I’m a Negligent Blogger

Hey, I just wanted to update this really quick. I’ve been pretty busy lately and haven’t had much time to write here. And that probably won’t change for about a month. So I’ll be back, hopefully at a more regular pace, in 2013.

Shame On All Of You For Not Telling Me About Doomsday Preppers

Doomsday Preppers is my new favorite thing on TV. It’s a documentary-style show that features groups of survivalists who for a variety of creative reasons think some kind of apocalypse is imminent. It’s the kind of show that seems to be baiting people like me who are morbidly fascinated with grandiose, paranoid delusions. And now I can’t stop watching it.

Happy Carl Sagan Day

Today is Carl Sagan’s birthday. He would be 78 if he were still alive, but he would also be clawing at the lid of his coffin, trying desperately to get out. Everyone’s posting their favorite quotes of his on Twitter, but mine is too long for that. So you will have to see it after the jump:

Why I’m Voting Third Party

I should probably preface this by pointing out that I live in a state where it’s practically impossible for a Democratic Party candidate for President to lose. The last time a Democrat lost New York was in 1984 (the actual year, not the dystopian Orwell novel) when Walter Mondale lost everything except Washington, DC and his home state of Minnesota to the B-movie actor Ronald Reagan.

So it’s entirely possible that I’m only taking this position because I don’t have to face some moral dilemma over what might happen if too many New Yorkers, including myself, voted for a third-party candidate instead of  Obama. I’d like to think that if I lived in Ohio or Florida or Virginia or some place like that I would be consistent in my principles. But I can’t really know that for sure unless I were actually in that position, and I’m just not that interested in testing that by moving out-of-state to find out.

Legitimate Rape = The Kind God Likes

Yesterday the Republican politician Richard Mourdock got real mad about them there uppity women wanting abortion rights and all. So he went on Facebook and wrote this:

Keep Brain Bleach Handy While Reading This

By now you’ve probably heard about the most important news story of our generation. The effects of it will echo throughout the world, impacting the daily lives of every single man, woman, and child on the planet for decades to come. I speak of course of the Hulk Hogan sex tape.

The EPA Will Turn Your Children Against You and Your Non-Lightswitch-Flipping Ways

I’d really like to be able to stop writing about crank websites like WorldNetDaily and Natural News, but they keep on being hilarious and so I can’t. For example, did you know that your kid might be a spy for the Russians Environmental Protection Agency? IT IS TRUE:

If your child suddenly starts marching around the house demanding that you turn off every light switch after leaving a room, or begins attaching hangers to door handles that grade your family’s energy use habits, he or she may have been recruited by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as a spy in one of its so-called “energy patrols.”

Study Finds Doctors Distrust ‘Big Pharma’

One of the standard propaganda lines for the alternative medicine industry is that the typical physician is in the pocket of “big pharma.” Even if they’re not bought off with pens and pads of paper, then their good intentions can be subverted with biased studies that are funded by pharmaceutical companies. And since these doctors don’t take the possibly nefarious intentions of “big pharma” as seriously as the alties do, they end up as unwitting salespeople of unnecessary drugs, which serves to line the pockets of the CEOs of drug companies.

This sounds like a pretty testable hypothesis. Do physicians trust company-funded clinical trials too much? The New England Journal of Medicine decided to investigate. Here’s what they found (emphasis mine):

Why Don’t More Nobel Prize Winners Do This?

Half the fun of winning a Nobel Prize – at least one that hasn’t been made completely ridiculous – should be in how you can rub it in the noses of all of those who have wronged you in the past. And that’s what John Gurdon, who just won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, is doing to one of his schoolteachers. Good for him. Check out the excerpt from his 1949 report card after the jump:

Marriage Equality Will Turn Everyone Gay, Or Something

Every once in a while I try to re-examine my views by reading conflicting ones. And I try to find articulate conservative or religious writers who put forth the best argument they’ve got in a comprehensible way. It’s all well and good to laugh at the Chuck Norrises of the world, but there have to be serious and thoughtful arguments against something like gay marriage out there somewhere. Right?