What were you wearing?

From The Root:

Twitter user @Steenfox—real name Christine Fox—was still reeling Wednesday evening from an earlier online debate with a follower who insisted that women's revealing attire could be a contributing factor to sexual assault.

"I was trying to make him understand that it absolutely does not make a difference, and that the responsibility does not lie on women," she told The Root.

So she asked her twitter followers to report what they'd been wearing, if they'd been sexually assaulted:

The response was overwhelming. Within two hours, Fox says, she had received several hundred replies, pouring in faster than she could retweet them. ...

@steenfox I was wearing a Grumpy Carebear Tshirt, with jean shorts...it was a male relative...(okay to RT)

@steenfox Assaulted twice. At age 15: jean capris, loose red baby tee, flip flops. At age 18: jeans, university t-shirt, sneakers. Can RT.

@steenfox I was wearing a hooded sweatshirt, baggy jeans and a cap advertising the Beatles. You can RT

@steenfox I was wearing a brown Garanimals-type shirt w/green frogs on it, a brown fringe jacket, Wranglers and B. Brown loafers. 6. OKRT

@steenfox The first time? I was 8. I had on a sweater and jeans. The 2nd, work clothes: dress pants and a button up blouse

@steenfox 1st of multiple times by the same family member was at 7...wearing pajamas. 2nd time I was 12...sweatpants and tee...youth pastor

@steenfox 10 wearing pjs molested by a "family friend"....16 wearing jeans, black hoody, and nikes

@steenfox Terry bicolor short set. It was my favorite. I had matching jellies. There were two of them. The oldest was 12. I was 6. RT away.

@steenfox 8yrs old at after school tutoring sessions so in school uniform - below-the-knee short sleeved dress. You can RT

"I really hope that this opens people's minds that what you are wearing has absolutely nothing to do with whether you are assaulted," said Fox.

Note that those are just a small fraction of the tweets she received, even in the first two hours. As Kay Steiger at TPM puts it:

This serves to simultaneously destroy two myths about rape, first that it is rare and that you probably don't know anyone who has suffered assault -- too many of the tweets related clothing that they were wearing as children and that the perpetrators were relatives or family friends. The second is that what a victim is wearing matters at all. This is one of the hardest things for many who haven't been victimized to understand about rape: it isn't about sex; it's about power.

___

This isn't the same thing, but it's not too far off, either:



A woman on YouTube must withstand the kinds of threats and vile, degrading personal attacks that a man just doesn't face. It must be frightening, but also incredibly depressing. Heck, I get depressed just reading the comments Rebecca Watson gets (and those aren't the worst of what she has to put up with, not by a long shot).

As a man, I need to recognize what women go through. I've never in my entire life worried about the possibility of being raped. I'm a big guy, and here in Lincoln, I've felt free to go anywhere at any time of the day or night, without ever worrying about my personal safety.

Sure, men are victims of crime, too, but I don't have to worry that all my doors are locked and my windows won't open far enough to let an intruder get in - not while I'm home, certainly. (When I bought this house, from a single woman, the windows had all been blocked from opening more than a few inches. Hey, that was just a prudent safety measure for her.)

It makes me angry that women do have to worry about these things. But it makes me angrier that women who are victims have to face accusations that they were at fault. That's ridiculous! It's not just that what you're wearing has nothing to do with rape. It's even more than that. The victim is never at fault here! It's the rapist who's entirely to blame.

I don't care if you walk down the street naked, at midnight. It's not your fault if you're attacked. I don't care if you had too much to drink. I've had too much to drink on occasion, and I've never had to worry about sexual assault. A woman shouldn't have to go through life worrying not just about strangers, but even about casual friends and acquaintances.

When men commit crimes, it's their fault. Don't get me wrong, it's not my fault, because I don't do things like that. But it is my fault if I fail to recognized the problems women face, just because they're women.

The Republican alternative to Obamacare

(Tim Eagan)

Men's vs women's health care

The Daily Show
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Funny, isn't it? Federally-funded penis pumps, but no birth control for women? Viagra, sure. Cialis, of course. But no birth control pills for women, heaven forbid! (Literally, heaven forbids it.)

You'd think if men were getting penis pumps, then dildos would also be covered, wouldn't you? But can you imagine conservative heads exploding about that? (Actually, that would be pretty funny. I'd love to see it!)

The crazy thing - well, one of the crazy things - is that these right-wingers are also dead set against abortion. But if they really cared about abortion, instead of about controlling women, then effective birth control would be their top priority.

Here's another video, not so funny, on the subject of women's health care:



Old white men tend to look at things from the perspective of old white men. And since old white men controlled our country - and still do, largely - that was the perspective of our laws and regulations. In fact, that perspective tended to be just an implicit assumption.

Now, things are changing. There are a record number of women in Congress (though still only 18.8% of the total membership), and women tend to look at some of these things differently.

Of course, they were still raised in a patriarchal society and almost all belong to a patriarchal religion, so their attitudes aren't necessarily going to be different. But it's a start.

Bible barons

From Salon, here's an excellent article about how the Republican Party gets people to vote against their own self-interest (my thanks to Jim Harris for the link):

Last week, a bill to make way for the display of Ten Commandments in public buildings, such as courthouses and schools, passed out of an Alabama Senate committee, sending it to the full Senate for a vote as early as next week.

If you want to know why nine out of the 10 poorest states are located in the hyper-religious South, look no further than this calculated right-wing political play, which is designed for one purpose: to ensure Southern and Sunbelt voters continue to vote against their own self-economic interests.

