Science and how it is reported

MSN does it again. A headline that is too good to resist.

Luckily there is a tremendous website operated by those who actually give a crap about accuracy that gives the skinny on the real news behind the headline.

Not as exciting, absolutely but a whole lot more accurate for sure. Like Snopes has done for urban legends I reckon this site will help in combatting quacks and hyperbole in our medja.

Weird sexual proclivities – A Fox News trait?

Hot on the heels of Falafel and Loofahs we have Brian Kilmeade who appears to acknowledge some sexual activities between the species. Apparently Fins mate with Fins, Swedes mate with Swedes but good ole Brian humps things that are not even human…

Funny he didn’t appear to wearing his wellies.

Cracker Fracas 2 – The fall of a Prime Minister

Oh no here we go again.

Apparently Stephen Harper isn’t getting enough carbs in his diet and decided to pocket the wafer he was given at a catholic church for later on.

It appears Stephen isn’t too sure of his place in the Country in recent days.

Firstly we have him pretending to be head of state on Canada Day, now we have him pretending to be a catholic. He always has to be up front and in the camera’s eye, unfortunately it just shows everyone what the real leader of the CPoC is all about. From the befuddled look on his face in the video I’m tempted to call early onset Alzheimers but it’s probably self-righteous arrogance.

PZ is right send him the cracker if you have it and watch out for the catholic league.

Intolerance – its a good quality if you are religious

Reading Suzanne at BBW she ends off with a snipe at anybody who argues against her theological point of view thusly:

And Derek Munn of gay-rights group Stonewall accused the bishop of promoting inequality and intolerance.

Unlike gay rights activists who promote intolerance of conservative Christians

Recently I have written about honour killings, depriving a child of an education and caste brutality by people who have an idea that they know what their god wants people to do. Now the Jews are getting in on the act (via PZ)

So even opening a simple carpark to accommodate the increasing number of tourists visiting Jerusalem’s Old City is highly offensive to Orthodox Jews because it’s seen as a desecration of the Shabbat, by encouraging people to drive.

I was aware that earlier protests had erupted into violence on previous weekends – Orthodox Jews throwing rocks at police, or setting rubbish bins alight, even throwing dirty nappies or rotting rubbish at anyone they perceive to be desecrating the Shabbat.

Obviously protesting isn’t working or throwing shit is religiously approved behaviour, but parking a car isn’t. Then these intolerant religious zealots went further and attacked a reporter for turning on her tape recorder. She was subjected to a rainstorm of spittle from the righteous dickheads.

I found myself herded against a brick wall as they kept on spitting – on my face, my hair, my clothes, my arms. It was like rain, coming at me from all directions – hitting my recorder, my bag, my shoes, even my glasses. Big gobs of spit landed on me like heavy raindrops. I could even smell it as it fell on my face. Somewhere behind me – I didn’t see him – a man on a stairway either kicked me in the head or knocked something heavy against me.

People are free to believe what they want, they are not free however to insist that everybody else should do likewise. They are certainly not free to take the enforcement of that belief into their own hands.

You see Suzanne intolerance is gay bashing, spitting on folk who don’t agree with you and killing them. Nobody has prevented you from going to church (like whites did to black xtians in the states, nobody has cut you off from your literature, nobody has taken away your right to vote. In fact society has given your ideas and institutions rewards applenty over the years. All minorities have done for years is ask that you stop dehumanising them and denying them the same basic rights that you insist are yours. That is not intolerance. Denying them those rights shows just how self centred, self righteous you are.

It isn’t intolerance when a xtian conservative hates, it’s doctrine isn’t it?

Steven Harper doesn’t think Paedophilia is serious?

Just recently the CPoC have decided to play games with the subject of paedophilia. They have twisted the intentions of the Bloc leaders and have kind of issued a “have you stopped beating your wife yet?” question concerning just who sentences criminals to gaol terms.

This possible attempt to use suffering to score cheap political points is shocking.

However on the off chance that Harper and the grey, sycophantic yes-people in the CPoC might actually think that dealing with paedophiles and their enablers is serious, I look forward to a serious investigation into the abuses of the catholic church. Recent news from Ireland has shown that while some members of the front line clergy might be the ones who engaged in such activity, their behaviour and continued behaviour was enabled by the church hierarchy right up to and including the pope. Also members of many of the governments that ran Ireland also colluded with the cover ups.

