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Question of the Day
What is your favorite album released in the 1990s?
(Yes, re-releases and best-of collections totally count.)
Do Tell
A U.S. News & World Report article headlined "Obama Is Emphasizing Ronald Reagan-like Optimism" (LULZ), contains the following unintentionally hilarious passage:
As the nation prepares to mark the 100th anniversary of his birth, the question arises: Why has Ronald Reagan retained a hold on the popular imagination? Polls of historians often rate him in the top tier of presidents, and everyday Americans tend to agree.Ya think?
Of course, Reagan did have some failures.
Daily Dose of Cute
Matilda
Olivia
Sophie
Dudley
Four captured moments of classic inimitability: Matilda, curious and cute; Olivia, graceful and distracted; Sophie, in another pose befitting the platonic ideal of catdom, her tail wrapped around the tops of her paws; Dudley, standing in the door of the kitchen, patiently waiting for a treat. Each picture, just so.
Quote of the Day
"When I wake in the morning, I wait on the Lord, I ask him to give me the strength to do right by our country and our people. And when I go to bed at night, I wait on the Lord and I ask him to forgive me my sins and to look after my family and to make me an instrument of the Lord."—President Barack Obama, at today's National Prayer Breakfast.
Listen, I hate the National Prayer Breakfast, and I hate that our political leaders participate in it, not just because I'm an atheist who isn't a fan of public (meaning government-sanctioned) celebrations of faith, but also because it confers legitimacy on its organizer, The Family, whose agenda is objectionable even to most Christians.
But the reason I'm posting this quote isn't to have that discussion. The reason I'm posting this quote is because I really just want to say: That is one heck of a Jesus-y quote, right there, I mean, that is a man who loves him some Jesus, yo, no kidding, that Barry is a fan of The Jesus like whoa, AND THERE ARE STILL RIGHTWINGERS WHO THINK HE'S A MUSLIM LULZ!!!!!!!eleventy!!!1!
I'll Show YOU, Smarty Pants
Okay, so, apparently Bill O'Reilly is fond of saying "Tide goes in, tide goes out," to prove the existence of God. Or something. I mean, I learned in grade school that the tides are caused by the gravitational pull of the moon (and the sun), but what the fuck do I know. After all, back then, I thought Spiderman was real. Oh wait, I do know this, Bill O'Reilly can't be arsed to google anything. I also know Bill O'Reilly thinks I'm a pinhead.
Anyway, I hope you enjoy this debunking of science by O'Reilly. I know I'm convinced. Flag on the moon... how did it get there?
Poor Mars. All lonely out there.
Text Onscreen: "BILLOREILLY.COM Backstage Conversation."
(Transcript below the fold, thanks to Liss for the transcript. H/T to Shaker MMC.)
O'Reilly [sitting in his office, reading an email/letter, the text of which appears onscreen]: David, Beverley Hills, Florida—"What do you mean when you refer to the tides when you are asked about the existence of god? Science explains the tides…the moon's gravity pulls on the oceans." Okay, how'd the moon get there? [cut back to O'Reilly in office, looking directly at camera] How'd the moon get there? Look, you pinheads who attack me for this, you guys are just desperate. How'd the moon get there? How'd the sun get there? How'd it get there? Can you explain that to me? How come we have that, and Mars doesn't have it? Venus doesn't have it—how come? Why not? How'd it get here? How did that little amoeba get here, crawl out there? [waggles fingers to mime an amoeba crawling out of the primordial ooze, I guess] How'd it do it? Come on.
You have order in this universe; you have an order in the universe. Tide comes in; tide goes out. Okay, yeah, the moon does it. Fine. How'd the moon get there? Who put it there? Did it just happen? Okay, if we have existence, if we have life on Earth, how come they don't have it on the other planets? Were we just lucky? Some meteor do this? [waves hand like exploding meteor] BOOM. Come on.
You know, I see this stuff—it's desperate. As I've said many times, it takes more faith to not believe and to think that this was all luck, all this human body, the intricacies of it and everything else—all luck!—then it does to believe in a deity. There you go.
Text Onscreen: "Become a BILLOREILLY.COM PREMIUM MEMBER for more weekly insights from Bill!"
Yeah....no.
Apparently in Shelby County, TN, teen pregnancy is "a problem". One minister, Ralph White of the Bloomfield Full Gospel Baptist Church, thinks that abstinence isn't the only message young people should get--they should hear about "responsible sexual behavior" and that more programs in churches need to address pregnancy prevention. Well, ok. That sounds all right on the face of it, doesn't it?
