Quick Hitts

As promised, here’s the second half of the TADD list from 2009.  This are culled from the second half of last years leftover bookmarks.  They document all kinds of things things done by believers, from the horrific to the hilarious.

A group of 35 clerics in Saudi Arabia has declared that no woman should ever appear on TV, nor should any image of any women be allowed in any magazine or newspaper.    A woman who dared to not only appear on Saudi TV but to actually discuss sex was sentenced to 60 lashes.

This book wasn’t written by an atheist

In Illinois a gaggle of ignorant Christians, under the banner of the Illinois Family Institute,  have attempted to get The Friendly Atheist (who runs one of the calmest, least snarky atheism sites on the net) fired from his teaching position because he has a blog about . . . gasp! . . .Atheism!

In Minneapolis a pastor told his congregation a tornado was God’s way of punishing Lutherans for not hating gays enough.

In Kenya people, including children, are still being killed and maimed because someone, not an atheist, has labeled them a witch.

Muslim women should still be sexy under their Burkas, but only for their husbands.  With that in mind, a new line of body covering clothes will allow them to work out at the gym without their head scarves getting caught in the equipment.

Wiley Drake, who believes the nut job who murdered Dr. Tiller was an answer to his prayers, told his followers they should be praying for Obama’s death.

When Pastor Manning was questioned about using the N word while declaring Obama the antichrist, he justified it by explaining the word is also used by Kanye West, P. Diddy and Snoop Dog.  I was surprised to learn they were religious leaders too.

Islam forbids homosexuality.  Pedophilia with young boys is just fine, though, which isn’t surprising considering Mohamed was a pedophile.

This pastor, whose holy vestments consist of coveralls and a dirty t-shirt, is organizing a book burning.  Not only is he burning books written by fellow Christians he disagrees with, but any bible that’s not the King James version, which he considers the only true word of god.  Surprisingly, his congregation consists of only 14 people.

Novels, plays and, of course, cartoons are being withheld from publication or performance for fear of attacks by the Religion of Peace.

Four people drowned during a baptism ceremony in South Africa. People, people, you’re not supposed to hold them under that long.

Jehovah’s Witnesses berate the Catholic clergy, but they do have one big thing in common – sheltering, aiding and abetting pedophiles.  This is a transcript of a BBC documentary on the subject.  This is the first of a 13 part BBC series on the issue.  This is me having some fun at their expense over at the rather useless Yahoo Answers.

Here’s a good argument against becoming a religious vegetarian.  (Warning: This is a link to pictures of face piercings that are graphic and disgusting.)

If you’re a Muslim father in Phoenix, upset that your daughter has become too “westernized,” what do you do?  Run over her with your car, of course.  And just for good measure, hit her roommate too.   If you’re in Somalia, of course, you just half-bury her and then stone her to death.

Not being Muslim is no excuse for eating during Ramadan.

In Washington DC the Catholic Church says they help tens of thousands of people with adoption, homelessness and health care.  When DC proposed a same-sex marriage law, they lovingly threatened to pull out {insert your own birth control joke here} unless the law was changed to please them.

In Nigeria a 15-year-old-girl was put into protective custody to protect her from a lynch mob.  They wanted to murder her because they believed she had changed into a cat, and then back into a girl.

Warning: This next link contains extremely graphic, very disturbing photos. These are professional portraits of Muslim women who have had acid thrown in their faces.  If you are even slightly squeamish or prone to nightmares I recommend you move on to the next entry on the list.  These are horrible and heartbreaking.  This is not hyperbole.  If you still want to see them, click here.

And last of all, to finish things up on a lighter note, here’s a list of some incredibly stupid/funny things spewed by the overly religious.  One of my favorites: “I believe my son has a girlfriend, because she left a dirty magazine with men in it under his bed.”

Last year the nicotine nannies (NNs) took their Second Hand Smoke nonsense a step further and announced that third hand smoke (THS?) was deadly.   The evidence consisted of someone doing a survey, asking people if they believed this nonsense, then presenting that as scientific proof.   “Journalists” ran with the story, declaring that smokers who had politely avoided smoking near anyone were still deadly bags of toxins.  That’s not hyperbole: the gullible Dr. Nancy Snyderman declared, on national TV, that smokers were “a walking toxic dump.”

The purpose of this is, of course, is to continue the NNs tireless crusade to make non-smokers hate and fear smokers.

This kind of nonsense might be amusing if it didn’t have such serious consequences.  In the UK one hospital banned smokers from visiting patients, for fear of third hand smoke contamination.

