Budziszewiski asks atheists not to be offended by his remarks, and insists he wouldn't have been offended by them when he was an atheist. Let me say I'm not offended. I am worried, though. I am worried because I live in a country where best-selling novelists lead believers through fantasizing about the grusome deaths of unbelievers. I am worried because I live in a country where these novels are being turned into a video game which will allow believing teenagers to role-play the killing of infidels. I am worried because I live in a country where this brand of religion has considerable influence in the goverment and wants more. I am worried because I live in a country where believers are increasingly redefining "persecution" to mean "any criticism of our beliefs."I am an Episcopalian Christian, and I worry about exactly the same things.
Hat tip to Making Light for the following.
As you must have heard, this week, the US Department of Homeland Security released information about the allocation of anti-terrorism funds to US cities. New York City, which is about 15 miles south of where I'm sitting right now, had its funding cut by 40%. The mayor of NYC pointed out the stupidity of this, saying "Whenever we catch someone involved in a terrorist plot, they've got a map of NYC in their pocket".
More information about the allocation has gradually been getting out. It turns out that the allocation method was remarkably simple. In their applications for funding, cities listed assets that they needed to protect. What DHS did was take the number of listed assets from all of the cities that were going to be recipients of funds, and give each city an amount of funding proportional to the number of assets they listed.
So, the Empire State building is equal to the neighborhood bank in Omaha. The stock exchange on Wall Street is equal to the memorial park in Anchorage, Alaska. Mount Sinai hospital is equal to the county hospital in the suburbs of Toledo, Ohio. The New York subway system (18.5 billion passenger-miles per year) is equal to the Minneapolis transit system (283 million passenger-miles per year). The Brooklyn Bridge is equal the George Street bridge in New Brunswick, NJ.
We know, perfectly well, how to estimate relative values and risks - the insurance company does it every day. Did our government do that? No. They ignored the established math of how to do it right, in favor of a stupid, a mind-bogglingly stupid, a deliberately stupid formula that would screw over every single actual high-risk location in the country, so that they could shove the money at people who don't need it.
The biggest armored dinosaur to be discovered so far was recently found in southern Utah, in a rugged badland just south of Green River.
"It's built like a tank," stated Reese Barrick of the new dinosaur. Barrick is a paleontologist who is the Director and Curator of the College of Eastern Utah (CEU) Prehistoric Museum in Price, Utah. "It will be the largest, heaviest armored dinosaur found on the planet so far."
Estimated to be 25-30 feet long and to weigh 6 tons, this newly discovered animal was adorned with spikes and bony plates along its back and sides, similar to another armored dinosaur that was also found in Utah.
Never mind that no one has ever made a coherent, much less compelling, argument for why allowing gays to get married will do anything whatsoever to damage heterosexual marriages. The anti-gay marriage position is not based on reason, it is based on bigotry. For all practical purposes, the opposition is a mob and you control mobs by appealing to their base emotions, by telling them who is to blame for the thing that outrages them. This playbook has been used time and time again throughout our history.
