Daily Blend: 05/01/13

Kiera Wilmot

How the hell can it be this hot this early in the year? This can’t bode well.

Animal liberation activists in Milan, Italy, heroically sabotage years’ worth of mental health research by releasing scared and helpless lab animals that cannot survive on their own.
(via Pharyngula)

Who made the “bad choices” here: the model high-schooler ^[pictured] who created a tiny pop in a bottle by mixing chemicals in an experiment* (To be fair, not generally a good [or safe] idea unless you know what you’re doing, which it didn’t sound like she did), or the dumbass school and police officials who got her expelled, arrested and are dragging her to court for “possession/discharge of a weapon”?
(via @radleybalko)

• Better yet: The school then respond to criticism by declaring that “there are consequences to actions”. Indeed, and those consequences are that students will refrain from ever exhibiting any curiosity or scientific interest at Florida’s Bartow High School in order to avoid violating their ridiculous zero-tolerance policy.
  (via Pharyngula)

Wait, hydrogen peroxide doesn’t work? Dammit, Cracked, stop exploding my beliefs.

And finally, happy decaversary to MythBusting! Even though I only started watching in 2005 (“Steel Toe-Cap Amputation, Bottle Rocket Blast-Off”)
(via @MythBusters; RT: @JamieNoTweet)

Daily Blend: 04/09/13

Rehtaeh Parsons

Another teenaged rape victim ^[pictured] falls victim to rape culture and takes her own life.

Today in pearl-clutching hilarity: Exposing the top “facilitators” of the US’s “porn pandemic”, including Google Play and the American Library Association! (Also: Bonus video featuring Morality in Media’s resident porn-awareness girl scout.)

Westboro Baptist Church to complete Roger Ebert’s awesome legacy.
(via Joe. My. God.)

And finally, I break my practice of ignoring such things by pointing out that the US Interior Department’s Instagram gallery is chock-full of fuckin’ awesomeness like this:
(via BuzzFeed)

[source | full size (607×600)]

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

Daily Blend: 04/02/13

Dr. Deandre Poole

So, I guess that should read “exemplary teacher ^[pictured] threatened by student after asking class to step on piece of paper with Jesus’s name in harmless exercise on cultural sensitivity”. And he’s been receiving death threats from those ever-lovin’ Christians, of course.

I was in kinda-sorta-loose agreement with Sam Harris right until he says “[t]here is no such thing as Islamophobia” and that “[it] is a term of propaganda”. Now that’s how you shipwreck an argument, folks. (If he wants to contest the conflation of genuine criticism with bigotry, he should stress that ‘Islamophobia’ only applies to the latter, not that it isn’t actually a thing.)

Reality: Hoaxer dude calls domestic violence counseling line with phony abuse story, repeatedly refuses offered assistance to find free shelter or contact authorities. MRAs: “Abused man ‘denied help’”!

Public Policy Polling does conspiracy theories, reveals an average 10–15% of Americans are effin’ nuts. Not sure why “Bush lied about Iraqi WMDs” is counted as a myth, though.
(via @BuzzFeedAndrew)

And finally, it’s getting almost impossible to tell when Vox Day is being either seriously or facetiously stupid.

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

Daily Blend: 03/22/13

Richard Littlejohn

Today in “there ought to be a hell”: Fuckbrained bigot Richard Littlejohn ^[pictured] and trash-rag extraordinaire Daily Mail succeed in blithely bullying a transgender schoolteacher into killing herself.
(via Pharyngula)

Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper (D) officially signs civil unions bill.
(via @breakingpol; RT: @BreakingNews)

Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear (D) vetoes “Religious Freedom Act” that would’ve permitted anti-gay discrimination based on bigots’ “sincerely held religious beliefs”. Expect wingnut heads to commence exploding shortly.
(via Joe. My. God.)

PZ Myers is dead on: Adria Richards did everything exactly right. It’s amazing how many men can’t stomach the idea of being called out publicly for misbehaving in public.

Pope Francis comes out swinging against Catholic Church’s track record with covering up clerical child abuse. Now to see if his actions match up with his words.
(via @BuzzFeedAndrew)

And finally, why is it still such a shock (to some) that women can be science aficionados, too?

