Saturday, December 17, 2011

Christopher Hitchens 1949-2011

Some of my favorite Christopher Hitchens clips...




The Munk Debate between Hitchens and Tony Blair is free for the weekend.  After that you'll have to find it on YouTube.

Monday, November 28, 2011

Prefectly safe...

This looks perfectly safe...the link is to Paypal...right...


(look at the bottom ^^^ )

Saturday, November 12, 2011

Almost cheaper then rent...


I was bored, so I came up with a schedule for the Amtrak USA Rail Pass.  45 days or 18 segments (whichever comes first) for $829. A segment ends when you get off a train or Amtrak bus.  Unfortunately it involves some overnight stays.  That would drive the cost up.  Someday I'll try to come up with another scenario that involves less or no overnight stays. I can picture how I would figure it out.  I would need a large white board, a video projector, a variety of Post-it Notes, and a machine that goes "bing".


Seg Route From To Time Time Start/End Day
1 Empire Builder MSP Portland Fri 23:15 Sun 01:40 Stay overnight 0 3
2 Coast Starlight PDX LA Sun 14:25 Mon 21:00 2 night stay 3 4
3 Sunset Ltd LAX New Orleans Wed 15:00 Fri 14:55 Stay overnight 6 8
4 Crescent NOL NY Penn Sta. Sat 07:00 Sun 13:48 9 10
5 Silver Meteor NYP Miami Sun 15:15 Mon 16:15 Stay overnight 10 11
6 Silver Star MIA Wash. DC Tue 11:50 Wed 15:14 12 13
7 Capitol Ltd WAS Chicago Wed 16:05 Thu 08:45 13 14
8 California Zephyr CHI Emeryville, CA Thu 14:00 Sat 16:10 14 16
9 San Joaquin EMY Bakersfield Sat 18:00 Sat 23:56 Stay overnight 16 16
10 Bus 3612 BFD Barstow Sun 13:50 Sun 15:55 17 17
11 SW Chief BAR Chicago Sun 21:56 Tue 15:15 17 19
12 City of New Orleans CHI New Orleans Tue 20:00 Wed 15:32 2 night stay 19 20
13 Sunset Ltd NOL San Antonio Fri 11:55 Sat 03:00 22 23
14 Texas Eagle SAS Chicago Sat 07:00 Sun 13:52 23 24
15 Lake Shore Ltd-BOS CHI Boston Sun 21:30 Mon 21:10 Stay overnight 24 25
16 Crescent BOS Charlottesville VA Tue 08:15 Tue 19:23 Stay overnight 26 26
17 Cardinal CVS Chicago Wed 13:55 Thu 10:05 27 28
18 Empire Builder CHI Minneapolis Thu 14:15 Thu 22:31 28 28

Thursday, September 22, 2011

The Star Wars Talk

I'm glad I don't have to worry about having 'the Talk'...

Sunday, August 28, 2011

This should be a crime

Giving smallpox infected blankets to Native Americans = using homeopathy to treat Africans... a lot of people are going to die.


It's one thing to sell a product that claims to have magical curative powers to people in developed first world countries were we can say "They should have known better" and "They could have checked the Internet to find out that it doesn't work". But to do this in rural Tanzania‽ This particular quack has started the "Homoeopathy for Health in Africa" project, "specifically intended to help patients with AIDS". In 2008 he claimed to have treated 40 people with AIDS, one of whom was totally negative. He is going back to Tanzania to put more lives at risk do more research. Homeopathy/homoeopathy doesn't work, there is no way it can work, there is no reason it should work. It might have made sense a long time ago, now it should be laughed at along with other primitive and archaic practices like bloodletting, using leeches, chiseling holes in the head to let out evil spirits and tobacco smoke enema's.

Tanzania...there is no reason why you have to accept people like this as doctors. They are not medical doctors and they do not have the best interests of your citizens in mind. It would benefit you greatly if you passed laws (or enforced them if they already exist) regarding practicing medicine without a license. A homeopath (also spelled homoeopath) is NOT a medical doctor, even if they do put Dr. in front of their name. While your at it...naturopaths (ND's or Dr. of naturopathy) are not medical doctors (MD's) either. Don't be fooled! Stop these people at the airport and put them on the next plane home before they cause any more damage.

Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Boiron and Oscillococcinum: fairy dust diluted out of (non)existence

You know the details of how homeopathy is supposed to work, right? If not review this and come back when you're done...


That was the serious version, this is the not so serious version...


Boiron, a company that sells homeopathic nostrums, has threatened Italian blogger Samuele Riva who dared point out that there is no active ingredient in Oscillococcinum (which anyone can see by understanding basic chemistry, how homeopathy works, and reading the back of the package).

Many people don't know what homeopathy is or say "What's the Harm?" and it is showing up on more and more pharmacy shelves, like Walmart, CVS, Target. So I'm posting this not only to contribute to the Streisand Effect, but also to raise awareness of the fact that there are major retailers selling homeopathic products.

And to the people at Boiron... if you want me to link to your site instead of the other sites when I'm talking about Oscillococcinum, then that would be advertising and I expect a large sum of money. If you want bloggers to give up our free speech rights, and not say bad things about you when it's in the public interest, then you can take all that money, put it in a blender and grind it up to dust. Then put a ml of it into 99 ml of water (hope that water doesn't have any memories of money that might have been in it before), do the magical shake-shake-shake...take 1 ml of that put it into a different 99 ml of water, repeat the shaking... repeat that about 200 times and send that last 100 ml to me...I'll be the richest person in the Universe!

* The thing in the title about "fairy dust diluted out of (non)existence" comes from Steven Novella's article at Science Based Medicine about Oscillococcinum.

** Time Magazine seems to agree. Homeopathic flu remedies is the #1 thing they say you should stop buying. I didn't mention that Oscillococcinum is being sold to treat "influenza-like symptoms". Many people might mistake that to mean that it treats influenza, which isn't what it's claiming. There are homeopaths who claim there are homeopathic treatments for influenza, which should be a crime. It can be dangerous to lead people to believe that it treats the flu...people die from the flu.

Sunday, June 19, 2011

One nation, indivisible...

During some golf game on NBC today there was a spot where they had the Pledge of Allegiance, but they forgot a few parts. They left out "indivisible", but you won't hear conservatives caring about that to much. But they also left out "under god". Oh my! It's the end of the world, this is obviously a sign of the end times, the commies are taking over, the Obama run government broadcasting corp is trying to take your faith away (apparently, your not going to be able to go to church next week).

Porky Pig knows how to say the Pledge of Allegiance...they should have checked this before making their video...


Then again, wasn't it the pigs in Animal Farm that were the start of all the problems...

Saturday, June 11, 2011

Twin Cities Free Movies 2011

I haven't had time to enter the free movies in the calendar this year, but I still get lots of hits from people looking for it. So I'll just add events with links to the Minneapolis and St. Paul movies at the top of each month. If there are other lists I find I'll add those. If anyone knows of any leave them in the comments.


If you have iCal or compatible calendar program try these links, iCal or XML.

Friday, May 20, 2011

End times warning....

No, I'm not suggesting that the rapture will happen tomorrow and the world will end on Oct. 21st. That's ridiculous. So you might say "What's the harm...May 22nd will come around and these people will realize that they were all wrong, they will look up a local freethought group and they will get on with living a happy well adjusted life.

Check out this profile of a true believer from Huffington Post (or just cheat and watch the video like I did).


If Harold Camping goes into hiding on May 22nd, this guy in the video is going to assume that he has been left behind. Then he might start to think his wife might still have a chance and his unborn baby should of course be able to get into heaven. I fear for her life. If anyone knows Marcia Paladines, make sure she is safe. If you don't think a person could come to such a conclusion look no further than Andrey Yates, which had nothing to do with an end time prediction.

Sunday, April 17, 2011

Thank you very much...

"China 'to overtake US on science' in two years" - BBC, 28 March 2011

<sarcasm>
Thank you...thank you very very very very very much young earth (and old earth) creationist wackaloons.
</sarcasm>

And I shouldn't forget to mention the moderate/liberal Christians who don't speak up when they see fundamentalist Christians trying to sabotage science in our country, and worse see it as a personal attack when atheists speak up about it.