Praying For Rain - God Says, You Got It, Bubba.

GOP Ignoring God's Message

Everyone seems to be ignoring a very important thing going on with the Democratic convention - God's hand. Fundagelicals have been fervently praying for Obama's public acceptance event to be rained out. Of course the forecast for Denver (clear and 81F) doesn't look like there will be much problem Thursday. But hey, miracles can happen. Then the fire sprinklers go off in the GOP's Fox News booth at the Democrat convention. And it looks like his work was ignored by the christian righties. But they are good at that. God wiped out a major bridge on a major route to their convention site. But they ignored it except to massively expedite the repairs only to find they won't be completed in time so they sent out special routing maps to keep their delegates fro having to see the thing. They're still ignoring him. So, beginning Monday, instead of coverage for their convention, Gustov will arrive in or near New Orleans and probably rain all over their media plans for the next several days to a couple of weeks. Personally, I think God is hunting for Bobby Jindal and David Vitter primarily and will take out the GOP just to save them the trouble of doing it themselves. If I was a God fearin' Xtian of any brand, I think I would get the message that I had better vote for Obama and beg forgiveness for following false prophets for so long. Then I would do some serious thinkin' about what to do with all those false prophets so they don't ever harm anyone again.

The great thing about being atheist is that sweet irony tastes even sweeter when we don't have the taste of all those bad crackers and cheap grape juice in our mouth.

Hillary did the right thing the right way for the right reasons.

It's not about Obama and Michael O'Hare over at RBC got that Hillary and a lot of other people get it.

Return To Planet Of The Apes

Via PZM. 'Tis a classic and it seems even more appropriate these days. Now reformatted. More tracts of interest here. This is one of my favorites. Print them and hand them out at your next bible study. I dare ya.

Dollar Strore

Is it me or are the speakers at the presidential convention getting worse? Thanks mostly to the really rotten stupid reality shows and re-runs on TV, I've watched a lot of the PBS coverage of the democrat convention. If I were running that show, I wouldn't let most of those people in the building much less let them make the speeches they've given. I would have hired writers and speech coaches or directors and made them all go through a thorough practice and presentation boot-camp and pass a rigorous review before allowing in the line up. It's not so much the ideas they were talking about as the really poor and unpersuasive way they make the delivery. Where are the writers and directors from West Wing etc. when you need them. If a multibazillion dollar operation like a major political party is that sloppy with good ideas, something is wrong. It is the same something that has plagued the democrats in particular. It is that the party leaders and candidates are poll driven. They are not experience and compassion driven. They try to take positions based on polls and not the facts behind issues. Politicians do not try to educate the public to the facts of problem. If there is widespread public opinion on a problem that is flawed or based on imcomplete knowledge, politicians seem to make no attempt to enlighten anyone. They will inflate issues in ways that are completely disconnected from the facts of a problem as long as they think they are in control of public opinion of the problem of interest. In my opinion, this leads to bad shit for all of us and it is our own falt for not hitting the books.

One of those issues ties a major factor of our economy to the public perception of the energy questions and costs. The value of the U.S. dollar. The changes in value of our money related to other currencies and commodities is the main cause of the change in prices we see in just about everyhing from gas to tuna helper. But the value of a dollar is never mentioned by anyone and most people on the street don't have a clue what it is or what makes it what it is. Hint, The U.S. dollar value has been crushed by about 40% in the last eight years. There are people making a killing from that. It is not you and me. Politicians do not want you to think about this and will do everything possible to distract you from it because it is one of the best measures of how they are doing their jobs (bad) and at the same time one of the most effective tools for maximizing wealth for those in the know (their backers). If your employer is smart, he she or it keeps it's assests and much of it's liquidity in anything but U.S. dollars. When it comes time to write your paycheck or give you a raise, you only see U.S. dollars. You are getting screwed. To borrow a phrase from one of the biggest crooks on planet Earth, "They don't want your to know." I could tell you the secrets but then I would have to charge you for it or shoot you. So, save yourself a ton of money or me a bullet and go learn about it, really learn about dollars, on your own and stop listening to the non-speeches from politicians.

