Wednesday, February 28, 2007

New look

Opinions?
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Saturday, February 24, 2007

They have weapons

Next, they learn how to use guns:
Researchers have witnessed a chimpanzee skewering a lemur-like creature for supper, but it's unclear whether the spectacle was a bit of luck or an indication that chimps have a more advanced ability to hunt than was thought.

A team led by Iowa State University anthropology professor Jill Pruetz witnessed the spearing of a bushbaby in Fongoli, Senegal, during an observation of chimpanzees from March 2005 to July 2006. In a study being released Thursday in the online version of the journal Current Biology, Pruetz documents 22 cases of chimps using spear-like tools to hunt bushbabies — a small primate that lives in hollow branches or tree trunks.

"It's not uncommon to have chimps use tools. But to use them in the context of hunting" is nearly unheard of, she said.

Pruetz said the practice is most common among adolescent females, ages 10 to 13, which must compete against physically superior males.

"It's a way of accessing protein or meat that is a creative solution to this problem," she said.

Pruetz said the chimpanzees stripped leaves from tree branches and modified the tip with their incisors, "effectively making a point." Then the chimpanzees jabbed the tool into a cavity to snag a bushbaby.

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Friday, February 23, 2007

Friday Dead Racist Blogging: Incestuous Edition

But races must progress. Men have not political or economic duties only. They have hygienic duties. Hygiene is both ethnical and ethical; moral duties are coupled to the relation of races. Races must not be wronged. Hygienic process is a right. It is a right, because a duty. But hygienic progress forbids ethnical regress. Morality therefore, which commands general progress, prohibits this special regress. The preservation of and progress of a race, is a moral duty of the races. Degeneration is evil. It is a sin. That sin is extreme. Hybridism is heinous. Impurity of races is against the law of nature. Mulattoes are monsters. The law of nature is the law of God. The same law which forbids consanguineous amalgamation; forbids ethnical amalgamation. Both are incestuous. Amalgamation is incest.

--Henry Hughes, Treatise on Sociology, Theoretical and Practical, pp. 239-40

I find this horribly creep because of the short sentences he uses. I'm just imagining a recording chanting these over a loudspeaker endlessly to brainwash someone.
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It was the Jooo~s!

Circumcision reduces HIV risk:
In an "extraordinary development" in the fight against AIDS, a medical journal article published Friday says that conclusive data shows there is no question circumcision reduces men's chances of catching HIV by up to 60 percent.

The question now is how to put that fact to work to combat AIDS across Africa.

The findings were first announced in December, when initial results from two major trials — in Kenya and Uganda — showed promising links between circumcision and HIV transmission. However, those trials were deemed so definitive that the tests were halted early.

The full data from the trials, carried out by the U.S. National Institutes of Health, were published Friday in The Lancet.

...

In the Kenyan study, 1,391 circumcised men were compared to 1,393 who were not. And in Uganda, 2,474 circumcised men were compared to 2,522 men who were not. Scientists tracked the men for two years and found that those who were circumcised were 51-60 percent less likely to contract HIV.

I think this proves that AIDS is a Jewish plot.
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Thursday, February 22, 2007

Who needs alcohol...

...when you have sleep deprivation?
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Wednesday, February 21, 2007

My new catchphrase is....

Friction! Sweetest of life's gifts!
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Monday, February 19, 2007

Defining family down

Ed Brayton has a post up about a California court case, Good News Employee Association v. Hicks. In short, some employees of the city of Oakland formed the group GNEA in order to, in Mr. Brayton's words, "counter what they viewed as city policies that favored gays and lesbians more than they would like them to." They put up a flier on a bulletin board, a lesbian employee complained, and they were told that they couldn't put that flier up on the bulletin board anymore. What I found interesting were the described contents of the flier, from the court's ruling:
GNEA's stated purposes are "[t]o celebrate our Faith and Liberties by preserving the integrity of the Natural Family, Marriage and Family values"; "[t]o provide a forum for people of faith to express their views on contemporary issues of the day"; and "[t]o oppose all views that seek to redefine the Natural Family and Marriage." In its "Statement of Faith," GNEA explains that "we believe the Natural Family is defined as a man and a women their children by birth or adoption, or the surviving remnant thereof (including single parents)"; that "[w]e believe Marriage is defined by a union between a man and a woman according to California state law"; and that "[w]e believe in Family Values that promote abstinence, marriage, fidelity in marriage and devotion to our children. "

I find the inclusion of adoption in the definition contrary to everything one would expect of the word "natural", and I really have to wonder about the fact that it says nothing about stepfamilies or in-laws--apparently my brothers aren't really my brothers despite the fact that we've grown up together since I was two. These attempts to narrowly define the notion of "family" to exclude gays will omit a lot more families than just those headed by same-sex couples.
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Sunday, February 18, 2007

Sunday Dead Racist Blogging: It's Not Friday Edition

I've mentioned before some of the double-standard in attitudes towards miscegenation. White men could sleep with black women, but white women sleeping with black men was considered unthinkable.

