This is not their day.

We are better than those who did this. This is not their day.

The Thinking Atheist · 128,185 like this

7 minutes ago · 

• We look at the horrors of Boston today, and we're again shaken to our core. 
  
  Throughout our history, there have always been monsters among us, their terrible deeds searing us with confusion and pain. They've peppered our history books and our headlines with terrible acts done for terrible reasons, and they will always be among us. 
  
  But I will not give them this day.
  
  I give today to those who could have run from the chaotic scene, but instead broke through barriers and rushed to the sides of total strangers in pain. I give today to the paramedics, police, firefighters and physicians who worked to heal what another had so horribly hurt. I give today to the communities, both physical and online, working to find avenues that might provide financial and emotional support to the wounded and grieving. I give today to the best of us.
  
  It is a terrible day. But when I look at humankind, I will not define it by the anonymous cowards bent on destruction and chaos. I will define it by so many more who demonstrated something beautiful in the face of so much ugliness.
  
  To the good, the compassionate, the brave, the helpful, the kind, the loving and the generous...I give the day to you.
  
  -Seth

Intellectual Collapse of Islam... and US?

From 800 to 1100 AD, the Arabic world was the center of knowledge in the world.  Mathmatics as we know it today was developed, the stars were named as navigation and astronomy were refined.  We’d be speaking Arabic today but for one thing.  Around 1100 AD, a Muslim scholar, Hamid Al-Ghazali, declared that mathematics was the work of the devil.  That was the beginning of the end of the 300 year Arabic renaissance and intellectual domination.  Today, out of the billions of Muslims on the planet, only two are Nobel prize winners.  Out of only 15 million Jews, one quarter of the prizes have been given to Jews.  Significant scientific discovery by the Muslim world ended in 1100.   Is the US headed in the same direction?  The religious right and social conservatives seem to be trying to drag us into the dark ages.

http://youtu.be/Fl1nJC3lvFs

Facebook rant:

The 2014 Obama NASA budget proposal. Essentially unchanged from 2012 and 2013. It should be doubled. Where is this out of control spending I keep hearing blather about? IT SHOULD BE DOUBLED! This country is going down the tubes, heading the same way the Arab world went in 1100AD, the moral religious right got it in their heads that math was the devils work and now the Arab greatest accomplishments (algebra, math, astronomy, navigation) are from 900 years ago and they are still beheading and stoning people. Without investment, research, and exploration, we will follow the Arab world. Fuck the Tea Party.
  

An atheist's ten commandments.

From Adam Lee's Daylight Atheism blog his "ten commandments".

First Commandment: Do not do to others what you would not want them to do to you.

Second Commandment: In all things, strive to cause no harm.

Third Commandment: Treat your fellow human beings, your fellow living things, and the world in general with love, honesty, faithfulness and respect.

Fourth Commandment: Do not overlook evil or shrink from administering justice, but always be ready to forgive wrongdoing freely admitted and honestly regretted.

Fifth Commandment: Live life with a sense of joy and wonder.

Sixth Commandment: Always seek to be learning something new.

Seventh Commandment: Test all things; always check your ideas against the facts, and be ready to discard even a cherished belief if it does not conform to them.

Eighth Commandment: Never seek to censor or cut yourself off from dissent; always respect the right of others to disagree with you.

Ninth Commandment: Form independent opinions on the basis of your own reason and experience; do not allow yourself to be led blindly by others.

Tenth Commandment: Question everything. (Including these commandments.)

Comet PanSTARRS

I managed to find the comet PanSTARRS and get a couple of pictures.

Offended?

No one has the right to spend their life without being offended.

http://youtu.be/HQ3VcbAfd4w

Murder moral?

@daytonhartman @unbelievablejb
"so it [murder for pleasure and self relief] is absolutely, objectively wrong? On what basis besides subjective opinion? Further...why is prioritizing your pleasure over another's wrong? Atheism says their just fizzing organic matter. Also...is your standard for judging moral actions the objectively/absolutely correct standard?"

Murder for pleasure is wrong because it harms the community, if the community doesn't thrive then the species doesn't and we suffer. The fizzing organic matter wants to thrive and alturism and charity assists that. It is natural and shown in all populations down to single cell organisms. Religion needs absolute objective measurements, rules, laws in order to control the masses. Atheism doesn't because it uses reason and rational thought. So I take back my tentative agreement that absolute objective rules are necessary to determine morality. If you aren't somehow relieving or preventing suffering or giving pleasure in your actions, you are at risk of not being moral. Are there actions that don't do these things that are not immoral? I can't offhand think of any.

