Where would you go?

If you had the time and enough money to spare for the purpose, and you could take one trip anywhere in the world you wanted, where would you go, and why that place?  I'm curious about the diverse interests people have in this area.  I used to know a guy who went to Las Vegas every chance he got (for the gambling), and I now know another person who goes to India for every vacation.  My own aspiration is the same as when I posted this.  How about you?

Video of the day -- should we "colonize" the red states?

Obviously the problem of bringing red America into the modern world is more complex than this, but Maher's ideas are worth a listen.

Link round-up for 24 February 2019

Various interesting stuff I ran across on the net over the last week.

o o o o o

Bluebird of Bitterness presents cat mathematics.

Debra She Who Seeks presents farting.

Tengrain finds a headline; Calvin finds a couple more.

These cats must have been Portland drivers in their previous lives.

How did Jesus rise from the grave?

This is how America should be.

Explore seventies fashion (found via Mendip).

See if you can guess who this person voted for (found via Calvin).

You may be a prisoner.

Pascal's wager isn't so straightforward.

There are many vampire stories left to tell.

This website provides computer-generated faces of people who don't really exist -- refresh the page to change the picture (found via I Am Mental, who finds it a bit creepy).

Remember that you don't know what burdens that person is already carrying.

The list of books banned from some schools is very revealing.

I don't know enough math to really understand this, but it looks cool.

See the slap heard round the world.

This is what happens when an art form self-destructs due to aesthetic homogenization.

Schools need a better approach to preventing bullying.

Embracing one crank belief makes you more susceptible to others.

I guess this is what passes for conservative humor (found via Mock Paper Scissors).

There's always room for one more church.

Cryptocurrencies are hackable.

Who is really the evil one?

A judge rejects the Trump State Department's effort to break up a gay family.

Various groups are tracking people and spying on them (but note that this only works if you participate in the whole tiresome subculture of "smartphones" and "apps" and whatnot).

Read observations on the Jussie Smollett case from Vixen Strangely, Burr Deming, and John McWhorter.

The US is, in certain areas, backsliding toward Third World status.

Falling birth rates result from a toxic economic and work culture.

Whether it "exists" or not, New Atheism is winning.

Sixpence Notthewiser looks at the odd phenomenon of right-wing gays.

The Supreme Court unanimously rules to rein in the practice of police looting the citizenry.

She pwns religio-bullies with a sprinkler.

The Catholic hierarchy is still fatuously useless about sexual abuse.

"Puberty blockers" are neither safe nor easily reversible.

Even in pre-Columbian Peru, religion was religion.

Not surprisingly, Michael Behe's new "intelligent design" book shows basic misunderstandings of evolution.

Renaissance genius Leonardo da Vinci figured out that the Earth is far older than the Church claimed. 

No one knows what's causing these dark streaks on mountainsides.

There are strict rules for naming Jupiter's numerous moons.

This bee is excessive in size (found via Scottie).

Why do zebras have stripes?  Now we know.

GMOs will play a critical role in coping with global warming.

Hayabusa 2 has successfully sampled an asteroid.

Israel seeks to become the fourth country to get a lander to the Moon.

Europe is as sick of Trump's bullshit as the majority of Americans are.

If the Beijing gangster-state gets away with bullying Taiwan, other democracies should worry as well.

As the next election approaches, be wary of manipulation.

Trump's biggest enemy in 2020 is demographics.

What Republicans really need to do is support Obamacare (fat chance).

Support is growing for Northam to stay on as Governor.

Trump's "emergency" will either fail or set a precedent (maybe both).

The 1% need a replacement for the Republican party, but it's too late.

"Speaking of What the Fuck Will it Take to Get This Motherfucker Impeached news....."

If you want more political links, click here.

[766 days down, 696 to go until the inauguration of a real President!]

Some brief political observations

1) Yeah, yeah, Trump declared a national emergency, whatevs.  Sorry if I can't work up much sense of concern.  This asshole generates outrages every week or two, and yes, a few of them have done real harm, like the migrant family-separation policy or the shutdown.  But I doubt this one will rise to that level.  The expected lawsuits have already begun, and we now have some real power (in the House) and a real leader (Pelosi) who's shown she knows how to handle him.  Meanwhile he's yet again causing consternation and division in his own party, having plunged recklessly into this fight with no clear idea how to win, just as he did with the shutdown.  And it's not like any wall is actually going to get built as a result.  Trump isn't Hitler, he's the Gilderoy Lockhart version of Hitler.  He may yet do horrendous damage somewhere down the line, but this emergency thing is just another example of his usual random blundering and will turn out to be ineffectual.

o o o o o

2) It's long been observed that since roughly the Reagan era, conservative tax and labor policies and the implosion of unions have left real wages for most workers stagnant instead of steadily increasing as they always had before.  Productivity grew dramatically and people are working harder than ever, but the gains in national wealth were skimmed off by the owner/investor class which was already at the peak of the economic pyramid, resulting in the massive inequality and concentration of an obscene amount of wealth in the hands of a tiny oligarchy that we see today.

