Unless they’re imprecatory, and from the other side. Christopher Hitchens has made an announcement.
I have been advised by my physician that I must undergo a course of chemotherapy on my esophagus. This advice seems persuasive to me. I regret having had to cancel so many engagements at such short notice.
Medical treatment is the best course of action in these sorts of events.
We have achieved victory in the great beard debate, reaching the goal of £1500, and also the votes for beards have a dominating lead over no beard. The Trophy Wife™ is relieved.
We aren’t quite finished, though — the poll will remain open for another week, and those sneaky bare-faced people might still pull together a bunch of votes and snatch victory from our grasp. Just in case, I’m mobilizing the Australian hordes with this awesome beard on the face of Ned Kelly.
Ferocious!
The beard-or-not donations seem to be fading…we’re at 86% of the goal. Clearly you need inspiration, and here it is: the fabulous Captain Nemo.
Notice also yet another reason for the beard: it expresses our yearnings for the glorious appendages of the cephalopod. We can’t have tentacles, but at least we can recognized the beauty of dangly bits hanging off of our heads.
By the way, I have to address a base canard that I have been hearing from many poorly informed women: that the beard is scratchy and unpleasant. Not true! This is a confusion spread by those men who shave, and who reduce their natural beards to a coarse stubble. It’s the bare-faced men who have abrasive chins! The beard, when allowed to grow, is soft and silky, like the pelt of a baby rabbit — soothing to the caress, gentle when cheek-to-cheek, and capable of feathery tickles when cheek-to-other-bits. The only way those clean-shaven scoundrels can achieve such softness is by slaughtering baby rabbits, hacking their skins off, and plastering the bloody fur to their perfidious faces. They are disgusting barbarians.
Save the baby rabbits. Help the children of Barnardo’s grow up to cultivate downy beards of their own. Donate and vote for the beard.
The Great Beard debate is still going strong, and this ought to clinch it for the beard side: how can you deny the puissance of a majestic beard when you look on Darwin’s nobly hirsute face?
Case closed! Boo-yah!
Now I am a fair-minded and magnanimous person, so I thought I would give the naked-cheeked ones a chance to rebut. I was sent this video:
Hmmm, fascinating…so beardless men compare their lack to sexual inadequacy, and find it amusing? It is not surprising that they’re being crushed in the vote.
The fundraiser that will decide whether Big Dave and I will have to shave off our beards has passed the halfway mark — you have donated £805.33 for Barnardo’s children’s charity — but I notice that some people are still voting “no beard”, and we can’t have that. To counter these weak sallies into beardlessness, I’m going to have to regularly remind you of glorious beards, and today we start at the top.
That’s right, people with beards have that aura of great majesty and power, just like Jehovah. Would you ask God to shave? Look at that glorious beard — it’s almost as good as Dan Dennett’s. You must vote for the beard.
Now you may be marshaling counterarguments in your head: “What about Buddha”, you’re thinking, and “Hardly any kind of god at all”, I reply, “When has Buddha ever annihilated a city with a column of fire?” Or you might be thinking “But I’m an atheist!” or “Hey, women don’t have beards, and they’re perfectly lovely”, to which I say “Satan! He’s got a beard, too.”
And see? He’s apparently a lesbian as well, so the ladies can feel comfortable voting for the feminist bearded option.
Do the right thing. Donate £2 or more, and vote FOR the beard.
P.S. The rules clearly state one vote per person, so if you’re thinking of maximizing your impact by donating £10 in 5 £2 votes, it won’t work. Just vote once. If you’ve already donated, you can ignore my pleas.
This is good news! After the outrage over a prior policy statement, the AAP has revised and clarified their position on female genital mutilation:
The American Academy of Pediatrics has rescinded a controversial policy statement raising the idea that doctors in some communities should be able to substitute demands for female genital cutting with a harmless clitoral “pricking” procedure.
“We retracted the policy because it is important that the world health community understands the AAP is totally opposed to all forms of female genital cutting, both here in the U.S. and anywhere else in the world,” said AAP President Judith S. Palfrey.
The contentious policy statement, issued in April, had condemned the practice of female genital cutting overall. But a small portion of statement suggesting the pricking procedure riled U.S. advocacy groups and survivors of female genital cutting.
Smart move.
There was a rumor going about that the Royal Australian New Zealand College of Obstetricians was going to consider the practicality of supporting that clitoral “pricking” business — fortunately, it is not true and the RANZCOG is just as forthright in rejecting the procedure.
The anti-vax loons are having a rally in Grant Park, in Chicago, today at 3-5pm. The wretched fraud Andrew Wakefield will be speaking there, encouraging more parents to make their children vulnerable to pathogens and to act as vectors for the spread of disease. Some people are taking action and moving in to spread factual information — if you’re in the area and have some time, help them out.
They are also having ‘satellite rallies’ in Edison, NJ, New York City, and Kent, WA. I’m dismayed at that last one, that’s my hometown…and it’s being held in the public library. I practically grew up in that library (at least, its prior architectural incarnation). If you’re in those towns, stop by share some truth with these dangerous kooks, too.
The author of that phenomenally influential Mathematical Games column in Scientific American (if you are of a certain age you will remember it well), Martin Gardner, has died at the age of 95.
95 is a very interesting number, but then one of the things we learned from Gardner is that they all are.
Like last time, I expect this news will set off another fusillade of dissenting opinions, but too bad. Extremists have vandalized Lars Vilks home, trying to set it on fire (original article in Swedish here).
In an undoubtably futile attempt to forestall what I expect will be common objections to this story here, I know that there are political ramifications to the cartoons of Mohammed. I know that many of them were motivated by racism and xenophobia. In this instance, though, I don’t care. Vilks drew a sketch. His enemies set his house on fire.
I would encourage Muslims to respond in kind, with their own cartoons lampooning Vilks (it shouldn’t be hard; the article about the arson has a picture of Vilks that looks rather deranged already). But when you respond to an insult to your beliefs with violence and destruction, you have moved beyond the boundaries of civilization, straight into barbarism, and you will get no sympathy from me.
