College students secretly broadcast gay freshman having sex; victim kills himself

Tyler Clementi performing with the Ridgewood High School Orchestra at a benefit dinner in 2009

It’s yet another horrific incident of a stupid, malicious prank gone tragically wrong. Tyler Clementi, a gifted freshman orchestral musician, has jumped off a bridge to his death only a few days after a dorm-room sexual encounter with another man was secretly filmed by his roommate and accomplice and broadcast over the Internet, thus outing him in the most brutal way imaginable:

“Going to jump off the gw bridge sorry.”

Tyler Clementi posted those words on his Facebook page moments before he apparently leapt to his death on Sept. 22, according to a friend. But the message did little to hint at the crisis unfolding in the life of the Ridgewood teenager.

In the days before, the personal life of the 18-year-old Rutgers freshman had been exposed on the Internet when, authorities say, his roommate used a webcam to surreptitiously broadcast a sexual encounter involving Clementi.

Dharun Ravi (left) and Molly W. Wei (right)

Ravi and another student, Molly W. Wei of Princeton, have been charged with two counts each of invasion of privacy, the Middlesex County prosecutor and Rutgers police said Wednesday. Ravi faces two additional counts for attempting to view and transmit the second encounter, authorities said.

I’ve heard numerous people calling for the two pranksters-turned-unintentional killers to be charged with murder. Unfortunately, they did not directly cause bodily harm to poor Tyler, so murder charges wouldn’t stick. I also don’t know if we could stick them with a hate crime, seeing as this was intended to be a mere prank of sorts that they had no idea would result in the victim’s injury or death.

No … I’m just hoping for some form of “manslaughter” charges, instead.

(via @jennifurret)

Tags: Tyler Clementi • Dharun Ravi • Molly Wei • LGBT students • tragedies

Daily Blend: September 30, 2010

I got nothing, so here’s a cheetah-train [source]

• Featured: Remember that Pew religious quiz that showed how American atheists/agnostics know more about religion than religious people? You can take the highly simple, 15-question test right here. (I got 14/15 correct. And I’m no expert, or even relatively knowledgeable on religion.)

• WWI finally ends 92 years later now that Germany has paid its reparations.
  (via The Daily Grail)

• So pregnant women should engage in regular oral?
  (via The Daily Grail)

• Cheery, reassuring news: Every single Republican Senate candidate is a climate change denialist.

• House of Representatives finally passes 9/11 healthcare bill. Don’t worry, fellow pessimists; the Senate is where good measures go to languish and die, after all.

• Two Iowa Republican Reps. introduce new bill to exclude LGBT students from 2007 anti-bullying bill. Because there just aren’t enough LGBT kids being bullied to misery or death.
  (via @todayspolitics)

• 6 Things Everyone Knows About Women (That Aren't True).
  (via Gene Burmington)

If you have any story suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments or send them in.

Tags: Pew Forum • WWI • Germany • semen • pregnancy • Republicans • denialism • 9-11 healthcare bill • House of Representatives • Senate • LGBT discrimination • Jason Schultz • Matt Windschitl • women • stereotypes • genderal roles • psychology

Canadian court strikes down anti-prostitution laws

I spend so much time keeping up with and writing about politics in the US (and occasionally elsewhere) that I often lose track of what’s going on in my own backyard. And once again, the Canadian courts have done the right thing and ruled that, to riff on George Carlin’s famous quote^[1], selling fucking should be legal for the sake of sex workers’ safety:

An Ontario court has thrown out key provisions of Canada's anti-prostitution laws in response to a constitutional challenge by a Toronto dominatrix and two prostitutes in 2009.

Ontario's Superior Court of Justice ruled Tuesday the Criminal Code provisions relating to prostitution contribute to the danger faced by sex-trade workers.

In her ruling, Justice Susan Himel said it now falls to Parliament to "fashion corrective action."

"It is my view that in the meantime these unconstitutional provisions should be of no force and effect, particularly given the seriousness of the charter violations," Himel wrote.

"However, I also recognize that a consequence of this decision may be that unlicensed brothels may be operated, and in a way that may not be in the public interest."

The judge suspended the effect of the decision for 30 days. It does not affect provisions dealing with people under 18.

A judicial ruling about sex founded in common sense – not something I reckon we’re about to see happen in the US anytime soon, I’m afraid. Prostitution, along with other subsets of the sex industry, drugs, and anything else that consenting adults engage in on their own time and their own dime, should absolutely be legal and carefully regulated by the government to protect the providers and punish abusers. As it is, a prostitute who encounters a violent client has virtually no resources at all, as his/her options are essentially limited to jail time or simply shutting up and coping. And that should never be anyone’s reality.

