Straight from the "Republican Shangra-La":

Yeah, I wrap all my gifts in dollar bills.

Via the Wall Street Journal, no less:

Plutocrat Lesson No. 4–How to Wrap Gifts in Dollar Bills

If you want to be a successful plutocrat, you have to perfect the art of the hostess gift.

Edwina Rogers, the wife of Washington lobbyist Ed Rogers, is a master of the form and has developed her own signature specialty. She wraps her thank-yous in sheets of real dollar bills, purchased from the Bureau of Engraving.

* * *

[Hillary Clinton] That is our duty, to build that bright future, to teach our children that, in America, there is no chasm too deep, no barrier too great, no ceiling too high for all who work hard, who keep going, have faith in God, in our country, and each other.

To all the atheist children out there - sorry, but you're screwed. Apparently for them there is indeed a chasm too deep, a barrier too wide, and a ceiling too high. It's called "acceptance into the Democratic party".

I'm sorry, but I just am seriously uncomfortable with both major-party candidates at this point.

McCain is, well, McCain - a Republican who panders to the religious right. And Obama is a member of the Democratic party which seems to be hellbent-for-leather to exclude atheists, agnostics, and secular folks from their ranks at all costs this year. (And WTF is that all about, anyway?)

Obama sounds good on church-state separation issues, but he's so incredibly inexperienced, that I have reservations about voting for him. In the same way that I would never hire an inexperienced technician for my department, I don't think I'll be able to "hire" Obama for the position of my President.

McCain isn't as far-right as he's been made out to be this year, and he has a pretty good track record of working well across the aisle, and he's a bona-fide war hero which I like. However, he also says some pretty stupid things about how this country is a "Christian Nation", and that just turn me right off. He might just be pandering to the religious folks to counter his moderate image, but it still troubles me greatly.

Bob Barr is my party's candidate, but he's just a Republican who secured the Libertarian nomination by virtue of being the highest-profile politician ever willing to pretend like they are a Libertarian. And the Libertarians fell all over themselves nominating him as quickly as they possibly could. He's farther-right than McCain in my view. Bleh.

All I know is that I've been voting since I was 18 and I have never gotten this close to an Presidential election without a friggin' clue who I'm going to vote for. It's scary.

I think I may end up writing-in Jim Downey. ;)

That's Richard Dawkins reading from his email. There's no surprise in the hateful and obscene language, as anyone who has taken a position questioning religion will know.

But I came across this via BoingBoing, where it is interesting to read the comments. Since BoingBoing is a more general-interest site, they have a more generalized readership, which includes a fair proportion of believers. Watching them react to the Dawkins clip is a good reminder (if you need one) of what we're up against.

Jim Downey

Say, I've got an idea. Let's disregard more than a 100 years-worth of evidence that tells us that vaccines work in preventing nasty childhood diseases like measles, mumps, and rubella because after all, vaccines make Baby Jesus cry.

THURSDAY, Aug. 21 (HealthDay News) -- Some parents' refusal to vaccinate children seems to be behind the highest rate of measles cases reported since 1996, federal officials said Thursday.

Between Jan. 1 and July 31 of this year, 131 measles cases have been reported in the United States, many of them among children whose parents have philosophical or religious objections to the vaccine, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Nice. Now your children get to suffer because you believe in magic.

How's that working out for them?

Remember a couple of weeks ago when the Focus on the Family nuts all decided to pray for rain at the Democratic convention? PZ talked about it. Even Olbermann featured it. With the bad publicity, they decided to pull the video, and it's no longer available on YouTube. Which is a shame, really, given what happened this morning:

DENVER - A sprinkler system partially flooded part of the Pepsi Center Monday morning.

The Denver Fire Department, which has a crew stationed at the center all week, was able to respond quickly before 5 a.m. when the sprinkler went off.

The sprinkler was located on the club level in a skybox which had recently been renovated to host a news crew. It appears the skybox belongs to Fox.

After going off, the sprinkler released 50 to 100 gallons of water per minute and 9NEWS crews estimate it was on for around 5 minutes.

Yes, Faux News's skybox was flooded.

(Nearly) Instant Karma, anyone?

Jim Downey

Somehow, I don't think that this will work out well:

Miss Sister 2008

An Italian priest announced Sunday he's organizing "Miss Sister" 2008, an online beauty pageant for nuns. He said the pageant would make them more visible in the Roman Catholic Church, and it would help fight the stereotype that nuns are old and dour.

More from The Daily Mail:

It would run online at first, but Reverend Rungi is hopeful that it will one day take off in the real world alongside the all-singing and all-dancing Miss Italia competition.

He said it would give nuns from around the world a chance to showcase their work and image.

'Nuns are a bit excluded, they are a bit marginalised in ecclesiastical life,' Reverend Rungi said.

'This will be an occasion to make their contribution more visible.'

Yeah, I'm sure that will make them all feel much more appreciated and respected. Right.

Jim Downey

The Freedom From Religion Foundation is placing five "Imagine No Religion" billboards around Phoenix this week.

