Snark fails me: Why would anyone, anywhere, ever think this was a good idea?
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No, really. I understand the concept of no publicity being bad publicity and all that, but … really?
Some people are weird in a very frightening way.
(via ThinkProgress)
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Scenes from a post-racial America, specifically in Rochelle, Georgia:
Stephanie and Keela are white and Mareshia and Quanesha are black. They're seniors at Wilcox County High School, a school that has never held an integrated prom during its existence.
"There's a white prom and there's an integrated prom," said Keela.
The rule is strictly enforced, any race other than Caucasian wouldn't dare to attend the white prom.
"They would probably have the police come out there and escort them off the premises," said Keela.
That was the case just last year as a biracial student was turned away by police. It's been that way for as long as anyone can remember and it doesn't stop at prom. Homecoming is also segregated. Normally, there would be a court for each race, but for the first time the school decided to elect only one homecoming court, Quanesha won. But there were still two separate dances.
[…]
There will still be two proms this year. Neither proms are financed by or allowed to take place at Wilcox County High School. The students said that when they pushed for one prom, the school offered a resolution to permit an integrated prom that would allow all students to attend but not stop segregated proms.
Well, that’s odd. I just checked, and indeed, I didn’t somehow wake up in the early 1900s this morning.
Luckily, the students are paving the way for progress, though they’re finding it much harder than it should be in 20-fucking-13 to get a government-sponsored, publicly funded institution to drop the whole segregation thing [EDIT: 04/07/13 12:32 PM ET – I just realized my error: The proms aren’t school-sponsored, but are private-funded events organized by the community, instead, which is the only reason this shit is legal]:
So the girls are taking matters into their own hands.
"If we don't change it nobody else will," said Keela.
They're part of a group of students organizing a prom for everyone to attend, called the "Integrated Prom", but everyone is not fond of the idea.
"I put up posters for the "Integrated Prom" and we've had people ripping them down at the school," said Keela.
The group says they will continue to make progress even though there doesn't seem to be much motivation to change.
"We need to stick with the tradition," Quanesha said mockingly. "This is a traditional thing we don't need to change and stuff like that, but why? No one can answer my question.
"Exactly," responded Keela. "They think nothing's broken so don't fix it."
It remains to be seen whether the people of Wilcox County will remain steadfast in their pro-segregationist beliefs now that the media and Internet are about to bring a little more scrutiny upon their bigoted heads than they’re used to.
The world is a disturbing place sometimes.
(via Wonkette)
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| Jon Stewart |
A sad reminder that liberals/progressives can be racist idiots, too.
Is there any climate-change-denialist argument (read: lie) that doesn’t invariably boil down to blatantly cherry-picking data?
(via @BadAstronomer)
While reading this breathtaking(ly bizarre and repugnant) homage to North Korea, try to keep in mind that it is not from The Onion.
(via @BuzzFeedAndrew)
And finally, Jon Stewart [pictured] to take three-month hiatus from The Daily Show (which will be babysat by John Oliver) to direct his first feature film.
(via @ebertchicago)
If you have any story suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments or send them in.
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| Rhonda McGee |
Iowa woman [pictured] “arrested and charged with intent to manufacture [crystal] meth” after buying cold medicine for her allergies – without even violating legal limits.
(via @radleybalko)
In case you somehow missed it, Phil Plait has breathless coverage of last Friday’s spectacular Russian meteoric fireball, along with a reassurance that no, the Universe is not out to get us lately (any more than usual, that is).
The Heartland Institute: Still a bunch of lyin’ liars about climate change.
(via @BadAstronomer)
And finally, here be morans. (To be fair, the handrail looks like it broke and slid askew rather than got installed that way.)
(via @RichardWiseman; RT: @pzmyers)
If you have any story suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments or send them in.
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Is it just me, or are months going by faster and faster?
Unbelievable: Remember the old joke about conservatives being so anti-Obama that if the President came out against Hitler, the Right would defend the Nazis? Oh, wait, that totally just happened.
(via @radleybalko)
More on creeping Creationism in Missouri.
And finally, I am quite happy to see Jen McCreight is back in the game. And not just because it promises more Pokébiology.
If you have any story suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments or send them in.
EDIT (02/01/13 9:53 PM ET) – It turns out the above is the same Creationism/ID bill I mentioned in my last Daily Blend. (via Rob F)
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| Dr. George Doodnaught (accused) |
Does Toronto Star columnist Rosie DiManno truly believe that this:
She lost a womb but gained a penis.
The former was being removed surgically — full hysterectomy — while the latter was forcibly shoved into her slack mouth.
