Month: October 2009

Epic footgun is epic

Jason Thibeault6 Comments

As covered elsewhere, Twitter is ABSOLUTELY ASPLODE with controversy over the present number-one trending topic of the past, oh, six hours or so: No God.

Sadly, this was started by @RevRunWisdom, an extraordinarily popular reverend that spouts pithy catch-phrases for the sheep to regurgitate. He tweeted “Know God… Know Peace. No God.. No Peace.” Christians took it upon themselves to retweet this in a number of variations, some transposing the two, some changing punctuation. Atheists talk about there being no god at all, quite frequently. Some people use “god” and “no” in the same tweet; moreso than those that use all four words.

The result? “No God” gets the trend, the rest falls by the wayside. Atheists explode with delight, as, despite several attempts, no atheist memes had ever made it to the trending topics, and this one was handed to us by the theists, raising awareness that “no god” is an option like no other Twitter-based campaign yet.

Other blogosperoids are covering the events:
Attempts at Rational Behavior
Petursey
de-conversion
Blag Hag
Daily Atheist

Enjoy the trainwreck!

Epic footgun is epic
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SCO to Darl: “You’re FIRED!”

Jason Thibeault, , , 2 Comments

Ars Technica reports a bit of news for which I cannot but help a measure of schadenfreude: Darl McBride, architect of the “sue Linux” strategy that’s put SCO in the crapper and destroyed its international reputation, has been ousted as CEO. And yet, the zombie shambles ever onward, continuing the present litigations even though they’ve reorganized half a dozen times already and still haven’t managed to settle all their debts or close all their outstanding grievances.

Even after SCO’s deception was exposed and the company effectively lost its case, Darl McBride continued to insist that the company has evidence of System V code in Linux. No such evidence has been presented and McBride’s argument directly contradicts testimony given by other SCO executives. McBride’s stubborn detachment from reality has made him a subject of ridicule in the Linux community.

The SEC filing indicates that SCO COO Jeff Hunsaker and CFO Ken Nielsen will assume the responsibility of managing SCO in collaboration with the trustee. The company does not intend to name a new CEO. Additional details of the restructuring plan are said to be forthcoming, but the company says that it has undertaken several cost-cutting measures including a “a modest reduction in SCO’s workforce” and the sale of additional assets.

In a statement issued by SCO’s new leadership, the company indicates that it plans to continue its litigation efforts and will move forward with the appeals process. The company also says that it plans to continue supporting its UNIX products. This potentially indicates that SCO has given up on trying to unload its UnixWare assets, a plan that has fallen through several times now as various proposed deals have evaporated.

PJ at Groklaw will have to hold off on putting on her red dress a little while longer.

SCO to Darl: “You’re FIRED!”

Kicking, biting and screaming

Jason Thibeault

A man with Tourettes’ syndrome takes a two weeks vacation in Anchorage to visit his step-mother. Said step-mother later reports he’d been acting unusual and violent in the course of the vacation. While on a plane trip back, he acts unruly — kicking people repeatedly, refusing to listen to directions from the flight attendants, quoting Bible passages at people repeatedly and loudly, refusing to allow the window-seat passenger by to get to the bathroom. He told the window-seat passenger, in fact, that his blood would be on her and he wouldn’t let her leave no matter what. He is later restrained by several flight attendants and, in the process of being so subdued, he tries to bite one of the other passengers on the leg. Once the flight is diverted to Nashville, police arrest the man and the flight continues on its way.

Guess which part of the story is getting everyone’s attention? Answer (and links) below the fold.

Continue reading “Kicking, biting and screaming” →

Kicking, biting and screaming

The Cure for Piss

Jason Thibeault

Homeopathy is complete tosh, total bollocks, as Crispian Jago demonstrates.

His corrections to the video are that he’s mispronouncing succusion, each glass should contain 99ml of water rather than 100ml (meaning his end succusion would be more potent, according to homeopaths, than 30C), and that if he were doing this the way the homeopaths do, he’d have been using a completely sterilized and clean pipette after each insertion.

All in all, I still would have drank the 30C dilution. Even with his mistakes. After rinsing the pipette that often, there’s likely not a molecule of urine in the end result. And if there is, well, every glass of water you drink has at least one molecule that’s passed through Oliver Cromwell’s bladder.

The Cure for Piss

Sabotaging the enemy

Jason Thibeault3 Comments

Microsoft recently put out .NET Framework 3.5, and silently included a plug-in for Mozilla Firefox. In so doing, they have apparently exposed Firefox to a crapload of attack vectors that exploit Microsoft’s buggy code, bringing Firefox down to the same level of insecurity as Internet Explorer.

To make matters worse, that framework is not an optional install for most users of Windows — it will install automatically as a recommended installation, silently, without prompts, under the default Vista security settings, and the default under Windows XP once you’ve explicitly enabled automatic updates (which is strongly recommended in the installation process). If you can’t beat the competition at security, just bring them down to your level. That’s the way Microsoft innovates, I guess!

