Happy 70th

Before the day is out, all the best to Bob, my northern neighbour to the south...

MEET STORM, A CHILD WITHOUT GENDER

An interesting tidbit flittered across my screen that made me smile on a day when not much is going right. I found this story so profoundly wonderful and wacky I just had to share.

At four months old, Storm is the most recent addition to the Witterick/ Stocker household of Toronto, Canada which includes brothers Jazz and Kio. But for now, Storm’s parents aren’t revealing his/her’s gender.

"We've decided not to share Storm's sex for now--a tribute to freedom and choice in place of limitation, a stand up to what the world could become in Storm's lifetime (a more progressive place? ...)"

Stocker and Witterick say the decision gives Storm the freedom to choose who he or she wants to be. "What we noticed is that parents make so many choices for their children. It's obnoxious," adds Stocker, a teacher at an alternative school.

HERE is the story.

I found myself being able to identify with some of their ideas and concepts. I remember at the age of 8 wanting desperately to be a boy, mostly because my brother got so much attention from my Dad and a favorite uncle. I thought if I wished really hard and acted like a boy, I’d become one. This quickly passed and I became content to be a girl but many times I was told I couldn’t do something or follow a career path because it was reserved for males only.

One of my sons at the age of four wanted my mother in law to paint his nails with nail polish like hers. He liked the bright, shiny color. My father in law went wild,” You’ll turn him into a sissy!” I had to defend my mother in law’s action and my son’s desire for the innocent interaction it was. Today he is a man who seems quite well adjusted to his gender.

The notion of letting children develop their own personality and perspectives is appealing to me. Think of how much mental illness and or sociopathic behavior might be averted if kids grew up just being whatever they wanted to be.

Forget color, gender, religion and social status…

I’ll let Storm’s, Jazz’s and Kio’s Mom have the last word:

"Everyone keeps asking us, 'When will this end?'" she said. "And we always turn the question back. Yeah, when will this end? When will we live in a world where people can make choices to be whoever they are?"

Lemmings

Well, it's a new week. Apparently the world ended on Saturday not with a bang, but with a whimper. If you're reading this, you're apparently a hopeless sinner, doomed to five months or so of torment before being sent to the fiery pits of hell, or perhaps (just maybe) Harold Camping was wrong.

Christianity tends to get a pass in our society. The most outrageous ideas popping out of the mouths of the sincerely religious are allowed to stand unchallenged (although other religions don't get the same respect).

But not this time, really. Most of us heard about Camping and his idiotic ideas, and most of us thought he was an idiot. But there were some poor gullible bastards who were taken in. Many of them were taken in completely.

A man in Nairobi killed himself because of Camping's prediction. A man in California tried to euthanize his pets. People have spent their life savings, families were torn apart.

And a woman in Antelope Valley tried to kill herself and her two daughters, by slitting their throats and wrists.

Fortunately, "murder/suicide" now joins "spotting fraud" as just another thing she sucked at.

Some people suggested that Camping had emailed a suicide note to the Family Radio employees and killed himself. Sadly, that didn't prove to be the case. He showed up the next day, confused that he'd proven to be a lying sack of fuck. As I write this, the Family Radio website hasn't changed their "Judgement Day - May 21, 2011" screen:

But I clicked on that microphone in the upper right, and that vicious, unwavering bastard is holding a press conference claiming that God has now judged the world, and it will still end on October 21st.

This evil fucknozzle has earned over a hundred million dollars with this scam, and he is still trying to keep it going.

The saddest part to all this is, Camping's followers will most likely just become more devout because of this. What needs to happen is that his victims need to sue him for his immoral con game. But it won't happen.

Because the one thing that lasts forever is stupidity.

Damon Fowler vs. Bastrop, LA

Graduating from high school is supposed to be a joyous time in a young person's life. For Damon Fowler, however, the celebration involved being lied to and ostracized by his community, and being booed as he walked across the stage in Bastrop, LA. His parents honored the occasion by throwing Damon's possessions out on the lawn in the rain, locking the house, and going "on vacation." Prior to this, they had cut off Damon's internet access and his contact with his brother in Texas who supported him.

