An anatomy quiz!

The Australian department of health distributed these posters to aboriginals and Torres Strait islanders to improve understanding of their bodies. I’m forced to conclude that either aboriginal peoples in the southern hemisphere are aliens with a remarkably deviant body plan, or the Australian government doesn’t give a damn.

Can you spot all the errors?

Answers:
Heart is reversed
Right kidney is not a pancreas
Ovaries are not kidneys
Stomach is not a respiratory organ
Small intestines are not a pear-shaped organ called the stomach

The poster has been withdrawn. The real mystery is whose understanding of anatomy at the health department is this bad.

The same old bad argument against gay marriage

Riley Balling, patent attorney, is certain that gay marriage will affect his marriage. Why? Well, he splutters on in a long op-ed in the Star Tribune, but all he manages to say is the children, because…the children, that’s why.

For many of us who favor traditional marriage, marriage is about raising children in a healthy environment. Thus, any change to the definition of marriage affects our marriage. Our “traditional” marriages and the children they produce are our greatest source of happiness, and we desire that our children will live in a world that will promote their ability to make the same choices that brought us happiness.

Shorter Riley: “I have defined marriage, and marriage is defined this way, and therefore changing the definition of marriage changes marriage by definition. Oh, and my marriage is all about pooping out kids, therefore your marriage damn well better be too.”

[Read more…]

Who was it that was supposed to be committing voter fraud again?

Here’s some news on a representative bit of Republican Party slime from Riverside County, California, home to some of the slimiest Republicans in known space. From California Watch:

In a complaint filed last week with the county registrar of voters, the Democrats presented affidavits from 133 Democratic voters who said they had been re-registered as Republicans without their consent after they encountered petition circulators outside welfare offices and stores.

One voter complained that his registration was changed to Republican after he signed what he thought was a petition to legalize marijuana. Another said he was told he was signing a petition to lower the price of gasoline, according to the affidavits.

Others said they were offered free cigarettes or a “job at the polls” if they signed some paperwork.

Also among the Democrats who said they were involuntarily re-registered as Republicans: two aides to retired U.S. Air Force Maj. Gen. Richard Roth, a Democrat locked in a tight race with Republican Assemblyman Jeff Miller for a state Senate seat.

According to Democratic Party spokespeople, thousands of people might have been fraudulently re-registered with a Republican Party affiliation. Riverside County is getting slightly more liberal each year for a number of demographic reasons, and yet the county’s Republican Party reported an upswing of 35,000 new Republican voters in the county.

Oh, and here’s a shocker from the California Watch report:

Many of the complainants were Latino or African American.

 

I don’t care, just GIVE ME A CHOICE

A blogger recently posed this question.

If I had to vote for one of two hypothetical candidates, would I be more likely to vote for a liberal Christian or a conservative atheist?

My first, immediate response was to just answer the question: yes, of course I’d vote for the liberal Christian. All you have to do is realize that Karl Rove is an atheist to know that the label “atheist” is not an automatic marker for a good person (just as we know “Christian” isn’t either, with more examples than I can count.)

But then I thought about it a moment more, and realized it is a goddamned stupid question.

I have never, in my entire life, been given an opportunity to vote for an openly atheist candidate for any office. Not once. This is a radically hypothetical question postulating an unthinkable world (to an American, at least) in which atheists can run for office without the bigoted Christian majority making it an exercise in futility, where we actually get a choice. In that reality, I think actually I might seriously consider voting for a non-odious conservative atheist (not Karl Rove, not a Randian asshole) just for the novelty of it all and to see someone, anyone representing my irreligious views in office.

Because isn’t that really the issue, that atheists are virtually locked out of most offices?

Then there are some weird assumptions in the question itself. What if a conservative atheist were answering it? There’d be no conflict of values at all. Notice how it simply assumes that nearly all atheist readers would be politically liberal — which I think is mostly true, despite the strong strain of Libertarianism within atheism.

But doesn’t that imply that if we had an atheist candidate representative of most atheists’ political leanings, the question ought to be:

If I had to vote for one of two hypothetical candidates, would I be more likely to vote for a liberal Christian or a liberal atheist?

O Glorious Imaginary Universe of Delightful Choices! Can you imagine going into the voting booth and finding yourself confronted with a decision between two reasonable, intelligent, thoughtful candidates, rather than Dumb Thug vs. the person the other party decided to run against it? Or, as I often find when voting for local offices, Dumb Thug vs. Dumb Thug.

But of course what reality tells us is that the candidate who clothes himself in religious garb and makes their faith an issue in a political campaign is almost always conservative — religion tends to side with stupid, archaic, and authoritarian on social issues. What that means is that if we ever did get an opportunity to make that choice at the ballot box, it would look like this:

If I had to vote for one of two hypothetical candidates, would I be more likely to vote for a conservative Christian or a liberal atheist?

And now it’s no question at all.

#FreeGeronPastitsios

Another state with an archaic blasphemy law on the books is Greece, and they recently cracked down and arrested a 27 year old FaceBook user for using a mocking pseudonym, “Gerontas Pastitsios”, for some famous Greek Orthodox monk. He faces up to two years in prison for “malicious blasphemy”.

There is a petition to have him released and most importantly, abolish pointless laws against free speech.

Election day will be…interesting

Sarah Silverman explains how to get around Republican voter suppression tactics: register to get a gun! (NSFW. But of course, all you workers are working at work, so you’re not going to see this anyway.)

I wonder if the media will pay any attention to the outraged minorities and students who discover they are disenfranchised on election day? I know Fox News won’t, but there’s a possibility the other networks…nah, who am I kidding?

I just realized how the Republicans can win me over

I saw this clip from Stephen Colbert about how the Republicans rely on the cranky old white man vote, and I had an epiphany. Why, that’s me! But then, as this clip goes on, it’s all about how the Republicans are straining to embrace a new demographic and capture the Hispanic vote.

That’ll never work. Hispanics aren’t going to see him as a friend no matter how much spray-on tan he puts on.

But then I had a thought. What the Republicans need to do is increase the supply of cranky old white men. How can they do that? Longevity research! Pour more money into the NIH for work that keeps old people alive for longer…especially that favorite subject of biomedical research, the white male. It’s a win:win! More money for science, more cranky old white men voting longer, more cranky old white men feeling obligated to the Republican party, more medical benefits that assist me as I get older.

I don’t see why they aren’t rushing to adopt this strategy. It’s their only hope.