Token monthly post

To the family members that continue to forward right-wing talking points, ridiculously outlandish stories, or emotional pleas to forward emails to raise awareness for a missing child/horrendous disease/conspiracy theory despite my varying snarky responses or links to Snopes, please accept the following video response. Remember it every time your cursor hovers above that Fwd button.

Somebody check the crawl space...

...Under Michele Bachman's house. Apparently she confused John Wayne, the actor, with John Wayne Gacy, the killer clown.



My wife is STILL laughing about that.


H/T Let Freedom Rain.

Surprising? Nope.

Well, here it is, midnight PST, making it past seven PM in New Zealand, yet it looks like Harold Camping's apocalypse is at least an hour late.

It's amusing that after two thousand years of failed predictions, people are still expecting the Jewish Zombie Apocalypse (you know, Jesus returning to the Earth). Harold Camping was able to put together an advertising campaign with over three million dollars in donated cash. Three million dollars that could have gone to something important, like (as Jesus commanded) feeding the hungry or clothing the poor. It's disheartening to see such large numbers of people willing to waste their lives and huge amounts of resources in the vain attempt to warn people of imaginary dangers, especially when we risk catastrophe from real perils like climate change, pollution, disease, reliance on non-renewable resources, etc.

Attempting to get people to worry about the consequences of tossing out a few bits of plastic becomes that much more difficult when they're terrified that hidden demons or dragons are chomping at the bit, waiting for the signal that will free them to unleash waves of disease, suffering, and death upon the entire populace of the Earth, save for an invariably small number of "true believers" who will be magically protected from the apocalypse.

People have such short memories that they cannot recall the hundreds, if not thousands, of failed predictions regarding the apocalypse. What will it take to convince humankind to abandon superstition pushed by con men and begin to recognize the real problems that we face as a species on this planet?

Of all the stupid...

Damn it! Due to my inability to read dates on a website, I missed PZ Myers giving a talk over in Kamloops last night!

I wonder if I can sneak into his talk tonight at 7PM? Unfortunately, there isn't a phone number I can call to check, and I don't think I'm going to risk driving two hours to be turned away at the door.

Bah!

Why democracy is ultimately doomed

On Saturday I went in to work for the seventh day in a row in order to finalize our Cisco telephony inplementation (short story: it went well, everything looks to be working well, thus far).

While eating our butter chicken, rice and Naan bread we ordered for lunch from the best Indian restaurant in town, I overheard two of my coworkers chatting about one of the candidates for local office. One guy said, "he seems like a pretty good guy." The other responded, "dude, he taught my nephew karate. I'd totally vote for that guy."

Since I can't keep my nose out of discussions that don't necessarily concern me, I interjected, "What are his policies? Is he conservative, liberal, or what?" My inquiry was met with embarrassed silence, so I pressed further, "So you're telling me you'd vote for a guy when you don't know anything he actually plans to do if he grabs the reins of power? It's enough to think you'd want to drink a beer with him?" A different coworker tossed in the helpful comment, "Why not? It worked so well for the Americans with George W!"

Sadly, this seems typical for most people. They can tell you the intimate details of the latest indiscretions of dozens of celebrities, but they don't know the policies of a politician they'd be willing to vote for.

I guess the one saving grace is that neither of those coworkers are likely to actually vote. Still, it's no wonder that sociopathic assholes are able to dominate in politics the way they have these past few years.

Under the trailer park lights

I have a personal anecdote to add to George's post about what seems to be a common pastime for some people: being discovered passed out in their cars from alcohol overindulgence in places that are relatively distant from where the driver obviously departed from (especially McDonald's drive-thru lanes).

Dude, I grew up in low-income apartments and trailer parks - these stories are fucking common.

Seriously, about a month ago, I was leaving for work and discovered a car parked across the small road that leads from my local neighborhood to the main road. I was forced to drive around this Dodge Caliber that was idling in the street, almost getting stuck in the two feet of frozen snow that had been plowed onto the sides of the road the night before. As I pulled up close, I realized that the vehicle that I'd thought was empty was actually occupied. I could see the driver leaning way over into the passenger seat.

I drove past and turned to head up the street on my way to work, when I figured I'd better check to see if this guy was actually okay. I pulled over to the side of the road, got out and walked back to the car to make sure the driver wasn't hurt. I looked in the open driver door window to see the driver had his seat belt on and was doubled over into the passenger seat. His left hand was hanging out his window with an empty Nestle Crunch wrapper held in it, while his right hand was wrapped around a generic gas station paper coffee cup in his lap.

I asked him if he was okay, with no discernible response. I yelled at him and received more silence in return. I grabbed his arm and shook him very strongly, and he barely even flinched. I didn't notice the smell of alcohol, so I was worried that the guy might have had a heart attack, entered a diabetic coma, or had some other health issue. I should have remembered that I was inside a trailer park.

I called my wife (since he was only 50 meters from my house) and asked her to contact emergency services to check in on this guy so that I could head off to work. My wife came out to watch over the driver while the fire department and an ambulance made their way to the scene. She pinched him hard and he flinched a bit, but didn't stir. My wife grabbed the coffee cup to keep the man from spilling it on himself and immediately noticed the strong smell of booze. The cup had a small amount of what was probably whiskey in it.

