Greetings, dear Rhuffman

That’s not a name, that’s a login id.

What’s the profit of higher education in Colledge?

College? Colander? Coleridge? WTF?

Is the diploma with higher qualification worth time and money spent for study? The difference in income is incredible…

Only one qualification? Difference between what and what??

Specialists with degree will always have higher salary and higher rating in labor market

Generalists, however, are screwed.

Difference in lifetime incomes of people with different education level was analyzed within the state program “Lifetime Earnings Soar with Education”

That was an about.com webpage, not a state program. Thanks for showing us your only source for this, though.

So do I need to read the rest of this now?

Sigh.

It was found out that specialists with degree or diploma have wages several times higher than employees without such a diploma.
Here are some simple and clear examples showing what income education brings
These are real numbers, which you can expect earning, if you contact us.

And, of course, if you pass this letter on to seven friends. If you don’t, then C’thulu will come to you in the night and eat your face.

HIGH SCHOOL DIPLOMA – High school graduates can expect, on average, to earn $1.2 million in lifetime income.
BANCHELORS DEGREE – Those with a bachelor’s degree, $2.1 million over a lifetime
MASTERS DEGREE – People with a master’s degree earn $2.5 million
DOCTORAL DEGREE – Persons with doctoral degrees earn an average of $3.4 million during their working life:
PROFESSIONAL DEGREE – Those with MD or JD professional degrees (medicine, law) do best with an average of $4.4 million dollars in lifetime earnings:

Okay, why is the colon at the end there? Never mind. From the source linked above:

The report titled “The Big Payoff: Educational Attainment and Synthetic Estimates of Work-Life Earnings” (.pdf) reveals that over an adult’s working life, high school graduates can expect, on average, to earn $1.2 million; those with a bachelor’s degree, $2.1 million; and people with a master’s degree, $2.5 million.

Persons with doctoral degrees earn an average of $3.4 million during their working life, while those with professional degrees do best at $4.4 million.

So what are your thoughts on plagiarism in higher education?

The fact is that you have a wealth of experience in your sphere but no diploma confirming this. Do you want to change your life and social status? We can help you! In a month we will send you a diploma confirming your higher professional level.
Invest your money in diploma today, pay once and get profit for many years after.

That was the bait, and now for the hook…

Buy your diploma by calling us on: USA: 1-6-035-092-001 and Outside USA: +1-312-260-7939 and expand the horizons of your future.

That is how it ended, which is sloppy. NEVER let the last thing your mark sees be something anomalous; you should always leave someone you’re trying to fleece with something that feels familiar and right, such as a sincerely yours, [respectable name] [respectable title].

So what’s odd here? Why would a number inside the U.S. be broken up that way? To hide it from search engine results. I guess they got lazy with the second one (not that moving dashes around is industrious, but).

Anyhow, now that I’m done looking at the fail of the scam, I just want to express my deepest, fondest wish that if anyone finds the people perpetuating this scheme (which will only add to the pain and misery of the student debt bubble, which has been made even worse by the fact that ALL student loans can not be voided by either bankruptcy or death, not just federal ones – so do not get any student loan but a federally subsidized one, PERIOD), please smash the bones of their limbs with hammers. If you have an extra hammer, give a call. I’ll come help.

Much appreciated!

South Korea has intensified a crackdown on the smuggling of capsules from China containing the powdered flesh of dead babies, taken by some as a cure for disease or a way to boost sexual performance, a customs official said Tuesday.

The gruesome practice came to light Sunday when Korea Customs said it had uncovered 35 attempts to import a total of 17,451 such capsules since last August.

The pills — filled with the dried and powdered flesh of foetuses or dead infants — were intercepted in the mail or in customs searches at airports.

The customs service said that apart from ethical questions the capsules were contaminated with “super bacteria” and other disease-causing organisms.

Most pills were sent from the northeastern Chinese cities of Yanji and Jilin as well as cities including Qingdao and Tianjin at the request of customers in South Korea, it said.

