9 Nov

The science behind blood-type matching

Posted by kemibe in The Medical Tent.

Most people know that there are various blood “types,” as defined by two major contributors: protein antigens on the surface of erythrocytes (red blood cells, or RBC’s) classified as either “A” or “B”, and a plus or minus designation rooted in the Rh factor (“Rh” derived from the Rhesus monkey). Other immunological factors exist, but do not normally affect compatibility in the realm of blood transfusions.

As a result, there are eight blood types: A, B, AB, and O, each with its own + or – appendix.

Out of the gate, it is important to recognize that people build antibodies against antigens that do not exist within their own systems, and do not mount such defenses against their own antigens (well, they sometimes do, and this is what results in autoimmune diseases, which can be severe or even fatal, as with lupus). The implications of this is that if you have blood type A, you will have anti-B antibodies in your blood and conversely. If you are type O, meaning you have neither A nor B antigens on your RBC’s, you have both anti-A and anti-B antibodies floating around.

Things are the same with the Rh-factor. If you are Rh-negative, your bodies produce anti-Rh antibodies. These can cross the placenta, meaning that if an Rh+ male mates with an Rh- female and the fetus turns out to be Rh-, the fetus–if Rh+, the genetically likely outcome–can be attacked by the potential mother’s circulating anti-Rh antibodies. This is the reason underlying the early-term administration of RhoGAM, which consists of anti-Rh antibodies that work in a seemingly paradoxical fashion: given to Rh- pregnant women, they desensitize the woman’s own response to the presence of an Rh+ fetus and prevent hemolytic disease of the newborn, which would otherwise kill at least 10,000 brand-new babies every year in the U.S. alone.

So, breaking things down, it’s easy to see why certain blood types do not mix. My own very common blood type is O+, which means that I could donate to anyone who is type A, B, or AB (since there is nothing for their anti-A or anti-B antibodies to attack) as long as the recipient is also Rh+. This is why people with blood type O- are called “universal donors.” Similarly, someone who is AB+ makes no antibodies to anything relevant, and is thus a “universal recipient.”

These factors are nicely summed up in this graphic:

You might rightfully wonder why someone with, for example, type-O blood–whose serum contains type-A and type-B antibodies–can be given harmlessly to those with various other blood types, since the donor blood could theoretically antagonize the RBC’s of the recipient. For whatever reason donor antibody-recipient antigent reactions are negligible compared to the parallel reverse situation. More importantly, when people receive blood, it is usually in the form of “packed RBC’s,” meaning that the serum of the donor–and along with it, all antibodies–has been stripped out and that only RBC’s themselves are given. Nevertheless, for other hematological reasons, the possibility of graft-versus-host disease exists and remains an important consideration in the transfusion milieu.

I wrote this post almost entirely off the top of my head, so it may not be entirely trustworthy. If I glitched anything, I trust that someone will correct me. But the bottom line is that your blood type not only needs to be a part of your medical record, but is also something you should know yourself. In my experience, most people have no idea. So don’t get into a car crash or other evil, unpredictable situation if you are among the unknowing.

9 Nov

Disjointed spew

Posted by kemibe in Sheer Procrastination.

Thanks to a chance encounter last night, I now know there’s a type of dog called a “Goldendoodle.” I told the owner I couldn’t imagine the mechanics underlying the coupling of a male poodle and a female Golden, thinking that there must have been stepladders or pulleys involved. But as it happens, the father was a Goldendoodle himself. Problem solved.

When people conclude an exposition with “that’s just my personal opinion,” they’ve made an inane statement on multiple levels.

The show Lost is an amazing phenomenon. I never watched a single episode until launching the 2004 pilot on Hulu.com the other day. Now I’m hooked and ashamed to admit how much sleep I’ve lost watching episode after episode on my laptop. It won’t be long before I catch up to the current season and have to wait a week between viewings.

A certain blogger cum acquaintance has given me a new nickname. This has actually been going on for a few months, but I only recently discovered it. It’s a simple moniker yet somehow entertaining.

I’m thinking of picking up an ancient Yamaha vocorder so that I can start doing podcasts that sound like they’re being hosted by icons such as Daffy Duck, Mickey Mouse, Yoda, Alvin the Chipmunk, and Johnny Most.

I was recently paid several hundred dollars to not write an article. This is the second time this has happened with this particular publisher.

Whenever I start seeing gray hairs on a given part of my body, I just shave the whole area. Fuck it if it can’t take a joke. This is a limited phenomenon for now, but within a few years I will bear a startling resemblance to one of the aliens in Close Encounters Of The Third Kind.

I continue to reveal my ignorance in the realm of private and semi-private female behaviors. Only within the past year have I come to understand just how many women start coloring their hair at age 35 or so, and how many single women own vibrators.

I’m going to start running with a tree stump under my arm, and if anyone asks questions I’ll mock them for never having heard of a training log.

I could live on popsicles. Since I eat the sugar-free kind, though, I would eventually starve to death in mid-lick. It would be like a chocolate addict trying to escape from being underweight by chowing down on Ex-Lax all day.

I don’t know where the popular belief that people are hungry half an hour after eating Chinese food came from. Whenever I eat Chinese, I can only drink water for the next seven or eight hours because the stuff is notoriously salty.

I bet that less than 50 percent of Americans know their own blood type, and it’s a solid bet that only 1 percent recognize whom a person with a given ABO profile can donate blood to and receive blood from. The latter isn’t of importance to the majority of folks, but it’s best to have the former on record somewhere.

I’m going to go to one of my sister’s Pampered Chef parties wearing nothing but Pampers and a chef’s hat. I wonder if people will get the joke. If not, I’ll shit my pants and not worry about it.

8 Nov

And of course these assholes have to chime in

Posted by kemibe in Society Gone Bananas.

