Conservapedia.

Really, I don’t know where to start. Well, no, that’s not a lie, I do: in its own words, “Conservapedia is a much-needed alternative to Wikipedia, which is increasingly anti-Christian and anti-American.” I don’t know where to go from there. I want to…edit…I want to comment…I…

ech, really, I’ll just drop in some good examples and let you go from there.

1. The Conservapedia Commandments, in which the first rule is”Everything you post must be true and verifiable.”
2. On the heels of that, the origins of the Kangaroo: “Like all modern animals, modern kangaroos originated in the Middle East^[1] and are the descendants of the two founding members of the modern kangaroo baramin that were taken aboard Noah’s Ark prior to the Great Flood” A baramin, by the way, is “a lineage of earthly life that that was originally created by God during the Creation Week.”
3. Faith is unique to Christianity. A quote from Jesus is somehow proof that Christians mean it more than anyone else.
4. The home page proclaims it has “over 3,400 educational, clean and concise entries on historical, scientific, legal, and economic topics,” and is therefore “one of the largest user-controlled free encyclopedias on the internet.” I suppose that (uncited, unverified) claim can be made easily enough when you fill your info resource with entries like James Buchanan, for example, which says in its entirety: “Was the 15th president of the United States. He served as the president from 1857-1861.”

If I were a Conservative I’d probably be annoyed at this–not all Conservatives are Christian Creationists. But I guess funadamentala-christia-creationapedia.com doesn’t roll off the tongue as well.

<tieboy> I wish something would happen to distract the media from all this anna nicole blather. like a war in the middle east or something

I’m fairly empathic, which is good for understanding where other people are coming from, but it also makes me somewhat indecisive. Sometimes I have difficulty taking a firm stand on an issue because I think both sides have their merits.

Then, occasionally, someone writes something well enough that gets me fired up. No, damnit, I’m right on this.

With the ACLU, ‘American’ Comes First « The Opinion Mill

If you need context, it’s about the teacher in Kearney High School in New Jersey who tells his students that if they don’t accept Jesus they belong in Hell. Also, “there were dinosaurs aboard Noah’s ark and that there is no scientific basis for evolution or the Big Bang theory,” which is a really ironic pair of statements, next to each other.

So you’ve probably heard about the shameful conditions at Walter Reed for injured soldiers, including mold and mice infestations:

Crooks and Liars » Countdown: Shameful treatment of the Troops at Walter Reed

I’ve lost track of reading neocon blogs ‘n things recently. I’ve primarily just been reading C&L for political viewpoint stuff, which is slanting me a bit, unfortunately. But I just haven’t had the stomach for it. Anyone have any examples of people calling for the heads of the reporters on this story because they want America to fail?

I’ve written a book review for Prank the Monkey, a new book by John Hargrave, of zug.com. In fact, John should be thanked for my getting the site in some semblance of workingness, because I wanted to do the review justice, and I didn’t want to just put it in as a blog entry.

I think I have more to say about that, but I’m all typed out. He requested I get the review done before the book came out, and I had it stuck in my head that it was coming out Feb 7, instead of Feb 6 when it actually does. (Did.) So my “just under the wire” wound up being more like “ow, wire hit me in the head”, and now I’m up til 2:30am telling you this.

Well, I finally got something together for the site, sorta. There’s very little here at the moment, and the layout’s kinda bland, but I really just gotta get the thing moving. I’m going to beat down my perfectionistic side and just get some stuff back online.

But mostly, I promised to have a book review down soon, so I hope to have that up tomorrow. I didn’t want to do that as just another blog post.

Years ago, I worked in tech support for a large government facility. Joe, one of my co-workers–college age, libertarian, unhappy with the way things were run–had reached his breaking point with HR not letting him work at home. Pregnant women/recent mothers were allowed to work from home, though not officially. He spent a lot of time trying to convince them that it was unfair, but got nowhere. His tolerance gone, he decided to make a point about it.

He made this point by sending e-mail to the facility’s “Everyone” mailing list. These days, if you’re a corporate employee, you already see the problem. But this was, oh, maybe 1994 or 1995, the early days of modern corporate e-mail, so it wasn’t understood that this was an easy way to make a mess of the e-mail system. But that’s fine, pass that part over, because here’s the kicker: he started the mail with something like, “there’s something bothering me, and I have to get it off my chest or I’m going to go postal.”

That certainly got everyone’s attention. In tech support, we all got the mail, read it, and said to ourselves, “ah geez Joe, what are you doing now.” We knew him; we knew he wasn’t seriously contemplating picking up a gun and shooting random employees; in fact the phrase “go postal” did not even register with any of us as a problem. We had a sorta “ah, crud, people on the network are going to complain about this useless email” reaction. Joe wasn’t in our building at the time, so we couldn’t go to his desk and tell him not to be an idiot with the mailing lists, but for my part, I read it and processed it and forgot about it.

So we were sort of surprised to learn later that Joe had been escorted off the facility in handcuffs while people determined what kind of threat he presented. I couldn’t imagine why, until I heard from people in other buildings that the “going postal” references actually scared a lot of people, to the point they were too anxious to leave their offices until the threat was resolved. They had no idea who this Joe guy was or what the hell he was talking about, but they sure saw that he was thinking about going postal.

I mention all this because I’m trying to use my first “eh, so what” reaction to Joe’s e-mail, and the pointless panic that ensued, as a guide to understanding how Boston could’ve gone so apeshit insane over a couple cartoon Lite Brites.

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