when the status quo frustrates.

My Opinion

Monday, February 16th, 2009

Which I have been resisting giving for a while now, but really, at this point, I figure I may as well express myself to the limits of my interest, which I admit are pretty narrow. I’m sure you’ve all been waiting with bated breath for this.

Equivalent in interest generation, inducement of feelings of eeuuugh, and a strenuous and powerful wish that any minors involved in the situation do not end up messed up in the head as a result for life, but conscious that unless actual minor neglect or abuse occurs, it’s really none of my fucking business in either a moral or a legal sense:


Nadya Suleman, eight days before giving birth to the last eight of her fourteen kids. (hat tip)

Photobucket
Michelle Duggar, just after giving birth to her eighteenth child.


The Enigma, born Paul Lawrence, a sideshow performer who has undergone extensive body modification including horn implants, ear reshaping, multiple body piercings, and a full-body jigsaw-puzzle tattoo.

I doubt the mental health status and pecuniary and attention-seeking motives of the principals are much different, either. There. Now I never have to think about it again.

Fun!

Monday, January 19th, 2009

I like helping people. So, in the spirit of liking to help people, I thought I would help Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va), the new Republican Whip, with his recent CNN Commentary entitled, “Big Risk in Obama’s Stimulus Plan.” He clearly means to Set the Tone of His Whipness Early On, By God! with that Daring, Aggressive Commentary Title! or should that be his “whiphood,” or perhaps his “whipdom,” or maybe even his “whipshiz,” which bears a remarkable resemblance to the word “dipshit” but I’m sure that’s a total coincidence. Given that the entire thing is a masterful exercise in passive-aggression, one might end up being entirely unable to decipher whom it is, exactly, that he thinks will be the source of the “Big Risk”…but, here I am to the rescue! The PunkAssPolitoPictoralTranslator! is at your service! Ready…set…go!

(more…)

Priceless

Friday, December 19th, 2008

Those of you who peruse Pharyngula are doubtless already familiar with this episode; for those of you who are not, from PZ a few weeks ago:

The Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden and the Creation Museum have made a joint marketing agreement and are selling “combo tickets” to get into both attractions for one price.

The Cincinnati Zoo is promoting an anti-science, anti-education con job run by ignorant creationists.

Unbelievable.

I believe the Cincinnati Zoo has betrayed its mission and its trust in a disgraceful way, by aligning themselves with a creationist institution that is a laughing stock to the rest of the world, and a mark of shame to the United States. I urge everyone to contact the zoo; write to their education and marketing and public relations departments in particular and point out the conflict between what they are doing and what their goal as an educational and research institution ought to be.

While you’re at it, it might be even more effective to contact the newsroom at the Cincinnati Enquirer and the Cincinnati weekly, City Beat. Let’s raise a stink and give these guys the bad PR they deserve.

The zoo did end up withdrawing their “combo ticket” offer, much to the anger and dismay of a certain subsection of upstanding American citizens, who have promptly written to inform PZ of their massive displeasure. It’s great readin’. :) Check out the priceless gems below!

You ought to be ashamed of yourself forcing your religion on others this is a free country and it should not happen. If your religion is so faultless and absolutely correct then debate with a professional from a creationalist Mr. Morris. Scientist thought the universe revolved around the earth about 1000 years ago,they thought the earth was flat 500 years ago and 200 years ago man couldn’t fly so as we progress we find science is very fallible. So as long as people like you think you are an infallible god and socialism is the way you chose to deal with unproven fact there are always people that won’t and can’t believe another false religion.

Let’s see. PZ is an atheist, socialism isn’t a religion, and what exactly is an “unproven fact?”

This nation is going crazy with left wing attacks on traditional America and the Christian principles on which it was founded (not the revisionist historian separation of church/state myth).

Always good to know that the separation of church and state as one of America’s founding principles is just a nasty, left wing myth!

Evolution is used now as a tool to promote the vulgar and disgusting homosexual movement that has recently become violent.

Vulgar AND disgusting! And how come I missed out on the news reports about the recent upsurge in heterosexual beatings at the hands of gangs of roving homosexuals? Maybe the writer’s getting confused by stories like this one–homosexuals, homophobes; they ARE very similar-looking words, I have to admit.

