Journal Of Applied Misanthropology Comments

Zachary Drake: Blogging From The Worker's Paradise

zdrake314@hotmail.com (Zachary Drake) — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 22:52:56 -0700

What kind of liberals do you hang out with, Lizard? Are they really Castro supporters? Do they think that the Cuban system is better than the American system?

I'm quite liberal (at least on the American spectrum), and I think Castro is an oppressive, self-absorbed thug who has done horrible things to his country. The free health care does not make up for the dire poverty, political oppression, and other evils Castro has perpetrated on his people.

When I went to college I don't remember any of my professors touting the Cuban system to us. And the liberal friends I have haven't ever talked up Castro to me. Maybe I just hang out with more sensible liberals, but pro-Castroism isn't part of any liberalism I recognize or participate in.

uafbum: Thoughtcrime Bill Goose-steps Through Congress

uafbum@gmail.com (uafbum) — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 18:00:23 -0700

Reading things like this only makes me feel more justified in owning my own firearms. I just hope that the pendulum will swing back to sanity in the near future, before violence against the government becomes the only answer left.

uafbum: An Armed Society...

uafbum@gmail.com (uafbum) — Fri, 29 Jun 2007 09:09:00 -0700

Colorado had a decent law up until about 5 years ago, the Make My Day law, which allowed a person to respond to an assault upon their person or buisness with equal force to that of their assailants. It lead to a dramatic decrease in the amount of armed robberies in that state. Of course, the flip side was baseball bat muggings went up, but not by so much that it made up for the lack of armed robberies. I know that we allow concealed carry permits here in Alaska, but then again, we're chock full of survival nuts here

Zachary Drake: Trackbacks, They No Work

zdrake314@hotmail.com (Zachary Drake) — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 15:58:22 -0700

I often get errors when trying to do trackbacks, too. So often that I generally don't bother anymore. My readership has suffered as a result.

uafbum: Muslims Over-React Violently To Trivial Slight; In Other News, Water Is Wet

uafbum@gmail.com (uafbum) — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 16:05:22 -0700

If you want to see something humorous (or downright sad, I haven't decided which), check out some of the comments in Ed Brayton's blog on the same issue.... His quote that "any religion that thinks it's ok to kill those who disagree with them can go fuck themselves" really brought out the nutjobs.

Robert Mueller: Germans Go After "Child Porn" In Second Life

gatac@t-online.de (Robert Mueller) — Mon, 14 May 2007 09:52:45 -0700

German cybercrime enforcement can get a bit - intense - on some hot topics. Child porn is one of them. Nazi stuff is another one.

It mostly comes out in relation to the relatively low-key efforts on everything else, though. For some reason, our mild-mannered bureaucrats seem to have a few sizeable red flags where the cure is almost worse than the disease...

(And yes, I'm still reading this blog. Rarely feel the need to add anything, though.)

Uafbum: The Fun Just Doesn't Stop!

uafbum@gmail.com (Uafbum) — Fri, 04 May 2007 13:36:27 -0700

It's like a train wreck in slow motion... Should be interesting to keep track of. I'm kinda happy to see this too, it means I have more fire in my arguements against socialism in debates lol

Uafbum: Man, Dinesh D'Souza Is A Moron

uafbum@gmail.com (Uafbum) — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 09:16:11 -0700

D'souza is a moron, a fraud and a cheat. Most of the religious reich nowdays are. They prefer to frame the situation emotionally, which is so much easier to do than to think rationally about the situation. That is what scares me the most about the situation, all the knee jerk reactions based on emotion, rather than reflecting on the tragedy, empathizing for the loss there and healing the rift caused by one person. It helps that this unhinged young man didn't participate in the "usual" suspects in shootings (video games, music, godlessness etc.), but that hasn't stopped any of the pundits from blaming their choice pet peeve. Ah well, I'm rambling

Heraldblog: Dennis Prager (Whoever The Frack He Is) Is A Moron

heraldblog@gmail.com (Heraldblog) — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 06:55:33 -0700

For a brief while, I imagined the Christianists would place a moratorium on these type of rants. Two-thirds of Americans are creeped out by the Pragers and the Dobsons, which is why the GOP got its ass kicked in the mid term elections. It seems like somebody would get the message. I thought wrong. Anyway, great post.

Thom: Prowd Arian Seks Mayte

admin@allwhitedating.com (Thom) — Wed, 15 Nov 2006 11:47:48 -0700

"pretty much, all data points leading to the opposite conclusion"

go on.........

Zachary Drake: First Rule Of Politics...

zdrake314@hotmail.com (Zachary Drake) — Mon, 13 Nov 2006 23:52:46 -0700

Will the President of 2020 have a blog?

And if he does, will it be filled with spam for porno and viagra?