… is a good introduction for a story about a doctor who’s being sued for sexually assaulting several patients during surgery?
No particular comment here, other than the mind just boggles.
(via @BuzzFeedAndrew)
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| Rick Santorum |
The fun thing about trying to forcibly rearrange your sleep schedule is that for a few days, you effectively have no sleep schedule. Oy.
Owners of Mississippi’s only abortion clinic go to court in hopes of preventing its demise.
(via @BuzzFeedAndrew)
Unbelievable: House Oversight Committee flacks lecture vaccine-advocating scientists about all the usual anti-vaccination myths and delusions. Where’s that basic science litmus test for elective office?
(via @BadAstronomer)
Meanwhile, climate change denialists lie their asses off in yet another garbage-packed opinion letter that gets just about every single thing wrong.
Wow: Freethought Blogs’ Ashley Miller was just disowned by her redneck father for dating a Black man. ’Scuse me while I go check my calender.
(via @jennifurret)
And finally, the only thing remotely surprising about Rick Santorum [pictured] joining the WorldNetDaily is that it took this long.
If you have any story suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments or send them in.
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| Richard Dawkins |
Fun: Being enthralled by a great book. Not fun: Returning to mundane reality afterwards. *le melodramatic sigh*
It’s come to the point where U.S. Islamic leaders are trying to discourage impressionable loners from terrorism whilst the FBI pushes them to commit it.
(via @notjessewalker; RT: @radleybalko)
Meanwhile, it’s getting difficult to take Richard Dawkins’s [pictured] complaints against accusations of Islamophobia seriously when he uses unreliable statistics about beliefs and attitudes in Pakistan to imply that “most Muslims” around the world aren’t “moderate”. It’s like he’s never heard of selection bias before.
And finally, this parting thought from Phil Plait: “I’m not sure I want to trust plans for NASA from the same guy who wonders why airplane windows don’t open.”
If you have any story suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments or send them in.
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| Don’t make me describe this. Please. |
Mother Jones examines how the Democratic Party’s preoccupation with civil liberties and protections has mostly evaporated after four years in power.
(via @ggreenwald)
Ed Brayton explains how atheists can be harsh critics of Islam whilst still being decent towards Muslims.
Infographic: Walter White/Heisenberg’s body count. (Spoilers?)
(via @pzmyers)
And finally, destroying your faith in humanity, one unbelievably weird slash fiction pairing at a time. (No idea why #5 [pictured] isn’t #1.)
If you have any story suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments or send them in.
Tags: Democrats • Democratic Party • Ed Brayton • Chris Stedman • Islam • Islamophobia • Muslims • atheists • Breaking Bad • Walter White • Cracked.com • fan fiction • slash fiction • Harry Potter • Harry Potter • Severus Snape • Teletubbies • X-Men • Charles Xavier • Professor X • Magneto • Hannibal Lecter • Tetris • Death Note • Jonas Brothers • Band of Brothers • Dragon Ball Z • Anne Frank
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| Clint Eastwood |
Ten-year-old Maine babysitting girl and her mother charged with manslaughter over baby’s accidental death.
(via @thedailybeast; RT: @radleybalko)
Wonkette presents the best summary of the Clint-Eastwood-berates-an-empty-chair [pictured] spectacle. I still love him and his movies, dammit.
And finally, it seems that Ray Comfort is running out of ways to deliver his “Darwinism leads to Hell!” mulch.
If you have any story suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments or send them in.
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| Mohammad Mahfud MD |
Electrical companies Pepco and BGE will charge Maryland customers extra for all the power they didn’t get during the prolonged outage. I don’t even.
(via @radleybalko)
Indonesian Supreme Court chairman [pictured]: Atheists are totally free in our country! (Just ignore that guy we arrested and threw in jail for saying he didn’t believe in God.)
NYPD claims to have foiled 14 terrorist plots … then claims it never said that.
(via @ggreenwald)
A former religious-conservative shares how she learned to embrace Canada’s universal healthcare. It still astounds me to see some people acting like the government providing high-quality healthcare to everyone at little to no cost is a bad thing.
(via The Words on What)
A short list of annoying Christian platitudes (written by a Christian). “Love the sinner, hate the sin” is my favorite.
(via Friendly Atheist)
And finally, here’s a clam eating salt on a table:
(via The Agitator)
If you have any story suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments or send them in.
