Via arch-fool P.Z. Myers:
I’m a fan of Yo, Is This Racist? even if the answer is almost always “YES”. This particular Q&A seemed particularly appropriate.
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2012/01/31/word/
That’s a quote for the ages right there. Who’d have thunk it eh?
Anonymous asked: Is it racist that my science teacher sucks balls?
Yo, science education in the US is a fucking political mess of a tragedy, but it’s worth sticking around and at least trying to learn how to apply evidence and logic, because bastardizations of science are basically the favorite tool of the modern racist.
http://yoisthisracist.com/post/16590542766/is-it-racist-that-my-science-teacher-sucks-balls
I must complain. The stereotypical aggressive attitude and phrases such as “yo” here are so racist! This makes blacks look bad.. Racist!
Also.. my back hurts this morning, I think I slept on it wrong. Racist!
Also.. my boss sucks at his job too. RACIST!
The word “racism” doesn’t mean anything anymore. If you call me racist, then you might as well call me a cloud. I’ve got no idea what you mean when you say it. Good job leftists!
Posted on: Thursday, February 02, 2012 7:38 PM
Its been an age since I last posted anything here. Life’s mad, but that’s not a good excuse.
From being involved in two after-work software collaborations, to trying to learn about ten things at once, to planning a move to another city to… I dropped off. However, my intent to start making videos again is still there. I am experimenting with creating a higher quality format but ultimately I am procrastinating quite a bit.
Mea culpa.
Posted on: Wednesday, February 01, 2012 4:00 PM
I first became aware of Hugo Schwyzer when I listened to debates he would have on the Glenn Sacks show (his side). He struck me as a softly-spoken gimp-like character; a man who took an almost fetishistic-like joy in self-flagellation and, by extension, the flagellation of his entire sex. Every solution to every problem was to declare men to be the weak perpetrators of evils based on their terribly flawed patriarchally-based natures. In short, he was a quintessential feminist.
However, whilst we can see why a female may find feminism alluring because it allows them to attach to a movement which offers catnip to blame all their shortcomings and failures in the game of life by buying into the belief that that game is essentially rigged. Feminism is a theory that offers women a chance to feel superior about themselves, whilst also feeling sorry about themselves and acting as the cringing victims.
This double-barreled appeal, whilst seemingly contradictory, has a great pull to it; a pull that we can see in the terrible characters of the many feminists we have run into through the years. The strength of the pull is entirely dependent on being a female though. If you don’t belong to that exclusive club but yet are a feminist, then you are coming into it for entirely different reasons.
I’ve been rather appalled at the Hugo Schwyzer story that has been unfolding unpleasantly lately, but since Ms. Daisy Cutter brought it up and Comrade Physioprof has a good post on it, I thought I’d throw in a few words to the pigpile.
Schwyzer is a professor who lectures on feminism…he’s also a professor who had sex with his students and who tried to murder an ex-girlfriend. We could stop right there; just those acts alone make him contemptible. But for some unfathomable reason, he now makes money lecturing women on feminist ethics and patriarchal culture; would you believe that the title of one of his lectures is “Holding Men Accountable”? And now many people are arguing that he should be recognized as a useful ally for women, that we should forgive and move on, and recognize him as a changed and better person.
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/page/2/
Read more »
Posted on: Tuesday, December 27, 2011 7:22 PM
This is exactly how I envisage club-carrying bloodthirsty barbarians as behaving.
Some people in the skeptical blogosphere have been attacking people who are perceived as attacking Hitchens after he’s dead. Nothing comes close in vileness than P.Z. Myers own comments. Truly, there are no enemies on the left.
Posted on: Saturday, December 24, 2011 2:27 AM
Farewell Christopher Hitchens, I barely knew ye.
People in the skeptical blogosphere have been writing posts on this. One that caught by eye for it’s sheer vilefulness is, naturally, one by P.Z. Myers. The dark side of Hitchens.
It’s only fair to balance the light — Hitchens was a glorious writer and rhetorician, an advocate for atheism, and a brave human being — with the dark, and point out that there were subjects on which he was infuriating.
…
Alex Pareene brings up his peculiar misogyny and his support for war.
…
He promoted jingoistic violence as the solution to everything in the Middle East.
