RationalWiki:What is going on in the world?/October 2012
October 2012[edit]
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Hey! Wanna go see the new Left Behind reboot next year? Would it influence your decision to know that it's being made by a secular Aussie production company which has replaced Kirk Cameron with Nicolas Cage? Yes, that Nicolas Cage! |
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Obama and Romney demonstrate their jobs priorities: Obama's campaign baseball caps are made in America while Romney's are made in China. UPDATE: They now think the Romney Ryan hat is actually a knock off, so this could be inaccurate. |
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Romney, you're doing a heck of a job! UPDATE: Michael 'Heckuva Job' Brown accused Obama of responding too quickly to Sandy. |
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If you're a man and you want to breed, consider gettin' busy sooner rather than later. |
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The Respect Party, apparently aiming to replace the moribund BNP as the biggest hive of crazy in British politics, has chosen a complete crank to contest the Manchester Central by-election. |
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A survey asks random Americans what Obama's religion is. The results are somewhat surprising. |
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Most Americans willing to admit to a total stranger that they don't like Black people. |
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Controversy over a proposed bust of Christopher Hitchens in London. |
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Decisions, decisions. Feed 10 African children for a year or stump up £406 to watch the Rolling Stones?. |
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The Saudi government bulldozes centuries of Islam's own history. But, hey, even Muslims like skyscrapers! |
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Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute reveals that climate change may be affecting the evolution of certain tropical tree frogs. |
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No shit! Faecal transplants used to combat C. difficile. |
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James O'Keefe and company are at it again, committing election fraud to prove that election fraud is a problem: this time, a candidate's son goes down with the ship while O'Keefe takes footage from the life raft. |
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God does not have a sense of humor: a research team demonstrates how the Rapa Nui (Easter Island) statues could have quite easily been put into place. |
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America seems to have started dragging Canada down the intellectual drain. Witness the horror as Queens Jubilee medals, the same ones given to war heroes, are given to anti-choice activists as Conservative MP's compare them to the likes of MLK. Weep for the future... |
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Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott wins Olympic Gold in Missing The Point: "If OSCE members want to learn more about our election processes so they can improve their own democratic systems, we welcome the opportunity to discuss the measures Texas has implemented to protect the integrity of elections" |
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Pregnancy From Rape Is 'Something God Intended. Will the stupid never stop? |
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Oh no! Our boy, Paul Ryan, was caught out in a fake photo-op at a soup kitchen?! How shall we react? By punishing the soup kitchen. |
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Beluga Whale tells diver to "get out" of its tank...no, really... |
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Supposedly "never seen before" hidden camera footage of insider Mormon ceremonies, including being admitted to the "Celestial Room'. Your US Presidential candidate awaits you…. |
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Can someone drag her down to Dumbfuckistan where she belongs? |
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We currently cannot predict earthquakes, but when someone dies we need a scapegoat. |
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Seralini's "GMO gives cancer to rats" study has attracted unprecedented condemnation in a joint statement of six French academies of science. In the comments, people smell a Monsanto conspiracy! |
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The power of the (mis)-spoken word: In 2006, a Native American boy was being ravaged by flesh-eating bacteria. The boy was given a Life Flight helicopter ride to a major hospital where he was placed in a drug-induced coma and given several anti-bacterial treatments and the first of 29 reconstructive surgeries. The doctors were waiting for all their hard work to take effect when somebody at the hospital allegedly told the family that the only thing left for them to do was pray. So they did. Thanks to that, on October 21st the Catholic church -- looking to stem the tide of Native Americans returning to their old beliefs -- will canonize their first Native American saint. Of course, depending on which news source you consult, you might not know that he was ever in hospital, or that his "stunned" doctors had done all that hard work on him. |
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This should be the #1 topic for the last debate: have Obama do the negotiating, or...Mr. London 2012 is going to suck, Cameron. |
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September Morn, the first major truther movie since Loose Change, is in the works for 2013. |
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The latest crusade of the Obama campaign: Romnesia awareness. |
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Remember that attack on the American embassy in Libya? The CIA seems to have found the real culprit. |
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Investors still jittery. Why shouldn't they be? We're only one shipment of cocaine away from the next crash. |
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The GOP race to the bottom continues: Rep. Joe Walsh of Illinois declares that, thanks to "advances in science and technology", there's no need for abortion exceptions to save the life of the mother. |
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If you came of age in the 70s or 80s, this may bring you down a bit. |
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Does this count as irony? Evangelical author who "lived biblically" for a year -- including calling her husband "master" and camping out on the front lawn during her period -- has her book about the stunt rejected by one of the largest Christian bookstores in the US because she used the word "vagina" in it. |
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Ireland sees a four-fold increase in the number of people who say they have no religion since 1991. |
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Who are you, and what have you done to Ben Stein?! |
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DOMA ruled unconstitutional again, this time in New York. |
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Whoops! Looks like it was the Northern Ireland Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment who wanted the National Trust to push creationism "as a grant condition" for the Giant's Causeway exhibit. |
