It’s a Cronenbergian thing

knee

I was just in to the local clinic to have a misbehaving knee taken care of: I got a needle stuck in there, some fluid drawn out, an injection of steroids and an anesthetic, and then I had blood drawn for another test. I know some people have a horror of needles, but I think I have the opposite — I find my internal fluids fascinating, and seeing technology digging into them is actually kind of cool. Not that I’m going to seek out opportunities to be stabbed and poked, though…being a smoothly running machine that doesn’t need repair work is even cooler.

I also quite enjoy getting dental work done. There may be something wrong with my brain.

I have one thing in common with Ta-Nehisi Coates

horde

He has a Horde? One difference is that he was more ruthless in culling that horde. And that made it difficult to sustain — this resonated with me.

He doesn’t sound optimistic about the future of the comment section. Instead, he sounds tired: of deleting and banning trolls, of trying to police and curb an online community’s worst—and, it often seems, most natural—instincts, all in the name of a goal he doesn’t feel he’s ever achieved. “To be honest, I can’t say how long this will go on for,” he told me, addressing the possibility that he might someday close comments entirely, like his colleague James Fallows. “It never quite became what I wanted it to be. I never really figured out how to get people from different perspectives in a place without defaulting to these usual conversations.”

Sometimes comments work, sometimes they end up being self-destructive. It’s a hard thing to balance.

It’s also the case that those damned trolls have a strategy that is sometimes effective — no matter what you do, there are assholes who make it their obsessive, petty hobby to tear it down.

Botanical Wednesday: I need!

We’re leaving for the West coast on Friday, and of course my creaky old joints are lancing me with stabby excruciating pain. I have seen my doctor. I have pills. Because I must restore myself with red cedar, Sitka spruce, sea stacks, tide pools, banana slugs, great herds of sea urchins, and the ocean and the mountains, I will get there if Mary has to carry me on her back.

The Olympic National Forest is also where Mary and I had our honeymoon, 35 years ago. If ever I could just ditch all my responsibilities and retreat somewhere to avoid everything, this is where I’d go. But don’t bother looking for me. Just be satisfied with the news that, if I vanish, sightings of hairy ape-like creatures in the wilderness of Washington state will spike.

I just can’t stop groaning

money

One of the nice things about being blacklisted by a large segment of the atheist community is that I don’t have to be shy about criticizing…oh, hey, wait a minute, I’ve always been a pain in the ass. OK, I can be even more obnoxious now.

The latest troubling event in the world of atheist leadership is that Edwina Rogers has amended her lawsuit against the Secular Coalition of America. She’s now suing Richard Dawkins directly.

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Christians can get awfully reductionist when it suits them

elephant-embryo

Amanda Marcotte rips into stupid gotcha by Marco Rubio.

When Rubio appeared on CNN after Thursday night’s Republican debate, he kept insisting that this vague entity called “science” has declared that human life begins at conception. (Actual biologists, for what it’s worth, argue that life is continuous and that a fertilized egg is no more or less alive than a sperm or an unfertilized egg.) CNN host Chris Cuomo vainly tried to point out that “science” says no such thing, and Rubio got a little excited.

“Let me interrupt you. Science has—absolutely it has. Science has decided… Science has concluded that—absolutely it has. What else can it be?” he asked. Then Rubio reared up for what he clearly intended as his wowza line: “It cannot turn into an animal. It can’t turn into a donkey. The only thing that that can become is a human being.”

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How about if we just show this one video in all sex ed classes?

It would be such an improvement over what American schools teach now!

Although…it doesn’t really get around to teaching about sex much, does it? It’s mainly about how stupid and destructive sex ed policies are. We need a second video. It doesn’t need to be very long — when you get right down to it, the basics of sex are simple. Any suggestions?

The ol’ racist evolution switcheroo

lies

Ben Seewald, whose only claim to fame is that he’s married to Jessa Duggar, tries to stake out his own domain of stupid in a conversation with Dante Berry, another evangelist. He does not do well. But in the topsy-turvy world of American fanatical Christianity, that might mean he succeeded.

“If you check it out, what they’re trying to do with America, is basically have us going against each other while the Devil can sneak in real clearly and destroy what he’s trying to destroy,” Dante explains to Ben, adding that “if we’re fighting against each other, the Devil can sneak in and do what he want to do.”

“That’s right,” Ben agrees, “there’s no room for racism in Christianity. That all comes from the Devil. That all comes from, like, this false religion out here, evolution, that stuff? Teaching that, like, some people are ‘more evolved?,’ and different stuff.”

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Now that he’s out, what’s Kent Hovind up to?

He’s making YouTube videos! Lots and lots of YouTube videos, several per day, it appears. If you’re concerned about the volume — how will we ever keep up? — don’t be. It’s all exactly the same old tired Young Earth apologetics and Bible babble that he’s always done.

His latest topic is WOE: What On Earth is about to happen? He expects Jesus to return in 10-15 years. Right.