OneNewsNow.com, in decrying the idea of affordable healthcare for all Americans, is claiming that the House’s vote favoring H.R. 3962 is “monstrous” and “a defiance of the will of the American people.” They base this on the fact that some polls have supposedly demonstrated that a majority of Americans oppose this administration’s ideas about such reform. But since they never cite their sources, I don’t know where they get their numbers. One recent Gallup Poll survey suggests that the current plan versus some hypothetical alternative plan (or the status quo) runs about 50/50 among the voting populace.

Regardless, the worth of the supposed, and generally misrepresented, “will of the people” is grossly overstated by shitblogs like this one. Keep in mind that if it were strictly up to popular vote, creationism would likely supplant evolution in schools and avowed adherence to Christianity (something I could never successfully fake) would be mandatory in much of the U.S. We live in a country of fuckheads. People on the whole don’t read anything meaningful, don’t think outside of the gut reactions they have to their cable programs of choice, and think that the ability to understand the themes in a supermarket flyer constitutes the strength to be a literary critic. What the majority somehow thinks about any topic of choice should factor into the political process as strongly as what a Red Sox fan’s ideas concerning the fate of the Yankees in the World Series do.

But if one gives credence to this “will” in one area, he must give it in others. Therefore, since favorable opinion of Obama’s performance now outpaces his poor ratings by a factor of 54 percent to 41, his endlessly whining and dissembling opponents need to shut the hell up and respect the will of real Americans everywhere.

John Boehner is a shameless liar who deserves as much access to higher office as Carrot Top. He says people want a “common-sense approach to health care reform,” an appropriately vacuous and substance-devoid statement from someone whose job description is “fuck whatever the Democrats do.” He’s too stupid to be at all convincing in his deliveries to the press, but in that area has lots of good company.

Most people in the United States are far too weak-minded to contribute in a positive way to the political process as it stands and should be thanking the Christ Jesus for the fact that America freely allows functional illiterates and Elmer Fudd clones to vote on anything. But thanks to the wonders of our version of democracy, they are treated as equals and are therefore misled into thinking that the shit they have to say has more merit than that of a gopher on Ecstasy. It’s fun to watch them get mad, but irksome from the standpoint of realizing how mentally crippled the average hominid really is.

8 Nov

Evidence that “conservative” “bloggers” don’t do research

Posted by kemibe in Fun with Politics, Troglodytes at Play.

That wingnut bloggers are credulous tools who propagate lies throughout the Web as if this gives them orgasms is no secret. But on the heels of pointing out that Sarah Palin knows that her base is one huge, thrumming hive of intellectual desolation, it’s worth wasting the short time needed to point out the one guy who consistently embodies every trait of “conservative” “bloggers” out there.

So I again refer to Gribbit, who, in just the first paragraph of this post, commits an improbable number of errors in addition to resorting to insults and slurs that would embarrass a sentient person. He writes:

Democrats who were holding out against SanFran Nan’s 1900+ page, $1 Trillion+ government takeover of health care got a key concession from the Speaker and her band of uber-leftists in the House when it was permitted for an amendment to the Death Care bill to be offered. The amendment addressed a key point of contention between pro-life Democrats and the leftists who are currently running the Party’s Caucus in the House. The Stupak Amendment, named for Rep. Bart Stupak of the Democratic People’s Republic of Michigan, removed federal funding of abortions from the Death Care bill gaining Pelosi the much needed 25 votes necessary for the bill to pass.

So in order, there’s an unsupported assumption (i.e., that the number of Democrats who changed their minds a a result of the added language was critical), a shitty nickname (“SanFran Nan”), a lie (that the bill is somehow owned by Pelosi), a lie and a gratuitous capital letter wrapped into one (“$1 Trillion+”), breathless hyperbole (“government takeover of health care”), another uncreative label (“the Speaker and her band of uber-leftists”), a rejection of the political process (“an amendment was allowed to be added”), unabashed ignorance of what the bill contains “Death Care bill”), a false dichotomy (“pro-lfe” =/= “leftist”), another silly label (“People’s Republic of Michigan”), an outright lie (see below), and finally, an obvious falsehood (that the bill would not have passed without the added language and that 25 Democrats switched sides owing to its inclusion; perhaps other Dems upset by the amendment went the other way).

The bill never contained anything about “federal funding of abortions.” Pro-lifers have claimed all along that it allowed for the possibility, but that was a creative interpretation of the passages in question, and one could have just as easily claimed (and still can). that it allows for the possibility of eight-graders performing neurosurgery, because it does not say outright that they cannot. The “concession” Gribbit mentions was nothing more than a “sigh, okay, dipshits, we’ll say it flat out if it’ll shut you up”) Gribbit it too much of a blinkered coward to address this directly and instead hides behind his comments-only-for-wingnuts policies and his failed IP bans, but he invariably sees the things I write about him and the comments people make about him, and at some dim level understands that he has nothing accurate or useful to say.

The amendment passed 240-194. There weere 64 Democrats among those 240, leaving 176 Republicans. There are presently 177 Republicans in the House. so, since one member was absent, the reponse to the amendment among Democrats was overwhelmingly negative–either 193-64 or 194-64. Ironically, then, the amendment may actually help Republicans gain enough votes to tip the scales in their favor once this bill hits the Senate floor.

8 Nov

World to end (again) on Wednesday

Posted by kemibe in Troglodytes at Play.

It’s tempting to view sites like this as parodies of other, genuine End Times sites, but this one must be the real deal. The giveaways: The endless amount of material on the home page (no parodist would make such an effort), the circa-1994 design format, and the color scheme.

You would think that with the number of such prophecies that have come and gone without incident that these nuts would get a clue and quit predicting specific dates on which the Rapture will occur. If had believed since 1986 that if I drove a car on the first day of every month, I would get in a fatal crash, I would ultimately have cede the belief, as would even the dimmest of halfwits. But then again if you embrace something as crazy as eschatology in the first place and see the Book of Revelation as a compelling analysis, you’re not the world’s most preeminent logician

8 Nov

Sarah Palin’s Facebook comments about the passage of the healthcare bill

Posted by kemibe in Fun with Politics.

