I would love to sue gravity

Cracked has a great (and funny) article on scientific stupidity.

7 (Stupid) People Who Sued the Scientific Method

Can I pay more to buy the expired milk, please?

We bought Rachel a laptop for Xmas. It really says something about the success of a product (Windows Vista) when you have to pay a $50 premium to have installed the PREVIOUS version of that product (Windows XP).

Answer: Incredibly stupid

How out of touch do you have to be to not recognize that some things just shouldn't be said? And how stupid do you have to be to then think you should lead the Republican party? (Okay, maybe that second one isn't so obvious.)

A candidate for the Republican National Committee chairmanship said Friday the CD he sent committee members for Christmas -- which included a song titled "Barack the Magic Negro" -- was clearly intended as a joke.

"I think most people recognize political satire when they see it," Tennessee Republican Chip Saltsman told CNN. "I think RNC members understand that."

The song, set to the tune of "Puff the Magic Dragon," was first played on conservative political commentator Rush Limbaugh's radio show in 2007.

Maybe they would recognize such satire at a Klan meeting, but everyone else should be smart enough to realize that this was a really bad idea.

Game Room Remodel

Since we're really into gaming, we have a game room in our basement that Carol and I have spent a lot of time improving. We went from generic, all white walls and ceilings to a Japanese-themed space that has display storage for my over 400 games, mood lighting, artwork, accessory, food and drink storage and enough table space for over 20 people. It's a great comfortable space.

Unfortunately, the initial basement layout designed by the last owners was somewhat odd and claustrophobic. To give you an idea, here's a shot of part of the game room. The doors open to two different large closets.


From another angle, you can see that the space isn't very open.

So, we recently had a renovation done. It was reasonably inexpensive and really opened up the space. Here's a photo during the construction.


And here's the final result. We didn't add a tremendous amount of space but the openness means we're not as crowded and we can get in another card table as needed. We aren't sure if we're going to hang the Crokinole board or the Sushi picture. We're leaning towards Crokinole.


We lost a good deal of closet space but by dumping stuff we don't need and increasing storage in our utility room, it has worked out. And the remaining closet space is good dedicated gaming storage.

Finally, here's a shot of the other part of the room.

The details of my life are quite inconsequential

You may have noticed the little box on the right side column concerning followers.

Here it is:
To tell the truth, I'm terrified of hitting that "MANAGE" link. I appreciate the show of support, but I have no idea if I have the time or talent to actually manage three other people. I have enough trouble with my two kids. So, I'm going to continue to practice a laissez-faire management style for now.

My plan is to wait until I get enough followers to form at least a battalion. Then we'll see who's laughing. (hint: me)

Merry Christmas

25-30 years ago at this very time of night, I would be seated in church, holding a candle in the dark amongst hundreds of others singing hymns to bring in Christmas. Most of the time I had performed as part of a choir, a bell choir or even a soloist. It was a beautiful ceremony and I loved it.

The fact that the ceremony was based entirely on myth doesn't take away the power of the memory. I'm glad I was able to experience that feeling.

That said, I would rather feel the constant sense of enlightenment I've felt since I gave up belief in superstitions. The truth does indeed set you free to view the world as it is, which is a sobering, but very good thing.

There are many wonderful things in this place and the job of those of us who live in comfort and safety should be to empower as many other humans as possible to experience those wonders during their short time in existence. Whenever one of us dies in poverty, hunger, sickness or horror, it's a tragedy. Today, we have the power to feed, clothe, heal and keep safe almost everyone on this planet if we would just use our resources wisely. Over the chaos of the past few years, it's been hard to believe that.

Hopefully, we can turn things around and all become a source of good for the good of all humanity.

Last night I became unconscious but then recovered in the morning. It was a miracle!

I know that people say they get strength from their faith and I know that most of them believe it. But this kind of thing still bugs the crap out of me.

Searchers had combed the brutal backcountry of rural Ontario for the housewife from the city of Hamilton, who had left her home three days earlier in the middle of a blizzard to grocery shop.

...
There she was, there was Donna, her face was almost totally covered except for one eye staring back at me!" he said. "That was, 'Wow!' There was a thousand thoughts going through my head. It was over the top."