They will be at:

• 19th Avenue and Fillmore Street, west of the Capitol.
• Van Buren Street and 15th Avenue, northeast of the Capitol.
• Indian School Road and 23rd Street.
• McDowell Road and 14th Street.
• McDowell Road and Third Street.

I'll try and get a picture or two while they are up. I expect the local paper to be full of righteous indignation at the gall of these uppity atheists, militantly putting up billboards, offensively having opinions, and arrogantly considering themselves full citizens just like regular people! Harumph! :)

Got two hours to spare? It could open up a whole new dimension in your life.

No, this is not some Amway scam, new-age Woo, or political revival. It's a series of brilliant videos (along with explanatory text) put together by a French mathematician which explore the existence of a fourth spatial dimension. And it is *very* cool. From ScienceNews:

So can any of these techniques help us visualize Schläfli’s 600-sided, four-dimensional shape? Using a computer, Ghys first passes Schläfli’s regular, four-dimensional shapes through three-dimensional space and looks at the three-dimensional “slices” created. This helps a bit, but just as in two dimensions, it’s not easy to assemble an image of the higher-dimensional shape this way.

Hmm. I posted a piece about the Tom Willis nut over on my blog, and noted in comments there that I seem to never have cross-posted this essay from Daily Kos on either my site or here on UTI. So, I thought I would.

Jim Downey

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Do you own a fire extinguisher? Why?

MOSCOW, Idaho - There's a reason comedians call it "dying on stage."

Research by a Washington State University linguist found that people who tell bad jokes often endure an astonishing outpouring of hostility from the listeners.

"These were basically attacks intended to result in the social exclusion or humiliation of the speaker, punctuated on occasion with profanity, a nasty glare or even a solid punch to the arm," said researcher Nancy Bell.

We're not talking about jokes that contain offensive material, or the type of slurs unleashed by former "Seinfeld" star Michael Richards. The joke that Bell used in her research was:

"What did the big chimney say to the little chimney?

"Nothing, chimneys can't talk."

The responses to this childish riddle included insults, glares, silence or even blows.

OK, that explains my hostility to the Bush administration.

Jim Downey

Via NPR last night, a new Pew Research Poll showing a turn-around on attitudes about involving religion in politics, with a narrow majority saying that it is a bad idea. What might be a little surprising, is that most of the change has come from the conservative side of the spectrum. From the report:

Some Americans are having a change of heart about mixing religion and politics. A new survey finds a narrow majority of the public saying that churches and other houses of worship should keep out of political matters and not express their views on day-to-day social and political matters. For a decade, majorities of Americans had voiced support for religious institutions speaking out on such issues.

[Hope y'all don't mind me posting this here. I fancy UTI gets a lot more traffic than my little Earthman's Notebook blog, and I want more people to see this.]

Hello to the year 3008!

I was thinking about my life a few days ago, the things I’ve lived through, and I’m writing to tell you some of what I was thinking.

In my time, we have the musical scores of greats such as Ludwig von Beethoven and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – I do hope you still remember them – but we don’t have any actual recordings of their own original performances.

On the other hand, musicians such as Elvis Presley, The Beatles and Bob Dylan were all alive in my lifetime, and I can listen to their actual performances any day.

I can hear the music of Beethoven, but I can hear the music of Elvis as performed by Elvis. I can see it too, some of it, through film and video.

Recording – something more than just musical scores written down on paper –came along in time to capture the man himself performing his own musical creations.

So, you're a retired brigadier general in the Air National Guard, and even certified to carry a pistol as a pilot of a commercial airliner, under the program designed to provide last-chance security against terrorists seizing control of a jet. What does the TSA do? Put you on the terror watch list, of course:

But there's one problem: James Robinson, the pilot, has difficulty even getting to his plane because his name is on the government's terrorist "watch list."

That means he can't use an airport kiosk to check in; he can't do it online; he can't do it curbside. Instead, like thousands of Americans whose names match a name or alias used by a suspected terrorist on the list, he must go to the ticket counter and have an agent verify that he is James Robinson, the pilot, and not James Robinson, the terrorist.

Via Neatorama, the story of one incredible hoax:

A Professor at the University of Wurzburg in Germany was fooled by his colleagues in the 18th century. They carved limestone into animal shapes and carved the name of God on them in various characters and hid them on a nearby mountain where Professor Beringer liked to hunt for fossils. Beringer became convinced that the carvings were actually created by God himself. Even when people pointed out that the limestone showed chisel marks, he held to his theory and even published a book on the stones.

Doing a little more digging lead to this site, where more information (and lots of images) was available. An excerpt:

CHICAGO, Illinois (AP) -- When it comes to saving lives, God trumps doctors for many Americans.

An eye-opening survey reveals widespread belief that divine intervention can revive dying patients. And, researchers said, doctors "need to be prepared to deal with families who are waiting for a miracle."

More than half of randomly surveyed adults -- 57 percent -- said God's intervention could save a family member even if physicians declared that treatment would be futile. And nearly three-quarters said patients have a right to demand that treatment continue.