Pretty Funny

Remember to register and vote.

Democrats too can suck.

It is tragic that so many Americans are infected by religion that every politician must bow to their ignorance and dogma just to communicate with them. Oh wait, politicians know this. Religion has been used to crush the constitution's article VI protections against the requirement of religious test of our elected leaders and representatives. Rich Warren blatantly performs a political rally in his mega church with no fear of losing his tax exemption. The filthy cloak of religion has become the supreme test and has replaced almost all rational thought in evaluating the issues of governance and leadership of this country. Religion is a fatal brain cancer. It has eaten the minds of everyone who has touched it. The Democrats are touting the first ever faith caucus meetings at their convention. They are filling the air with the stench of religion in all of their speeches. The reason? Because the minds of Americans are so cankered and rotted by religion that no reasoning or discussion is required deal with them. To control the masses now, all one has to do is insert words like faith, I believe, hope, God, christian nation, into every utterance and the grotesque parasite of religion destroys all defenses against evil by elimination the capacity for all other thought.

Born To Believe

A blow to the head will confuse a man's thinking, a blow to the foot has no such effect, this cannot be the result of an immaterial soul. - [Heraclitus, 500 BC]

Human brains evolved to be belief engines, according to Lewis Wolpert, a professor of biology at University College London who studies the evolutionary origins of belief. "We want to explain everything," he says, "We cannot tolerate not knowing a cause." - The rest>>>

Don't Miss This Duckbill

Happiness, Liberties, Rights, Science and Everybody's Business

A guest blogger over at Pharyngula left a very nice sermon today about science and human rights. We should understand science to keep ourselves safe from most every advertisement but that's not all. It's short and smart and worth your time to read. Sastra, using cranes not skyhooks>>>

Danio on giving up the ghost.

This is wonderful. >>

Religious Schools Whupped Again In California

Academic standards are real. A federal judge has upheld them in a case brought by some religious zealots who teach their kids that the bible is the unerring history of the world.

A federal judge in Los Angeles has thrown out the remaining claims of Calvary Chapel Christian School, which sued the University of California alleging university officials rejected some courses for credit because of their Christian viewpoint.

The religious tools will probably try to appeal but don't expect different results when they keep doing the same thing. One of their attorneys had this little jewel to spout.

Tyler said he fears schools will become afraid to teach from a Christian perspective.

Christian schools are free to teach their students any crap they want to. But they are not allowed to force a university to lower it's standards and accept students on religious credits instead of their own approved standards. The consequences of turning loose the poor kids with all that woo in their heads are solely the responsibility of the religious schools and their backers.

U.S. Military Commision to GWB: Screw You!

The Bush/Cheney dictatorship tried to make out like Salim Hamdan was some major national threat. He was a part time chauffeur for Osama bin Laden. Not in all of history has someone who drove a war criminal around even been detained. I hope secret service drivers are starting to worry about hauling Bush and Cheney around.

The special military commission created by Bush and his lapdog congress at the time carried out their orders but gave Bush a slap in the face with the conviction on the least of the charges before them and a sentence of just 66 months most of which are already served.

The commission probably realized and detested being a part of this rupture of constitutional law. Our constitution prohibits prosecution of anyone under a law that did not exist at the time of the act. That is exactly what our government did in this case by even charging, much less convicting Hamdan under the 'material assistance' clause that was not written into law until years after the events for which he was prosecuted had taken place. That is pure chickenshit and I hope everyone who had anything to do with the case have their day in war crimes court.

This made me cry.

Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) snapped this image of Phoenix parachuting through the Martian atmosphere during its landing. It is us watching ourselves explore another planet.

Sleep Learning

There is a pretty interesting article about what our brains are up to while we sleep. The article made some sparks jump some of my synaptic gaps. The quality and quality of our sleep is very important to the health of all the body parts and functions and in particular our brain. Playing those sleep learning tapes while you sleep is worse than a waste of money.

