I hate having to choose the lesser of two evils

So two years ago I voted for my congressman, Gerry Connolly, for several reasons; one of which his campaigns response to my question to his campaign concerning seperation of church and state especially in regards to science education.  Now, 2 years later, all I see from him are adds touting his anti-tax conservative bonafides.  Now I know it's too much to ask for a progressive in Virginia...but really must my candidate campaign in a way that makes me completely unexcited to vote for him?  If his opponent wasn't completely bat shit insane I would actually be worried.

The case for agressive Atheism

This morning PZ Myers posted the remarks he made at the Secular Humanism conference stating his case for confronting religion.  It's a very good read and he makes a strong case for why we shouldn't try to accomodate religion.

Global warming is a losing arguement.

Do I accept the science that says the Earth's climate is warming? Yes.  Do I accept the countless studies that show that its anthropogenic? Absolutely.  Do I think Global Climate Change is a winning argument in getting Americans to reduce their fossil fuel use? Not one fucking bit. 

The problem is that, unless you are a scientist or a nerd, global climate change doesn't work on a scale that most people can understand.  It's the same problem you run into when trying to explain evolution or the problems with most science fiction.  The human mind just isn't conditioned to perceive the world on those kinds of scales.  This is why so many people look at things such as the 3 blizzards that hit the DC area last winter and say 'See, the planet can't be warming!  There were blizzards in DC!'  Now you can try and educate people, and you may even succeed with some of them, but most people just can't wrap their minds around those kinds of scales.  You just start running into what I like to call the Murder Paradox.  1 murder is a horrible crime.  2 murders is depravity.  1000000 murders is a statistic.  The only way to get people past this is to shrink the scale of what you are talking about to a more human scale.  Go through any history class where they talk about how many Jews were killed in Nazi Germany or how many Cherokee died on the trail of tears and the numbers just don't trigger the same response as the first hand stories of the horror do; and look at how few people at the time could accept the reports they heard out of Europe till the first videos of concentration camps brought it home.  Similarly, when you talk about climate change and how it will affect things 20, 50, 100 years or more down the road it just is beyond what the human mind can easily envision.

Now add to this the fact that science is an area that values "flip flopping" and encourages its practitioners to reevaluate their beliefs and you are running into a disaster waiting to happen.  Right wing loons just go and point out that scientist changes, that it isn't set in stone and use that to discredit the argument.

So what's the solution?  Well I would suggest that instead of using global warming as an argument we instead focus on stuff that's harder to deny, such as the limited supply of fossil fuels.  It becomes harder to refute that and it works to achieve the same goal of reducing carbon emissions.

Is it possible to declare independence from my state?

So for those who aren't aware, my states Attorney General is an idiot.  He's on a witch hunt trying to discredit climate science, forcing an already hurting state budget to pay for both his prosecution and UVA's defense of the professor.  This ranks right up there with his decision to challenge health care reform with state money and his attempt to change the 234 year old state seal because it "inappropriately" showed a bared woman's breast...

I understand that living in a southern state means dealing with these kind of loonies, but really this is too much.  Let Ken Cuccinelli be a warning to every liberal out there who is disappointed in Obama and the democrats and is thinking of staying home November 2nd...BEWARE!

Dreams really do come true

So I recently started listening to a podcast called Citizen Radio, and on Monday while sitting there at work, listening I heard them make some jokes about zombies not listening.  Now, total geek that I am, I took this as a sign from His Noodlieness and decided to write them an email playing on their Zombie talk...and low to my surprise I was listening today to hear them reading my email as one of the Viewer/Listener Mails they read aloud.  Now if only they would promote this blog...

As an aside to anyone who reads this, while I find Citizen Radio funny and informative they are significantly more liberal then I am and I don't agree with all their views; still I recommend them.

When will conservatives tell the truth about the deficit?

While watching Discovery Channel tonight I saw a commercial for a new "documentary" that conservatives are putting out blaming Democrats for the deficit and calling the President a socialist...yeah right.

Now everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but everyone is not entitled to their own facts. If you look at the past 40 years what you will see is that whenever a Republican is in charge the deficit increases, whenever a Democrat is in charge the deficit decreases. The reasons for this lay in what the two parties believe about government. Republicans don't believe that government can function and therefore they want to sabotage it whenever they can, such as by "starving the beast."  Democrats, on the other hand, believe that government can and should function so they want to balance out their spending with tax increases.

The trailer for this movie is so bad I couldn't even watch it all without getting sick at the patent dishonesty (if you must go see it you can find it at http://www.iwantyourmoney.net/).

Life in Conservative America

What would things be like if America was run by conservative ideals?  Just look at what happened in rural Tennessee last week for a glimpse.  Now I don't know about you, but to me fire fighters and fire departments aren't supposed to be in the buisness of deciding whether or not to stop a fire form burning on the basis of whether the owner paid a fee.  This isn't the first time in our history that this kind of barbarism could happen.

Prior to the civil war this was the norm; fire departments where for profit and they would commonly forgo saving a house that had contracted with a competitor or who hadn't contracted with anyone at all.  We figured out from that failed experiment in capitalism that certain things shouldn't be optional and shouldn't be for profit.  Those functions are for the good of all of us and should be instead reserved for the commons, with everyone paying for the cost with their tax dollars.

These types of policies are the model for how conservatives would run things.  Are you a poor farmer living outside of city limits?  Can't afford to pay an extra fee to keep your house protected?  Guess you're SOL then buddy because the fire department only protect the well to do.  Can you imagine if they used the same system for the police?  Or paramedics?

Think about that, and if when you're done you still like the idea of fee based fire protection then I have just the place for you!