However, Pastor White has come up with a, let's call it, not-so-all-right solution:
MEMPHIS, TN (WMC-TV) - A Memphis pastor is taking a stand, refusing to baptize a baby unless the child's parents are married.Soooo...shame is the method here, eh? "You aren't married, so you cannot have your baby baptized in church!" Because shame works so well, amirite?! Just when did "not being married" = "man doesn't care for his partner and child"? Will Pastor White make an exception for rape survivors who may not know her attacker, become pregnant, decide to continue a pregnancy, and keep the child? Single parents are just SOL, it seems. Also SOL: parents who cannot get married because retrofuck jackholes in their state have made it illegal. Great solution you have there, Pastor White. I think we should call it a "bullshit solution".
Reverend Ralph White, the pastor of Bloomfield Full Gospel Baptist Church in Memphis, is trying to set a precedent when it comes to teen pregnancies.
"We will do it, but not in the church setting," he said. "We'll go to the home or if they want to have an event somewhere, we'll go there and do it."
White said he hopes to send a message to young fathers: step up and provide for your family.
"Biblically speaking, a man who doesn't take care of his children or family is worst than an infidel," he said.
There are congregations who address these issues the right way. You might want to try some learning yourself, Pastor White, instead of trying to teach unmarried parents a lesson via shame from your propped up high horse.
Scenes from the Snowpocalypse
This morning, the sun came out, and the snow-covered world is just unimaginably beautiful, despite being inconvenient and dangerous. There is nowhere to safely walk Dudley—the snow in the backyard is knee-deep, the sidewalks are buried, and the roads are unsafe; when I was out walking him this morning, after strapping on his purple balloon boats and coat, we had to run out of the way of a fishtailing car and saw a big collision at the intersection near our house, when a car slid through the stop sign and plowed into an SUV, pushing it into a telephone pole. We're going to have to try to clear a path in the backyard tonight.
And we're fortunate that that's our biggest problem. We haven't lost electricity, we've had no injuries from the snow or ice (touch wood), and we've got a roof over our heads. Others are not so lucky.
So the snow is really no fun. But it does look beautiful.
A bit of snow-covered holly, poking through the slats of the front porch.
A bright red cardinal, who likes to hang out in the vines outside my office window.
He flitted around for ages, his red a stark splash of color in the winter landscape.
Icicles already beginning to melt in the sunshine.
Snow-covered vines.
The snow has created some beautiful shapes on rooftops in the area.
This is a particularly lovely formation over our garage.
Shadow of a tree in the snow covering our front yard.
Sophie sitting on the back of the couch, checking out the results of the storm.
Olivia and Matilda looking out the front door.
Matilda is not impressed.
A shot I took yesterday, on a grayer day, of the humongous amounts of snow.
Another one from yesterday, looking down the length of our driveway.
Our back porch, decorated by the storm.
Iain putting on his boots; Dudley looks worried. "You're not making me go out there, are you?"
Nope—Iain was just going out to shovel.
Livs and Sophs at the front door, with reflection of wintry landscape.
My reflection in our dirty window, taking pictures.
An Observation
Troll Logic:
1. It is censorship to criticize something with which you disagree.
2. It is not censorship to tell me to STFU.
For the record, neither of these things are censorship. (Nor, as an aside, is prohibiting certain types of content on one's personal blog.) I just find it interesting that if I say, "I object to this thing," I am a censor and enemy of the First Amendment. But if a troll says, "I object to your objection," which is frequently couched in silencing or overtly eliminationist language, they are champions of Free Speech.
All of this happens without a trace of irony.
#dearjohn: No On 3
The good news: Republicans have stripped the "forcible rape" language out of the bill. We've made enough noise to stop their redefinition of rape.
The bad news: The rest of the bill still "contains numerous provisions that appear to dramatically expand federal limits on abortion funding, including a clause that limits the incest exemption to girls under the age of 18 and language that makes it tougher for women to obtain abortion coverage through their private insurers."
Even stripped of its attack on survivors of rape, the legislation remains an attack on people who need to terminate a pregnancy, particularly people in marginalized and/or vulnerable populations. Young women, poor women, trans men, and others, who are disproportionately targeted by reproductive coercion and/or sexual violence, and thus are most likely to be in need of government assistance to terminate unwanted pregnancies, are now under attack from the Republican Party in yet another way. As are all people who can get pregnant and quite reasonably expect that their private insurers pay for legal healthcare services.
So keep up the pressure. Keep calling, keep emailing, and keep making noise so we can stop this reprehensible assault on reproductive rights in its tracks.
Top Chef Open Thread
[Image from season seven: Marcel. In a bandana. We* miss you, Marcel!]
Last night's episode will be discussed in detail, so if you haven't seen it, and don't want any spoilers, move along...
* I don't miss Marcel.