Facebook is a great place for someone like Palin, as she can pretend she isn’t widely viewed as something between a laughingstock and a menace by seeing that she has nearly a million “fans.” Unfortunately this doesn’t dilute her grating ignorance, and in fact only encourages it.

She has these things to say about the House passing “Obamacare” on Saturday. Since many of you are wise to lack Facebook accounts, I’ll post the whole thing in its entirety. Continue reading

8 Nov

Nubble’s struggles worsen

Posted by kemibe in The Medical Tent.

I wrote recently about my mother’s Golden Retriever, who turned nine in September, being diagnosed last month with Lyme disease and experiencing the rapid antibiotics-induced improvement typically seen in dogs and people in whom the illness is caught early. Unfortunately, she’s really fallen apart in recent days and is now in a Portsmouth veterinary hospital.

I haven’t seen her since last weekend or so, but evidently she had some lethargy that quickly went from mild to incapacitating, and, alarmingly, had an eye went from normal in appearance one day to 100 percent bloodshot the next.

My mom rushed her to the vet, who drew blood and took X-rays an in turn sent them along to where she now rests. In addition to the ophthalmological issue, she was found to be anemic (very weird since she was recently placed on an all-meat diet), febrile, and dehydrated. She also had abdominal tenderness, and the X-rays revealed some arthritis in her spine (possibly unrelated to everything else, given her ago and breed).

From what little knowledge of medicine still lingers in my chemically damaged brain, I would have to think that a multisystemic problem like this is almost as likely to be autoimmune as infectious, but the seemingly rapid onset and the fever still point to something infectious. The fact that the doxycline she’s on obviously hasn’t cleared things up suggests a misidentification of the causative agent, an idea supported by a few things Nubble’s vet mentioned about the blood test that resulted in a diagnosis of Lyme.

Anyway, she’s in good hands know and being seen by various specialists. This poor dog, naturally, is the sweetest animal you could ever meet and never objects to the various tests she is subjected to or behaves in a surly way even when she is clearly under duress. And it’s a shame she can’t vocalize exactly how this has all progressed from a subjective standpoint.

Why can’t things like this, if they have to happen at all, strike animals like Michael Vick instead?

7 Nov

Dumb-ass polls

Posted by kemibe in Troglodytes at Play, Uncategorized.

It’s as though Christian “news” sites are engaged in a perpetual contest to see which one of them can produce the most inane poll question.

Take this one, for example.

How should Christians respond to lawmakers who support healthcare reform which includes abortion funding? (See related article)

1. Complain about them to other people
2. Contact the lawmakers to express your concerns
3. Remember their names when you vote in 2010

Leave aside the fact that no one is presently supporting such a thing, although I, despite not being a lawmaker, would gladly support the public funding of forced abortions for the lepers behind sites like those created by the AFA and other stupid people who insist on getting knocked up with the intent of churning out one more wall-eyed, flat-faced, mentally defective affront to the mammalian world. These are just useless questions. #1 is a given–Christians always complain about shit. It’s virtually their job. So thrilled are they by the very notion of bitching for its own sake that they donate money to outfits whose entire sad act consists of airing grievances founded on lies, all with the intent of parting morons from their money. #2 is a wash, since no one who frequents sites boasting polls like this one is resourceful or sensible enough to actually become involved in civic affairs in a meaningful way. #3 is also a wash because people with the intracranial extravagance of cuddlefish won’t remember their own names in 2010, let alone those of these rat bastards intent on hoodwinking American taxpayers via the healthcare reform business.

Ardent pro-lifers are liars by trade. They intentionally mislead people with their punctured-foetus photos aimed at portraying late-term abortions as a frequent occurrence. They make up numbers on the spot while pretending that what organizations like the CDC have to say on such matters is driven by conspiracies. The National Right To Life couldn’t generate an honest press release if you paid them to try. These people, as a group, are hysterical, meddlesome, and uneducated cross-waving fuckabouts, although few of them are as insanely out-of-control of this bitter and schizotypal cretin, who calls herself “an advocate for the rights of all women” even as she rambles on incoherently about “Feminazis” and “pro-abort feminists.” I guess the only rights she feels women should have are the ones she approved of. Pro-lifers know in their hypocritical hearts that their campaign is destined for failure, now and in the future.

Speaking of categorically failed goals, I’ll never quite get my mind around the idea that a bunch of functional illiterates with a blog genuinely thing that they can “Stop the ACLU.” That’s not what they’re interested in anyway–they’re driven only by the aim of railing about anything they see as a liberal cause, lying, and putting their room-temperature IQs on display with every misinformed shitburst. I bet none of them even knows why he is compelled to complain in the manner he does. All of them seem to have been raised in hillbilly households by inbred Jesus-freak parents whose only success was producing offspring with a number of chromosomes somewhere in the ballpark of appropriate. The stupid on that site almost burns.

Anyway, I voted for #1 just so I could see the results, and the results are wonky. Supposedly, at this point 8097 people have voted, and none of them have chosen the answer I did, even though I just did. 63% favor #3 and 36% like #2.

6 Nov

So Carrie Prejean is a hypocrite? Wow to that!

Posted by kemibe in Troglodytes at Play.

So it turns out that disgraced former Miss California Carrie Prejean, an outspoken opponent to Prop 8, is not quite the pure Christian lady she has pretended to be.

Look, I’m all for people filming themselves masturbating or whatever it was Prejean was doing to cause this mess, if that’s your thing. But this is a self-promoting Christian who constantly propounded her alleged faith while railing against the moral transgressions of others. And sure, she was basically just a stupid kid at the time she made her comments, although that is probably both condescending and giving her an unfair pass. But who makes a sex tape starring only himself or herself? I mean, if I were ever moved to do such a thing, I would have to have at least one other person in the video to offset the raw damage viewing just me playing with myself would do to someone’s eyes. Even given the case of a co-conspirator, I would balk at watching the output. Fuck, I don’t need to watch that.