With one ungloved hand near her neck, Molnar, 55, mumbled and tried to scream as Lau yelled to other rescuers. Dressed in a leather coat, sweater, slacks and winter boots, Molnar was carefully extracted from a 3-foot-deep mound of snow that had apparently helped to insulate her.

Note that last sentence. Snow mound helped to insulate her. That's the whole idea behind an Igloo, which is certainly not such an unusual thing. The policeman gets it exactly right.

"I think the snow must have worked to trap her body heat, and that's what really saved her," Cox said. "This really speaks to what's possible."

But of course, others have to believe it was divine intervention that saved her.

"My wife, you know, doesn't pump iron. She is strong physically and spiritually," he said. "When people say to me how do I explain how she survived, I said I believe God reached down and cradled her until the rescuers could find her, because there's no rational explanation."

Uh, yes, there is a rational explanation. Just read this very article!! Geez!

And, frankly, if it was divine intervention God did a piss-poor job once again.

In addition to hypothermia, Donna Molnar is being treated for severe frostbite, and her recovery will take months.

That's God all right; such an incompetent.

So much for infallibility

The Catholic Church HEARTS Galileo!

The Vatican is recasting the most famous victim of its Inquisition as a man of faith, just in time for the 400th anniversary of Galileo's telescope and the U.N.-designated International Year of Astronomy next year.
...
The church denounced Galileo's theory as dangerous to the faith, but Galileo defied its warnings. Tried as a heretic in 1633 and forced to recant, he was sentenced to life imprisonment, later changed to house arrest.
...

In 1992, Pope John Paul II declared that the ruling against Galileo was an error resulting from "tragic mutual incomprehension."

See, it was not the Church's fault, it was a mutual fault.

The Catholic Church's error was that they didn't comprehend a complex scientific fact that Galileo had just proven. Certainly an understandable mistake on their part.

Galileo's error was that he didn't realize what a bunch of Fracking asshats the Catholic Church was until it was too late.

What if they gave a war . . .

Rats! It's two days until Christmas and I haven't lobbed a single grenade in the War Against Christmas. The Evil Atheist Cabal controlling America will certainly take me to task over my failure.

In the meantime, check out this summary at Atheist Revolution of the battle for souls in the Washington State House. It's interesting reading if you really think that Atheists are causing problems.

At first, nobody objected to the "holiday tree" erected in the Washington State Capitol. However, a handful of thin-skinned Christians soon decided that using the more inclusive term "holiday" was a blow to their preferred religion. They requested the addition of a nativity scene, and with the help of a lawsuit filed last year by the Alliance Defense Fund, their request was granted this year.

The thing is, Washington State recognized that the only legal way to permit a nativity display in a public building would be to permit all other groups to add their own displays. So, in getting their nativity scene, the Christians opened the door to virtually any other sort of display. Washington State deserves credit for understanding the implications of the Establishment Clause.
...
Now a Festivus pole is joining the display, and Westboro Baptist is seeking to add a bizarre Christian extremist display. What will be next? I have no idea.

Way to go Christians!

Witch's Teat

On the way to work, I get off the DC Metro at a stop on Pennsylvania Ave. The entrance to this particular Metro station is constructed in such a direction of such a height to create a wind tunnel under certain conditions. In the summer it’s fantastic. Walking against the continuous rush of warm air is enjoyable and invigorating. On frigid days, such as today, it’s a remarkably difficult walk to the escalator. The cold wind literally takes your breath away, making it hard to breath.

I’ve never felt anything like it. It feels like I’m struggling to cross one of the veils in the Pattern of Amber. But instead of getting to teleport anywhere in the Universe upon completion, all I get to do is arrive at work. Bleh.

In Memory - Sue Smith

On Monday, December 8, my Aunt Sue died one year to the day after her Father, my Grandfather, died. She fought a long battle with cancer, years filled with travel, friends and family. She did not waste the extra time she had won.

Aunt Sue was my father's sister. She was that one relative in every family who moves from the family to live in a far-away, exotic state. Until recently, I never knew why she and Uncle Stephen moved to Florida but it didn't matter. She enjoyed her life there and if we didn't see her too often, then our visits were that much more special.