Some were hidden in packages of legitimate drugs to disguise their contents.

Officials now closely monitor flights from “certain Chinese regions” and inspect all the luggage of all passengers far more often than before, Kim Soo-Yeon, a Korea Customs official in charge of customs clearance told AFP.

Bringing in such pills breaches a regulation banning items that “violate social dignity and customs”, he said.

Not to mention laws against cannibalism, unlawful disposal of human remains, and smuggling human remains across international borders, to mention just a few possibilities. Also:

No seriously, WTF?

Between this not being the first time this claim has popped up (I’m not seeing anyone deny the existence of the pills; the only sticking point seems to be the country of origin), the whole super-bacteria thing, and the incredible WTF FACTOR OF DEAD BABY PILLS, I’d say that China is going into crisis management mode right now, and that several PR firms are already swinging into action trying to quash this.

Somehow I don’t think they’re going to have an easy time of it (assuming they don’t hear the request, laugh hysterically (not in a good way), and then hang up the phone outright).

Update: BAWWWWWWWWW! Seriously? SERIOUSLY?? She makes a fact-free assertion (while implying that it’s backed up with facts) that is as baseless as Gov. Bobby Jindal’s ridicule of volcano monitoring just before Icleand blew up, but without even the saving grace of schadenfreudy goodness. Seriously, I don’t know the state of Black Studies departments today, but I’m informed enough to know that arguing for their removal based on evidence that you explicitly refuse to read is intellectually incompetent at best. What the hell is wrong with these people that they are so bound and determined to reward idiocy?

Original post begins here

Despite what her pal James Taranto at the WSJ says, Mrs. Riley shot herself in the foot with her article titled “The Most Persuasive Case for Eliminating Black Studies? Just Read the Dissertations.” Now this provoked a backlash, but an unnecessarily complex one in this cranky critter’s humble opinion. My first question upon seeing Mrs. Riley’s post was “did she actually read the dissertations?” Fortunately, an answer to my question was forthcoming: no, she didn’t read the dissertations (5th paragraph). Sadly, Mr. Taranto leaves out the fact that Mrs. Riley’s title itself is dishonest, let alone the rest of her opinion piece.

Or this:

Or ESPECIALLY this:

via Anne Laurie at Balloon Juice.

And the best I could come up with was this:

And this:

(the idiot who was holding the camera in this clip has gone on a DMCA rampage on YouTube, so I don’t have this clip. If anyone has it, please let me know.

If you can’t see the clip above, the local news station is unlikely to pull it down, so you can see it there.

Anyhow, there just isn’t a way to have a fair comparison here, because there is no tenable position whatsoever in favor of Amendment One.

If you’re in North Carolina, go out and vote.

Update Foamy weighs in in his own… questionable and unique way:

Early in 1886, labor unions were beginning a movement for an eight-hour day. Union activists called a one-day general strike in Chicago on May 1 of that year. Two days later a shooting and one death occurred during a riot at the McCormick Reaper plant when police tangled with the strikers. That evening a small group of anarchists met to plan a rally the next day in response.

The rally began about 8:30 p.m. May 4 at Haymarket Square, a open market on Randolph Street between Halsted and Des Plaines streets, but moved a half block away to Des Plaines Street north of Randolph Street. Speakers addressed the crowd from a wagon used as a makeshift stage. Mayor Carter Harrison joined the crowd briefly and then left. After 10 p.m., as the rally drew to a close, 176 policemen led by Inspector John Bonfield moved to disperse the crowd. Suddenly a bomb exploded. In the confusion that followed shots were fired. Policeman Mathias J. Degan was killed by the bomb, six officers died later and sixty others were injured.

Thirty-one well-known anarchists and socialists were arrested and named in criminal indictments, and eight were held for trial. Despite the fact that the bomb thrower was never identified, and none of these eight could be connected with the crime, Judge Joseph E. Gary imposed the death sentence on seven of them and the eighth was given 15 years in prison. The court held that the “inflammatory speeches and publications” of these eight incited the actions of the mob. The Illinois and U.S. Supreme Courts upheld the verdict.