It occurred to me recently that this third-of-a-century of stagnant real wages (while the costs of things like health care skyrocketed) pretty much coincided with my own entire working lifetime.  If the tax and labor policies that prevailed before the 80s had remained in effect, my income history would probably have been very different, as would my present situation.  So yes, I take the machinations of this vampire party and the oligarchy it serves rather personally.  I'm not alone -- as the shutdown showed, many people with jobs at much higher skill levels than mine are living paycheck-to-paycheck, struggling to cope with even a brief interruption of income.  And I can see why the generation now coming of age -- often "in the hole" before they even start due to massive college loan debt -- are unenthused about participating in the working world or consumer culture at all.  They know a rigged game when they see one.  The kind of economy their grandparents worked in is not even a living memory to them.

o o o o o

3) Does mass rejection of science and reason, and the popularity of crackpot ideas like creationism and global-warming denialism, do concrete harm to US society?  That's increasingly happening as the proliferation of nonsense spreads to more and more areas of thinking.  It now includes millions of people firmly and truculently embracing movements which are directly harmful to their own health, such as fat acceptance and the anti-vax mania.  As a result, we are beginning to unilaterally disarm in the face of a catastrophic obesity epidemic and new outbreaks of diseases which vaccines had long kept at bay.  (If you doubt that fatism is now reaching the point of utter strident raging against reality itself, read this.)  Thank goodness we don't have an equally belligerent and delusional "smoking acceptance" movement to complete the trifecta.

The vaccination rate in measles-stricken Clark county, WA is only 78%, and state-wide it's only 85%.  Despite Trump's rants about disease-bearing migrant caravans, impoverished Guatemala has a higher rate of childhood vaccination than Texas does.  Tens of millions of American parents are rejecting or delaying vaccination for their children.  We already lag behind most other developed countries in universal health coverage, infrastructure maintenance, and some areas of applied technology like high-speed rail.  Now, through sheer stupidity, we risk degenerating into the kind of disease-ridden Third World cesspit which much of the actual Third World is leaving behind.

o o o o o

4) What Ilhan Omar did earlier this month -- invoking an old anti-Semitic trope about shady rich international Jews manipulating politics behind the scenes with money -- was at least as bad as posing in blackface, as Northam did.  And it was contemporary, not from 35 years ago, representing her current views rather than some juvenile stupidity which intervening decades of maturity might have washed away.  Pelosi and the rest of the party leadership were right to come down on her like a ton of bricks about it.  This once again draws a clear line between Democrats, who will not and cannot tolerate such bigotry in their ranks, and Republicans, who almost never condemn the constant barrage of bigotry of all kinds from their own, notably from Trump himself.

Omar's apology was unequivocal, and I'm willing to cut her some slack on this, especially since she came to the US in 1995 as a refugee from Somalia and may have been genuinely unaware of some of the history of anti-Semitic propaganda memes in the West.  But if she ever does anything like this again, the leadership must force her to resign.  We are not the Republicans.

Link round-up for 17 February 2019 (delayed)

Various interesting stuff I ran across on the net over the last week.

o o o o o

The first trailer for Frozen 2 has come out!

You can't tell me this wasn't intentional.

Plormp!

He hides in plain sight.

Visit Canada's bird, avoid stress Satanically, and more.

When designing a machine, think ahead.

Here's how to determine the date of a world map.

And he can only move diagonally.

I guess the altar boy is giving the sermon.

A young musician draws an appreciative audience.

Debra She Who Seeks has dancing goddesses (slightly NSFW).  Calvin has some creepy critters.

Oh, the things religious nuts have to worry about.

Is she a witch?

OK, this is the kind of news item you don't see every day.

Trees, trees, trees!

He's hot as Hell.

Most clueless management ever.

This is Johannesburg.

Such self-righteous scum really exist.

Crazy Eddie and friends compare Trump to various kinds of extinct mammals.

