Pro-Atheism Messages In Public Spaces
Here are some billboards that have been going up around the country (Illinois and Chicago) to promote secularism during this "holiday season."
Hat/tip to Joe.My.God
VitaminWater Is Declared A Scam!
OMG! Vitaminwater has been ruled to be a marketing scam by a federal court. This is very sad to me because I love drinking Vitaminwater! I like the "dwnld" and "XXX" flavors. I never believed the "health claims" but I figured that it was better than drinking juice or Gatorade.By including the suggestion that the product will “keep you healthy” or “help bring about a healthy state of physical and mental being” alongside such statements, the quoted language implies that the nutrient content of vitaminwater may help consumers maintain healthy dietary practices. I conclude, therefore, in light of the language and context in which they are used, that the statements on the “defense” and “B- Relaxed” labels constitute implied nutrient content claims which use the word “healthy.” Such claims are in violation of violation of FDA regulations because . . . vitaminwater achieves its nutritional content solely through fortification that violates FDA policy.
FRC Co-Founder Caught With 20-year-old Rent Boy
White Guy Disguises Himself As Black To Rob Banks
This has to be seen to believed:Ohio police say they've apprehended a wily white bank robber who threw them off the trail by disguising himself as a black person. Authorities say 30-year-old Conrad Zdzierak would rob the banks in a high-quality mask, then take it off as he drove to his next robbery target, confounding police on the lookout for a black man. He allegedly managed to hit four banks and a CVS within just three hours, ABC reports. His mistake? He never disguised his car.Here's a local news story on the case:
Oklahoma Homophobes Can't Even Discriminate Straight!
Oklahoma State Senate Minority Leader Andrew Rice, D-Oklahoma City, said when the Senate passed Senate Bill 1965 on March 10, it eliminated hate crime protections for race and religion.All I can do is shake my head.The bill states local law enforcement agencies should not enforce any sections of federal law under hate crimes statutes listed under Title 18 U.S. Code Section 245 unless they are in correlation with Oklahoma’s hate crimes laws.
But the protections for sexual orientation and gender identity in the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes, which passed Congress last year, are not listed under Section 245, but Section 249
“The bill in its current form doesn’t take away rights from gays and lesbians,” Rice said. “It takes away rights for religion and race.”
“This is most likely a legislative error or at least a typo,” Rice said.
hat/tip to PFAW's Right Wing Watch.
Condomania Ranks U.S. Cities By Average Penis Size
Joe.My.God has posted this great map which ranks American cities by average penis size by analyzing the size of the custom condoms ordered to addresses in those cities via online retailer Condomania.com. "The Big Easy" (New Orleans, LA) ranks first. I'm somewhat surprised but I have barely ever been there. However, if my memory serves me right, I am unsurprised by the District of Columbia being ranked #2! *cough* majority Los Angeles, my fair city, placed 17th. Oh, the shame! Then again, yours truly didn't order any condoms from Condomania, or else I would have skewed the rankings up! *grin*
Here's the Top 20:
- New Orleans
- Washington DC
- San Diego
- New York City
- Phoenix
- Portland
- Atlanta
- San Francisco
- Chicago
- St. Louis
- Seattle
- Miami
- Indianapolis
- Columbus
- Boston
- Denver
- Los Angeles
- Detroit
- Philadelphia
- Dallas/Ft. Worth
I would love to know what this is going to do to my blog traffic now that I have a blog post with "penis size" in the title!
Celebrity Friday: Isaiah Mustafa
Isaiah Mustafa has appeared shirtless in two very popular and self-parodic commercials for Old Spice cologne. Mustafa, 36, is a former NFL player who is now trying to make it as an actor. His appearance in the first Old Spice commerical "I'm The Man Your Man Could Smell Like" caused giggles and has over 3 million viewings on YouTube.
Hat/tip to Rod 2.0
BOOK REVIEW: Iain M. Bank's MATTER
Iain M. Banks has been on my list of science fiction authors to try for quite awhile since his name is often mentioned in the same breath as my favorite, British master of space opera Peter F. Hamilton.I actually tried to read Banks a few years ago when his The Algebraist came out. It got excellent reviews and was nominated for big awards soI picked it up from the library and hated it. I didn't even bother to wrie up a review. In fact, I'm not even sure I finished it, but I am pretty sure I did. All Banks novels are intricately plotted with multiple threads and characters leavened with wry humor but for some reason The Algebraist just didn't work for me.