On November 11, 1887, four of the men—Albert Parsons, August Spies, Adolph Fischer and George Engel—were hanged. Louis Lingg committed suicide in prison awaiting the death sentence. The sentences of two others were commuted from death to imprisonment for life. On June 26, 1893, Governor John P. Altgeld pardoned the three who were in the penitentiary.

After Altgeld became governor in 1893, the petitions for pardon that had been presented to and refused by his predecessor, Richard Oglesby, were again introduced. After reviewing the case, Altgeld granted a full pardon. In his remarks, he stated that the jury was selected to convict and the judge so prejudiced against the defendants that a fair trial was impossible.

Worldwide appeals for clemency for the condemned Haymarket martyrs led to the establishment of May 1 as an International Workers’ Day. Although May Day has been commemorated as a labor holiday in many countries, it was never adopted in the United States.

A more comprehensive description of the events is up at Lawyers, Guns, and Money (post by Erik Loomis):

From ibiblio.org:

On May 4, 1919, a quietly determined column of Peking students assembled in Tiananmen Square and marched through the capital. Distributing incendiary pamphlet literature and carrying pointed slogans, the students behaved quietly, arousing little notice among the officials. When they reached the home of pro-Japanese minister Tsao Ju-lin, chaos ensued. In the confusion that followed, Tsao escaped, Japanese minister Chang was beaten, parts of the house were burnt – and all of the students were received as heroes. Bystanders cheered as the students apprehended by late-coming police marched toward imprisonment. The Chinese press was delighted with them; the British Herald made much of Tsao’s “biting the dust.” (p. 348, The North China Herald) The demonstration planned to honor China’s “National Humiliation Day” would be remembered as one of the most important events in twentieth century China. Over three thousand intellectuals mobilized and struck a blow against those they perceived as China’s enemies – the students were doing more than just talking about revolution.

This “May 4th Movement” was so pivotal as a symbol of reinventing China is so important, its echoes were felt all the way through the events on June 3-4, 1989 in the same square. Its effect continues to be felt to this day.

From NPR, an article from a year ago:

Fifty years ago this month, a group of 13 men and women, seven black and six white, left Washington, D.C., on two buses bound for New Orleans.

They never made it. Ten days later, on May 14, 1961, one of the vehicles was attacked by a white mob in Anniston, Ala., the bus set on fire and the riders beaten up. The local police and state troopers made no effort to stop the violence, and the governor of the state, referring to the integrated group of passengers, sarcastically remarked that “you can’t guarantee the safety of a fool.”

That same day, the other bus pulled into the terminal in Birmingham, Ala., where it was met by a mob of 1,000 people who proceeded to viciously beat the riders. But as Freedom Riders, a stunning two-hour documentary being broadcast by PBS on May 16 at 9 p.m. EST (and reviewed by Stanley Crouch for The Root last year) demonstrates, these nonviolent activists never gave up — and, in doing so, managed to effect real change.

From the Kent May 4th Center:

MONDAY, MAY 4, 1970

At 11 a.m., about 200 students gathered on the Commons. Earlier that morning, state and local officials had met in Kent. Some officials had assumed that Gov. Rhodes had declared Martial Law to be in effect–but he had not. In fact, martial law was not officially declared until May 5. Nevertheless, the National Guard resolved to disperse any assembly.

As noon approached, the size of the crowd increased to 1,500. Some were merely spectators, while others had gathered specifically to protest the invasion of Cambodia and the continued presence of the National Guard on the campus. Upon orders of Ohio’s Assistant Adjutant General Robert Canterbury, an army jeep was driven in front of the assembled students. The students were told by means of a bullhorn to disperse immediately. Students responded with jeers and chants.

