Just Sayin'

Comparative Candidates

2010-10-20T11:34:00.005-04:00

So it's official - Christine O'Donnell is ~~not~~ a witch, according to her deservedly globally-panned campaign ad:

Well that just sucks! We need more witches in Washington, DC - after all, the Wizards have been there for a while now and their performance has been somewhere down around "in the crapper" and "don't give up your day job").

And so, I vote we elect the following candidate for Senate.

Of course, back in the dark depths of history someone else is famous for saying "I am not a ..." ... Nixon was his name. So maybe Saturday Night Live tells us what was really on O'Donnell's mind while she made her ad:

Now I'm not saying Christine O'Donnell is really a witch - not because I don't believe that she is or isn't, but I think it's the safest course of action when dealing with someone whose grasp of the Constitution and the First Amendment is quite as loose as hers:

Just sayin'

Gah!

2010-10-18T16:04:00.000-04:00

Just a quick post to note I've not been very active for a few days (and for a few more) thanks to work demands. You'd think someone who works on the 'net could find time to wander it, wouldn't ya?

But no, someone actually wants value for the ridiculous amounts of money they pay me for once, and so I'm busy for a while.

The irony of the entire situation being that my being busy is related to creating a place for people to post all sorts of comments. Still waiting on CNN to offer me a job doing same :)

Just sayin'

Carl Paladino should be a supporter of gay marriage

2010-10-11T19:22:00.004-04:00

Carl Paladino is another one of those strange right-wingnut extremists that have been cropping up giving us conservatives a bad name.

This time, the battleground is New York's gubernatorial race, pitting Paladino against Andrew Cuomo.

Now, I'm not saying that Paladino has been watching too many episodes of the Sopranos - for one thing, the guy looks more like Spike Milligan than Tony Soprano - but really, this guy sounds even nuttier than Sharron Angle merged with Rand Paul.

He's even threatened a reporter from the New York ~~Times~~ Post. In public. On video.

Think I'm making this shit up? Watch:

Then of course there's Paladino's opinions on forcing women to essentially be raped a second time by the system if he has any say in it - he would force victims of rape or incest to carry any resulting child to term (familiar refrain of all these Christian Taliban, isn't it?), casually tossing any concerns aside with the one word "adoption".

Which brings me to the topic of this little diatribe tonight, why Carl Paladino should be a supporter of gay marriage.

See, those who are against gay marriage have been known to indicate how this would just be the first step on a slippery slope, leading to incest, bigamy, men wanting to marry their pets ... and this last part is why I would have thought Paladino would support gay marriage.

You see, this morality crusader (who has a 10 year old child out of wedlock, to put it in the vernacular), has in the past forwarded pornography to colleagues and others - that would be beastiality pornography.

Women having sex with horses, to be precise.

Since Paladino seems to have that on his list of interests so interesting he wants to share them with the world, he should be all in favor of gay marriage if it brings about laws legalizing woman-horse relationships, since then he'd only be on the hook for distributing pornography - not extreme pornography.

Now, I'm not saying that Carl Paladino is a beastiality lover, but come on, this philandering real estate bazillionaire pornography distributor who feels no shame at threatening a reporter in full public view is running for Governor of New York State?

And you thought Sharron Angle and Christine O'Donnell and Pat Robertson were half a brain short of intelligence!

Boys and girls, Carl Paladino should not be allowed to continue campaigning for Governor of New York State until he unequivocally explains his intentions with regards towards gay marriage and forced impregnation of women, by strangers, family members, or horses!

Don't delay, vote neigh!

Just sayin'

CNN Blogs - Media Theater?

2010-09-23T15:28:00.000-04:00

After battling with CNN's Belief Blogs all day, trying to post well researched, cited and attributed source material in various conversations, I've pretty much given up on their site.

CNN's blogs, although they're reached via the cnn.com domain name, are really hosted on wordpress.com. When CNN configured those blogs, they obviously built up a list of "bad words" and plugged them into wordpress' basic comments moderation system.

Which is where the problem begins. Wordpress.com's badword filters use a simple regexp, which reads from the badwords list one word per line. The downside to this way of filtering, as anyone with a shred of internet history knowledge knows, is what's known as the "Scunthorpe Problem".

