In Honor of George Carlin

Shit
Piss
Fuck
Cunt
Cocksucker
Motherfucker
Tits.

One small step for civil rights

So California courts decided to give gay marriage an okay. Which isn't terribly surprising. I mean, we've been here before in California. Repeatedly.

Interestingly enough, the legislature in the state of California recently voted in favor of same-sex marriage. The governator decided to veto it; in spite of his campaign promise never to exercise such a veto.

So, as I understand it, the general rule of thumb in the states is as follows:

-the actions of the judicial branch are invalid, since they are not the "will of the people", however, in California, the actions of the courts are preferrable to the legislature, so the opposite rule applies.

-the actions of the representative legislative branch is invalid, as it doesn't represent the "will of the people", except in Massachusetts, where the judicial branch is the invalid actionary member and the legislature acting to overturn their constitutionally-based decision is the proper course of action.

-the actions of the executive branch, acting against the will of the courts and the legislature is a heinous abuse of power, if it is in San Francisco or New York and the action being taken is to bestow rights upon citizens. If it is the governator of California, acting against his own campaign promises and against the elected representatives of the people, then that's an okay thing.

-In other words, it would seem that the good ol' GOP intends to implement a full chaosocracy where the majority has absolute power over the minority and can abuse them and deny them any and all rights via the voting booth, thus overturning the constitutional, representative government which has served us up until today, using the "might makes right and makes your rights invalid" theory of government. The mob mentality right now makes this the most efficient path to achieve their desired results, much as has been done in many past governments, with limited, yet hideously disasterous results.

Summary: Tearing apart the very basis of government in this country and hurtling towards ruin is okay, as long as, in the process, they make sure them faggots don't get adequate health care, family, and estate options, since that'd be disastrous.

I can't wait to see how this plays out.

"Acceptance of evolution is a sign of low self-esteem"

A creationist whackjob recently made the following, sweeping, ridiculous statement:

Most of you who believe the evolved story IMHO seem to have such a low opinion of mankind, it translates to low self esteem.

I responded as follows:

If evolution is correct, the number of individual beings which could be standing here in your place vastly outnumber all of the grains of sand, on all of the beaches, in all of the world. You're the inheritor of a genetic legacy which stretches back 3.8 billion years through the eons, and which has circled the center of our galaxy about 20 times. You're the endpoint of billions of generations of births, competitions, wars, and deaths; the only possible sequence of hereditary combinations that can possibly result in you. Your forbears have survived arguably the single greatest ecological catastrophe ever to hit the planet; when the earliest plants started poisoning the atmosphere with oxygen. Yet, your ancestors learned to use this poisonous gas to produce energy in a way that had never been attempted before; an evolutionary triumph which paved the way for the first multicellular life. Your genetic line has survived floods, freezes, and meteor impacts from the skies themselves, preserving this single genetic line through the eons to lead ultimately to you. This is a legacy you share with every living thing on earth, from the largest creature ever to have lived; the blue whale; to the lowliest prion. You share this legacy with the blades of grass between your toes and the trees that give you shade. You are a thread in a huge, amazing, incredibly diverse tapestry of living things; some of whom have clawed their way out of the seas to survive on land, some of whom remained in the ocean, and a few of whom stood on land for a few million years, ultimately said "well, screw this" and marched back into the sea. Once we add cosmology into the mix, not only does this legacy stretch to everything living, but to the non-living as well. You share your origins with the stars and planets. The asteroids which hang in space, all the way down to the loneliest hydrogen atom in deep space. All the parts that make you stretch back through the eons and have borne witness to the very birth of the universe. They have seen the birth and death of stars, supernovae, black holes and pulsars. They've seen planets torn to pieces and solar systems form. They've seen galaxies coalesce and skies darken.

The universe is much more grand, more amazing, more beautiful, more elegant and more subtle than has ever been written in any holy book, and you are here, against nigh-incalculable odds, to see it all. Just consider that for a moment.

If that's a sign of low self esteem, what the hell are your standards for a high one?

Since when is being "elite" a bad thing?

Barack Hussein Obama, the current front-runner for the democratic nomination has been labeled left and right as an "elite."

What bothers me about this is they throw around that label as if it were a bad thing.

Seriously: when did it happen that being "elite" was something to draw condescension? There was once a time when being "elite" drew respect and admiration. I'm working my ass off for 60-80 hours a week in the hopes of someday becoming an "elite scientist." It's my goal to be the absolute best at what I do. I'll realistically never reach that goal, but shouldn't I shoot for it?

Why shouldn't we demand the same of our elected officials? Why should we not demand the best from the people who will lead our country for the next four to eight years? Shouldn't the person we elect as president represent the absolute best from among us. In other words, what the hell do you want from a president, if not the "elite?"