Tags: Pepco • BGE • power outages • blackouts • bill stabilization adjustment • Mohammad Mahfud • Indonesia • Supreme Court of Indonesia • atheists • Alexander Aan • NYPD • Paul Browne • ProPublica • terrorists • Justin Elliott • Melissa • universal healthcare • Canada • socialized medicine • Christians • Christianity • Christian Piatt • clams • molluscs
The rest of this CBS article doesn’t help make any more sense:
![CBS DC headline: “Lawsuits: Kim Kardashian A Terrorist, Had Sex On Tape While Unicorn Watched” [@ 06/28/12 12:54 PM]](http://i.imgur.com/iaItI.png "CBS DC headline: “Lawsuits: Kim Kardashian A Terrorist, Had Sex On Tape While Unicorn Watched” [@ 06/28/12 12:54 PM]")
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(via The Agitator)
Tags: Kim Kardashian • CBS
This is easily one of the best – by which I mean worst – examples of how deeply religion can twist one’s mind that I’ve yet seen. Here are four minutes of several people proclaiming their gratitude to God for all the horrible things that have happened to them, including being raped, losing their husband and being anorexic, while many more lines appear on-screen, such as losing a baby, having cancer or being addicted to drugs, because the “The Secret is to become Thankful for Everything” (random caps included) because that’s “the key to unconditional love”:
Quick question: If God’s love is unconditional, then why do people need to force themselves to draw up silver linings in their traumas in order to earn it? Not too clear on that.
What’s even weirder is that lines like “Thank God I am gay” or “am a virgin” also appear in the midst of all those tragedies. ‘Cause those are bad things. I mean, know I find it hard to tell who I should care about more – homeless stroke victims, or people who haven’t had sex yet …
(via Dispatches from the Culture Wars)
Tags: God • tragedies • Thank God I • John Castagnini
In which PETA’s perfect track record of tone-deaf idiocy remains unblemished:
| My transcript: (click the [+/-] to open/close →) | [−] |
A man is yelling at a terrified woman while a young girl watches. The man rears to punch the woman, and the girl screams.
Street thugs are harassing an elderly woman, pushing her up against a car and forcibly robbing her as she screams.
School bullies are kicking another student as he lies on the ground, bleeding and screaming for help.
A chef quietly cooks while a fish on a cutting board opens its mouth silently.
Text overlay: “SOME SCREAMS CAN'T BE HEARD.”
’Cause domestic violence, robbing old ladies and beating other kids in school are just totally as bad as eating fish. (Or the other way around. Or something.)
And I’m sure they’re still scratching their noggins over why no-one takes them seriously.
It’s almost a shame; their message about improving the humaneness in the livestock and food industries is a sensible one that needs to be shared. So why must they always drive everyone away and turn themselves into a laughingstock with their monumental caustic stupidity?
(via Joe. My. God.)
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| Rev. Creflo Dollar |
Pardon my lateness; music got in the way.
New report: “[T]he period from June of last year to May of this year was the warmest year since record-keeping began in 1985.”
(via ThinkProgress)
The War on Women by the numbers.
(via Rob F)
“She needs her ass beat”: Christian commenters rise to the defense of Pastor Creflo Dollar [pictured] after his arrest for choking and beating his 15-year-old daughter.
Vox Day again tries to convince anyone who cares that PZ Myers is totally just afraid of his ginormous brain (rather than dismisses him as an irrelevant git).
If you have any story suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments or send them in.
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| Roger Ailes |
Of all the attempts to whitewash Fox News’s far-Right bias, these quotes by chairman Roger Ailes take the take – and then blast it into orbit:
Ailes made the head-scratching pronouncement during two recent campus lectures. The first came at the University of North Carolina [emphasis added]:
Well, first, I separate out news from programming. If you're talking about programming, we noticed that all the talk shows on the other networks basically had progressive or liberal talk show hosts. We have one conservative on FOX News, Sean Hannity. Quite open about it, that's what he is, that's what he does, that's his framework, that's where he comes from. Others tend to be libertarians or populists or you can't really tell.
Last week, according to reports from Ailes' lecture at Ohio University, the Fox chairman boasted about the array of progressives he employs:
Ailes defended his network, saying he was not politically biased compared with competitors MSNBC and CNN. Ailes said he employs 24 "liberals," which distinguishes him from those networks who feature fewer dissenting opinions.
To be fair, it’s possible he’s entirely honest about this – assuming his definition of “liberal” means anything to the left of the Westboro Baptist Church.
Then again, could it be that Ailes may be passing from one alternate universe to the other without realizing it, à la Fringe? I don’t think anything else could explain why he’d say something so utterly disconnected from reality, or why he apparently believes it wouldn’t be debunked within a femtosecond on Google. Unless, of course, he’s just as dishonest as he is delusional.
Tags: Fox News • Roger Ailes • conservatives • liberals • Sean Hannity
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Ontario, CA top appeals court legalizes brothels to protect prostitutes. More of this, please.
