Dan I just saw a link from John Moltz that referenced this site. Like him, I had totally forgotten about owning this album! I had the orange version when I was around eight years old.
Check out the site for larger versions. It even has scans of the record cover insert which had all kinds of party planning ideas. I remember making all the invitations, though I can’t remember if I actually had the party or not.
Good times. Good times.
Here’s why it’s really hard to take the religious right seriously.
“I don’t believe in global warming,” said conservative activist Kim Simac, a horse trainer and mother of nine from Wisconsin who also believes that the teaching of creationism and prayer need to be brought back to public schools.
(via)
…and…
One delegate, Sue Phelps, drew comparisons between Barack Obama, Fidel Castro and Adolf Hitler – “they were good orators too” – and said the president’s nationality and religion were “unanswered questions”.
(via)
…and…
“Today in America, far too many young people enter adulthood unprepared for college, career, and life,” said Allan Golston, president of The Gates Foundation’s U.S. Program. [Drew] Dickens agrees and believes that “part of the problem is that we have removed prayer and the Ten Commandments from our schools and curriculum.”
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I could go on. When people are that vocal, yet that oblivious to facts, that ignorant of the Constitution, and that eager to force their religious beliefs on others, they’ve really got no room to complain when they are ignored or mocked.
The Cassini spacecraft took this (these?) picture of Saturn on August 12th. It’s actually 75 separate pictures stitched together. Phil Plait at Bad Astronomy has more info.
If you check out an uber-sized version, you can see four of Saturn’s moons, too. The image below links to the 1-meg JPG version. There are higher resolution images at the link above. They’re all awesome.
From John Moltz comes a link to an interesting perspective of the recent Washington, DC “Tea Party” protest march. He links to Matthew Yglesias’s website with the following quote.
As was the case with the bulk of the protesters, there was very little sense that anyone had any actual specific complaint with Obama’s health care proposals. That one woman loves the confederacy. This guy thinks guns are great and diversity is stupid. Many protesters feel that abortion is murder and/or that Barack Obama is in league with terrorists. But nobody had a sign urging the president to adopt more stringent cost control measures, or slamming the concept of regulations to require insurers to cover people with pre-existing medical conditions.
I don’t know if that’s valid criticism or not since protests (on pretty much any issue by any group) generally tend to be more about displaying slogans than offering solutions.
The signs I’ve been seeing in the photos I’ve viewed seem to express opinions on a pretty wide array of issues… including taxes, the deficit, ACORN, lies, socialism, Hitler, health care, and God. Some signs seemed to be well thought out by intelligent people. Some signs were obviously not. Some were absurd.
Again, I think that’s probably the case with almost any protest. You’ll find signs by sincere, intelligent, knowledgeable people alongside signs by folks who have good intentions, but are just running on pure emotion and don’t really know too much about the issues… alongside signs by people who are certifiable whack jobs. The signs will run the gamut from concern to anger to disgust to outrage to blind hate.
Most of the reports I’ve read about the protest this past weekend are saying that the crowd was exceptionally well-behaved. I haven’t read anything about any “incidents” occurring that would mar the gathering. That (in my book anyway) is a real plus for this protest.
Whether I agree with some or all of the protestors is another issue altogether, but I’m glad I live in a society where this kind of gathering is allowed to happen. There are some things about this country I think are wonderful and some things I think are pretty messed up, but freedom of speech and freedom of assembly are two of the great things.
I’m sure President Obama would agree with me.
Today, President Obama is going to give a “Back to School” address to students across America. The speech is intended to be about the importance of education and taking control of your own education… and the benefits that can result from that.
However, what should be a simple, straightforward address to students has been attacked and demonized by many who don’t want their children hearing the president speak… for various reasons. There have been claims that his speech is unprecedented (it isn’t) or that it will try to indoctrinate children into becoming little socialists (it won’t) or that it undermines parental authority (it doesn’t).
It was well known in advance that the speech was to focus on the importance of education, but the vociferous opponents of the president cried wolf yet again and spread their alarmist rhetoric, claiming that there was a conspiracy afoot and our children were in danger of being insta-brainwashed by a 15-minute speech.
As White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said, “I think we’ve reached a little bit of the silly season when the president of the United States can’t tell kids in school to study hard and stay in school.”
Here are some excerpts from the comments section of a Reuters article about the speech [sic].
“I would not want my children to grow up being inspired by Obama and furthering their interests by studying his ideals and adopting his mind set. Obama is no friend to America’s freedom nor is he a friend to our Constitution which he is sworn to defend with the BEST of his abilities.”
“I am not sure I would trust anything this president has to say to children.”
“He’s a very un-American President, maybe that’s why people don’t want him talking to their kids.”
“This is not about Obama telling our kids “work hard and stay in school”; this is about him being invasive and taking over, and promoting his socialist agenda.”
“we have taken god out of our schools lets take polictics out of it also”
Thankfully, most of the comments to the article were either in support of the speech or in support of clear thinking about the issue itself, something the opponents seem to be abundantly lacking.
I know a few people personally who oppose the speech and combining that with the tone and content of many of the comments I’ve read, there seem to be two common characteristics; very right-wing views and very religious views.
Perhaps the outrage comes from Obama’s public acknowledgement of religious views other than Christian ones. Perhaps the outrage is that, due to the incredible increase in the partisan divide that occurred over the past 8-12 years, many people can’t seem to see anything good coming from their political opponents. However, the dissent, hateful rhetoric, misinformation, and blind outrage seem to have reached a crescendo this year. Obama-haters see conspiracy around every corner. They rage about information received in bogus chain emails. They rant against anything, regardless of benefit, proposed by their enemies.
