Category: Stupidity

Should math be taught in schools?

Recently all Miss USA candidates were asked if evolution should be taught in schools. 

The answers were varied, and most overwhelmingly indicated that they did not personally believe evolution. That’s an appalling statement on American education and the iron grip the religious right holds over our country.  While there were a couple of definite “yes” answers, many “yes” answers were of the variety “well we should teach both sides”. It’s such an appalling state that so many believe there’s “two sides”.  If we teach whatever anybody believes, we must also include creation stories from Hinduism, Daosim, Pastafarianism, Raelianism, and so on.  It’s not just evolution and the Abrahamic faiths.  Evolution differs from all of the creation stories in one important respect: It has evidence.  It’s science. It’s not faith based. We should not teach religion in schools, but we should teach science. Creationism in all it’s varied forms (including Intelligent Design) is RELIGION. Period.

Consider this from another angle: what if the question was “Should we teach Math in schools?”

Carl Sagan was a Mormon?!?

In some random internet surfing I ran across this: http://famousdeadmormons.com/index.php?id=208

The Mormons have a habit of posthumously baptizing famous people into the Mormon religion. Some of them are really amusing. This site has listed some of the more interesting names, including:

Carl Sagan,
Groucho Marx,
Alexander the Great,
George Carlin,
Frank Zappa,
George Orwell,
Eazy-E,
Jack Ruby,
Bing Crosby,
Joey Ramone,
Betty Page,
Buddy Ebsen,
Fred Rogers,
Shemp Howard,
Steve McQueen,
Lee Harvey Oswald,
Karen Carpenter,
Earnest Hemingway,
Babe Ruth,
Wolfman Jack,
John F. Kennedy,
Joan of Arc,
Imhotep,
Timothy Leary,
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,
Oral Roberts,
John Candy,
Nostrodamus,
Pope John Paul II,
King Arthur,
Pocahontas,
Hunter S. Thompson,
Karl Marx,
Sam Kinison,
Andre the Giant,
Malcolm X,
James Dean,
Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz,
Jimmy Hoffa,
Johnny Cash,
Vlad the Impaler (better known as Count Dracula),
Attila the Hun,
Sid Vicous and Nancy Spungen,
Candy Barr (famous stripper),
and Anna Nicole Smith

just to name some of the more amusing ones.

Where the hell is my giant robot, Dawkins?

This is actually quite funny, with just a hint of supercreepy. The very thought of anyone organizing atheists into an army bent on world conquest is completely laughable. Sorry, we just don’t work that way. Not to mention that most of us, Dawkins included, are ardent pacifists as well. 

But then they warn the Christians to get their sword and fight off the evil atheists. Um, what? Is this more of that Bush era “strike first” kind of thing? It’s more than a little creepy that there are Christians out there who might take this video seriously.

Let me make one thing clear: I’m not fighting a war for Richard Dawkins or anybody until I get my own giant fucking killer robot.

A brief look at what’s really important to us as a species

You may (or may not) have heard that recently SETI had to mothball it’s Allen Telescope Array.  Apparently it would cost $2.5 million to keep it operational.  That’s a lot of money, especially in these hard economic times, right?

It depends on what’s important to you.  I recently saw a bumper sticker that read something to the effect of “we never have enough money for education, but we always seem to have enough money for war”.  Think about that. The swath of Republicans we just voted into office (due in no small part to the billions of anonymous dollars filtered through SuperPACs made possible by the Citizen’s United ruling) have been busy slashing funding left and right.  They claim we can’t afford these things.  Things like health care for all Americans, NPR, PBS, Planned Parenthood, and our educational system.  I’m watching my sister facing the possibility of being fired and forced to re-apply for her job as a way of “improving our educational system”.  What a crock.  Meanwhile, we’re involved in a third war now.  We don’t pay our soldiers much, but damn do we buy them some expensive toys. 

Microcosmologist has put together a little infographic that shows, quite clearly, where our priorities lie.  (there’s more after the picture)

Is this stuff important? Is it worth the money? I defer to the great Carl Sagan.

Back online for what it’s worth

I decided to reopen the blog.  Is it safe to?  No.  “Then why?” you ask.  Cause I really don’t give a fuck anymore.  My reasons for closing the blog down are more or less moot.  All the bad crap I was afraid might happen did anyway, without anybody finding my blog.  So, what the fuck.  Hope I haven’t lost too many readers.  Well, ok I didn’t have that many to start with, so I guess it’s more accurate to say I hope I still have readers.  Meh.

Occasionally I wish there were a God

So I could flip the fucker off. 

It would be so easy.  Blame all of this shit on God.  Everything in my life that’s going wrong, wrong job, wrong wife, God’s fault.  Losing my son to the fringe fundamentalists; watching him heading down a path that will waste all the talent and brains he has until it’s too late… so much like me… why would God do this to me?  To him?

Spent the best years of my life trying to be somebody I’m not.  Spent my few healthy years living somebody else’s dream while my own slipped away… why God why?  Why would you let this happen to me? 

But alas, the answer is all too clear.  I did it to myself.  My rage and anger is properly placed on myself.  I saw the direction things were going at work over a year ago.  I did nothing.  I saw my wife’s penchant for fringe fundamentalists over a decade ago when she involved me in a cult.  I let it go.  I saw the increasing insanity of her new fringe religion over a year ago, maybe more.  I’ve done nothing.  I objected to homeschooling five years ago but she did it anyway.  I let it happen. 

I’ve completely and utterly failed myself and my children.  The crushing weight of this guilt would be so easy to schluff off on an imaginary supernatural being who was supposed to watch out for me.

Oh how easy it would be to weasel out of my guilt that way.  I suppose that’s the last of the God Virus in me, like that cough you have for a week or so after a bad cold.  I find myself wanting to blame somebody else for my own failures, and a God would be such an easy target.  After all, he wouldn’t fight back now, would he?

So I sigh and resign myself to the fact if anybody is to blame, it’s myself.  I take a deep breath and set about fixing all the things I’ve let fall to shit.  Here we go.