If passed by the state Senate and signed by the governor, the state would put a constitutional amendment on the next ballot to let Alabama voters decide the issue. The theocratic authors and the Republican Party sponsors of this bill are fully cognizant of the fact that the bill is unconstitutional, and thus it will, inevitably, be struck down by the courts.

The Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is clear: “Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion.” It is the very basis of the separation of church and state. ...

While both [Trip] Pittman and [DuWayne] Bridges may sound like idiots, they’re actually shrewd political strategists, for the promise of tax cuts for the rich is hardly an effective platform for rallying the Republican Party base in a midterm election year. The promise of the Ten Commandments, however, is how you get a person without healthcare to vote for the party whose platform is based on repealing the Affordable Care Act.

According to the Pew Research Center, Alabama is the second most religious state in the nation with 74 percent of residents saying religion is very important in their lives. Number one is Mississippi. It is a pitiful irony that those states that are most religious are also states with the most individual suffering. More than 30 percent of the children in these two states suffer extreme poverty. In both states, the primary reason for abject poverty is that more than a third of children have parents who lack secure employment, decent wages, and healthcare. But thanks to Jesus, these poor saps vote for the party that rejects Medicaid expansion, opposes early education expansion, legislates larger cuts to education, and slashes food stamps to make room for oil and agriculture subsidies on top of tax cuts and loopholes for corporations and the wealthy.

Yup. And note that it's to the Republican Party's advantage to keep citizens poorly educated and ignorant, so they won't understand this. But more importantly, it's to their advantage to keep citizens poor, because struggling people tend to turn more to religion (especially when our society's social safety net has been shredded).

It's a very, very bad thing when there's no incentive for politicians to do well. Indeed, as the party which claims that "government is the problem," the incentives are just the reverse, to do so badly it demonstrates their point.

In a way, we're lucky the Republican Party is so bigoted and so crazy. If they were even halfway reasonable just think of how much damage they could do. Instead, they can't help but show the crazy, despite their best efforts to keep that hidden, and that helps to keep them out of power (not in Alabama, though, or Mississippi,... or Nebraska).

The survivor

Southbridge - or the northern tip of it, at least

Note: This is Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead - the new version, with a new world and a new character. Check out my other posts for the details about this game, including installation instructions and tips for beginners. This post is just for fun.


I'm a survivor.

Yeah, call me a coward if you want, I don't care. But you can't, because you're dead, huh? Everyone's dead...

And it's not my fault! There wasn't anything I could do about it. I'm not a coward!

I was traveling cross-country, far from family and friends, when the world ended. Suddenly, it was a complete madhouse. Sure, we'd heard rumors. We'd seen the military everywhere, and we knew something was up. (Ha! Lot of good that did. All that gave us was zombies outfitted in Kevlar!)

OK, I'm sure they did their best, and so did I. I would have joined up with other survivors - of course I would. I offered. I argued that we needed to get organized. We're social animals, for chrissake! How do you think human beings have survived this long?

But no one was willing to trust a stranger - even the few who weren't operating purely in panic mode by then. I was there. I saw it. I wish to hell I hadn't, but there wasn't anything I could do about it! Heck, it's a miracle I survived myself. I nearly didn't...

I'm not a coward! I'm cautious. I'm prudent. When the world goes to hell, there's no way one man can stand in the way. Somehow, I ended up in the woods, and I stayed there as long as I could. I slept in the trees. (Thank the gods the weather stayed clear!) I scavenged for food. I'm no survivalist, or even a backpacker, but I am a survivor.

Eventually, I wandered into the evac shelter just north of Southbridge. (That's what the signs say, at least. I don't even know what state I'm in, not for sure.) Would I have been rescued if I'd made it there sooner, whisked off to some tropical island paradise where human beings are even now trying to rebuild civilization?

Maybe, but there was no sign of that. There was a car engine sitting on the pavement in front of the shelter - just the engine, nothing else - and a pair of jeans in the basement. Those were the only signs that anyone had ever been there. The doors were closed. The windows were unbroken. There was no blood, thank the heavens, and no other sign of struggle, either.

I had a small pocketknife and a matchbook - I don't smoke; I just picked it up somewhere - and I was carrying a plastic bottle of water. That was it. I'd been wearing the same clothes for far too long - t-shirt, jeans, and sneakers - but I'd tried to keep them clean and aired out. (I didn't want anything trailing me by the smell.)

And as far as I could tell, I was the only human being left alive on Earth.

I hope not. No, no, I can't be. There must be other survivors left, and I'm going to stay alive until I find them. But I wouldn't stay alive for long by hiding in the woods. I needed supplies. I needed shelter. And I needed weapons. (Oh, I'm not going to fight unless I have to. I've seen how far bravado gets a person! But I'm tired of being completely helpless.)

I had shelter. The evac building would keep the rain off, I could close the curtains to keep... things from seeing me, and there were doors in all four compass directions. If something came at me, I could at least escape in the opposite direction.

And I'd checked it out before I'd even come close. The shelter sat in an open field, far from anything else. In the daytime, at least, I could see a long way. And most zombies are slow. I could outrun them, if I had to. But I still needed a weapon.

There were metal lockers in the evac shelter, though they were all empty. But I grabbed a rock from the field outside and smashed one of them to pieces. Most of the debris was useless, but there was a stout metal pipe which fit my hand pretty well. And by flattening the end with my rock, I created a makeshift crowbar, which would come in useful as a tool, as well.

I kept the rock, too. I took a drink of water, then left the bottle behind - no way to carry it - but I put a couple of rocks in my pockets and I carried the club/crowbar in my hand. I knew better than to go very far into town, but I thought maybe I could sneak into a few outlying houses, so that's what I did.