Daily Blend: Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Pictured: Douchebag

• 33 Conspiracy Theories That Turned Out To Be True.
  (via The Daily Grail)

• “Weird”? Airbus’s vision of the future of air travel is awesome.
  (via The Daily Grail)

• Christine O’Donnell’s mice-with-human-brains trumped by fish with human teeth.
  (via The Daily Grail)

• This is a casual (or perhaps restrainedly excited) link to a science article that confirms my bias(es) or some generally accepted notion, or that attempts to blow a moderately intriguing discovery to astronomical levels of relevance, especially for fringe groups.
  (via The Agitator)

• So you wanna go bankrupt? Here’re the five quickest ways to end up on the streets.
  (via Gene Burmington)

• Manassas, Virginia’s anti-sex prudishness will cost them $70,000. Sweet benign schadenfreude.
  (via Fark)

• I really don’t know what to make of these. Parody? Poe? Please?
  (via Fark)

• How to run a sex toy ad on primetime TV: Call it a “personal massager”.
  (via Fark)

• You think your engagement photo shoot was fun? These folks had Bruce Springsteen pop in for a surprise play on the husband-to-be’s guitar.
  (via Fark)

• Marty McFly can now browse for his self-tying shoes (well, someday soon).
  (via Gene Burmington)

Inhuman | Chapter 16: Destiny’s Call [old edition]

This entry has been removed from Preliator and can now be found over at Creativitas. (See here for more info.)

FBI fails simple test on Fourth Amendment rights

FBI seal [source]

Just how incompetent are the feds? A Justice Department investigation has found that FBI agents and supervisors cheated “significant[ly]” on an exam. An open-book exam, where they were just short of having all the answers spoon-fed to them. Bonus: An exam on the Fourth Amendment. This certainly seems to explain things.

WASHINGTON – A Justice Department investigation has found that FBI agents, including several supervisors, cheated on an important test covering the bureau's policies for conducting surveillance on Americans.

Justice Department Inspector General Glenn Fine said Monday that his limited review of allegations that agents improperly took the open-book test together or had access to an answer sheet has turned up "significant abuses and cheating."

Fine called on the bureau to discipline the agents, throw out the results and come up with a new test to see if FBI agents understand new rules allowing them to conduct surveillance and open files on Americans without evidence of criminal wrongdoing.

This is beyond absurd and is well into the realms of the outright laughable – or so it would be, if it weren’t for the terrifying fact that these fools are in charge of enforcing the laws they’re so overtly clueless about. One has to wonder if this sort of generalized idiocy is symptomatic of a decline in quality of training and instruction, or if it’s rather indicative of lowered disciplinary standards. Either way bodes rather badly for the general population, who are forced to obey the whims of people who have demonstrated they don’t have the slightest idea what they’re doing.

Though, at least they aren’t nincompoops in charge of steering nuclear submarines. What is this, an epidemic of incompetence?

(via The Agitator)

Tags: FBI • Fourth Amendment

Daily Blend: Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Gloria Stuart as Old Rose in Titanic (1997) [source]

• Farewell, Old Rose [pictured].
  (via @BreakingNews)

• Kentwood, Michigan man Ed Heil tries to photograph town’s small water tower, ends up harassed by utility officials, case goes to Homeland Security.
  (via The Agitator)

• Photos from California’s Creation Research Society creation museum. Bogus numbers, Hitler = Darwin’s fault, mind-meltingly weird multi-verse concepts, and more.

• The most ludicrous depictions of evolution in science fiction history.
  (via Pharyngula)

• Former President Jimmy Carter on The Daily Show. He emanates spirit and genuineness like few others. And, yes, I mostly post this because he criticized Fox News and the polarization of US politics.

• Because we could always use a reminder of how utterly meaningless we are in the (very, very) grand scheme of things.
  (via The Daily Grail)

• New evidence indicates dogs began turning domesticated at least 14,000 years ago, a full millennium earlier than first estimated (and 8,000 years before the world was Created!).
  (via The Daily Grail)

• Rep. Randy Forbes (R-VA) vs. Dr. Wynne LeGrow (D), or literally Christofascist vs. Secularist Atheist.
  (via Right Wing Watch)

• Douchebag Republican Sens. Tom Coburn (OK) and Jim DeMint (SC) block a women’s history museum because there are already “cowgirl” and “quilters” museums.
  (via Right Wing Watch)

North Carolina’s “legal rape” problem

If it’s not “yes”, it’s “no” [source | full size (300×324)]

What constitutes rape? Any form of sexual contact with another person without their explicit and knowing consent.

