Month: December 2012

Maya Apocalypse Day Music Madness: Only The End of the World Again!

Dana Hunter6 Comments

Welcome to the Umpteen Thousandth Annual Apolcalypse! Brought to you by the Maya Long Count Calendar – and we all know that things carved in stone must be true. Never mind that people have based their idea that the end times are upon us on a cultural misunderstanding. Somehow, the fact that the Maya expected the world to continue after today never crosses their minds. Never mind that their doom scenarios are completely without foundation.

The small detail of end-of-world disaster scenarios being completely corny will not stop us from throwing end-times parties (because it’s Friday and damn it, we’ll take any excuse handy. Woo!). End-times parties need a soundtrack. I am here to provide. I also stand to lose ~90% of my readership if you all watch some of these videos sober, but I’m willing to take the risk, because they made me laugh.

Also, don’t forget: we have a very special Geopocalypse edition of the Accretionary Wedge up courtesy of Lockwood, and it has awesome content and valid points, so you lot who are stuck at work should absolutely read it while the clock ticks toward party time.

Soundtrack below the fold. Party on, my apocalyptically outstanding readership, party on! Continue reading “Maya Apocalypse Day Music Madness: Only The End of the World Again!” →

Maya Apocalypse Day Music Madness: Only The End of the World Again!
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New at Rosetta Stones: I Snark At the Media. Do Contain Your Surprise.

Dana Hunter5 Comments

Back to geology for a bit: our own RQ sent me some articles that got me started on Tolbachik and the media’s fractal wrongness. One thing I’ve learned during these last years of science writing: don’t trust science writing. Really don’t trust anything you see in the popular media, and take stuff written up by actual science writers with a grain of salt (or, if you’re watching your sodium intake, salt substitute). Yes, even mine. We can be wrong sometimes. But, happily, not as often as the mainstream media, which is filled with poor innocent journalists being asked to cover breaking news about things they know nothing about. It’s like asking me to cover a soccer game. What could go wrong is hilarious and horrible to those with more expertise.

Anyway. It was nice to do up a bit of geology, and I hope it proves to be a nice breather for all of you who have spent this week alternately crying and raging. Enjoy!

New at Rosetta Stones: I Snark At the Media. Do Contain Your Surprise.

A Child Armed Himself

Dana Hunter9 Comments

So there’s this, and it broke my heart. Good job, America. You’ve convinced eleven year-olds that they need to be armed and dangerous. And what happens when we arm children? They don’t know how to use a gun responsibly, so they wave it at people, and we have one more data point in the set that says guns don’t make you safer. At least it was unloaded.

Elsewhere in that article, after the tragedy of a child thinking he needed a firearm to be safe because we can’t get our violence under control, and we have gun nuts telling us the solution is more guns (conveniently forgetting Fort Hood, and all of the highly-trained people armed with guns there), we have an Attorney General-elect declaring fortifying schools is one possibility.

Ah, smell that Second Amendment freedom! We are free to live as if we are living in a war zone, because we’re not responsible enough to take the high-capacity clips and assault weapons away while we begin the long work of addressing the myriad factors that go into making this a culture where people with guns kill lots and lots of people.

“Well Regulated.” Image courtesy Rick Cooper (RickC) on Flickr.

I am disgusted beyond words with my country right now. Continue reading “A Child Armed Himself” →

A Child Armed Himself

Space and Time to Heal

Karen Locke2 Comments

If I can figure out how to do it, I want to post a delightfully science-ific parody of the “Gangnam Style” video here:

NASA Johnson Style

Okay, that didn’t seem to work.  But do click on the link, and enjoy a few minutes of sciency silliness.

Why?  Because I need time to think.  The first salvos against the USian violence culture are clear: keep assault-type weapons at gun ranges, and make mental health care easily accessible and a positive thing to access.  Just those will be difficult enough.  But Dana has called for nothing less than the eradication (or at least a great reduction) in the violence culture of our country, and thinking of ways to go about that makes my head hurt.

Meanwhile the video reminds me that there are lot of people doing good work for the sake of our country and our world.  They don’t negate the shooters of the country; they don’t reduce the violence.  But they do good, and in this climate, it’s proper to remember that some people go to work every day and do good (other than teachers; they go to work every day and do fantastic.)

Karen

Space and Time to Heal

A Few Important Items

Dana Hunter8 Comments

Before we get back to our a semblance of our normal routine, I want to share a few things with you.

First, for those who want to help the Sandy Hook families with funeral expenses and paying for counseling, Atheists Giving Aid has set up a fund. You can donate here.

Roses at Avery Park, Corvallis, OR
Roses at Avery Park, Corvallis, OR: A reminder there are still beautiful things in the world.