It was scary. I'm not embarrassed to say that. But, oddly, I also felt a bit ashamed to be breaking into someone's house and going through their stuff. Still, they were almost certainly dead, and... what else could I do? I needed supplies. I needed food. I needed water. I needed clothing - in particular, I needed some way to carry the other stuff I found. And - of lesser importance immediately, though necessary to survive for long - I needed tools.

So I pried open a few back windows and went inside. For the most part, I stayed in the back, because I could see zombies through the front windows, and I couldn't close the curtains without them seeing me. Perhaps if I came back at night?

There was stuff scattered around, but I couldn't carry any of it without dropping my makeshift crowbar. So I made a note of what I'd found and moved on. I did find some food and some warm cans of pop, and I ate and drank my fill before returning to the evac shelter, so it wasn't a complete loss. I needed to be methodical about this, anyway. I needed to take my time and scout out everything I could.

The last house had a basement filled with guns. Yeah, big surprise, huh? It seems like the only right we have - had - in recent years was the 'right to bear arms.' Every other right could be limited, but never that one, huh? Fat lot of good it did that poor bastard in the basement, though. He was still moving around, but he wasn't alive.

I shut the door and left. The fact is, I didn't know how to use any of those guns. But one thing I did know was that it was an easy quick way to die.

This was America, after all. Half the men and even some of the women had been carrying their own personal penis substitute. But you know what happens when some swaggering fool shoots a zombie? Oh, he might drop one or even two, but the sound of a shot is like ringing a dinner bell. And eventually, all those zombies get back up again,... plus one.

(I don't want to be misleading here - assuming that anyone else will ever read this. Zombies don't eat brains. They don't eat anything. They just have an overpowering urge to kill. That's one reason why I think this was a military project gone wrong. But that's another story. I just want to be as accurate as I can here, so I thought I'd better explain.)

Southbridge evac shelter

I couldn't sleep that night - too keyed up, I guess. So I thought I'd try a night raid on the town, maybe get to some of those front rooms in the dark (so I could close the curtains and look around more thoroughly). I'd seen a clothing store, too, a little further in. If I could get there, maybe I could get a coat with pockets.

That's where I headed first. It was drizzling rain and very dark. I see well at night, but even for me, it wasn't easy. [Note: I was wrong in this post about the Night Vision trait. Actually, the distance you can see varies with the conditions. When it's raining, it's darker than when the night is clear or even just cloudy. Makes sense, huh? The developers seem to have thought of everything.]

But it was easy to walk quietly, too, and I was able to search the clothing store without encountering anything at all. I found cargo pants in my size, plus a trenchcoat and a raincoat, and then topped it all off with a voluminous bag I could sling across one shoulder.

Finally, I could carry stuff! So I went back to those homes I'd explored earlier in the day and filled that bag, and my pockets, with food, drink, and small tools. I was in a great mood as I ran back to the evac shelter. I suppose I wasn't paying enough attention, but it was still pitch black outside. Anyway, I nearly ran into the side of a moose.

It was scary as hell in the darkness. Have you ever seen a moose closeup? They're huge! Normally, they'll ignore a human being, but not when they feel threatened. And running up to a moose in the middle of the night clearly feels like a threat to them.

I tried to back off, but it kept attacking me. I tried to run, but it was faster than me. It kept knocking me down as I was trying to escape. Finally, I ran inside one of the homes nearby, but it came right inside after me! It was just so fast, I couldn't even get the door closed.

In desperation, I started beating at it with my makeshift crowbar, and I finally drove it off. At least, it ran out the front door, and I was able to close the door behind it. Then I crawled out a back window and ran for home again,... only to run smack dab into another moose.

I was nearly in hysterics by then. I'd not only taken a beating, but my new clothes were getting shredded. So I started hitting the moose with my crowbar until that one, too, ran off, and I was finally able to return to the evac shelter.

My trenchcoat had been completely destroyed, and my raincoat was little better. Most of my clothes were damaged, with only the messenger bag still in good condition. Well, I was a little better off than I had been, but not much. I did have some food and water, at least.

The next day, I thought I'd check out a science lab to the northwest, but I started encountering these giant insects. I'm talking about ants the size of dogs - big dogs (and even a fly of that size). What had those damned scientists been doing?

I remember finding science books at my grandparents' house - until my parents found out and threw them away - so I knew well enough that science hadn't always been like that. But in recent years, the only science being done was funded by the military - partly because only the military had any money and partly because we didn't really value science. Only technology was valued and, for the most part, only military technology at that.

I'd always loved to hear stories about the old days, when scientists could research whatever the hell they wanted. Heck, I might have become a scientist myself back then, back before scientists were basically just army grunts without the status. Anyway, I'd heard rumors of worse stuff than giant bugs. I just hoped I wouldn't run into any of that stuff.

As it turned out, I found some scientists on the way back - their corpses, at least. One of them was animate. At first, I thought maybe it was still alive, because it didn't seem to be completely mindless. It was mindlessly hostile, though. I smashed it with rocks from a distance, while it was still fumbling through its pockets. (I didn't wait to find out why. Despite its weird behavior - not quite like ordinary zombies - it clearly wasn't human anymore.)

I continued a little further south, on the west side of this small suburb, as the drizzle turned to rain. Pretty soon, I was in a thunderstorm (and remember that my raincoat had been damaged pretty badly). Just before I could get to another house down there, I was spotted by a zombie dog - a German shepherd that had apparently been an army dog when it was alive, since it was still wearing the remains of its Kevlar armor.

