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Best Use of the Phrase “Mouth-to-Snout”

Kudos to Wausau, Wisconsin firefighter Jamie Giese and teammates on the Wausau Fire Department, for saving the life of 7-year old Labrador retriever Koda.

After rescuing the unconscious dog from a burning house, Giese gave Koda “mouth-to-snout” resuscitation.

I’ve heard it argued more than once that there’s something shameful or unnatural in valuing an animal in the same way we value our fellow humans. I like to think that view is somewhat less popular than it once was, but I have no doubt it’s still out there. The accusation is that some of us love animals MORE than we love humans, or even that we love animals because we actually hate humans. Continue reading “Best Use of the Phrase “Mouth-to-Snout””

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If You Masturbate, You Are … Fabulous

Goddammit, it’s not enough that the world is ending today. Now we have to stop touching ourselves too. Because wanking makes you fabulous.

Don’t misunderstand me — it’s okay to be fabulous. Nothing wrong with it. Some of my best friends are fabulous. There are fabulous clubs right here in my hometown, and I see fabulous people walking around in my own neighborhood. There are fabulous parades and celebrations in major cities all over the world. After generations of being considered second-class citizens, the fabulous have earned respect and equality. Continue reading “If You Masturbate, You Are … Fabulous”

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Short Stack #4

“Faith” is the belief in something for which there is no evidence. Breach the protective barrier in your mind, the barrier that keeps you from believing stuff just because somebody tells you to, or just because you want to, and all sorts of ugly side effects begin to take place. The first is that you become a sucker for the next 50 con men able to convince you of THEIR seductive lie.

When there’s evidence, nobody talks about faith. Faith only comes into it when we want to replace evidence with blind belief. Continue reading “Short Stack #4”

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You’re All Going to Die and Burn In Hell. Again.

Woe, I say woe unto you, heathen masses! Your time has, I say your time has come!

Deferred Doomsday Due Friday — Or Not

On May 22, an obviously shocked [Harold] Camping emerged from his home to say he was “flabbergasted” that the Rapture stood him up. But then, a couple of days later, like all good doomsday prophets, he had an answer: May 21 was just the beginning; the Rapture would take a lot longer; the real Rapture will happen five months later on Oct. 21.

“What really happened this past May 21st?” Camping asks on his Family Radio website. “What really happened is that God accomplished exactly what He wanted to happen. That was to warn the whole world that on May 21 God’s salvation program would be finished on that day.”

Basically, “Applications for Salvation” closed on May 21. You see, even the Office of God has red tape.

 

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Life-Changing but Not World-Changing

This Reuters piece on a milestone in malaria research — not an excited  shriek of earth-shaking revelation, but the somber celebration of a respectable bit of progress — strikes just the right note in reporting science.

(Oh, yeah … maybe I should tell you the Weekly World News pic is here to show the OTHER type of reporting.)

Malaria scientist celebrates success after 24 years

“There were many ups and downs, and moments over the years when we thought ‘Can we do it? Should we continue? Or is it really just too tough?,” he told Reuters, as data showing the success of his RTS,S vaccine were unveiled at an international conference on malaria.

“But today I feel fabulous. This is a dream of any scientist — to see your life’s work actually translated into a medicine … that can have this great impact on peoples’ lives. How lucky am I?”

Final stage clinical trial data on RTS,S, also known as Mosquirix, showed it halved the risk of African children getting malaria, making it likely to become the world’s first successful vaccine against the deadly disease.

The piece ends with an appropriate counterpoint to the too-fantastic tabloid stories we so often see.

He was also careful to underline that this was a first step, as well as a world first. GSK, MVI and several other research groups and drug firms are already working on next generation vaccines and on other ways of making malaria shots they hope will better the roughly 50 percent success rate of RTS,S.

“The work is not over, that is for sure,” Cohen said.

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Blue Collar Atheist: Three Posts

What follows (below, in posts time-stamped earlier than this one so they’re stacked 1, 2, 3 down the page) is two chapters of my book, Red Neck, Blue Collar, Atheist: Simple Thoughts About Reason, Gods & Faith.

I’m posting this lead-in and these two chapters so you’ll have a better idea of the tone and something of the content. Yes, I’m selling them, and yes, I hope you’ll buy one.

Just below is the first chapter, Introduction: Who Is This Guy? — which is of course about me, and how I came to write the book, and below that is the Foreword: Saying Goodbye to Gods, which is about what I like to think of as the “journey” of atheism. Continue reading “Blue Collar Atheist: Three Posts”