Always Coming, Never Here

Apparently the only people who really have an issue with stem cell research are Catholics and Christian fundies. That's a pretty seriously small minority. Islam, Hinduism, and Judaism have no issues with using stem cells for research purposes, as the research occurs to cells before any of those belief systems consider them "alive". Only Catholics and fundamentalists/cultists believe in personhood at conception/fertilization.

Don't ever let them paint this issue as one where "religions" believe using stem cells is wrong! The vast majority of people in the world believe using stem cells to research healing is fine.

The Union of Concerned Scientists have published this "periodic table" of political / government interference in scientific study.

http://www.ucsusa.org/scientific_integrity/interference/a-to-z-guide-to-political.html

This is what electing the Bush administration has done for us and the world...!! Can we please get rid of Republicans now? Or change their party name to "Corporate Lackey-ians?"

I would like to have a vote on the THEORY that the sun revolves around the Earth...

http://blogs.usatoday.com/ondeadline/2008/02/fla-educators-t.html

FSM help us.

There must be no intersection of religious law and state/federal law. I do not elect priests and imams. They do not make resource decisions for me. I do not pay them my taxes. They do not enforce my laws.

I reject and ignore sharia law, and any other religious laws. I do not recognize any religions as having any place in my life. The secular state is vital - and supporting and solidifying the secular state is THE ONLY MEANS by which any religion can hope to avoid future religious persecution! Only a non-partisan, non-religious organization can provide impartial arbitration and resource management amongst people of varying (or no) religion.

Religious people should pray long and hard for the survival and thriving of the secular state; or woe to them when the forces of persecution and prejudice come knocking on their door!

I was listening to NPR yesterday, and was witness to yet another of the endless attempts by homophobic, power hungry, politicizing bigots to take civil rights away from people. This time it was a discussion of the upcoming political tempest in a teapot - since gay marriage worked so great for Republicans in 2004, they're going to take aim at gay adoption in 2006. Despite the fact that there are hundreds of thousands of children currently adopted by gay singles and couples, there are 16 or so states working towards legislation to ban gay adoption; legislation that will no doubt be ready to bring out the "religious whackjob" (as they are called by Tom DeLay's staff) voting contingent in November.

What I really hate most is that any time I hear one of these "debates" no one ever confronts the anti-gay/lesbian speaker for exercising a moral prejudice against people they've never met. They never start with questioning their base assumptions - why are you assuming a negative environment for children cared for by gay/lesbian parents? Why do you implicitly suggest that homosexual is equivalent to over-sexed? And I'm always pissed off when they discuss "gay lifestyle" and "sexual choice" as if sexual preference were something you could just suddenly decide on the spot and change.

How many gay/lesbian people do you actually know? If gays and lesbians aren't entitled to the same rights as everyone else, what is it about them that makes them so different? What's the difference between discriminating against someone based on skin color, religion, or sexual preference? At what point in your life did you "choose" to be straight? Can you choose not to be straight?

These are the questions that bigots need to be confronted with. I really don't think it's that hard to show someone they're being a bigot - it's just that people are rarely confronted with the truth of their bigotry, under the guise of "everyone's entitled to an opinion." I couldn't agree less! The long and short of it is: bigots aren't entitled to be bigots, and misinformed people are not entitled to being misinformed.

Otherwise, anti-war protesting vegetarians go to jail for writing down license plate numbers.

Have you protested lately? Maybe you're under surveillance too.

"I don't think the GPL v3 conversation is going to happen for the kernel, since I personally don't want to convert any of my code." - Linus Torvalds

Why does this mean open source can't work? Because ultimately, it's all about egos. Open source relies on force of will and influence to get things done. Essentially, if the project is "popular" or the person driving it is a "rock star" of programming, the project will thrive. If nobody (meaning programmers) gives a shit, the project fails (like, say, a particular driver that is highly demanded by the masses, but the programming community doesn't like the manufacturer).

This doesn't mean that open development of commercial software can't work - obviously it does, and it succeeds because there is a market force driving the development. But when the impetus is no better than rock star-itude, shit don't get done. When the rock star says "I dun wanna" it dies. Essentially what it comes down to is this: programmers are no better than anybody else at figuring out what is "good" for people. They are just as prone to following the herd and following trends as everybody else, and they are equally as short sighted. Without some outside force driving a project to an ultimate end (like a market gap) we have to rely on people making the "right" choices, and people just never seem to make those right choices.

Summer 2002 - Department of Justice offices

MS rep: "Look, this case is just bad news for everyone, and all I'm saying is I think we can work out a way to make everyone happy."

DOJ rep: "I don't see what you could possibly offer the U.S. government in exchange for a settlement."

MS rep: "I think that you're thinking what I'm thinking. I think that we have something that you want very badly."

DOJ rep: "And what might that be?"

MS rep: "You want a backdoor into every PC running Windows."

DOJ rep: "It would be a great boon to law enforcement to be able to protect national security in that manner."

MS rep: "We'll just keep that part of the settlement between us though, of course."

DOJ rep: "Of course."

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I guess we'll never know the truth.

Read the first comment and quake with fucking fear.