The Heartland Institute is a not uncommon source for climate ’skepticism’, which term, by the way, I put is scare quotes as climate ’skepticism’ makes a mockery of skepticism and I find that offensive. Climate ’skepticism’ is an insult to skeptics everywhere. You see, the skeptic questions, the climate ’skeptic’ fabricates and misrepresents in an [...]

I found a decently done review of Ben Stein’s idiocy, ‘Expelled’, but the reviewer has swallowed a little bit of the ID Kool-Aid and it happens to be a bit of Kool-Aid that annoys me greatly. Having now watched the film — which is terrible, filled with specious reasoning, false dichotomies, and self-contradiction — I [...]

John Pendleton has a series of videos on YouTube spotlighting his scientific inadequacies. Sadly, his video freezes several minutes in, at least on my system, so I’m linking to an analysis posted by ExtantDodo which reproduces (nearly) Pendleton’s entire film plus commentary. It is a long video, weighing in at over thirty minutes. If you [...]

Its tempting to post my own ‘free speech‘ rant but… “Senator Lieberman stated his belief, in a letter sent today, that all videos mentioning or featuring these groups should be removed from YouTube — even legal nonviolent or non-hate speech videos,” YouTube’s blog post states. “While we respect and understand his views, YouTube encourages free speech [...]

A quick redirect to an interesting bit of news. Ray McGovern, “veteran Army intelligence officer and a former CIA analyst for 27 years’ as per his signature line, has written a letter to Gen. Fallon about attacking Iran. In this letter he talk about oaths taken to uphold the constitution and about the general stupidity [...]

May 21, 2008 starts the clock. Let’s see how long it takes for the creationists to cook up some way to claim that this latest ‘transitional’ fossil isn’t in fact transitional at. Sure it has that “overall amphibian gestalt. … You know, kind of a froggy salamander-y sort of look” but I’m sure that’s nothing. And [...]

Not long ago I promised to post some creationist videos I’ve scratched up from YouTube. Well, here is the fulfillment of that promise. Ok. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that that one is satire. But this one… this one… Oh, ok. That one is satire too. This next one isn’t. Fun facts: At [...]

Ah… Microsoft… two words no wants to hear… I’ve whined about Vista before, notably in this post where I chronicle my adventure with a new laptop and describe how said brand new laptop running Vista gets its ass kicked by several boxes built of geriatric crap found lying around the house. I can’t help myself. [...]

Welcome to the May 11, 2008 edition of carnival of the libertarians. I was invited a month or more ago to host this carnival. I’m happy to do so. I’ve got libertarian leaning myself, as well as some not so libertarian ones as those who’ve crawled the blog might be [...]

“Animal abusers are cowards,” says PETA Manager Martin Mersereau. “They take their issues out on the most defenseless beings available to them. Seattle residents have reason to be concerned. According to leading mental health professionals and law enforcement agencies, perpetrators of violent acts against animals are often repeat offenders who pose a serious threat to [...]

Image via WikipediaAskimet catches virtually all of the spam that hits this blog but sometimes I scan the logs just to see what’s coming through and to assure myself that nothing genuine is being flagged as spam. And what have I found lately? Well, sex. Lots of sex. And drugs– most of which concern sex. [...]

Anyone running a WordPress blog has likely seen at least a mention of this article, as its floating through the WP Admin Dashboard RSS feed right now, but no matter, my point is not Microsoft bashing. No, my point is Adam Smith bashing. Actually, to be fair I’m not bashing Adam Smith. I’m just bashing [...]

Welcome to the May 1, 2008 edition of this is not my country. This edition is much shorter than the past two or three but we’ve lost nothing in quality. War: jkrane82 presents Pentagon Spin, Much to Our Chagrin posted at We Op-Ed, saying, “Exploring the impact and significance of the Pentagon’s use of military analysts for [...]

Once again the nation is convulsing over a celebrity sex scandal. Racy photos of yet another teen star are making the news, and boy is it shameful! Except that the whole thing is nonsense. Hannah Montana star Miley Cyrus was photographed showing her back. Yes, that’s right. She was photographed exposing that thing with the [...]

This must be one of the more amusing ‘debunkings’ of evolution I’ve seen thus far. Have a look. think of it as a kind of ‘how many layers of stupid can you find’ game. I love the little speech given by the frumpy lady starting about ten seconds in. Several videos follow the break. This ‘peanut [...]

April 1, 2008. (Well… Ok. Its actually April 5th. Let’s just say that April 1 is the nominal date.) Spring is in the air. I’m not all that happy about it, but such is the way it is. Here at the the ‘This Is Not My Country Carnival’ we’ve got a new set of post [...]

I’ve written here and there about climate change and I also think that I’ve mentioned my fetish for technology. The problem, rather obviously, is that technology requires power. I like power. I do not wish to return to those halcyon days when long distance travel meant going to the next town and ingrown toenails were [...]

Short but hopefully inflammatory. The United States was founded on a strong set of principles, most if not all of which I favor by the way. But lets think about something else. Since its founding, people in the United States have had a kind of religious zeal about those founding principles. Politics seems to be eternally [...]

I’m guessing. Absolutely. I know no more about this case than is written in the article cited, but I’d bet that he was beaten and burned for liking ‘outies’ instead of ‘innies’. Any takers? The victim, 27-year-old Michael Lee Williams of North Richmond, was unrecognizable when firefighters found his body burning Sunday night next to [...]

I’ve been running Vista for six to nine months now. I can’t remember exactly. The OS came installed on a laptop, and I was scared when I bought it. Turns out the fear was justified. That laptop was new when I bought it and is, physically, the best box in my collection– the rest of the [...]