Never Enough Creationist Baiting Department

I no longer buy into the notion that the Religious Right has faith. They have no faith in the human mind or its ability to create systems for learning truth without relying on faith. They have no faith in the vastness and antiquity of the cosmos. They have no faith in the miracle of creation and evolution, that natural processes could create over billions of years what they say God did in six days. They do not believe that their own God could've created a universe that could take care of itself, rather than require constant planning to ensure that He had lots of worshippers. They demean eternity, and they demean God. If that makes me a deist, so be it, but don't dare call me the infidel here.

(Actually, I'm a SubGenius, damn it, but I do have a deistic, agnostic/gnostic, scientific mystic bent to my favorite belief system. It makes for interesting writings on religion and science both.)

Never Enough Blog Template Revamping Department

Hope you like the more recent changes to the blog. You'll notice that the long, long list of Archives is gone--replaced with a pull-down menu right under the Recent Posts. I've also tried re-tweaking the webring section near the bottom, but will have to experiment more to get it just right--or else get rid of 'em all. Leave a comment abou the change if you care.

Never Enough Iraq Grousing Department

So Bush still refuses to give a deadline on leaving Iraq, despite the
fact that a solid, increasing, pissed majority of Americans think the
war was a huge blunder committed by a Commander In Chief who couldn't
wipe his own ass without giving himself a shit mustache. And the GOP
still refuses to send their own to fight this war, despite their
jingoistic cries of Supporting Our Troops in the War On Terror.
Meanwhile, general recruitment continues to sag, even as violence
escalates in Iraq, and grieving mothers demanding to know why their
children died in a nonsensical war are defamed by the suddenly
not-so-Great Wurlitzer of right-wing punditry. Even if we do pull out
of Iraq we've already done great damage to the reputation of the US
while providing new rationales for future terrorist activity and
condemning the new Iraq to civil war for years to come.

Will the last American soldier to die in Iraq do me a favor, and
scream "Vive le France" as he perishes? It's about the only thing that
could make this whole clusterfuck of a war even more surreally bad.

Never Enough Intelligent Design Department

OPEN LETTER TO KANSAS SCHOOL BOARD:

"I think we can all look forward to the time when these three theories are given equal time in our science classrooms across the country, and eventually the world; One third time for Intelligent Design, one third time for Flying Spaghetti Monsterism, and one third time for logical conjecture based on overwhelming observable evidence."
link...

tags: [evolution] [intelligent] [design] [humor] [flying] [spaghetti] [monster] [global] [warming] [pirates]

posted via Wists: permamark

Never Enough Financial Perspective Department

Even with my pay cut nearly in half:

I'm the 608,124,192 richest person on earth! Discover how rich you are! >>

Never Enough Sincere Gratitude Department

Speaking as a queer, transgendered SubGenius minister with admittedly skewed ideas and a filthy mouth, I would like to take the opportunity to thank the right-wing punditry, the Bush Administration, and the Republican Party leadership for becoming so shrill and unhinged that even I seem reasonable to most folks. While I have no desire to be "normal" per se, it's a lot easier to pass as "normal" in comparison to those who prefer to manufacture reality rather than deal with reality. You have guaranteed that America will increasingly depend on the crude oil of other countries, and will be forced to implement their policies over our own self-interest. You have disregarded sanity in favor of ideological rigidity, and have sacrificed your own independence of conscience in the name of political power. You have defamed the term "conservative" and turned it into a lie; you have transformed the word "liberal" into a cludgel. You have insulted the grieving and refused to support your words with actions.

You have reached the point where you cannot climb out of the hole you insist on digging for us all. You have undermined your own efforts to rule. You shall suffer the consequences, without a single vengeful hand, save your own. You've fucked up.

Never Enough Science TV Department

If you have yet to see it, I strongly urge you to check out The Science Channel's six-part miniseries, Miracle Planet. I realize that documentaries is not everyone's cup of tea, but the information in here is very cutting-edge. I'm utterly amazed at how much more we've learned since my high-school years regarding how Earth was formed and how life came to be. It also drives home the point that life is a lot more durable than we believe, that it has survived catastrophe almost beyond imagining. (The graphics are a bit overdone--in one scene, you can clearly see the Milky Way behind the Earth, while in reality it would be lost in the glare of reflected sunlight off the surface of our planet. But I quibble.)

It got me thinking....

Junk DNA is genetic material which, to the best of our knowledge, serves no immediate function. Some of it is ancient hangovers--legacies from long-extinct ancestors currently suppressed. Some of it appears to be gibberish.

What if junk DNA was intended to be used as a buffer against mutation? I'm not talking about bad sci-fi mutations, like the Mutants from This Planet Earth; nor am I talking about the "Superior Mutant" used by my fellow SubGenii. Mutations in DNA can be fatal if they change the way our bodies produce vital proteins. So if you provide a lot of "junk" in the DNA sequence, your chances of mutations in vital code are greatly diminished.

Surely I wasn't the first to come up with it. Surely not.

I wasn't.

If only I could convince the anti-science faction to take this sort of thing seriously--and, simultaneously, not use life's hardiness as proof that we can safely trash the planet. Life may continue, but we may wipe out almost all life we know in the process. No, thank you.

Never Enough Feedburning Department

If you were subscribed to the Atom feed, try using the Feedburner link instead--you'll like it.

Never Enough Ugly Blog Feeds Department

Many pardons for the state of the Atom feed. Browser woes mixed with my own sadomasochistic browsing methods led to posting issues I've since fixed.

Never Enough Natural Gender Deconstruction Department

The Missing Vagina Monologue--part of the Our Bodies Ourselves website--approaches the transgender/intersexed question from a different angle: What if you were a woman, such as author Esther Morris, born without a vagina? For too many people, their concerns focus around whether this woman can be penetrated, not whether she cares. Questions about gender identity may fill her mind, and she may experience terrible cramping, but none of that seems to matter as long as she can have so-called "normal" sexual relations. (Never mind decades of sex research indicating that "normal" isn't quite as straight-forward as the missionary position with the lights off.)

In one sense, this disorder--Mayer-Rokitansky-Kuster-Hauser Syndrome, or MRKH--has parallels with transsexuality, in that women with gender issues are seeking surgery to "correct" their genitalia. In another sense, women with MRKH are 180 degress from transsexual women; while transsexuals often know from an early age that their gender differs from their body, MRKH women are usually unaware of any incongruity until puberty. In some ways, women with MRKH have similarities closer to being intersexed, whether via chromosonal, gonadal, or hormonal means. Any changes in their gender perception come later, when puberty goes differently than expected. Psychological changes follow the physical. In contrast, for transsexuals, physical changes follow the mental. In both cases, however, we find ourselves wrestling with society's expectations of sex, gender, and sexuality.

It's promising that Our Bodies Ourselves now includes a chapter on gender identity and sexuality, but thanks to the imposition of gender based on a crude check of a baby's crotch at birth, it often feels more like damage control instead of progress.