I just found out that you were one of the main reasons that the Cincinnati Zoo cancelled its partnership with the nearby Creation Museum. How dare you!!! And you should be ashamed of yourself, but since you are obviously an intolerant, left wing liberal, I can probably count on the fact you have no conscience, at least not one that would make you ashamed of something like this…You spout your speech about how people should be tolerant of others. Of course what you mean by this is that Christians should be tolerant. Well, sir (and I use that term extremely loosely), Christians are probably the most tolerant people on the planet. If we weren’t, and if we spoke up more, then asinine liberals like yourself wouldn’t be trashing this once great country…And I hope you have the courage to answer this e-mail, but then again I’m sure you don’t. You, just like so many other pea-brained, pinheaded liberals I know, just want to make your stupid little comments then go into hiding and not take any responsibility for what you say or do…Your actions have proven that you are..a pseudo-intellectual snob.

A veritable model of Christian tolerance!

How much punk would a Punkass ass if a Punkass could ass punk?

Tuesday, September 30th, 2008

Lisa and I would like to hash it out a bit and try to figure out constructive rules for engaging each other when we disagree. At least between the two of us. It may be relevant for others as well, too, though. I won’t provide a link, but I still vividly remember a great moment of shame in this blog’s history, when for the sake of a minor rhetorical ploy, a recently-deceased pet was virtually sodomized.

So what the hell, we can at least have a go at setting some ground rules for proper snarky manners. It’ll be a snoozer for most people, but for anyone interested, I hereby decree that this thread will be where we try to agree among ourselves just exactly how punkass a PunkAssBlogger ought to be. (Or at least how punkass me and Lisa ought to be.)

It’ll probably just be us two, but outside opinions are welcome.

(I’m off to bed now. When I wake up in the morning I expect there to be dozens of messages telling us exactly how unbearably snottily dismissive we are. Come on, people, don’t let me down!)

Greetings, Earth Mortals

Thursday, June 12th, 2008

Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting

(I’d forgotten that I’d met Sabotabby before.)

And also, if we’re all going to die someday anyway, does it really matter if we each die one at a time or together all at once?

Oh, that’s right, I haven’t introduced myself yet. Guess I better do that before getting all of you to join me in a group suicide pact. My name’s Quin. I’m the dude on the right in the pictures just above.
(more…)

Where I Am Not Liberal

Thursday, May 22nd, 2008

I promise to get some serious posting to make up for my lack of posting later. Until then, enjoy!

Here in the soaked-red state of North Dakota, I am basically considered to be a hippy/ liberal freak. My friends, mainly moderate, apathetic, or conservative basically think I’m just a little bit to the right of Karl Marx. However, there are some places that I split with liberals, and join in with my conservative brethren.

(more…)

Another day, another gaggle of people pretending our preznit isn’t Satan Incarnate

Tuesday, January 29th, 2008

When it comes to Republican presidents, AP hacks sure know how to apply the spin:

A lame duck president called again for immigration reform, an end to lawmakers’ pet projects, control of Social Security spending and making tax cuts permanent. Democrats have rejected those Bush initiatives before.

Poor Bush! If only he wasn’t a lame duck and battling the dastardly Democratic Congress, we’d have licked this whole foreign invasion mess, cut pork, fixed Social Security, and saved you tax money. Oh, the injustice! The Democrats are always blocking his thousand points of light. In other news, Chris Matthews saved a baby from a burning building.

And while I understand Speaker Pelosi has to shake Bush’s hand, did she have to look so gleeful about it? The guy’s kind of a mass murderer. Of course, every other Democrat joined in giving him standing ovations, and that was equally as special. We might as well have just knitted him a nice sweater, or given him an apron that says “Will Cook for Iraqi Blood.”

At this rate, the Democrats will have the best of both worlds: being equally complicit in the raping and pillaging of the world while singularly receiving all the blame for everything that’s gone wrong.

McCain’s coming, people…

Slate’s new Blog For Girls fails the ‘who the hell are you and why do I care’ test

Sunday, October 21st, 2007

Slate’s new gals-only blog (called the XX Factor because it’s x-edgy to the x-treme, and also women have two X chromosomes while men have an X and a Y chromosome. Get it?) is drawing criticism for being eyeball-meltingly boring. Erica Barnett calls it “fucking DULL.” Gawker remains unimpressed by the writer’s “femiladyism.” Slate commenters suggest that XX Factor posters may be indistinguishable from men posting as women and quickly get to the heart of the problem:

I wonder if so far the writers for XX Factor just think it’s a place to jot down some thoughts before heading back over to the ‘real news’ that has nothing to do with women’s issues.

