Jackson Case Was 'Gender Lynching'?

Did I miss something? I wasn't really paying attention to the Michael Jackson trial because there were more important things to be focusing on. David R. Usher of Sexists' News Daily had other priorities apparently:

"This is not law. It is the finest example of feminist sexism witnessed since the movie “First Wives Club” hit the screens in 1996. The Jackson case bears much more meaning than any movie could, because it demonstrates real living sexism. It is a national disgrace these minions of misandry are given prime time when the media would never air the equally-reprehensible views of the Ku Klux Klan."

I'm assuming that Mr Usher will be next in line to send his kids to sleepover at Neverland. I guess we can also assume that all feminists were hoping for a conviction and all men were hoping for an acquittal. Wait, what about the feminist men? They must have felt so torn...poor guys. It gets better:

Celebrity Justice Pat Lalama was apoplectic, shoving her fierce feminist face into the camera while literally scorching the inside of my picture tube with flaming rhetoric torching from her mouth.

The ultimate indicator of a fine journalist is the misuse of the word 'literally.' Any 'journalist' who messes that one up should resign his/her rights to describe things to people. I think Mr. Usher's literal hatred of women severely limits his ability to process information, let alone relate back a reliable, well-informed and justified interpretation of the events. I didn't see the Fox News interview he is referring to, but the figurative pile of feces that his article left of my monitor leads me to believe that his willful misunderstanding of feminism is just as rotten as his political views.

A surprising number of Americans still imagine that Jackson must have abused somebody. This is precisely how we have been programmed to think by feminists throughout the liberal media.

What liberal media?

The great civil rights advancements of this century will rise from the burgeoning mainstream pro-family marriage movement, which must rightly end feminist sexism to reach its goal. This movement will succeed because feminism is the true source of father-absence...

Ah, dammit! I've been fighting for the wrong things! I didn't realize I was supposed to be helping to abolish fatherhood.

We have substantially ended racism. However, vestiges remain which are actually driven by sexist attitudes towards males of all races.

Can anyone else figure out what the hell this guy is talking about?

Sauerkraut Custard Pie

Sue Anne Zollinger, ex-Scissor Girl, no-wave guitar hero, doctoral candidate and collector of unusual pastries is featured in the Chicago Reader. The Art Institute of Chicago graduate tells of her adventure to spread international pie love.

Creepy...

Despite the possible advances in fertility research, it's just creepy.

Too Sexy for My Dignity

I don't usually post truly personal thoughts like these, but this is an issue that seems to haunt everyone. It's wonderful to see a young adult really developing an independent sense of self. Regardless of the pressures to conform or pressures to seek validation from peer groups, a high school student establishes her own style:

By the time spring rolls around, I feel as though my school is transformed into a strip club, and instead of arming myself with pencils and review books for finals, I think I’ll just start bringing dollar bills.

..I feel like the return of actual sunshine after months of grey turns the high school into Jay-Z’s newest music video-- underage nakedness and all.

... never again do I want to feel controlled by the approval of my peers...

We all feel the pressures to look and act in certain ways, men and women. I've given in to my share of shameless self-displays, but I have also conquered much of the cognitive dissonance. For example, I don't wear make-up because I don't like the way it feels on my skin, the way it looks on my face or the way it warps my conscience and no amount of commercial advertisement will change my mind. I know, easier said than done.

If you want to dress in the height of fashion, then do it and don't feel guilty. What I would discourage is conformity for the sake of acceptance. My first suggestion to anyone trying to breakaway: STOP WATCHING TELEVISION. The standards by which you judge yourself will change dramatically and they will be much more realistic. And remember, even all of the supposedly beautiful people we envy struggle just as much to reassure themselves.

The Truth Hurts

The autopsy of Terri Schiavo was released today. I like the way Sufficient Scruples sums it up:

In short, the position of Michael Schiavo in this long sad mess, endorsed by every responsible commentator at the time, has been as fully vindicated as is scientifically possible - while the position of the Schindler family and Michael Schiavo’s many critics has found absolutely no support, as far as we can tell from the preliminary reports, and has in significant aspects been conclusively disproven.