It was very fast, and most of my rocks just bounced off its armor. I did hit it in the head a couple of times before it got to me, but then it was just a matter of standing my ground and smacking it with my crowbar until it was dead. I was bleeding badly by then, and in a great deal of pain. But it was only when I started to bandage my leg that I realized why. The rain had turned to acid!

What in the hell have we done to our planet? Yeah, we'd had 'acid rain' before - we'd been screwing up our own environment for years - but nothing like this. If I hadn't been wearing a motorcycle helmet I'd found in one of those houses, I think I would have gone blind. As it was, my skin felt like it was on fire.

I ran towards the nearest house, pried open a window, and crawled inside. It didn't matter what was in there. Without shelter, I was going to die anyway. Luckily, it was safe. There was just a frightened ground squirrel in the garage, a pair of boots in my size (my sneakers were about shot by then), and some odds and ends of food and drink. But mostly, it was a place to wait out the acid storm.

When the rain turned to drizzle, I looked outside to discover bodies lying all around the house - zombies, apparently 'killed' by the acid rain. Of course, I knew that they'd just get back up again, eventually. I'd seen that happen far too many times already. So I went outside and cut their heads off.

On the way back to the evac shelter, I tried to stay close to houses I'd already cleared, just in case the acid rain returned. Christ, I'm glad that hadn't happened when I'd been lost in the forest. What a way to die!

It was only mid-day, but I was exhausted, so I slept until nightfall, then went back into town. This time, I raided a sporting goods store, which was a big disappointment, then a grocery store, where I grabbed a shopping cart and filled it to the brim with everything I could find that hadn't spoiled (including some useful magazines about crafts, construction, and popular mechanics, too).

On the way back, I encountered a weird, swollen zombie which exploded after I hit it with a few rocks. Then I was almost at the shelter when a cougar attacked me. I killed it - mostly with rocks, again, and a few lucky hits with my crowbar - but not before it shredded the few clothes I had left.

I had to learn how to repair that stuff, so I spent the next day practicing. (I'd found a needle and thread in a couple of those houses.) I also read for awhile, when I needed a break. I had enough food - especially after another period of acid rain left moose and wolf corpses all around the shelter - and I needed to take it easy for a bit.

Cabin in the woods, but this room isn't finished, and there's no water.

A couple of days later, the sun came out, so I headed north. I'd seen a cabin in the woods, and I wanted to check it out. It looked safe enough - I didn't see anything dangerous on the way - and the cabin had a bed and a wood stove. But one wall needed repairing, and there was no permanent source of water nearby. Well, neither was there at the evac shelter, but at least I could get water from toilets, for awhile

It stayed clear, so that night, I went further south, raiding some military surplus stores. Again, the results were disappointing. I found a few things that were useful, but no weapons. And I really needed something better than that makeshift crowbar! (Maybe I should get a gun, if I can find one with a silencer.)

There were a lot of wrecked vehicles everywhere, and a couple of them still had their lights on. Thus, I came upon a well-lit scene that will give me nightmares for years: a playground, still full of kids. Only they weren't kids anymore.

They couldn't see me, so I just stood in the dark crying.

Eventually, I moved on. What else could I do? There were several military surplus stores nearby. I found some MREs, some military clothes, and a really nice backpack, but still no melee weapons. I attracted some attention at one point, when I was forced to move into the light, but I lost them again. Then I opened the back door of a supermarket and came face-to-face with a glowing blue portal.

I nearly had a heart attack. I'd heard rumors about such things, and if even half of what I'd heard was true, I needed to start running and never look back. But survivors don't panic. I closed the door and headed back to the evac shelter - moving more quickly than usual, true, but I wasn't in a panic.

Still, what do I do now? I can't head into the forest, not without a shelter, not given the likelihood of more acid rain. I'd try that science lab, but I don't fancy being eaten alive by giant ants. Yet that might be a kinder fate than what waiting around near that portal would grant me.

Could I destroy it, somehow? How do you destroy a portal? I suppose I could burn down the grocery store, but would that accomplish anything? I just don't know. And the fact is, my skin crawled at the very thought of getting that close to it again.

I laid awake that night worrying and wondering what to do. Maybe I could wait for a sunny day and head east into the forest, just to see if there might be something in that direction. Alternately, I could try exploring southwest, trying to stay a prudent distance from the portal that way. But what was a prudent distance? I had no idea.

I'm still wondering what to do.

___
Note: Part 2 is here, and my other game-related posts are here.

Ann Coulter's 'not racist' death squads

Ann Coulter has, of course, made a career out of being crazy. Without a radio or TV program of her own, she's not even minimally limited in how crazy she can be (not even to the very, very limited extent of Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck).

Her career, her celebrity, her notoriety are based on being not just outrageous, but completely over-the-top. She quite literally can't go too far. The only danger for her is if she's not noticed.

And this is CPAC, where crazy is standard. So Coulter really has to work on the crazy to stand out. Well, she did rise sink to the occasion, didn't she? She was so vile I couldn't ignore it (and I do prefer to ignore her).

Even at first, it's crazy enough. Yeah, if you don't celebrate the 'browning of America,' you're considered a racist. Actually, it's more like you're a racist when you have hysterics about it. Who the hell cares? Only racists.

Has she forgotten that we're all descended from immigrants? Arguably, even Native Americans are descended from immigrants, but certainly the vast majority of our ancestors came here from other countries. Did Coulter somehow miss the significance of the Statue of Liberty?

But she just gets worse and worse. Next, she argues that 'brown people' won't want to pay into Social Security and Medicare to support 'older white people.' First of all, if that were true, these right-wingers would be cheering. They don't like Social Security and Medicare anyway.

