Mike's Blog

A very positive upside to the stupid Terri Shiavo wackiness

      Not the Next President of the United States!

Via Dependable Renagade

I'm soooo glad I live on the opposite coast

This is amazing, he has some excellent links that are really scary.

North Carolina: I don't know how you smell, but some of your 'educators' stink

   Ed Brayton has the funny part of this story covered: a public school teacher who used a stupid lesson about how Jesus (and good Christians!) smell. Read a little further into the news story, though, and prepare to be even more appalled.

Ashlee came home with a worksheet on which she was marked wrong for answering that "chance" was the reason many animals are colored to match their surroundings. The teacher indicated that the right answer was "God's master design," the suit says... (link Pharyngula)

I guess I've been missing all the "fun"

I guess I miss out on some things that are going on since I don't  have a TV.  If there are others who feel then've been missing out on the 'fun' and controversy of the Terri Shivo case here's a great segment from the Daily Show (via Boing Boing)

Reuters sums it up

Reuters sums it up nicely.  I would say it can't get any more disgusting than this but everytime I think that they prove me so very very wrong.

...
Bush said he stepped into the Schiavo case because the United States should have "a presumption in favor of life," but there were 152 executions in Texas during his administration, including some in which the convict's guilt was in doubt, critics said.

"It's hypocrisy at a thousand levels," said University of Houston law professor and death penalty defense attorney David Dow.
...

As opposed to the fables in their "Book"?

Back to the Middle Ages, arm in arm with Islam and groups like the Taliban.

The Catholic Church is trying to do a Khomeini with Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code.  Does Dan Brown play fast and loose with some of the historical facts? Probably, I don't care, it was a good book. He's playing fast and loose with myths and how history has dealt with myths. He's a fiction writer.  Does the Catholic church play fast and loose with whatever they want to claim as 'fact' that has zero evidence? The Da Vinci Code classification - fiction, suspense thriller. The Catholic Church's classification of it's "Book" - the revealed word? Because they say so?  I guess they're afraid that people will confuse fiction with fabrication.

...
Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Archbishop of Genoa and a possible successor to the Pope, has been appointed by the Vatican to rebut what the Catholic church calls the "shameful and unfounded errors" contained within The Da Vinci Code. ...

The book is everywhere," Cardinal Bertone told Il Giornale newspaper, according to a report in The Times today. "There is a very real risk that many people who read it will believe that the fables it contains are true. [Dan Brown] even perverts the story of the holy grail, which most certainly does not refer to the descendants of Mary Magadalene. It astonishes and worries me that so many people believe these lies."... (link The Guardian via BoingBoing)

Doubleday couldn't buy this kind of publicity.

A Day in the City

A couple  of interesting things to do yesterday in San Francisco.  I'd gone up for the Urban Iditarod which is held on the same date each year as the start of the Alaskan Iditarod.  This is the 11th year and the 2nd year that I've gone.  If you've never gone and like wacky things this is great.  It's a race through San Francisco by teams of people dressed up - the theme is dogs - and  pulling shopping carts.  The police do escort and block the traffic at intersections.  I don't think they originally did but  probably realized it was in their best interest to do so and what better way for some of  the motorcycle cops to have some fun on a Saturday while getting paid.  I would think is would be a fairly sought after 'duty', it beats writing parking tickets. Link to my flicker tags marked Urban Iditarod from last year and this.

From their web site.
...

• How many people do it?
  Last year 240 dogs, 35+ teams.  And I ain't lying!
• What is the course?
  The course will likely be the same as last year which started South of Market, went up Powell Street, across Union Square, up Stockton, over to Grant, across Washington Square park, down Powell, through Fisherman's Wharf, down Beach Street, up the hill, end south of Fort Mason.
• Do people wear costumes?
  Totally!  There range from serious doggie outfits to crazy elvis stuff to really random.
• Does the musher sit in the cart?
  Think about this for a moment. You're sitting in a cart, going up and down hills with 4 dog-costumed maniacs running in front of you. If you want to ride in the cart, ride in the cart.
• The Rules
  
  1. Dogs must be tied to sled when running and entire team must finish together.  No stray dogs.
  2. Rest stops must be at least 20 minutes.
  3. Teams must follow the course.  No shortcuts.
  4. Obeying traffic laws is up to the individual teams
  5. You may rotate dogs & mushers during the race.
  6. Barking is encouraged.
  7. There is no drink minimum, but it is the musher's responsibility to ensure the dogs are well watered.
  8. This event will be held rain or shine.
  9. Dogs may run free in the rest areas.
  10. Dogs must pull the cart dog sled style

...

After following the start of the race a bit I went over to park at Yerba Beuna Gardens. Yahoo was doing some sort of photo shoot there. Also nice place to sit and relax by the fountain/water fall/pond.

Then picked up the race again through China Town and over to Fort Mason.  I picked up some fruit and Girl Scout cookies at Safeway then went to park at the Marina to watch the kites for a while.

Came across this while looking for links to post this morning.  Definitely something to see next time I'm there and can time it with a high-tide.  It's a wave organ close to the Exploratorium

Then after a snack I headed over to the Palace of Fine Arts and Exploratorium.  I didn't get there until about 3:30 pm so it was a bit late to go to the Exploratorium but the grounds of the Palace of Fine Arts are beautiful and with a large pond with ducks and geese and turtles.  I hadn't seen lots of large turtles basking in the sun in a long time, pretty neat.

 

"Murdoch meat-puppet..."

From one of the comments.  I've never heard that one before, it's great.  Article from News Hounds. An incredibly stupid trumped up cease and desist order from Bill O'Reilly's legal attack dogs demanding that their site delete a link to one of his newspaper columns.  Came across this via a Wankers of the Day post from Atrios.

...
Thanks to the assistance of Lawrence Lessig and Jennifer Granick of Stanford Law School's Center for Internet and Society, we have learned about the Ticketmaster ruling which says that Hypertext Linking Does Not Violate Copyright. In other words, we are entirely within our rights to post a link and I find it hard to believe that Creators Syndicate would be so incompetent as to be unaware of that ruling. Can you say "intimidation?"
...

 

RNC posts blatant LIE on their website

I first saw a post from Atrios, then come across details on dKos.  Not only are they too stupid to figure out simple math they want to make sure that everyone knows how stupid they are.  Note that they didn't report this first hand, CNN gets that honor.  They read CNN's story and said 'yeah, let's post that!'. Stupid is as stupid does...

...
Here was what Dean said, according to the Cornell Daily Sun.

Dean pointed out that, while he would not endorse this, if Social Security were left alone for 30 years, its benefits would be reduced to 80 percent of what it is now. He acknowledged that while there were indeed problems with the program, turning to Wall Street was not the answer.

Notice the math here. If you reduce something to "80 percent of what it is now," you are reducing it by 20 percent. You reduce $10,000 to $8,000. Why am I explaining simple math?

On CNN, here is what Robert Novak said.

"[T]hey've got to really get Howard under control. He spoke at Cornell University last week, and the only paper that covered this was "The Cornell Daily" student paper, and he said, yes, Social Security has a big problem. Over the years it's going to lose about 80 percent of the benefits. That, Judy, is not the Democratic line. The Democratic line is there is no problem."

Note Novak's math. If something is "going to lose about 80 percent," there will only be 20% left. $10,000 becomes $2,000.
...

(link to RNC website)

Update:
The RNC took the lie off of their website, the link is now dead. But here's Media Matters coverage.