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Month: March 2004 Page 3 of 6

It’s the Christianity, Stupid

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On March 12, 2004

In Blog

rmjwell points to this wonderful article by Avadon Carol.

Consider the teachings of Jesus: He preached against public piety, against putting material wealth above the spiritual, against casting the first stone, against bigotry. He spoke up for the poor and told us to love our neighbors. He blessed the peacemakers and the merciful, and taught his followers to share. He preached love, hope, and charity. He was about forgiveness and redemption.

And so, as someone who, “was raised on the Good Book Jesus ’til I read between the lines,” it’s pretty much impossible for me to look at the modern GOP and the Christian right – and particularly at the Bush administration – and see any of Jesus’ teachings there. I don’t claim to know the mind of any god (which, after all, would be blasphemy), but it seems to me that Bush represents the kind of self-righteous, publicly pious, war-mongering rich men who Jesus warned us not to become.

Unlike Avedon, I wasn’t even raised in a religious tradition, and have always considered myself far more spiritual than religious. But even so, I read this and said “yes, this, this exactly, this is what I’ve been saying all along.”

Go read. it’s good stuff.

Shorter LOTR

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On March 12, 2004

In Blog

Some of you may already be familiar with mollyringwraith‘s hysterical condensations of the LOTR movies. Now, someone with a lot of time on their hands has done some photo magic to present her scripts in comic form.

So far they’ve only done The Two Towers, But it looks like they plan on setting up all three movies. Check it out, and I’ll make a note here if the following parts show up later.

Things that make you go…”WTF–?”

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On March 12, 2004

In Blog

Listening to NPR’s Morning Edition this morning, I heard a report on the President’s video address to the National Association of Evangelicals in Colorado, which predictably focused on efforts to make gay marriage illegal.

Now, there are certainly some legitimate arguments against gay marriage. By legitimate, I don’t mean that I agree with them (as I don’t), but in the sense that they are founded on an actual thought process that one can use to support a rational argument.

Then there are people like Pam Flannery, interviewed in the segment, who said

There will be problems in, you know, in the western world, because then we’ve broken down the family, we’re no longer producing children, and yet in other countries, where there’s an agenda to affect America, they are going to be producing children with a agenda to hurt the United States, and so there’s a concern, there’s a fear there.

To which I went….”Whaaaa—?”

What barren intellectual wasteland produces people like this? What sort of low grade paranoia allows people to think that if we allow same-sex couples to get married, that we as a society will stop producing children, allowing our enemies to outbreed us? I admit that as arguments go, it’s hard to refute, if only because the sheer ludicrousness of the approach tends to leave anyone with an above-room-temperature IQ speechless and unable to defend themselves.

Someone isn’t making a lot of sense here. And I don’t think it’s me.

Bush/Cheney slogans for ’04

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On March 11, 2004

In Blog

Circulating the Internet. Some of these might be fun to plug into this tool that khaosworks pointed to earlier.

Bush/Cheney ’04: Compassionate Colonialism
Bush/Cheney ’04: Because the truth just isn’t good enough.
Bush/Cheney ’04: Four More Wars!
Bush/Cheney ’04: In your heart, you know they’re technically correct.
Bush/Cheney ’04: Putting the “con” in conservatism
Bush/Cheney ’04: Thanks for not paying attention.
Bush/Cheney ’04: The last vote you’ll ever have to cast.
Bush/Cheney ’04: Asses of Evil
Bush/Cheney ’04: Don’t think. Vote Bush!
Bush/Cheney ’04: Apocalypse Now!
Bush/Cheney ’04: Deja-voodoo all over again!
Bush/Cheney ’04: Leave no billionaire behind
Bush/Cheney ’04: Lies and videotape but no sex!
Bush/Cheney ’04: Or else.
Bush/Cheney ’04: The economy’s stupid!
Bush/Cheney ’04: This time, elect us!
Bush/Cheney ’04: We’re Gooder!
Bush/Cheney ’04: WWJB: Who would Jesus Bomb?

Bush/Cheney: 1984 Now

George W. Bush: Leadership without a doubt
George W. Bush: The buck stops Over There
George W. Bush: A brainwave away from the presidency
George W. Bush: It takes a village idiot

Vote Bush in ’04: “I Has Incumbentory Advantitude”
Vote Bush in ’04: “Because every vote counts — for me!”
Vote Bush in ’04: “Because I’m the President, that’s why!”
Vote Bush in ’04: Because dictatorship is easier.
Vote Bush in ’04: It’s a no-brainer!