I am eagerly awaiting the response from OneNewsNow.com, which will surely condemn this event. Or ignore it altogether, as these useless hypocrites always do.

6 Nov

Anti-government-healthcare protester saved by…the government

Posted by kemibe in Fun with Politics.

The idiot quotient in this country is beyond my toleration or understanding. This story merely illustrates the obvious–that people who bitch about government-sponsored healthcare are the least qualified to speak on this matter, or about anything. It only figures that uberclown Michele Bachmann was somehow involved.

[A] man standing just beyond the TV cameras apparently suffered a heart attack 20 minutes after event began. Medical personnel from the Capitol physician’s office — an entity that could, quite accurately, be labeled government-run health care — rushed over, attaching electrodes to his chest and giving him oxygen and an IV drip.

This turned into an unwanted visual for the speakers, as a D.C. ambulance and firetruck, lights flashing, pulled in just behind the lawmakers. A path was made through the media section, and the patient, attended to by about 10 government medical personnel, was being wheeled away on a stretcher just as House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) stepped to the microphone. “Join us in defeating Pelosi care!” he exhorted. A few members stole a glance at the stretcher.

Fucking idiots. This country stands little chance.

6 Nov

Utterly random, and in all likelihood not entertaining

Posted by kemibe in Self-Indulgent Wankery, Uncategorized.

It’s 34 degrees (Fahrenheit) outside. This has me thinking that I should have the heat turned on in my apartment soon. The thing is, it’s at least 60 in here, at least during the daytime. This building pisses away an absurd amount of plain old ambient heat. I chose a second-floor rental precisely owing to wintertime considerations, but this is nuts. Then again I like it pretty cold.

I re-read a favorite essay of mine last night. This excoriation by Hunter S. Thompson of Richard Nixon is on a par with H.L. Mencken’s astonishingly cruel anti-eulogy of William Jennings Bryan in the wake of the Scopes Monkey Trial in 1925. HST is, as a friend recently put it, a national treasure. Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas is what he’s best known for, but that novel barely scratches the surface of his skills. Sadly, his nonfiction was his greatest stuff, and I say “sadly” only out of empathy, as he always wanted more. Continue reading

4 Nov

In which I waste time bashing another creationist numbskull

Posted by kemibe in Troglodytes at Play.

Every time I think I’ve had my lifetime fill of tearing into deluded would-be advocates for the Christ Jesus, I find something else on the Internet that seems degrees worse than anything I have derided previously, and I just have to load this interface and start screwing with the material in question. I’m no different than when I tell people I watch very little TV, right before I spend seven hours watching Tim and Eric’s Awesome Show, Great Job! online.

Owing indirectly to some recent activity on Dispatches From the Culture Wars, always a great source of insightful commentary assuming you’re not overly sensitive to exposure to the Grand Overwhelming Stupid, I unearthed this stunningly bad treatise challenging evolution. It was written in 2007 but was published to “Way of Life Literature” a few months ago. Mind you, the rant I am hopefully almost halfway through is even more pointless than most anti-creationist rants, because the author of the piece in question, David Menton (who somehow earned a Ph.D. in cell bio from Brown way back when), is a shill for Answers in Genesis and has been exposed as a flagrant liar and an idiot on more than one occasion. Still, the fact that the bright lights behind “Way of Life Literature” actually find Menton more compelling than damning is instructive in its own right, so here I am.

The opening paragraph of “THE EVOLUTION DATING GAME” reads as follows:

Much of the controversy between evolutionists and creationists concerns the age of the earth and its fossils. Evolution, depending as it does on pure chance, requires an immense amount of time to stumble upon anything remotely approaching the complexity we see in even the simplest living things. For over 200 years, geologists have attempted to devise methods for determining the age of the earth that would be consistent with evolutionary dogma. At the time Darwin’s Origin of Species was published [1859], the earth was “scientifically” determined to be 100 million years old. By 1932, it was found to be 1.6 billion years old. In 1947, geologists firmly established that the earth was 3.4 billion years old. Finally, in 1976, they discovered that the earth is “really” 4.6 billion years old. These dates indicate that for 100 years the age of the earth doubled every 20 years. If this trend were to continue, the earth would be 700 thousand-trillion-trillion years old by the year 4000 AD. This “prediction,” however, is based on selected data and certain assumptions that might not be true. As we will see, selected data and unprovable assumptions are a problem with all methods for determining the age of the earth, as well as for dating its fossils and rocks. It has all become something of a “dating game” in which only the evolutionarily-correct are allowed to play.

There are so many fuck-ups in just this one passage–and the essay in its entirety is quite long–that describing them will probably cost me a half an hour, possibly more. When I first read it, I was nearly blinded by the force of its thrumming incompetence. But I have since recovered and am prepared to address specifics.

First of all, evolutionary biologists don’t give a fuck how old the earth is (or if they do it doesn’t relate to their work). Evolution, broadly speaking, does not depend on “pure chance,” but even if it did, this would not necessitate “an immense amount of time to stumble upon anything remotely approaching the complexity we see in even the simplest living things”–not that biologists disagree anyway; of course some of the changes to organisms that have transpired over millions of years take, well, millions of fucking years. This is precisely why certain things that seem improbable to the parochial human mind can occur; our brains simply are not equipped to account for time scales hundreds, thousands, or millions of times longer than our own lifespans.

The idea that geologists are in bed with biologists is ludicrous enough. But when Menton says that this has been going on for over 200 years, it kinds of screws with his credibility. Charles Darwin was born in 2009 1809, and it took him a while to inspire that which bitter Jesus fans would later call “evolutionary dogma.” To complain that people were championing evolution in the early 1800’s is akin to bitching about the treatment of text-messaging and Internet porn during World War I. It really is just that stupid. Also, creationists have an extremely difficult time correctly identifying the book they so often like to complain about. It’s On The Origin Of Species. It’s not that hard to get right. When a layperson leaves out the first few words, it’s one thing, but when someone purporting to be an informed critic fucks this up, it’s quite another. And it’s revealing–David Menton is a cognitive cripple.