Finding someone walking alone in a dark alley and forcing them into sex is rape.

Getting someone to have sex with you when they’re too drunk or otherwise affected by drugs to fully understand what’s happening is rape.

Trying to have sex with someone who either doesn’t outright say “yes” or who explicitly says “no” is rape.

Unwanted sex is rape. You’d think this was a simple enough concept to understand. North Carolina courts apparently don’t think so.

If you begin having sex in the great state of North Carolina, want to stop, and your partner forcibly restrains you to continue having intercourse, well, you should have made up your mind beforehand. Once you've initially consented to the act, you relinquish the right to your own body, according to a 1979 state Supreme Court ruling: "no rape has occurred though the victim later withdraws consent during the same act of intercourse." If your partner ignores your pleas to get off you or causes physical injury to keep you from leaving, that's still just not rape.

In effect, this is a court decision legalizing rape.

It’s commonly accepted that most people are horndogs who will happily get hot & bothered any chance they get (not just men, despite the popular stereotype), but this biological notion also comes with the moral responsibility of self-control. Unless your partner lets you know, in no uncertain terms, that the sexual act to come is approved, then you cannot and must not try to drag them into it, regardless of how much you want it. Even if your partner originally wanted it and now wishes for the act to end as it’s underway, whether you’re just beginning or nearly done, it is your responsibility, as a moral being, to end it at once and let your partner be. It doesn’t matter how, when or why he/she says no – just stop. It’s really not that hard. (Plus, you would think the fact that your partner is in obvious distress would be an effective boner-kill for most people to begin with.)

Matt Barber and Washington Times continue fear-mongering about repealing DADT

“Illustration: General Gaga by Greg Groesch for The Washington Times” Count the number of ways in which this typically terrible PhotoShopping fails

If there are two things that Christian-centric legal pundits have consistently demonstrated over time, it’s how they’re generally both clueless about the laws they claim to uphold and are so often virulently homophobic. Here is the latest example: Matt Barber, director of cultural affairs at Liberty Counsel, takes to the Washington Times and unleashes a petulant screed against efforts to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” that feels almost inanely easy to take apart.

While preaching to the choir at his April 12 Nuclear Security Summit, President Obama revealed his perspective on America's matchless military might: "Whether we like it or not," he said, "we (the United States) remain a dominant military superpower." That the president would even imagine "we" might not "like it," betrays his fixed membership within that "progressive" camp of self-loathing "or nots." (Mr. Obama's anti-Americanism is showing.)

Oh, my, the President actually said that some – “progressives”, of course, according to Barber – were unhappy with how large and powerful the US Military has gotten?

Well – no, he didn’t. Courtesy of Media Matters:

Obama discussed "cost" of getting "pulled into" violent conflicts abroad. […] Obama stated that "[i]t is a vital national security interest of the United States to reduce these conflicts because whether we like it or not, we remain a dominant military superpower, and when conflicts break out, one way or another we get pulled into them. And that ends up costing us significantly in terms of both blood and treasure."

So, Barber chose to start off his piece with some quote-mining over which he could then get all dishonestly flustered about how Obama is supposedly “Anti-American” because (supposedly) some Americans (progressives, remember!) may not be happy with the Military’s excessive weight. That doesn’t even make much sense if we take Barber’s out-of-context quote at face value, much less with Obama’s proper meaning. Stretching logic this thin just to attack Obama – Barber’s desperation is showing.

Daily Blend: Monday, September 27, 2010

Jimi Heselden, Segway company owner

• The First Amendment Center’s annual poll results: Yup, most Americans still have no idea what the First Amendment is about.

• Feds tired of phone line, now want Internet companies and websites such as YouTube, Twitter and Facebook to facilitate the use of online surveillance on their users.

• “Jerks Who Want to Tell You How to Raise Your Kids Because Your Kids are Obviously Too Stupid to Think for Themselves Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood” want to ban TV show for featuring superheroes who wear a specific brand of shoe.
  (via The Agitator)

• Sad but funny (but sad): Segway company owner Jimi Heselden [pictured] goes over the edge – of a cliff, on a Segway, and dies in the river below.

If you have any story suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments or send them in.

Tags: First Amendment Center • First Amendment • FBI • wiretaps • online surveillance • Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood • children • Segways • Jimi Heselden

Guest post: Dealing with the lies of god

This is a guest post by Gene Burmington. (Obligatory disclaimer: the views and opinions expressed below are the writer’s and do not necessarily reflect my own.)

Special Comment: Dang, now I almost feel guilty. But I respect my friend too much to coddle him with things I know are untrue, no matter how temporarily and cheaply reassuring they may appear to be. As Greta Christina once said, reality is a harsh mistress, but we must accept her in order to see just how magnificent she truly is, far more than any fantasy we can conjure to replace her.