But second, what different does the color of your skin make? Younger people of all colors pay into these programs to support older people of all colors, and they do it because they can count on the same support when they get older. That's been the social contract in America, and the color of your skin has nothing to do with it!

Still, even that isn't the craziest thing Coulter says here. As I say, it's CPAC. That level of crazy is standard. So if the rest of this hasn't been crazy enough, how about death squads? Yeah, if immigration reform passes through Congress, "then we organize the death squads."

Gee, and people call her racist? Wow, that's hard to believe, isn't it? I wonder why?

Of course, the right-wing hits the ceiling when anyone does call them racist. And even at CPAC, they want minority votes. (They just don't want to do anything to piss off the racists in the GOP base, the people who applaud Ann Coulter, the people they deliberately wooed in their notorious 'Southern strategy.')

So how's that working out for them?



Heh, heh. But why should anyone be surprised at this? Ann Coulter got applause. That's what CPAC is all about.

The same people who think that immigrants won't ever become real Americans if they're not white, the same people who think that 'brown people' won't pay into Social Security and Medicare, because the current recipients are mostly white, the same people who applaud death squads as an appropriate response to immigration reform, those are the same people who think that racial minorities vote Democratic because Democrats give them free stuff.

Insane, isn't it?

The ignorance of creationists

This is Scott Clifton, aka Theoretical Bullshit. I understand his frustration with creationists.

I'm not a biologist. Indeed, I'm not a scientist of any kind. I have a layman's understanding of evolution, no more than that. But creationists don't seem to have even a grade school level understanding of evolution, and they're just everywhere in America.

It would be easy to educate themselves, if they actually wanted to be educated. Evolution, after all, is the foundation of modern biology, and it's been that way for a good century, at least. How could anyone past the age of ten or twelve be so ignorant about such a basic fact of science? It's like a third of Americans believing that the Sun revolves around the Earth.

If you're that ignorant, there's nothing to debate. Read a fifth grade biology text, and then maybe you'll understand why I roll my eyes at your arguments.

William Lane Craig vs Sean Carroll

These excerpts are great, because the entire debate (plus the Q&A at the end) is nearly three hours long - and there's a definite limit to how long I can stand to listen to William Lane Craig!

This is common, though. I frequently hear people with almost no understanding of science confidently claim that they can refute cosmologists, biologists, climatologists - the people who actually know something about the issue they think they can disprove. Science is based on evidence. Scientific theories aren't just opinions!

In this particular case, William Lane Craig makes a good living telling people what they want to believe, and I really doubt if this debate will change that. But it's fun to hear Sean Carroll tearing his arguments to shreds, isn't it?

Yeah, no surprise, this CPAC story was bullshit

This is like David Barton presenting a fictional story as history. Faith-based people don't care if their stories are true. They know what they want to believe, and that's all that matters to them. If reality doesn't match up, they'll use a lie.

Of course this was bullshit. It was at CPAC. What did you expect?

Oh, and I do like the examples given here - those of Eboni K. Williams and Steve Oh, people who actually needed help as children and used it to become successful adults. All children should have a decent chance to succeed in life. Why would anyone let children go hungry, especially just to save billionaires pocket change?

GOP man-crush on Vladimir Putin

The Daily Show
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Right-wingers are swooning over Vladimir Putin. They've got a real man-crush going. (But they're not gay or anything, even if they do love his bare-chested manliness. Mmm, man-nipples!)

Of course, he's white, unlike that weak, ineffectual, mom-jeans-wearing vicious tyrant, crushing all opposition, we have as president, huh? You don't see Barack Obama wrestling tigers!  er, shooting a tied up, tranquilized tiger in a calculated photo op.

But hey, I guess you can't help what turns you on, huh? And clearly, Republicans are smitten.

Incidentally, Jon Stewart's guest was a Russia expert, Kimberly Marten. Her interview was very interesting. For that matter, the whole show was superb - one of their best.

Bing, bing, bing

The Colbert Report
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I'm not a huge fan of Hillary Clinton, but not because she's a woman. And let's face it, she's a million times better than anyone Bill O'Reilly would support.

God, these right-wingers just get crazier and crazier, don't they? But Stephen Colbert does a great job of poking fun of O'Reilly, at least.

Why We Did It

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These are two of my favorite people, so how could I not post this video clip? More importantly, how could I not advertise Rachel Maddow's new documentary, Why We Did It (which airs tonight on MSNBC)?

The Iraq War was a horrific mistake - wasteful of lives and money, both. Remember how we were going to be greeted as liberators? Remember how the war was going to "pay for itself"? Like everything else the Bush administration promised us, these things were lies.

And so was the rationale for starting the war. Iraq was no threat to us and never had been a threat. Iraq didn't attack us. In fact, Saddam Hussein was the enemy of the people who did attack us on 9/11. He also had no weapons of mass destruction.

Furthermore, we were already in a war in Afghanistan - a war we might have won, and then gotten out, if we hadn't directed our attention and our efforts towards a foolish war in Iraq, giving the Taliban time to regroup.

Yet the George W. Bush administration had been looking for an excuse to invade Iraq since they day they took office. 9/11 didn't give them that excuse, because Iraq had nothing to do with that. But 9/11 gave them the opportunity to lie to the American people, because the news media wasn't willing to question anything after that. 9/11 gave them the over-the-top 'patriotism' which translated into letting the president do whatever he wanted.

The Bush administration didn't even raise taxes to pay for these wars. (Of course, Iraq was going to "pay for itself," right?) For the first time in our history, we were going to wage war entirely on borrowed money. They didn't even bother to budget the costs of these wars. Hey, free war! How could we resist?

