It’s going to be an interesting two weeks. Mary and I are moving in August. I have to get things for the high school summer camp. I started The Weekly Muse, and I’m getting ready to get a podcast up and running once I figure out the software. In the meantime, expect articles on time and general weirdness on the Facebook page and the Twitter feed.
And now, on to the randomness!
Who are the most violent people in the world? The answer might surprise you.
Herman Cain, a man who has whined about race more times than anyone in recent memory, now claims it should be legal to ban mosques from being built. His rationale? Islam combines government and religion and is therefore illegal. By that reasoning, his party’s insistence on combining the Bible of law would make THEM illegal.
The Thing stands as one of the great horror films of the 80′s a truly disturbing movie where anyone could be the enemy. The paranoia made it awesome. That being said, and given my caution when it comes to sequels or remakes of classic works, I’m actually a little optimistic about the prequel, strangely also titled The Thing. Here’s the first trailer, and let’s hope it doesn’t suck.
The new photos from the reboot of Spidermanhave me thinking that they might actually know what they’re doing. Spidey looks, well, like he does in the comic. The costume changes are odd, but at least they have web shooters!
And finally… some of you already saw this, but here’s the official, cleaned-up version of the first teaser for Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises. Please, dear gods of the four winds, do not let this get threequel rot. I will hunt people down with a fork.
Ann Coulter may laugh when someone brings up racism since she believes racism no longer exists. It’s possible to say that we’ve cleared away a lot of the old racism, but racism is still here. Yes, we elected a black president, but that gets rid of racism much like going to college means you develop common sense.
It just doesn’t happen.
The wave of Islamophobia moving across the country, everything from the Park51 project, to the vandalized mosques across the country, and even to the new “high birther” comments from Mike “Selective Outrage” Huckabee, show that racism is alive and well. We once targeted Catholics, the Irish, and Jews, and blamed the country’s problems on minority groups with little to no representation or way to get their message out.
And if you think Islamophobia is just a legitimate concern over real terrorism, then please explain this video.
In case you skipped it, we now have video of two state representatives saying, among other things, that they would be willing to let Muslims go to paradise by force (do I have to spell it out) and that they were proud of the protestors.
Yes, I can see how you would be proud of protestors heckling and shouting insults at women and children a worthy cause.
Women and children… This was a fundraiser to build a women’s shelter and help the poor. Now, granted, one of the speakers was linked to the 1993 WTC bombings and has some anti-Semitic viewpoints, but does that taint the entire group?
I know Mexicans who would love to invade Texas. Does that make me dangerous radical because I too hail from the land of tequila?
Of course not. My anarcho-humanist tendencies and the fact that I know how to build an A-bomb with smoke detectors is what makes me dangerous.
And for the twelve federal agencies monitoring internet content, that last line was a joke.
Watch that video again. Multiculturalism is bad. Islam is bad. Muslims all support terrorism. Muslim men beat their wives. Muslims are pedophiles. Death is the only solution.
This is the mentality of the Far Right, but it’s only because the Far Right doesn’t mind being exposed. It doesn’t care what others think of it. There are people who espouse similar beliefs and cloak them under the guise of academics and logic.
And finally, I am not a fan of Apple products in general. I like iTunes and my iPod. That’s about it. And yes, I’ve worked on Macbooks and used Apple products for work. Don’t like them. Don’t like the iPad, so I really got a kick out of this little video… Anyway, I’ll see you Friday. Keep sharing links, folks!
It’s amazing the things you learn when you listen to people you disagree with.
It seems I’ve been a murderous psychopath for most of my life. After years of watching horror movies and seeing kids get dismembered, I finally snapped and went on a killing spree that left hundreds dead. The gore and viscera clung to my machete as I inspected the grim scene before me. Exposure to this one obviously isolated part of my life had turned me into a mindless killer.
And then I stopped watching Fox and remembered how stupid Bill O’Reilly can be. For the last few weeks, he’s been going on about this “Muslim problem” in the world. It goes something like this: most of the foreign danger right now comes from terrorists who are Muslim. Therefore, Islam is contributing to our problems and those of other nations. Moderate Muslims are not speaking out, he says, and so the religion itself is the problem.
If you believe that, then you also believe we have a science problem, a white guy problem, a black guy problem, and a myriad of other problems in this country.
Taking a small sample of a whole and using it judge or make a generalization about the entire group is called what, folks? Racism? Stupid? It doesn’t matter. This is the mentality that takes isolated incidents and applies the resulting conclusions to the entire group. Minorities, art, and religion have all, at one time or another, been targets of this kind of myopic thinking.
Let’s look at O’Reilly first. Yes, a lot of the people who are threatening the country right now are Muslim and they claim their religion is one of the main causes for this hatred. However, how many Muslims are there in the world? I think at last count it was close to a billion. Maybe more. And how many of them are plotting to kill us? A small fraction. The religion’s been perverted and twisted into something that most Muslims would never embrace and yet Bill here thinks it HAS to be the religion that’s the problem.