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

Woman fired for denouncing misbehavior at tech conference

Adria Richards, a technology “evangelist” for email marketing firm SendGrid, was attending a developer conference when two men seated behind her began reportedly began making crude sexual jokes. Eventually having enough of this, Richards saw fit to snap their picture and call them out on Twitter:

After someone made a comment about forking a software repository, the two allegedly began making jokes about forking in a sexual manner and “big dongles.” After listening for some time, Richards got fed up, took a picture of the two, and posted it to Twitter:

Not cool.Jokes about forking repo's in a sexual way and "big" dongles.Right behind me #pycon twitter.com/adriarichards/…

— Adria Richards (@adriarichards) March 17, 2013

The result: Playhaven “conducted a thorough investigation”, which led to one of the men being fired.

Daily Blend: 03/20/13

Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX)

Happy tenth anniversary to the clusterfuck in Iraq and the spoon-fed lies that got the US populace to go along with it.

Another underage victim blamed for being raped by football players. Some people are just fucking sick.

Why is it that so many of those in charge of laws pertaining to computers and the Internet are absolute morons about computers and the Internet? (Though, to be fair, Rep. Gohmert (R-TX) ^[pictured] is usually wrong about everything.)

Another day, another blatantly dishonest global-warming-denying article from a renowned crank in a Daily Mail-associated tabloid.

I’m really embarrassed by fellow progressives’ penchant for nanny statism at times. Is it really that hard to commit to the ideal of personal freedom even if it means allowing people to make unhealthy choices?

Faithlessness is healthy and growing in Canada.

More of that Christian Love^TM, this time in Nova Scotia, Canada.

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

Daily Blend: Monday, February 18, 2013

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.

AZ court: DUIs don’t require actually being “under the influence”

It’s all too often that I find myself both astounded and depressed at the almost cartoonish stupidity and injustice exhibited some courts of law in the US, particularly when any form of drugs are involved:

An Arizona appeals court has ruled that marijuana users don't need to be actually impaired to be successfully prosecuted for driving under the influence. The ruling came Tuesday in the case of a man who tested positive for an inactive marijuana metabolite that remains in the body for weeks after the high from smoking marijuana has worn off.

The ruling in Arizona v. Shilgevorkyan overturned a decision by a superior court judge who said that it didn't make sense to prosecute people for driving under the influence if they're not actually under the influence.

The ruling turned on a close reading of legislative intent in writing the state's DUID law. The legislation specified the presence of "the metabolite" of THC, and Shilgevorkyan had argued that lawmakers meant "hydroxy-THC, the metabolite which would indicate current impairment, not carboxy-THC, an inactive metabolite that indicates only usage some time in the past.

The appeals court disagreed, citing its decisions on earlier challenges to the DUID. "The legislature intended to create a 'per se prohibition' and a 'flat ban on driving with any proscribed drug in one's system," the court noted. "We determined that the legislative ban extends to all substances, whether capable of causing impairment or not."

In other words: It doesn’t matter how long it’s been since you’ve taken a substance, how much of it is present in your system, or if it’s actually affecting you in any way, shape or form – or if it’s even possible for it to affect you – because, well, drugs are bad, m’kay?

I’d say there has to be some sort of legal principle against any rationale that ridiculously hackneyed and overbroad, but the fact that none was brought up to prevent this ruling would indicate that there isn’t. And that’s one damning condemnation against the legal system and its agenda-driven puppets all on its own.

(via @BuzzFeedAndrew)

Obama DoJ: Bankruptcy still a fair price for filesharing

The Obama administration doesn’t seem to mind reaffirming the validity of “rebellion” as a reason for why people chose to pirate media:

This shouldn't be seen as much of a surprise at all, given that the Obama administration previously supported the $1.5 million verdict against Jammie Thomas-Rasset for sharing a mere 24 songs. However, now that an appeals court has reverted back to the original $220,000 ruling (procedural reasons...), and Thomas-Rasset has filed to ask the Supreme Court to hear the case, the Obama administration is back again, saying that there is nothing wrong with $220,000 for 24 songs. The argument is basically what you'd expect. In short: Congress set the statutory rates, the record labels asked for statutory damages, and thus nothing in that range should be considered too high.

Any system that favors mandatory minimum punishments (be they prison sentences or monetary fines), particularly minimums so egregiously disproportionate to any alleged harm caused, is a system invested in public spectacles rather than anything resembling true justice. There is simply no valid sensible or ethical (if not, sadly, legal) justification for throwing someone into insolvency over the “offense” of downloading or sharing a few tunes (or videos, or games, or anything else). The very most they can – or should – be accused of is displaying a lack of support for the artist(s) or right-holder(s), which ought to be punishable by furrowed eyebrows rather than criminal sentencing.