When the students refused to disperse, Gen. Canterbury ordered the guardsmen to disperse them. Approximately 116 men, equipped with loaded M-1 rifles and tear gas, formed a skirmish line towards the students. Aware of bayonet injuries of the previous evening, students immediately ran away from the attacking National Guardsmen. Retreating up Blanket Hill, some students lobbed tear gas canisters back at the advancing troops, and one straggler was attacked with clubs.

The Guard, after clearing the Commons, marched over the crest of the hill, firing tear gas and scattering the students into a wider area. The Guard then continued marching down the hill and onto a practice football field. For approximately 10 minutes, the guard stayed in this position. During this time, tear gas canisters were thrown back and forth from the Guard’s position to a small group of students n the Prentice Hall parking lot, about 100 yards away. Some students responded to the guardsmen’s attack by throwing stones. Guardsmen also threw stones at the students. But because of the distance, most stones from both parties fell far short of their targets. The vast majority of students, however, were spectators on the veranda of Taylor Hall.

While on the practice field, several members of Troop G, which would within minutes fire the fatal volley, knelt and aimed their weapons at the students in the parking lot. Gen. Canterbury concluded that the crowd had been dispersed and ordered the Guard to march back to the commons area. Some members of Troop G then huddled briefly.

After reassembling on the field, the Guardsmen seemed to begin to retreat as they marched back up the hill, retracing their previous steps. Members of Troop G, while advancing up the hill, continued to glance back to the parking lot, where the most militant and vocal students were located. The students assumed the confrontation was over. Many students began to walk to their next classes.

As the guard reached the crest of the Blanket Hill, near the Pagoda of Taylor Hall, about a dozen members of Troop G simultaneously turned around 180 degrees, aimed and fired their weapons into the crowd in the Prentice Hall parking lot. The 1975 civil trials proved that there was a verbal command to fire.

A total of 67 shots were fired in 13 seconds. Four students: Allison Krause, Jeffrey Miller, Sandra Scheuer and William Schroeder were killed. Nine students were wounded: Joseph Lewis, John Cleary, Thomas Grace, Robbie Stamps, Donald Scott MacKenzie, Alan Canfora, Douglas Wrentmore, James Russell and Dean Kahler. Of the wounded, one was permanently paralyzed, and several were seriously maimed. All were full-time students.

Today is Star Wars day (say “may The Force be with you” with a lisp and you’ll know why – the actual release date was May 25th, 1977). I loved Star Wars (as a little kid I saw the second showing on release day), but I’m just can’t get motivated about “Star Wars day.” I’ll have a drink on the 25th though, and quietly remember staring at the one sheet in front of the theater wondering what those robotic-like guys in white armor were on the poster, while my parents were in line not far away. It’s important to remember these things, though not because they themselves are important. This world is complex and unfair and trying to ward off emotional numbness is difficult without the ability to occasionally feel a childlike joy now and again.

Other than that, I’ll just be keeping on as I usually do.

Not that this could be considered “serious” by any stretch of the imagination…

So someone posted a video about the reactions they get for being a My Little Pony fan to my Facebook wall (I deleted it, because I didn’t want it on my wall, and had already said to the user who posted it there that I’m not a fan). Here’s the video. Why am I posting it here? Because I’m about to rip it to shreds, and not at all on the grounds that the video makers might suspect.

If you don’t feel like watching the video, it’s basically saying “judge not fans of My Little Pony (or anyone else), lest ye be judged.”

Continued below the jump.

So what’s wrong with MLP (“My Little Pony” or bronies (adult/young-adult, usually male MLP fans)? Well firstly, all too many times bronies have tried to get me to answer the questions “what’s wrong with MLP?” or “what don’t you like about MLP?” They’ve never been satisfied with either the answer “I just don’t,” or “It’s just not my thing.” Perhaps they sense a deeper, more convoluted answer. I don’t know what the bronies who are asking me this stuff are thinking (because I’m not a telepath) and they’re almost certainly not all thinking the same thing anway. Maybe some of them think the answer I’m giving goes like this:

While I agree with the overall sentiment (that glossing over the dark parts of your life is extremely unwise) that idea has nothing to do with why I’m not a fan of MLP. To be perfectly honest, I’m not certain I can express it in terms that most people can understand (I hope I’m wrong, though). Why would this be difficult? Because my reasons have absolutely nothing to do with MLP or bronies, and everything to do with symbols, the transmission of abstract symbols into concrete signifiers and the industries which make it happen, and the identity politics that go into groups that form around such signifiers.

