RCimT: Catch-up

I told you last time I still had a ton of crap in my tabs. It’s exploding again, so here we go, one more time. (I really gotta stop ctrl-clicking on everything interesting!)

First up and above the fold, Stephanie Zvan got good-but-complicated news with regard to her biopsy, suggesting the lesions she has on her cervix are not invasive cancer and can be treated. The blogosphere heaves a collective sigh of relief.

Much more below the fold.

Go vote on this poll: Will intelligent design harm conservatism? I only hope conservatives will get the message so the Democrats can have an opposition party that’s at least moderately sane, so the Blue Dogs and the sane Republicans can join forces and bring some balance to the overton window for the first time in years.

Someone fixed that ridiculous Jesus-holding-the-Constitution fan-fic painting. The original which, while well-painted, was probably painted with the jism of the religious right and is obviously no reflection of reality whatsoever. This one’s much MUCH better. Don’t look directly at the centre though, you might go mad.

One of the awesomest pictures to come out of Iran in the history of, uh, ever.

Phil Plait expounds on a new Creationist tactic — though he says it’s about them “telling the truth”. They’re not. They’re taking facts that otherwise would be terribly inconvenient to their young-universe theories like dark matter and black holes, and lying about their provenance.

A major mystery about histones, the proteins that fold and package DNA, has been solved. That mystery being how God invented them while intelligently designing everything, I assume.

Harvey Milk posthumously wins the Presidential Medal of Freedom in an effort to keep the gays placated long enough so Obama doesn’t have to spend political capital juuuuuust yet to have Don’t-Ask-Don’t-Tell repealed. That’s one promise you’d better not renege on. That, nor closing Gitmo, nor getting the hell out of Iraq and Afghanistan. You have three years and three months, at least — seven and three if you make enough progress by halfway. I know you have only had 9 months to get shit done, but some wheels could start turning sooner rather than later.

Here’s a street debate between Ray “Bananaman” Comfort and some guy named Bruce The Atheist — and damn he’s good. Comfort dodges and quotes scripture rather than answering any (or most) of his questions.

I spoke recently about donating my body to science. Some people apparently don’t have that option, when their parents are religious. Thankfully I’m estranged to my mother and it’s starting to look that way with Dad as well, so it’s not like I’ll have any obstacles to this. Science if my body’s not too mangled to be of use, cremation otherwise. Mark it, please. Especially with the “don’t kill sentient life” crowd looking to kill me (presumably because I’m not sentient).

Polish clergy aren’t looking TOO deeply into this one: a priest accidentally dropped a eucharist, washed it off in “holy” water, and it turned red. Turns out the “cracker” was a piece of human heart, after testing. Sounds to me like murder — and an ironic cover-up, people thinking they’re eating body-of-Christ when they’re actually getting liver-of-Carl. The church is pushing hard for it to be declared a miracle. A rationalist squad is pushing hard for the damn thing to be investigated just in case, you know, it turns out someone was murdered. Who will win this fight?

Daniel Maldonado and Zdenny both answer my reply to Daniel’s reply to Vizhnet’s reply to Zdenny’s comments on one of Vizhnet’s videos. Yeah. It’s that meta. I’m only linking what I linked, figure out the rest of the links by going down the rabbit hole. My sur-replies are… well, somewhere. I haven’t gotten to them yet. Suffice it to say Daniel does a lot of hand-waving and statements of “well that’s just your opinion, and since I said that about the above as well, I’ve logically disproven your points”, and Zdenny doesn’t know what “incompatibility” means. Nor difference. Nor logic.

Some great arguments against a global flood here. Not that there were ever great arguments FOR a global flood, but for some reason, non-Christians are expected to disprove their failed hypothesis. Again. That seems to happen more than it should, in fact.

Commenters and all-around cool people are joining the trend I’ve obviously set (because you’re totally doing it because I did it, even if my post came out after yours!). Canucklehead participated today in Blog Action Day ’09, as did Julie at Attempts. Do pay them a visit.

… And there’s still more. Enough probably for another post tomorrow. Which is good, cause I don’t think I’ll have much time to do much intertubing and I gotta keep the streak alive.

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RCimT: Catch-up
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