The Heretics Hayride

Here’s a spring gift that I hope my aging tech, geek, atheist, skeptic, and nimble-minded Euro-youth niches will all appreciate.  I’m pretty sure I’ll offend, applaud or confuse quite a few other niches along the way.  As always, join at your own risk. I don’t want to read or watch whiny Youtube videos about a bunch of hurt feelings when everybody laughs at you for falling off the back of the skeptic’s hay wagon.

If there isn’t enough hay to begin with, there’s a good chance I might be able to stir up a little extra along the way.  Hold the horses!! Heretic HQ just called to tell me that if there are no rules of conduct, then the ride cannot be certified by the head of the Atheistplus Action committee, the formerly estimable Dr. Richard Carrier (aka Debbie Downer).  Since this blog insists on inclusiveness and I have been accused of being something a tad south of totally gracious, here goes:

The Heretic Hayride rules of conduct are as follows:

Leave your pets at home (no #carrierpigeon allowed).  Be aware that our path crosses the known territory of a doughy looking, blue-haired Siren, as well as a cinnamon skinned fuzzy-haired monster.  DO NOT attempt to approach either one. The latter is known to have hair trigger rage issues and an incredibly acute sense of hearing. Snap a PIC, Tweet to World, Call security, write blogpost, but DON’T be foolish enough to confront either of them directly if we have the misfortune of making their encounter.  Keep your arms inside the wagon at all times and avoid loose or dangling jewelry.  Dongle type earrings are known to be specially prone to snagging.

Having to construct and conform to arbitrary rules of conduct took all the fun out of the adventure, so the ride has been officially cancelled for today.

Enjoy.

Wall Street Versus the Euro

Wanna know why Wall Street is so keen on killing the Euro?

You can’t sell below cost in the Eurozone countries just to run your competition our of business, even if you have a billion dollars to give it a go.  Helps to level the playing field.  Gives the small guys half a chance to compete with the bigger players.

From this.

Enjoy.

PZ and his Pusillanimous Pixies

As the most prominent atheist comedian on the planet,I give thanks to the many godless blessings that PZ Myers and his not-so-merry band of Girlyban Skepdinks have provided me. A virtual cornucopia of idiocracy to choose from. The only other comedic assignment with more low hanging fruit than I’ve been provided would have been writing jokes for Bill Mahr during the Bush administration. I could have never have imagined (We all knew!) it would still be going strong at this late stage of the game.

But I don’t make the news, I just report it. PZenu and the pusillanimous pixies of Feminology are holed up over at Pharyngula, which to those unfamiliar with Feminology, is the Internet equivalent of the safe haven carved out by Scientologists in Clearwater FL. Like their cohorts in nonsense, the Feminologists were quick to invent their own rules and jargon. Being blocked and banned as a suppressive person was their initial mimicry. Here we are a couple years on, and now they’ve got an automated process for blocking content off their computers that’s even slicker than the blocking software the Scientologists make their people use to protect them from vicious (truthful) Internet content!)

I swear on the imaginary soul of my long departed mother that I am only adding the tiniest bit of hyperbole as I recount these cult-like similarities, and we haven’t even touched on the Feminologist-specific jargon issue yet! Suffice to,say that those idiots over at Pharyngula HQ are so Out Tech on proper skepticism that rehabilitation seems out of the question. The girls over at the PeezOrg have spent way too much time hooked up to their she-meters. There is always a little hope for their recovery but that’s assuming you could wrestle them away from their firm grasp of PZenu’s balls in the first place (Please no photoshops! (I see it already!)) I run a clean ship over here.

This will probably break the heart and soul of those like Michael Nugent (pity the poor dumb bastard) who favor a policy of NOM (non overlapping menseshysteria) between skepticism and the outright bat shit insanity that appears in faithless femininity, but I see no place for allowing evidence free claims to invade and dilute organizational attention away from the mission of figuratively (trigger warning) bitch slapping creationists and Jeebus slobberers who employ the same techniques (tactics).

One final little dingle dongle to make note of. A sad reminder that the virulent nature of memes (both good and bad-thank you Richard Dawkins) goes on unabated, and can laterally transfer from one group of pusillanimous pixies to another. In the latest example it caused a death (of Adria Richard’s career) and she wasn’t even a part of the skeptic movement! It’s not “something in the water” at conferences or a germ picked up off an unsanitary toilet seat at the buffet restaurant loo (unless that’s where Adria happened to be sitting when she got infected reading the Rebecca Watson Slate article e.g.). There is protection available for those who need it. Simply following this blog or my Twitter feed is a good first step.