---

Not insofar as we can ascertain with science and human understanding

This essay wasn't written for Christians, Hindu's, Buddhists, or Muslims: they have their beliefs and won't be shaken of them no matter what. Instead, this is for those others who are incredulous and don't know what to believe.

Ever since the owner of this blog came out with the facts of life on atheism, all my thoughts and pretenses have turned to shit. I mean, how can any sane person just simply accept an end to existence at death?

All the time, religion tries to consolidate our trust into these unproven farces of things that happen to us as we go through the beliefs and eventually our death.

But let's be realistic, if science has already proven that our minds work from electrical signals that can process things faster than computers, and that our personalities can suddenly CHANGE from brain damage, what hope do we have to believe in an afterlife if the proof leans toward our existence being tethered to a physical mass of flesh and combined learning experiences?

To be candid of truth, that's what everyone wants--a happy ending. From our fairy tales, to our religion, and even in massage parlors; people just want to pretend that everything's fine as long as someone or a respected system is stroking them, as George Carlin once said.

The Tea & Crumpets Party

The ever astute Tom Tomorrow asks: What if the Tea Party’s billionaire lobbyist backers were to come clean with their true motives?

“The Tea & Crumpets Party” | This Modern World (Tom Tomorrow)

Frankly, I wonder if they really are being so bald-facedly dishonest, or if they really are just anti-reality whackjobs who use the cloak of populism to give their bullshit traction.

(via Political Irony)

Tags: Tom Tomorrow • This Modern World • cartoons • Tea Party

How to properly dispose of holy books

Koran and Bible

There are no real good reasons to keep any holy texts lying around; they are of no use to the rational mind in everyday life, and what archival value they may possess (such as highlighting an excerpt to denote their inaccuracy or other weirdness) has been replaced with the greatly superior tool that is the Internet. But how best to rid yourself of these archaic manuscripts?

Forget burning them, which recalls unpleasant imagery; tearing them apart, which is just crude; or even merely tossing them into the garbage (perhaps with a nail through them), where they only take up valuable space. PZ Myers shows us the best way to dispose of these useless books, whilst simultaneously putting them to greater use than they would ever have been if perused or left to collect dust on bookshelves. For the first time since their inception, let them serve, not to spawn bloody battles and prohibitive superstition, but to help spread beautiful life. [video below the fold]

Daily Blend: Sunday, September 26, 2010

Mike Celizic [source]

• New meta-study on the relation between traditional gender roles and sexual abuse reveals rapists and child molesters are generally more religious and socially conservative. So it would seem that demonizing and repressing sexual urges leads to bad things. Shocker, that.

• List of the “40 Best Conservative Blogs for 2010” at Right Wing News. Yup, it’s a cavalcade of necrocerebralism.

• Mike Celizic [pictured], MSNBC reporter and sports columnist stricken with terminal lymphoma, has died.

• For the record, I happily encourage filing criminal charges against asshole youths who bully LGBT kids to death.
  (via @jennifurret)

• Looks like the Pentagon was able to fulfill their quota of censorial cowardice after all. Or, alternatively, they really, really need to sit down and Google “Streisand Effect”, along with anyone else trying to suppress information in such a stupidly blatant manner as burning books.

• John Shook from the Center for Inquiry epitomizes the Courtier’s Reply in a silly little anti-atheist screed over at The Huffington Post. Jerry Coyne (Why Evolution Is True) dissects it.
  (via @godlesswoman)

• Bishop Eddie Long denies the charges of sexual exploitation from four young men before his cheeringly supportive congregation. I wonder how they’ll all react should the accusations be substantiated.

If you have any story suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments or send them in.

Tags: rape • rapists • child molesters • conservatives • Right Wing News • Mike Celizic • sad • LGBT kids • suicide • bullying • Pentagon • US Military • Operation Dark Heart • Able Danger • Anthony Shaffer • Streisand Effect • John Shook • atheists • Center for Inquiry • Courtier's Reply • theology • Eddie Long • clerical child abuse

What if Civilization had lyrics?

Ever wanted to know just how massive the scope of the epic computer strategy game was by taking the gorgeous theme song and adding in some witty lyrics? Well, you have odd demands. And here it is, courtesy of brentalfloss [video below the fold]:

Daily Blend: Saturday, September 25, 2010

USAF Maj. Margaret Witt [source]

• The Earth’s volcanic pulse.
  (via The Daily Grail)

• The Titanic sank as a result of numerous human errors (including forgetting to equip the lookouts with binoculars, ignoring ice warnings and steaming too fast in dangerous waters, reversing the engines upon spitting the ’berg and thus preventing the ship from turning effectively, etc.). This is common knowledge, has been ever since the time of the disaster. So why is it now being treated as some grand shocking revelation?

