June 2012
1 post
4 tags
“The Holy Trinity is impossible to explain and impossible to understand, but with...”
– The Priest at my cousin’s First Communion today.
May 2012
5 posts
Send Them Your Money.com →
conza:
The Problem
The MPAA & RIAA claim that the internet is stealing billions of dollars worth of their property by sharing copies of files. They’re willing to destroy the internet with things like SOPA & PIPA in an attempt to collect that money.
The Inspiration
Hundreds of years ago a Japanese judge (Ōoka Tadasuke) handled a lawsuit by a paranoid innkeeper who accused a poor student...
April 2012
7 posts
Please participate in my survey for my senior... →
10 tags
Please participate in my survey for my senior... →
I hereby resign: An ironic look at the employer...
abaldwin360:
She logged into her Facebook as I requested, and as I followed the COO’s instructions to scan her timeline and friends list looking for evidence of moral turpitude, I became aware she was writing something on her iPad.
“Taking notes?” I asked politely.
“No,” she smiled, “Emailing a human rights lawyer I know.” To say that the tension in the room could be cut with a knife would be...
March 2012
18 posts
“Whenever a Republican tries to claim they aren’t racist, let’s remember this...”
– A comment on Mediamatters on the article How The Right Deals With A Problem Like Trayvon Martin (via abaldwin360)
12 tags
4 tags
Watchreagan-was-a-horrible-president:
kileyrae:
Rachel Maddow breaks down the similarities between Mitt Romney and an etch-a-sketch.
Okay, y’all know that Rachel is always awesome. But this has to be one of the best segments she’s ever done. If you don’t have 15 minutes to watch it now, then bookmark it and come back to it.
Memories Of Rick Santorum
liberalsarecool:
11. “Santorum? Is that Latin for asshole?” —Then Senator Bob Kerrey overheard asking another senator. Philadelphia Magazine, December 1995
12. ”Rick Santorum is a Catholic missionary. That’s what he is. He’s a Catholic missionary who happens to be in the Senate,” —Former Santorum aide Sean Reilly, New York Times Magazine, May 22, 2005
13. “Forrest Gump with an attitude.”...
Can Your Kid's Cafeteria Now Opt out of "Pink... →
Shooter of 17 year old Trayvon Martin a habitual... →
1 tag
'Pink slime' beef off US school menu →
This isn’t the perfect solution but it’s an improvement. Rather than ending their endorsement and purchase of Pink Slime, the USDA is now allowing school districts to opt out of purchasing the product.
Bravo, NPR! Its stylebook has changed →
justinspoliticalcorner:
For years, NPR committed itself to a brand of journalism that often focused not on telling the truth, but on telling competing sides of a story.
This false journalistic balance – presenting two sides of a story even when one side is propped up by spin or compromised facts – has been a hallmark of NPR’s reportage on political matters both foreign and domestic for far too...
4 tags
Petition the USDA to ban the use of "pink slime"... →
February 2012
52 posts
“We’re helping him, as we should. We’ve gotten pretty good at this over the...”
– David Koch admitting he bought Wisconsin governor Scott Walker
If you can stomach it, I highly recommend reading the rest of David Koch’s extremely arrogant interview, where he talks about how he wants to be known as the guy who “cured cancer.”
(via mohandasgandhi)
“I’m fascinated by [America’s income inequality] because a lot of the people who...”
– David Simon on unregulated capitalism (via thesoapboxschtick)
Curious about the political leanings of your... →
And while you’re at it, find yourself on the political spectrum!
Top 10 Catholic Teachings Rick Santorum Rejects →
The unjustness of the war in Iraq
Universal health care
Opposition to the death penalty
Increase in the minimum wage
Welfare for needy families
The rights of workers to organize
The withdrawl of Israel from Palestine
The unethical nature of the Arizona immigration law
That illegal immigrants not be treated as criminals
The rejection of Bush’s idea of a “preventive war.”
Interviewer: You do not accept the existence of a god, a divine prime mover?
Ayn Rand: No.
Interviewer: Now the reason you don't is because you can't prove that such an entity or being or energy exists.
Ayn Rand: I can't nor can anyone else. There is no proof.
Interviewer: There is no proof so therefore you've concluded that there isn't one?
Ayn Rand: That's right.
Interviewer: You can't prove there isn't.
Ayn Rand: You are never called upon to prove a negative. That's a law of logic.
Interviewer: You have to be impressed with the universe. When you see order in the universe, this wasn't an accident, Ms. Rand.
Ayn Rand: Oh now you've got to give me a few minutes. [laughter] What do you think would happen in a disorderly universe? What is the concept of order? What does it have to do with the things which exist? Do they clash with each other? If there were contradictions they wouldn't exist. There is no such thing as a disorderly universe. Our whole concept of order comes from observing reality and reality has to be orderly because it's the standard of what exists.
Interviewer: Right.
Ayn Rand: So contradictions cannot exist.
Interviewer: OK.