Happily, Matter, which is one of the books in the series Banks is most well-known for (The Culture series) is very different from The Algebraist although on the surface their descriptions seem somewhat similar.
Both books feature a sophisticated, galaxy-spanning society which has an intricate, hierarchical culture and a story that centers around a single key individual. In The Algebraist this person is the annoying Fassin Taak, while in Matter this person is Prince Ferbin.
Most reviews of Matter talk about its overwhelming length (600+ pages) but for someone who is a Peter F. Hamilton fan this is really not an obstacle to enjoying the book, since we are accustomed to the 1000+ page-turners Pandora's Star and Judas Unchained.
Iain M. Banks' work is reminiscent of Hamilton, with a similarly complicated plot and overly detailed combat scenes. However, Banks also includes a wickedly sharp sense of humor that he deploys to great effect as he simultaneously creates and pokes fun at typical space opera tropes such as advanced weapons technology, super-smart computers, humongous artificial living environments and bizarre aliens.
Reading Matter has convinced me to try and read the earlier works in the Culture series, like Excession (1998) and Look to Windward (2001), the immediate prequel to Matter.
Title: Matter.
Author: Iain M. Banks.
Length: 624 pages.
Publisher: Orbit.
Date: February 10, 2009.
OVERALL GRADE: A/A+ (4.08/4.0).
PLOT: A+.
IMAGERY: A+.
IMPACT: A-.
WRITING: A.
π Calculuated to 2,700,000,000,000 Digits!
Big news, y'all! The number π has just been calculated to 2.7 trillion digits!According to the Mathematical Association of America news story:
Computer scientist Fabrice Bellard has computed Pi to nearly 2.7 trillion digits, breaking the record by 123 billion places.Pretty cool, huh?
It took him 131 days to do it. The old record had been set in August, 2009, by Daisuke Takahashi(University of Tsukuba, in Japan), who needed just 29 hours on a supercomputer 2,000 times faster than Bellard's desktop.
"I got my first book about Pi when I was 14 and since then, I have followed the progress of the various computation records," Bellard told BBC News.
Protect Marriage Sues Courage Campaign Over Logo Parody
Do you notice anything similar between the two logos above? The bottom one was the official logo of ProtectMarriage.com, the proponents of Proposition 8, the state constitutional ban on same-sex marriage in California, who are now the defendant-intervenors in the Perry v Schwarzenegger federal lawsuit going on before a 9th Circuit District Court Judge in San Francisco. The top one is the logo of Prop8TrialTracker.com, which has become one of themost heavily trafficked LGBT weblogs in the last week, since it is an excellent source for real-time information on the landmark trial on the unconstitutionality of Proposition 8.
Last week, ProtectMarriage.com's lawyers sent Courage Campaign (the people who are responsible for creating the Prop8TrialTracker.com website) a cease and desist letter complaining about the use of their copyrighted trademark in the logo of the new website. Courage Campaign replied with a letter that said, in very nice lawyerly language: go f*** yourself.
Yesterday, the heterosexual supremacists responded by filing suit(pdf) in federal court against Courage Campaign. What is amusing about the logo lawsuit is that ProtectMarriage.com is arguing in one federal court that the image of a same-sex couple and an opposite-sex couple are "substantial indistingushable" when depicted graphically, but in their defense of Proposition 8 in another federal court, they are claiming that same-sex marriage and opposite-sex marriage are two completely different and very distinguishable entities (and one of these is much better than the other--guess which one?)
Makes you go, hmmmm, right?
Here's a press release from Courage Campaign about their latest legal response (pdf) to the logo lawsuit:
Courage Campaign Institute responds to Complaint and Motion for Temporary Restraining Order by Prop 8 supporters
Jacobs: "The Courage Campaign Institute will continue to focus our energy on this historic trial and the rights and protections at stake for loving, committed same-sex couples. 'ProtectMarriage.com' can continue to expend time, energy and resources on a logo. Frankly, I think that says a lot about our respective priorities."