It started about a week ago, when Damon objected to a prayer that was scheduled during his graduation ceremony. In 1992, the Supreme Court ruled against coerced prayer in a strongly worded decision which read, in part:

"As we have observed before, there are heightened concerns with protecting freedom of conscience from subtle coercive pressure in the elementary and secondary public schools. Our decisions in [Engel] and [Abington] recognize, among other things, that prayer exercises in public schools carry a particular risk of indirect coercion. The concern may not be limited to the context of schools, but it is most pronounced there. What to most believers may seem nothing more than a reasonable request that the nonbeliever respect their religious practices, in a school context may appear to the nonbeliever or dissenter to be an attempt to employ the machinery of the State to enforce a religious orthodoxy."

Ironically, the original suit was brought by Christian parents who objected to a rabbi giving the benediction at their child's graduation. In the 18 years since this ruling, Christians have repeatedly and vociferously complained and fought against this ruling, illustrating the 'be careful what you wish for' aspect of any such effort.

When Damon went to the ACLU, the school backed down, and agreed to a moment of silence in place of the prayer. He then posted this on reddit.com, a social media site with a strong atheist community. The top-rated out of the 1,771 comments is a response from Damon's brother, who kept the community in the loop after Damon was cut off from communication by his parents. He conveyed the amazing support to his brother in conference calls through Damon's sister. Meanwhile, Damon's teacher Mitzi Quinn told the local newspaper, "[In the past, non-religious students] respected the majority of their classmates and didn’t say anything. We've never had this come up before. Never…And what’s even more sad is this is a student who really hasn't contributed anything to graduation or to their classmates." The paper reported that Quinn was given an award for her "great service." Damon received death threats, and his brother and sister feared for his safety attending the graduation.

I would dare any apologist to defend the behavior of the so-called Christians in this story. One of my dearest Facebook friends posted the graduation video with a comment that she missed the days we could openly make religious references in school, but what I saw was a student defiantly flouting the Constitution and going back on the school's promise, and the crowd cheering wildly:

But while Damon was cut off from almost every avenue of support, wonderful things were happening across the internet. A Facebook fan page now has 10,115 people who "like" it (though some apparently clicked the like button so they could say hateful things and boast about how the prayer was said anyway, that's to be expected). The FFRF had already awarded Damon a $1,000 scholarship, but an additional scholarship fund was set up on ChipIn with a goal to raise $10,000. The total donations now stand at $14,482.75, thanks to support by prominent atheist bloggers like The Friendly Atheist.

The most striking element of this story, to me, is the terrible behavior exhibited by the Christians in contrast with the outpouring of support from the atheists. I'm sure my own cognitive biases are hard at work here, but I just spent the last few hours reading through a huge amount of commentary on this subject and I have yet to find one redeeming comment from a religious individual, even among my own friends. I had intended for my first post to be more of an uplifting story, but the more I read about this, the more I despair for the prospect of coexistence. Yes, this one had a happy ending, but my mind keeps going back to the thought of one kid, alone and scared, publicly shamed and cut off from support. How an entire community, including that child's parents, could come together to do that is beyond me.

The First Cephalopod in Space

The space shuttle Endeavor is carrying the first cephalopod in space. Called Euprymna scolope or bobtail squid, the onboard passenger will be the subject of experiments to test the Transpermia Hypothesis, also known as exogenesis or panspermia.

We are talking about space aliens in the form of microorganisms imbedded in meteorites that came to Earth billions of years ago and seeded our planet. If life came to Earth aboard primitive rock ships, then linguists are likely to build big words from Latin building blocks: Hence the term lithopanspermia.

Yes, our ancestors may have come from Mars or Venus or other corner in space, found a hospitable home on Earth, and evolved into the flora and fauna we know today. Sound far-fetched? Not according recent analyses of space borne particles.

In 1996, a meteorite originating from Mars was shown to contain microscopic structures resembling earthly nanobacteria. Although debunked and ignored for years, David McKay of the Johnson Space Center reexamined the sample in 2009, using an electron microphotography technique not available in 1996, and found “strong evidence that life may have existed on ancient Mars" (source).