The latest “study” on THS comes out of Berkley.  (Surprise!)  Unable to find any dangerous levels of anything in THS, they exposed particulates to nitrous acid and announced that it resulted in horrible deadly tobacco-specific nitrosamines (TSNAs)

The study hasn’t been published yet, so they’re using the oh-so-respectable method of Science-By-Press-Release to spread their message of fear and hate.  In their release they mention children, toddlers and infants over and over and over.  Of course.

Just how much of this stuff have they managed to fabricate in their lab?  The lead “researcher” explains:  “Whereas the sidestream smoke of one cigarette contains at least 100 nanograms equivalent total TSNAs, our results indicate that several hundred nanograms per square meter of nitrosamines may be formed on indoor surfaces in the presence of nitrous acid.”

Most people don’t douse their furniture or their smoking friends with nitrous acid, but for the sake of this thought experiment let’s pretend they do.  How much toxin is he talking about?

A nanogram is a billionth of a gram.  A single grain of salt weighs about 120,000 nanograms.  Let’s assume this shill’s extremely imprecise “several hundred” means 300.  Hell, let’s make it 500 to make the math easier.  We’re talking the mass of 1/240 of a grain of salt spread over a square meter.  Oooo, scary stuff.

You’ll find a more complete explanation of the “study” here.

As someone commented on this blog, at these levels talking about Homeopathic Smoking.  Homeopathy claims that diluting a toxin increases its strength, so reducing exposure to THS or SHS increases the danger.  Quick, get to a smoke-filled room!

My contempt for these dirt-bag hate-mongering pseudo-scientists exceeds my ability to articulate it.  They should be stripped of everything they own, including their obviously meaningless degrees, and forced to stand in the middle of the freeway holding signs that say, “Will Fabricate Facts For Food.”  That won’t happen until I’m made King of The World, which is a ways off, so expect to see more of this nonsense flooding the media in the months and years to come.

Throughout his campaign LMO promised he wouldn’t raise taxes on anyone making less than $250k/year.  The *first* thing he did in office was raise the tax on roll your own tobacco by an astounding 2,159%.  It’s a pretty safe bet RYO smokers are making a *bit* less than a quarter million bucks a year. (BTW, it was to pay for medical coverage for kids whose parents made up to $63k/year.  So the minimum wage guy trying to save a few bucks on his smokes gets to finance the larvae of $63k “poor” citizens.)

RYO tobacco producers responded by re-labeling their RYO tobacco as pipe tobacco, which received a mere 158% tax increase.  Same stuff, same bags, same tobacco, but a different name.

Congress’ is pissed that anyone dare get around their draconian increase.  Their solution is a 775% tax increase on pipe tobacco, making sure that pipe smokers get screwed so RYO smokers won’t be able to evade *their* screwing.

Is it time to shoot the bastards yet?  Seriously, how much longer should we wait?

I’m not sure how much good it will do, but here’s a petition to tell your elected scumbags to knock it off.

Those of us who are fond of reality make the mistake of using logic and reason to deal with religious nutters in an attempt to show them their conclusions are flawed.  (We use the term “flawed” because it’s impolite to use the more accurate term: “fucking stupid.”)  We can be persuaded by logic and reason, so we make the mistaken assumption it can work on them.  Unfortunately, their mighty shields of impenetrable ignorance can deflect even the most obvious facts.

Anger and outrage are even less effective.  They are black holes of anger and outrage, and so any more directed at them just gets sucked into their own dark core – it feeds them.

There is a weapon, though, that they simply can’t handle – ridicule.  The most obvious example was the Dutch cartoons that resulted in thousands of Muslims going on murderous riots and rampages – and they’re still trying to kill the cartoonists.   Fortunately for us, most fundy Christians aren’t as violent as fundy Muslims, so we can have some serious fun at their expense without the serious consequences of being attacked by seriously pissed-off followers the eternally angry Allah.

Alleged homosexual Fred Phelps provides us with a perfect test bed for nutter containment.  Normal citizens have reacted to his insanity by blocking his protests with fire trucks, motorcycle brigades, their own signs, and passing laws restricting protests at military funerals.  (I think it says a lot about us that he hasn’t been beaten to a bloody pulp.  Not even once.)  But when he showed up outside Twitter’s offices in San Francisco to protest, well, everything in the city, he was met by a counter protest of signs even more bizarre and ridiculous than his.

My personal favorite was “I Have a Sign,” although “Bitch Burger” runs a close second for its pure meaningless surrealism.  I appreciate people who go out of their way to add a little surrealism to our lives.