Interestingly enough, as soon as the flashing lights from the emergency vehicles arrived, the guy came fully alert. I guess police arriving to assist when you've passed out while drinking and driving has a way of sobering a person up quickly. Especially after the BC government recently passed some of the harshest DUI penalties in Canada.

At first I was worried that the guy would be okay, because I hadn't realized he was merely drunk. After I found out he was driving hammered, I began hoping that the cops would nail him to the wall, since he was obviously so inebriated that he could have killed somebody and not even noticed.

My only regret? I should have snapped some photos of the dipshit to spread around the internet.

Google can be used for evil

I was reading a news alert in GMail regarding Rupert Murdoch placing a bid to buy a large UK media company, when this advert popped up:

The Ultimate Tea Party - www.heartland.org - The Patriot’s Toolbox is the #1 source for Tea Party activists

Targeted advertising? Not working so well.

I second that motion

I was reading an interesting post over at Dispatches From The Culture Wars about a virulently anti-gay preacher who was arrested for masturbating in his vehicle parked next to a children's playground.

Hearing about the hypocrisy of people like that isn't much of a surprise, but what I really liked was one certain comment in the thread below Ed's post:

The only hostility I feel towards Christianity or any organized religion, is premised upon the fact that some are so arrogant as to believe they have the right to not only criticize law abiding citizens for being different, but the power to force us to conform to their ways. Gay people never show up at my house early in the morning trying to convert me to homosexuality. Gay people never try to take my civil rights away or my human rights away due to my gender as a female, Gay people do not assume the worst about me because I am not Gay, nor act as if I must have been born stupid because I do not accept their homosexuality as if that were the one true path to salvation.

Posted by: Seeing Eye Chick | March 1, 2011 11:32 AM

I have no idea who Seeing Eye Chick is, but the only response I can come up with is, "Amen, sister."

In The Year Two Thousand (and ten)

Jason has posted an interesting video from National Geographic, outlining the fact that we have reached seven billion people on the planet. This number will continue to rise exponentially, which raises real questions about how we are going to provide clean water, food, and power to all those people.

As usual, there are a number of interesting comments over there, (and I'm really interested in reading DuWayne's post on world security when he posts it) about how we are going to manage to provide food, clean water, and power to such a massive number of people. Sadly, I have to say I don't really hold out much hope for making progress in being able to sufficiently support such a massive and growing population, at least not in North America. Certainly not at this point in history.

The way our society works right now, we have an uninformed, disinterested electorate, who spends more time worrying about what celebrities are doing with their spare time than what their government is doing to effect their lives, and what corporations and banks are doing with the environment and the world economy.

Government is basically a rich political class that is increasingly using secrecy, propaganda, and fear in order to manipulate the 40% of the population that actually vote in order to keep the politicians in power. The politicos then use that government power to enrich their corporate friends, who in turn throw money back at the political sphere in order to keep their paid cronies in office. Sadly, this corporate ownership of the political sphere seems to be pretty much the same across most of the spectrum. Politicians that truly wish to fulfill a mandate to reflect the will of the people find their careers ending early.

Fixing problems with food and water distribution, and making power cheaper and easier to produce threatens the power & financial structures of the most powerful corporations and financial institutions. Since those same interests are what provide the vast majority of political funding, it makes sense that most politicians are not suicidal enough to actually attempt to bring any true reforms into the financial or corporate sectors.

On top of that, the media has become complicit in all of this. In order to keep all-important access to political figures, large news organizations have become little more than government mouthpieces. Reporters in the US have been tripping all over themselves for the last 18 months to cover what should be a ridiculous, fairly crazy and relatively small group of angry Republican white folks* (rebranded as the Tea Party) that protested against the Obama administration. However, those same news companies essentially ignored much larger, anti-Iraq (and Afghanistan) war protests back in the early 2000's. Remember the greatest, most catastrophic oil spill in history: the BP oil spill? It took months to close the hole dumping millions of gallons of oil into the ocean, and by the time it was finally capped the media had all but moved on. Six months later, and somebody brand new to the North American mass media probably wouldn't even be aware that such a massive disaster took place so recently.

In short, we're fucked. Politics, like investigative journalism, science and most other things worth doing, is hard. And the last thing that the majority of people these days are interested in is doing anything more draining than finishing a day at work, followed by flopping their fat asses down on the couch and vegging out until it is time to head back out to work.

That critique includes me: I'll fully admit that I rarely do more than complain on the internet or to coworkers about political and scientific ignorance. I'm also not nearly as dedicated to following politics as I was when I was younger. (I wonder if that's because I used to be very conservative, and I recognize how little chance there is of reaching out successfully to my former bretheren.)

I guess the old saying really is true: we get the government we lazy, ignorant idiots deserve.

Oh, and here's the video:



* - Republican white folks? But I repeat myself!