• Titanium foam for your bones.
  (via The Daily Grail)

• Fox News host Brian Kilmeade spreads more lies in claiming that President Obama didn’t mention North Korea in his UN speech – despite him clearly and explicitly singling NK out as an example of “tyranny” as a “regime that enslaves its own people”.

• Scientific American’s new poll results showing that scientists are the most trusted authority figures (and religious authorities, the least) would be more heartening if they hadn’t taken these results from their own, much-more-informed-than-the-hoi-polloi readers.
  (via Pharyngula)

• Very weird report: Process server tries to hand divorce papers to a woman, woman runs him over and severely injures him, he gets charged with “harassment” and “criminal mischief”.
  (via The Agitator)

• Libertarians get all hot & bothered thinking about British governmental reform.

Pennsylvania lawmaker wants to ban synthetic marijuana used in cancer, AIDS and MS treatment research

Here’s another legislator afflicted with a crippling infestation of ignorance and stupidity when it comes to drugs. Pennsylvania State Rep. Jennifer Mann (D) has introduced a bill intended to criminalize several synthetic cannabinoid compounds (ie. artificial marijuana) and to ban their use in medical research for treatments for such serious diseases as cancer, AIDS, MS, and other pain-causing illnesses:

H.B. 176, recently introduced by state Rep. Jennifer Mann, is scheduled to be considered at the House Judiciary Committee meeting on Tuesday, September 21st, 2010. This bill would criminalize 5 synthetic cannabinoid compounds that are being researched for use in the treatment of cancer, AIDS, MS, pain, and other serious diseases. Research using these substances has been done at colleges throughout the Commonwealth, such as at the University of Pennsylvania. There is no scientific or moral reason why we should send cutting edge research out of the state. There is also no reason to ban something that may one day be a prescribed medication used to treat the severely ill. Preliminary evidence suggests these substances appear to be relatively harmless. Some of these substances and similar substances have been shown to kill cancer cells, reduce nausea and vomiting, and boost the immune system.

There are absolutely no legit legal or medical reasons why these compounds should be stopped. As usual, it all points to yet another idiot politician with a hard-on for trying to suppress any and all drugs, regardless of what context they’re used in. Merely banning marijuana because people consume it is stupid enough, given the drug’s relative harmlessness and lack of physical addictiveness. But banning it just because artificial compounds are used to further the development of much-needed treatments for destructive sicknesses like Cancer, AIDS and MS is just fucking insane.

Dan Savage launches “It Gets Better” project

Update: (09/24/10 3:00 PM) – Added a link to the campaign in my right sidebar.

If you’re an LGBT teen going through hard times in high school, or know someone who fits that profile, then you need to watch this video from the new “It Gets Better” campaign by Dan Savage. Listen to the testimonials. There’s a life and future after those difficult teen years. From familial tensions to shunning by classmates (and more), that’s what you need to learn, to accept, to embrace: It gets better. It really does. [video below the fold]

Camera crew in Sahara caught by massive sandstorm

Sandstorm sweeping in

It must be simultaneously fascinating and often terrifying to be a cameraman for outfits such as the National Geographic Channel, where you get sent all around the world to capture some of the most beautiful and amazing photos of the natural world (and instant screensaver material) at the expense of occasionally getting caught up in some tricky situations. Bob Poole might be able to share one such experience, captured in thrilling video when he and his team were out in Mali, smack dab in the Sahara, to film some elephants and were instead caught by surprise when a massive wall of sand overtook them within minutes, pitching them into near-total darkness and giving the air a very creepy red tinge. [video below the fold]

Daily Blend: Friday, September 24, 2010

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), feminist [source]

Sorry for the lack of posts these past few days. Blame a combination of a dearth of interesting blogging material and my being busy with other projects, notably grinding on that ruddy Chapter 16 of Inhuman.

• Not content with merely arsoning the worksite, Murfreesboro, Tennessee Islamophobes now trying to stop the proposed mosque there with a stupid lawsuit. Ed Brayton (Dispatches from the Culture Wars) has the details.