Mark Alpert has written a novel about a curiously-familiar fictional President.

Not good news for my own job-hunting.

Gosh, what precaution could she possibly take?

This is an obvious scam and wouldn't even make a good cartoon.

The witch game teaches kids a valuable lesson.

This outcome was predictable, inevitable, and unforgivable.

Catholics who support the Christian Right had better hope it never actually wins.

Mass paranoia leads to harassment and worse.

Here's how Americans debate health-care reform.  Most Americans have no clue about realistic health costs.

Look for answers, don't just make them up.

The "woke" bullcrap will reduce fanfic to the level of those godawful Christian novels.

Republicans are afraid of everything, even Trump.

Can humans change God's mind?

This looks like good advice for anyone, not just writers.

Discrimination thrives in Pence's former state.

Other people's taste in sexual fantasy is just as valid as yours.

Petty, slimy, hateful language meant only to wound and insult -- nice going, Christians.

Google's "do not track" setting is basically fake.  They're going to try to sabotage your ad-blocker too.

Apparently the next big thing in consumer gadgetry will be this "mirrorworld" concept.  At first reading, it sounds to me like a horribly intrusive and commercialized nightmare.

Professor Chaos looks at idiots in the news.

This book is evil.

There's now a video game for conservatives.

A sports-store owner boycotted Nike to protest its Colin Kaepernick ad, with predictable results.

Republicans have weaponized the most gullible segment of the US population.  They're basically working toward this (found via Calvin).

What seems like evil is often just indoctrination.

Legalization of teh shrooms gets some surprising support.

The White House communications chief is married to a lunatic.

See if you can guess why Fox News rejected this ad.

Disaster is good for business.

A massive sexual-abuse scandal has erupted within the hypocritical Southern Baptist Convention.

Michigan is about to tell the cops to stop stealing stuff.

Let the Trumpanzees suffer the consequences of their stupidity.

The Christian God is as far from "love" as it's possible to get.

Pompeii is still being excavated, giving us new glimpses into ancient Roman life.

Oh, great, a flying lizard the size of a giraffe (don't worry, they're all long dead).

Hackwhackers remembers Opportunity.

The US and Europe team up to test a defense against asteroid impacts.

How much water an Earth-like planet has may depend on whether a supernova happens nearby at a certain stage of solar-system formation.

Here's why the British tend to dislike Trump.

British students take a stand against the barbarity of halal and kosher meat (though administration lags behind).

With the US an unreliable ally under Trump, another powerful nation must take a larger role in European security.

This seems like a useful form of "cultural appropriation", if true.

A vibrant Asian democracy is standing up to the world's biggest gangster state.

The rule of a religio-nationalist party is eroding science in India (sounds familiar).

The Ebola outbreak in the war-torn eastern Congo is getting worse.

Half of Republicans believe Trump was chosen by God.

Start preparing now for the next election.

Shower Cap wonders why Trump prefers "his face looking like rhino's butthole after it sat on a crate of apricot jelly beans", and contemplates the "national emergency" and its aftermath.

[Image at top:  the Opportunity rover]

Quick update

My hand is much improved now.  All last week I was grimly determined not to go to a doctor, because the insurance I have right now is very limited, and I was worried about the out-of-pocket cost.  But the problem was costing me in lost income anyway (my job is mostly keyboard work, and every day last week I had to leave early because of the pain and because doing everything left-handed was making my left hand sore too).  And the problem was just not getting better.  So Saturday morning I did go to the doctor, expense be damned, and got a prescription.  I've now recovered some use of the right hand, and the pain is much less, though the medication makes me rather drowsy.  I can now type close to normally and I assume it will continue to improve.

Normal posting should resume in a day or two.  Thanks again for all the good wishes.

The Infidel is [OUT]

There will be no more posts this week.  I have a very painful joint inflammation in the right hand and have to type everything left-handed only, and it's just getting too wearing.  It's something that afflicts me once every two or three years, and it takes a week or so to go away.  The next link round-up will likely be delayed.

Video of the day -- the "good news"

Christianity summarized in under two minutes by ex-preacher (now atheist) Dan Barker.  Found via Scottie.

Link round-up for 10 February 2019

Various interesting stuff I ran across on the net over the last week.

o o o o o

Cat time!

Re-think the font, indeed.

Has this actually been an issue in their library?

Now we know why he did it.

There's now a pin-up calendar of gods.

The Galactic Empire attacks a new target.

It's a "dead duck", or.....