The researchers writing the article point out findings about how sleep impacts learning and the quality of that learning. We need to be careful about what we have our noodle working on while we sleep. The old adage garbage in, garbage out applies here. A night of T.V. before turning in loads the noggin up with junk. But it sells yogurt. Another thing that becomes obvious from this work is that all those over night cram sessions we did in school hurt instead of helping. Want to solve problems?

In a 2004 study Ullrich Wagner and others in Jan Born’s laboratory at the University of Lübeck in Germany elegantly demonstrated just how powerful sleep’s processing of memories can be. They taught subjects how to solve a particular type of mathematical problem by using a long and tedious procedure and had them practice it about 100 times. The subjects were then sent away and told to come back 12 hours later, when they were instructed to try it another 200 times.

What the researchers had not told their subjects was that there is a much simpler way to solve these problems. The researchers could tell if and when subjects gained insight into this shortcut, because their speed would suddenly increase. Many of the subjects did, in fact, discover the trick during the second session. But when they got a night’s worth of sleep between the two sessions, they were more than two and a half times more likely to figure it out—59 percent of the subjects who slept found the trick, compared with only 23 percent of those who stayed awake between the sessions. Somehow the sleeping brain was solving this problem, without even knowing that there was a problem to solve.

Go read the rest, plan and organize information about the things you want to do and what you want to learn or do a day like you want your days to be then, sleep on it. >>>

Now that was fun!

A few months ago I stumbled onto an atheist meetup group that has a bout 340 members and a few meetings a week. I've been to two dinner meetings with them now. Tonight was just the second one and there were about 35 folks there. I had a blast! Mostly just listening but, they talked about the same stuff I read, the same blogs I see and lots of the same kinds of stuff I'm interested in. Not everyone agrees on some of the politics but they are a really diverse bunch. They are all very bright and I can learn a lot there. The most amazing thing to me was how unhindered their conversations are. We all sat at a long series of tables so I talked mostly with different folks than I did at the first meeting. Over all there was about a 50% mix of people that were at the first meeting I attended and different folks this time. One guy I met must be a very rare bird indeed - an Aggie atheist - old school Unix administrator. There were lots of geeks and a neuroscientist or two. Although I didn't have a lot to say and mostly just listened and was by far the oldest in the room, everyone seemed to go out of their way to say come again. I'll be doing that.

Danger, Severe Vacuum Ahead!

On the way to the store I heard Hannity and Limgaugh crash.

I have been complaining since the first time I got a flat tire that cars should automatically keep the tires inflated to the proper pressure. Some military and damn few civilian vehicles do just that. The Hummer is one. A couple of cars I built did just that. But automatic tire inflation should have been mandated for all vehicles long before even the oil embargo fiasco of the seventies.

Obama mentioned that we could save more fuel by keeping the tires on our cars properly inflated and by keeping our vehicles properly maintained and tuned. He is right. But the wingnuts are so out of touch with reality that the claim sounded outrageous to them and they all jumped on it and started using it as a point of derision apparently without even looking up the facts. They are the same shit heads that hated seat belts and air bags and women voting.

Those facts are published damn near everywhere but in the bible. It is in almost every owner's manual for every car sold in the country for the last 30 years or more. Every auto club and every consumer organization that has anything to do with saving money or sensible living has published it. It is the number one driving tip in the world. And the amount of fuel we would save is in fact more than we can produce from all of the drill now drill here save our ass claims. So no wonder the assholes missed it.

There simply is no room in their certainty crippled minds for one fucking fact. The GOP has now thoroughly embarrassed itself by having their blowhard mouthpieces repeat it as ridicule all over the airwaves today, and even sending tire gauges to reporters with a note saying it is Obama's energy plan as if they had finally found some fault in him worth ridicule. No worries tho. They will never correct this lie either. They and their kind are too insecure to do anything but stay the coarse.

Time lays it on them. The tire gauge solution is no joke and there is more good info there than you will ever hear from all of your con friends combined. They are too busy selling each other pyramid diet and alternative cancer treatment schemes and being failures.