In essence, I wouldn't be able to post the word "Scunthorpe" on CNN's blogs as a comment, because within it, it contains a bad word.

Whoever configured those blogs for CNN should have known this would be an issue - wordpress.com's settings page, where they would have had to added the list of bad words, prominently warns of the filtering methodology. It seems CNN didn't think it was an issue and so pasted their bad words list in, one word per line, nonetheless.

Anyone with half a brain would have known that they could have easily and readily avoided the Scunthorpe Problem by the simple expedient of adding a space before and after each word on the list. There are even text editors that could have automated this for them.

I guess they didn't have the right half of a brain available when they configured the blog.

This means however that it can be near impossible at times for commenters to engage in meaningful informative debate and discussion within the blog comment system.

CNN's Belief Blog says in its sidebar:

The CNN Belief Blog covers the faith angles of the day's biggest stories, from breaking news to politics to entertainment, fostering a global conversation about the role of religion and belief in readers' lives.

I don't believe that it can come close to that performing that mission under its current configuration. Not only is the badly configured badword filter annoying, but to be able to post anything of substance demands trying to guess what words might be triggering moderation, and repetitively posting revised versions until you find a combination that works - which in and of itself is wasteful of wordpress.com's resources.

More importantly, this misconfigured comments system makes it extraordinarily difficult to be able to readily post quotations or citations that are accurate, which when dealing with matters relating to religious texts and tracts is a critical ability. Changing the words to get around a bad word filter, words that aren't in and of themselves bad, can lead to even more misinformation, rather than communication.

I do not believe that CNN is serious in its stated mission for its blogs. I believe that if they were, they would either have someone to handle approving false-positive comments, or would take the time to properly configure the filtered badwords. They have done neither, leaving the comments section essentially nothing more than soundbite website property.

CNN may look as if it's actively fostering debate, but in reality it is nothing more than appearance. Debate is stifled, throttled, and muted for the simple reason of bad configuration and apathy by CNN as to resolving it.

The dangerous part is that current topics being discussed on the site contain blatant misinformation, vitriol, false quotations, and outright falsehoods, and CNN's current configuration gives anyone who attempts to challenge or rebut those comments a serious handicap in doing so.

CNN prides itself on its reputation of trying to be neutral, but these blogs, as they currently stand, serve only the purposes of those who deal in generalities and innuendo, insinuations and rabblerousing, whilst denying any meaningful ability of scholarly challenge, by the simple virtue of making it impossible for any serious response to be posted without having to dance around a media giant's inability (or apathy) to resolve one simple technical issue with a website.

Whilst it is CNN's site to run as they like, if they're going to run it in this way then it's time they were honest about it in the blog's description in the sidebar. I would suggest they change it to read:

The CNN Belief Blog covers the faith angles of the day's biggest stories, from breaking news to politics to entertainment, fostering a global playground for soundbites and childish hurling of insults but no real serious debate or discussion about the role of religion and belief in readers' lives.

Just sayin'

I spoke too soon

2010-09-16T05:06:00.002-04:00

So in a previous post I remarked that people seem to be dumber than a bucket of wet hair (or words to that effect) these days.

Man, was I ever optimistic!

Christine O'Donnell. Ever heard of her? No? OK, a brief recap for those of you whose rocks you're living under don't get cable news channels.

Ms O'Donnell just won the Republican primary to run for the US Senate seat for Delaware.

OK, you ask, so what's the big deal?

Easy - Ms O'Donnell seems to make the aforementioned bucket of wet hair seem on the same level of IQ as Stephen Hawking.

That would be the guy with Lou Gherig's disease that has a greater IQ than most of the world combined.

Yes, that Stephen Hawking.

So what, I hear you ask, has Ms O'Donnell said that causes me to post about her? I'm glad you asked!

You see, Ms O'Donnell (who, I understand, is single), appeared on a TV show many years ago (on MTV no less) and declared ... well, let me show you:

It basically boils down to "The Bible says that lust in your heart is committing adultery. So you can't masturbate without lust"

Only - what if your spouse is masturbating for you? No, hang on guys, bear with me here! If your spouse is masturbating you, are they committing adultery against you with you? Is there a flowchart that goes with this logic that covers all the permutations?