A modern person finds something disturbing on his doorstep.

The snow fairy has arrived in Portland (brrrr).

Hey, no shit.

Voldemort was a pretty pathetic villain.

Church of what?

Check out this almost psychedelic cube.

They both recognized it.

Good summary here of human reactions to technology.

Keep this poison away from children.

Pelosi pulls the plug on Gohmert TV.

Marco Polo probably never got anywhere near China.

These are the real-world zombies.

Here's a richly-detailed discussion of the 1972 film Silent Running.

Humorists mock the SOTU speech.  Here's a more serious analysis.

John Dingell was skilled at Twitter pwnage (Tyson was right, though).

Never use your real name on social media.

A religio-nutball goes on a rant against "effeminate" men -- and plastic forks.

There really is a Lake of Fire, and it's in Turkmenistan.

Clash of the asshole titans:  it's America's sleaziest "newspaper" vs the boss of Amazon.

Incels psych themselves into being jealous of rats and fish (warning -- this is kind of gross).

This is a good overview of the attacks on internet free expression, though I find it too defeatist -- Google Blogger backed down from such efforts in 2015, and as I've discussed recently, user-funded platforms remain free of corporate power.

Lucky Otter worries about the coming end of Google+.  I've never been on Google+, so it's hard for me to say, but I don't see why this would have any effect on the Google Blogger platform.

No, Trump is not going to end AIDS.

You're not just imagining things, pop music really is getting worse.

There's more and more pushback against the tiresome and bullying "cultural appropriation" bullshit.

This epic tale of dumbth has it all -- bitcoins, drug culture, "anarcho-capitalist" Randroids, and endless business scams.  (Seriously, "John Galton"?)  Here's some more pwnage of bitcointards.

Hecate Demeter takes an unusual view of drag.

Trumpanzees fume at their idol as they fill out their tax forms.

This person is an asshole.  And this person is worse.

Monotheism is not better.  It's not even monotheism.

Powerful Texas landowners will oppose Trump's border wall.

It took long enough, but Fox News is going down the tubes.

What's religion worth?  The evidence is clear.

An overwhelming majority of Americans favor raising taxes on the rich (found via Mock Paper Scissors), and even more want Mueller's final report made public.

As the measles outbreak a few dozen miles north of me reaches fifty cases, some people are deciding vaccines are a good idea after all.

Two former RedState writers explain why they quit.

Too often, Christian homeschooling is a way of controlling and limiting children's minds.  Of course, they're trying to foul up the public schools too (found via Scottie).

The latest work of creationist propaganda looks dead-on-arrival.

Yes, there's value in learning higher mathematics even if you'll never use it.

Pygmy mammoths sound like a contradiction in terms, but they really existed.

The "replicator" is a new approach to 3D printing.

Compare the rotation speed and axial tilt of the various planets (but they left out Pluto😡).

We live in a warped galaxy.

2018 was officially the fourth-hottest year on record.

Americans tend to be utterly ignorant of how socialized medicine really works.

Even in Canada, there are a lot of bad cops.

In Germany, Merkel's conservative government has maintained a surprisingly backward abortion policy which is only now loosening a bit.

Let's hope this is no more effective than curses usually are.

The Catholic Church in India behaves just like it does elsewhere in the world.

No, the US is not the hottest economy in the world -- not even close.

Republicans' hypocritical weaponization of the law for partisan attacks goes back years before Trump, but it's getting worse.

This city did it -- yours could too.

Here is why Northam probably won't resign.

Stacey Abrams for President?  Some people are thinking about it.

Republicans don't understand Ocasio-Cortez, or much of anything else.

Some politicians find God, but it doesn't last.

Shower Cap reviews the Virginia mess and the SOTU speech.

[Image at top:  Pluto!  Yes, it is a planet, dammit -- it's got a Sailor Senshi named after it.]

The Virginia mess (updated)

It's a bizarre and alarming situation.  Virginia Governor Ralph Northam is under fire after a photo from his 1984 yearbook surfaced showing a man in blackface and another in a KKK outfit (it's not yet established whether either figure was Northam).  Lieutenant Governor Justin Fairfax has been accused of a sexual assault in 2004.  And Attorney General Mark Herring has admitted to wearing blackface at a party when he was 19.  All three are Democrats; if all three leave office, the next in line for the Governorship is the Speaker of the House of Delegates, a Republican.

This certainly looks like an unfolding disaster, but I don't think any one of these men can be written off just yet, much less all three of them.