Of course, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld - nearly the entire Bush administration and the neocons cheering them on - had avoided war like the plague when they had the opportunity to fight, themselves. (Heck, Ted Nugent deliberately crapped his pants in order to fail the physical in the Vietnam era.) But this was going to be a free war in another way, too. There was no draft, so no danger of a protest movement. And these guys weren't going to be in the field, anyway, so they wouldn't be in any danger.

Jon Stewart and Rachel Maddow make a good point in this interview - one I've wondered about, myself. All of those right-wingers who cheered for the invasion of Iraq, that's not the only thing they've been wrong about - demonstrably wrong.

No, we weren't greeted as liberators. No, the war didn't pay for itself. No, Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction. No, invading Afghanistan was not the way to get Osama bin Laden. (Ten years later, Barack Obama showed us how it should have been done in the first place.) No, tax cuts for the rich did not "pay for themselves." No, the Bush tax cuts not only didn't eliminate the deficit, they shot the deficit through the roof. And no, bankers would not effectively "regulate themselves."

These right-wingers - politicians and pundits alike - have been demonstrably wrong about everything, if seems, for years and years. So why do the news media still act like they've got some particular expertise? Why do these pundits still have a job? Why are they still in demand? Why does anyone ask Dick Cheney about anything? (At least Bush stays secluded, as he should.)

I don't get it. For right-wingers, there doesn't seem to be any downside for being wrong, even disastrously wrong. I mean, everyone is wrong on occasion, but these people were wrong about... everything, pretty much. Over and over again, they were wrong - horribly wrong, catastrophically wrong. At some point, shouldn't that have consequences?

New version of Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead

My new world - mostly forest, so far. (Is it just me, or did they nerf the viewing distance at the start of the game?)

Check out my earlier posts on how to install and play Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead. I just wanted to announce that a new stable version of the game has been released (0.A Kaufman), which is available for free download here.

The complete changelog is here. I'll just mention a few changes below, though note that I've barely begun to explore it, myself. I did start a new game to try it out, but old games begun in version 0.9 Ma can apparently be transferred to this version. (Some terrain features just won't show up until you go to a new part of the map.)

Options:

Module manager. - You have the option to select mods whenever you start a new game. Four mods are included in the download - including one which adds dinosaurs to the game (no, I didn't try that, so let me know if you do) - and you can easily add others to the mod folder.

Fullscreen mode. - I like to play most games fullscreen, but not this one. I tried it, and it worked fine, but it struggled when I alt-tabbed out of the game and then got back in it again. Given that I need to check my notes during play occasionally, I prefer to play in a window.

Note that the width and height settings use different values in this version of the game. In the previous version, I set the width to 90 and the height to 30. This time, for the same size window, I had to set them to 240 and 62, respectively. (In both cases, I was using the Waldo 32x32 tileset. Waldo has abandoned that project, so let's hope someone else picks it up and continues with it.)

Safemode when driving. - This allows you to turn off safemode when you're driving a vehicle, but still have it working when you get out. (Safemode keeps you from overlooking a hostile creature.)

Vehicle facing indicator. - When driving, you can have an indicator on the screen to show which way your vehicle is facing. Toggle this feature on or off in the Options.

Sidebar style. - This isn't anything new, but I missed it in my previous game. By setting this to "narrow," you can see a larger area around your character. Things are crammed into the sidebar this way, and not as easy to see, but it's still worth it, to my mind.

Initial points. - If you prefer, you can increase the number of points you have available in character creation (letting you create a character with more skills, more traits, and/or higher stats). In the previous version, the maximum number of points was 25. Now, it's 1,000! Heh, heh.

Character Creation:

I'm not going to say too much about this, although there are new professions, new traits, and better handling of gender at character creation.

In the previous version, I played an unemployed man. That option is no longer available, apparently being replaced by Survivor, who starts with a pocket knife, a matchbook, and a plastic bottle of clean water. Nice, huh? (Note that the pocket knife and matchbook don't spawn with every character now.)

That's the one I went with (for zero points), but I was tempted by Backpacker, who starts with a leather backpack and a book which will teach one level in Survival, and by Ballroom Dancer, who starts with level two in Dodging - both also for zero points. I don't think those were new options, but there are many others, too, so it wasn't easy to decide.

There are new traits, and I took one of them: Weak Scent - for only one point. Zombies - and most other enemies - can find you by sight, sound, and/or scent. Since I like to play a cautious, timid character who avoids danger, I took advantages in all three: Night Vision, which lets me see better than the zombies at night, Light Step, which means I make less noise when walking, and now Weak Scent - each at the cost of only one point.

But note that Night Vision seems to have been nerfed considerably in the game (back the way it used to be, I think). In the previous version, I was really surprised at my sight range at night. It wasn't huge, but it was much larger than I expected. In this one, I can see only two squares away. That's one more than I could see without it, but still not very far.

Edit: I guess I was wrong about that Night Vision trait. What was happening - and this is pretty neat - is that weather conditions affect your viewing distance (and for all I know maybe other things, like the phases of the moon, too). Initially, I was outside at night in a thunderstorm, which is why I could see only a couple of squares away. But most nights are much brighter than that (which makes perfect sense, huh?). This is just an example of the complexity of this game, and the thought which has gone into it.

Other Additions/Changes:

Many mutations, more refined mutation progression. - I've always avoided mutations. As a role-player, that just seemed natural, I guess. But now, there's also Mutation friendly clothing.