Ovaries replenlish eggs, study suggests

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On March 11, 2004

In Blog

Diane Duane (outofambit) points to article in the Boston Globe about a study which indicates that one of the things we thought we knew about the function of mammalian reproduction may be fundamentally wrong:

In a finding that could someday revolutionize fertility treatments, researchers yesterday reported evidence that appears to topple a decades-old tenet of reproductive biology: that girls are born with all the eggs they’ll ever have, a pool that dwindles and degenerates with age.

[…]

Clearly, they needed even better evidence. They gathered more. In particular, they took a mouse that had been genetically engineered so that every cell in its body glowed green under fluorescent light, cut its ovary in half, and grafted onto it pieces of a normal mouse’s ovary.

In three or four weeks, they found green-glowing eggs that had been surrounded by a layer of nongreen supporting cells to make what is called a follicle. That mixture, Tilly said, indicated that green egg stem cells had migrated into the nongreen pieces of ovary and started to produce new eggs that then attracted the supporting cells they needed to form follicles.

If the study can be reproduced and substantiated, this could be a truly revolutionary development in biology. Very nifty!

Pictures of an Exhibitionist

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On March 11, 2004

In Blog

Vectored from rjmwell among others:

Go to Google images and search on your first name; post the first interesting picture you find.

Read More

Character Cleaner

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On March 11, 2004

In Blog

If you’ve ever had a problem with transferring text from an application like Microsoft Word to an all-text medium, due to Word’s fetish with “smart quotes” and other silliness, check out The Character Cleaner, which will convert the special characters into straight-text suitable for using on webpages.

(Found via jimhenleyrss)

Interests meme

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On March 10, 2004

In Blog

Take the first letter of the username of the person from who you gather this meme, go to your interests list, and then post all your interests which begin with that letter.

Well, since I vectored this from fairestcat, that yields:

fairy tales, fan fiction, fandom, fantasy, filk, filk conventions, filk music, filkers, filkhaven, filking, firefly, flirting, folk, folk music, folk tales, folklore, food, free speech, and friends.

The Neuroscience of Morality

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On March 10, 2004

In Blog

aolscalzi links to a facinating article in Discover magazine about the fledgling studies of the neuroscience of moral reasoning.

Excerpt:
Many of the world’s great conflicts may be rooted in such neuronal differences, Greene says, which may explain why the conflicts seem so intractable. “We have people who are talking past each other, thinking the other people are either incredibly dumb or willfully blind to what’s right in front of them,” Greene says. “It’s not just that people disagree, it?s that they have a hard time imagining how anyone could disagree on this point that seems so obvious.” Some people wonder how anyone could possibly tolerate abortion. Others wonder how women could possibly go out in public without covering their faces. The answer may be that their brains simply don’t work the same: Genes, culture, and personal experience have wired their moral circuitry in different patterns.

Doctor Update

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On March 9, 2004

In Blog

Left work again at 2 to try once again to see a doctor about my ear. This time, things went fairly smoothly. Ended up seeing the same ENT’s office that I saw for my ear infections last summer, but I still had to fill out all the paperwork again.

Once I finally got seen, the nice doctor was able to flush out the obstruction and I can HEAR again! yay. Being half-deaf was very alarming, and not something I really want to go through again soon.

I also got to talk to the doctor about my ongoing sinus problems, and he’s agreed to see if we can make an impact on them. I have a prescription for a nasal steroid and an appointment to see him again in a month. Going back to square one with a new doctor gives me some hope that maybe this time we’ll make some progress.

We’ll see. Meanwhile, I feel much better now that my ears are empty and unblocked. Especially since the post brought me new CDs to listen to. I now have a replacement copy for the soundtrack from Spinal Tap, the soundtrack from Avenue Q, and Billy Bragg and Wilco’s Mermaid Avenue and Mermaid Avenue Volume II.

Those last two I’d been looking forward to for a long time. If you haven’t heard the story, basically, they took a bunch of unrecorded Woodie Guthrie lyrics that had been found among the late folksinger’s papers and effects, set them to music, and recorded them. Some really nice stuff on the first one, so far.

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