(With the added bonus remark that "The reason that you don't tell them that masturbation is the answer to AIDS and all these other problems that come with sex outside of marriage is because again it is not addressing the issue. You're just gonna create somebody who is, I was gonna say, toying with his sexuality. Pardon the pun.", just for added impact).

Of course, one has to laugh at the irony of the single 41-year old Ms O'Donnell's parting shot from the clip: "If he already knows what pleases him and he can please himself, then why am I in the picture?"

OMG does she even have to ask??? You don't need to be Stephen Hawking to figure it out, lady!!!

So here's my question. Do you remember those advertisements Hilary Clinton ran?

It’s 3am and your children are safe and asleep.

But there’s a phone in the White House and it is ringing.

something is happening in the world

your vote will decide who answers that call.

whether it is someone who already knows the world’s leaders,

knows the military

someone tested and ready to lead in a dangerous world.

its 3am and your children are safe and asleep.

Who do you want answering that phone?

If you replied "an almost certainly sexually frustrated 41-year old woman who thinks masturbation is akin to adultery, thinks lying to the Nazis to protect Jews hiding in her house would have somehow been morally repugnant, and believes that God created the Universe and the Earth literally in 6 24-hour periods and thinks that it can be proven as fact using the scientific method", then we, the People, are seriously screwed.

What I don't understand is this: Why does the Tea Party insist on promoting people who would be more at home at the sort of tea party attended by Alice and the Cheshire Cat? Are they really that hard-up for anti-establishment candidates?

Or is this just some cosmic joke and come November 2nd there'll be a special edition of The Colbert Report where Stephen turns around and says "Take that NASA for not listening to the popular vote for the name of your new module for the International Space Station!"?

Just sayin'

I am ...

2010-09-10T23:52:00.000-04:00

... so fucking PISSED right now.

How did we get so far out of control that the population is not only dumber than a bucket of wet hair any more, but they're happy in their blithe ignorance?

Are people so fucking lazy any more they don't even want to think for themselves, and are content to have their minds sucked out by mass media?

We're losing control over what America is. Fear and ignorance and doubt have the country running around like headless chickens, willing to grasp at any straw for relief, willing to blame anyone set up before them without blinking.

There are times when I truly come close to crying at the state of America. We can't even be sure that what we think we know is what we actually know any more, or if we've been warped into a particular path by some clever psychological trickery on TV.

People are scared because the country is unstable. When people can't be sure they'll have a job tomorrow, can't be sure they'll have a house tomorrow, can't be sure they can afford to eat tomorrow, and yes, can't be sure they won't risk dying tomorrow, they have lost control. No-one handles that well. It becomes natural to lash out at someone, something, in order to try and regain some semblance of control, even if illusionary.

And that gets exploited by others for their own agenda.

Why do the majority seem unable to resist this? Are people really so desperate now that they will allow themselves to be led by the nose by anyone who sounds good on TV, or some bimbo running a website?

If the loss of control because the world is so unstable now is such a blow to people's self-esteems they have to lash out at the nearest convenient target, what will happen to their self-esteem if they realize that people are grabbing hold of that ring in their nose and pointing them at a target for someone else's agenda?

If people start waking up to how they've been manipulated, it's going to lead to an emotional meltdown that will make the economic meltdown look like a minor overdraft.

The alternative is scarier. If people start realizing how they've been manipulated and used, their shame might lead them into remaining in that state, in denial or making like ostriches. Then the cycle won't be broken.

How do we get people to think for themselves again?

Is it too late to stop the decline?

Just sayin'

Decisions, Decisions

2010-09-08T22:00:00.000-04:00

OK, so I have a choice for this Sunday - go watch Danny Trejo in Machete, or go watch Milla Jovovich in Resident Evil: Afterlife.

It's not an easy decision. I love both of the stars, both of whom (as far as I'm concerned) are woefully underestimated in their skills.

Resident Evil is a movie franchise I really like, although I never played the game. Milla just rocks as Alice, the altered ass-kickin' heroine, and even though the plot tends to be kind of one dimensional (see zombie, kill zombie, rinse, repeat) there's a certain charm to the whole thing that keeps me going "ooooh".

