tqa | October 26, 2009
A number of people (including another blogger here at ScienceBlogs) have weighed in on the recent revelation of a patent application that describes a way to integrate advertising into computer operating systems. The patent application covers both traditional personal computer operating systems and a wide range of portable devices, including mobile phones. The system proposed in the patent application incorporates methods that ensure that the users will have to pay attention to the ads, and includes an option that would lock the operating system if advertisements are not locked. The patent…
tqa | October 18, 2009
You would think that it would be hard to find a statement more outrageous than hopefully-soon-to-be-former-Louisiana Justice of the Peace Keith Bardwell's attempt to prove that he's not a racist:
"I have piles and piles of black friends. They come to my home, I marry them, they use my bathroom. I treat them just like everyone else."
For that matter, you'd think it would be hard to find conduct more outrageous than Bardwell's repeated refusal to marry interracial couples. Unfortunately, this turns out not to be the case. It's almost painfully easy to find both more outrageous statements…
tqa | October 13, 2009
As some of you might recall, I've been keeping tabs on some of the continuing court antics of Dentist/Lawyer Orly Taitz, High Priestess of the Birther Movement. Her frivolous court filings - which start out at chiropteran excrement insane and go downhill from there - have been providing me with a great deal of entertainment lately. Of course, that's at least partially because I don't actually have to waste time and effort responding to them, and can stop reading them anytime I want (really, I can).
Apparently, not everyone has been as amused by Taitz's apparent inability to grasp subtle…
tqa | October 5, 2009
As I wrote that title, I realized that it's probably insufficiently informative - there are, after all, multiple parallels between Intelligent Design proponents and the crackpots dedicated defenders of the Constitution who continue to insist that Barack Obama is not eligible to be the President. Both groups, for example, have a blind devotion to a concept that has no actual basis in reality. Both appear to be remarkably skeptical toward the enormous amounts of evidence challenging their views while simultaneously demonstrating a remarkable credulity toward any evidence that might possibly be…
tqa | October 4, 2009
Earlier today, Birther Leader Orly Taitz took time away from her busy schedule to explain the connection between Barack Obama's birthplace and Tropical Storm Grace to this reporter:
"If you look, you will see that the storm is just like Obama. It has come from Africa and turned everything left. But it's not a legitimate storm, so it will not do anything significant."
When informed that the storm had actually turned to its right, Taitz replied:
"Look, if you don't know left from right there's really no point talking to you because you will never see what is so totally apparent - the…
tqa | October 2, 2009
I've been pretty quiet over here for the last few weeks - I've been (very) slowly getting used to a new job that's got me working from 0500-1300 - but I haven't totally disappeared from the blogwebtubeospheres. I found some time earlier this week to do an interview with Ava. If you're interested, it's up over at Paw Talk.
tqa | September 18, 2009
Yesterday the House of Representatives - demonstrating a reckless disregard for the United States Constitution and the very concept of the rule of law - overwhelmingly voted to ban the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now from receiving federal funding. ACORN, you might recall, is the organization that the right-wing echo chamber turned into an all-purpose bogeyman after some temporary ACORN employees were caught submitting fictitious voter applications in poorly thought out efforts to get paid for doing no actual work. More recently, a couple of ACORN employees were caught…
tqa | September 17, 2009Mary Travers, of Peter, Paul, and Mary fame, passed away this morning from complications of leukemia. She was 72.
tqa | September 7, 2009
...and it's easy to see why the right is so up in arms over Obama's plan to start off the new school year by talking to students.
I've just finished reading the text of the speech, and it's just totally jam packed with anti-Republican ideological concepts. Here are some of the highlights:
I know that feeling. When I was young, my family lived in Indonesia for a few years, and my mother didn't have the money to send me where all the American kids went to school. So she decided to teach me extra lessons herself, Monday through Friday - at 4:30 in the morning.
Now I wasn't too happy…
tqa | September 2, 2009
How in the world did your party manage to get here:
"As the father of four children, I am absolutely appalled that taxpayer dollars are being used to spread President Obama's socialist ideology. The idea that school children across our nation will be forced to watch the President justify his plans for government-run health care, banks, and automobile companies, increasing taxes on those who create jobs, and racking up more debt than any other President, is not only infuriating, but goes against beliefs of the majority of Americans, while bypassing American parents through an invasive abuse…
tqa | August 31, 2009
Judging by the comments, it would appear that I wasn't as clear in my last post as I should have been. I apologize. Let me try again.