And it turns out that New Mexico actually coded this into law:
The last intermarriage prohibition passed before the decision was delivered in the Dred Scott case, was promulgated by the Territory of New Mexico on January 29, 1857, as follows:

SEC. 3. If any negro or mulatto, being free or a slave, shall marry or cohabit with any woman of the white race of this Territory, said negro or mulatto shall be liable to be presented by indictment, and on conviction shall be sentenced to hard labor in the penitentiary, for a term not less than two years, nor more than three years. Provided, That the provisions of this section shall not effect the free negroes or mulattos who may have married before the passage of this act.

SEC. 4. If any woman of the whit race, shall marry or cohabit with any free negro or mulatto, she shall be liable and punished on conviction, in the same manner as is provided in the foregoing section and any minister of the Gospel or other person who shall solemnize the prohibited matrimonies in this and the foregoing section, shall be punished with a fine not less than one hundred dollars, nor more than two hundred dollars; recoverable before any Court having jurisdiction of the same.


New Mexico's initial venture into anti-miscegenation legislation was a clear example of the frequently heard about but infrequently enacted double standard. The prohibitions and punishments under this double standard applied only to white women and nonwhite men combinations. There was no illegality in or sanction against white men marrying or cohabiting with non-white women. The New Mexico law was patently unfair and the chief sample of sexism-racism duality during the
1831-1857 period.

--Byron Curti Martyn, Racism in the United States: A History of the Anti-Miscegenation Legislation and Litigation, pp. 458-59.
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Friday, February 16, 2007

Friday Dead Racist Blogging: Leporine Edition

For deborajoy, this post has bunnies in it.

For the rest of you, these bunnies are brainwashing our children as part of their seditious plot to undermine the laws of God and Nature.


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Wednesday, February 14, 2007

Al's In

Al Franken is running for the Senate.

He has a video on the website, a preliminary campaign speech of his. Here's an excerpt I liked:
Conservatives like to say that people need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps – and that's a great idea. But first, you've got to have the boots. And the government gave my wife's family the boots.

That's what progressives like me believe the government is there for. To provide security for middle-class families like the one I grew up in, and opportunity for working poor families like the one Franni grew up in.

By the way, I stole that boots line from Tim Walz, our great new congressman from Southern Minnesota. Tim's father died when he was a kid, and he and his brother and his mom made it because of Social Security.

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Let's paint the town red tonight

Today, as you all know, is a very special day.

On this day Ayatollah Khomeini declared:
The author of the 'Satanic Verses' book, which is against Islam, the Prophet and the Koran, and all those involved in its publication who were aware of its content, are sentenced to death. If someone knows them but is unable to kill them, he should hand them over to the people for punishment.

And today, eight years later, conservative columnist Frank Gaffney is continuing the tradition!
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Tuesday, February 13, 2007

Well whaddya know....

Purdue just canceled classes because of snow.

This is my first snow day in years. I didn't even know colleges were allowed to do that.

[Edit] They closed the libraries! The bastards! Couldn't they have just shut down the dining halls instead?
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Sunday, February 11, 2007

The pear doesn't fall far from the tree?

The Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research laboratory, or PEAR, is shutting down:
"For 28 years, we've done what we wanted to do, and there's no reason to stay and generate more of the same data," said the laboratory's founder, Robert G. Jahn, 76, former dean of Princeton's engineering school and an emeritus professor. "If people don't believe us after all the results we’ve produced, then they never will."

Ya think?
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Friday, February 9, 2007

Friday Dead Racist Blogging: Education Edition

God wanted the white people to live alone. And He wanted colored people to live alone....We do not believe that God wants us to live together....Do you know that some people want Negroes to live with white people? These people want us to be unhappy. They say we must go to school together. They say we must swim together and use the bathroom together. God has made us different. And God knows best. Did you know that our country will grow weak if we mix?