Machete started life as a fake trailer for Robert Rodriguez' Grindhouse movie, but come on - it's Danny Trejo. He has to be one of the most atavistic bastards on the planet! I was sooooo pissed when they killed his character off so fast in Predators. He deserves the title role, and Machete is a movie that he fits into perfectly.

So which one to watch is the question. Both will make for an enjoyable afternoon's movie watching (and our local theater has some massive screens to watch either of them in).

But here's one kicker that might affect the decision - Resident Evil: Afterlife is billed as 3D.

Now I know that, after everyone saw the major success of Avatar, studios have jumped onto the 3D bandwagon again, but let's face it, their retooling of films into 3D has been atrocious so far (again!). They seem to think adding in parallax effects, and slapping "3D" into the movie title somehow makes it a 3D movie, when it doesn't.

So I'm pretty sure Afterlife will be full of cheesy schlock homages to the bad 3D of a few decades ago, with things wavering in the picture to make you feel like it's aimed right at you - a far cry from the craftsmanship Cameron put into making the 3D of Avatar enhance the movie.

Decisions decisions. Will Afterlife doing something cheesy just to play on the 3D thing disrupt me from the movie itself? Is the anime/manga styled violence depicted in Machete the better choice?

I hate decisions.

Just sayin'

Why is it ...

2010-09-05T11:01:00.001-04:00

Has anyone else noticed how all the crazies who think that the world would be better off without humans, because of overpopulation or just because they don't like humans to begin with, never make the most obvious logical conclusion and quietly dispose of themselves?

I mean, think about it - if the world is overpopulated, if we produce too many carbon emissions per person, if we just suck, aren't they themselves part of the problem, according to their own logic?

Take the case of James Jay Lee, for example. Who is that, you ask? You might know of him better as the guy who tried to hijack the Discovery Channel headquarters just outside DC recently. Like all crazies, he had his own manifesto, snippet and more after the fold:

Humans are the most destructive, filthy, pollutive creatures around and are wrecking what's left of the planet with their false morals and breeding culture.

For every human born, ACRES of wildlife forests must be turned into farmland in order to feed that new addition over the course of 60 to 100 YEARS of that new human's lifespan! THIS IS AT THE EXPENSE OF THE FOREST CREATURES!!!! All human procreation and farming must cease!

It is the responsiblity of everyone to preserve the planet they live on by not breeding any more children who will continue their filthy practices. Children represent FUTURE catastrophic pollution whereas their parents are current pollution. NO MORE BABIES! Population growth is a real crisis. Even one child born in the US will use 30 to a thousand times more resources than a Third World child. It's like a couple are having 30 babies even though it's just one! If the US goes in this direction maybe other countries will too!

Now the guy's ethnicity was Chinese, a nation widely recognized as having a draconian and scarily eugenic birth control policy, but that's peanuts compared to this guy's solution - the deliberate and voluntary extinction of the human race.

Whilst most rational people can see just how frakking insane the guy's ideas are, the problem is there are too many who are equally as crazy.

Which is where the hypocrisy kicks in - They want everyone else to shoulder the blame for things - none of them sees that by their own logic they're part of the spurious problem they think exists.

They're like the eco-terrorism group ALF, which drives to their arson attacks on car dealerships, or the "animals have more rights than people" groups like SHAC or PETA who want animal testing to end, while perfectly happy to use the medicines produced as a result of such testing to date.

To paraphrase Heinlein, the problem with zealots isn't that they're willing to be killed for their cause, it's that they're willing for you to be killed for their cause.

So, why is it that in all cases of groups that think humans are the problem, they refuse to make the connection and see they themselves are part of this problem they've defined, and simply remove themselves?

Just sayin'

Jealous much?

2010-09-04T01:44:00.000-04:00

For some reason, people seem to think that when they have no leg to stand on to argue with someone on an intellectual level, and resort to name calling, that it's OK to try and dismiss someone just because of their disability.

Case in point, these remarks about Stephen Hawking's recent theory that God wasn't necessarily involved in the creation of the universe:

Annette

If Stephen is smart enough to figure out how the world was created, why can't he cure his own medical condition?