• Wackiest, most original and overall best nude/genital tattoos (NSFW). #4 is my favorite and makes me want to weep with sympathetic pain.
  (via The Agitator)

• The plight of women sharing Sarah Palin’s name.
  (via The Agitator)

• The Top Seven Cutest Feminists, from Spike, proving women don’t need to sacrifice aesthetics for brains. I’m just happy they didn’t put Sarah Palin in there.
  (via The Agitator)

• British spy agency MI6 apparently liked to wank in their writings.
  (via The Daily Grail)

• Ray Comfort claims atheists who say that “everything came from nothing” believe in “unscientific lunacy” and those who believe that matter didn’t just pop out of absolutely nowhere are no longer atheists. Boggles the mind, doesn’t it?

• NewsBusters still sucks at the whole “reality in media” thing.

• The “sick food movement”, featuring the Heart Attack Grill (Chandler, AZ). A whole movement of assholes giving the finger to health and people with genuine weight problems.

If you have any story suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments or send them in.

Tags: Murfreesboro, TN • mosques • Muslims • Islamophobia • tattoos • body modification • Sarah Palin • feminists • cheesecake • Spike • MI6 • semen • Ray Comfort • atheists • NewsBusters • healthcare • healthcare reform • sick food movement • Heart Attack Grill

Friday Canine: They’ve been well trained for mealtime

[source | full size (2400×1693)]

Tags: dogs

Daily Blend: Thursday, September 23, 2010

Rendering of Kosmoceratops

• Refreshingly decent piece over at The Next Web Media about the predicaments of PZ Myers and Christopher Hitchens, and how atheists respond to death and others’ reactions to their own mortality.
  (h/t to Simon Owens)

• Some good news: Miami court of appeals rules the Florida ban on LGBT adoption is unconstitutional.
  (via @BreakingNews)

• Two new dinosaur species discovered in southern Utah: Kosmoceratops [pictured] and Utahceratops (aka Ugly Spikyhead and Ugly Hornface).

• Jon Stewart rebukes Bill O’Reilly’s claims that President Obama doesn’t understand “the folks”: “You’re just making things up.”

• More Fox “News”: Megyn Kelly of America Live derides former President Carter for (brilliantly) criticizing Fox News on The Daily Show, claims Stephen Colbert’s self-paid in-character speech to Congress is a “waste of taxpayer dollars”, keeps pushing that bullshit “New Black Panther Party scandal”, and snidely remarks on how a cop who presumably attacked a 15-year-old boy for having sex with the cop’s 14-year-old daughter (no further details provided) is now facing possible criminal charges – as though what the cop did was supposedly a good thing in proportion to the alleged “offense”.

If you have any story suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments or send them in.

Tags: Simon Owens • atheists • death • mortality • PZ Myers • Christopher Hitchens • Florida • LGBT rights • LGBT adoptions • dinosaurs • Kosmoceratops • Utahceratops • Jon Stewart • Bill O'Reilly • Fox News • Megyn Kelly • Jimmy Carter • Stephen Colbert • New Black Panthers Party • underage sex

Daily Blend: Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Senate candidate Glen Urquhart (TP-DE)

• British couple kicked out of the Golden Beach Hotel by the manager after writing a negative online review. I’m sure that’s gonna help with the place’s (already poor) rating.
  (via The Agitator)

• Damn. Poor bastard.

• Obama administration continues to advocate indefinite detention without charges or actionable evidence.

• Another Tea Party wingnut from Delaware (other than Christine O’Donnell), Glen Urquhart, claims that the phrase “separation of church and state” came, not from Thomas Jefferson, but from Adolf Hitler. Which would come as a bit of a shock to both Jefferson and Hitler (and anyone who’s read a history book), I’m sure.

• Republicans once again managed to set back equality yesterday. So for now, here’s a Washington Post article on five myths about “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”.

If you have any story suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments or send them in.

Tags: Golden Beach Hotel • TripAdvisor • Adrian Healey • strokes • sad • Obama administration • indefinite detention • Glen Urquhart • Thomas Jefferson • Adolf Hitler • separation of church and state • Republicans • DADT • Don't Ask, Don't Tell

Dogs performing tricks to music – what more do you want?

The song is okay, though nothing great. The choreography is neat. And the dogs are awesomesauce. Official video for “White Knuckles” by Chicago, Illinois rock band OK Go [video below the fold]:

Young Republicans want you to “break up” with Obama

Young people don’t want old people to have all the stupid

Uh-oh. Looks like the disease of ignorance and blind partisanship is starting to infect young people as well. Here’s a new ad from the College Republicans that tries to convince young voters who originally put Obama and the Democrats in office of how they made a bad choice using the only allegory most youths are likely to understand: hooking up with a bad boy-/girlfriend. It’s a rather like an epileptic Gish Gallup: So much idiocy thrown at you in such little time that you feel both overwhelmed and stupider simply for having watched it. [video below the fold]

Daily Blend: Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Gorilla playing with Nintendo DS while youngster watches

You who read stories have it easy. If only it were as exciting and fluid an endeavor to write them. *grumble*

• Oh, Mr. Brayton, you naughty boy.

