06 January 2013

Link round-up for 6 January 2013

Great cities, by starlight alone.

Does the Gospel of Matthew portray Jesus making an ass of himself?

Best headline evah.

Check out Pat Robertson's failed predictions for 2012.

Good grief, is Boehner's boozing really this bad?

What really happened on the seventh day?

Ad-blocking software will doom online ads (and about bloody time -- on a lot of sites the ad-clog is getting intolerable -- YouTube is almost unwatchable now).

The old South was economically inefficient.

Why is the law harassing harmless people like Sarah Dae Walker?

Sean Hannity was one of the big losers of the 2012 election.

Here's one conservative who gets it about taxes.

Sorry, but religion is garbage and the concept of "atheist fundamentalism" is nonsense.

California can teach us a lot about dealing with extremist obstructionism.

The Catholic Church continues to flounder on gay marriage and morality (found via Republic of Gilead).

Republican vote-suppression efforts backfired (read the comments, especially #6).

Lady Atheist has some awards for 2012.

The future belongs to the left.

Religionists think they know our minds better than we do.

Here's another Republican official trying to trash the First Amendment (found via Republic of Gilead).

That Journal-News online map of gun-permit holders' names and addresses is endangering police officers.

A potential massacre at a Texas movie theater is stopped by an armed guard.

No, the US does not have exceptional social mobility.

Defying the Catholic Church, Ireland plans to repeal its abortion ban.

France's top court annuls the largely-symbolic 75% top tax rate, while Britain will crack down on corporate tax evasion.

The Iranian theocracy persecutes union activists.

Malala Yousafzai has been released from hospital as an outpatient.

Indian blogger Avicenna reports from one of the many protests against his country's rape epidemic.  Here's a report from the state of Haryana, where traditional authorities are complicit in the problem.

China is re-discovering its sexual past.

An elevated freeway in northern China collapses ten months after being built.  The regime is touting a new anti-corruption drive, but there's less here than meets the eye.

Indonesia's Aceh province (notoriously the most religious part of the country) bans women straddling motorcycles.

Here's a real war on Christmas.

Mayan-calendar end-of-the-world retards vandalize an actual ancient Mayan pyramid.

This is what Mars would look like as a living planet.

Criminality and low intelligence correlate with lead exposure.

We evolved amid trees, and they seem to be good for our brains.

8 Comments:

Blogger Tommykey said...

Thanks for the link, Infidel!

06 January, 2013 06:27  
Blogger Ranch Chimp said...

New Years Greeting's Infidel and Thanx fer the link up ... really some nice work they done too on graphic's in that Mars living planet deal ... I never seen one before.

06 January, 2013 08:52  
Blogger Robert the Skeptic said...

Regarding Ad-Blocking -
Internet advertising resides near the top of my angst list; it seems to be growing more pervasive every day. Ad-blocking is fine for browsers (I wish I could run FireFox on my I-Pad but *shrugs*). Much of the delays in loading web sites into a brower now are due less to the content of the source than to waiting for the ancellary ad connection servers trying to track visitors and target ads. (watch the "loading" in the lower LH corners the next time you visit a site.)

But ad blocking often does nothing to prevent providers of video content from starting their media with advertising clips which there is no way to curcumvent. Yeah, some are just 30-seconds... for now. Advertisers have made TV unwatchable for me; well over a thrid and sometimes even half, of regular programming is devoted to advertising. These same people are are determined to ruin the internet with advertising as well.

I sometimes wonder when, if ever, today's "Don Drapers" of Madison Avenue will begin questioning their effectiveness? After all, millions of dollars were dumped into political campaign advertising this last election and IT DIDN'T WORK! And I wonder how many consumers like me become so desensitized, their messages ignored, lost in the background under the deluge of relentless blather?

Oh by the way; my son-in-law runs the "Bad Headlines". Thanks for the link; Funny stuff!

06 January, 2013 15:16  
Blogger Infidel753 said...

TK: It's a good post.

RC: Mars may actually have looked that way once -- and may do again in the future, thanks to us.

RtS: I've noticed that the most ad-clotted sites load the most slowly. Surely they must realize they lose readers that way.

I've heard that the best ad-blocking software can even block those ads that run before You-Tube videos, but I haven't actually installed it yet, so I don't know.

"Bad Headlines" is great! I've been following it ever since I discovered it.

06 January, 2013 16:09  
Blogger Shaw Kenawe said...

All great links! I look forward to them every week.

07 January, 2013 07:35  
Anonymous Blurber said...

At least Pat (the idiot) Robertson is consistent. And I loved his conversation with God where he kept asking which calamity was coming. I wonder why God didn't just tell him without making poor Pat go through all those guesses.

07 January, 2013 09:47  
Blogger Infidel753 said...

SK: Thanks!

Blurber: God tends to be pretty vague in these messages, except on the point that everyone should send the televangelists money.

08 January, 2013 04:20  
Blogger Tommykey said...

I'm hoping the Denver Broncos win the Super Bowl just to spite Pat Robertson, who mentioned that he thought it would serve Peyton Manning and the Broncos right if Manning were injured because they traded away God's favorite quarterback to the Jets.

08 January, 2013 17:17  

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