…
Hitchens was a complicated fellow: talented and intelligent, and on some subjects he was warm and humane and a true child of the Enlightenment. And on others, a bloodthirsty barbarian and a club-carrying primitive. At least in his final months it was the civilized and thoughtful humanist who emerged most.
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2011/12/16/the-dark-side-of-hitchens/
A commenter, ikesolem, said:
Hitchens may have been a rhetorical genius, but when it came to the Middle East he was woefully ignorant, and acted as a swiller and regurgitator of neocon propaganda (as did the U.S. corporate media establishment).
A person with a dark side. A misogynist, a promoter of violence, a bloodthirsty barbarian and club carrying primitive. Ignorant, a shill for the neocons.
What all this noise really means, when you consider the ilk of the people who are saying it, is that Hitchens disagreed with the left on some things. The horror.
Read more »
Posted on: Sunday, December 18, 2011 11:37 AM
Posted on: Monday, December 05, 2011 7:22 AM
Childhood classics.
Posted on: Monday, December 05, 2011 6:40 AM
The BBC website served me this page, the reasons people immigrate are of interest to me because I seek to understand why other people make a life changing decision that I have also made.
Why we quit Australia for the UK is about people who had left the UK for Australia, and then moved back to the UK again. Interesting.
I stayed in Perth for 15 years after my parents emigrated there when I was seven. At 24, I came back to England and have been here ever since. The dullness and isolation of living somewhere like Perth can't be explained unless you experience it. There are so many reasons why England is preferable to Australia for a lot of people such as being able to buy groceries past 6pm, local shops and pubs, having Europe on your doorstep, comedy and culture. Even when I am stuck on the M25 it is preferable to driving on dull empty roads at mind numbingly low speeds. This will probably be perceived as "whinging pom" by any Aussies as they can't understand why anybody wouldn't want to be them but it simply isn't for everyone.
Amazing, an almost 180 degree turnaround from my own view.
I moved from Oxfordshire to Canberra with my husband in 1990 after our children had grown up. He had been offered a job there. We later lived in the bush for 13 years. It was a fascinating experience to live in a house we built, with only solar power and rainwater, in an unspoiled area where wild flowers and animals could be studied close up. We both loved it but our families were back in the UK. We were also retired and British state pensions are frozen if you retire in Australia. We returned in 2008 from our wonderful 100 acres of forest in New South Wales to a bungalow in Oxfordshire. No regrets.
Sorry, the last one was merely pedestrian. This one is amazing. A 100 acre forest paradise for a bungalow in Oxfordshire? I’m insulted you would pose such a question, the answer should be plain!? </sarcasm>
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Posted on: Saturday, December 03, 2011 12:08 PM
National Geographic Photo Contest 2011
Posted on: Friday, November 25, 2011 5:38 PM
I’m not the most altruistic person, but there is a cause that I regularly donate to. Wikipedia.
Wikipedia is one of those Utopian-sounding fantasies that could not possibly work, but does.
Whenever I’m trying to educate myself on a topic, which at the moment is a history of politics in New Zealand and the particulars of electoral systems – national elections and referendum today (Sat 26th Nov!) – Wikipedia will dominate on my browser tabs an an inevitable good source of well-written reliable information.
It has been criticised for its user-contributed nature. On this I say that there are some cases where Wikipedia has been proven to be quite reliable as compared to other encyclopedias. However, I will say that I think the proper onus is on people possessing adequate skeptical tools in their minds to include Wikipedia in a list of possible sources that they consult on issues, and not as some irrefutable and unquestionable source. No one thing you read should be accepted uncritically. You should always be questioning where, why and how.
Wikipedia could make a lot of money from advertising, even in a limited sense, but it does not do so. I respect this immensely and will be donating via their donations page.
https://donate.wikimedia.org/
Posted on: Friday, November 25, 2011 3:36 PM
The umbrella in particular is remembered as the symbol of the nineteenth century’s disturbing obsession with individualism. In Bellamy’s utopia, umbrellas have been replaced with retractable canopies so that everyone is protected from the rain equally.
“In the nineteenth century,” explains a character, “when it rained, the people of Boston put up three hundred thousand umbrellas over as many heads, and in the twentieth century they put up one umbrella over all the heads.”