There’s also Menton’s worse-than-fuzzy math. The reliability of his sources aside, the fact that the estimated age of the earth has changed over time is not a detriment to science, but a credit to the willingness of scientists to refine their claims based on new findings. When he blabbers, “if this trend were to continue, the earth would be 700 thousand-trillion-trillion years old by the year 4000 AD,” he’s not only making a ruin of basic arithmetic, but is also ignoring the factor of convergence. Just look at the fact that the claimed age of the planet has remained static over the past two-plus decades. And what Menton calls a “prediction” is anything but what real scientists actually predict. You won’t find any earth scientists who think that the age of the earth is going to skyrocket exponentially or without bound. That’s just bullshit that exists only in Menton’s mind.

Of course, clowns like this guy cannot avoid blaming widespread conspiracies for the various failures of their various claims. The phrase “only the evolutionarily-correct are allowed to play” marks its originator as both an imbecile and a whiner, which is never a useful combination. If anyone could produce a meaningful, reasoned rebuttal to evolution, it would have already happened. It would also have made someone rich. Instead, the world is stained by functionally retarded people like Menton, whose only argument here is that dating rocks and fossils is an imperfect process. No shit! Who knew?

Menton goes on to gurgle about “radiocarbon dating” as if this is something geologists rely on in order to figure out how old the planet is. Of course carbon decay isn’t a means of figuring shit like this out. I can’t believe this warbling shitbird has a Ph.D. in anything. He expects people to just overlook the fact that “radiocarbon” and “radioisotope” are not synonyms, apparently. The entire midsection of his shitburst is neatly and methodically refuted here. The idea that circular reasoning is involved in any way is something only an unmitigated fucktard would claim, which is why it makes sense that Menton is claiming it.

Menton’s final paragraph is at least as bad as his first:

As far as the plausibility of evolution is concerned, it really doesn’t make any difference if the earth is 10 billion years old or 10 thousand years old. Indeed, if the whole of evolution were reduced to nothing more than the chance production of a single copy of any one biologically useful protein, there would be insufficient time and material in the known universe to make this even remotely likely. Time by itself simply does not make the hopeless evolutionary scenario of chance and natural selection more reasonable. Imagine if a child were to claim that he alone could build a Boeing 747 airplane from the raw material in 10 seconds, and another were to claim he could do it in 10 days. Would we consider the latter less foolish than the former, simply because he proposed spending nearly a million times more time at the task? Our Creator tells us that “the fool has said in his heart, there is no God.”

Actually, for a score of obvious reasons, it does make a difference. Just not to idiots like David Menton. It’s funny that he terms something understood by virtually all working biologists as not remotely likely. Sure, assfuck, you’re the go-to guy when it comes to knowing this stuff, and an unimpeachable source of information.

I’m imagining a child claiming he could build a 747 in ten seconds, and I am not impressed. The parallels between this scenario and evolution are nonexistent. But fuckheads thrive on dishonesty, which is why this fellow is unfailingly dishonest.

4 Nov

Same-sex marriage and the “popular vote” nonsense

Posted by kemibe in Society Gone Bananas.

It’s no secret that sites like OneNewsNow.com are the purview of undiluted asshats, created by and for cognitive cripples exemplified by the ghastly”Granite Grok” crew, “Gribbit”, and too many others. Every once in a while, these types will merely be wrong in lieu of flat-out lying, which hardly gives them a pass but in part helps explain their general worthlessness. OneNewsNow.com is staffed by moronic champions of the Christ Jesus, but its perpetrators know damned well that they are lying around the clock and that America’s hyper-religious faction consists of people who are jaw-droppingly stupid and will therefore swallow whole every far-fetched pile of shit outlets such as theirs care to churn out.

Today, these assholes are in effect arguing that the legality of gay marriage, state by state, should fundamentally be a basic matter of what voters think. They embrace mob rule. They are citing the fact that in 31 states, the majority of citizens have opposed gay marriage, which is not surprising given the fraction of the populace that consists of mindless busybodies. But why does anyone give a fuck? I’m straight, but I think it’s time to come out in opposition to straight marriage because it too often results in breeding, which in turn virtually always results in FAIL. If married people are going to insist on fucking, then they ought to be more responsible about not doing it during those few hours a month when serious, lasting damage can occur.

I just cannot understand why anyone would truly care who others marry. In fact, when people babble on about gay marriage potentially leading to the legalization of person-domestic animal or person-tree marriage, I realize I’d be all for such things. If more people were wed to inanimate or non-human objects, fewer of them would be reproducing, something 95% of hominids are ill-advised to do owing to sheer genetic flaws and overwhelming idiocy.

Just imagine what would happen if the legality of church services boiled down to what people who are actually intelligent thought about it. If it were up to those with brains, religion as a whole would be shitcanned and its feeble-minded followers endlessly mocked for being slack-faced, uncomprehending yokels. If it were up to intelligent people, Christianity on the whole would have gone the way of the Dodo bird a long time ago. No one with a brain has any use for such bullshit.

The “article” states:

Five other states have legalized gay marriage — starting with Massachusetts in 2004, and followed by Vermont, New Hampshire, Connecticut and Iowa — but all did so through legislation or court rulings, not by popular vote.

Legislation! What fucking nerve! They should just let the citizenry vote on everything, especially in the American South, where the general degree of backwardness and ignorance is roughly that of Kandahar. If it were up to the average voting hick from Buttfuck, Indiana, women and black people would probably not be allowed to take part in civic affairs. By the way, if it seems as though I am singling out certain parts of the country for ridicule, it’s because I am. And we have a slew of dipshits here in New Hampshire as well, especially given that the state’s population is roughly that of Dallas, Texas.