Ayn Rand: The real issue as far as man is concerned, is that when you accept such an important issue as the creation of the universe on faith you are destroying your confidence and the validity of your own mind. It has to be either reason or faith. I am against god for the reason that I don't want to destroy reason. I don't...
Interviewer: Give us a chance, alright? We appreciate your zeal but if you continue that it's going to make it difficult for the other people absorb all this, what's going on here, OK?
Ayn Rand: How can I be against god? I'm against those who conceived that idea.
Interviewer: Tell us why. Tell us why.
Ayn Rand: Because then it gives man permission to function irrationally, to accept something above and outside the power of their reason and superior to reason. You said it, I think unintentionally. You said "so I can't wait to die and find out." That, I'm serious, is one of the results of acting on faith. You can't wait to get out of this life.
Interviewer: And what's wrong with that?
Ayn Rand: Because this life is wonderful, as you said. Because if you look at the the universe, it's wonderful and you have to use your life to the best of your understanding. If you go by emotions, not reason, it means you're going against reality. Something exists, something is right and you say no, I don't like it because I want to believe something else.
Interviewer: I see.
Ayn Rand: You, in effect, go by emotions, by your whims, not by reason.
Interviewer: I just want to get this in before the break. You're an atheist?
Ayn Rand: Yes. [noise] [laughter] I could do the same to you, you know. [laughter] [applause] So you're the host I won't say it, but, in other circumstances I would say I don't agree with religion. I approve of your right to it, but...
Interviewer: You don't approve of religion because?
Ayn Rand: Because it's mystical. Because it's based on faith, not on reason and facts.
Interviewer: So? So for you but not for others, OK. What do you care? Somebody wants to worship a Christmas tree or a telephone pole, that's their business.
Ayn Rand: I respect that legally. I said that everyone has the right to believe anything they want but I don't have to approve. If they are serious, I would say... [noise] [laughter] You know? But I would never pass any laws to stop them.
Interviewer: You've got to allow that you're not smart enough to know whether or not there's a god.
Ayn Rand: Yes. I am and everybody here is.
Interviewer: Is what?
Ayn Rand: Smart enough. It doesn't take much intelligence. Do you know why?
Interviewer: Why?
Ayn Rand: Because you are not called upon, I cannot be called upon to know a negative or to prove a negative. If there is a god and you prove it, that's fine. But you don't tell me you can't know that there isn't. I would say yes I know there isn't because I have been given no evidence.
Interviewer: I think atheists are as arrogant as many of the so-called Christians or relgionists that you defy. I'm saying...
Ayn Rand: Arrogant in what way?
Interviewer: In that you are here with your certainty saying there is no god and anybody who believes there is is... It's almost a suggestion that you believe that you are foolish if you believe there is and I think that's a little arrogant and condescending.
Ayn Rand: No. The arrogance and foolishness... I would have to tell the truth. I think it's a bad sign psychologically. It is a sign of a psychological weakness, a man who is afraid to stand on his own mind and has no responsibility. Because it is the absence of proof that brings on false thinkers. Every argument for the existence of god is incomplete, improper and has been refuted and people go on and on because they want to believe. Well, I regard it as evil to place your emotions, your desire above the evidence of what your mind knows.
Interviewer: OK.
Ayn Rand: But that's what you're doing with the idea of god, speaking philosophically.
Interviewer: True.
Ayn Rand: You say you need someone to explain the order but now you have to explain that. You have to take what exists as a fact and start with what exists and see how much you can learn about it.
But it is not right. It is not proper to man to take anything on faith. Religion is a matter of faith. You accept a religion emotionally or because you were born to it. You have not chosen it rationally.
Interviewer: I tend to think of this whole thing as ongoing, that there is an eternity and that we are going to be part of that eternity, that we aren't just corpses in graves when we die.
Ayn Rand: But we aren't corpses in graves, we are not dead. Don't you understand that when this life is finished, you're not there to say oh how terrible that I'm a corpse? No.
Interviewer: Well this is true.
Ayn Rand: It's finished. And what I've always thought was a sentence from some Greek philosopher, I don't unfortunately remember who it was, but I read it at 16 and it has affected me all my life. I will not die. It's the world that will end. [silence] …
(source www.stumbleupon.com/su/1mf74n/public.youtranscript.com/zs/882.html)
Less than half of British self-identified...
The Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science released a survey this week indicating historically low levels of religiosity among the British public, and an aversion to religion in the public sphere. More after the jump.
Following Baroness Warsi’s column earlier this week, this survey contradicts the government’s apparent belief that Christianity deserves privilege in British...
1 tag
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No Women on Congress' Birth Control Panel →
keepyourboehneroutofmyuterus:
Is there anything else that needs to be said about that fucked up farce and waste of tax-payer money that happened today in DC?
15 tags
“Some people think that you can’t let same-sex couples get married without...”
– California attorney and semi-professional cynic Bill Smith on today’s Ninth Circuit decision regarding Proposition 8. Read the full decision here. (via cognitivedissonance)
5 tags
