Category Archives: Stupidity

Why Does Thomas Paine Hate America?

Posted on February 14, 2007 by Kevin

Very apropos to the book I’m currently reading… c/o Reason Magazine’s Hit & Run blog:

If you want to celebrate Thomas Paine Day in Arkansas, this has got to be a time that tries your soul.

The proposal by state Rep. Lindsley Smith, Fayetteville Democrat, to commemorate Jan. 29 as “Thomas Paine Day” failed in the state House of Representatives after a legislator questioned Paine’s writings criticizing the Bible and Christianity. … state Rep. Sid Rosenbaum, Little Rock Republican, quizzed Miss Smith about Paine and quoted passages from Paine’s book, “The Age of Reason,” which Mr. Rosenbaum called anti-religious.

“He did some good things for the nation, but the book that he wrote was anti-Christian and anti-Jewish,” Mr. Rosenbaum said. “I don’t think we should be passing things out like this without at least debating it and letting people in the House know what we’re voting on.”

Or by, you know, lying about them. The Age of Reason isn’t anti-Christian or anti-Jewish. It’s anti-religion. “All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.” This is without question the most powerful document of Deism. (It’s free right here, by the way.) Paine was basically turned into a pariah by the book, though, so this vote carries a kind of terrific irony.

I understand why legislators want to perpetuate the story that all of our founding fathers were Christians (budding Jerry Falwells, depending on who you ask). I don’t understand the importance of believing that they all really dug church.

Freakin’ morons… Thomas Paine is one of my personal heroes.

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Couldn't have said it better…

Posted on January 29, 2007 by Kevin

Brilliant.

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Truly Awful Star Wars Collectables

Posted on January 10, 2007 by Kevin

These need to be seen to be believed. The Star Wars collectible versions of the Star Wars Holiday Special. :-)



Link

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Mike Judge's 'Idiocracy' out on DVD

Posted on January 9, 2007 by Kevin

Just added Idiocracy to my Netflix queue…

When Mike Judge’s highly anticipated futuristic satire “Idiocracy” opened and promptly closed in a few cities last fall (it never played Washington), the blogosphere lit up. Did Twentieth Century Fox, the film’s distributor, intentionally dump the movie? Did it have a hand in what most considered the film’s chief flaws (a distracting narration, gratuitous expository sequences)? Put simply, did Fox do to “Idiocracy” what it had done to Judge’s 1999 comedy “Office Space,” and was the new movie eligible for similar cult status?

We may never know precisely who did what to whom and why (although a hilarious sendup of Fox News in the movie may not have helped). What we do know is that “Idiocracy” appears on DVD today, and once again it seems that Judge, best known for TV shows “Beavis and Butt-head” and “King of the Hill,” has gotten the fuzzy end of Fox’s lollipop. Like “Borat’s” dark twin, “Idiocracy” indicts American culture with a combination of scathing humor and barely concealed rage, as Judge projects what the country will look like 500 years from now. His dystopian vision includes avalanches of trash, a U.S. government that has been purchased for corporate sponsorship by a sports drink, and a citizenry that, through demographic reverse Darwinism, has become congenitally fat, lazy, stupid and violent.

Link

Follow-up: the movie was good, but not great. It’s worth a rental.

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25% anticipate the second coming of Jesus Christ in 2007

Posted on January 1, 2007 by Kevin

One more “I’ll never understand fundamentalist Christians” post –

Poll: Americans See Gloom, Doom in 2007
Dec 31, 7:12 AM (ET)
By DARLENE SUPERVILLE

WASHINGTON – Another terrorist attack, a warmer planet, death and destruction from a natural disaster. These are among Americans’ grim predictions for the United States in 2007.

Only a minority of people think the U.S. will go to war with Iran or North Korea over those countries’ nuclear ambitions. An overwhelming majority of those surveyed think Congress will raise the federal minimum wage. One-third see hope for a cure to cancer.

These are among the findings of an Associated Press-AOL News poll that asked people in the U.S. to contemplate what 2007 holds for the country.

Six in 10 people think the U.S. will be the victim of a terrorist attack. An identical percentage thinks it likely that a biological or nuclear weapon will be unleashed somewhere else in the world.

Seventy percent of people in the U.S. predict a major natural disaster in the country and an equal percentage expects worsening global warming. Also, 29 percent think it likely that the U.S. will withdraw its troops from
Iraq.