First off, I reject the view that Northam's photo can be dismissed as meaningless youthful stupidity because it wouldn't have seemed all that bad by the lower standards of the time.  I can remember 1984 (I was 24 that year) and it was certainly recognized that blackface was offensively racist -- and a KKK outfit far, far more so.  Choosing such a photo for a yearbook would not have been a mere act of harmless thoughtlessness, even then.  It's a serious issue, and the calls from many prominent Democrats for Northam to resign reflect that.

(For another view of this question, see Bluzdude.  I disagree with the thrust of his post, but he's always worth reading and this is a discussion that we as a party need to have.)

Of course, people can change over decades (I certainly believed in some cringe-worthy things that far back).  The question is, has Northam changed?  His adult political career doesn't suggest racism, but if his views have evolved, he needs to convincingly explain how and why, and completely repudiate the mentality shown by the 1984 photo, not try to minimize how bad it was.  Otherwise he can never regain the confidence of the non-white members of his state's population, or of whites who abhor racism.  So far, he hasn't done this.  But it's possible he may yet rise to the occasion.

The accusation against Fairfax is by far the most serious.  A person can repudiate offensive attitudes over time, but a violent crime must be punished, if proven, regardless of how the perpetrator's views of it have evolved.  However, Fairfax continues to flatly deny the accusation, insisting that the encounter in question was consensual and that the accuser showed no sign of discomfort with it at the time.  I'm inclined to give more credibility to him here than to other similarly-accused figures of recent years, because there is only one accuser.  Sex abusers, whether they're cold-blooded predators or horny frat-boy types who genuinely don't recognize the seriousness of what they're doing, tend to rack up multiple victims -- Moore, Kavanaugh, Franken, Weinstein, and others all faced multiple accusers.  So I'm not prepared to judge Fairfax as probably guilty yet, as I do those others.  If more women come forward to accuse him, of course, it will be a different matter.

Finally, Herring's situation differs from Northam's.  There was no KKK outfit involved, and what he confessed to was gross behavior at a party -- a semi-private setting -- not choosing a photo to represent himself in a yearbook.  It's at least possibly more analogous to telling an offensive joke among friends which one wouldn't repeat in public.  Even more than with Northam, he deserves the chance to repudiate his past racist stupidity and explain how and why he's renounced such attitudes since then.

So don't write off Virginia to the Republicans just yet.

But W. Hackwhacker makes a solid point here.  We'll have a lot less of this kind of headache to deal with if we run more women for office.

Update (Friday afternoon):  There is now a second accuser against Fairfax.  If this is indeed "ratfucking", it's a highly professional job.

Today

Well, that was a day.

It started with doing my taxes, always a thrill.  I should have done that over the weekend, but I tend to forget such tasks when involved in something more interesting, like the link round-up.  So I finally got it done this morning.  It's always more mentally draining than one expects, especially since they've redesigned the 1040 this year.  Getting a refund, by the way, is not actually a good thing as most people think it is.  It merely means you've been making an interest-free loan to the government all year.  Still, if I've got one coming, the sooner the better.

Then there was the snow.  Many of you who live in colder climates are used to the Devil's Dandruff, as I call it, but Portland only gets the damn stuff every two or three years and we are not geared for it.  What we usually get is an inch or so which melts when driven on and re-freezes into a thin layer of slippery ice which is hard to see -- and I leave for work about three-quarters of an hour before sunrise.  Today I started ten minutes early to allow time for cautious driving and a diversion to the post office to get those tax forms in the mail.

Things went fairly well to begin with -- the main roads had seen enough traffic that morning to wear away the ice in most places.  I had almost reached the post office and was just slowing down to let a bus pull out into traffic when there came a loud BANG and my car jolted forward about a foot.  The car behind had skidded on the ice and run into me.  There was no damage -- the speed of impact must have been pretty low, and the bumper did its job -- but it did not exactly contribute to a sense of tranquility.  That's the problem with situations like snow days -- no matter how careful you are, you're at the mercy of how careless everyone else is.

And they are.  Even on this icy morning, there were cars racing and weaving in and out, trying to get a few positions ahead at any cost.   I believe the technical term for this is "natural selection in action".  Or perhaps "please do that shit as far away from me as possible".

Anyway, I got to work without further collisions and settled in for eight hours of the usual charms of the modern office environment.  Half the people there do that thing where they lick their fingertip before leafing through a stack of papers -- some of which they then hand to you.  This has been the case at several companies I've been at.  Aside from being disgusting, it can't be hygienic.  No wonder colds and flu proliferate through these places like indictments through a Republican administration.

