Tuesday, April 15, 2008

(Quick) Hit me with your rhythm stick

Look! Eighties parenthetical title! W00t!

And now: the Quick Hits.



Heard this morning on Marketplace's morning radio report, during a story on the business of selling trinkets and mementos for Chancellor Palpatine's Pope Benedict XVI's visit to Washington, DC:

In reference to the always-funny Pope-on-a-Rope, a woman in the gift shop of the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception: "I think that's disgusting. Why wash your body with the pope?"

To which I must respond: good gracious, why not?



It's official:

How many cannibals could your body feed?
Created by OnePlusYou

I may need to lose some weight.



The Wife has something awful that she'd like to share with you (pay attention to the last paragraph). Because that's what the Internet is for, right?

But, really, dear: it'll be okay. Don't hang up your Chucks yet.



It's a week late and a benjamin short (ooh, clever! look, I'm teh r0x0rz!), but I finally figured out what began to bug me about Scalzi's last Big Idea entry (mentioned in my previous post). And it is thus:

John knowingly fed the troll.

Day is not a troll in the usual sense - or perhaps it's more accurate to say that he's an higher order of troll. Whatever, he gets his kicks and makes his monies by being a deliberate douche, and that's clear trollish behavior. I don't even care if Day really believes in his own claptrap or not - devotion to ideas or ideals doesn't make you any less of a douche.

It's been written to death by this point, but I'll say it again: it's John's blog, he can do whatever the fuck he wants with it, but... huh? I'm not bewildered by the post, but by the motivations for it, I guess. Someone as Intarweeb-savvy as Scalzi knows exactly what he's doing, so I'm left scratching my head as to why he decided to feed the troll.

Makes me wonder if we didn't all just catch John on a really bad day or something.

(h/t to this post by ertchin, which helped clarify my thinking)

Tuesday, April 08, 2008

You've just shit on your brain

Scalzi's opened up a can of worms over at the Whatever by featuring the author Vox Day (a pseudonym) in his ongoing Big Idea series. Day's latest offering, The Irrational Atheists, aims to take down the leading modern day thinkers of the atheist community by taking them on at their own game: namely, by using reason and the scientific method to refute their arguments against the existence of God. I haven't read the book, and I'm not planning to - Day freely admits to ad hominem attacks throughout this book, and I'm just not going to bother with that kind of nonsense when discussions surrounding the nature and existence of God are already rife with that spectacular brand of bullshit - but the comments thread at the Whatever for the Big Idea post featuring TIA (as the author acronyms it) has been a rollicking good read.

It's obviously gotten a bit testy, but for the most part the conversation has been spirited but civil. However, one of the most recent posters - pretty obviously an atheist - wrote one of the single-best put-downs of a belief in God I've ever read. (Full disclosure: I'm agnostic, leaning atheist):

The bottom line is that when you accept nonsense, and cherish it in your heart and make it an importat part of how you think and lead your life, you’ve just shit on your brain.
Now, that ain't nice... but it sure did make me giggle.