Among other predictions for the U.S. in 2007:

* 35 percent predict the military draft will be reinstated.

* 35 percent predict a cure for cancer will be found.

* 25 percent anticipate the second coming of Jesus Christ.

* 19 percent think scientists are likely to find evidence of extraterrestrial life.

With Democrats poised to take control of Congress this week, eight in 10 people predict lawmakers will raise the $5.15-an-hour federal minimum wage. It would be the first increase since 1997. Democratic leaders have proposed raising it in stages to $7.25 an hour. President Bush has said he supports the idea, with some protections for small businesses.

Fewer than half the public think it likely the U.S. will go to war with Iran or North Korea. Should it come down to that, 40 percent think the battle will be with Iran while 26 percent said North Korea.

Higher gas prices, legalized gay marriage and the possible arrival of bird flu also are seen as being in the cards.

More than 90 percent of people think higher gas prices are likely. A gallon of self-serve regular gasoline averaged $2.29 last week, compared with $3 over the summer.

Also, 57 percent said it is likely that another state will legalize gay marriage. Same-sex marriage is legal in Massachusetts; four other states offer civil unions or domestic partnerships.

People were split on whether 2007 will bring the U.S. its first bird flu case. More than 150 people worldwide have died from the disease. Health officials fear a pandemic if the virus mutates into a form easily passed from person to person.

Women generally were more likely than men to expect some of the more dire predictions to come true, such as a worldwide terrorist attack and war with Iran or North Korea. Democrats and people under 35 were more likely than Republicans and older people to say global warming will worsen in 2007.

The telephone poll of 1,000 adults was conducted Dec. 12-14 by Ipsos, an international polling firm. The margin of sampling error was plus or minus 3 percentage points.

Link

As always, this is always an interesting read – the Rapture Ready message board.

Oy.

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"The Devil made that rock look that old to turn you away from God"

Posted on January 1, 2007 by Kevin

From CSICOP’s Creation & Intelligent Design Watch (via Digg):

The summer before my senior year of college I worked as a park ranger guiding hikes in one of the most beautiful state parks in the country. Its central feature was a 256-foot waterfall that plunged down through a gorgeous natural amphitheater, cutting through bands of limestone and sandstone and collecting in a deep pool, the perfect hangout for summer swimming. My favorite program was the hike to the base of the falls. Layers of rock are like chapters in a history book and this canyon, carved so deeply, told an ancient story. Standing at the bottom, calling out over the roar of the falls, I got to teach the exciting conclusion, “The layers of slate and shale beneath our feet tell us that 300 million years ago, this deciduous forest was a tropical jungle.”

“What book d’ya get that out of?” came the reply one day. And thus it began, for this waterfall was not only located in ancient rock, it was also in the heart of the Bible-belt. I had heard there were people who believed the Earth was only 6,000 years old, but I never thought I would actually meet any. That summer, and every other summer I worked teaching science to the public, I met a lot of them. Though most objectors would just walk away from the program, some mothers would cover their children’s ears to protect them from the “blasphemous park ranger.” One man, after I patiently explained how we know the age of rocks, finally just threw up his hands, exclaimed, “The Devil made that rock look that old to turn you away from God,” and led his family back up the trail.

At the time, to a college kid with a summer job, these responses seemed bizarre but relatively harmless – they were local, “everyone’s entitled to their own beliefs”, “no skin off my back”, “whatever”… But now, 15 years later, I understand these taunts to be the threat they truly are: dangerous beliefs made more dangerous because more and more people believe them.

Continue reading

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Senator Ted Stevens is a Dope

Posted on July 3, 2006 by Kevin

Senator Ted Stevens (R – Alaska) (watch the Daily Show’s primer), the belligerent blowhard and sponsor of the infamous “bridge to nowhere”, has chimed in on net neutrality – and provided demonstrable proof that he has no idea how the Internet actually works.

Here is Steven’s quote, via Wired’s 27B Stroke 6 blog:

There’s one company now you can sign up and you can get a movie delivered to your house daily by delivery service. Okay. And currently it comes to your house, it gets put in the mail box when you get home and you change your order but you pay for that, right.

But this service isn’t going to go through the interent and what you do is you just go to a place on the internet and you order your movie and guess what you can order ten of them delivered to you and the delivery charge is free.

