Callous Disregard – A Penn State Football Story

Unless you’re living in an alternate universe, you’ve probably heard about the Sandusky/Penn State scandal/cover-up. Sandusky was convicted in June and will likely die in prison for raping numerous children that were in his child-advocacy program. He was truly a sick fuck.

But on top of all that, the Freeh report was released a couple of weeks ago, which was commisioned by the Penn State Board of Trustees to investigate what Penn State administrators and those in the football program did or didn’t know and do.

Turns out top administrators, including the university President, Graham Spanier, and legendary football coach, Joe Paterno, knew as early as 1998 that Sandusky was, at the very least, endangering young children:

Religion News Service Lies

There’s a new poll out from Pew that, among other things, shows that around 19% of Americans identify as not having any religious affiliation. Also that number has been steadily growing compared to previous surveys. That tells us almost nothing, except maybe that more people are getting embarrassed to admit to being part of one or another weird book club.

Vox Day Will Rate Your Blackness

Theodore Beale is this blogger at WorldNetDaily. He sometimes goes by Vox Day, probably because his family would disown him if they knew about his racism and misogyny and anti-science extremism. He’s also buddies with John Derbyshire – remember that NRO writer who got fired for writing that racist screed about how he tells his kids to stay away from black kids? And then everyone was like, “Oh, he’s just doing some stupid faux-colorblind tongue-in-cheek thing about how black people are the real racists for telling their kids about racism,” and he was like, “Nah, dude, I’m serious here.” Yeah, they’re tight.

Westboro Baptist Church <3 Chick Fil-A

I follow a lot of dirtbags on Twitter. It’s mostly for LOLz, but every once in a while something interesting pops up. This time it’s from the Westboro Baptist Church.

You know the WBC, right? The “God Hate Fags” people? That one practically incestuous cultish church almost entirely composed of a single family that’s headquartered at a compound in Topeka, Kansas that made headlines a few years ago for picketing the funerals of killed American soldiers? The ones who think the people who kill US soldiers are instruments of God’s wrath, and that we therefore should celebrate when members of the American military come home in body bags? The ones even Sean Hannity thinks are “religious nuts?”

Well, they’ve finally found an institution besides their own church that it turns out God doesn’t hate. Can you guess what it is? Can you? I’ll give you a minute to figure it out.

Books You Should Read: Glamorama, by Bret Easton Ellis

If you’re in our target demographic, you’re probably not a fan of the celebrity culture. It’s all well and good to look up to people for their accomplishments, but fame for its own sake is just annoying. And yeah, that was pretty cliched to even point that out.

But there’s something the people who are into that sort of thing get out of their weird fascination. It’s some kind of stress release valve. And we all find our own ways of getting our allotment of mindless entertainment, hopefully without being too dumb and proud about it. This is where Glamorama comes in.

Climate Change Deniers and Conspiracy Theories

There’s an article in the Guardian about how how climate change deniers tend to also believe in conspiracy theories, such as the idea that humans never landed on the Moon. It’s a mixed bag of awesomeness and a few parts that make me cringe.

Sunday Reading

• A Call to Arms for Decent Men, by Ernest W. Adams (Butterflies & Wheels) – A call to fight sexism in the gaming community.
• A Dilution of the Facts, part 1, part 2 (McKinnon Secondary Sceptical Society) – What happens when a homeopath visits a high school skeptical society.
• The Dark Knight Rises vs. the 99%, by Eileen Jones (eXiled online) – a critical review of the newest Batman movie.
• Three problems with the American debate on guns, by Michael De Dora (Rationally Speaking) – Fanaticism on both sides oversimplifies the issue, makes us all dumber.
• Pussy Riot: will Vladimir Putin regret taking on Russia’s cool women punks?, by Carole Cadwalladr (The Guardian) – Putin had a female punk group imprisoned for unlawful dissent and a backlash ensued.
• 5 Creepy Things London Did to Prepare for the Olympics, by Lillian Marx and Max Danvers (Cracked Magazine) – London is basically under military occupation.
• Pat Buchanan: GOP Imperiled by Decline of White Population, by Matt Taibbi (Rolling Stone) – More despicable racism from Pat Buchanan.
• Who is Mat Staver, Counsel for Anti-Gay Activist Against Suit from Uganda?, by Sarah Posner (Religion Dispatches) – Liberty Law Exam Question on Notorious Kidnapping Case Pressured Students to Choose “God’s Law” over “Man’s.”
• The conversion of a climate change skeptic, by Richard Muller (NY Times) – The Berkeley physics prof explains how and why he’s changed his mind on climate change.
• The curative powers of the Internet, by Glenn Greenwald (Salon) – A well-crafted hoax is quickly uncovered, showing the advantages of Internet journalism over the traditional model.

Image: Philip K Dick with his cat [r/scifi]

*

Follow me on Twitter

Arrested Developments

Personally, I never cared for the Olympics. I’ve never been much of a sports fan to begin with and so getting some sort of national pride out of people (who probably would have beaten me up in high school) winning a gold medal just is not in me.

But I’ll give this to those who do watch the Olympics, most of them probably don’t fuck children.

“Mitt the Twit”

Mitt Romney, who is aspiring for the position of head diplomat of the US, has been in the news lately for saying some rather undiplomatic things during his visit to  England Britain the UK.  And the media are giving him a hell of a time.  My favorite headline is the Sun’s with Mitt the Twit as it reports him saying he had looked out of “the backside of Number 10“.  Which roughly translates from UK to American as ‘he was looking down the ass of the administration’s spokesperson.’  Gotta love the lulz Mittens brings to the international table.

Anyway, that’s not the real point of this post.  Instead, today I’m interested in Mitt’s tax returns and his motives for not releasing more than the past two years worth.  This story has been getting a lot of press and Mitt himself has received quite a bit of pressure even from his conservative allies.   As Salon’s Joan Walsh notes, conservative stalwart George Will believes “[Romney] must have calculated that there are higher costs in releasing them [than to continue their concealment].”  The hypothesis is that while the tax records that Romney has released, 2010 and 2011, indicate an effective tax rate of 14%, prior records could reveal an effective tax rate that is significantly below that mark.

Don’t tell anyone, but I actually don’t pay ANY taxes! Fuck you Uncle Sam!

Mitt Romney = Baby Eater?

Delicious!

I am almost, but not entirely, convinced that Mitt Romney may or may not have been, at some point, or currently is a secret baby eater. The presumptive Republican nominee for president, not as far as he knows but heretofore many have speculated, could’ve possibly been seen in the presence of cannibals. But there is overwhelming evidence that he could or could not possibly be secretly involved in a super secret society of baby cannibals.