Open Thread: Revolution in Egypt
A group of soldiers pass by anti-government protestors just outside Cairo's main square, Egypt, Thursday, Feb. 3, 2011. Egypt's prime minister apologized for the attack by regime supporters on anti-government protesters in central Cairo, vowing to investigate who was behind it. The protesters accuse the regime of sending a force of paid thugs and policemen in civilian clothes to attack them with rocks, sticks and firebombs to crush their movement to oust President Hosni Mubarak. [AP Photo]The Guardian—Egypt's revolution turns ugly as Mubarak fights back:
Egypt's pro-democracy revolution descended into violence and bloodshed overnight as President Hosni Mubarak's regime launched a co-ordinated bid to wrest back control of city streets, crush the popular uprising, and reassert its authority.Al Jazeera's liveblog is here. Christiane Amanpour reports frome Egypt here. A sampling of other coverage:
Bursts of heavy gunfire rained into Tahir square just before dawn today and there were reports that three more people had been killed. Protest organiser Mustafa el-Naggar said he saw the bodies of three dead protesters being carried toward an ambulance, while another witness spoke of 15 people being wounded.
Clashes had continued into the early hours even though the pro-Mubarak supporters had been pushed back to the edge of the square and explosions – possibly from gas canisters – echoed around the area.
There were extraordinary scenes in the centre of Cairo as anti-government demonstrators fought running battles with organised cohorts of Mubarak supporters, exchanging blows with iron bars, sticks and rocks.
At one point pro-Mubarak forces rode camels and horses into central Tahrir Square, scattering opponents. At least three people were killed yesterday and up to 1,500 injured according to medical sources.
George Soros in the WaPo: Why Obama has to get Egypt right.
New York Times: Protesters Clash Again on Cairo's Streets.
Wall Street Journal: New Premier Apologizes as Violence Escalates.
CNN: Who are the pro-Mubarak demonstrators?
LA Times: President Obama meets with John McCain at White House. Let me be probably not remotely the first person to say I really don't give a fuck what John McCain thinks about how we should approach Egypt.
NASA's Kepler Spacecraft Discovers New Planetary System
This is my new desktop image:
Six planets orbiting a single sun-like star. Here is the full-size version from NASA.
From NASA's website:
Scientists using NASA's Kepler, a space telescope, recently discovered six planets made of a mix of rock and gases orbiting a single sun-like star, known as Kepler-11, which is located approximately 2,000 light years from Earth.
"The Kepler-11 planetary system is amazing," said Jack Lissauer, a planetary scientist and a Kepler science team member at NASA's Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif. "It’s amazingly compact, it’s amazingly flat, there’s an amazingly large number of big planets orbiting close to their star - we didn’t know such systems could even exist."
In other words, Kepler-11 has the fullest, most compact planetary system yet discovered beyond our own.
SnOMG, Part 3
Shakes Manor, an hour or so ago.
Photo by Iain, who continues to marvel at the snowfall. It's the most snow he's ever seen.
Quote of the Day
"I would like to think that fixing [the debt] and saving our kids' future could be a unifying moment for our country and we wouldn't stop our disagreements or our passionate belief in these other [issues like abortion and gay marriage], we just sort of mute them for a little while, while we try to come together on the thing that menaces us all."—My garbage nightmare of a governor, Mitch Daniels, who is a strong contender for the 2012 Republican nomination.
I just can't get enough of highly privileged straight white cis men telling me what the REALLY important issues are, i.e. the ones that effect them.
And, seriously, advertising you can't multitask or hold multiple thoughts in your head at the same time isn't a great pitch for the presidency. Personally, I can be concerned about abortion and marriage equality and the economy ALL AT THE SAME TIME. In fact, I don't even regard them as mutually exclusive subjects.
Daily Dose of Cute
Video Description: Olivia investigates the snow on the porch first thing this morning and is fairly unthrilled with it. But she did leave ridiculously adorable kitteh prints behind.
Dudley in his boots. Oh the humanity!
SnOMG, Part 2
Scenes from earlier today. We've had about three more inches since, and it's coming down hard again. Iain is out shoveling for the fourth time in 24 hours; I asked him if he'd rather be at work, and he just laughed and said indeed he would.
[this morning, over scenes of piles of snow] We officially have a fuckload of snow. In fact, it may be several fuckloads of snow. Um, all I can hear is the sound of people running their snowblowers in the distance, and sirens on a regular basis, 'cause I think there are probably a lot of car accidents right now. We've had about 10 inches of snow, and it's still coming down, so we will probably have some more.
[edit; later] Now it's coming down pretty hard again; here comes some more plows. It's really blustery, is the problem. Everything's getting blown around on top of there being more snow.
[edit; later] There's our neighbor, out snowblowing. Iain shoveled our whole driveway, uh, by hand with a shovel, because we don't have a snowblower! [laughs] And his back hurts, and I'm gonna give him a backrub later, because that's the least I can do since he did all the shoveling. Snowmageddon. Snowmygod.