There is undeniably merit to the concept of copyright in itself (not to use the silly term “intellectual property”), as affording content creators legal protections against plagiarism and other unscrupulous behavior is evidently the right thing to do. But no rational mind can argue that the current system is anything other than categorically broken when it’s seen as a sign of leniency for a court to hammer an average citizen with crippling sanctions over an act that simply cannot be reasonably said to cause any harm to anyone (especially given the patent absurdity of “lost sales”^*).

* There is no such thing as a “lost sale”, which implies that a transaction was actually conducted before somehow being undone. What “lost sales” really means is that fewer potential customers are committing to handing out their money in exchange for content, which is simply a failure in marketing (and possibly PR – hint, hint, EA.) The blame for that rests squarely on publishers.

EDIT: 02/14/13 1:20 PM ET – Made a few minor phrasing edits.

Real “war on Christmas” in Saudi Arabia

This has probably been done by a myriad other bloggers who follow these sorts of things, but it bears repeating. For all the privilege-soaked Christianists in the U.S. (and elsewhere) who see any reminder that their faith isn’t the law of the land as an affront to their religious liberty, it’s easy to forget – for we comparatively lucky ones – that while the “war on Christmas” is simply nonexistent in most of the West, it’s a very real struggle in other parts of the world, namely in rigidly Islamic countries where Christians are actually persecuted:

Saudi religious police stormed a house in the Saudi Arabian province of al-Jouf, detaining more than 41 guests for “plotting to celebrate Christmas,” a statement from the police branch released Wednesday night said.

The raid is the latest in a string of religious crackdowns against residents perceived to threaten the country's strict religious code.

The report is vague about the outcome of the raid (namely if anyone will be put on trail or such), though it sounds like most of the guests have since been released. But at any rate, this is something else to keep in mind the next time some whiny church leader or perennial malcontent tries to compare Western Christians to Nazi-era Jews because a court points out that it’s against the law to put sectarian symbols on government property.

(via @BuzzFeedAndrew)

Daily Blend: Thursday, December 13, 2012

PZ Myers

If crap like this doesn’t convince you that the U.S. criminal justice system is an absolutely hideous farce, nothing will.
(via @ggreenwald)

I can’t wait for the usual dolts to quote-mine PZ Myers’s ^[pictured] (discomforting but incontrovertible) assertion that “[i]f you’re white, you’re racist”.

Meanwhile, the man must be damn near a saint if harmless, sex-positive jokes are the blackest dirt the anti-Freethought Blogs ilk can dig up on him.

And finally, here’s your amazing wildlife video of the day:
(via @DiscoveryCanada)

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

Daily Blend: Thursday, November 29, 2012

Susan Johnson

Juvenile crime in California dropped by a record-breaking 20% between 2010 and 2011 thanks to marijuana decriminalization.
(via @BuzzFeedAndrew)

South Lyon, MI middle school performing arts teacher plays pro-LGBT music video in support of diversity. So naturally, the school suspends her without pay.
(via @BuzzFeedAndrew)

And finally, new from NASA: Mercury “almost certainly” has frozen water buried at its north pole.

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

Daily Blend: Saturday, October 27, 2012

Andrew Messina

Interactive map shows details on every single drone strike in Pakistan under the Obama administration. One wonders how many “militants” were actually military-aged male civilians.
(via @ggreenwald)

Horrible: Cherokee County, GA parents call police asking for negotiator to help their suicidal 16-year-old son ^[pictured]. Cops arrive with a tank and a sniper, who then shoots and kills the boy. Parents maintain he never acted aggressively and are planning to sue.
(via @radleybalko)

It’s getting hard to maintain any respect for the good done by the Cato Institute when they go and pull bullshit stunts like this.

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

Italian scientists sentenced to jail for being “too reassuring” before deadly earthquake

Bernardo de Bernardinis in court

Science on trial, conviction edition: After being accused of providing false reassurance about the risks of a deadly earthquake right before a large one struck L’Aquila, Italy and resulted in heavy casualties, the scientists responsible have now had their day in court – and lost:

Six Italian scientists and an ex-government official have been sentenced to six years in prison over the 2009 deadly earthquake in L'Aquila.

A regional court found them guilty of multiple manslaughter.

