December 2010
30 posts
32 GB versus 32GB: Almost everyone is writing it... →
I always wondered which was the correct way.
Hate-spewing “Christians” need to listen up →
Second, your “religion” is a myth. It’s bogus. Jesus did not die and rise from the tomb and ascend into heaven. Okay? That. Did. Not. Happen. God did not take the form of a little bird and fly down and impregnate an unwed teenage virgin girl so that she could give birth to a half-human half-divine man-god. Immaculate conception, virgin birth, raising people from the dead, walking on water,...
The Day I Bought $15,000 →
Bingo. I wasn’t planning to go anywhere, but I did have a credit card with a high limit and a cash back rewards program. All it took was some quick math to realize I could make $300 to help pay for my new computer for what seemed like very little work. I’d have to cross my fingers a little and try something new, but I liked the idea.
The Legacy of the Self-Made Man →
Prior to the industrial revolution, status in most societies was based on one thing only: heredity. No matter how much you accomplished - or didn’t - you stayed in the same station of life.
This began to change a few hundred years ago, with the rise of classical liberalism and general shifts in the organization of society. Birthright was still important, but the merit of an individual’s...
Deepwater Horizon’s Final Hours →
Honeybees are found to interact with Quantum... →
Honeybees don’t have much in the way of brains. Their inch-long bodies hold at most a few million neurons. Yet with such meager mental machinery honeybees sustain one of the most intricate and explicit languages in the animal kingdom. In the darkness of the hive, bees manage to communicate the precise direction and distance of a newfound food source, and they do it all in the choreography...
A Holiday Message from Ricky Gervais: Why I’m An... →
But what are atheists really being accused of?
The dictionary definition of God is “a supernatural creator and overseer of the universe.” Included in this definition are all deities, goddesses and supernatural beings. Since the beginning of recorded history, which is defined by the invention of writing by the Sumerians around 6,000 years ago, historians have cataloged over 3700 supernatural...
How I got an uncooperative eBay buyer to pay for... →
I had tickets to a sporting event and couldn’t attend. I made a 1-day listing and clearly stated that the tickets must be picked up in person within 24 hours (the game was the evening after the auction ended, so there wasn’t any time to ship the tickets). A woman won the auction for about $600. The auction had ended at 10:00am and by 5:00pm she still hadn’t responded to my...
Study Confirms That Fox News Makes You Stupid →
The conclusion is inescapable. Fox News is deliberately misinforming its viewers and it is doing so for a reason. Every issue above is one in which the Republican Party had a vested interest. The GOP benefited from the ignorance that Fox News helped to proliferate. The results were apparent in the election last month as voters based their decisions on demonstrably false information fed to them...
Ignorance Comes with Consequences →
“And the same thing was true when I went to China. I was talking to the mayor of Shanghai, and I asked him about how he was doing recruiting teachers, given that they’ve got 25 million people in this one city. He said, ‘We don’t have problems recruiting teachers because teaching is so revered and the pay scales for teachers are actually comparable to doctors and other...
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What If Ice Cream Cost You Your Vision →
I suspect after awhile I would wonder if it were really true – does ice cream really cause me to lose vision, or did someone make that up to keep me from getting fat? Eventually, I would try it out. I would eat some ice cream and then look at some words to see if they were blurry. I’m guessing I would see just fine – 1% wouldn’t make that much difference. But just to be safe, I would only have...
Check. And. Mate. →
“It’s all these images and things from the eighties and early nineties, and it’s pretty awesome.” In spite of myself, I added with a rather copious amount of enthusiasm, “Yesterday, I saw a picture of the Swatch phone!”
She looked at me, blankly.
“You didn’t have a Swatch phone?” I couldn’t believe it. I mean, we both grew up in Los...
Naomi Wolf on rape, justice and Julian Assange →
In other words: Never in twenty-three years of reporting on and supporting victims of sexual assault around the world have I ever heard of a case of a man sought by two nations, and held in solitary confinement without bail in advance of being questioned — for any alleged rape, even the most brutal or easily proven. In terms of a case involving the kinds of ambiguities and complexities of...
WatchJulian Assange: Why the world needs WikiLeaks
Everyone needs to see this.
This is irony: U.S. to Host World Press Freedom... →
Not such wicked leaks →
For the celebrated novelist and intellectual Umberto Eco, the Wikileaks affair or “Cablegate” not only shows up the hypocrisy that governs relations between states, citizens and the press, but also presages a return to more archaic forms of communication.
Harry Stardust →
Spinal Tap's IMDB rating goes to eleven →
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