The first "big" trip I ever took was with my parents, my brother, and my maternal grandparents to Florida where over two weeks we saw pretty much every tourist attraction there was. We stayed only briefly with Sue and Stephen, but the memory of that vacation has stayed with me. We followed up that trip with many more over the next 35 years and I have had the pleasure of taking my kids down there enough times that they also know and love Aunt Sue.

We were able to visit her this year, over the summer. We knew it was the last time and although we couldn't do much together but talk and eat, we had a nice time and were able to spend a lot of time with her.

She was a very nice woman who loved life. Within the last twenty years she became a certified barbecue judge, first MIM then KCBS, with Uncle Stephen and traveled all over the United States, making friends. They got us interested in Barbecue and now Carol and I are also certified MIM judges.

She fought a long, tough fight, and lived a good life too. We'll miss her.

Woo Hoo! We win!!

Finally, at long last, President Bush can now legitimately unfurl the "Mission Accomplished" banner! We've converted those heathen Iraqis! They've just celebrated their first Christmas!

Even before I can ask Interior Ministry spokesman Major-General Abdul Karim Khalaf a question, he greets me with a big smile. "All Iraqis are Christian today!" he says.

Which has been in the back of the religious rights' minds for the entire war. Well done, America!

Sure, "natural causes"

Former FBI Official, Mark Felt, using the alias "Deep Throat", brought down the Nixon presidency by leaking information to Washington Post Reporters Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward. Now, 36 years later Felt suddenly "drops dead" of "old age".

Coincidence? I think not. This all sounds very suspicious to me.

True Colors

Wow. In one of the most dickish moves of all time, supporters of California's hate-based Proposition 8 have filed suit to NULLIFY the marriages that were performed while gay marriage was legal.

It's not bad enough that these reprehensible bigots have voted to deny a group of people equal rights, now they want to interfere with existing, legal marriages. Obviously this throws their whole argument about protecting marriage out the window as they don't want to protect marriage, they just want to step on the necks of homosexuals.

Perhaps when people see how far these homophobes are willing to go to discriminate against gays and how they're using religion as a crutch for their views, some will realize how wrong it was to support Prop 8.

This is ugly and hateful behavior and we shouldn't let these people dictate how others are to live their lives.

Christmas Movie-ganza!

All right, let's do it.

What's your favorite Christmas movie?

No question, mine is Die Hard. Yes, it's a Christmas movie. And likely the only Christmas movie ever where about fifteen guys are violently killed while the star constantly drops the F bomb.

That's how awesome it is.

Next Year's Guest Star: George Bailey

We've been watching the NBC show, Chuck, since its premier last year. Although they often have a TV-show's poor understanding of computers and tech, the show is pretty fun. It's a bizarre combination of violent spy thriller and a business sitcom, but it works.

In this week's Christmas episode, the employees at the show's Best Buy clone, Buy More, are trapped in the store by a gun-wielding guy on the run from police. If you missed the guest star listed in the opening credits (why do they ruin things like this?), you were in for a surprise.

As the gunman had Chuck engage the store lockdown, the soundtrack played a bit of Beethoven's 9th while the metal gate came down. Knowing viewers will recognize the subtle tribute to Die Hard, the most awesome Christmas movie ever. Later, after the police arrive, all subtlety is dropped. One of the cops who arrives is Reginald VelJohnson, twinkie in hand, playing his Die Hard character, Sgt. Al Powell of the L.A. police.

They didn't go overboard about it so it was a fun cameo and a cool homage.

Another Trek personality gone

This really caught me off guard. Majel Barrett Roddenberry has died.

She played Number One, the first officer in the original pilot and Nurse Chapel in the original series. She was the voice of the ship's computer in all modern Trek series and played Lwaxana Troi in TNG and DS9. She just completed doing the voice of the ship's computer in J.J. Abram's upcoming Star Trek movie.

I met her at a con in Boston in 1986. She was a very nice lady.

Hmmph

Some progressives (which is what I call myself) aren't happy with some of President-Elect Obama's cabinet choices, who are either very centrist or even conservative. I'm okay with his cabinet choices but I'm not happy about his choice of Rick Warren to do the invocation at his inauguration.

For all his wishy-washy feel-good version of Christianity, Rick Warren still holds some very conservative social positions. Plus, he's a huge douchebag. Okay, maybe just a small douchebag. But he is one, and that's why I don't like this news.