Had Maine’s law been upheld, the result would probably have energized efforts to get another vote on gay marriage in California, and given a boost to gay-marriage bills in New York and New Jersey.

Guess what, fuckheads: Those energetic efforts will continue regardless. That’s what people do in response to miserable half-wits like the ones behind OneNewsNow.com. It’s kind of a tradition, this biting back at the moron brigade. And ultimately, it always works.

One of these days, long after I’m gone, anyone blithering on about Jesus Christ as if it were a historical figure will be laughed out of the frigging room. He or she will be granted all of the legitimacy currently bestowed upon those few putative souls who nowadays believe that Zeus is king of the universe. They and their anti-science, anti-basic-sense stances will become wholly meaningless, just like they are. And it cannot happen soon enough.

4 Nov

NY 23

Posted by jimfiore in Fun with Politics.

OK, so Democrat Bill Owens beats Conservative Doug Hoffman in the NY-23 Congressional race. Yes, I know NY-23 has been solidly Republican since the Civil War and it was about as safe a seat as a party could hope for. And really, I’m damn happy that Owens won (and a bit surprised), but I’ve been reading a lot of comments around the net this morning (Huffington Post, for example) and I think some Democrats and progressives are going a bit overboard on this.

I live directly south of this district so I am at least a little familiar with it. Although many folks tend to think of New York as a liberal/progressive state, once you get out of the cities, the main themes are conservative and independent. NY-23 is about as non-urban as it gets. Parts of it are downright desolate. My take is that voters didn’t like the idea of folks like Palin and Armey coming in to push Conservative Hoffman over Republican Scozzafava, particularly Armey’s comments referring to local concerns as “parochial” and trying to turn the election into a national referendum on Obama.

Independence and local issues are serious business in NY-23. But conservative ideology runs deep. Being ex-military no doubt helped Owens, along with Hoffman’s general cluelessness. This election result does not mean that even staunchly conservative areas have suddenly become progressive and completely reject teabagger foolishness. After all, uber-conservatives did manage to push out the moderate Republican and lost by only four points (less than Scozzfava’s 6% in spite of having dropped out, and rest assured that that will be the GOP spin: “Owens only got 49% of the vote, so more people actually rejected the Democrat”).

Bill Owens will be up for election in one year. The real test will be whether or not he can hold onto the seat.

1 Nov

Meb wins in New York City

Posted by kemibe in The Running Ape.

This morning, Mebratohm Keflezighi became the first American to win the New York City Marathon since Alberto Salazar set a world record there in 1982. Meb was born in Eritrea, but has lived in the U.S. since he was around 10 years old and is about the nicest guy anyone will ever meet. Here’s the story.

This is a man who holds the American record for 10,000 meters on the track and, by the end of 2008, had been written off by all manner of pundits owing to a string of injuries and his relatively advanced age (34). Today’s victory, accomplished in 2 hours, 9 minutes, and 15 seconds, is heartening for both Meb personally and for U.S. distance running. Six American men finished in the top 10, an unheard-of circumstance in recent memory.

Derartu Tulu of Ethiopia the women’s race in a pedestrian (by the standards of this race) 2:28:52. World record holder Paula Radcliffe, running with a bum hamstring, could only manage fourth place. Here’s one example of why the New York Times should never be regarded as a paragon of journalistic expertise, its bloated circulation notwithstanding:

The 36-year-old Boulet, a native of Poland, became a naturalized American citizen on Sept. 11, 2001, in San Francisco, but has struggled since.

Magdalena Boulet won was second in the 2008 U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials in Boston. If that’s “struggling,” I’d hate to see success.

31 Oct

30 outstanding place names in Great Britain

Posted by kemibe in Hootworthy.

A book called Rude Britain includes a list of the 100 “dirtiest” named places (towns, streets, etc.) in the U.K. Here are the top 30, courtesy of Wikipedia.

1. Cocks, Cornwall
2. Minge Lane, Upton-upon-Severn, Worcestershire, England
3. Bell End, Worcestershire, England
4. Twatt, Shetland (note, there is another Twatt in Orkney)
5. Sandy Balls, a long-established holiday centre in New Forest, Hampshire, England with a name dating back to Henry VIII
6. Muff, County Donegal, Ireland (Not part of Britain or UK)
7. Fingringhoe, Essex, England
8. Back Passage, City of London, an alleyway in the EC1 postal district
9. Shitterton, Dorset, England
10. Slag Lane, Merseyside, a residential street in Haydock, England
11. Hole of Horcum, North York Moors, England
12. Fanny Hands Lane, Lincolnshire, England
13. Inchinnan Drive, Renfrewshire, Scotland
14. Cockshoot Close, Oxfordshire, England
15. Funbag Drive, Watford, England
16. Fanny Avenue, Derbyshire, England
17. Beaver Close, Surrey, England
18. Dick Court, Lanarkshire, Scotland
19. Felch Square, Powys, Wales
20. Lickfold, West Sussex, England
21. Rimswell, East Riding of Yorkshire, England
22. Spanker Lane, Nether Heage, Derbyshire
23. Cocknmouth Close, West End, Surrey
24. Friars’ Entry, Oxford, Oxfordshire, England
25. Butt Hole Road, Conisbrough, South Yorkshire
26. Cockermouth, Allerdale, Cumbria
27. Fine Bush Lane, Ruislip
28. Ladygate Lane, Ruislip
29. Hornyold Road, Malvern, Worcestershire, England
30. Crotch Crescent, Marston, Oxford, England

31 Oct

Grief in the (other part of) the primate world

Posted by kemibe in Bonobos from other troops, Habitats and Humanity.

For some reason this is just heartbreaking.

From the November issue of National Geographic magazine.

31 Oct

Some truly funny comments from the wingnut world

Posted by kemibe in Fun with Politics, Troglodytes at Play.