Mary

In the midst of incontrovertible evidence that man has—somewhere, sometime, somehow—grossly erred, this ingrate freak finally overthrows the role of a functioning brain, the one surviving human tool in this birth, and the only thing that has allowed same access to the public eye. Without the existence of God’s mercy, society could not have tolerated even the appearance of this mockery of humankind; and now the repulsive lump has rewarded ignorant evil for even that good.

coco

Looking at Stephen Hawking in the condition he is in, I think that he could either not believe in a God who would let him be in such a state. Or he could look at his being alive and having such a brilliant mind as being a gift from God. I believe in God and evolution. And I believe they go hand in hand. But that's just my belief. If Stephen Hawking doesn't want to believe in God, that's his business. Being a Christian, I'd like everyone to come to know God and love Him. But I don't cram that down people's throats. It would be nice if everyone would just respect each other's right to their own religion or lack thereof.

(Small sample)

And people wonder why we still need the Americans with Disabilities Act!

It's a sad state of affairs when people still think they can dismiss the disabled so outrageously, especially when they're disagreeing with one of the most intelligent people on the face of the planet.

Sure, so his premise is going to cause some disagreement, but if you can't debate him on the issues (and, lets be honest here, unless you're well versed in quantum physics, you ain't gonna have much of a chance of that) don't resort to trying to dismiss him because he's disabled.

If anything, it just makes you look even worse in your own mind, because it means by default that you yourself have been bested mentally by someone you think you should be superior to.

Just sayin'

Why do men have nipples?

2010-09-02T22:48:00.004-04:00

Hey, before you start on me, the topic is not my fault! - blame David Johnson, a comment contributor on CNN's Faith blogs.

In a discussion there entitled God didn't create universe, Stephen Hawking argues, David posted this:

You said, "Why, you ask, would God create man, in His very own image"

I've wondered about something for awhile Sarah. Why would god create man with Nipples? It would make sense if we evolved, but god must have known, men weren't going to nurse. So why do men have nipples?

Unfortunately CNN's badword filters would likely stomp on my instinctual reply, and so I post it here instead:

Guys are perfectly capable of nursing, which is cool! Turnabout is fair play. I bet guys would be a lot less interested in making babies if they knew 9 months later they might have to take turns feeding their offspring instead of rolling over and letting their wife do all the hard work.

Not to mention they'd look really neat in nursing bras.

The alternative might be you were just given an option if you're really narcissistic and have an uncontrolled boob fetish.

Didn't someone say God must have a sense of humor? :)

Just sayin' :)

How do you decide who to highlight?

2010-09-02T21:14:00.009-04:00

I was wandering through CNN's Belief Blogs tonight when a new topic came up, entitled simply "Chaplain Killed In Action". The article was a relatively lengthy one telling how U.S. Army chaplain Capt. Dale Goetz, as well as Staff Sgt. Jesse Infante, Staff Sgt. Kevin J. Kessler, Staff Sgt. Matthew J. West, and Pfc. Chad D. Clements, all five were stationed at Fort Carson in Colorado, died when their convoy was ambushed in the 'stan on August 30th.
My point? CNN's article on the Belief blogs was a length piece about Captain Goetz, who is the first Chaplain to have been killed in Iraq or Afghanistan, including quoting in full the Army's Chief of Chaplains' statement about Captain Goetz' death. The others who died with him got one line.

One. Line.

That annoys the hell out of me. Yes, so Captain Goetz was the first Chaplain to be killed, and yes it's CNN's Belief blogs, which orient around religion - but one line for the four other servicemen who died?

It worries me, that somehow this is an indication that the media thinks that the only time the death of our troops should be personalized is when it's somehow a "special" event.

It worries me even more that we, the American public, look at it the same way ...

I wonder how the families of the others who died with him feel, if they read a media report that highlights just one of the casualties, goes ahead and reprints a statement from some brass, but just glosses over their loved ones. Surely their service must have been worth the glowing words too from their brass?

Right now, with the Westboro Baptist Church gaining supporters such as the Dove World Outreach Center in their actions dishonoring our fallen heroes, we can't lose sight of the fact that every one of those heroes is someone "special", that each of them deserves equal treatment in the reporting of their sacrifices made on our behalf, for our safety, for us.

My condolences go out to the families of all of our fallen heroes, and I hope the media takes the hint and starts remembering that they're all worth the column inches.

Updated 2140 9/2/2010 CNN changed the title of the article to "For first time in Iraq or Afghanistan wars, U.S. military chaplain is killed"