I suspect anyone who’s not interested in tinkering with the mechanics of symbols has left, so I’ll try and make this mercifully brief for those of you who stayed. added: I will fail to keep it short, but it will be amusing.

1. I’m not answering this for you, I’m answering this because it’s an excellent case study to tinker with, and this helps both to discard poorly-formed ideas, and clarify my thinking on the issues I’m taking apart here. Look at this clip:

Now in this scene, most of the crew is accepting things at face value. God is asking for a starship, and his prophet is all about “it shall be done!” Kirk is looking at the interrelationships not only between the “deity” and Sybok, he’s looking at it in the larger context and quite rightly going “WTF?” That’s how I like doing things, because it gives me a deeper understanding of the things I learn, and greater joy as I continue to learn still more things.

2. Take this popular scene from “The Matrix,” but really there is only one important part: from about 50 to 53 seconds – the rest is just for context.

What’s important here is not Neo, or the music, or the struggle – what’s important is the realization that underneath all this stuff that the people in the movie take for granted, there are processes going on that maintain and shape these things. Just like any other process, they are subject to rules and restrictions, and most importantly they are subject to being influenced.

Now instead of a fictional “reality” created for a sleeping human race, imagine that this “reality” Neo sees through is that of symbols, marketing, the exchange or transmission of ideas, and the emotions that they are associated with. The “code” he sees beneath that surface appearance are the many layers of metaphor and human interaction that make it possible for symbols to act as carriers of meaning from one human being to another.

This is how just about anyone involved with, either directly or indirectly, looks at symbols. It’s why film critics have a hard time writing reviews that the general public can understand, why literary figures who write book reviews about popular fiction are unanimously greeted with raspberries by the public at large, why professional musicians often have very different reasons for liking the bands they like than most people, and it’s why people who have been on 4chan for a very, very long time do not find the same meme amusing when it’s posted over and over and over again.

We’ve seen the surface stuff, and yes, it’s very nice, usually for about a second and a half. Maybe we can get ten seconds out of it if it’s something really new. Beyond that, the surface meanings and the concurrent emotional associations just are not that interesting, and they’re barely noticeable when you know there are support structures that underlie it.

3. Let’s take it to a more concrete level. How many of you have seen someone wearing one of these:

I worked at the agency that the Lance Armstrong foundation used to promote the Livestrong campaign. I learned a lot about spreading symbols there (even though I was a systems admin, not someone actually doing that work), and most of what I learned was about the amazing amount of effort that went into the incredibly difficult task that just began when you got people interested in finding out what your message was.

You had to get them interested in whatever it was in such a way that they’d be motivated to go get more information, start their search in the right place so that they found the information you wanted them to find, and be in a frame of reference so that they’d draw conclusions roughly analogous to what the larger set of information you were trying to convey actually was (because there’s always a larger set of information, either in priority, in size, or both).

Never mind the many ethical questions that go along with Public Relations, we’re just talking about what a tremendous bitch it is to get people not just to hear your message, but to accept it within the same context that you intended it to be seen in.

This takes a lot of skill and effort, and never, ever goes neatly (except if your message is completely and immediately dismissed or ignored by everyone, in which case you have an unhappy client, or an unhappy you if you are your client). If someone is going to a lot of effort to put out a message, I want to know what the message is so I can figure out how good a job they did at what they were trying to do.

