I nominate @PZMyers for a Shorty Award in #MasterOfHisDomain because he is!

It’s been a year? Wow. Last year at this time, there was a run of silly votes for what is called the Shorty awards on Twitter — you may recall that a couple of quacks, Mike Adams and Joe Mercola, snapped and started cheating furiously to win the Health category, to no avail: their votes were mostly disqualified. It was hilarious.

Anyway, I got an email asking me to promote another set of candidates this year. If you already have a twitter account — you don’t get to create one for the sole purpose of voting — you can follow the directions below.

I was hoping I could get some help adding a skeptical bent to the Shorty Awards. Last year the health category had Mike Adams and Joe half-man-half-drink Mercola strongly in the lead at the time we noticed, but thanks to their followers vote rigging (disqualifying Adams and having over half of Mercola’s votes revoked, twice) as well as strong support from the skeptical community we managed to get Rachael Dunlop to legitimately and overwhelmingly take out the category.

They’re back on again this year and I’m hoping we can get support from the atheist and skeptical community worldwide from the word go this year, and I’d love it if you could mention it on your blogs and podcasts.

To vote one simply needs a twitter account with prior activity. Accounts created just for voting could result in disqualification of the nominee. Once someone has an account, it’s as simple as sending a tweet in the formats of “I nominate (@person) for a Shorty Award in (#category) because (reason)” or a shorter version of “#shortyawards (@person) (#category) (reason)”.

I have a few recommendations for voting, but of course everyone is more than entitled to vote for whomever they’d like. You are allowed to vote for multiple different people in a single category, so it’s easy enough to vote for a requested person as well as who you’d prefer to see take it out.

“I nominate @DrRachie for a Shorty Award in #health because she does such standup work against quacks.”
“I nominate @BastardSheep for a Shorty Award in #NoPants because #NoPants is life!”
“I nominate @BadAstronomer for a Shorty Award in #science because he always brings us such interesting and amazing info.”
“I nominate @RSPCA for a Shorty Award in #charity because of the awesome work they do for animals.”
“I nominate @GeorgeHrab for a Shorty Award in #entertainment because of his awesome podcast, music and comedy stylings.”
“I nominate @jref for a Shorty Award in #Education because of their promotion of reason in schooling.”
“I nominate @nocompulsoryvac for a Shorty Award in #Quacks because of her tireless effort to spread lies about vaccines.”

And of course @PZMyers for every single category, because that’s kinda traditional isn’t it?

I’ll deviate a little from the recommendations. DrRachie won it last year: I think @RhysMorgan ought to win in the #health category this year.

Nice suck-up in that last line, too.

The Most Influential Female Atheist of 2010

Jen McCreight is running an online poll to determine the most influential female atheist of the year.

Uh-oh. You’d think she’d learn.

But given that the results will be utterly meaningless, it’s still useful — there’s quite a long list of good XX godless folk, and commenters keep mentioning more that were left out. Go there to see the depth and diversity of atheism, even if you don’t vote.

Why, that poll is almost virginal!

Atheist Ireland is looking to determine the most fervent believer of the year with an online poll (frivolous topic, frivolous poll), and I was astounded to discover it had hardly been touched. It was an almost virginal poll.

The really, truly True Believer™ of the YEAR 2010

And the winner of 2010 is…

Islamic breast hacking clerics 0% [ 0 ]
Vatican Child Abuse as bad as Ordination of Women. 0% [ 0 ]
God phoning children in Massachusetts. 0% [ 0 ]
Conor Lenihan and the anti science anti evolution book. 100% [ 2 ]
Sheikh Maulana Rape ok in marriage 0% [ 0 ]
Irish Minister for Social Protection pray for the economy. 0% [ 0 ]
Hanging the Christmas elf as a helper of Satan 0% [ 0 ]
Virginia Politician thinking ecurity pat dows are gay agenda. 0% [ 0 ]

Well, I didn’t vote — I just backed away. I like my polls a little more experienced. Don’t let that stop you, though!

Do ask, do tell…with a poll

I’m so used to our do-nothing Democrats accomplishing nothing that I’m pleasantly surprised that they actually managed to repeal the “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy afflicting our military. Congratulations, gay servicepeople!

Unfortunately, now we have to worry about marines’ legs falling off, and Fox News has gone whining to popular opinion with a poll (big numbers there, we probably won’t budge it much).

Will Ending ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ Affect America’s Ability to Defend Itself?

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2010/12/18/decide-dont-ask-dont-tell-military-gays/#ixzz18V7Ahe00

No — Being gay is about someone’s sexual preference, not their patriotism, acceptance of duty and their love of country. 40.84% (11,224 votes)

Undecided — We’re in a war in Afghanistan, and I’m not sure that this is the right time to undo something that will affect our men and women in combat. 5.28% (1,451 votes)

Yes — At the core of an effective military is trust, and allowing a lifestyle that might cause some members of our military to feel uncomfortable cuts to the heart of that trust. 52.6% (14,455 votes)

Other (post a comment) 1.28% (352 votes)

Expect further meltdowns and hysteria from the crazy religious right in the next few days — I’m already getting a buzz from the poor old Illinois Patriarchy Institute. We’re undermining the military by allowing the gay people already staffing our armed forces to admit that they exist!

I suppose this is a kind of poll

The City Church of San Diego has a website with a fill-in-the-blank statement you’re supposed to complete, and they’re actually displaying the results, after they’ve been approved…and it looks like they’ve been reasonably liberal in their approvals. Help ’em out. Tell them what JESUS IS ______.