In 2001, researchers from the University of Naples claim to have found live extraterrestrial bacteria inside a meteorite estimated to be over 4.5 billion years old. The scientists resurrected the organisms when they immersed their rock samples in growth medium. Similar to modern day Bacillus subtilis, they say, the DNA is unlike any found on Earth (source – bilingual English/Italian).

Earlier this year (March 2011), Richard Hoover of the NASA/Marshall Space Flight Center published this paper, Fossils of Cyanobacteria in CI1 Carbonaceous Meteorites.

Our stalwart cephalo-astronaut is not the only non-human inhabitant aboard the space shuttle Endeavor. Five strains of bacteria will be used to test the exogenesis theory, specifically whether or not Earth borne microbes can withstand extremes of temperature, zero gravity, and high levels of radiation in deep space.

For our high-flying squid, this experiment is about the beneficial bacteria that live inside the sea creature's body. Called Vibrio fischeri, these bioluminescent organisms generate light which give our squid the ability to outshine its own shadow and mask itself in water.

Previous experiments with microbes in space have shown that some bacteria turn nastier when subjected to extremes of temperatures and radiation. In 2007, for example, a Salmonella sample was three times more likely to kill their hosts after returning from a shuttle mission. Nasa wants to observe what happens to mutually beneficial microbes when altered in space. Will these bioluminescent bugs transform themselves from dim to high intensity?

Watch Octopus ink the aquarium and then turn supernova.

Fizzle ...

Water sports and frozen treats

So, what we have here is a semi-major blogger, Debbie Schlussel, leaping to a blatantly ignorant conclusion... No, wait, I'm sorry. Please replace the end of that sentence with "openly lying."

And then put a period after it. That should pretty much cover everything.

See, Debbie's not as famous as, say, Pammycakes over at Atlas Snores, but she's just as Islamophobic. Debbie, after all, is the one who thought it was great that reporter Lara Logan was beaten and sexually assaulted in Cairo during the riots (it "warmed (her) heart" that people could see what savages these heathen be), or who calls for full-on genocide against all Muslims everywhere ("Rot In Hell, Osama Bin Laden. One down, 1.8 billion to go... many of ‘em inside U.S. borders") despite proudly proclaiming herself "granddaughter of immigrant Holocaust survivors" (Cognitive dissonance is her stock in trade, after all).

But she's willing to go to the mat for her fantasy causes. Case in point:

Philly Muslim Ice Cream Truck Driver Had Urine Popsicles to Sell

Was Muslim ice cream truck driver Yasser Hassan planning to serve “urine popsicles” to non-Muslim Philadelphia area kids? It’s not clear, but Hussein was drunk driving his ice cream truck in the area and police found at least one bottle of frozen urine in the refrigerator that was used to store ice cream sold to children. They also determined that the condition of the entire truck and the ice cream was unsanitary. But, no worries, as the Koran and the Hadiths would say it’s okay to sell this to infidel kids. Oh, and like all the good Muslims who preach to us not to do this and not to do that, he had quite a bit of alcohol in his system and in his truck, despite the fact that this is haram (forbidden) in Islam.

At the moment, there are 54 responses, ranging from "Damn those Islamic types!" to "OMG!! we should Sind all theese terrerist ragheads back to irak where They cum from!!1!"

There could be 55 responses, but there aren't. See, I've done long-haul driving, most often in nuclear convoys. Here's the one response that Debbie decided didn't make the cut editorially.

OK, y’all can feel free to be stupid about this if you want, but people who spend all day in their truck often pee in bottles. And I’m thinking that with an ice-cream van, that’s even more true: it’s harder to lock up. (From experience: if he was smart he was using a gatorade bottle – wider mouth.)

The problem is especially bad with long-distance truckers. The problem is so widespread that some lawmakers have had to take action.

You can google “urine bomb” or “pee bomb” on your own, if you try.

It's not pretty, but it's the truth. But they don't care about "facts" over there in Spittle-Flecked City.

Apocalypse tomorrow

What you gonna do
When Death come creepin' in your room?
O my Lord what shall I do?
Gonna run, gonna hide,
Gonna fall on bended knee
O my Lord what shall I do?