If that message is a fictional story, then awesome, I love escapist narratives.
If it’s an allegory, then please keep it short – allegories tend to get preachy and boring after too long (kill me if I ever say that I want to read Atlas Shrugged ever again).
If it’s science fiction of the best sort, then FUCK YEAH, I’m there, because asking questions about our current society in a way that challenges or sets aside our current assumptions about the way things must be is awesome.
If it’s just to make me laugh for a bit, great. Laughing is good.

Whatever it is, just realize that I’m going to want to know what point you’re trying to get across.

4. Now take a look at this clip, which was my introduction to bronies:

Neat, huh? I’m now going to give you just a little hint in how you can completely ruin it for yourself, and see it in a completely different light, roughly the same degree of difference as walking off the baseball field, out of the stadium (leaving behind your glove and bat), and sitting down for a nice game of go (or chess, if you prefer).

Watch it again, but before you do, I want you to try to watch it the way I did when I first saw it. Think of the following:

• Remember that the current MLP show is a retooling of an even cheesier children’s show in the 80s.
• It was one of the first cartoons explicitly created to sell a line of toys.
• The series’ continued existence is dependent on its ability to continue to sell both those toys and other advertisements (apart from the show itself, which as you will remember IS an advertisement).
• The music and lyrics are an interesting variation on the traditional rap theme of solidarity with your group.
• That the original media is a set of still images appearing at (roughly) 29.97 frames per second.
• That the frames that appear were chosen so that either 1. the spoken lyrics matched the mouth movements of one of the on-screen ponies, or 2. that the action in the frame followed the intensity and/or rhythm of the music at that time.
• Transitions applied between different scenes are applied in order to follow shifts in the melody, the rapper, or the tone of the lyrics.

I could go on, but I’m perilously close to beating a dead horse with the skeleton of the PREVIOUS dead horse.

To cut to the chase: when you get beyond the flashy MLP videos and threads in various places, and into the whole “Friendship Is Magic!™*” of the whole MLP craze, what exactly is the information that the symbols are trying to get across? What is MLP’s unique selling point? What are the feelings and ideas behind the symbolism? As I’ve screamed during several Thunderf00t videos, “WHAT IS YOUR FUCKING POINT?”

When bronies ask me whether I like MLP, the question I hear in my mind is this: “What do you think of the group that unites around MANY, MANY MANY repetitions and variations of the following message: ‘YAY US! WE’RE ALL FRIENDS AND WE CAN DO STUFF BECAUSE WE’RE A GROUP OF FRIENDS! WE DON’T JUDGE, AND WE WANT YOU TO BE FRIENDS AND NOT JUDGE TOO! DID I MENTION THAT WE’RE FRIENDS AND A GROUP THAT DOESN’T JUDGE AND WE DO STUFF? IT’S GREAT TO BE FRIENDS WITH US BECAUSE WE’RE A GROUP OF FRIENDS AND TOTALLY NOT JUDGING! WHY WON’T YOU BE FRIENDS AND TOTALLY NOT JUDGE WITH US? WE’LL KEEP ASKING UNTIL YOU STOP JUDGING, M’KAY? COME BE FRIENDS IN OUR GROUP AND WE’LL DO STUFF LIKE NOT JUDGE AND SHARE THE MAGIC! DID I MENTION THAT IT’S TOTALLY IRRELEVANT TO MY SEXUALITY TO BUY PONIES AND WATCH PONIES ON TV, BECAUSE IT IS!!** WHAT’S THE MAGIC? FRIENDSHIP! ALSO, NOT JUDGING THE GROUP THAT’S NOT OUR GROUP OF FRIENDS!***’”

Wait, so you’re going through all this effort and evangelizing, and that’s pretty much your entire message, verbatim? Seriously? Do I really need to spell out for you why I literally could not care less about bronies in general and “My Little Pony” specifically? I hope not, but I’ll make it just a little clearer for those of y’all in the cheap seats.

If you think (as others have, when I’ve presented a shorter form of this explanation) that I just don’t have any imagination, then I not only laugh at you, I am happy to now be below your radar.