I will have some more substantial things to say at a later time. I do know one thing: things here will change. We’ll still have our fun and our geology and so forth, but you’ll see more of a focus on social justice issues than before. This latest mass shooting crystallized the entirety of A+ for me. The reason why we need movements like A+ is because we have so damned much to fix. As I’ve said repeatedly over the past few days, there’s no single way to prevent these shootings. Getting an assault weapons ban passed is just taking the keys out of the drunk person’s hand – it will probably reduce the incidence, but it won’t eradicate the causes. We will never completely solve these problems. That’s no reason not to begin somewhere. Continue reading “A Few Important Items” →

A Few Important Items

Cautious Optimism, and the Need for a Meaningful Boot

Dana Hunter5 Comments

You know, I didn’t expect anything. I figured a few random Democrats would poke their heads up and make some noise before getting the only-protruding-nails treatment and pounded back down, but we have a President with no reelection campaign and two young daughters, and he appears to be eyeing his hip waders and giving the Rubicon some meaningful looks.

Once stripped of the religious treacle, which was slathered on good and thick for the religious folk and gave not a single thought to the possibility that one or two of the bereaved may be nonbelievers, Obama proved that he has good words. Continue reading “Cautious Optimism, and the Need for a Meaningful Boot” →

Cautious Optimism, and the Need for a Meaningful Boot

Sunday Sorrow: What We Can Do

Dana Hunter11 Comments

No songs today. Something broke this time.

These mass killings have gone on since before I was born, and somehow I accepted them. Outrageous, horrible, tragic: can’t do anything about them in our gun-obsessed, health care-deprived, bullying, class-ridden society. Moving on, then.

Not this time.

These mass killings have gone on since before I was born. I want them to stop before I die.

And I will need your help. We are going to have to start pushing hard together for a great many things. Continue reading “Sunday Sorrow: What We Can Do” →

Sunday Sorrow: What We Can Do

Enough Children Have Died

Dana Hunter5 Comments

Enough children going to school, or out with their families, have died. Enough adults going to work, going out to eat, going shopping, going to the movies, have died. Enough people attending political rallies have died. Enough people have died.

It’s time to have a serious conversation as to why the United States has so many more of these shootings than anyone else.

It’s time to get serious about gun control.

It’s time we found the political will to face down the NRA and those who refuse to believe that regulating guns will solve anything, and make it much more diffcult for raging, hateful people to access the weapons they need for murder.

It’s time we found the political will to face down the cries of socialism and enact health care policies that will allow people to seek the help of a therapist when they can’t control their anger and hate on their own. It’s time we have the will to ensure that people who need help can get it, afford it, and will be judged as strong and good for seeking that help.

It’s time we stop excusing these killers as lone nuts, and start seeking real answers regarding their actions so that we can engage in real prevention. It’s time we had the courage to follow the evidence wherever it leads.

It’s time. It’s been time for a very long time.

I don’t want to see any more dead kids on my screen.

Contact your representatives. Tell them it’s time.

Control Arms campaigner David Grimason lays a photo of his son Alistair, who was killed by stray bullets in a gun fight, at the base of a mock tombstone. Control Arms coalition set up a mock graveyard next to the United Nations building in New York July 25, 2012. They are demonstrating as the negotiations for an Arms Trade Treaty comes to a close on Friday. Image and caption courtesy Control Arms/ Andrew Kelly
Control Arms campaigner David Grimason lays a photo of his son Alistair, who was killed by stray bullets in a gun fight, at the base of a mock tombstone. Control Arms coalition set up a mock graveyard next to the United Nations building in New York July 25, 2012. They are demonstrating as the negotiations for an Arms Trade Treaty comes to a close on Friday. Image and caption courtesy Control Arms/ Andrew Kelly

Link roundup and my letter to my Congresspeople below the fold. Continue reading “Enough Children Have Died” →

Enough Children Have Died

A Personal Post

Karen Locke11 Comments

I debated with myself for quite awhile before I decided to post this; it’s on the edge of being a little too personal.  But it illustrates my own feelings on compromise.

Today I gave a donation to my Catholic high school.  Yes, I was raised Catholic, and attended Catholic schools through senior high (though that was more because our local public schools were so bad than because my parents were concerned about my religious education). My high school was/is for girls only.   But I haven’t darkened the door of that school since 1976.  I’m currently an atheist humanist, and my opinion of the Catholic Church as an institution is so low it can’t be adequately expressed in a family blog.   So why give money to a Catholic high school? Continue reading “A Personal Post” →

A Personal Post

Friday Freethought: “It Is Not Worth While to Believe a Lie”

Dana Hunter3 Comments

Annie Besant may have left atheism for Theosophy later in life, but she was a firebrand before she met Blavatsky. Many of the things she said while she was palling around with Charles Bradlaugh, getting prosecuted for things like publishing books about birth control, and helping matchgirls form a union would not be out of place in the mouths of firey feminist gnu atheists today. Well, aside from the fact that her language is Victorian era. Her sentiments are assuredly not. Continue reading “Friday Freethought: “It Is Not Worth While to Believe a Lie”” →

Friday Freethought: “It Is Not Worth While to Believe a Lie”