Mance Lipscomb -Run sinner, run-

_______________

The clock is ticking folks. What are you going to do? Duct tape and plastic sheeting? I don't think so. You need to be prepared for anything. The CDC, the Center for Disease Control thinks you're remiss if you haven't prepared for the Zombies who may well be roaming the streets after Saturday evening's apocalypse, looking for brains. (It you're a Teabagger, you can stop reading now. You won't have a problem there.) The CDC link will take you to a list of recommended supplies:

"So what do you need to do before zombies…or hurricanes or pandemics for example, actually happen? First of all, you should have an emergency kit in your house. This includes things like water, food, and other supplies to get you through the first couple of days before you can locate a zombie-free refugee camp (or in the event of a natural disaster, it will buy you some time until you are able to make your way to an evacuation shelter or utility lines are restored). . . . for a full list visit the CDC Emergency page."

In addition, I would certainly include firearms, at least one of which should be a shotgun ( and lots of shells) and always remember to aim for the head.

For those of you who are sure you're actually going to be raptured, I'd suggest you wear sky blue clothing since many of us will be down here with shotguns and itchy trigger fingers and not only Ted Nugent. Don't be an easy target. Don't dress like a duck or a zombie.

Here are a few tips:

1) Refrain from drinking liquids after 3:00 PM, there are no rest stops along the way
and God doesn't like to pull over.

2) Say goodbye to us sinners before leaving the atmosphere. In Space, no one can
hear you scream.

3) Bring a firearm. There will lots of traffic and that means road rage.

4) And behave yourself -- don't make God stop the car and come back there!

UPDATE:  Your Weekend Weather Forecast:

T minus 48 hours and raving

Dies iræ ! dies illa
Solvet sæclum in favilla:
Teste David cum Sibylla !


Well the End is neigh and a Day neigher than it was yesterday, but the proof is certain, says Harold Camping, even though he formerly had 'proof' 1994 was the big one; the Dies Irae, the End time.

But he has proof that God is allowing us to have gay pride parades and same sex marriage as a set up for the fall and the proof is in something called the Book of Jude, which I'd never heard of, my Bible ending somewhere around the book of Daniel or so and being in various Semitic dialects, not Greek. Anyway Camping says God all gaybashing mighty explains it in Jude 7 which is funny because although the Bible has at least two names for God ( and two versions of the stories to go with them) Jude isn't one of them. The real Tanach doesn't tell us that the elder Yahweh or the somewhat later Elohim wrote it either. That was Moses, it supposes -- nor did the prophets claim to actually be God, but that's a long road I won't go down today, you'll be pleased to hear.

But seriously -- it's important now in these last days before John the Revelator's ( also not God) psychotic episodes come true, to be familiar with the words of God, speaking through Jude and Camping (the least godlike of all) of course, so I looked it up to see just who this fellow was, but although I did find a site that explains it all, I had to stop reading the explanation when the writer accused Theologians ( as to be distinguished from believers) of incompetence.

" This subject is under constant dispute by many theologians. The trouble with them is they can't read English."

Stunning and in the interest of brevity I could quit right here -- but I won't.

I certainly can read English, but I can't claim to be an authority on this questionable early second century book, since I can't read Greek, so score one for The Bible Study Page. I'll even overlook the gaseous certainty that whoever the author claimed to be, he must then be, and the ubiquitous practice of naming anonymous religious texts for long dead prophets. I'm just not in an argumentative mood.

So I'll have to believe them when they say that God himself guarantees that Jude, like James, the Upright, was the brother of Jesus, but as the English language was more than a thousand years away in the future and out of respect for Mrs. Christ, or Miriam as poor old impotent Joseph ( who none the less made other kids with her) called her, let's call them Jehudi and Jacov just like their mother did. Not nice to contradict Jewish mothers, I can tell you -- I mean you want to talk about days of wrath?

So then -- just what does Jude 7 give us as the WORD OF GOD that can't be attributed to Jehudi son of Miriam or some other writer in another country?

"In a similar way, Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding towns gave themselves up to sexual immorality and perversion. They serve as an example of those who suffer the punishment of eternal fire."