Wouldn't it be fabulous to have a Presidential inauguration without a ridiculous religious invocation or benediction? That sounds so, oh what's the word?

Oh, yeah. Constitutional.

Clone Wars

Ben and I have been watching Cartoon Network's Clone Wars. The episodes sometimes veer towards kiddie TV, but all in all, they're pretty cool. That they're better than 90% of the prequel stuff goes without saying.

Get really rich, really quick

I have the BEST IDEA EVER.

Some Saudi businessman has offered $10 million for just ONE of the shoes thrown at President Bush. It seems to me that we have a huge opportunity here to lift ourselves out of this recession. What we do is set up an assembly line; one person from each family in America gets to hurl a shoe at the President. I doubt we'd find too many families who would turn down such an opportunity. And at $10 million per family, boy will the recession be over.

This will be the perfect meritocracy. Those who manage to hit Bush with their shoe will obviously be able to demand much higher prices.

America! Financial independence is only one shoe away! Let's get this going right now!

Sorry, I can't hear your pronouncements of doom

I’ve been riding the DC Metrorail into work for 18 years while the system itself has existed for 32 years. In all that time, announcements made over the PA system have sounded like this:

“Bzzz. Atten-squeak! . . . garble . . . riders should – aware . . . all dead . . . for your li - - crackle . . a nice day.”

The PA system was pretty much useless. That is, until a couple of weeks ago when I noticed that I could actually hear and, what’s more, understand the periodic announcements. What’s this? It can’t be. Turns out, it can. The Washington Post reports that Metro has put millions into replacing their old PA system with a new one. As far as I can tell, it works really well. It’s quite a pleasant novelty to understand what they’re saying.

Since the system serves a high-profile terrorist target and lives could depend on following Metro instructions in an emergency, it’s about damn time.

Let the Shoe Guy go

Muntadhar al-Zaidi threw both of his shoes at President Bush, a vile insult in Arab culture, during an Iraqi press conference. What’s amazing is that he was able to throw both shoes, one after the other, before anyone tackled him. And I have to give the President credit for some pretty good reflexes in ducking the shoes. I imagine he practices ducking things that might be thrown at him a lot.

Al-Zaidi has become a celebrity in Arab culture for his act of defiance. President Bush joked about it afterwards and said that these were the types of things that can happen in a free and open society. Exactly. Given that, the President should encourage the Iraqi authorities to give the guy a slap on the wrist and let him go. Al-Zaidi was making a political point (however rude) and no one was hurt. He shouldn’t go to jail for this and he shouldn’t be roughed up by police, which is rumored to have already happened.

If al-Zaidi goes to jail, it just demonstrates to the Arab world that the Americans and their Iraqi allies are hard line and talk a good game of open expression but don’t back it up. Encouraging the Iraqi government to let him go (which Bush should have done immediately after the incident) will demonstrate compassion and an understanding of the frustration that lead to the shoe-throwing. We gain nothing by punishing this guy.

I don't imagine they had him circumsized

The mind boggles.

The father of 3-year-old Adolf Hitler Campbell, denied a birthday cake with the child's full name on it by one New Jersey supermarket, is asking for a little tolerance. Heath Campbell and his wife, Deborah, are upset not only with the decision made by the Greenwich ShopRite, but with an outpouring of angry Internet postings in response to a local newspaper article over the weekend on their flare-up over frosting.

I hate it when local boards interfere with parents naming their children. Parents should have the right to choose a name they want. But in this case, I think you'd have to make an exception. Little Adolf's siblings are named JoyceLynn Aryan Nation Campbell (2) and Honszlynn Hinler Jeannie Campbell (1)l.

Clearly, this family has issues.

Mr and Mrs Dumbass, congratulations. It's a boy.

Owwwwwwww! My brain!

Don't watch this. You have been warned.

Atheists 1, Anti-Intellectual Religious Slackers 0

In response to the Atheist ads on buses in DC which say, “Why believe in a God? Just be good for Goodness sake,” some group placed a back page ad in yesterday’s Washington Post Express. The ad said, “Why believe in God? Because he believes in you, good or bad.”

This is not only an inadequate response to the Atheist ad, it’s just goofy. The “answer” they give simply assumes that God exists and posits something completely unknowable -- what a potential deity might believe. And the idea that you should believe in God because his followers say God (1) exists and (2) believes in you is just silly. If I said, “Believe in Santa because he believes in you, “ you’d think I was daft. It’s sloppy thinking and doesn’t work at all.