Repainted Control wheel

http://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-prn1/19722_537290722959159_918505872_n.jpg

 

Bless You

I understand the blessing "bless you" [in response to a sneeze] as a totally selfish concern for your own well being by begging the big sky daddy to bless me so you don't get sick as well.  Atheists don't have an equivalent because when you sneeze, they make plans to avoid the germs and prepare for the upcoming epidemic with hospice care and disposal actions.

 

Response to Rubio

Obama has not suggested bigger government. Obama has not grown government. Government employment has declined since Obama took office. These are all easily checked facts Mr. Rubio.
Free enterprise does not build roads. Free enterprise does not educate the workforce. Free enterprise does not do basic research. Free enterprise does not protect our citizens. Free enterprise does not protect our environment. These are the things that president Obama has proposed.
The deficit is not today's problem. The economy is the problem. The economy needs to be fixed. Spending reductions do not fix the economy. Your way just leads to stagnation, further income disparity, and no growth to the economy.



Sent from my iPhone

I was told to look in the mirror as an answer to this.

I look in the mirror and don't see any hatred of minorities. I am a minority. I've tolerated religion all my life and still do, I don't oppress anyone, and seldom make claims without evidence. However, religion doesn't get a free pass anymore. If it makes claims that can't be substantiated, it gets questioned. No longer is faith a virtue. No longer can religion claim moral high ground. No longer can religion claim the only purpose and meaning to life. No longer can religion claim any explanation for why or how we came to be. Showing where religion is wrong is rational human growth, progress out of darkness and superstition. That isn't war, that's rational thought. That's growing out of fear and into understanding of our place in the universe. If the religious feel embattled and persecuted, they should consider the arguments they make based on ancient texts and personal anecdotes that usually are easily explained by statistics, imperfect human perception, and corruption.

I do hate. I hate mutilation of children's genitals in the name of religion. I hate stoning of women on religious grounds. I hate the child abuse that is telling a small child that they will burn in hell without proper belief in gods/Jesus/whatever. I hate the undemocratic control religion has over people with the subsequent inevitable abuse of power. Hate is not always a bad thing.

Job Rant.

I've been a manager at this company for more years than I want to admit anymore.  Ok, here goes... of the 32+ years in this company, 3.5 years in the late 80's to early 90's and then the last 16.48 years since August of 1996.  I've never liked being a manager,  that is why I got out of it the first time.  Fortunately I have been able to do technical work and lead a technical team so it wasn't all bad.  I do that part pretty well apparently.
Rant:

• The customer is warning us that they expect a 10% cut in our budget this year.  Just a warning and we won't know for sure until half way through the year.
• The director wants to cut now and avoid having to make a 20% cut later.
• We identified people we could cut by position that would least impact our operations and work.
• Two of those people said they would take the layoff without bumping someone if that is what it came to.
• This plan was submitted to Human Resources.  HR for short.  Heartless Rats.  Human Refuse.
• HR said we have to try to find these people jobs, even if that meant bumping our own people below them in the ranking order.  The outdated ranking order that is over a year old and has no relationship to today's rankings.
• As if I give a shit about rankings.  I need specific people.  The people we decided to release were releasable because we don't need them as much.  If everyone could do anyone's job, we wouldn't have made a selection.  That isn't the real world.  It appears to be the HR world.  A Level 5 System Engineer Sr Stf should be able to step into the shoes of another Level 5 System Engineer Sr Stf of lower ranking without too much training or trouble.
• And what is this bullshit that an employee can't say "I don't want to bump anyone."and we have to try to place him somewhere anyway?  I guess they want to avoid severance pay at all costs since it is 2 weeks pay plus 1 week per year served up to 26 weeks.  But if they bump someone who has the same salary and severance, no gain there!

I am so pissed off I can spit.  Several people are going to get an unnecessary layoff notice because some lawyers tells HR to toe the line and follow process exactly.  I am spending hours of my life writing up justifications for why the other people shouldn't be bumped by this guy ranked higher than them.  Obviously they don't trust my judgement, nor the judgement of the senior manager and director above me.  I am tired of it.  Why do we have managers at all?  Just hire a bunch of HR types to do this shit and let the engineer leads run the real work, until HR runs the company into bankruptcy.

MORAL Majority?

Right there, in black and white, the Republicans admit publicly how the House seats they retained in 2012 was achieved despite having over a million fewer actual votes. Intentionally, planned, with premeditation. Now WHO is corrupting American values? WHO is un-American? From WHO do we need to take our country back from? These are the people who are supposed to be MORAL and RIGHTEOUS?