Well I guess Jehudi would know, being the half brother of the son of God or maybe the full brother - who the hell knows, but it's funny that neither of the real Gods, Yahweh and the Elohim mentioned this a thousand years and a half earlier and what they did mention didn't need some adopted son to relay the message. I thought it mentioned something about inhospitable treatment of strangers, and condoned tossing your virgin daughter to a crowd to be gang raped, but as the book was likely written quite a long time after these cities disappeared, who the hell could possibly know?

Anyway, since neither Lot nor his daughters were blasted to hell for incest, I think we can dismiss the sex thing entirely, OK? If Mrs. Lot was fossilized for looking over her shoulder, but Lot gets off for free (yes, that's a double entendre - aren't I wicked?) the whole God-hates-perverts thing came right out of Jude's ass and into Camping's mouth.

As far as I can gather from Bereshit, or Genesis, Gay Pride wasn't the problem with the cities of the plain at all, and as far as we know, ancient Greece wasn't blown to hell by a firestorm like Gomorrah, nor was Egypt whose kings made Oedipus look like a prude, but who am I to argue and point out contradictions?

Like the Wrong Reverend Phelps, Camping believes "God hates fags" and is going to kill most of us for allowing them to live in peace like other people, just like he killed the Sodomites and Gomorrans for their gay pride parades and same sex marriages. And he'll find proof somewhere whether it makes sense or not, and since none of his followers are really quite sane, it doesn't matter.

The real proof of Camping's high fecal content will come at the International Date Line ( no, not the phone sex number) on 6:00 PM Saturday when nothing at all happens and the Repo men will begin to pick up all those vans, The leases on the billboards will expire, his followers will stand around like fools looking at them and wonder how they're going to get their property back and the 18 million dollars Camping has raised will likely disappear into various "good works." Perhaps he'll rapture himself to Marbella or Monte Carlo.

Anyway, Even though there are two sets of commandments given in two slightly different settings by Gods with two different names in the Bible, it's obvious to me that God doesn't like having words put in his mouth and for those who believe Jesus was Divine ( no, not the Drag Queen) I think Jesus didn't think much of you putting hate speech or damnation in there either. Of course in my personal religion, God not only speaks through our mouths, he speaks only through our mouths and thus nobody can be certain of what he's all about. Certainly for those like me who escaped out the back door during those weekend religious study classes and actually read it in its entirety, Psalm 77:19 comes to mind.

"Thy way is in the sea, and thy path in the great waters, and thy footsteps are not known. "

Like the Poet said: nobody knows where God is going or where he has been and his wake is long lost in the waves, so stop pretending you know.

Newtie!

OK, let's be clear here. We want there to be no misunderstanding.



Are we clear on that? He misspoke. It wasn't what he meant to say. He was frazzled. That wasn't a planned speech; he just went off the cuff, and dropped the ball. He went out there, and just flubbed it. It was a mistake, now let it go.

Of course, context is important, right? So let's take a look at these impromptu, unrehearsed remarks that he regrets having said now.

("But," I hear you wailing, "that'll take forever! That fucker starts talking and just won't stop! I don't have that kind of time! Plus, his voice gives me the shingles!" Ah, but I wouldn't do that to you: this is just the money shot. Three minutes and two seconds (plus a 15 second ad, because MSNBC has to pay the bills).

.
See that? Off his game. No way he could have rehearsed that, right? All that stammering and stuttering. He was winging it. Never would have said something like that. He was taken completely off-guard. Anybody who could say that was a prepared argument is just blind.

So let's repeat this for you. It's very important that you understand.



You got that? This has nothing to do with Newtie spending 15 hours on the phone with every Republican in Congress. The Koch brothers didn't say a word to him. It was a complete misunderstanding. He was tired, and had to squint to see through the glare off David Gregory's platinum helmet of hair. He opened his mouth, and some truth just fell out. That's so unlike him! It landed in a big pile of bullshit, but there it was, naked. For everybody to see. It was embarrassing, but that's our Newt. Big enough to look the camera in the eye and lie his ass off about it.

And by the way, don't make fun of Callista.


She can't help it. It's fucked up you're even talking about it.


Bitch ain't crazy.


It's congenital.