Scratch that, I don't want an "elite" president. I want one who's embarrassingly superior to me in every conceivable way. I want a repeatedly self-made trillionaire who, in his spare time after bringing about world peace, can solve the climate crisis, the oil crisis, develop stem cell therapy, teach grades K-12 in all subjects, and still find time to walk the dog every day.

We've already tried the president that you'd want to hang out and have a beer with. That didn't work too well for us. In fact, I think it's probably fair to say that it worked absurdly badly for us. Insanely badly, in fact. Our economy is circling the drain; we're stuck in an endless, pointless and quite likely illegal war; the rest of the world hates us; we're falling behind China in every conceivable manner; and scientific literacy among high school students is right now barely above Turkey.

Seriously. We could use an elite president right now.

Dear Moron,

I guess when you get to a major turning point, it's pretty natural to think about where you came from. Or maybe it's just that I'm in the process of packing up, and I found a few mementos from my high school days. Either way, it's related to the fact that I'm about to get married, move away, and start working for a living as opposed to doing mostly fun stuff for a living.

I was fifteen once, interestingly enough. Frankly, I was ill-prepared for being a fifteen-year-old male, which is probably why I did a pretty crappy job of it. The bottom line is that at fifteen, life, generally, sucks. There really isn't a claim you can make to the contrary. I know for a fact that every time my parents told me that "these are the best years of your life" (we've all heard it) my general reaction was "oh, shit."

So I've been realizing lately that the face looking back at me from the mirror is no longer fifteen years old. He's seen a not insubstantial amount of the world, and he's lived a rather interesting life.

Didn't seem like it was going to turn out that way at fifteen, but then it never does, does it?

At any rate, I was wondering recently what I would write if the laws of physics could be bent, slightly, for just a moment. What if I could write to the fifteen year old I used to be? What would I say?

Dear moron,

I figured this greeting would be the best way to convince you that I'm you. I mean, who else would greet you that way? Of course, if you want more proof, look up on the very top shelf of your closet. You'll find a shoebox labeled "playboys" (brilliant hiding place, by the way). In that shoebox, you'll find a bottle of hydrogen peroxide, a bottle of isopropyl alcohol, a package of double-edged razor blades, anywhere between two and six sterile gauze pads, and a roll of surgical tape. Nobody but you knows about that, right?

While we're on the subject, cut back a little (no pun intended). I'm not going to tell you to quit just what say that instead of three or four times a week cut it down to, say, two or three? You're not going to quit any time soon. And you're going to try (and fail) to do so a number of times between now and the time that you're looking at my face in the mirror, and the truth is, those blades helped you through a lot of rough patches in your life. As coping mechanisms go, you could do worse, I guess.

Okay, depending on when you're getting this, you've either just flunked a math exam, or you're about to. That'll be a first for you, won't it? You'll deal, and you'll be stronger for it. Take my word for it, it's not the end of the world. About five years from now, nobody's going to give a rat's ass what grades you got in High School. Believe me, you have a lot more school to go through before you're done. High school is gonna get lost in the flurry long before you're done.

I know that right now you're thinking that you're going to be a doctor, and that's all there is to it. Well, you're not. And interestingly enough, that's a decision you'll make after being accepted to med school. I know, weird, huh? The point I'm trying to make is that life has a nasty habit of never working out quite the way you plan for it to work out. If I were to tell you now that your first three publications in a scientific journal would be in astrophysics, what would you say? What if I told you that the next three would be in the American Journal of Physiology and the Biophysical Journal (times two)? Exactly.

If you're fifteen, you also just got dumped for the first time, or you're just about to. Sorry for the spoiler. It hurts. A lot. But you'll survive that too. Maybe you need things like that to happen. Maybe it's things like that that make you stronger. All I'm going to say is just wait 'till you meet your future wife. You've read Romeo & Juliet as well as all of the classic romances who talk about that one instant when they find that one person and they just know that their life is never going to be the same again. You don't buy all that bullshit, do you? Trust me: you will.

Don't worry. Let things fall the way that they should. Let them fall the way that they will, and don't freak out when they don't quite fall where you want them to. The only constant in life is that it's never what you expect. It's always moving, always changing, always persevering.

Oh, and when dad tells you that these are the best years of your life, you can call bullshit on that one. You're nowhere near the best years of your life. Not yet.

Keep an eye out for me. I'll be the one looking back at you from the mirror in about fourteen years.

Sincerely,
Drew

The Evil Evolutionist conspiracy has issued a directive.

Some of you may have heard about Ben Stein's latest movie. Well, the google-bombing gauntlet has been thrown down. Expelled Exposed is a project by the National Center for Science Education exposing the fraud that is Ben Stein's movie "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed" and never was there a more appropriate title. You literally have to leave your brain at the door in order to believe the bullshit spewed throughout the movie.

Fortunately, I don't have to spend my time chronicling the misrepresentations, ludicrous claims and outright falsehoods of the movie. You can find them here: Expelled