Republicans enjoy a 33-seat margin in the U.S. House seated yesterday in the 113th Congress, having endured Democratic successes atop the ticket and over one million more votes cast for Democratic House candidates than Republicans.

Rachel Maddow: The GOP Plan To Take Presidency, Keep House In Four Easy Steps

1. Win under-the-radar local elections:

2. Use new majorities to gerrymander state legislature and congressional districts in their favor:

3. Use redistricting to ‘win’ seats in the US House of Representatives in 2010 and 2012:

4. Change state-level electoral college rules so Democratic candidates can’t win the presidency:

And just to ratchet up the slime factor, the Virginia Senate waited until Democratic Senator Henry Marsh left to attend the president’s inauguration before voting on the bill. “Virginia senators had to wait until he was gone because the Senate is equally divided in Virginia, with 20 Republicans and 20 Democrats,” exclaimed an appalled Maddow. Because of the even split, Virginia’s Lt. Governor, Bill Bolling typically casts the tie-breaking vote in situations like this. But even the state’s number two Republican thought this was a dirty trick and refused to support it. That left the GOP lawmakers with no option but to wait until a Democrat left town and they could skew the numbers in their favor without having to rely on Bolling. As it so happened, they waited until one of Virginia’s most preeminent civil rights icons (and the first black mayor of Richmond, the capitol of the Confederacy) was at the second inauguration of the nation’s first black president to launch their attack. Throwing up yet?
Yet Virginia’s law — the first of its kind — still stands, and other states are poised to follow suit. Already, Pennsylvanian Republicans have a similar bill in committee.

It's Not the Deficit Stupid!

I feel like slapping someone... wake up! The problem with today's economy is not current budget deficits and national debt! It is not! Our problem is lack of jobs, and the markets the employed make for more job creation. The only reason an employer creates a job is when they need someone to work. Taxes, health care, national debt don't matter. They want to sell something and they need buyers. They only create jobs if demand for what they sell requires it. All deficit reduction does right now is kill jobs. Period. Yes, the budget needs to get better balanced but not now, especially since more than half of the current deficit is caused by the recession. Recover from that and half the problem is solved! Get out of the stupid wars and more is saved. Get the economy booming with education and infrastructure now while money is cheap! Austerity fails! It failed Japan's stagnation for 20 years and now Europe is dying with its failed austerity efforts. WTFU!

http://harpers.org/blog/2013/01/america-is-having-the-wrong-fiscal-argument/

"Deficit-cutting under the current circumstances is bad economics, according both to theory and to historical precedent. Austerity economics are palpably and tragically failing in Europe, yet the same types who urge austerity on Greece, Italy, Portugal, Spain, and even France — not to mention the non-Eurozone giant, Britain — are also urging it in broad consensus in America. And they are succeeding. Dedicated to their polite even-handedness, meanwhile, the media have tended to blame both sides and to assume unquestioningly that deficit reduction is required, rather than identifying the clear culprits responsible for sustaining our economic mess. These culprits are not evenly distributed across the political spectrum. In order of importance, they are:"

1. The Tea Party Republicans who have been working for an economic policy driven by ideology and a hatred of most social policies.
2. self-appointed “common sense” centrists like the powerful Campaign to Fix the Debt
3. Third is the Congressional Budget Office. The CBO’s economics are utterly neoclassical, which means it is conservative, in that it almost always favors less government spending. Its projections generally assume that high budget deficits will crowd out private investment and slow economic growth.

God in judgment

Today 20 kids lost their lives. 

Mike Huckbee has an opinion.


So do I.“[W]e’ve made it a place where we don’t want to talk about eternity, life, what responsibility means, accountability — that we’re not just going to have be accountable to the police if they catch us, but one day we stand before, you know, a holy God in judgment,” Huckabee said. “If we don’t believe that, then we don’t fear that.”

Why would I fear a God who is so ineffective as to be totally unable to at least call the cops before the shooting starts? It never has before. Or maybe this god is malevolent and shouldn't get our attention. Or is uncaring and there is no point in our attention. Or. There is no god. Mike Huckabee... you've wasted your life on something that doesn't exist. How sad for you. Not nearly as sad as losing 20 kids you think could have been prevented with fear and superstition. Action by us here and now could have prevented it, not fear and superstition. Those kids have lost their one and only lives, they do not go to a better place. They are lost to us. Their lives have been lost, they will never be who they could have been. We will never know who they could have been. This is the price paid for supposed rights (god given in some minds) of gun ownership and personal responsibility that limits aid to mental illness. 

The first five shots I blame on the lack of health care in this country, the rest on the NRA.