She may not have a "blog", but she'll have some newfangled way of communicating via technology, and it may not be filled with spam for "porno" or "viagra", but doubtless those who are attempting to peddle the 2020 equivalents will try to use that new technology sell their stuff.

Maybe instead of a State of the Union Address, there will be a State of the Union cyberexchange or something.

Zachary Drake: Connecting To The Universe

zdrake314@hotmail.com (Zachary Drake) — Thu, 26 Oct 2006 15:58:20 -0700

Ah, yes, the "Noble Lie" argument. I share your disdain for it. And I agree that science provides us with a more firmly grounded connection to the universe. Here's my favorite: All living creatures on earth are members of the same family. Not some hippie-dippy, "spiritual", abstract kind of "family", but all are literally cousins, albeit very distant ones. To riff on an old exclamation, You WILL be a monkey's uncle (if you're male), indeed you already are.

But my main objection to the "noble lie" argument is that it assumes that belief in God will "deeply influence their behavior" in a positive way. I think this is a very difficult question to answer in the affirmative. God seems to tell some people, "Thou shalt engage in socially useful behavior!" but he seems to tell other people (or even the same people) "Thou shalt vote for pathetic, incurious, narrow-minded jerk who will do enormous harm to your country." And of course, God often seems to say "Go kill person/nation/ethnicity [fill in the blank]" as often as he issues the contrary command.

Certainly there have been studies showing that regular church attendance in the United States is positively correlated a number of socially desireable outcomes, but the causal relationships are by no means easy to tease out.

David Emami: Review And A Rant

emamid@gmail.com (David Emami) — Mon, 25 Sep 2006 11:49:41 -0700

Lizard, I've been reading your online writings for quite some time now, and while you've often taken the "religion is the cause of problem X" tack before (was there a big hulking Pentacostal that beat you up and stole your lunch money every day during the 3rd grade or something?), this time you're really reaching, in my opinion.

I think you're on to something in your basic "balance" premise, but as I see it, the problem is that so much of the population has now been brought up in an environment where liberal voices have been much much stronger than conservative ones. People hear and see more of the afformentioned Hollywood than they used to, and it has gotten more liberal than it used to be. And it's not just the entertainment industry. All of the teachers I had in high school were left-wing (in subjects where politics might surface; I have no idea where my math teachers stood), and while some of them kept their opinions and the instruction separate, most of them did not. Granted, this is anecdotal, but that was in a small, relatively-conservative town where half the stores still closed on Sunday. The same was true in community college, and at CSU Sacramento when I went there. And also, now that I recall, in junior HS in mid-80's Orange County, heart of Reagan Country at the time (had a science teacher who was the spitting image, visually and politically, of Mr. Van Driessen from "Beavis & Butthead").

On top of that, besides the entertainment industry and the schools, there are the parents. Of the adults alive in the US today, most of those who aren't baby boomers were brought up by them, and the boomers are more left-leaning than their predecessors. Those children of the boomers that are inclined to embrace their parents' values, do. Those that want to rebel -- well, you rebel against your parents by rejecting their viewpoints in favor of what's "cool." But the "cool" people -- the entertainers and whatnot -- are, as you've pointed out, liberals. Heads, Michael Moore, tails, Barbara Streisand. And anyway, how does one rebel against a generation that prides themselves on being rebels? How do you shock members of a group whose defining moment was rolling around in the mud, drugged to the gills, at Woodstock?

Sorry, channeling a bit too much Rand there for a moment.

Anyway, not every kid gets turned into Noam Chomsky, of course, but all of this put together can't help but shift things, especially over the course of decades. The problem isn't the likes of Pat Buchanan, who no one listens to anymore, anyway. The problem is that liberal viewpoints strongly outnumber conservative ones, and most people just go along with what everyone else says rather than actively form their own opinions.

Ah, well. At least I can assure myself I'm doing my own small part by introducing my nephew to South Park.

Lizard: Review And A Rant

lizard@mrlizard.com (Lizard) — Mon, 25 Sep 2006 03:26:43 -0700

Test comment.

Robert Mueller: Not About 9-11 (Well, not entirely)

gatac@t-online.de (Robert Mueller) — Tue, 12 Sep 2006 04:10:52 -0700

Intellectual honesty is dead, welcome to the shouting match.

It's strange that the rise of the Internet seems to be accompanied by nigh-total complacency of the traditional media - as if, in the great cosmic balance, somebody thought that people would get their facts from the net now and discard the drek on TV (while slopping up the drek on the net, present company excluded). But then, investigative journalism doesn't sell, it's all "with us" or "against us" beyond all reason.

The people want it!

And some still ask what's wrong with democracy - just because it seems to be the best placeholder we have doesn't mean it's anywhere near perfect, or even very good.