LOS ANGELES, CA - The Courage Campaign Institute responded this morning to a complaint and temporary restraining order delivered yesterday by lawyers for ProtectMarriage.com and announced it will continue to refuse to remove a logo on their Prop 8 Trial Tracker website that parodies the ProtectMarriage.com logo.
Courage Campaign Institute legal counsel Nathan Sabri of Morrison Foerster continues to assert in written documents to ProtectMarriage.com that "this difference between our client's logo and your client's logo is a graphical representation of the core difference between Courage Campaign's views and ProtectMarriage.com's views, presented in a sassy way that will not be lost on the public."
In an Opposition response statement filed to the U.S. District Court of the Eastern District of California, Sabri cited numerous examples of case law, including cases involving the World Wrestling Federation, Mattel, and Universal Studios to show that Courage Campaign has a legal right to parody the ProtectMarriage.com logo.
Rick Jacobs, Chair of the 700,000-member Courage Campaign Instititute, commented on the irony of ProtectMarriage.com's continued focus on this issue. "We thought that our response laying out the tremendous legal precedent in cases like this would be the end of this silliness," said Jacobs. "But we are more than happy to defend our case if Prop 8 supporters continue to argue that the difference between their logo and ours is 'substantially indistinguishable,' given that their logo features a father and mother and our logo features two mothers."
In a response letter to ProtectMarriage.com sent Friday, January 15, attorney Sabri had previously stated that "while our client does appreciate the irony of the suggestion in your letter that a logo of a family made up of a man, a woman, and two children is 'substantially indistinguishable' from a logo of a family made up of two women and two children, your assertion is incorrect."
"The Courage Campaign Institute will continue to focus our energy on this historic trial and the rights and protections at stake for loving, committed same-sex couples," said Jacobs. "ProtectMarriage.com" can continue to expend time, energy and resources on a logo. Frankly, I think that says a lot about our respective priorities."
Jacobs concluded, "This is yet another attempt by Prop 8 supporters to distract from the facts being brought forth at this trial that are demonstrating quite clearly both the discrimination same-sex couples face and the need and benefit to society of equal treatment under the law."
Courage Campaign's Prop 8 Trial Tracker web site has garnered more than 700,000 views and 5,000 comments since it launched on January 11 and has become a leading source of real-time updates on the Perry v. Schwarzenegger trial.
Sarah Palin Gets Lie Of The Year Award For "Death Panels"
Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin has received the dubious distinction of being recognized by Pulitzer Prize-winning website PolitiFact for telling The Lie Of The Year.
To refresh your memory, here is the lie (posted to her Facebook page) Sarah Palin told:
Seniors and the disabled "will have to stand in front of Obama's 'death panel' so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their 'level of productivity in society,' whether they are worthy of health care."PolitiFact says:
Sarah Palin, Friday, August 7th, 2009.
Of all the falsehoods and distortions in the political discourse this year, one stood out from the rest.Congratulations, Sarah!
"Death panels."
The claim set political debate afire when it was made in August, raising issues from the role of government in health care to the bounds of acceptable political discussion. In a nod to the way technology has transformed politics, the statement wasn't made in an interview or a television ad. Sarah Palin posted it on her Facebook page.
Her assertion — that the government would set up boards to determine whether seniors and the disabled were worthy of care — spread through newscasts, talk shows, blogs and town hall meetings. Opponents of health care legislation said it revealed the real goals of the Democratic proposals. Advocates for health reform said it showed the depths to which their opponents would sink. Still others scratched their heads and said, "Death panels? Really?"
How To Choose Your Religion: A Helpful Flow Chart
This chart is pretty helpful for those of you who are deciding on which religion to follow. (Hat/tip Holy Taco)
American National Government & Monty Python
Jokingly, I had suggested to my family over the weekend that I should have three of the questions be as follows: 1. What is your name? 2. What is your quest? 3. What is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow? So this morning, as I was making out the test and therefore looking for a way to avoid working on it, I decided to Google "what is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?" My quest ultimately led me to this site where someone had actually done some research and worked it out, all with a Monty Python theme.
So if you ever find yourself on the Bridge of Death, just remember, the answer is 11 meters per second, or 24 miles an hour. Hum, too bad it was 24 and not 42, then we might have found the question to the ultimate answer, but that's an entirely different story.