• Fascinating New York Times gallery of nuclear bomb photos. Wanna know what happens to a bus at 10 million degrees, splitsecond by splitsecond?
  (via The Daily Grail)

• Another fascinating gallery, this one of the solar system via Boston.com’s The Big Picture.
  (via The Daily Grail)

• Hee hee.

• Boy accidentally drops Nintendo DS into a gorilla cage at the San Francisco zoo, gives new cause to animal photography [pictured].
  (via The Agitator)

• Another “limited government, personal freedoms” Republican in Michigan wants to have cops draw blood from random drivers for drug testing despite test’s record of false positives.
  (via The Agitator)

• US soldiers charged with hunting Afghani civilians for sport, covering up the murders, and gang-beating the whistleblower.
  (via @wikileaks)

If you have any story suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments or send them in.

Tags: Ed Brayton • Christine O'Donnell • masturbation • nuclear bombs • atomic bombs • solar system • gorillas • Republicans • drug tests • Michigan • soldiers

Health insurers drop coverage for children days before before healthcare reform rules kick in

Healthcare insurance vipers

Been having a good day so far? Okay then, allow me to fulfill my role as a perpetual killjoy and ruin your evening: At least four states have chosen to drop healthcare coverage plans for children altogether only three days before new rules under the healthcare reform law would prohibit them from denying children coverage due to “preexisting conditions”.

Health plans in at least four states have announced they're dropping children's coverage just days ahead of new rules created by the healthcare reform law, according to the liberal grassroots group Health Care for America Now (HCAN).

The new healthcare law forbids insurers from turning down children with pre-existing conditions starting Thursday, one of several reforms Democrats are eager to highlight this week as they try to build support for the law ahead of the mid-term elections. But news of insurers dropping their plans as a result of the new law has thrown a damper on that strategy and prompted fierce push-back from the administration's allies at HCAN.

The announcement could lead to higher costs for some parents who are buying separate coverage for themselves and their children at lower cost than the family coverage that's available to them.

[…]

The issue had largely dropped out of sight since then, but insurers including WellPoint and CoventryOne have announced in recent days that they're dropping children's coverage in California, Colorado, Ohio and Missouri, according to HCAN.

Just in case you thought these greedy, heartless bastards couldn’t make it any more overt how they simply do not give the slightest damn about human lives, even (or especially) those who require help and compassion. If even sick children are fair game for these people to screw over, what’s next? Seriously, who is there left for these ghouls to use as polishing stones for all their ill-gained and blood-soaked lucre?

Who really deserves to be voted out …

Just imagine if the educated minority of Americans could go to the ballots and vote on the subject of the unwashed masses that are spreading so much stupidity across the country (and, by extension, much of the adjoining world along with it):

Cartoon for 09/20/10 | GoComics.com (Tom Toles)

Well, either that, or we could just implement some sort of awareness and general intelligence litmus test for the electoral base to pass in order to obtain the license to vote. In all honesty, I can’t see much to complain about such a measure, should it be enforced properly, as it would serve only to weed out all the ignorami and wingnuts who simply cannot be trusted to vote with anything other than partisan politics and black-and-white ideology in mind, policy and sensible governing be damned. Imparting free rights upon everyone equally is one thing. Allowing a deranged fringe to gain the upper hand and seize control through misinformation and demagogy is quite another.

Mojoey’s Atheist Blogroll offline, searching for interim solution

I wanted to create this post to try and alert as many people (specifically atheist bloggers) as possible to the fact that Blogrolling.com, the service hosting Mojoey’s Atheist Blogroll (currently at a magnificent 1,270 entries!), has apparently just gone offline, taking the great blogroll down along with it. Mojoey is currently searching for interim solutions and needs some help with getting the blogroll back online.

So, if you have some time and technical expertise with servers and code testing and whatnot (thus definitely excluding me from the list of possible helpers), then do stop by and see if you can’t lend a hand. Godless heathens everywhere (at least on the Web) will be (partially) in your debt.

Also, a reader contacted me earlier today to inform me that he’s now receiving a malware warning upon visiting this blog with Google Chrome. Needless to say, there is no malevolent code present on this blog or any website I choose to link to, so this must be some odd side-effect of the atheist blogroll code going offline. I’m now removing the code and implementing one of Mojoey’s interim solutions, so if you keep receiving malware warnings for this blog, please let me know in the comments as it’s certainly not supposed to happen. Thank you.