I call upon Harper and his gang to launch a wide ranging investigation into abuses of children in this country and if he believes that minimum sentences are the way to go, extradite those who can be charged who ever they are, prosecute them and make them go to gaol.

Otherwise you are playing a painful game using really horrible tactics. Or maybe you really are the heartless idiots that most modern conservatives have evolved into?

Religion is all about respect for life – er yeah right.

Pro life advocates say that every life is sacred and usually bring along their religiously motivated reasons as back up. In N America it is usually the xtians, the middle and far east the moslems and in India the caste system.

• xtians in N America in the anti-choice movement generally have no time for folk once they are born, because politically they are of the modern, hateful conservative mindset and murdering doctors is not their fault.
• xtians in Ireland, with the Catholic faith so all pervasive in every institution, couldn’t punish paedophiles and sought to hush it up ruining many a life forever.
• moslems say that it isn’t part of their faith to kill women who won’t do as they are told, but that’s hard to square with an imam leading a death squad or a cleric marrying an eight year old to a fully grown adult male.
• high caste folk with their religious system have no problem killing, beating and raping dalits because that’s what they do.

All these folk seem to do this with the support of their religious superiors. The religious  keep saying that religions have the greatest respect for life, I really do not think that respect means what you think it does.

Right wing approach to education – a joke

Oh how I remember the conservatives accusing “lefties” of diminishing the value of education.

Now we have the right wing idiots in the legislature of Alberta allowing folk to opt out of the curriculum when it doesn’t jive with their superstitions and the idiot governor of La, south of the border allowing people into 9th grade when they haven’t passed the 8th grade.

Next time fundagelical righteeeeees go on about cultural relativism etc smack them in the face with this.

Somehow ensuring basic needs is wrong and is socialism – just in case you didn’t get that it was the end of the world as we know it.

While taking in a national post and national conservative pundit’s recent post I was stunned by the lack of real, rational thinking.

Everyone will become sick at one time or another in their life. (I have no references but I’m assuming that this is true based on anecdotal evidence from living on four continents.) What he hell will you do once you are ill? Ensuring that folk have access to health care and preventative medical services will increase the overall health of the nation and its productivity. (Again no reference but if folk aren’t off work, then they are subject to the conditions of their contract and would be available to add to the productivity of their workplace.)

These medical services are not free, somebody will always have to pay. Right wing regimes in the western hemisphere have sought to limit the liability of the medical profession in recent years, along with all sorts of other enterprises. So by doing this these regimes have admitted the need for these services but don’t see why courts should respond using free market principles when these services mess up.

The commentator I illustrated above regards the idea of a national health service in the US as a financial burden upon the individual tax payer down south, BUT…

• Doesn’t seem to think the burden of medical insurance is a tax by any other name.
• Doesn’t seem to think that folk not having access to medical help might be a downer on productivity.
• Doesn’t think that limiting payouts for mistakes is infringing free market principles.
• Doesn’t seem to understand that vehicle insurance, which he approves of, is as much of a built in tax as is money going to defence spending. (If you have been to a US city or town, try getting around with out a car and then try and tell me it is an option or a luxury.)

At the end of the day we all need to travel, we all need to stay healthy and we all need to live as happily as we can for as long as we can. There are reasonable discussions around as to how we go about this but wailing, whining and miss-defining does not help.

The biggest problem I have with the extreme right is that they are not consistent in the application of their views. I have heard too many rightees espouse self reliance but whine when somebody close to them needs assistance and some “bureaucrat puts obstacles in their way.”

The biggest difference between a Conservative and the rest of us is that we don’t think welfare should be restricted to folk close to us, we think that if somebody is suffering then even if we don’t know them they should have some options open to them.

The wingnuts are imploding

Franken appears to have caused a little bit of distress amongst the extreme right wing in the USA.

A good example is the opinion piece written in the Wall Street Journal. I was pleased that it was posted under opinion, because it was so devoid of factual content that it couldn`t have been anything else. It goes to prove the old say true:

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts.

The piece is a scary diatribe of falsehoods and distortions lies. (I live in Canada and I know more than its author). This indicates to me that the paper cannot be a reputable and reliable source of information if this is the level of accuracy in basic reporting one can expect.

For added wtf moments check out the comments. Both mainstream parties in the USA are so far right of centre that Americans can have no idea what a leftie actually looks like let alone what socialist politics is, but they still throw the term around as if they have a clue.

Happy Canada Day

that’s it

have a blast