Seriously, wingnuts, you’ve got to stop this October 22, 2009
Posted by Evil Bender in Humor, wingnuts.3 comments
Dear Wingnuts,
Please, please, please stop publishing lists of “Top Conservative ________.” Yes, they’re unintentionally hilarious, and yes, they’re misguided, and yes, their obsessive concern with ideological purity is creepily totalitarian. But that’s not why you should stop–if you stopped doing all those things, what would you feel countless pages at WingnutDaily and ClownHall? No, you need to stop because it’s been scientificially proven* that laughing too hard can cause one to “blow a funny fuse,” to use the technical term, and if I read one more of these lists, I won’t be able to laugh again for years.
Then I’d have no choice but to take you seriously, and frankly we both know you’re not up to that.
So please, stop publishing these lists. Do it for the laughter!
Kisses,
EB
*no it hasn’t.
Analogies that just don’t work: football and dogfighting edition October 12, 2009
Posted by Evil Bender in Morality, sports.7 comments
So those of you with very strong stomachs can read this piece on “Football, dog fighting and brain damage,” which has a disturbing and important point to make about the substantial dangers football players face. That’s a worthwhile subject, and I wish everyone working to shed light on the dangers of the sport the best of luck.
But I have to say, I find the comparison to dog fighting which informs the essay to be repulsive. Malcolm Gladwell avoids making the implications of the comparison explicit, and carefully sidesteps drawing direct moral equivalence, but in my reading the implication is clear, and I don’t appear to be the only one.
So the question is, as Paul Campos asks, why is dog fighting more morally repugnant than football?
The answer, it seems to me, is simple: football involves adults who willingly engage in a high-risk livelihood. Dog fighting is a “sport” in which animals who have no choice are tortured for human amusement. Dog fighting is much more morally repugnant than football for the same reason gladiatorial contests would be. This isn’t just about level of potential injury, but about consent: professional athletes can give it, dogs cannot.
Before anyone suggests otherwise, I don’t mean to suggest that we shouldn’t do more to protect athletes, nor that football doesn’t present some morally difficult situations. But it is quite simply no comparison to an activity where powerless beings are tortured for the amusement of those with the power. Yes, I know we can perform a class and race analysis of football, and I’m open to that. But highly paid professionals taking risks with their own health is simply not comparable to the horrors dog fighting visits upon dogs.
Honestly, I thought this sort of distinction went without saying, at least among thinking people. Maybe I was wrong.
Wingnut, distilled to pure form October 1, 2009
Posted by Evil Bender in wingnuts.1 comment so far
I give you Red State’s Erick Erickson, who is threatening to disband his police department rather than let police unionize.
Just toss that link to anyone who says wingnuts are about anything but helping the rich shit on everyone else.
Bob Barr ups the crazy September 9, 2009
Posted by Evil Bender in wingnuts.add a comment
We knew Bob Barr was nuts, but it seems he’s gone going for the rare triple-winger reverse. If he sticks the landing, he’ll be Palin’s VP nod.
This particularly irks me because of the many hugely important (and bipartisan) roles of the census.
In case you were wondering, by the way, here’s Barry Sotero’s latest Marxist Fascist plot in all its glory. We’ve reached so low that teaching children about a Constitutionally mandated program that benefits everyone is an evil child slave labor government spying evil school program.
I’m seriously about an inch from stocking up on dog food and garden supplies and hunkering down in Canada for a few decades.
Catholic Birth Control? September 2, 2009
Posted by Evil Bender in Uncategorized.add a comment
I guess if you’re sufficiently turned off, there’s little chance of reproducing.
Gag.
Proof Number 4,509,531 that organized religion warps ones brain September 1, 2009
Posted by Evil Bender in Religion, reproductive rights, wingnuts.4 comments
If you’d like to be more charitable, you could assume that it’s just Judie Brown’s odious fundamentalism that warps her brain. But you’d be hard pressed to find anything but religious indoctrination that would lead anyone to say anything as stupid and immoral as this:
The entire travesty, from the television cameras to spectacle itself, goes beyond anything I have witnessed in my more than 65 years of life. In fact, while we all thought the appearance of President Barack Obama at the University of Notre Dame was a scandal, the very idea that he offered a eulogy in a basilica, while the real presence of Christ was in the tabernacle, is perhaps the most dastardly thing I have ever seen.
Brown is a rabid fetus-worshiper, so we shouldn’t be surprised that her values are a bit eschew. She seems to honestly believe that the Worst Thing EVAR is that women aren’t forced to give birth. Even so, she’s been around a while, so we might be able to help her come up with some examples of even more dastardly things she’s seen during her “more than 65 years of life.”
Examples abound, so I want your feedback: what’s the most glaring example of a “dastardly thing” in the last 65 years?
Three-sentence Inglourious Basterds review August 21, 2009
Posted by Evil Bender in arts and culture, Film.add a comment
Quentin Tarantino loves movies. Watching his movies reminds rekindles my love of movies. Inglourious Basterds is no exception, and has bonus killing of Nazis.
[Bonus 4th sentence: Highly Recommended, and not for the faint of heart.]
Beards are proof of evolution is false? August 10, 2009
Posted by Evil Bender in Origins, Science, wingnuts.1 comment so far
So says “Brian Thomas, M. S.“:
On the other hand, if everything was created by a God who exists outside the physical world, there is a ready answer, one with broad application: beards present a certain appearance. Aesthetic features were emplaced by Someone who knew how things look in addition to how things work. Beards do not confer any selectable survival advantage to humankind, but they do serve to add distinction to men, perhaps as different features distinguish women.
It would be consistent to think that it simply pleased the Creator to outfit humans and other creatures with certain visually appealing characteristics. “But God giveth it a body as it hath pleased him” (1 Corinthians 15:38). The study of purposes is called apobetics, and beards are evidence that God designed certain features simply with aesthetics in mind.
I’ll just point out that this is actually a pretty decent argument when compared to the ICR’s usual tripe. Which means, naturally, that it’s only embarrassing, not shockingly embarrassing.
Right up until the end of the piece, that is:
Researchers have not yet found a metaprogram in this universe that guides clouds of space dust into raw functional, let alone variously aesthetic, forms. After all, what does the impersonal universe care about beauty? A Creator God who appreciates beauty and wants others to appreciate His handiwork must be responsible for the origin of aesthetic features. Men have beards–some thick, some sparse–because it pleased God to adorn them so.
Don’t you love it when Creationists think they’ve just indicted science for points that scientists long-since have considered and dealt with? It’s almost as funny as their pathetic misunderstandings of evolutionary theory. Seriously, have these people ever heard of sexual selection? Genetic drift? For that matter, are they really so stupid that they can’t think of a more plausible reason that beards aren’t in favor than that A Magic Man Gave Them To Us But We’ve Lost Our Way? (Hint to Creationists: when is a beard more important? when you’re in a cave or your parents’ nice warm basement?)