I said, “a myth”, but I also saw “a Jewish zombie” and “Placebo” and “very upset that you called him gay” appearing on the page.

A victory in Louisiana

This is fabulous news: the Louisiana school system has been wrestling with a proposal from the Louisiana Family Forum (you know the rule: the word “family” in their title means they’re anything but) which would have had the schools using science textbooks with absurd warning labels and watered down content. The Board of Elementary and Secondary Education has seen the light, however, and voted 6 to 1 in favor of using quality textbooks for the kids of Louisiana. It’s an all-around win for everyone.

The Louisiana Patriarchy Forum is not happy. They are venting their frustration a bit with a ridiculous poll — go make them cry some more.

Do you support BESE’s decision today to approve a list of Biology textbooks with known false and inaccurate information?

YES
29%
NO
71%

Just remember, to a creationist “false and inaccurate” refers to any piece of evidence that shows how bogus their superstitions are, and vote accordingly.

Let’s poll the readers and see if it’s OK to kill children with neglect

It’s another of those horrible stories of an ignorant fundie family with a sick child who could be easily cured by modern medicines, but they chose to treat him with the uselessness of prayer…and guess what happens? They’re now the proud parents of a corpse.

The media doesn’t help. They give a voice to all the frauds saying things like, “Our teaching is to trust Almighty God for everything in life: for health, for healing, for protection, for provisions, for avenging of wrongs” and “The result was not what they wanted because our faith is imperfect at times. But God is perfect.” And then they go further and create a stupid poll for specious validation of the majority view.

Do you believe in the power of prayer to heal?

Yes 7.1%
Yes, but in conjunction with medicine 54.8%
No 38.1%
Don’t know 0%

That “Yes, but in conjunction with medicine” is such a common cop-out. This is what the apologists for religion do: let the stuff that works give cover for the lies they spew that do nothing and do harm. And they’re just as wicked as the ones who flatly say yes.

Hey, these bus ad polls sure are popular

The Fort Worth transit system is running horrible, hateful ads on their buses: they say, “Millions of Americans are Good Without God.” I know, pick yourself up off the floor, that’s terrifying…how dare atheists be so offensive?

The Star-Telegram is going to settle this by running a poll. Look who’s winning!

Should The T have rejected the ‘Good-without-God’ ad as DART did?

No. The T policy is rightly non-discriminatory
32%
No. The T could use the ad revenue
2%
Yes. The T should steer clear of such controversy
23%
Yes. And I won’t be riding The T until the ad comes off
43%

Woo hoo! Buses in Fort Worth will be 43% less crowded!

The War on Christmas escalates

Now the Catholic League — you know it’s going to get ugly when Bill Donohue joins the fray — has bought a billboard near the American Atheists’ billboard. The pro-superstition sign says, “You Know It’s Real: This Season Celebrate Jesus“. Isn’t that sweet? It’s just like the religious side to proclaim a falsehood. Anyway, they’re welcome to buy the ad space. The real winners here are the commercial enterprises marketing billboards and selling, selling, selling…and when you get right down to it, isn’t that what Christmas is really all about?

Meanwhile, the British have their own weird version of an indignant Christian majority standing up against oppression: a group has launched the Not Ashamed campaign, in which Christians are urged to be shameless, as if they’ve ever had a problem with that.

Paul Sims calls them out on the silliness. They’re seeing the same ridiculous whining over there that we are here, where outraged empurpled Christians claim that “Merry Christmas” is an endangered phrase and somehow they’re being repressed by the fact that sometimes people say “Season’s Greetings!” or “Happy Holidays!”, which I have to say as an atheist are about the two least ferocious battle cries I could imagine. In response to the Christian persecution complex over Christmas, he says:

But it isn’t happening. When are campaigners like Carey – and members of the government like Eric Pickles – going to take a look around them and finally admit that there is no widespread movement to ban Christmas. Lots of non-religious people (I’d wager the majority) even quite like it. I know I do. Some might even (whisper it…) confess that they quite enjoy hearing the odd carol, and find the local nativity scene (yes they still exist) quite endearing. Sure, there are Season’s Greetings cards and the like, but I guarantee that your local card shop will have plenty of religious ones too. It’s called catering to a diverse market – Christmas is a Christian festival, yes, but it’s also a mid-winter celebration (whose history stretches back to pagan times) that means lots of different things to lots of different people. But one thing we can all agree on is that it’s an enjoyable time of year, whether you include the baby Jesus or not. Banning it would be a really bad (and quite frankly bizarre) thing to do.

He also has a poll question. Would you believe that so far, it looks like people will still be able to celebrate Christmas even when the atheist dictators take over the universe?

Would you like to ban the Christian version of Christmas?

Yes 11.39%

No 88.61%

Of course, the evil truth is that I don’t want to ban Christmas either — I plan to coopt it as an atheist holiday. Bwahahahahahaha!

Wikileaks poll

Hmmm. We may not be able to really skew this poll, since my sense is that readers here are somewhat divided on the topic — but here goes anyway. Obama wants to crack down on leakers, while Sarah Palin thinks we ought to hunt down Assange and treat him like a terrorist. So what do readers of the NY Daily News (and now, Pharyngula) think?

Is WikiLeaks right in making these ‘secret’ documents public?

Yes, the people have a right to know. 58%
No, they are endangering lives and destroying important alliances. 39%
I don’t know 3%