Here's what PZ wrote:
I think I'd have a few questions for this pope. Like, "What about over-population, Ratzi dear? What's the devout Catholic plan for dealing with that rather serious environmental issue?" and "Hey, have you noticed all those hell-holes of destruction in Africa? How does catholicism help people achieve economic and individual autonomy, huh?"
I read that as covering two separate points: overpopulation, and the major problems faced by…
tqa | August 30, 2009
PZ Myers is upset - and rightly so - at something that Pope Benedict XVI said in a speech he gave at Wednesday's General Audience. The Pope, while speaking on the topic of environmentalism, suggested that disrespect for the environment stems from disbelief in God:
Is it not true that inconsiderate use of creation begins where God is marginalized or also where is existence is denied? If the human creature's relationship with the Creator weakens, matter is reduced to egoistic possession, man becomes the "final authority," and the objective of existence is reduced to a feverish race to…
tqa | August 26, 2009
PZ called my attention to the fact that former US Army 2nd Lieutenant William Calley has, for the first time, publicly apologized for his conduct at My Lai. Something that Paul wrote got me thinking, particularly while I was running some errands on base this morning:
There is no doubt that Calley was a bad man and a weak man -- he was the lieutenant who led the My Lai massacre of Vietnamese civilians in 1968 -- but at the same time, he was one of the pawns in a game dictated at the highest levels of American policy.
I'm absolutely certain that PZ is at least half right - at a time and in…
tqa | August 25, 2009
I don't know if it's me, or if it's really becoming harder and harder to figure out what is actually a right-wing rant and what's satire. Case in point: an anti-Steven-Colbert rant written by someone who bills himself as, "an Investigative Journalist, Motivational Children's Party Entertainer and Antique Soda Bottle Collector all in one special, blessed package!" The rant appears over at Christwire.org, and is well worth the read.
And it is satire.
I'm pretty sure, anyway.
tqa | August 18, 2009
In his latest column, Cal Thomas takes another swing at explaining the perils of health care. Last week, you might remember, he claimed that health care proponents want to kill off the old because we're evolutionists. This week, we're Hitler:
Anyone wishing to revise America's medical system and model it after the systems in Britain and Canada ought to thoroughly examine how those health care systems function before plunging into the same pool. A reasonable conclusion is that these systems require long waits and treatments (if you can get them) that are inferior to what's available in the…
tqa | August 18, 2009
If you're poor, sick, and can't afford good - or even adequate - health care, it's your own fault for being poor, and your own problem. That's the clear message of an editorial that appeared on the National Review's website yesterday:
Defined at a high level of abstraction, rationing is inevitable in medicine. Not everything that might be in a patient's best interest can be done in a world of finite resources, and some constraint has to limit his treatment. Thus the left-wing jibe that the market features "rationing by price."
But there are many good reasons to prefer rationing by price to…
tqa | August 14, 2009
If you're holding out any hope that Harry Reid might actually be concealing - deep, deep down - an untapped well of leadership potential, it's probably because you haven't seen this story yet:
The Senate Finance Committee will drop a controversial provision on consultations for end-of-life care from its proposed healthcare bill, its top Republican member said Thursday.
The committee, which has worked on putting together a bipartisan healthcare reform bill, will drop the controversial provision after it was derided by conservatives as "death panels" to encourage euthanasia.
"On the Finance…
tqa | August 11, 2009
Why, exactly, do Democrats want to kill the elderly with their health care? It's a question that's baffled billions since at least last week. Politicians, philosophers, theologians, and comedians have all been at a loss to explain the motivation for the proposed geriatric genocide. Fortunately for us all, there is one who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men.
In his latest column, Cal Thomas exposes our motivations for wanting to pass a "health care" bill that will allow us to whack granny. He comes up with an answer that's so simple, so glaringly obvious, that I'm honestly surprised…
tqa | August 7, 2009
A friend just pointed me to this... illuminating bit of polling data on the Daily Kos website:
QUESTION: Do you believe that America and Africa were once part of the same continent?
24% of Republican respondents answered "yes". 47% answered no.
That's right - Republicans rejected plate tectonics by about a 2:1 margin. Words seriously fail me at this point.
tqa | August 7, 2009
Earlier this week, the Des Moines bus system abruptly removed ads from their vehicles that had been purchased by an atheist group. The bus system had received numerous calls and complaints, and apparently some people actually refused to ride busses that had the ad. The Governor of Iowa, when asked, said that he "was disturbed personally" by the ads:
Iowa Governor Chet Culver has commented on the controversy: "I was disturbed personally...by the advertisement, I can understand why other Iowans were also disturbed by the message that it sent. But, we'll see how it unfolds,"
Culver avoided…