The Onion reports that Children clearly oppose health care:
Study: Most Children Strongly Opposed To Children’s Healthcare
Here’s why we shouldn’t teach kids about sex in school.
I’ve made it no secret that I find The Onion regularly hilarious. Occasionally, I found myself wondering how they stay funny. This article from the November 2008 edition of the Washington Post answered many of my questions.
Are you a modern-day right-wing Republican needing some new apps for your iPhone? If so, this video is for you:
Assimulated Press - Tempe, Arizona
In a discovery that not even the most optimistic scientist would ever have predicted, all of the transitional forms necessary to prove that evolution is indeed a fact have been found in one location. In a strange twist of fate, it was a Creationist scientist who found the fossils.
Uncovered over the course of several years at one extensive archeological dig in Arizona were all the so-called “missing links” needed to show that man has indeed evolved from simpler primate ancestors and that we are kin to all other primates, mammals and indeed every living thing on the planet.
At a press conference on Monday, chief archeologist Matthew Christiansen of the Creation Science Foundation stated, “I really didn’t expect to find these fossils. Genesis says that we were created separate from the animals but even I can’t deny this evidence. People can now stop saying that evolution is ‘only a theory’ because it isn’t. It’s a fact. We now have all the complete sets of fossilized transitional forms that we need. There are no gaps. This case is closed.”
The news has sent Jewish synagogues and Christian churches around the world into a frenzy. Rabbi Eli Weinstein of the Beth Shalom Israel synagogue in New York put it this way, “Those of us who accepted the traditional account of seven day creation as true are devastated. Proof of evolution means that Genesis is wrong which means that God doesn’t exist. I guess I’m out of a job!”
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This morning my cat was stiff as cardboard. He’d died overnight. It was not much of a surprise, as he has refused to eat for 26 days. He basically died of AIDS, the feline variety (FIV). So I’ve been a bit distracted for about a month, and now the sword has fallen.
I posted a short photo essay of his short life here, if you are curious.
Then I read today’s XKCD:
So I’ve outlived several cats, and kids born after too many events I experienced are old enough to bring them to mind. I’ve lived on the same block for as long as it took me to go from birth to two college degrees. I predate manned space flight and weather satellites. My first record player had both 16 and 78, as well as 33 and 45. I have changed tubes in my radio. 1984 still feels like it should be the future. I celebrated the American bicentennial. I still have a Vote McGovern button from just after my parents got their citizenships.
No real point, today.
Improv Everywhere has struck again, this time with Subway Yearbook Photo.
And I dare you to watch this one without getting tears in your eyes (and I’m often cynical about weddings).
According to Onion Network News, the Obama family is totally out of touch with the rest of America.
Poll: Happy, Healthy Obamas Out Of Touch With Miserable Americans
As I have not been around DI of late, I thought I’d pop in just momentarily to reiterate my adoration (no, that’s not too strong a word) of Jon Stewart. His show recently won an Emmy and in a poll conducted by Time Magazine over the summer, he was once again named the most trusted journalist in America.
Some find that appalling, that a comedian doing “fake news” would be trusted - but not only do I not find it a surprise, I find it emblematic of what is great about our country. Yep, strangely enough, I believe that beyond all of the nonsense foisted upon us by the fear-mongers and the naysayers and the hand-wringers, above the greed and corruption, the re-emergence of public racism and class-ism that has knocked the very wind out of us over this last year - we, as a culture, have maintained one vital component of our identity as a nation.
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| America: Target America | ||||
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We still have a senses of humor. Most importantly, we can still poke fun at ourselves.
Stewart takes on the rightwing nutjobs with LMAO-level attacks, but he just as willingly puts Obama and the Democratic congressfolk smack in their liberal places. He brilliantly points out the hypocrisy by putting videos back-to-back in which politicians completely contradict themselves. He forces us to see the political blustering for what it is, and gives voice to sanity in the midst of complete crazy. He makes sure we never forget our humanity.
Last week, he took on the absurdly ridiculous overreaction to the elementary school in New Jersey in which children sang a song about the new President during Black History Month. As he points out, no one complained about it at the time. And Stewart’s lampooning of the way the rightwing media turned this non-story into something murky and evil became especially potent when he pulled out video of school children in New Orleans singing a song in which they THANK THE LORD for Bush and FEMA!!! Good grief. The twinkle in Stewart’s eyes as he reads the lyrics that group of kids sang is priceless.
Carry on -
Here is a 3-minute comparison. On the one hand, we have natural selection. On the other hand, we have creationism/intelligent design. Brought to you by comedian Robin Ince.
I was feeling discourage about all of the recent anti-science, including the attacks on evolution and politicians interfering with the decisions of FDA scientists. And then I found this cheerful distraction: a scientific experiment from Monty Python’s Holy Grail:
Yesterday I wrote a cool sentence. Well, not actually a sentence - more of a statement. Well, not even a statement - more of a descriptive title to what I thought could be a chapter in a science fiction novel. Look, whatever it was, I was very proud of it. It was so conducive to creative thought that I actually began to write the introduction to a science fiction novel (it was here that the author decided that the makers of Word for Windows were the most annoying bastards in the entire world. Every time he began to write the word “novel”, he’d get to the first ‘e’ and a little box would pop up next to the with “November” in it, implying that he didn’t have the intelligence or presence of mind to put a capital letter at the start of a proper name. Naturally, being an educated person, he would have put a capital “N” if he was going to write “November”. But he wasn’t going to.
He was about to write “novel”, because that’s what he started to talk about and he wasn’t planning on writing “November” until the bloody programme starting annoying him by suggesting it every time he started to write a word with N, O, V, and E as the first four letters. Damn programmer geeks think they’re being so bloody helpful, popping up little squares every time you type something, thinking they’re helping you get things done quicker…it’d be a lot quicker if they didn’t keep implying that you don’t know what the hell you’re doing all the time. And if they’re so smart and so helpful, why couldn’t their programme have figured out that it would’ve been completely out of context to write “November” in that position: “…a chapter in a science fiction November…”?
Now, because of those well-meaning, over-cautious but more likely bloody-minded programmer bastards, not only has most of the introductory paragraph been taken up by a bracketed and completely unplanned rant about an annoying little “help” function, the author has ended up writing “November” six times when he didn’t intend to mention it at all unless it was relevant to the story, which it was never going to be [stardates don't use Earth months, as any decent science fiction writer should know]).
Ahem.
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According to The Onion:
An international panel of leading anthropologists, cultural critics, biologists, and social theorists announced this week that Western civilization will reach its lowest conceivable point at 3:32 p.m. Friday.