If you think you just need to rephrase the meaning and message behind being a brony, then you will get the curt “fuck off” that you deserve. Not all people think like you, and not all people should think like you. I don’t get happy feel-goods from MLP, and do not care whether you do or not any more than I care about what attractive packaging your assembly-line cheeseburger came in. I’m me, I went through a lot of effort to get this way (and survive the consequences of my occasional stupidity), and I’m quite happy being me. If you’re trying to get me to react to something in a way that I don’t, then you’re trying to get me to not be me, and that’s just creepy, so enough said about that.

To the rest of you: thank you for making it through this, and I hope it was interesting. It was actually a great deal of fun to write, because symbolic human interaction is fucking awesome!

* Yes, that specific phrase is a trademark, as are the names of each and every one of the ponies, and Hasbro will protect them (at least to the extent of shutting down attempts to air the original episodes in full without their permission). As for the rest of the linked article: bronies, like any other group of fans, can be very, very strange.
** Purchasing MLP toys or watching MLP is indeed completely irrelevant to human sexuality (unless you’re applying rule 34 or otherwise directly making it a part of your sexuality). It is not irrelevant to Hasbro’s marketing strategy, however.
*** With the possible exception of being a little over-zealous at times in wondering why they don’t want to be bronies.

Are CEO Bonuses Wrecking the Wider Economy?

Here is the simple answer: “YES”

You’re welcome.

Aaaand several someones got a little cranky, but one person in particular had to share his feelings on his YouTube profile:

Soo, the person running the charity event decided to gently share his own feelings about the sharing!

And then there was a huge Internet Shit Storm. Just imagine a huge shitstorm here, it will be easier that way than me posting a list of videos.

Artist's Conception

In response to this, first DawahFilms is indignant.

THEN he gets pretentious and starts lecturing us, starting off with how we’re not doing the kind of activism on the kind of topics he thinks are important in places he can see us doing them.

I’ll address the rest of my comments to this douchebag.

First off, you’re sending this video to a community of people who make videos. Your contrived drag from the hookah before you speak makes you look even more pretentious than you usually do, because we all know that this is a mediated experience and you look like you’re trying (too hard) to put on an air of casual indifference towards us. If we weren’t a concern to you, you wouldn’t be on the OTHER SIDE OF THE DAMN PLANET making videos to us about something that has no effect on your life whatsoever.

In case you hadn’t noticed, free speech is under attack all over the place, not just if you have brown skin or you’re Muslim – and the threat to both freedom of speech and freedom of association is under far greater threat from the covert than the overt, and is (as it ever was) a global issue.

In case you hadn’t noticed (and aren’t just nutpicking), private censorship and abuse of power is on the rise, so what happens on a private website is indeed a concern – or are you buying into the capitalist arguments you hate so much?

In case you hadn’t noticed, you’re completely ignoring the coming isolation of Iran from the Internet. Oh wait, you’re probably thinking about other things.

In case you hadn’t noticed, thousands of your brothers and sisters (both in the faith and just plain human beings) are languishing in U.S. prisons and are being used as cheap labor (and it’s getting worse), and you say nothing. Oh wait, you’re probably focused on one of the billions of other things that are going on.

In case you hadn’t noticed, secular humanism has nothing to do with capitalism, especially since capitalism (approx. founding date 1776) predates secular humanism (approx founding date 1851). Oh wait, you’re too busy affirming your rightness and righteousness to be familiar with such details.

In case you hadn’t noticed, Israel’s chief military commander is stating outright that the case for war with Iran put forth by our political and economic oligarchy is baseless, and that Iranian leaders are just as rational as the leaders of any other country (though this last bit gives me some pause). Oh wait, you wouldn’t want to actually support parts of a machine you blindly hate but that have a perspective that aligns with yours on such an important issue as war. Or, you could be focused on other stuff.