Ten of them streaming across that internet and what happens to your own personal internet?

I just the other day got, an internet was sent by my staff at 10 o’clock in the morning on Friday and I just got it yesterday. Why?

Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the internet commercially.

So you want to talk about the consumer? Let’s talk about you and me. We use this internet to communicate and we aren’t using it for commercial purposes.

We aren’t earning anything by going on that internet. Now I’m not saying you have to or you want to discrimnate against those people […]

The regulatory approach is wrong. Your approach is regulatory in the sense that it says “No one can charge anyone for massively invading this world of the internet”. No, I’m not finished. I want people to understand my position, I’m not going to take a lot of time. [?]

They want to deliver vast amounts of information over the internet. And again, the internet is not something you just dump something on. It’s not a truck.

It’s a series of tubes.

And if you don’t understand those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and its going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material.

Now we have a separate Department of Defense internet now, did you know that?

Do you know why?

Because they have to have theirs delivered immediately. They can’t afford getting delayed by other people.

[…]

Now I think these people are arguing whether they should be able to dump all that stuff on the internet ought to consider if they should develop a system themselves.

Maybe there is a place for a commercial net but it’s not using what consumers use every day.

It’s not using the messaging service that is essential to small businesses, to our operation of families.

The whole concept is that we should not go into this until someone shows that there is something that has been done that really is a viloation of net neutraility that hits you and me.

The original audio can be found here.

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Americans Not Bothered by NSA Spying

Posted on May 12, 2006 by Kevin

Ohhhh, dear lord…are we really that complacent? From Slashdot:

According to a Washington Post poll, a majority (63%) of Americans ‘said they found the NSA program to be an acceptable way to investigate terrorism.’ A slightly higher majority would not be bothered if the NSA collected personal calls that they made. Even though the program has received bi-partisan criticism from Congress, it appears that the public values security over privacy.

Wow…

I think some good quotes are worth repeating here:

“The greatest tyrannies are always perpetrated in the name of the noblest causes.”

— Thomas Paine

“They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

— Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania (1759)

“It is the common fate of the indolent to see their rights become a prey to the active. The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime and the punishment of his guilt.”

— John Philpot Curran: Speech upon the Right of Election, 1790. (Speeches. Dublin, 1808.)

“The masses almost always value security over freedom until they have so little of either a revolution is born.”

– Unknown
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The Torn-Up Credit Card Application

Posted on March 10, 2006 by Kevin

OK, now this just pisses me off.

Just so you know, I’m currently on hold with American Express’s fraud dept, as I just discovered four fraudulant charges on my latest statement. This has happened to me every 6 months or so over the past few years that I’ve been actively shopping online. While I’m (not so) patiently waiting to speak to someone, I read this (from cockeyed.com):

bq.. You should probably buy a shredder today.

I wasn’t sure if just tearing a Credit Card application into tiny bits was good enough to prevent dumpster-diving theft, so I did a test.
I tore one up, then taped it back together again, filled it out with a DIFFERENT address and CELL number.

Sure enough, in four weeks I was rewarded with a shiny new card with a $5,000 limit.

Now I guess I’ll go buy a shredder with this card.

p. My God, just how dumb *are* the credit card companies?!?

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Homeland Security Expands the Scope of Their Duties?

Posted on February 17, 2006 by Kevin

If I were a xenophobic isolationist crackpot, I would be more scared of the Department of Homeland Security than the UN and the “New World Order”.

From the Washington Post:

bq.. Two uniformed men strolled into the main room of the Little Falls library in Bethesda one day last week and demanded the attention of all patrons using the computers. Then they made their announcement: The viewing of Internet pornography was forbidden.

The men looked stern and wore baseball caps emblazoned with the words “Homeland Security.” The bizarre scene unfolded Feb. 9, leaving some residents confused and forcing county officials to explain how employees assigned to protect county buildings against terrorists came to see it as their job to police the viewing of pornography.

After the two men made their announcement, one of them challenged an Internet user’s choice of viewing material and asked him to step outside, according to a witness. A librarian intervened, and the two men went into the library’s work area to discuss the matter. A police officer arrived. In the end, no one had to step outside except the uniformed men.

They were officers of the security division of Montgomery County’s Homeland Security Department, an unarmed force that patrols about 300 county buildings — but is not responsible for enforcing obscenity laws.

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