 results). <vote poll=blog2633 closed="yes">Good ol' Faux. <vote poll=blog2632 closed="yes">GMO opponents are the Global Warming Denialists of the Left. <vote poll=blog2631 closed="yes">Fuck you, Einstein! <vote poll=blog2630 closed="yes">Edzard Ernst, the bane of UK alternative medicine, has started a blog. <vote poll=blog2629 closed="yes">PZ Myers calls out TheAmazingAtheist for being a callous asshole. (Again.) <vote poll=blog2628 closed="yes">You're not a nerd, geeks aren't sexy and you don't "fucking love" science. <vote poll=blog2627 closed="yes">"Obama's a communist!" "So what is a communist then?" <vote poll=blog2626 closed="yes">And on the subject of the Nobel Prize, being from a country that eats a lot of chocolate doesn't hurt either (though, admittedly, this is still a hypothesis warranting further testing). <vote poll=blog2625 closed="yes">So, in order to win a Nobel, you should be 61, male, American, married, a Harvard graduate, shave regularly and not wear glasses. Got it. <vote poll=blog2624 closed="yes">Roger Ebert asks: did you choose your religion? And what if you aren't the person you thought you were? <vote poll=blog2623 closed="yes">Cracked seriously discusses the NDAA. <vote poll=blog2622 closed="yes">For fucksake, students. <vote poll=blog2621 closed="yes">Obama's ticket to re-election. <vote poll=blog2620 closed="yes">damn i hate having to approve of a randroid <vote poll=blog2619 closed="yes">It's Golden Crocoduck time once again! Voting site is here. <vote poll=blog2618 closed="yes">Meanwhile at PBS... Update: Official response.

<vote poll=blog2616 closed="yes">Slate: Ayn Rand's mistake was in essentializing the distinction between "individualist freedom" vs. "collectivist tyranny" and then transporting it into our human past. <vote poll=blog2615 closed="yes">Cracked: What would Mitt Romney have to do to win the election? <vote poll=blog2614 closed="yes">"Be nobody or be a loud, mean somebody." <vote poll=blog2613 closed="yes">Wondermark: How to lie. <vote poll=blog2612 closed="yes">In 2008, Focus on the Family predicted what 2012 under Obama would be like. Let's see how they did. (Some portions may be familiar.) <vote poll=blog2611 closed="yes">US Politicians are partisan because voters are partisan. Of course, the first comment on the article is some jackass who blames Obama. Addendum: and, right on cue, someone else who couldn't be bothered to finish the article scolds him and blames Bush. <vote poll=blog2610 closed="yes">Court decides parent's refusal to vaccinate kids is not “free exercise of religion”. Win one for the constitution.