Thanks to Richard Tomsett for indirectly informing me of this issue.

---

Unrelated: Just to inform you that a progressing lethargic lack of bloggable material has now come to a head and there will be no Daily Blend for today. Come back tomorrow. (Or don’t, stay for the interim posts!)

Tags: Mojoey's Atheist Blogroll • Blogrolling.com • Atheist Blogroll • blogrolls

Daily Blend: Sunday, September 19, 2010

Jean-Luc Godard

See, this is why I didn’t want my brother to move back in. I now have an urgent need to sound-proof my bedroom door and walls to prevent his unspeakably execrable substitute for “music” (think what passes for music in ghettos) – which, naturally, he insists on blaring from the living room speakers and subwoofer – from seeping into my room and driving me insane in a matter of hours.

• Another Jehovah’s Witness willing to sacrifice her child’s life for her stupid beliefs.
  (via @godlesswoman)

• I don’t know anything about Jean-Luc Godard [pictured], other than he’s now my personal hero. (Well, okay, not really. But still, that’s one cool-ass move.) Finally, a prominent artist who fucking gets it about “intellectual property”.
  (via @ebertchicago)

• Another brilliant court ruling: Second Circuit Court of Appeals declares that corporations are immune from liability for human rights abuses, from slavery to torture to genocide.

• 13 congregants from a cult-like church in Palmdale, California, including up to 8 children, gone missing to await “Rapture” and feared at risk for a mass suicide.

If you have any story suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments or send them in.

Tags: Jehovah's Witnesses • Jean-Luc Godard • intellectual property • US Court of Appeals • corporations • legal rights • human rights abuses • cults • mass suicide • Reyna Marisol Chicas

Dawkins responds to Pope Ratzi at London protest rally

Pope Benedict XVI

Update: (09/19/10 12:33 PM) – Embedded & linked to a higher-quality video of the address.

I’ve already touched on Pope Ratzi’s use of that most insufferably repeated anti-atheist canard (and imagine the competition for that title): that atheism is somehow responsible for Hitler and the Nazis (even though nothing about Nazi Germany had anything remotely godless about it, and that competent historians would probably rather drink donkey piss over having to repeat such a blatantly evident fact one more time). Needless to say, he’s ruffled a number of feathers in doing so – though why anyone would either believe he wouldn’t utter such a claim, or be surprised that he would, is beyond me. (He’s the pope, people, the twisted old geezer at the top of an institution founded and operating on lies and all flavors of hokum.)

However, you can usually count on a select few individuals to raise their rightful concerns in a brilliant manner, and once again, leave it to Richard Dawkins to do so at the Protest the Pope Rally in London. It’s a fitting speech for that oh-so-flamboyantly mean and shrill militant atheist: using facts and reason to present his argument that someone like Pope Ratzi has absolutely no place lecturing atheists, of all people, on such things as morality and past atrocities committed by wicked individuals. [video below the fold]

Daily Blend: Saturday, September 18, 2010

Sarah Palin

• Oh my God. This strikes home so very much. (Poor Mom. My poker face merely hides my exasperated laughter.)
  (via @jennifurret)

• Lengthy list of Hitler quotes. Yeah, true atheistic evolutionist, wasn’t he?

• Oh, the battles waged by astronauts: Solar radiation, clean water, falling fingernails …

• On the persisting unreliability of criminal confessions.

• Sarah Palin [pictured] shows her determination and passion when asked about a 2012 presidential run: that under some vague conditions, she “would give it a shot”.

• Dear Editor: Choosing to publish an incredibly racist joke and then retracting it when you start receiving flak for it is not indicative of making a “mistake” borne from “bad judgment”. It just means you’re a racist. (And, most likely, an idiot.)
  (via @VeritasKnight)

If you have any story suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments or send them in.

Tags: Google • Adolf Hitler • atheists • astronauts • criminal confessions • false confessions • Sarah Palin • 2012 presidential elections • racism • Black people

Early “War on Christmas” starter: Cheesy anti-atheist movie

Christmas With a Capital C

Looks like it’s that season again. Stores have begun stocking up on little plastic conifers, hideous and itchy woolly hats and enough multicolored lights to turn the planet into a miniature star for a few weeks. It’s also the time where militant godless heathens go out and start snarling at anyone who wishes them “Merry Christmas” and using the ACLU (Anti-Christian Liberties Union) to try and destroy everything Christians hold dear in the neverending annual struggle for happiness and freedom known as the War on Christmas.

To kick things off in style (and a tad early – wanna get ready for those rabid atheists when they come!), the good faithfully preachy have already landed their first blow: a cheesy anti-atheist Christian movie! Trailer below the fold.