Hat Tip to the many positive women of skepticism. Their inspiration and support instills a tingling sense of wonder in the nether regions near my dangling tender jiggly bits. I would name them but I’d sound like Brigham Young reading off a list of his many wives and besides, I’d never kiss and tell.

Enjoy.

Marginalizing Misfits

Rebecca Watson, always eager to root out every acorn in the woods concerning anything even tangentially offensive to her delicate sensibilities is (still?) clueless to the mission and goals of The Richard Dawkins Foundation! Becky must avoid looking for information on Richard Dawkins like Kirk Cameron avoids Googling “banana”. She recently stated:

“Regardless of what RDF does for science (and I’m not sure what that is, exactly, though I do know that they donate substantial amounts of money to other organizations that actually do things)”

That is gobsmackingly incurious on her part, considering the magnitude of historical events and given her obvious lust to retain “privileged focus” with the serious rationalist media. Playing(?) dumb works well with her #atheismplus cohorts because they are 99% feminist and only 1% rationalist.

Like any respectable cult leader she is in the position of having to gin up enough dog whistle code to keep her disciples smiling without looking too much like a Pentecostalist tongue-babbler to the diversified (educated) majority of rational skeptics. You need better PR control than Scientology if you want to hide the steady stream of “crazy” coming from Watson these days, and all the banning and blocking in the world ain’t gonna save her. The scam is coming unglued. It certainly isn’t working for her anymore. She is young. She lacks proper perspective. No formal math or science education. The deleterious effects of binge drinking are a real ‘mutha??? People notice….

I was always as underwhelmed by her intellect as I was suspect of her motives and veracity, but even George Bush had heard about “the Google”. Looks like Becky is now gunning for Ken Ham status in the Academy of Intentionally Ignorant Asshats. Maybe she got pointers from PZ Myers? He took a trip down to see Ken Ham and rode his plastic dinosaurs awhile back. Maybe she was there with him riding something too? I dunno. I stay home and Google.

I’ll spare Becky the heavy journalistic work since I know how painful a hangover can be.

Richard Dawkins Foundation

Our mission is to support scientific education, critical thinking and evidence-based understanding of the natural world in the quest to overcome religious fundamentalism, superstition, intolerance and human suffering.

http://www.richarddawkins.net/events

Richard Dawkins has a voluminous selection of past presentations that are easily available on YouTube, You can see him speak in person at various upcoming atheist and science events. He is scheduled to,speak at a conference involving medical advances made through the use of evolutionary applications. He’s written a ton of best selling books debunking religion and supporting scientific methodology in support of his work in evolutionary biology, but then books and beer don’t mix so I guess Becky hasn’t read them.

There’s more backstabbing of RDF in her online screed against Dawkins, even as PZ Myers himself called for reason. She wasn’t having any of that tainted old white guy perspective privilege. It was heartwarming to see the King and Queen squabble so openly in public! My regards to PZ for the thinning of his harem, and in his honor:

I nominate “Nailing a cracker” as a synonym for “CONSENSUAL sex with a Skepchick” in the Idioms of New Atheism handbook.

I get my inspiration from the great men of science and skepticism that Rebecca Watson hates on. Where does she get her inspiration?

Enjoy.

Joe Washington

Watching and documenting the liars for Jeebus crowd has my bullshit sensitivity meter locked in so tight it was impossible to miss this right wing inspired gun nut Facebook post today:

The propensity of the Conservative party to lie about every other subject, coupled with the certainty that good old George never said anything of the sort set me to Googling. A search on that exact phrase, if it is indeed a Washington quote, should render hits from a plethora of serious presidential scholars. So, what were my results :

The quote is superimposed on one YouTube video:

It appears to be taken from a Christian Fundamentalist web page (Powered by “the Holy Spirit” the light within) posted by some guy named Joe Spenner, who apparently thinks putting quotes in the title of his web page makes his lunatic rambings attributable to Washington:

Be on guard for this kind of right wing tripe. It is pervasive and obnoxious but people are quite easily led astray by Republicans who then attribute it to the devil, or Obama.

Enjoy.