(via @BreakingNews)
Baltimore, MD cop suspended after grabbing a woman’s cellphone to stop her recording him. More of this too, please.
(via The Agitator)
More Cracked awesomeness: Five ways modern men are trained to resent women. A perfect explanation for MRAs.
Today in WTF?: Herman Cain (redux). [pictured]
If you have any story suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments or send them in.
Tags: Ontario, CA • prostitution • brothels • Court of Appeal for Ontario • Baltimore, MD • Paul Southard • Cracked.com • misogyny • Herman Cain • Sick of Stimulus
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| Peter Gleick |
My thoughts on Leaked-Heartland-Anti-Global-Warming-Documents-Gate, in (sorta-)brief: The only (major) objection I would have with what Peter Gleick [pictured] did is if he stole someone else’s identity rather than forge a fake one (and I withhold judgment on that matter until I see confirmation either way). Otherwise, I can only support his actions (even though he apologized for his self-called “serious lapse of [his] judgment and ethics”). No laws were broken, no-one was harmed in their persons or rights, and in the end, truth trumps all. Not that it stops Heartland from crying foul, nor the usual denialist suspects from crowing – even after cheerleading for the “Climategate” perpetrators (who actually did break the law, unlike Gleick) only a couple years previously. But then, denialism of any flavor does usually come bundled with weapons-grade hypocrisy.
All in all: No harm or foul (again, as long as Gleick didn’t steal any real person’s identity), the truth won out, and the anti-science liars are whining because someone used (a watered-down version of) the same tactics they so eagerly applaud when used against actual scientists. It’s only sad that Gleick now faces a ruined career for having ostensibly done the right thing.
And with that out of the way, I now present your links:
Dead-child law in 3 … 2 …
(via The Agitator)
Death by denial: A look at the (literally) dying field of HIV/AIDS denialists.
(via The Daily Grail)
Oh, Canada: Ontario universities sign ridiculous copyright agreement stipulating that emailing links is equal to photocopying, incurring heavy fees.
Homeowner to armed burglar who just shot him in the head: “F—- you, you son of a bitch, now it's my turn.”
(via @radleybalko)
The march sprint to Idiocracy continues.
(via The Daily Grail)
If you have any story suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments or send them in.
Tags: Michael Truluck • Kris Keys • energy drinks • dead-person laws • HIV/AIDS denialism • Richard Dawkins • The Telegraph • Adam Lusher • Henry Dawkins • Vox Day • Theodore Beale • Canada • universities • Access Copyright • Western University • University of Toronto • burglary • home invasion • Jay Leone • Samuel Cutrufelli • Ultimate Taser Ball • extreme sports • stun guns • Taser
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| Rick Santorum |
(Last October) Rick Santorum [pictured] thinks it’s “wonderful” [warning: auto-start video] that Iranian nuclear scientists are being murdered.
(via @ggreenwald)
Two Houston, TX 10-year-old boys charged with molesting 8-year-old boy on school bus. Why do I get the feeling there’s something deeper and far worse going on behind the scenes?
(via The Agitator)
I was about to mention nearly all of these stories individually before deciding to just link to Balko’s post instead.
Scorned health inspector shuts down respected NYC diner after owner records him with his cellphone.
(via The Agitator)
On whether prison inmates should be allowed to masturbate and enjoy porn. Seems like giving confined convicts the right to release some sexual tension in private might be a smart thing, there.
(via The Agitator)
Exploring the vertical slums of Caracas, Venezuela.
(via The Agitator)
List of the best New York Times corrections ever.
(via The Agitator)
If you have any story suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments or send them in.
Tags: Rick Santorum • Iran • sexual assault • rape • George's • Bill Koulmentas • Kenneth Reid • jail • masturbation • Caracas, VE • Venezuela • David's Tower • slums • The New York Times
![Joé McKen (18) [taken 07/13/10]](http://i.imgur.com/2wvlR.jpg "Joé McKen (18) [taken 07/13/10]")
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I’m a liberal skeptic, rationalist & third-wave atheist stuck in a rut in Québec, Canada and who spends his time composing, writing, drawing, harboring a layman’s passion for science and technology, getting angry at social injustices, and most of all, jabbing cretins and trolls with sharp pointy sticks. (Oh, and blogging.) Proud owner of a Nize Hat!, an indomitable SIWOTI syndrome and an itchy snark finger.
You can find all my musical, literary and artistic works at my art blog, Creativitas.
![There is probably no [superstition]. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life](http://i933.photobucket.com/albums/ad171/crispianjago/Probably-No.gif "There is probably no [superstition]. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life")