OK, grim. But not as bad as it could be. Only 20% of medical professionals thought that the Sky-Daddy would work a miracle to save a loved one. And the news item also contained this:

"Sensitivity to this belief will promote development of a trusting relationship" with patients and their families, according to researchers. That trust, they said, is needed to help doctors explain objective, overwhelming scientific evidence showing that continued treatment would be worthless.

It is a truism that religious bigotry and the entitlement mentality of the wanna-be theocrat grow strong in our small community school boards. It's relatively easy to get elected to a school board as a trustee, and in a small town most folks think just like you do.

Imagine the surprise of the Wylie, TX School Board trustees when during a bond meeting, School board member Ralph James tried to begin the meeting with a recitation of with The Lord's Prayer. He had got out "Our Father..." when bond committee member Mikki Lewis stood up and said very loudly, "Excuse me?"

Mikki Lewis is Jewish. Her husband is a Catholic. Her father is an atheist, and his parent were orthodox Jews.

[link] ...it wasn't on the agenda, and it surprised me," said Mrs. Lewis, a mother of two in the Wylie school district.

"I wasn't there to pray or practice my religion," she said.

Afterward the committee decided to have a "moment of silence" instead of a prayer. Mrs. Lewis then emailed the superintendent to discuss her protest. However, instead of a reply from the superintendent, she received a response from school board trustee Sue Nicklas - who does not seem to get the whole "U.S. Constitution, First Amendment" thing.

[link] "I must share with you first and formost [sic] that there are many people who are praying for you," Ms. Nicklas wrote. "In ten years as a trustee of the Wylie school board, you're the first parent to complain about a prayer, and the very first person in my 68 years that has ever had the audasity [sic] to interrupt God and one of His children in prayer."

Ms. Nicklas said Mrs. Lewis "doesn't set the agenda for meetings. We are elected by the people ... in the community."

Wylie is a Christian community, Ms. Nicklas said.

"You go with the culture and customs of the community," she said.

Uh, no.

You see Mrs. Grundy, that's not the way it works. Christianity isn't "more equal" than every other religion out there, and because of the First Amendment, U.S. citizens have a reasonable expectation that we won't be preached at by our elected officials. Quite frankly, no one gives a flying fudge sickle about your self-righteous proclamation about "many people praying for" Mrs. Lewis. Jesus! How arrogant can a person get, anyway?

Tell me the truth, Sue - is that part of your publicly elected secular job description as a Wylie ISD school board trustee? To organize voodoo chants against the unbelievers? I don't think so.

It isn't "audacity" that made Mrs. Lewis speak up after four years of cowed silence, Mrs. GrundyNicklas - it was a sense of outrage! A sense of injustice perpetrated by the bullying 400-lb gorilla of the Christian majority!

Here's a little secret I can let you in on, Sue: You don't get to be "more equal" than everyone else. You don't get to have the privilege of including your own personal wacky religious rituals in public meetings. Period. The end. Yes, yes, even if you have wink-wink, nod-nodded at it for 10 years. Just because you and your fellow Christian theocrats have been breaking the law for ten years does not magically make it legal.

Also, your tut-tutting at Mrs. Lewis was truly despicable. She is the one trying to get you to follow the law - YOU are the one breaking the law.

For the sake of our Constitution, I sincerely hope the citizens of your school district vote you out at the next election.

If John McCain sits under the Cone of Silence ...

Does that mean he's really Maxwell Smart?

Childbirth is usually associated with some pain and struggle, at least in most humans. That's normal, and to be expected.

But the cries of anguish I'm expecting to hear shortly will not be coming from women giving birth. Rather, it will likely come from religious fundamentalists who are going to scream about how their rights are being denied, how they are being persecuted for their beliefs. Which beliefs? These:

Calif top court: Docs can't withhold care to gays

SAN FRANCISCO - California's highest court on Monday barred doctors from invoking their religious beliefs as a reason to deny treatment to gays and lesbians, ruling that state law prohibiting sexual orientation discrimination extends to the medical profession.

Justice Joyce Kennard wrote that two Christian fertility doctors who refused to artificially inseminate a lesbian have neither a free speech right nor a religious exemption from the state's law, which "imposes on business establishments certain antidiscrimination obligations."

Cue the outrage:

OK, so Bigfoot was a bust, but there have still been a lot of great little weird news items recently. I thought I would pass on a few of my favorites, and ask for yours in comments.

Well, they used to hold naval battles there, so why not Pirates of the Colosseum?

Would this be Soylent Brown?

Rat snacks can solve world food price crisis: Indian official

Yum! And not to be outdone, the Aussies are saying we can save the planet by switching to 'Roo Burgers! Hmm, reminds me of a song...

OK, I spent *way* too much time playing this game last night: Orbitrunner. And because I'm the kind of guy that I am, I wanted to inflict it on you.

It's actually a very interesting bit of gaming, for as simple as seems at first glance. Here's the description from the site:

Control the Sun with your mouse. Use it to manipulate the planets' paths. The Sun's pull gets stronger as planets get closer. If the gravity is at a right angle to the direction of travel, an orbit can form. Make sure planets don't leave the screen or collide!