Atheists are happy to have a civil dialogue about religion but if this is the best theists can do, they might as well not bother.

This guy is so clever

No idea who this is. The disguise has worked perfectly.

I know! It's Bat-, er, Zor-, Mortici-, um. Okay, I'll go with Batzormortman.

And the Iraqis will shower us with flowers!

For all of the Republican cheerleaders who have continually bleated about our awesome progress in Iraq over the last 5 years, the New York Times has an article about a new report that's circulating in Washington about the tens of billions of U.S. dollars wasted on unmanaged, failed Iraqi infrastructure construction projects.

During the whole Iraq fiasco, I always thought that as long as we could restore and improve the Iraqi infrastructure, we'd have a chance at eventual peace. It seemed like a reasonably simple, though expensive, task. Unfortunately, the Administration totally bungled it and then lied about the results they were getting.

This conversation is very telling:

On the eve of the invasion, as it began to dawn on a few officials that the price for rebuilding Iraq would be vastly greater than they had been told, the degree of miscalculation was illustrated in an encounter between Donald H. Rumsfeld, then the defense secretary, and Jay Garner, a retired lieutenant general who had hastily been named the chief of what would be a short-lived civilian authority called the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance.

The history records how Mr. Garner presented Mr. Rumsfeld with several rebuilding plans, including one that would include projects across Iraq.

“What do you think that’ll cost?” Mr. Rumsfeld asked of the more expansive plan.

“I think it’s going to cost billions of dollars,” Mr. Garner said.

“My friend,” Mr. Rumsfeld replied, “if you think we’re going to spend a billion dollars of our money over there, you are sadly mistaken.”

The Administration had their heads way up their butts on this one. They were so wrong about everything, they were approaching Bill Kristol levels of wrongness. And that's saying something.

True Story

I use to complain because I had no shoes, until I met a man who had no feet. But after I pushed his wheelchair away, I started complaining again.

Question of the Day

Seriously, how stupid do you have to be to try to sell the President-elect's Senate seat??

This may be a new record for stupidity. It's industrial-scale stupidity. It's like the Mount Everest of stupidity but not like a human being sees Mount Everest, it's like Mount Everest from an ant's point of view. It's like you're a tiny ant (not even one of those big one-inch ants) looking up at this inconceivably large mountain and then you realize that mountain is just a pebble on the lower slope of Mount Everest.

I mean, this was pretty stupid.

To recap, Huckabee is a huge douchebag

I get that former and current Presidential candidate Mike Huckabee is charming and has a good sense of humor. I understand his appeal.

He was the guest on tonight's Daily Show and once again showed that in addition to being charming and funny, he's a complete ASSHAT. Stewart took him head-on over his views on gay marriage and Huckabee trotted out all the BS the social conservatives usually shovel: being gay is a lifestyle choice, marriage has been defined as one man/one woman for 5000 years, marriage is the bedrock of our society, if we allow gay marriage we have to allow polygamy. It's all bullcrap and Stewart called him out on every point. It was devastating.

Of course, at the end, Huckabee had to whine about the unfairness of people calling him a homophobe just because he wants to limit their rights and treat them as second class citizens. Boo hoo, Mike.

You're a bigot and a homophobe. Bite me.

What's the deal with huge, dark eyebrows?!?

Wheeeeeeee!

We've had Verizon FIOS (fiber optic) for Internet service for two years and have been very happy with it. A few weeks ago someone told me that Verizon had updated their minimum speed of 5 mb/s to 10 mb/s and that all you had to do is call them to upgrade your service.

So I called them yesterday and found out that not only would they upgrade me (for a year extension on our contract, big deal), but that because of the combo Internet/phone deal we have, they'd upgrade us to 20 mb/s and we'd pay about $5 per month LESS for the package.

Woo hoo!

I just ran a speed test. Here are the results.



Edited because of Mr. Haas' exacting standards.

Sorry, if I had realized it affected me, I would have cared a lot sooner

As part of their "On Faith" section, the Washington Post posts articles and blogs from a large spectrum of humanity, from the faithful of many religions to the unbeliever. Today's guest blogger is Kay Warren, who with her husband Rick started Saddleback Church in Southern California in 1980, and she has some pretty illuminating things to say.