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From NPR: It turns out Republicans hate The Black Guy more than they hate the The Mormon. |
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In 1978, under pressure to stop looking like a bunch of racists, the president of the Mormon church had a divine revelation that black people were no longer cursed and could be admitted to the Mormon priesthood. Four weeks before the 2012 election, under pressure to shore up the evangelical base among Republican Party voters, Billy Graham met with Mitt Romney and seems to have had a similar revelation that Mormonism is not a cult after contending for all of his professional life that it is. (Still cults in Graham's world: Unitarianism, Jehovah's Witnesses, Scientologists, "Spiritists" and the Unification Church.) |
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A terrestrial-type exoplanet has been discovered orbiting around Alpha Centauri B (not Proxima Centauri, which is α Cen C), only 4 light years away from the Solar System. |
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Dinesh D'Souza, who speaks vocally against Obama, feminism, and same-sex marriage displays an interesting interpretation on the sanctity of marriage. UPDATE: D'Souza steps down from the presidency of The King's College. |
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Remember the recent study about GM crops giving cancer to rats? Not only was it bogus - the authors also used tricks straight from the cranks' playbook to suppress criticism. |
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Give a big hand to Britain's latest anti-Islam outfit, the National Culturists! They're not racist, of course, they just happen to be very pally with racists. |
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Rainbow design on milk carton? Gay propaganda, of course! |
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Republicans throw Bush under a bus to compare his handling of Iraq to Obama's handling of Libya. |
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Felix Baumgartner has just jumped from 128,000 ft. |
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Evangelical Christian spends a year undercover as a gay man. (Note: As always, don't even look at the goddamn comments.) |
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The Sun has no clue on how evolution works, but at least we have a pretty good idea of what its readers look like. |
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"Egypt's liberals, Islamists clash, 110 reported injured" Cue wingnut cognitive dissonance. |
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It doesn't matter who votes, it matters who |
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Todd Akin again, this time on something else of which he's an expert: "There's no science behind evolution." |
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The Romney campaign found scaremongering over Lyme disease. |
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Another candidate for the craziest member of the GOP! Cliff Russell of Virginia offers some "words of wisdom": "I'll tell you what really need to do with these illegitimate families on welfare – give all the kids up for adoption and execute the parents." He says this while organizing support for Mitt Romney. |
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Another family values candidate in hot water: Tea Party-backed pro-life congressman Scott DesJarlais pressured his mistress to get an abortion. |
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The Pakistani Taliban nearly kill a feminist activist |
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Pew survey: The "Nones" are still on the rise in the US |
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Update to WIGO about Hubbard and Fuqua in Arkansas: GOP pulls funding for those candidates, along with Loy Mauch who previously called Abraham Lincoln a war criminal and asserted (correctly) that "Jesus Christ did condone slavery". |
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Say what you will about Julia Gillard, but watch her give a public spanking to Tony Abbott. |
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Introducing the two latest contestants in the GOP's balls-to-the-wall batshit crazy contest -- state representative Jon Hubbard and candidate Charlie Fuqua, both of Arkansas. Hubbard has trotted out the old white-hood canard that slavery was good for the slaves, while Fuqua advocates in his book God's Law that all Muslims should be expelled from the US. Not satisfied with a tie, Fuqua has now gone the extra distance by advocating the death penalty for rebellious children. Take that, Todd Akin!! |
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Cool cocktails are really not good for you. |
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Einstein's real thoughts on God and the Bible, now available on eBay for $3m. |
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Muslims get a Call of Duty map temporarily removed for featuring a quote from the Koran on a picture frame |
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Explains some UFOs. Here's the archive record. Cue the UFO/Area 51 conspiracy theorists! |
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The Dragon capsule is successfully launched and on its way to the International Space Station. SpaceX say that the "commercial era of space travel is about to begin". |
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The shiny new UK Health Secretary doesn't just support homeopathy, he also wants to slash the legal abortion limit in half, too - a position described by the Guardian as "a draconian change to terminations, unlikely to become law; unsupported by all the health professional organisations, deeply unpopular with many women." |
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Who says an arts degree doesn't lead to a real job? |
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So it turns out that "Gangnam Style" actually has artistic and social substance. |
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Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA) condemns evolution and the Big Bang as "lies straight from the pit of hell." Of course he's on the House science committee. |
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US Unemployment rate down to 7.8%. UPDATE: GOP conspiracy nuts predictably, and entertainingly, cry fix. |
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Turkey retaliates against Syria with military force. Who knows whether or not NATO will get involved. Cue the fun. |
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Woo magazine What Doctors Don't Tell You are threatening Simon Singh with legal action. WDDTY is an organisation that laments the inconvenience of the Cancer Act. Skeptics around Britain put the popcorn on. |
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Jack Wu of the Westboro Baptist Church is after a place on the Kansas Board of Education, to stop the state “preparing its students to be liars, crooks, thieves, murderers, and perverts.” |
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God missing from the campaign trail. An unintended consequence of evangelical voters, perhaps? Since neither candidate is a shrieking fundie, they don't want to bring up religion? |
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IKEA's Saudi version of its website has identical pictures to editions for other countries - with one exception. |