Prosecutors said the defendants gave a falsely reassuring statement before the quake, while the defence maintained there was no way to predict major quakes.

The 6.3 magnitude quake devastated the city and killed 309 people.

This is asinine. As tragic as the disaster was, the idea that scientists should be punished – much less imprisoned – for failing to describe the exact date, location and size of the next earthquake is complete lunacy, and that it’s actually come to pass should be singularly enough to destroy anyone’s trust in the Italian judicial system. And even worse is the fact that not only didn’t the scientists actually do anything wrong, they never even made the “falsely reassuring statement” in the first place, as it was instead pronounced by former VP of the Civil Protection Agency, Bernardo de Bernardinis. In it, he actually misrepresented the scientists’ opinions, as they had actually told him that risks were low, but still very much present, contrary to his subsequent declaration that everyone was perfectly safe.

If anyone ought to be punished, it should be de Bernardinis and him alone, as he’s the official who put words in the experts’ mouths in order to cover his own ass. As it stands, six perfectly capable and innocent individuals are being thrown behind bars not only for a crime they never committed, but for failing to do something that’s absolutely impossible with our current equipment and know-how. It’s a sickening outrage.

(via @BadAstronomer)

Daily Blend: Friday, October 19, 2012

Jenny McCarthy

Guess who’s been caught committing actual voter fraud yet again? Virginia Republicans.

Days after adopting a new policy to support transgender students, Illinois’s East Aurora School Board caves in to Christianist bullies and rescinds it. Now that’s how you tell vulnerable kids their rights aren’t worth standing up for.

Today in Bizarro World: Antivaccination pseudo-celebrity Jenny McCarthy ^[pictured] lands deal for a Chicago Sun-Times column on “being a good parent”.

Godlessness is on the rise in Ireland, too.

That’s gotta hurt as Romney loses the Salt Lake Tribune.

Which is possibly due to things like this: “Mitt has always been a pro-life person; he governed, when he ran, as a pro-choice […]”

Classy quote of the day about Wisconsin Senate hopeful Tammy Baldwin (D): “The last thing [Wisconsinites] need is Barney Frank in a dress.”
(via Joe. My. God.)

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

Daily Blend: Thursday, October 18, 2012

Alber Saber

Deceased parent, leg injury, financial difficulties, and now (treatable) cancer: Please consider helping Greta Christina any way you can.

Egyptian lawyer’s rationale for arresting, imprisoning and brutalizing atheist Alber Saber ^[pictured]: He hurt people’s feelings and insulted God on Facebook. Or, Why Secularism Matters.

Christianist hate group goes antivaccination, fear-mongers about HPV vaccine to try and scare underage girls into not having sex.

Douche-meister Bradlee Dean is still very, very sore over losing his bogus defamation suit against MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow.

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

Daily Blend: Wednesday, October 10, 2012

[full size (395×314)]

So it turns out that little shake I tweeted about last night actually was a 4.5 quake that hit the region. ^[pictured] It’s only the second earthquake I remember feeling. The important thing is everyone’s okay ^[pictured].

Newsweek derps again, publishes doctor’s typical “experience with the afterlife” as proof that “heaven is real”. Rational thinkers everywhere facepalm.

Swedish school lunch lady ordered to make her food less good to avoid making students at other schools jealous. Because that’s the real problem – cafeteria food that’s too tasty.
(via @RadleyBalko)

PETA attacks Pokémon for encouraging animal cruelty (!), succeed in “wast[ing] everybody’s time while simultaneously proving [they] don’t know what the hell [they]’re talking about. Again”.

And finally, Cracked.com reveals a few key details that were (in)conveniently left out of big news stories. (Spoilers: Vioxx is awesome and Hooker Chemical is an innocent scapegoat.)

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

Daily Blend: Thursday, September 27, 2012

Bryan Fischer

Keith Kloor at Slate explains why those fear-mongering about GMO food aren’t any more credible than climate change denialists.
(via The Agitator)

“Former inmates abruptly freed after spending up to six years in federal prison even though they were "legally innocent" are coming home with less help than the government typically provides the guilty after they are released.”
(via The Agitator)

Bryan Fischer ^[pictured] apparently thinks that repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” somehow makes it perfectly legal for servicemembers to rape children.