I have to be honest – until a few years ago, I was OK with that situation. I hardly ever gave HIV/AIDS a single thought. In the rare moments I saw a news report about it, I concluded that those who were sick probably deserved it since they had put themselves at risk. I didn’t know anyone who was HIV positive, so it wasn’t personal to me in any way. I was completely occupied with raising my family, attaining personal goals and investing in the ministry of our church. But in a single moment, all of that changed.

One afternoon I sat in my comfy living room with a cup of tea, casually browsing through a weekly news magazine. An article on AIDS in Africa, accompanied by horrific photographs, caught my attention. I was stunned to learn that (at that time) nearly 40 million people were living with an incurable disease that destroyed their immune system, causing a certain painful death, leaving 15 million children orphaned. I went to bed that night haunted by the photographs of skeletal men and women, the cries of abandoned children echoing in my dreams. I woke up the next morning still tormented by this new reality that had suddenly invaded my comfortable world.

Note the "deserved it". She didn't care about the horrible deaths of millons of people until she learned that some people who didn't "deserve it" were involved. Nice. We should note that the idea that gays deserve to die of a horrible, wasting disease is primarily a religious viewpoint.

The comments following her post call her on her indifference and hypocrisy. This first comment gets it exactly right.

It's good that you care, once you find out that lots of people, including women and children are involved. Some of us cared even while people like you were smugly enjoying your breakfast coffee, shrugging off the deaths because only people who "deserved it" (read: gay men and drug users) were affected.

Sorry, but I still don't see any real atonement for your indifference in your words. I see, "Oh, dear, I just realized that this affects People Like Me, and Innocent Children. Now I care!" Just a thought exercise - if the disease really only did affect gay men and drug users, would you continue in your indifference, on the grounds that these are not people worthy of your concern? Or would you care for the skeletal, suffering man clutching the hand of his weeping husband as he dies? Or for the woman sunk into the depths of despair, for whatever reason, who turns to drugs for comfort and finds only death?

Well said.

Okay, he gets the point already

Here's a tragedy: Would-Be Bride Swept Away by Wave

I imagine that many will see the hand of God swooping in to end this young woman's life. If you believe a deity does these kinds of things, I don't know how you could come to any other conclusion.

If this tragedy was a message, it seems a lot more clear than the muddled messages supposedly meant by Hurricane Katrina and the Asian Tsunami.

Or it could just be a really terrible random event.

Please don't go!

Anyone who watches TV has a show or a dozen that they really loved but was cancelled before its time. One of my lost classics is Andy Richter Controls the Universe. Tremendously funny, Andy Richter was all kinds of awesome but it didn't last.

I'm still bumming over the recent news of Pushing Daisies' cancellation. Only 17 or so episodes into the entire series and the show continues to go in all kinds of unexpected directions.

In last night's episode, Olive Snook suddenly realized that she hadn't gotten over her love for Ned after all and expressed it by singing the Bangles Eternal Flame. Yes, someone will occasionally break into song on Pushing Daisies but since it's done sparingly and the actors, in this case Broadway's Kristin Chenowith, are so good it really, really works. It was a touching, wonderful moment because her character is so complex and appealing. I don't see how they could resolve the Ned/Olive/Chuck triangle without some major heartache.

Damn, I'm going to miss this show.

(I was going to just link to the clip, but what the heck, here it is.)

How to understand?

It's hard to know how to deal with the pure evil of people who would commit the atrocities in Mumbai last week. What commonality can you have with such insanity?

Earlier this week, the Daily Show probably got as close as anyone will get to the truth of explaining it all.

Mumbai Tragedy

Confession

I admit it. I've never seen A Christmas Story which, apparently, is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year.

Somehow, calling a movie that premiered the year I graduated from high school a "classic" doesn't really endear it to me. Carol has seen it and positively hates it.

So, if you love this movie and can't comprehend why I've never seen it, have at me.

Star Trek would win

Ah, another shot in the ancient battle of Star Trek vs. Star Wars. It'll take five minutes but it's pretty well done. Make sure you watch it through the credits.

How true

Wellington Grey is just awesome. Here's his latest.