Sabotaging the enemy

RCimT: Views on a probably nonexistent deity

Jason Thibeault, , , 1 Comment

More random crap in my tabs! Hooray! These are mostly about religion, as keeping with the Sunday trend.

Your Cool Atheist of the Week: Linus Torvalds, famous for… something. I dunno.

Margie: How about religion?

Linus: Hmmmm, completely a-religious — atheist. I find that people seem to think religion brings morals and appreciation of nature. I actually think it detracts from both. It gives people the excuse to say, “Oh, nature was just created”, and so the act of creation is seen to be something miraculous. I appreciate the fact that, “Wow, it’s incredible that something like this could have happened in the first place.” I think we can have morals without getting religion into it, and a lot of bad things have come from organized religion in particular. I actually fear organized religion because it usually leads to misuses of power.

Links are below the fold!

Continue reading “RCimT: Views on a probably nonexistent deity” →

RCimT: Views on a probably nonexistent deity

Here comes a new challenger

Jason Thibeault

Some Sunday afternoon link love to another fresh new atheist blog by @Petursey, another atheist Twitterer lured by the siren call of being able to blog in more than 140 characters. He’s got a good chunk of content up already, including some beautiful pictures of his beautiful bitch. (If that don’t entice you to pay him a visit, I don’t know what will!)

I’ve already pre-warned him that certain trollish elements might show up as a result of this. He says the more the merrier, so feel free to go and try to convert him, as you folks are wont to do.

Here comes a new challenger

RCimT: Saturday mostly-science! (plus politics)

Jason Thibeault, , , 1 Comment

Some more Random Crap! You love these, admit it.

A skeptical take on neti pots came in handy battling some ridiculous forwards about them being good prophylactics against H1N1.

There was a bolide explosion over the Netherlands, and Phil Plait points us to where to find photos. Amazing pictures!

This picture absolutely floored me today — some of the moons hardly look bigger than motes of dust on this very long, mostly black image, but the Mars Observatory got Earth and Jupiter in the same frame.

The LHC is fully cooled once more, and prepares to re-enter Science! mode. Put your goggles on!

Back Street Boys? In an office environment? Sung by nerds? Possibly powerful. Probably funny.

Proof that Falcon Heene’s dad is a duplicitous fucker, and a bit of a nutbar to boot. Now can we stop feeding his attention whore nature?

Allegations have emerged that General McChrystal, handpicked by Obama to end the Afghanistan war, was involved in the cover-up of the real reasons behind Pat Tillman’s super-suspicious death.

Simon Singh won an appeal in the fight against the British Chiropractic Association after he decried their practice of pimping out “bogus” neck-cracking-based remedies for colic, ear infections, asthma and other issues in children. Apparently he ran afoul of British libel laws, despite everything he said being science-based — e.g. the BCA made claims they couldn’t back up, he called them on it, they went crying to the courts. Keep fighting, Mr. Singh, we’re all pulling for you.

Scientific testing on mice suggests we may soon be able to induce a quasi-suspended-animation merely by administering certain combinations of gases to patients prior to surgery, providing surgeons much, MUCH longer to perform delicate operations. We know what gases are to be used on some smaller animals, and more research needs to be done before we can use this to help perform surgeries on larger animals like cats, dogs, monkeys and humans.

CNN scuttled an anti-Lou Dobbs ad, paid for by progressives enraged that his primary focus is constantly on those damn dirty brown people coming up from Mexico despite all the millions of issues America faces, and despite there not only being very few Mexicans actually entering the country illegally, the ones that do don’t seem to be much of a burden on your society.

Obama proclaims that he is “just getting started”, and that he won’t brook any more obstructionism from certain elements. ‘Bout time someone on the side of reason grew a bit of a backbone. Now, if you could “get started” on some of your more long-standing and pressing promises, that’d be great. You have a supermajority in the senate, why not just steamroll the obstructionists a few times? Why do you keep allowing bills to be gutted (and by gutted I mean reduced to nothing more than platitudes and pats on the head)?

Let’s see if I can squeeze one more post out of this tab collection. I’m almost through it all! If only I could stop clicking on Twitter links…

RCimT: Saturday mostly-science! (plus politics)

Microwave Vs Grapes

Jason Thibeault3 Comments

A short video taken by Opal of me exacting revenge on Jodi’s behalf against some grapes.

L’Acadie Blanc, specifically. Two of them, stem-holes facing one another, sitting on top of a drinking glass, per suggestions at this site. Yay plasma!

A bit anticlimactic though, with just two sparks. If I wasn’t so afraid of destroying this microwave (like the two Magic Chefs that preceded it), I’d do some more experimentation.

Microwave Vs Grapes