According to Phyl Newbeck's Virginia Hasn't Always Been for Lovers, this was found in a 1950's Mississippi textbook for third- and fourth-graders.

Even though this isn't really as bad as some other things I've read, it disturbed me like nothing else has.
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Wednesday, February 7, 2007

Marriage is about their children, not mine

A lot of the people against gay marriage complain that marriage is about raising and/or having children, and the only way to do that is with a man and a woman. They of course conveniently omit the fact that many opposite-sex couples are allowed to marry without having children.

Well, some people have decided to fix that:
Proponents of same-sex marriage have introduced an initiative that would put a whole new twist on traditional unions between men and women: It would require heterosexual couples to have kids within three years or else have their marriages annulled.

Initiative 957 was filed by the Washington Defense of Marriage Alliance, which was formed last summer after the state Supreme Court upheld Washington's ban on same-sex marriage. In that 5-4 ruling, the court found that state lawmakers were justified in passing the 1998 Defense of Marriage Act, which restricts marriage to unions between a man and woman.

Under I-957, marriage would be limited to men and women who are able to have children. Couples would be required to prove they can have children to get a marriage license, and if they did not have children within three years, their marriages would be subject to annulment.

All other marriages would be defined as "unrecognized" and people in them would be ineligible to receive any marriage benefits.

...

Gregory Gadow, who filed I-957 last month, said the three-year timeframe was arbitrary.

"We did toy with the idea of (requiring) procreation before marriage," he said. "We didn't want to piss off the fundamentalists too much."

And what do the homophobes who bitch and moan about children have to say about this? Well, predictably, they immediately back away from their previous statements:
Cheryl Haskins, executive director of Allies for Marriage & Children, agreed with Gadow's group on at least one point about the initiative: "It's absurd," she said.

Haskins said opponents of same-sex marriage "have never said that the sole purpose of marriage is procreation."

Really. Let's see what the Allies for Marriage and Children have to say on their website, shall we?
We believe that authentic marriage*, a complementary union of one man and one woman, serves a basic societal purpose that by nature involves the potential for procreation and encourages the parenting of children by their mother and father.

...

The natural structure of authentic marriage meets an array of needs for the husband and wife, the requirements for procreation, and the complementary balance to the rearing of children by their married mother and father.

And on their talking points page:
Marriage is rooted in the natural order of procreation, the state has a compelling interest in supporting and encouraging the ideal family unit for the nurturing and development of children.

Sure, marriage isn't about procreation--when it'll affect heterosexuals.

You hypocritical bitch.
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Tuesday, February 6, 2007

Of course! It's so obvious!

Someone has finally explained to me why homosexuality is unacceptable! Because of finger-painting:
Anderson's exhibit contains blue and pink paint. The blue and pink colors stand for a man and a woman. When they are put together in a bowl, they become purple, meaning that the man and woman are a cohesive whole once married.

However, when two paints of the same color are mixed, nothing occurs, says the Sentinel. They must therefore mix together outside of the bowl and that makes, as the display puts it, "a big mess."

I'll file this with other homophobic analogies that show the level at which these people operate.
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D'oh!

I'm taking a class entitled Comparative Mythology, wherein we study the various myths of Mesopotamian, Meso-American, Celtic and Chinese cultures. Our first module was studying Mesopotamian cultures: Babylonian, Canaanite, Hittite, Hebrew, etc. We have a test tomorrow, so the professor posted a list of terms and names we should know, and we had review sessions last night so people could ask the TA's questions.

As a classmate remarked to me afterwards, "The award for 'dumbest question of the evening' has to go to that girl who asked 'Who's Yahweh?'"
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Monday, February 5, 2007

Sneaky

Huh. I just noticed that part of Heller's speech in Transmetropolitan is quoted--verbatim--from Hitler's Mein Kampf. Or as "verbatim" as it gets when translated from German to English... my translation has a slightly different wording, but it's clear that Ellis appropriated the words.
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Light unto nations

Who's more progressive than the US this week? Nepal!
Nepal has granted a person citizenship as both a man and a woman, a gay rights group said.

Chanda Rani, 40, received a notice of citizenship a week ago not as man or woman but as "both," Sunil Panta, president of Blue Diamond Society, Nepal's only gay rights group, told AFP Sunday.

"This is a landmark victory in our struggle," said Panta. "There are nearly 10,000 trans-genders, gays, lesbians and bisexual people across the country who have been struggling to acquire citizenship on the basis of their true gender identities."

