Jam this signal, stat!

The Christian Coalition of America has created something called the 2008 American Values Survey. It is why we crash polls.

This particular poll is supposed to produce results that the Christian Coalition will present to congress as if it is a serious and representative sample of “American values” … which must be why they toss it out onto the web on a conservative website. This is not how you do a legitimate poll. This is how you bias your results.

So let’s all show them that American values include atheists and agnostics and humanists. More importantly, churn this badly designed poll so that either the results are far more ambiguous than they hope, or they have to start throwing out answers they don’t like selectively, further demonstrating the invalid nature of this method.

Apologetic and arbitrary

I have sinned. While I was in Philadelphia, I was supposed to attend the Drinking Skeptically event on Thursday evening, and I was honestly looking forward to it…but I went to dinner with Michael Weisberg, Janet Browne, Rasmus Winther, John Beatty, Jane Maienschein, and a few others, and when I finally looked up from the conversation, it was 10:30. Too late. I offer abject apologies to Salvatore Patrone and everyone who showed up.

To get even, the Science Pundit has tagged me with a meme. I am, of course, obligated now to actually address it, as long as I’m groveling. Here are the rules:

  1. Link to the person who tagged you.
  2. Post the rules on your blog.
  3. Write six random things about yourself.
  4. Tag six people at the end of your post and link to them.
  5. Let each person know they’ve been tagged and leave a comment on their blog.
  6. Let the tagger know when your entry is up.

Hang on, my entire life is random, a chaotic maelstrom with a thin thread of intent tangled in it. How am I supposed to pluck out just six fragments from it? Oh, well, here’s something:

  1. The oldest object on my person is my social security card. I still have the very same rectangle of paper I was issued when I was 14 and got my first job. It must be made of gopherwood pulp to have held up so long.

  2. I used to be wickedly accurate with a slingshot in my misspent youth. I haven’t used one since I was a teenager, though, so don’t send me out to slay any giants.

  3. I have never smoked a cigarette or any other combustible tube, nor have I ever been tempted to do so in the slightest. My parents were smokers, so I was never curious, I didn’t see anything faddishly rebellious about it, either, and the habit always simply seemed revolting.

  4. I have three small scars on my head and forehead, because when I was a toddler I had multiple independent falls and bloody collisions with coffeetables. My parents and grandparents apparently purged their houses of all such furniture until I reached an age where I was reliably able to stand up without falling down — when I was about 20, I think.

  5. The biggest fish I ever caught was a 29 pound Coho Salmon. This was on the same trip where my father caught a 45 pound King. Oh, but we are fallen from the Ancient Days.

  6. The quietest place I have ever been was an old growth forest in the North Cascades, when the wind was completely calm and the cedars went still and nothing anywhere was moving — it was eerie. Visit that same forest when there’s even a hint of wind, of course, and the trees are all moaning and whispering to you without cease.

Now I have to tag 6? I took a semi-rational approach, and plucked out the names of the six most recent commenters to leave a url here: Scrambled Stoic,
Big Dumb Chimp,
Susannah,
Mike Haubrich,
Matt Heath, and
Tim Fuller, you’re it.

SIWOTI Syndrome Open Thread

At Owlmirror’s suggestion, this is a new thread to cope with the flaming wrongness of this recent creationist pimple, Teno Groppi, on the Entropy and evolution thread (which is now closed, by the way). This happens, now and then: some obtuse and confident creationist, made even more stubborn by an abysmal ignorance, shows up and starts babbling. So of course people rebut him, but he completely ignores everything that he’s told, which means more people jump in to hammer on him, and because he’s too stupid to recognize what’s going on, he babbles more. And then the thread expands in an endless game of whack-a-mole.

You can keep playing right here. The old thread was just getting too long.

I wish this were a Poe

But it seems to be serious. You have to read Christians AGAINST Cartoons — it claims that most cartoons are part of an anti-Christian campaign, and that they promote unwholesome values (like, say, a sense of humor). You will learn that Dora the Explorer promotes SATANISM and COMMUNISM, and that she has a TALKING GOAT (nudge, nudge). Hello Kitty leads children into Egyptian paganism. Adult Swim Sin is nothing but pornography and perversion. As for Spongebob Squarepants…Heads of the BEAST Ridden by the Mother of HARLOTS!!! Abomination of the Earth!!!

Man, now I have a real itch to turn on Nickelodeon and the Cartoon Network.

Zombies defend Christmas!

That’s all I can imagine: this imaginary conflict has gotten so stupid that it must be mindless undead droning out their need for brains who are still fighting it (oh, hi, Bill O’Reilly!). The latest instance is one of these always-affronted religion organizations that has made a Naughty and Nice List, to “make sure that Christmas does not get secularized or censored from its essence, namely the birth of Jesus Christ”. On the naughty list: Disney, because their online store is called the “holiday shop”. On the nice list: Best Buy, because Jesus wants a new digital camera they use the word “Christmas” in their commercials. These are all, of course, stores selling stuff. I had no idea that the swiping of the credit card had become a sacred rite, holy to Jesus Christ.

I’m rather fed up with the pointless inanity, especially since most of the godless I know will be celebrating this Christmas. Here’s a suggestion. Maybe all of us atheists need to point out that “holiday” is derived from “holy day”, and retire aghast to our fainting couches at this religious taint to the season, moaning, “Oh, Br’er Jebusite, please don’t use that word holiday on me”. Then they’ll get all smug and satisfied when some store acknowledges that it is a generic holiday, and they’ll all shut up.