Too much stupidity in the world

I'm still crazy busy with work and personal life, and it doesn't help that I've been distracted by a handful of stupid topics on the interwebs that have popped up recently. From rich folk bitching about a nonexistant tax hike to minor celebrity teabaggers, I've got over a half dozen lengthy diatribes full of indignation started but not yet ready to post.

It's high time I realized that I can't cover everything that I'd like to, and start picking one or two things to deal with at a time, and leave some of the heavier lifting to the professionals.

The Forgotten Disaster

Humans are fickle creatures with extremely short memories. This spring, the world was witness to one of the greatest human-caused disaster in history when the BP Deepwater Horizon offshore oil rig exploded and began spewing what would turn out to be millions of barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico.

Yet, even before BP managed to cap off and stem most of the oil pouring into the sea water, people started losing interest in the horrible disaster. Perhaps it was due to the feelings of helplessness about being unable to help, or maybe the massive scope of the disaster was just so overwhelming that people no longer wanted to be reminded of the horrors that have been (and continue to be) wreaked upon the Gulf coast ecosystem. I am no particular news junkie, but I have barely noticed any coverage of of the BP spill in the mainstream media since BP announced that the flow of oil had been stemmed back at the end of July.

Amazingly, in less than one month, one of the most devastating disasters in human history has all but disappeared from the mind of the general public. How can this be? Counterpunch has an excellent report, Slow Violence In The Gulf And The BP Coverup, on the what has been going on regarding the oil spill since July 30th, and it turns out that BP has had much assistance in slipping the destructive results of their corporate malfeasance out from under the attention of most of the North American citizenry.

From the article:

Three vanishing acts are being played out in the Gulf: the disappearing of the oil from the ocean surface by Corexit, the disappearing of the story by the media blockade, and the disappearing from view of the shadowy private contractors who are making a mint helping BP and the Coast Guard keep a cover on the clean-up.

The short version is that BP has been spraying millions of gallons of dispersants (made by a subsidiary company to save money) in order to lessen the amount of obvious surface oil, especially at night in order to avoid reporting on the aircraft spraying poisonous Corexit into the waters of the already-devastated Gulf. They then have their own consultants issue ridiculously-positive reports on how all the damage has been almost fixed.

Next, BP has done everything in its power (and with help from the coast guard and private security companies) to prevent reporters from gaining access to affected areas. Individuals hired to assist in the cleanup must sign non-disclosure agreements or risk losing their jobs. Jobs that are critical to the massive numbers of people out of work because of the devastation done to the Gulf economy. On top of that, major media organizations seem to be completely uninterested in keeping the public informed on what kind of progress is being made in cleaning up the millions of gallons of oil spread throughout the ocean.

Naturally, the United States government has been compliant beyond all reason. The Obama administration has been almost completely unwilling to fight back against the lies and obfuscation from the rival Republican party, but the way they have allowed themselves to be used by BP in order to convince the American public that the spill is under control and the worst of the damage has been dealt with is almost sickening. The Democrats essentially handed over control and responsibility of the Gulf environment cleanup to BP, a company that has done everything it can over the past 30 years to prove that it has no regard for anything other than profit margin.

Anyhow, read the whole article. If it doesn't infuriate you, you're either BP president Tony Hayward or a horrible human being (but I repeat myself).

(H/T to Mike the Mad Biologist)

Republican Evil, Democrat Stupidity

One thing that I've been learning in increments over the past decade as my political views have slowly shifted from almost wingnut-grade conservatism (hey, I used to subscribe to BC Report magazine!) over to moderate liberalism is just how prone members of the right wing of the political spectrum are to near weapons-grade projection.

Case in point (from Kim Lehman, a member of the Republican National Committee):

If you are able to successfully ignore the Twitterer's rampant stupidity, where she manages to ignore Obama's outright statement (within the exact speech that she refers to) that he is a Christian, and replaces his words with her own mistaken belief that he is a "secret Muslim" (it's a conspiracy!), you'll notice that she accused Politico of being paid large amounts of money to "protect" and support the Obama presidency.

Most people would think that the reason this Republican uttered such a statement was to merely strike a rhetorical attack, intimating that the only reason someone would ever defend Obama would be due to financial renumeration. That makes sense, right? Well, as it turns out, Republicans have been very busy purchasing articles and opinion space from right-leaning websites and bloggers in order to guarantee their support. The specter of Karl Rove (I know he's not dead, but he's certainly a Creature Of Darkness) rears its ugly head, and a Republican again accuses their opposition of performing an immoral act that they themselves have done a number of times. "Attack the enemy at their strengths" is a lesson they've learned well!

There's a second lesson to be learned here: Conservatives throw money at their supporters to ensure their continued fealty, yet the Democrats seem to prefer lobbing invective at their supporters in vain attempts to stop criticism for acting too much like Republicans. The GOP will use anything they can to "encourage" their base to vote: fear, racism, lies. Democrats will do anything they can do to demotivate the people that put them in power, for fear the Republicans will say mean things about them. This is merely another example of the Republicans revealing themselves as cynical opportunists and the Democrats proving that they are complete morons.