I guess it wouldn’t have made sense to claim that it was the brown skin that made them do it. Or the heat.
It’s the same way violent video games and movies keep getting blamed every time some kid grabs a gun or does something equally stupid, even if said kid says it’s something he saw in a game, or a movie, or something else. How many people watch horror movies every year in this country alone? How many people are playing Call of Duty, Halo, and other games where you can put a nice armor-piercing round through some n00b’s head?
Violent video games don’t make psychos any more than horror movies make killers or Islam creates mass-murderers. They just help give an excuse for the behavior. I’ve watched horror movies and played violent games for years and I’ve never done anything like this, and I guarantee that 99.9999% of the people who also do this share the same track record.
This also brings up a question artists need to ask themselves. What impact will our work have on the audience? There is no shortage of lunatics who claim to have been inspired by books, music, and movies. I’m sure Lennon and McCartney shuddered when Charles Manson said he was inspired by Helter Skelter. As I’m writing Charcoal Streets, I wonder if anyone will take some unintended message from my work. I wonder if someone will read “Designer Drug” and find justification for drug abuse. In the right light, any of these stories might trigger a very undesirable reaction in the right kind of individual.
There are really, really dumb people in the world. I mean, they make you feel like you could win a Nobel or edit Wikipedia for spelling errors in one hour. Take O’Reilly, for example. In his mind, he sees Muslims threatening us, so the religion must be the problem. Funny how he doesn’t think the economic collapse was a white guy problem or how the overcrowding in our prisons is a black and Hispanic problem.
Maybe he does. I don’t know.
It’s just safer to blame the minority, isn’t it?
All these excuses (religion, movies, books, music) tell us more about the person making the accusation than the actual work itself. I know more about O’Reilly than I do about Islam based on his remarks. I know more about people who say music speaks to them and tells them to kill or hate than I do about the music.
That’s the wonderful thing about actually listening to other people talk about their beliefs. They tell you so much without knowing it sometimes.
Speaking of the think-tank that is Fox News… I know I posted this on the Facebook page yesterday, but I had to repost it. Glenn Beck, who does not even understand the mechanism for evolution (whether he believes it or not) thinks he can explain QUANTUM PHYSICS to us and how it is part of the progressive conspiracy. This is a man who has admitted he does not have anything amounting to a formal education. People who do, people who spend their entire lives studying advanced physics and the workings of the universe still have trouble grasping some of these concepts and Glenn “I Learned in a Library” Beck thinks HE can do better?!
A straight couple was denied a civil union in what can only be described as the greatest blow to heterosexual couples since gay couples were allowed to marry in some parts of the world… Or something like that. See, the couple wants the legal benefits but not the “marriage” part. The British government says it can’t do that. So… it’s okay for gay couples, but not good enough for straight couples. How telling…
I like Dakota Fanning. I think she’s a good actress and, if she stays out of the Lohan-Olsen trail, she should do just fine. She’s also apparently awesome enough to be crowned homecoming queen twice. And she’s a senior at 16.
Are those healthy carrots just too full of vitamins and minerals for you? Fry the fraker and make carrot bacon!
I really don’t like using Macs. I’ll admit part of it is unfamiliarity with the system, but the other is the way you really have no control over fixing something broken short of sending it off somewhere. I like doing my own repairs. Anyway, this blogger apparently went from Mac to PC and found the experience… nice.
How can Optimus Prime possibly be any cooler? Could he ride a T-Rex into battle? Run for president? How about a steampunk-inspired Optimus Prime? He’s not just a truck… he’s a freakin’ TRAIN!
I keep talking about the coming robot apocalypse and how we seem to be helping it along… and now we find out that robots think humans are bacon. No lie. A robot designed to taste wine and food scanned a human and read it as pork. Yup. Forget about plugging us into the Matrix for fuel. The machines are just going to eat us.
Olbermann got suspended for making political contributions, was brought back, and started his show yesterday like THIS. I have my disagreements with the man, but I’ll say this… He knows how to do his job. That was hilarious.
And finally… I know this is three years old, but do you know a snooty rich wench who thinks she’s better than you because she’s white and married wealthy? Well, now you can teach her a few… important Spanish phrases to help with the illegal immigrants she hired. Trust me. It’s a Spanish lesson you don’t want to miss.
The fact that we even have to defend the so-called "Ground Zero mosque" is proof of just how ignorant our countrymen have become.
Do I really have to talk about the mosque story? Really?
Okay, I’m not going to go over the obvious refutations like the fact that it’s not anywhere near Ground Zero or that the imam in charge has actually helped with counter-terrorist efforts. Let’s jump right past the part where people are screaming about the Middle East funding this when Fox is also funded, in a major way, by the same people.