Granite Grok, a shitblog maintained by proud right-wing New Hampshirites who aren’t from New Hampshire, is always a reliable source of misinformation, illiteracy, and the various other noisome hallmarks of self-identification with neoconservative politics. They’ve outdone themselves, though, with this post about serial lunatic Michele Bachmann, a congresswoman from Minnesota. Its opening utterances:

She drives the left nuts. George Will wrote about her in a recent column. What makes Michelle [sic] Bachmann catch peoples’ [sic] attention? She’s smart. She speaks in plain language. She doesn’t engage in doublespeak or pander. THAT is what people want in their politicians…

Apparently, someone thinks that it’s not Hallowe’en, but April Fool’s Day.

Bachmann doesn’t drive the left nuts. She’s an endless source of entertainment. As far as her speaking in plain language is concerned, I suppose that if you’re knot reel good with wurds yerself, yu might think that. A great example of Bachmann’s “plain language” was her claiming that the Swine Flu epidemic broke out under Jimmy Carter’s watch:

I find it interesting that it was back in the 1970s that the swine flu broke out then under another Democrat president Jimmy Carter. And I’m not blaming this on President Obama, I just think it’s an interesting coincidence.

Sure she’s not blaming Obama–she merely finds things “interesting.” But more to the point, it was during Republican Gerald Ford’s presidency that the first cases of this strain of flu were seen (not that Ford was to blame, obviously).

Bachmann has also claimed that 3% the atmosphere consists of carbon dioxide, putting her in error by a factor of roughly 100. Then there’s this gem:

I just wondered that if our founders thought taxation without representation was bad, what would they think of representation WITH taxation?

Brilliant.

There are scores of other examples of Bachmann’s unwavering incompetence as a member of the House and as a human being, but it would take all day and night to list them and I have to stock up on eggs and shaving cream before it gets dark.

The Granite Grok clowns have stood behind people like Ted Nugent and Sarah Palin in the past. But when you believe that Michele Bachmann is smart, it’s time to visit a neurologist, or have someone analyze your tap water for the presence of heavy metals.

I don’t doubt that Bachmann’s unmitigated stupidity, lies, and fact-check failures are in fact exactly what morons like the Groksters want in their politicians. With Republicans like Bachmann front and center, it makes it all the easier for ineducable jackholes to feign relevance by littering the Web with Kool-Aid-induced vomit and waste time hosting radio shows that no one with a normal number of chromosomes could possibly bear to listen to.

30 Oct

More evidence that local driving schools have a sense of humor

Posted by kemibe in Sheer Procrastination.

Today, during a trip to the local supermarket, I saw a taxi-style sign atop a wavering car that read “PALE RIDER” advertising (or admitting) that the vehicle in effect belonged to an outfit called the Pale Rider Driving School. I had visions of Clint Eastwood for a few seconds before I got the joke.

This is on the non-immediate heels of seeing this license plate, which may well have been associated with the same school.

At least someone in Strafford County, NH has a sense of humor, however potentially morbid the outcome.

29 Oct

This could get mildly interesting

Posted by kemibe in Self-Indulgent Wankery, Sheer Procrastination, Uncategorized.

I’ve never used online dating services and have no honest desire to do so now, but earlier today I impulsively created a profile on one of the more popular ones, just because the sun had risen in the east and I was therefore feeling a bit manic and mischievous. Here is how I described myself:

I’ve never tried online dating before, but I am assuredly the antithesis of a successful Match. com participant. I’m technically sane but volatile and unstable in several respects, and I balk at a gut level at the whole notion of a contrived, quasi-blind date. The fact that I’m friendly, engaging, both possess and appreciate a robust sense of humor, and am allegedly intelligent only makes things worse, because I make a great first impression that I subsequently prove unable to live up to. At any rate, I expect any adventures I have on this site to end in cataclysmic failure.

One less-than-surprising thing I’ve noticed in viewing the profiles of people I know is that users of these services–and in particular, men–are fond of exaggeration and outright misrepresentation of their skills, assets, strong points, whatever. Now comes someone whose desultory mini-bio reads as if it should be bullshit, but is in fact 100 percent sincere. I have no interest in using the site legitimately, and as a holder of a free account have a lot of limitations on functionality.

What is most entertaining is the idea that people will be directed toward my profile because the things I have posted there render them theoretically compatible with me. Who on a dating site would be a good match for someone who abhors dating sites? I guess it really is an open question.

Anyway.

29 Oct

Schwarzenegger’s not-so-secret sentiments

Posted by kemibe in Fun with Politics.

The governor of California recently refused to sign Assembly Bill 1176, sponsored by Rep. Tom Ammiano (D) and dealing with the creation of infrastructure financing districts in San Francisco. Anyone care to guess was the Terminator was really trying to tell Ammiano–with whom the governor who has a well-established hostile relationship–with this?

ab1176

If you need a hint, think format, not content.

28 Oct

Christians waxing dishonest about new hate-crimes law, as expected

Posted by kemibe in Fun Is Where You Find It, Troglodytes at Play.

With President Obama having just signed a bill toughening standards relating to certain “hate crimes” into law, the religious right is using the opportunity to boost its dishonesty and hysteria quotients beyond their already stratospheric levels. OneNewsNow.com (who else) is claiming that Christian broadcasters are now at risk for being punished for speaking out against homosexuality and other things:

Appended to the hate crimes amendment was a statement ensuring that a religious leader or any other person cannot be prosecuted on the bases if his or her speech, beliefs, or association.

But Craig Parshall, chief counsel for National Religious Broadcasters (NRB), discounts that statement, pointing out that such laws in other countries have been used to silence people of faith. He believes the law approved by Congress is potentially dangerous as it relates to comments made about homosexuality or another religion.

This is obviously bullshit. As Charles Haynes of the First Amendment Center points out:

To illustrate their fears, religious conservatives cite cases in Europe and Canada where a few pastors have been prosecuted in recent years for “hate speech” after they spoke out against homosexuality. These prosecutions are indeed insidious attacks on free speech and free exercise of religion – but they all occurred in countries without a First Amendment.