I’ll continue to read and post, because I think these are important issues. But I do seriously question how on earth writers for this blog are chosen. Is it just because they’re women? Can we get some actual educated feminists over here please? Men and women feminists alike is fine with me. Just PLEASE, some deeper thinking, some educated opinions, some people who are already familiar with feminist theory, some actual insightful, keen allies to the women’s movement.

And it’s true that the gals have left themselves open for criticism about being boring, too self-referential, and irrelevant. On a whole page of posts from four or more women who are devoted to two topics (that school in Maine that gives BC to students and the smashing, star-studded divorce of France’s biggest media-whore political couple, because nothing else is going on anywhere that needs discussing) one takes a break from toeing the affluent midwestern mom party line to defend her prattle:

And I don’t see why a bunch of women talking to one another is necessarily a “feminist” project. I had assumed it would be more like the all-women dinner parties I started giving a few years ago, when I realized how much fun they were.

For some reason, I’m reminded of this:


Blogs…For GIRLS!

Let me just say, if this blog is a re-enactment of Anne Applebaum’s gals-only dinner parties, then Anne’s parties must suck. If you went to a party where a core group of dull women dominated the conversation with their vapid opinions while you had to do the real-life equivalent of scrolling to the bottom of the page to find the disorganized mish-mash of responses that you’d have to sift through in order to get your opinion heard, wouldn’t you just leave?* What insane fantasy land does Anne live in where “everyone in [her] neck of the woods” is actually talking about the Sarkozy divorce? Seriously, if she’s not posting from France than WTF? And if she IS posting from France, exchanging bon-mots over the scandalous Sarkozys at sparkling dinner parties with her girl friends, then maybe her personal experience is a bit irrelevant for making the personal political all over the Slate girlie ghetto as though she speaks for the rest of us girlie girls.

Honestly, I don’t have any idea who any of these women are. If I’ve read stuff by them in the past then it failed to make an impression. Their names don’t link to any bios, so the only way I’ll ever find out who they are and why I care what they think is if I keep on reading the XX factor, and really after today’s taste I’ll probably just stop in when I need something to make fun of.

I award Slate 10 Lazy Points for going to the effort of creating a safe, mainstream place for women to discuss politics, then staffing it with whatever vagina wandered past the editorial staff within an hour of getting the concept approved. Because if there’s one thing women need, it’s a bunch of pseudo-intellectual women prattling on about how their husbands are just better at playing because guys are just better, and ick, feminism. Slate really saw a need there and filled it. Unfortunately for them, had their hiring process been a little better, they could have just gotten some Cotillion women who would provide the exact same level of “status quo forever!” gender politics while providing enough spite to stave off the cries of “borrr-iinnng!” from the critics.

*The top post right now is a Re: by another poster to a previous post. No comments on the posts themselves, but a “discussion forum” link at the very bottom of the page. It’s a blog layout and posting system as graceful and delicate as the ladies themselves.

Education: big mistake or bad idea?

Sunday, September 9th, 2007

“How much are YOU WORTH?” A shady computer tech school in my area begins their radio commercials asking people to pause and reflect on that question before going on to imply that a certification in information technology will be worth about 50K right at graduation, and creating a false sense of prestige by saying you have to pass a test (oh, god, not a test!) to qualify for their program. For a person stuck in some of the armpits of service jobs we have here, such an offer must sound pretty tempting – I know that at my least employed and most desperate I spent $200 on a bartending course that was laughably useless although by the time I was willing to admit that, the check had already cleared and the classroom had moved on to the next geographical set of suckers. I keep the certification just to remind myself that I’m not as smart as I think I am.

I thought about that a few days ago when Cog over at Offsprung touched a nerve on the topic of useless vs useful college degrees. Cog, who I guess got burned by his expensive but ultimately not lucrative undergraduate program, subscribes to “the idea of college is to spend lots of money to get a degree that will get you a job.” A view that drives others (like me) insane. By the middle of the thread, it was very clear that this was a highly personal subject that divided people into roughly three or four camps that were speaking different languages. And I thought about it when I ran into today’s MSN list’o'the hour, Top Earning College Degrees.

Of the top 10 starting salaries according to major, no fewer than five have the word “engineering” in them. Two or three others (depending on how you count economics) involve high finance, and the remaining ones are computer related. Unifying theme? Math, and plenty of it. And they’re freaking hard.

The participants in Cog’s conversation were heavy on the liberal arts degrees, no shock since college graduates in general are heavy on the liberal arts. As far as I can tell, they divided into camps roughly along these lines:

1) Cog’s Supporters: People who feel that since the conventional wisdom is that you need a degree to get a decent job then you should pick your major based on lists like the one offered by MSN to ensure that you’re not burning money.

