Quick Hitts

The latest terrorist attempt to bring down a plane proves, beyond any doubt, that the TSA’s security theater is useless.  This guy was already on their watch list but that didn’t even slow him down.  (The watch list has, however, caused a lot of perfectly innocent people, including infants, from getting on a plane, because [...]

Just in time for Christmas, the British Medical Journal is featuring an article blaming Santa for obesity, speeding, drunk driving, extreme sports, smoking and reckless behavior.
Dr Nathan “Grinch” Grills wants to rework Santa into a politically correct image, right down to wearing a helmet and seat belt.
Using a variation of the nannies second favorite chant [...]

The Copenhagen summit on global cooling global warming climate change is barely started, and already impoverished nations are demanding handouts. Environment Minister Hasan Mahmud of Bangladesh says his country is entitled to a cubic buttload of money from the big nasty countries who arrogantly built successful societies while his government kept their citizens living [...]

Bobby McFarrin demonstrates that the pentatonic scale is a universal constant.

The newest Quick Hitts Podcast, “Ask Dave,” is now available for your listening pleasure.  It explains how people can believe the earth is 6,000 years old, why parents should buy red washcloths, and things to consider before naming your baby “Thor.”

A couple of weeks ago Rich White sent me an electronic copy of his book “Smokescreens, The Truth About Tobacco.”  It’s clear and well written and he provides a good explanation of anti-tobacco research, including not only the science, but the politics behind it.  I especially liked his chapters on second hand smoke.
You can find [...]

Here’s a commercial you’ll never see on American TV.

Spin is always entertaining, especially when it’s obvious and poorly done.
A couple of years ago it was revealed that Al Gore, the poster child for the Global Warming Will Kill Us All movement, used thirty times more electricity at one of his three mansions than any of his neighbors.  The apologists spin was pathetic.  “He [...]

Someone asked this question on Ask The Atheists.  This was my answer:

A skeptical viewpoint that will make you much less susceptible to scams and rip-offs. You won’t be as likely to risk your health on alternative medicines, fall prey to con-men, swallow the latest pseudoscience scare, etc.
Time. The religious waste an enormous amount of time [...]

Pfizer is abandoning the New London, CT site where their greed led to abolishing property rights for every single American.
The city of New London sold 24 acres of land to Pfizer for ten bucks, but Pfizer didn’t want to have to look at the older houses that dotted the waterfront.  They claimed they wanted the [...]

The Pew Research Center just released a survey about the public perception of media bias.  Before reading the rest of this article, check out the results and rate your own reaction.  How many times did you say “What The Fuck?”

First we have to ask if the survey itself is biased.  If it had been done [...]

The White House claims that 640,329 jobs have been saved or created by the stimulus package.
I love the “saved or created” scam.  While it’s possible to count how many jobs were created, it’s impossible to calculate how many were saved.   This lets them pull any numbers they like out of their ass and brag about [...]

The only thing more annoying than listening to old people bitch about how the past was so much better is catching yourself doing the same thing.  “Today’s music sucks and they don’t make movies like they used to and people are so much nastier now and kids dress like slobs and waaaaaa….
There are quite a [...]

The link between cell phones and brain cancer has been studied and studied and studied to death, and the results are conclusive:  there is no correlation between the two.  Yet the WHO, a political organization posing as a health organization, is now claiming otherwise.
Let’s take a look at the actual study.  Oh, wait, we can’t.  [...]

I love this guy. After you’ve watched this video, check out the others in his series.

It starts with an eight year old assassinating the president of the United States.  Then 7 men are kidnapped from various places in the country and brought to a secret underground facility.  They discover they all have the same name, and the same face.
Then it gets weird.
J. C. Hutchen’s 7th Son was the first podicobook [...]

I’ve never paid full price for a computer game.  I’m one of the guys who waits until a game has been out for a while and is available for half price or less. Still, I’m one of your customers who buys instead of bootlegs, and I have several suggestions for removing some of [...]

More of your favorite feature, folks. . .
A Missouri High School band designed t-shirts that showed the evolution of man and the evolution of band instruments.  A few days after they were distributed the school received complaints from concerned parents, who were not atheists, who claimed the shirts violated the school’s mandate to stay neutral [...]

In the UK parents who smoke are being banned from seeing their kids in hospitals.  The signs are not “No Smoking,” which is perfectly reasonable in a hospital, but “No Smokers.
We warned about the Third Hand Smoke scam back in January, and this video shows the real life consequences of this hateful nonsense.

Today is Blasphemy Day because, well, just because.  The religious have a plethora of holidays to choose from, so why shouldn’t atheists, apostates and blasphemers have their own day as well?
The Capital Region Atheists & Agnostics meetup group will be celebrating, of course.  Our dinner table will be decorated with butter sculptures of Christopher Hitchens, [...]