In my view, it can’t happen here. Americans have, after all, lived under hate-crimes laws, federal and state, for decades – and some of the state laws already include sexual orientation. In all that time, religious leaders of various stripes have preached controversial beliefs about race, religion and national origin without ever being charged with a hate crime based on the content of their speech.

Thanks to the First Amendment, we enjoy the strongest protection for free expression in the world. In a society where even white supremacists, anti-Semites and anti-gay hatemongers like the Rev. Fred Phelps are free to speak, local pastors need not worry about being prosecuted for preaching the Gospel as they understand it.

But just to be certain that the legislation will not be misused, sponsors of the hate-crimes bill have added language to ensure that “nothing in the Act shall be construed to prohibit any constitutionally protected speech.” Further, “nothing in this Act shall be construed to allow prosecution based solely upon an individual’s expression of racial, religious, political, or other beliefs or solely upon an individual’s membership in a group advocating of espousing such beliefs.”

Game, set, match.

Another thing religious conservatives–arrant hypocrites renowned, of course, for trying to use the courts to limit various nonviolent “attacks” by “militant atheists” who “persecute” them–might consider is that if they weren’t assholes insistent on maintaining a never-ending and comprehensive pogrom against homosexuals in the first place, they wouldn’t have to worry about this issue. But for present purposes that’s not the point, which is that they are free to continue being assholes thanks to constitutional protection, and as nauseating as the output this guarantees is, this is exactly how things should be.

28 Oct

Weight Watchers donates $1 million to combat world hunger…

Posted by kemibe in Health and Society, Society Gone Bananas.

…but dammit, they’re still in the weight-loss business and had the temerity to use pounds lost by its members as an incentive in a six-week drive that ended a week and a half ago. As noted here (and turn down the sound unless you really want to listen to Jenny McCarthy prate on), for every 1 million pounds members lost during the campaign period, Weight Watchers donated $250,000, or the equivalent of 250,000 pounds of food.

Here’s a complaint from someone on a site that is notorious for its denialism and where there is apparently no limit to the reasons people find to complain. It doesn’t surprise me that fat people are often on the defensive, what with countless examples of their being perceived and often portrayed as slothful, weak-willed and what have you. Continue reading

28 Oct

“Clearly, outright denial of Satan and demons is not the answer”

Posted by kemibe in Spankin' the Crank.

Sure it is, if your faculties are intact. And of course it isn’t, if you’re a wacknut like those behind the creationist site Answers in Genesis, who have provided an early Hallowe’en trick and treat with their earnest essay explaining the “evidence” for the existence of demons.

The essay is as long-winded as it is loopy, so I won’t address much of the text itself. But the first paragraph signifies the worthlessness of the claims to come:

Haunted houses, ghosts, demons—our Western culture can’t seem to get enough of the spirit world. The latest Gallup poll indicates that 42% of Americans believe in demon possession, 37% believe in haunted houses, and 32% believe in ghosts. (Not just Americans are enthralled—40% of the British believe in haunted houses, too.) Continue reading

28 Oct

Nutjobs love the “war on Christmas”

Posted by kemibe in Troglodytes at Play.

Despite their stated distaste for the so-called war on Christmas that unfolds every December, Christians of the martryesque persuasion plainly enjoy the battles, as this gives them uncommonly powerful opportunities to engage in the hollow bitching that pervades their entire “faith.”

Today, the American Fuckup Association spat out a press release noting that the 2009 version of the “war” has already begun in the form of a nativity display the city of Warren, Michigan is requiring be removed from the vicinity of a major intersection. The article begins with the claim that “The Christmas culture wars for 2009 have begun and ground zero is the Detroit suburb of Warren,” and devolves from there into unabashedly senseless rhetoric, including the placement of scare quotation marks around the phrase “separation of church and state” as if the concept is a rogue, false construct perpetrated by evil godless types. May I describe the “capital city” of my “home” “state” of “New Hampshire” as “Concord” in similarly baroque form without inviting scorn? I hope not.

I could personally not care much less about the presence of nativity scenes. They represent a bullshit event being framed as genuine history, but there’s nothing unattractive or offensive about them and I would not be personally inclined to call for their removal–this stuff is a world apart from Jesus-inspired efforts to render creationism legitimate, impede biomedical research for insane reasons, or otherwise propagate myth-driven assholery. Yet I also appreciate the need to keep such sectarian displays on public land in check, and what the AFA release fails to reveal–and not by accident–is that the Warren set-up was in fact on government property. The author notes repeatedly that the scene was “privately maintained,” but fails to note that the display was situated on a median strip, patches of land which, last I was aware, are never the property of private citizens.

Here’s the kicker, in my view. The AFA article states:

Richard Thompson, President and Chief Counsel of the Law Center, said that militant atheists attempt to do through the courts what the Taliban by force had done to Afghanistan: remove all the symbols of the country’s national heritage.

People who are not themselves victims of religious indoctrination can immediately spot the problem with this. The AFA compares the non-violent actions of “militant atheists” stateside, pursued through legal channels, with the deplorable and murderous tactics of the Taliban as if this were not the essential difference between them. If I told you that someone had done with a throw pillow what people of a similar bent had perpetrated with a bazooka, I would hope your eyebrows would be raised. Yet this is, from a rhetorical standpoint, exactly what the AFA is doing with this blather. There is roughly the same level of similarity between American atheists and Afghanistan theocrats as there is a physical resemblance between Willie Shoemaker and Shaquille O’Neal, but such considerations never stop people from the AFA or other Christopathic outfits–in fact, they feed handily and hungrily on their own transparent lies.

Despite years of observing the dishonesty inextricably woven into “journalism” by religious mouthpieces such as the AFA and Focus on the Fuckups, I am often still surprised to see how shamelessly it is spread. But when your world view is grounded in events that never took place and serially contradictory ideas, such dishonesty is, I imagine, obligatory.

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