View item on mouse hover. - If you enter a room with items scattered around, you can just move the mouse cursor over each to see what it is. That's nice.

Another change is that you can no longer see that there are items inside a container (a dresser, a refrigerator, etc.) unless you are standing right next to it. It's not just that you can't see what the items are, but that you can't see if it holds anything at all. You have to go over to it and look inside. I like that.

Fishing. - I haven't found a river or lake, in this game or the last, but if I do, I can make a fishing pole now. I wonder what I could catch? :)

Working Refrigerators.

Idling for vehicles, can effectively run as generators. - I'm guessing this is how you keep your refrigerator working, huh?

Allow filtering constructions by the ones you can do right now (can toggle). Inventory and crafting menus support listing items by category. - I combined these two. In general, there's better item handling.

Item spoilage rate varies based on temperature.

Shove items out of the way when closing a door. - Oh, now this is nice! If you've ever had a pile of corpses keeping you from closing a door...

Radioactive items. - Note that radioactivity causes mutations (although you can turn this off in the options, if you wish). Luckily, there are also items which can detect radioactivity.

Sleep increases rate of fatigue recovery and healing over time.

Add skintight flag for underwear-type clothing to negate layering penalties. - Use the + key to layer clothing ('s' toggles the selection of an item to move). If you put an undershirt, for example, next to your skin, it won't add a layering penalty.

First Aid and bandages take time to apply now.

Reduce rate of damage for "real armor" as opposed to "clothes".

Buffed most zombie HP (hitpoints). - These last two changes will definitely make the game harder, but I'm not sure how much.

More interesting gun misfire/jam mechanics, guns can take damage now.

Lots more terrain and furniture is now bashable.

Several new houses and other buildings. - Lots more content altogether, apparently.

Lots of recipes moved from auto-learn on skill thresholds to being learned from books.

Cruise control is now smooth, even the sportscar is drivable.

Sinkholes don't turn into pits after you step in them. - I've never stepped in a sinkhole, myself. Guys? :)

Believe it or not, this isn't the whole changelog. This was a big update, apparently. I've barely started to check it out, and I haven't tried to transfer my save game folder from the old version. But that is supposed to be possible.

I'm just not sure if I want to continue with my old game, where I've gotten pretty powerful, or play as a terrified, unskilled, poorly-equipped beginner again. The latter actually sounds more appealing.

The little I've seen of my new world, so far, is almost all forest (with a cabin in the middle of it, and a little bit of a town showing to the south). I've been there less than 24-hours, but I've already run smack dab into moose - two different moose, one after the other - which ignored me until I got right next to them (it was night, so I couldn't see them at a distance), at which point they proceeded to kick the crap out of me.

But I'm still alive, and there's a sporting goods store I might be able to sneak inside. If it ever stops with the acid rain. And if I don't run into a bear on the way. :)

PZ Myers and the nature of evidence

PZ Myers

PZ Myers is, of course, the biology professor and atheist who writes at Pharyngula - a blog which probably gets more readers in an hour than I get in a year.

Er, I don't have to say that I don't agree with him about everything, right? I mean, I don't agree with anyone about everything, so why should I even have to mention that?

I do agree with him about most things, though, and I admire the way he writes (and thinks). As an example - and my whole point in writing this - I wanted to reblog a couple of excerpts I particularly liked from this post:

I see a pad of post-it notes next to my keyboard on my desk. This is clearly evidence that tiny invisible elves from 3M climbed up the wall outside my window, translocated extradimensionally through the glass into my office, and left me a present. Or is it evidence that I picked up a pad at the central office and put it in a convenient spot near my phone? You don’t get to say that the existence of this pad is equal evidence for both claims; you have to ignore the consilience of phenomena that provide better explanations. There is a cabinet of these things just down the hall from me; it’s a mundane object with obvious utility; there are torn-off post-it notes with scribbled comments attached to my phonebook. At the same time, 3M elves have no evidence for their existence, have posited powers with no known mechanism, and are arbitrary, ad hoc, bizarre explanations for a perfectly ordinary object. It is not demanding too much evidence to expect some independent corroboration of the mechanisms of the phenomenon that aren’t more simply explained by my ability to walk 50 feet to a collection of supplies.

In the same way, believers like to say they do have evidence for their supernatural phantasm…and then they point to their Bible. Sure, it’s evidence. Evidence backed up by documents and history that over the course of many centuries, human beings collected stories and legends and hectoring homilies and poetry, all written by people, and assembled them into a clumsy compilation, and stamped it all with the imprimatur of religious authority. Meanwhile, you’re trying to tell me this hunk of cellulose and ink was magically transported into the world of Catholicism by the equivalent of invisible elves.

Who actually has evidence for the origin of the object?

I like how he puts this. I hear from Christians all the time that they've got 'evidence' for their beliefs,... and then they point to the Bible without the slightest sense of irony. Or they say they've got "logical evidence," which apparently means an argument from incredulity.

Of course, I'm always pushing evidence-based thinking, so those are the kinds of responses I should expect to get, I guess. I mean, it seems simple to me, but apparently not to people who want to believe what they want to believe.

Here's another excerpt:

You know, this is the big difference. If you tell a scientist that their evidence doesn’t distinguish between two alternatives, it’s the scientist who thinks hard about the problem, comes up with what would be differing consequences of an experiment if his hypothesis was valid or invalid, and does the work. We actually love this part of theorizing, thinking through the implications of a hypothesis and then testing them. And that’s a process that involves getting specific about the details of our hypothesis.