They fume and froth and sputter with righteous indignation over things like… like… the president giving a speech to students about the importance of education.
Here is a link to the text of the speech released by the White House. Here is a link to the Department of Education page about the speech. There’s nothing sinister here. There’s nothing controversial. Sorry… nothing that should be controversial. It’s just as announced… a speech about the importance of education and taking control of your own education. Study hard. Stay in school. Do your best. You can do it.
To oppose that is absurdity of the highest order.
This bit of bacon’y goodness was brought to my attention today and, as with most things bacon related, it impressed me enough to pass it along… and secretly file it away for future use… like Sunday morning breakfast.
It’s from a book called This is Why You’re Fat… which somehow seems appropriate.
(via Pharyngula)
A friend and I just returned from a trip to the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky. The museum is an attempt to show that the bible is scientifically accurate when you read the book of Genesis in a completely literal way. Though the museum is physically amazing (clean, well built, very high quality, etc), it pretty much fails from the science aspect.
So it was to my great amusement that I found this t-shirt available… though I heard it was discontinued and this was on clearance for $9.00…
I have a decent education. I went to a public school in Spring Grove, Pennsylvania, then proceeded to college at Penn State where I majored in (depending on which semester you target) chemical engineering, business, computer science, and English (with a writing emphasis). I grew up in York County in Pennsylvania where colorful colloquialisms and clichés are a dime a dozen. See what I did there? It was almost like a joke.
However, I didn’t attend a fancy-schmancy private school nor did I further my education at Harvard or some other outwardly ostentatious bastion of higher learning where everyone talks with a stiff jaw, raised nose, and a martini in hand.
I did, however, have a mother who was a teacher and was a stickler for proper grammar and polite speech. She was not born nor raised in York County, so the liberties that York Countians take with the English language tended to make her wince, and I think it became her mission (or one of them) to make sure her children did not suffer from such locale-induced linguistic affectations. She seems to have succeeded at least somewhat, since I’ve been told on a number of occasions (by York natives) that it is hard to believe I was born and raised in York County.
I appreciate my mother’s efforts in that regard. There is, however, a side effect.
Hearing some of the torturous grammatical creations spoken by some of my fellow York natives is like hearing fingernails down a blackboard (See! They even make me resort to using clichés!). I twitch. My head tilts involuntarily, as if in a desperate attempt to dump the offending phrases back out of my head. My breathing stops momentarily as all my brain functions are diverted to support linguistic defense mechanisms.
I have some grammatical pet peeves, certainly. Many people do. For instance, using incorrect contractions when referring to a plural predicate. “There’s cars in the parking lot.” That’s equivalent to saying, “There is cars in the parking lot.” It drives me nuts.
But that’s not what I’m talking about. What I’m talking about is the type of grammatical abomination that I heard today at the gas station from an elderly woman at the attendant’s glass cubicle asking about some gift cards for sale in the window. Most of them had “$25” printed on them in big, bold numbers. Some did not. She said (and this is an exact quote because, after my bodily functions resumed their normal course, I wrote it down)…
“What are them that don’t have no price on them?
…
I uh… ummm….
…
Sorry… I still twitch just reading it.
Sadly, that kind of language abuse isn’t an uncommon occurrence around here. That was a particularly colorful example, but is by no means unique. I’m not sure why. I did have grammar classes in high school. I’m sure of it… I think. I know I had writing classes in college and even diagrammed sentences (which, and you can call me a nerd for this, I actually enjoyed). I assume that the people who speak these brain-twitch-inducing sentences also had some grammar classes during their educational careers.
Or maybe they didn’t. A cousin of mine who teaches in the neighboring county told me that her school district had decided it wasn’t going to teach grammar anymore because “the kids already know how to talk.” It wasn’t her idea (she teaches Latin, anyway), but it must have been something the school board decided.
I think that’s sad. Every day, I hear our language being spoken by people who seem oblivious to basic grammatical rules. When it comes to longer sentences, all bets are off. It’s not just little things like ending a sentence with a preposition. It’s a complete disregard for the proper conjugation of irregular verbs or the correct usage of adverbs and adjectives or even basic subject/verb agreement… and it’s all combined at the same time.
My grammar isn’t perfect and I make mistakes (I’m eyeing up the last sentence in the last paragraph with all the ambiguous “it’s” usages, for instance), but I don’t think I’ve ever spoken a sentence like the one I heard today at the gas station… even when I was in a drunken stupor (not that I ever have been, mind you!). At times, I even catch myself speaking a sentence that’s leading inevitably toward a prepositional ending… and I stop… and I rephrase. I don’t always do it, but I try. I also cringe when I don’t.
Thanks, Mom.
Despite Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show on Comedy Central being an actual… well… comedy show, he tends to deliver more relevant and accurate commentary than many of the standard news analysts. He does it in the following clip about the healthcare town hall meetings and surrounding issues. I could comment more, but he pretty much covers it.
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Healther Skelter | ||||
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Barney Frank refuses to play the game that angry right-wingers try to play at some of the town hall meetings that have been going on about the health care issues.
There should be more of this type of response when people are either blatantly ignorant, obnoxiously unruly, or simply rude and inconsiderate… which are things that seem to be disturbingly common at these meetings. People are shouting out outrageous accusations or asking questions based on incorrect information and then shouting down any attempts to correct their ignorance.
It’s rather sad.
(via Moltz)