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Now if only we could do something about that name....

Geez.... Scientists have created a map of dark matter distribution in the universe:
Dark matter, the ubiquitous yet ethereal stuff filling the cosmos, has been mapped three-dimensionally for the first time by a team of astronomers using a fleet of orbiting and ground-based telescopes. Implementing techniques not even dreamed of when dark matter was first postulated, they have created a map two degrees on a side (roughly 15 times the area of the full Moon) and 6 billion light years deep. The Cosmic Evolution Survey, or COSMOS, reveals the spatial distribution of dark matter stretching back to a time when the Universe was half its present age.

...

The COSMOS team made their map of dark matter by exploiting a peculiar characteristic of gravity: its ability to warp space. Einstein postulated that gravity bends space like a bowling ball placed in the middle of a bed distorts the mattress. Light moving through empty space travels in a straight line, but if it passes by a mass, the gravity will bend the light's path. How much the path bends depends on how much mass there is and how it's distributed.

That is how scientists can detect dark matter. Mass (both visible and invisible) twists, bends, and warps the light from distant galaxies on its way from there to here. The visible mass can be measured in several ways, and by subtracting the visible component from the total mass, researchers are able to find the location and quantity of dark matter.

...

The result is nothing less than profound: a three-dimensional map millions of light years across and billions deep, showing the location of trillions of solar masses of invisible ethereal stuff that only decades ago was a complete mystery.

Even glancing at the map reveals insights into the Universe. The left hand side represents matter that is close to us, and the right side is farther away. We see more distant matter as it was farther in the past, so in a sense we have a time machine that lets us understand the Universe as it was 6 billion years ago. In the past, dark matter formed huge structures spanning hundreds of millions of light years across. But in more recent history, these enormous blobs have broken into smaller, scattered clumps. This shows that over time, the gravity of the big structures made them collapse into an array of smaller ones—just as modern theories of cosmology have predicted.

COSMOS verifies theory's next prediction, too: Once dark matter condensed into smaller blobs, its gravity would increase, drawing in more dark matter and normal matter. Eventually, the normal matter would gather near clumps of dark matter, so wherever we see large amounts of dark matter today, we should also see normal matter. The survey confirms this; the visible matter detected lies roughly along the same positions as the dark matter.

Of course, as the article points out, this only covers around 1/10,000th of the sky, and it still doesn't tell us what dark matter is.

But still... wow.
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Sunday, February 4, 2007

Fun with language

dox-y1
-noun
1. opinion; doctrine.
2. religious views.

dox-y2
-noun
1. an immoral woman; prostitute.
2. Archaic. a mistress.
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Saturday, February 3, 2007

Cognitive dissonance in action!

A commenter at Ex-Gay Watch left a link to this short YouTube video:


Andrew Sullivan, an openly gay, conservative, Catholic columnist, was at a panel at the Cato Institute discussing his book, The Conservative Soul: How We Lost It, How to Get It Back. The video has an elderly Catholic woman asking him how he can be for same-sex marriage. A partial transcript:
Q: I... if you really studied the Bible, um, it does not say that same-sex marriage is there. At least, I've never found it.
A: Sure doesn't.
Q: It does not.
A: No, and it says I should be executed.
Q: *pause* Well no, I don't go for that.
A: Well why not?
Q: Well, you're a very charming gentleman. No, both of you are.
A: That makes me particularly dangerous, you see. That requires that I be executed more quickly than anybody else. I don't understand people who quote the Bible and then immediately drop it as soon as it is raised back at them.

Quite right, Mr. Sullivan.
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Friday, February 2, 2007

Friday Dead Racist Blogging: Anti-Semitism Edition

Have you ever wondered who's responsible for miscegenation? The answer should be clear: the gays Illuminati Masons Jews. At least according to Edward Fields, who unfortunately is very much a live racist. He published a pamphlet in the late '60s or so entitled Jews Behind Race-Mixing in America, combining the two great flavors of racism and anti-semitism. This is something of a theme with Christian Identity--hatred of blacks, Jews, and Catholics. I'm really not sure why that is; it could be because the two religious groups, themselves minorities in this country, often were supporters of civil rights for blacks, and fought against anti-miscegenation laws even when the NAACP wouldn't. Of course, I could just be ascribing more significance to their racism than it warrants. They may have completely separate reasons for prejudice against the other two groups.