All over the country, people are protesting the building of new mosques. The main fear is that these mosques will be used as training grounds for terrorism, because, as we all know, that’s what mosques do. Kind of how Catholic churches train pedophiles. Or how colleges make progressive terrorists.
The point isn’t even about the mosque’s location. It’s about racism. Plain and simple. If you know someone is against this construction, ask them this question.
“Who is responsible for the 9/11 attacks?”
It wasn’t the Muslim community, and yet I had a very long debate with someone who agreed with me and insisted it didn’t make a difference. He said that while it was a small group of radicals, they’d tainted the rest and we needed to act accordingly.
Wow. I’d never heard anyone outline their racism so eloquently.
That’s what this is all about. People are forgetting that while the hijackers were Muslim, they were not representative of the more than one billion Muslims on the planet. Going back to the Catholic analogy, yes, Catholic priests did molest children, but they were not representative of all Catholicism. Unless, of course, you believe we should ban Catholics from building churches near schools, parks, and residential areas.
The worst part of all this is that it’s part of a pattern. America goes through this every few decades. Lincoln was accused of being Catholic at a time when many in America were Protestant. Franklin D. Roosevelt was accused of being a Jew. Now, Obama is accused of being a Muslim.
Every few decades, we find a new group to blame. And every few decades, we see the error in our ways and that group finds itself fully integrated into American society. Try finding anyone mainstream who makes Jews or Catholics the targets of society’s problems.
That’s not to say Muslims aren’t already integrated into American society. After all, Muslims died on 9/11, too. They hold prayer services at the Pentagon, an ACTUAL site of one of the 9/11 attacks. I understand racism. I understand where it comes from.
If you’re reading this and you don’t think Muslims have the right to build a mosque that close to Ground Zero or anywhere else in this country, I have a few things to ask you.
Should we ban white people from being anywhere segregation was practiced? The harm they did to generations of blacks is monumental. Treating an entire race as second-class citizens, lynching, and otherwise shunning others to the lowest levels of society impacted millions.
Are Japanese or Japanese-descended Americans allowed in Hawaii? You probably don’t want them anywhere near Peal Harbor even though a sizable percentage of the Hawaiian population is Japanese or descended from them. And by the way, there is a Shinto temple not far from Pearl Harbor.
Can blacks vote? Even though the voter intimidation story was blown out of proportion, there really is a New Black Panther party. Seeing as how a few thugs tried to intimidate voters, can blacks still vote?
Given that some of our soldiers in the Middle East engaged in war crimes by killing civilians, should we never again allow military personnel to work with civilians? Maybe we can make large groups of former soldiers and marines to work construction since we can’t trust them with non-combatants.
People screaming that Muslims are showing callousness by building this mosque think they’re being insulted because the protestors believe ALL Muslims are to blame. If I were racist and hated blacks and demanded that blacks move away from my home, would I be well within my rights to say I was the grieved party because they would not bow to my ignorance and racism?
Like I said, we’ve gone through this before. Before we get to the links, though, I want to show you something.
Every generation seems to find something to fear. Communists. The Civil Rights Movement. Immigrants. Gays. Whatever. This video is from 1947 and it shows just the kind of fracturing that Fox, Beck, Bachmann, Palin, Limbaugh, and all these other wastes of skin are creating. I’m probably breaking Godwin’s Law, but I’d like to create Martin del Campo’s Law, an updated version.
Once you compare someone to a terrorist, you fail. Terrorists: they’re like Nazis for the 21st century.
Watch for the moment where one man in the crowd is all for “reclaiming America,” one second… only to realize HE’S suddenly become the enemy.
And now time for links! Because we could ALL use a good laugh.
One more quick New York City mosque story. Glenn Beck has been one of the more vocal voices demonizing this project, and yet, four years ago, he applauded and endorsed the imam in charge! Need we say more about this money-whore?
If this study showing that Darwin was wrong about evolution proves correct, I guarantee that creationists will jump on it and declare evolution dead. However, this new study claims that Darwin was simply wrong about what causes evolution. It claims that the need for more space, not necessarily competition, caused adaptation.
Who doesn’t love the gay community? Not me. It’s sad we still need to fight for gay rights and equality, but at least we get to enjoy some VERY funny protest signs.
Want to learn how to create a temperature half as hot as the surface of the sun in a soda bottle and learn some science at the same time? Check out Thunderf00t’s new video on YouTube.
Remember a few years ago when everyone got real excited about wine being good for you? Guess what? Now rave drugs are also good for you! When the study comes out that proves tequila increases your life span, I’m celebrating until I forget what I was celebrating.
And finally, just when you thought you had to work hard to make it in this world… it’s now reported in various outlets that the Situation, one of the d-bags from Jersey Shore, will make $5 million this year. That’s right. Let that sink in, and I’ll see you on Friday.