There were, of course, some people missing -- presumably stymied by more severe ice around where they lived -- and so I spent the whole day far busier than usual because I had to cover for one of them.  My arthritis seized the opportunity to stage a terrifically painful flare-up in my right hand, adding to the fun.  I survived the day by dint of as much ibuprofen as I could reasonably get away with (trading the pain for an upset stomach), finished what needed to get done, and set off for home.  The Devil's Dandruff, at least, was mostly gone.

A few minutes from the building there is a railway crossing which is very rarely in use.  Today, of course, it was down and flashing, stopping traffic for the passage of a freight train of exasperating slowness and unconscionable length.  On and on it flowed, car after car, like an endless industrial cosmic megaturd issuing eternally forth from some vast and unseen Gigeresque primordial anus.  There's no alternate route available which doesn't waste even more time, so I settled in to contemplate the passing glacier of rusted steel and graffiti.

But all bad things must come to an end, and eventually the train did, and I made it back home without attracting any meteors.  But, long story short, I am decidedly not in the mood for watching or analyzing whatever inane drivel Hair Furor Agolf Twitler flatulated out in his big speech today.  I'll be relaxing with a few art sites and Whitney Avalon videos and then going straight to sleep, and frankly I've earned it.

Trump speaks!

Advance video of Trump's big speech today:

Link round-up for 3 February 2019

Various interesting stuff I ran across on the net over the last week.

o o o o o

"Rise of the machines....."

They tamed the gargoyles.

Oh, dear.

Oh, fuck.

What kind of service does this business provide?

Jenny_o posts more than you thought possible about socks.

Don't try to get this cat out of his cardboard box.

Who you gonna call?

Illinois cops make a chilling arrest.

Rocks, rocks, rocks!

Librarians enjoy their work.

Here are some reactions to the Gillette ad reactions.

Steve Ruis looks at capital letters.

Humorists sharpen their claws on Howard Schultz's fatuous Presidential aspirations.

Deck chairs, deck chairs.....

Read this touching story about a very minor god.

Yet another factory is moving to Mexico.

Not reality TV, but rather.....oh, he's just an idiot (both found via Calvin).

We must build a fence on our southern border to stop these filthy swine from entering our country.

Here are 55 sites where you can legally download free literature (found via Mendip).

I really like most of Bill Maher's commentary, but Catherynne Valente has some good points here.

Guess where this is going.

Why is health care in the Star Wars universe so backward?

536 was the worst year ever.

The "silent majority" is silent because it doesn't exist.

Houston has all kinds of people.

Ignorance of dialectology undermines the justice system (but I would argue this really shows the need for schools to make sure all Americans can speak standard English).

Winning the minimum wage took a fight; raising it will take another.

Work is work.

Some companies actually have decent values.

This person is an asshole.

The wallnuts want to use Coulter as a lever to force Trump to build the wall.

Declining birth rates and hostility to skilled immigrants will ruin your retirement.

MAGA hats are the new white hoods.  Fragile, stunted masculinity leads to violence.

Religious crazies object to the idea that schools should, you know, actually teach stuff.

Wingnuts have gotten very good at not learning from their mistakes.

We've come so far -- and progress will continue.

Here's how to come up with place names for an asteroid.

Long-term science experiments pose unusual challenges.

Jerry Coyne posts photos from Auschwitz.  Grim, grim material.

Blogger Arkenaten remembers the quaint, deeply-religious era of apartheid.

Yes, the world is getting richer.

Iranian atheist blogger Kaveh Mousavi recommends a Presidential candidate.

Some Republicans worry that Trump could cost them Texas.  Well, he's not the only dumb one.

Don't be a dumbass.

Rich asshole (found via Scottie) has second thoughts.

To Republicans, restoring democracy is a "power grab".

Shower Cap reviews the week in his inimitable style.

[745 days down, 717 days to go until the inauguration of a real President!]

Video of the day -- Dorothy vs. Alice

Two classic characters face off in a rap battle.  How could I resist?  Found via Bluebird of Bitterness.  (Some mildly NSFW language, but hey, that's rap for you.)

Time to get catty

It's a truism that the internet is used largely to propagate pictures of cats -- and it's only right that I should do my share.

Don't miss that classic tale of horror, The Catte of Amontillado.  And there's a big new Hollywood movie reboot coming up.....