Anyways. Your racist ramblings of the week, with a dash of conspiracy theory thrown in:
All the small Jewish clubs and social groups are united under the American Jewish Committee. All Jew businessmen belong to a secret society called "B'nai Brith" and they have their own secret spy agency called the "Anti-Defamation League." These are the groups that harass Right-Wing Patriots and seek to control elected politicians and the daily press. But, their most important mission of all, is to integrate the White Christian people to produce an indolent, Mulatto race for the future.

He includes a selection of quotes from Jewish leaders that... well, I guess they're supposed to make people fear their nefarious, underhanded schemes. But any rational person would simply nod in agreement. Here's an example of one of the quotes he cites:
Theodore Bikel, Jewish folk singer and star in the play, "Fiddler on the Roof" in a speech of July, 1969, in a Jewish temple in Honolulu said:
"A strong commitment to civil rights is implicit in Judaism. We must speak out against discrimination."

Yeah, that Theo. He's all for forced marriages and creating a "mongrel race".

He also rants about Jews supporting "militant negro causes" like Dr. King's "now infamous Selma, Alabama march." He spends most of that section outraged that people would raise money to defend 21 alleged Black Panthers who were accused of plotting bombings in New York City (by the way, they were all acquitted), and horrified that Jewish lawyers would defend--*gasp*--black clients. Surely there's a conspiracy there! Alas, the New York Times just couldn't keep quiet about it:
"The New York Times" of Sept. 19, 1966, really let the cat out of the bag when it admitted: "The Jewish community has long been the financial backbone of the civil rights movement . . . No special commission on race is needed to arouse Jewish support for civil rights activity in the South . . . Jewish support for civil rights is still high.

The fiends!
I also love how the New York Times has to be put in scare-quotes.

But, surprise of all surprises, he can actually scrounge up a quote of a rabbi advocating interracial marriage to support his case. Just one, mind you, and he pointedly notes that this man "has won the nickname, 'The Red Rabbi' for his visits to North Vietnam and efforts on behalf of communist causes." I suppose so he can throw Communists into the mix later, in the section "COMMUNIST PARTY FOUGHT FOR RACE MIXING". And then he quotes several rabbis warning against Jews marrying gentiles, with a triumphant "Ah-ha! Hypocrites!"

But why go to all this trouble, you may ask?
WHY THE JEWS SEEK THE MONGRELIZATION OF THE WHITE CHRISTIAN PEOPLE
The most cleverly contrived scheme in the history of race relations is now being employed by the Jews to break down the resistance of the White race. It is an elaborate plan to make White people ashamed of the color of our skin. It is deliberately designed to give us an inferiority complex whereby we will feel compelled to bring about our own racial destruction to rectify the superior position we naturally hold over the Black race.

...

This is the most diabolical plan ever conceived, to instill "self-hate" within White people so that we will embrace the Black race in order to "up-lift" them to our level (an impossibility).

Uh... okay. You still haven't answered the "why" yet.

He also is outraged--outraged!--that anyone would declare that white oppression of blacks drive them to riot. Why, they never had it so good!
Of course the truth of the story is that the American negro has a far higher standard of living than negroes have in ANY of their own countries in Africa. We do not owe the Blackman anything. In fact the negro has shown us the height of ingratitude to the fact that we lifted them out of jungle savagery, gave them sanitary homes for the first time, jobs, welfare, free medical care, poverty aid and free food.

Well, those of them that survived, of course.

And in the last page, he finally gives a reason why Jews go to all this trouble!
The Jews visualize themselves in a never ending cold war with the White Christian people. They know that we are an independent and freedom loving people. The Jew knows that our individualism springs from the restless creative spirit of our race. They know that eventually our White race will revolt against Jewish economic, cultural and racial domination of our people. [Just not today, apparently. -Skemono]

They have but one hope, to put the White race to sleep through assimilation with the lazy, mindless, leaderless, shiftless and slave-like Negro race. As Mulattoes our future descendants would make obedient workers under Jewish masters. The Jews are organized to prevent assimilation of their racial blood with either us White Christians or the Blacks. They stand to be the only race in the future which will be mentally alert if mongrelization conquers our unborn descendants to come.

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That wouldn't have been my first bet

This just in....
Gov. Rick Perry has signed an executive order making Texas the first state to require schoolgirls to be vaccinated against the sexually transmitted virus that causes cervical cancer.

Seriously? Texas?
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