Statistically stupid

The Heritage Foundation "reanalyzed" data from a previous study that shows equal STD rates among virginity pledgers and non-pledgers. Ah, but be warned, los punditos say:

The Heritage studies have not been submitted to a peer-reviewed journal for evaluation and publication, but several independent experts who have seen the studies are reportedly concerned that the foundation's statistical methodology was "flawed" and the evidence "lacking" to back up their conclusions...

Astonishingly, the doctors who conducted the studies used an alpha-level of .10 to establish statistical significance. I was taught in graduate school that anything higher than .05 is unacceptable...

As was I.

Granny Was a Monkey

In tonight's exciting episode of What's the Big IDea? we have a 'Fair and Balanced' follow up to a previous article.

Of course, stupid designs in nature far outnumber the miraculously intelligent ones, starting with the human appendix and tailbone, ranging across non-functional foot bones in whales, to joke animals like the dodo and the platypus, to molecular features like "junk DNA" and vitamin-C processing genes that are broken *in the very same way* in humans, apes and monkeys. If there was a creator, he/she/it sure was a bungler! - George

The Register features readers' letters both for and against evolution and cites a study that debunks the ridiculous 'eyeball is irreducibly complex' argument.

New template part II

It seems that the swank new template doesn't agree with some versions of Internet Explorer...I'll work on it this evening.

In the meantime, you can use Firefox or Netscape to behold all of its magnanimous glory.

Wait a minute...

What was all that about men and women equally likely to commit domestic violence?

News Flash:

Women are 84 percent of spouse abuse victims, and 86 percent of victims of abuse at the hands of a boyfriend or girlfriend.

Males are 83 percent of spouse murderers, and 75 percent of murderers who kill a boyfriend or girlfriend.

Nearly three in four family violence victims are female (73 percent).

Seventy-six percent of family violence perpetrators are male.

hmmmm....where are they getting their stats?

via feministing

Warning: product may contain 'Gayness'

Equating homosexuality to a pack of smokes:

The leader of a conservative Christian lobby group appears to suggest that gays should be required to wear warning labels, although he denies that was his intention.

"We put warning labels on cigarette packs because we know that smoking takes one to two years off the average life span, yet we 'celebrate' a lifestyle that we know spreads every kind of sexually transmitted disease and takes at least 20 years off the average life span according to the 2005 issue of the revered scientific journal Psychological Reports," Rev. Bill Banuchi, executive director of the New York Christian Coalition told the Mid Hudson News.

Insult to injury

Not only did they fly in from all across the country to blaspheme the good name of Evolution, but now they want to be reimbursed by the very people they are out to undermine. Shouldn't the Intelligent Design community be footing the bill?

Well said

The Register:

Of course, writing off evolution as a 'mere theory' demonstrates a very clear misunderstanding of the meaning of the word "theory" in science. In everyday language, theory is synonymous with conjecture. Not so in science, where is has a very specific meaning: a theory is an explanation of a set of events, based on proven, or at least well-tested hypotheses. It will also have been verified many times by unconnected research groups.

God hates science

Pioneer Press (reg. required):

"They've been taught that evolution is another way of saying atheism, and they just shut it out," said Wilcox, author of "God and Evolution: A Faith-Based Understanding." "They say, 'Why do I have to learn this stuff — don't you know that God hates science?' "

"God doesn't hate science — he invented it. We try to get them to see that evolution happened, and it's not so scary … that evolution is the way God did it."

Science is not atheism; science is non-theism. It is theistically neutral. We scientists are not advocating the teaching of evolution in congregational discourse every Sabbath. Will ID Creationists not pay the same courtesy and leave religion out of science classrooms? Many religious individuals have no trouble reconciling faith and science. Those who can't seem to accomplish this task should consider it a personal and private matter.

"I think there is a God, and he is the creator of the universe," said Miller, who is Catholic. "But the God of the intelligent-design movement is way too small. In their view, he designed everything in the world and yet he repeatedly intervenes and violates the laws of his own creation.

"Their God is like a kid who is not a very good mechanic and has to keep lifting the hood and tinkering with the engine."