And lastly, in case you hadn’t noticed, YouTube is not a platform for activism, it is a platform for entertainment first, communicating about what’s on YouTube second, and other things third. Using YouTube as a substitute for activism is pure narcissism. Kind of like trying to project a combination Islamic-scholar/Byronesque/faux-hipster/jaded-world-traveler/American-expat vibe.

Let me once again reproduce your bulletins here in full before I continue:

Now first of all, your overblown rhetoric sucks. In the beginning you use “you” to mean either devchelle, YouTube Atheists, or Atheists in general, and in the middle you use “your” to mean (presumably) United States/Western, and at the end you use “you” to go back to your first definition.

Second, you bitch about not being taken the way you mean to be taken when you’re not even consistent about who you’re talking about.

Third, your scare quotes around “spreading atheism” are silly. What you’re thinking of is “spreading democracy,” specifically “spreading democracy in the middle east.” Then again, you may not be thinking at all.

Fourth, you and InMendham need to sit down and have a chat, and maybe figure out how you arrived at this idea of an objective measure of suffering so that suffering can be quantified and compared across different places and times. It would be really neat if you could teach us this.

Fifth, your self-centered cluelessness is appalling. You are not the only fundamentalist who has attacked the AIDS charity event, and some of them have indeed attacked us for the specific purpose we’re holding it for. It’s not all about you, it’s about a general class of idiots (like yourself) who are raining contempt on us and connecting it to an event that is not contemptible.

As for what we’re individually doing for change? That’s an entirely different question, and you embarrass yourself by conflating it with the AIDS charity event. I wouldn’t tell you what I’m doing if my reputation depended on it any more than I’d tell Brett Keane, Thunderf00t, Stigmadeign, Gorilla199, or fringeelements because I have no use for self-important sophomoric asshats of any kind, and don’t see your kind as fit to be trusted with anything I consider to be of any importance whatsoever.

However: I do welcome your scorn, and your tears are delicious.

It looks like EU-member sovereign debt is giving the corrupt student loan/private university industry pairing a run for its money. If you’re going to take out student loans, try and stick solely to federally subsidized ones (assuming Congress gets its act together). If you have student loans out now, refinance them while you can – rates are very good.

Ugh.

via Naked Captialism

1. The classic non-apology apology!

I know this headline might be offensive (oh noooes), but I want to reassure you and begin this post by offering the following apology for choosing this headline.

An apology for the people offended by the headline

If this makes you feel bad it is probably because you’re a slut yourself and really don’t deserves to ever be loved. You are just a worthless piece of meat, so basically go fuck yourself (oh… you’re already doing that).

2. Silly stupid generalizations, e.g. “Men have an innate emotional revulsion from bonding with promiscuous women.” Pardon me, was laughing too hard to type and coffee was coming out my nose. Apparently this kid has never heard of men (or women) who won’t take “no” for an answer.

3. Confusing “data” with “quote-mining studies I like”

4. Completely ignoring the idea of confounding variables and how the limitations and scope of an investigative effort can completely change what you’re looking at. (Applies to all citations, as well as to #2 above)

5. Not considering that citing a paper from someone who is doing in depth research outside their primary focus of study (for instance, in this case citing research from someone who apparently specializes in research on military families, but the paper you cite is a work on premarital sex versus likelihood of divorce in all marriages) might not be such a hot idea, especially as since this is by far your strongest source. (applies to citation #2)

6. Citing a blog post about a popular press summary of a study done by someone affiliated with an organization connected to BYU, which has an agenda to advance on the subject of the study. (applies to citation #3)

7. Doubling down on the stupid and citing a Master’s thesis written by a graduate student in the Brigham Young University’s Marriage and Family Therapy Program as his final scholarly source. (applies to citation #4)

8. (added) OMG OMG OMG OMG I can’t believe it took me 45 minutes to think of this one! Apparently “sluts” is a female-only category (or at least that’s how he’s using it)!

Hoo boy, you’ve got a long way to go before you hit your stride as a wingnut. It’s a good start if what you want is to spend your life as a bitter, twisted soul who will forever be certain that it’s the world who is twisted and not you.