Theologians, on the other hand, hate that part. We can ask them what the difference would be between a universe that had a god and one that didn’t, between a god that answers prayers and one that doesn’t, between a Christian god and a Muslim god, between a Catholic god and a Protestant god, and they love to tell us that the differences are profound, but not anything specific. And then they yell at us that we haven’t given them the criteria that we could use to discriminate between the alternatives. And then, most aggravatingly, if we go ahead and make some predictions ourselves about what the universe ought to be like if there is or isn’t a god, they yell even more that their god isn’t like that, we used the wrong premises, we didn’t address their idiosyncratic view of a god…which is always conveniently tailored to circumvent whatever test we propose.

Do you theological wankers even realize that as the proponents of hypothesis about the nature of the universe, it is your job to generate testable hypotheses about how it all works? And that we, as agents in opposition to your nonsense, would be overjoyed to have you say something explicit about an implication of your ideas that we could test? Actually, I think you do know, because you so invariably avoid presenting any useful descriptions of what your philosophy entails. We keep waiting. And right now, your silence and the vacuity of what few feeble replies you make are just added to our stockpile of evidence that you’re all farting theology out of your asses.

Yeah, he's not too popular with theists. It's always rather amazed me that theists demonize Richard Dawkins, who's normally so mild-mannered and understated, in that British way of his. PZ Myers, on the other hand, tends to breathe fire.

Of course, both are scientists. Both understand the nature of evidence. Both come from a community which values the truth, whether it's what they want to believe or not - a community which expects its members to do their very best to disprove their own hypotheses.

Science is evidence-based. That's why it progresses. That's why you can trust the scientific consensus, if there is one - not that it's guaranteed to be true, but that it's the very best answer we currently have. And if it isn't true, or not completely true (which is far more likely to be the case), you can trust scientists to be the first to discover that, and the consensus will change.

Most scientists, like most other people, were raised in a religious household. But they get this stuff, so they're far more likely than most to understand the problems with faith-based thinking.

Anyway, that's all. I just especially liked those two excerpts, so I thought I'd post them here, too.

Earth's land mammals by weight

(xkcd)

This is mind-blowing, isn't it? (Click on the image to embiggen, if you wish.) We are one species of mammal. Yet our livestock (which we raise) and ourselves pretty much crowd out every other species which has no less of a claim to our planet than we do.

Well, unless 'might makes right,' of course. But can't we manage to leave some room for our relatives?

The worst thing is that we are still growing in number. We aren't even smart enough to decide that enough is enough - not until environmental destruction forces us to stop, I guess. I don't know. I just thought this was an incredible graphic.

Another Obamacare horror story

The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Video Archive

The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Video Archive

Do those attack ads work? All too often, yes. Politicians don't sell their souls to the wealthy for no reason.

Note that they don't have to work. We don't have to believe them. Billionaires still have only one vote apiece (and that really burns their butts, too). But all too many people are apathetic and gullible.

All signs indicate that the 2014 elections will be very bad for Democrats - not because of the Affordable Care Act, but mostly because Democrats tend not to vote in midterm elections. They're defending more seats than Republicans, too, and many of those are in red states.

There are other reasons, including the fact that Republicans, as always, have a big money advantage (and all of those fake 'grassroots' groups bankrolled by billionaires). But none of that would matter if Democrats actually voted in large numbers.

Another way guns make us all safer

From Florida, of course (via TPM):

An Orlando, Fla. man accidentally discharged a gun on Friday, first striking a 12-year-old girl in a moving car then himself immediately after, the Orlando Sentinel reported.

Ventura Santos Mateo, 60, was in his garage teaching a friend how to clean his gun.

Investigators said he was holding a Sig Sauer pistol above his waist when the weapon discharged in the direction of the street, striking the girl in her right upper arm. The 12-year-old was riding in the front seat of the car, with her younger brother in the back seat. Her father didn't realize she had been shot until he pulled into his driveway about a block down the street.

"Surprised and distressed by the inadvertent shot, Mateo 'nervously' shot again by accident, striking himself in the left thigh," the Sentinel reported, citing police.

Again, it's Florida, so he's apparently not going to be charged with anything.

Are your liberties being violated?

(Andrea Gatley, via Pharyngula)

That might be too small to easily read, but just click on the image to enlarge it.

It's a handy little guide. Maybe people who have trouble with this kind of thing should carry it in their wallets.

What if Hitler had won?

NonStampCollector made this same point in a blog post more than a year ago, and I linked to it then. However, a reader just pointed out (thank-you!) that those links are broken, because he's closed that blog.

My helpful commenter also provided a link to this new video clip which makes the same point, so... enjoy!  :)

Incidentally, NonStampCollector explains his handle this way:

If atheism is a "religion",...
then Not Collecting Stamps is a "hobby".
If atheism is a "religion", ...
then Not Playing Football is a "sport".
If atheism is a "religion", ...
then 'OFF' is a "TV channel".
If atheism is a "religion", ...
then "Abstinence" is a "sex position".

How Jessica Ahlquist handles hate

This is Jessica Ahlquist, that "evil little thing" who stood up for the U.S. Constitution when she was only 16 years old. Yeah, she's sure evil, isn't she? Just listen to what monstrous advice she's offering here. It's really hard to imagine anyone more evil than her, don't you agree?

Actually, it's good advice. I'm not so young that I actually care about internet hate - and being a man, I don't get rape threats - but it's good advice even for me (especially that ignoring trolls is the worst thing you could do to them, given how desperate they are for attention).

Not that I always do it. :) But I'm not as classy as Jessica Ahlquist. And I'm old enough that I don't need to worry about the future so much. If you're younger than me - and who isn't? - this is very good advice.

Even if it is from such an evil little thing. LOL