2) People who feel that education is it’s own reward.

3) Sensible Educational Theory types, who’d like to agree with statement 2 but have been crushed by reality and would like us hoity-toity learn-for-the-love-of-it types to wake up to the real world, kids.

I belong to group 2, but I have to admit to being a bit of a hypocrite; I ended up trading a kind of joke major for a more impressive, and more reliably lucrative, one. You see, my original major was communications, which I studied at a University that cost as much per year as three or four years at the place I ended up graduating from. So really, I almost made the same costly mistake that Cog appears to think he made. But by the end of that year I was bored out of my mind, I hated the school, and I realized that for what I wanted to do, college was the complete wrong path.

So I quit, and spent a year in theatre, doing some prop stuff and stagehand stuff. But when I realized that I could -if I was lucky and worked my ass off- maybe someday have my boss’ job, I quit that too. I went back to school but this time I majored in physics, and it took 5 years which basically sucked the whole way through. But then I got my degree and it really was the magic piece of paper everyone thinks a college degree is, and I’ve been doing pretty OK ever since.

So with that disclaimer out of the way, I’d like to use this thread to sort out some confusion I saw between the camps in Cog’s thread, because it seems that a lot of people were talking over each other. The whole thing has a tawdry Mommy-war vibe to it, with opposing camps that each have really good points but are defensive and see only where they disagree. So let’s open this can of worms with an insanely long post!
(more…)

Conservapedia withholding of cheesy potato secrets exemplifies all that is wrong with conservative ideas on the free flow of information

Sunday, March 11th, 2007

Oh, Christ on a crutch, I was ignoring Conservapedia, but then olvlzl had to go and ruin it for me.

Gravity is considered by scientists and evolutionists to be one of the fundamental forces of the universe. It is a theory which suggests that all masses are attracted to each other because of invisible particles called gravitons or invisible curves in space.

Let’s stick with the basics here:

1. They’re not called “evolutionists,” they’re called biologists, they are in fact real scientists, and they rarely think or write about gravity because they just get to assume that it’s there, working pretty much as always. “And once again, this mysterious force kept my bacteria culture from floating about the room” is a statement you’ll rarely find in the better biology journals. The “evolutionists” who don’t actually work in the sciences but still enjoy things like vaccinations and crops are called “sane people,” and you can, shockingly enough, find many of them in churches and temples that aren’t led by reactionary fear-mongerers across the nation.

2. We don’t talk much about “invisible particles” in the physics classes. Microscopic, sub-atomic even, yes. Invisible, no. And by the time we get down to fundamental forces-size, it becomes difficult to think of them as discrete particles so much as…you know what, nevermind.

And it’s space-time. And the word invisible doesn’t really apply here, either. Please, for the love of all that is good in the world, tell me that this is a very, very dry joke.

3. A belief in the theory of gravity will not challenge your belief in God in any way, and if it does it’s time for your pastor or other religous leader to refer you to a psychologist. There is no need to treat gravity so skeptically.

Schaffly’s spawn’s little project is just too funny.

Compare, for example, the difference between algebra for conservatives:
(more…)

Sticks and stones

Sunday, March 4th, 2007

Some people reasonably think we shouldn’t be spending time responding to the Coulter thing or whatever else the wingnut of the hour hacks up on the carpet. Don’t waste your time on a comeback, because they’re not going to get it anyway. Don’t let them see that it bothers you, because it just encourages them.

Well, it does bother me. Congratulations, Ann Coulter. Every time your haggard face opens and something slimy comes out of it, I feel a little twinge of hurt and shock and unhappiness. Not because I particularly care what you think about anything, but because I don’t like being reminded that such ugliness exists in the world. If someone were to show me a picture of a mutilated kitten, it would also make my day a bit darker.

The relevant attention Coulter gets isn’t from us, but from the people who clap and cheer when she says “faggot.” If that weren’t there, she would shrivel up into a dry husk of a late-night radio show host and we wouldn’t have to hear about her ever again. And that’s the part of Wingnuttia that deserves our attention. It needs to be seen and known and remembered for what it is. It needs to be held up and scrutinized and lamented and mocked. We need to spend time shaking our heads that such people exist and congratulating ourselves for being better than them. We don’t need to be above pointing out that we’re better than them.

Not that any of us has that problem. I’m just saying, good for us.