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Okay, so I contributed to the James Cameron Self Love Fund and saw AVATAR. Yesterday we went to the 3-D showing (no way I would spend money on the normal view, I can wait for the DVD the way I do with 99% of the movies I see anymore). I’ve had a day to think about it now and I’ve come to some conclusions, which are hardly profound, but I think worth saying. Let me say up front that I wasn’t bored. Visually, this is a stunning achievement. But that’s what everyone is saying. It is, in fact, the best 3-D I’ve ever seen. Often in the past the effect is minimal and the cost in headache high. This was neither. And it fully supported the visuals rather than masking mundane or poor image elements. Pandora, the planet involved, is magnificently realized. Cool stuff. Real gosh wow. The biology is problematic. You have a wide mix of lifeforms analogous to Earth. Some big lumbering critters like hippos or rhinoceri that also have features of a dinosaur, and some small things that are clearly wolves, and one big nasty cat-like thing that’s like a sabertooth tiger. It’s unclear if any of these creatures are mammalian, but it doesn’t matter much. Dinosaur analogs. Most of them apparently four-legged. But the “horses” the natives ride are six-legged, reminiscent of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ thoats. How does that play out in evolutionary terms? Well, maybe that’s a quibble. How then do you evolve humanoids out of this? Well, maybe that’s a quibble, too. This film is not about science on any level, regardless of the few bits of dialogue suggesting there are, you know, scientists, and that there is a studyable cause to any of this. Because the story, basically, is hackneyed, cynical, and cliched. [more . . . ]

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FOX commentator struggles to not understand the First Amendment

In this February, 2009 video, FOX commentator Megyn Kelly worked hard to claim that she didn't understand the First Amendment. Michael Newdow, who filed a suit challenging a school that required his child to say the Pledge (including the phrase "one nation under God") showed considerable patience with Kelly, but the outcome was pre-ordained. Kelly showed the same closed tortucan mind as the U.S. Supreme Court which strained mightily to through out his suit on a technicality rather than face the music. Emotions generated by the compulsion to force students to say the pledge has often caused massive distortion to legal logic.

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Deconversion story

A man named Shelby Sherman wrote a powerful story of his struggle to understand religion, which appeared at Ebon Musings. The second paragraph of his essay sets the stage for the story of his struggle:

Hello, I am 55 years old and an atheist. I was married to the same woman for over 33 years, lived in the same house for 12 years and my taxes are paid. My wife and I raised two sons who are both college graduates and doing well. The last 37 months of her life I was a full-time caregiver for a wife who was unfortunately diagnosed with an incurable, anaplastic astrocytoma (malignant brain tumor). After a three-year struggle, she passed away on May 5th, 2003 and I will miss her terribly. Taking my marriage vows seriously, I gave up my career and I considered it an honor to care for my wife. In the past three years I have lost virtually everything, my wife, my career, most of my net worth, my medical insurance, my freedom and most of my friends. When I die, according to the Christian belief system, I will head straight to HELL without any hope of intervention. I will face an eternity of unspeakable pain and torture for simply not believing in a concept that is not backed by a single shred of evidence. Jeff Dahmer, who was convicted in Wisconsin of twelve 1st degree murders and was sentenced to fifteen consecutive life terms for these murders, accepted Jesus Christ as his savior and was baptized in prison. Jeff was subsequently murdered in prison and will go to HEAVEN for simply believing in these concepts. The fact that Jeff brutally murdered who knows how many young men, tortured them, slept with some of the corpses before chopping them up and either freezing or eating them, does not matter to the Christian cult. According to the doctrine of Christianity, Jeff goes to heaven, to be greeted with open arms by God, Jesus and all the heavenly hosts, a child of God. Can anyone else see anything wrong with this picture?

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Banks: We’ve paid you back, so we’ll now be on our way . . .

The big banks are taking the position that they have paid back most of money they received from taxpayers, so that they can go back to business as usual. Think Progress reminds us that paying back the TARP funds was the tip of the iceberg, and that the big banks are heavily in debt to taxpayers:

While most banks have already paid back their portions of TARP, as White House economic adviser Austan Goolsbee told CNBC, the government has not charged the banks for the huge emergency guarantees provided to them by the FDIC, nor for allowing investment banks to convert to deposit banks, which gave them access to loans from the Federal Reserve. Moreover, the entire sector has benefited from taxpayer help. The government has provided financial firms with trillions of dollars in low-interest loans and outright equity purchases through programs like the Federal Reserve's Discount Window and loan guarantees, and they also benefited from the bailout of AIG. TARP represents only a small portion of the total support for the financial sector, so even firms that did not receive funds under the program -- or have already paid back their portion -- owe taxpayers.
This Think Progress post is link rich, in case you'd like to dig in deeper.

Continue ReadingBanks: We’ve paid you back, so we’ll now be on our way . . .