I already posted a Headline of the Day, so here you go: “Buddhist "Iron Man" Found by Nazis Is from Space”

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

Tags: Keith Kloor • genetically modified organisms • GMOs • food • wrongful convictions • wrongful imprisonment • Bryan Fischer • Don't Ask, Don't Tell • DADT • child molestation • U.S. Military • homophobia • Scientific American • Buddhism • Nazism • space • Iron Man

Daily Blend: Wednesday, September 12, 2012

Scott Van Duzer bear-hugging President Obama

Glenn Greenwald on Democrats’ Gitmo hypocrisy: “In the hierarchy of evil, consigning someone who has been convicted of nothing to a cage year after year after year, until they die, is high up on the list.”

Speaking of government evil, a new Human Rights Watch report reveals that Bush-era torture techniques were even more widespread than was thought, including in helping Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi (you know, who U.S. government all heroically helped topple only a few years later for all of its human rights abuses that the U.S. totally didn’t have any part in whatsoever).

Missouri lawmakers override Governor Nixon’s (D) veto of a bill that would allow employers to eliminate birth control coverage.

Florida Republican pizzeria owner who gave the Secret Service a collective heart attack by bear-hugging President Obama ^[pictured] is now being boycotted – an effort that’s falling hilariously flat.
(via Right Wing Watch & @KyellGold)

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

Tags: Glenn Greenwald • Democratic Party • Democrats • Guantánamo Bay • Gitmo • Barack Obama • Human Rights Watch • George Bush • Bush administration • enhanced interrogation techniques • Libya • Muammar Qaddafi • CIA • birth control • Missouri • Missouri General Assembly • Jan Nixon • Scott Van Duzer • Big Apple Pizza • Yelp • boycotts

The haters must be so proud of their latest victory

Congratulations, all you sexist assholes and misogynistic slimeballs in the atheist/skeptic community. Your years-long (albeit recently intensified) campaign of vicious hatred towards all those uppity women who have the nerve to speak up about sexist attitudes and gender inequality has successfully chased away one of the movement’s best and brightest: Jen McCreight is out.

I’m done with blogging for an indefinite period of time.

I hate to do this. After my brief vacation from blogging this summer, I felt recharged and ready to write again. But that happiness ended almost instantaneously.

I love writing, I love sharing my ideas, and I love listening to the ideas of my readers. But I simply no longer love blogging. Instead of feeling gleeful anticipation when writing up a post, I feel nothing but dread. There a group of people out there (google the ironic term FtBullies to find them) devoted to hating me, my friends, and even people I’m just vaguely associated with. I can no longer write anything without my words getting twisted, misrepresented, and quotemined. I wake up every morning to abusive comments, tweets, and emails about how I’m a slut, prude, ugly, fat, feminazi, retard, bitch, and cunt (just to name a few). If I block people who are twisting my words or sending verbal abuse, I receive an even larger wave of nonsensical hate about how I’m a slut, prude, feminazi, retard, bitch, cunt who hates freedom of speech (because the Constitution forces me to listen to people on Twitter). This morning I had to delete dozens of comments of people imitating my identity making graphic, lewd, degrading sexual comments about my personal life. In the past, multiple people have threatened to contact my employer with “evidence” that I’m a bad scientist (because I’m a feminist) to try to destroy my job. I’m constantly worried that the abuse will soon spread to my loved ones.

I just can’t take it anymore.

And the saddest part of all – moreso than Jen’s leave, and even moreso than the inevitable gleeful crowing of MRAs and assorted douchebags – is that she says she feels like she’s let her supporters down. I can safely say that she has never done any such thing. Even with the few niggling disagreements I’ve had with her now and again, she’s never been anything less than an inspiration, if not a role model in dealing with the pressures incurred by her position. She is an admirable activist, and it’s heartbreaking to see her feel like a disappointment when she is absolutely anything but. It’s the movement as a whole that has failed her, and not the other way around.

Why does the atheist movement need feminism? Because as long as shit like this continues to take place and remain condoned, explicitly or implicitly through inaction, by vast swaths of its supposed intellectuals and icons, it will never be a movement that can rightfully claim to be the home of enlightenment and openness. We need to support social justice causes. We need Atheism+. And above all, we need brave people of all kinds and colors willing to speak out and take action when certain elements get a little too comfortable with how wide their let their privilege swing.

Edit (09/05/12 1:09 AM ET) – Edited for cohesion.

Tags: Jennifer McCreight • Blag Hag • misogynists • sexists • atheists • atheist movement