I’ll sometimes debate with religious nutters for my own amusement, getting them to contradict themselves or backing them into corners, but these signs have inspired me to try a different approach.  The next time I have a chance I’ll just ask them, as seriously as I can, “Do you think Martians like pancakes?”  It makes just as much sense as what they’re saying.

Hat Tip: Hayden Black of the very funny Goodnight Burbank.

This has been a very bad week for the left.  They’ve received bitch slaps from three different directions, but only one of them will have any lasting impact.

The Democrats lost Ted Kennedy’s senate seat in one of the nation’s most liberal states, a state that already has its own version of Obamacare. (Which has been a complete disaster.)  The election of Senator Scott Brown threatens to drive Obamacare off a bridge and leave it to drown while congress wanders off in a drunken stupor.

The Brown family has the potential to be as entertaining as the Kennedys.  Not only did Scott pose nude for a Playgirl centerfold, his wife started in a video where she simulates a hand job (at about 1:04 in this video)  before getting arrested wearing a bikini.  The only useful thing we get out of our elected weasels is entertainment, and these folks should be able to deliver.

In other news, Air America went belly up.  The network was populated with far left pundits who were as ignorant and pompous as their far right counterparts, but not nearly as entertaining.  Using capitalism to promote socialism wasn’t a viable business model.  Surprise!

And last off all came the Supremes overturning much of the McCain-Feingold free speech limits, declaring that corporations can spend as much as they like to influence elections.

As I understand it (and I’m not a lawyer, so feel free to smartenize me if I’m wrong), corporations are persons under the law.  This legal fiction allows them to be liable for wrongdoing (as opposed their officers being liable), to own property, including intellectual property, and to remain in existence long after their founders have died.  It also gives them rights, including the right of free speech.

I don’t know if that particular right can be reigned in through legislation declaring that free speech applies to individuals and not corporations.  I doubt it, because that would affect the press and political organizations whose sole purpose is political speech.

My first response to this story was surprise that the Supremes finally made a correct decision, although to be fair, they usually get First Amendment cases right.  It’s the only part of the entire constitution that they actually understand.  When they’re finished completely eviscerating it the one right we’ll have left is the right to bitch about it.

My second response was agreeing with the liberals: this will allow corporations to purchase every single congress weasel.

My third response was: So what else is new?  Congress has been a wholly owned subsidiary of Corporate America for decades.  If it’s good for corporations, it becomes law.  If it’s good for American citizens, feh.

Occasionally congress pretends they’re doing something good for us, but digging just a bit deeper almost always reveals it’s a gift to one of their corporate buddies.  The sole exception is when they’re grabbing more power or money for government itself. Unsmartenized people are routinely fooled into thinking congress is looking out for them, but anyone with the slightest connection to reality knows who “their” representatives really serve.

Brown’s election could (and should) derail Obamacare and Cap and Tax, but the other two stories, which have the lefties wringing their pale, uncallused hands, won’t change anything.  A station no one listened to went off the air.  Boo Hoo.  And congress weasels will still be able to sell out to the highest bidder.   Ho hum, what’s for dinner?

Back in 1978 F. Paul Wilson wrote Lippidleggin’, a short story about a farmer bootlegging butter and eggs, which had been banned to improve everyone’s health.  I’m guessing that back then most people thought it was entertaining, but silly.

Back in 2007, with the author’s permission, I did a reading of the story for an episode of The Quick Hitts Podcast.  By then it didn’t seem silly at all.

And now the UK is taking the first steps toward making it a reality: spew from an expert who claims banning butter will save thousands of lives.   Uber nanny Shyam Kolvekar says, “By banning butter and replacing it with a healthy spread the average daily sat-fat intake would be reduced by eight grams.  This would save thousands of lives each year and help to protect them from cardiovascular disease – the UK’s biggest killer.”

This kind of nonsense is already starting here in the US.  Transfat is illegal in New York City, many states are clamoring to tax soda, and in 2006 Chicago banned foie gras to placate animal rights activists.  (The ban was lifted two years later, proving that incessant ridicule can be an effective political tool.)  If Obamacare becomes a reality Big Brother will have a perfect excuse to ban, regulate, and/or tax anything it deems unhealthy.

This may seem unrealistic – after all, there’s a huge dairy lobby, and they’d never let that kind of thing happen, right?

Ask a tobacco company executive about that.

So make it a point to enjoy real butter and eggs while you can.  It won’t happen immediately, or even very soon, but given how well nannies and Big Brother work together, it will happen unless we wake up and put a stop to this kind of nonsense.