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

May 2010
Compare and contrast: This and this. Rachel Maddow shows us that the current oil spill problems are really deja vu all over again. Something very similar happened in 1979. Hee! That old fake sneeze joke is still okay, though. The Onion's latest take on teach the controversy goes like this: Armageddon or global warming? The Kansas State Supreme Court rules that a school district can teach both views of the end of the world side-by-side. "From all evidence, [Rand Paul lives in Libertarian La-La Land, where a purist philosophy leads people to believe in the purest nonsense.] So the new culture war isn't about if two consenting adults can sodomize each other, it's about whether or not big businesses can sodomize people. Which Side Are You On? Arctic ice is one of the best indicators that the climate is currently warming. Some studies show that sea ice area is recovering, but really it's volume that matters and that's not looking too good. Report from a climate denial... sorry, I mean, "sceptic" skeptic conference in Chicago. Snake oil: an ""evidence bubble" for popular health supplements. "HI GUYS, I lost my fone and nueed ur numbaz plz!!" Deepak Chopra has a gig at the Royal Ontario Museum, Larry Moran is organizing a protest letter here. Flash Media presentation:  "The Journey of Mankind -- The Peopling of the World American History, Texas Teabagger Style. It's either a parody ("Patriotic Japanese Americans volunteer to place themselves in gated communities so that America will be safe from Imperial Japan." ya think?) or the writer cribbed their notes off of Conservapedia... Are you a sceptic or a denier? And now another entry for the Life Is Unfair file. What do you get for being the unwed pregnant teenaged daughter of a certain half-term governor? Would you believe between $15,000 and $30,000 per speech? On May 6th, Evan Harris, perhaps the UK's most scientifically literate MP, lost his parliament seat in Oxford West and Abingdon by 176 votes. Did the rising Christian Right in the UK have anything to do with that? How's this for a hate filled rant? Conservative bloggette Debbie Schlossel finds every excuse to rail against the newly crowned Miss America, the Muslim and apparently very Hezbollah supporting Rima Fakih of Michigan. She told us so.

<vote poll=blog990 closed="yes">The problem with the idea of "the majority support this action" is that the majority aren't always affected by it. <vote poll=blog989 closed="yes">Ever wonder why there aren't many women in engineering? (Although some experiments on monkeys do seem to indicate this may not be entirely the case) <vote poll=blog988 closed="yes">PZ gives us a nice little diatribe on Xtianity & women Fun! <vote poll=blog987 closed="yes">The UK General Chiropractic Council finally admits that subluxations don't exist. <vote poll=blog986 closed="yes">According to one model, at the current rate of climate change, half of Earth may be uninhabitable by the year 2300. <vote poll=blog985 closed="yes">"Shit My Kids Ruined" <vote poll=blog984 closed="yes">Daily Show video: Lewis Black says that Glenn Beck has "Nazi Tourette's." <vote poll=blog983 closed="yes">News Flash: Ted Haggard and his wife have incorporated a new church.  And in a possibly Freudian move, they gave it a name that makes it sound like (A) a Catholic church (where pedophile priests roam?) and/or (B) a hotel (for trysts?). <vote poll=blog982 closed="yes">The Maine Republican Party has has adopted a platform that seems to be a weird cross between Paulinism (The "reassertion" that "freedom of religion does not mean freedom from religion") and Ron Paulinism ("Austrian economics"). <vote poll=blog981 closed="yes">A few days after Family Research Council co-founder George Rekers was caught at Miami International with his "RentBoy," he tried to talk his "baggage carrier" into avoiding the media. During the conversation, Rekers offered up this little gem:   "I've been through things like this in the past --"  Hmmm. <vote poll=blog980 closed="yes">From Newsweek: "Why Men Love War" <vote poll=blog979 closed="yes">What happens when you get six Catholics and three Jews sitting together on a single bench? <vote poll=blog978 closed="yes">"Ten Ways Christians Tend to Fail at Being Christian" <vote poll=blog977 closed="yes">[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/06/gop-senators-cant-remembe_n_565919.html "Drill, baby, drill"? Who said "drill, baby, drill"? We never said "drill, baby, drill"! You're just making that up to anger the voters! It's on videotape? What's videotape? We've never heard of videotape!] <vote poll=blog976 closed="yes">But Donna why would anybody even watch cable news if it weren't for pundits? <vote poll=blog975 closed="yes">What you can and can't do in a polling booth (yes, you can do it drunk, providing you can wield a pencil!) <vote poll=blog974 closed="yes">Andrew Breitbart shares with us just a little too much information. <vote poll=blog973 closed="yes">The Phoenix Suns plan to stick it to the Arizona legislature and governor. <vote poll=blog972 closed="yes">It's OK to deny Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights to Terrorism suspects. Just send them to Guantanamo Bay! Lock 'em up and throw away the key! Who cares! But at least two GOP senators will be damned if suspected terrorists are denied their Second Amendment rights. <vote poll=blog971 closed="yes">Is Hammersmith and Fulham the Ghost of Tory Yet to Come? <vote poll=blog970 closed="yes">It's three years old, but what the hell? "Gay Scientists Isolate Christian Gene." <vote poll=blog969 closed="yes">The story about Philippa Stroud trying to cure gay people seems to have been ignored in the media at large, why? Various reasons but [http://blogs.channel4.com/news/benjamin-cohen-on-technology/2010/05/03/twitter-asks-why-has-the-mainstream-media-ignored-the-phillipa-stroud-story/ 1) it's not fully verified and is currently an allegation 2) the PM making a "bigot" gaffe is far more important 3) issues for gays are often off the radar for media types 4) well, it is the Tories... and so on.] <vote poll=blog968 closed="yes">Marxist traitors, God's omniscience and heavy rain; a snapshot of Speaker's Corner <vote poll=blog967 closed="yes">Crusader or prat? You decide: PZ Myers would like your assistance pushing up the rating of a Thunderf00t YouTube video, in response to a Mormon attempt to spam one of theirs up. <vote poll=blog966 closed="yes">Saints be praised! A high-ranking Catholic cardinal admits that compulsory celibacy for priests "in a time of sexual revolution" is indeed a contributing factor to the ongoing child-sex scandal. <vote poll=blog965 closed="yes">Ever wonder if there's a legitimate argument against gay marriage? Well, no, but redoing the databases to accept it all is going to be a fucking nightmare. <vote poll=blog964 closed="yes">In rapper M.I.A.'s new anti-genocide video "Born Free", storm troopers with American flags on their uniforms arrest redheaded boys ("gingers") in L.A. They take the boys to the desert and order them to run. When the boys refuse, the youngest -- a 12-year-old -- is shot in the head. The 12-year-old talked to TMZ about the message in the video. The HD NSFW video, which contains nudity and extreme violence, can be seen here.  (Note that a few knuckle draggers have posted comments saying that they think the treatment of "gingers" in the video is funny.  So much for showing violence to end violence.) <vote poll=blog963 closed="yes">Criminal Brief argues the iPhone raid against Gizmodo is a disguised prosecutorial attack upon freedom of the press. <vote poll=blog962 closed="yes">Why is wind power a bad thing? Because it makes power too cheap. <vote poll=blog961 closed="yes">Thunderf00t is fucking furious.