Observations and inanities by a second-shift assistant supervisor in the Puppy-Grinding division of the Evil Atheist Conspiracy® (our motto: "Sure it's cruel, but think of the jobs!"), your host, Brent Rasmussen.
Busted
It is with great alarm that I announce that Brent and I, no doubt aided by the evil invertebrate-testicle eating Dr. PZ Myers and the equally vicious rib-munching Ed "The Baby-back Bone Crusher" Brayton, have been unconsciously co-opted 'lo these many years by the dastardly astrologers:
Link--I don’t recall reading PZ Myers, DarkSyde, Ed Brayton, or Brent Rasmussen denouncing astrologists. Let me be clear. I seriously doubt that Markos sent out a “dummy up on the astrology-bashing” to his apparatchiks. Almost certainly the Left’s “Defenders of Science” simply haven’t perceived astrology as a threat. Okay, let me put it on your radar screen. An advisor to a serious Democratic presidential candidate is an astrologer, as well as an admitted stock swindler.
I have been foolish to give astrologers any slack, I was wrong to give them a 'pass.' But they're just so dang powerful! How could I resist, but resist I must, the fate of the entire planet could rest on my will power. And now, the possibilities of my shortsightedness stand over this nation like Orion straddling the Milky Way ...
If true, imagine the consequences: A close confidante of what could be the next President of the United States might be an advocate of a silly, primitive superstition deriving from Ancient Near East mysticism! What if the President himself starts to buy into the whole idea of magic, invisible sky wizards? Egad!
What if this individual, or any other, suddenly began rejecting common sense and making life and death decisions based on what a magical voice in his head was saying? Why anything could happen, he might invade a country on false premises and cause no end of death and destruction merely because of a mental disorder or a fondness for supernatural explanations! Worse, this odd predilection could end up affecting all sorts of public policy for the poor victims, from birth control to diplomatic relations.
Oh I was wrong, so wrong to never consider the immense repercussions. And I thank the Commissar for waking me up to the tremendous danger. I know he will join me in rejecting any advisor, any political candidate, or God forbid, any President, who professes a belief in childish fairy tales passed down for millennia by oral tradition from bronze age, goat herding savages to modern day mystics.
Bookmark/Search this post with:
Other things to denounce.
I think Mr. Comm has a good point.
I think the left needs to get out there and denounce any number of things. We should probably denounce kicking puppies. Maybe we should denounce going back to work before washing your hands. And I've always hated that Luminiferous aether idea.
Then we should carefully read his blog to see when and where he demands we jump. All of that seems quite reasonable. I mean he is *really* important. And really understands those of us who work for "the left".
Snark notwithstanding...
...you have a legitimate point about the Commissar's view of the left. A while ago, he wrote a dystopian short story in which Kos was the dictator of the US, PZ ran the science policy, Amanda Marcotte the retroactive abortion center, etc. In reality Amanda is one of Kos's biggest liberal detractors, but few if any people not well-versed in internal left-wing blogospheric politics will know it. Similarly I have no idea if there's a division on the right similar to the left's division between liberals and Democrats, which is why I tend to leave the blogosphere out of my dystopian scenarios.
Shit
if PZ was up for Science Czar, I'd vote for him as fast as I could punch the ticket.
Do you even vote for Science Czars?
I hope not, given that half of Americans don't believe in evolution.
The
WH appoints a Sec of Science. Bush's SecSci is a guy named John Marburger III. He's actually not a bad choice, especially compared to other appointments Bush has made. Marburger is on record rejecting intelligent design for example. I don't know how much juice he has within the admin, he has to play suck up to Dubya and Cheney, and it's not considered a major post by BushCo. But it could have been a lot worse.
I also don't go out of my way to offend anyone at Dkos
Agreed.
That was the point of my post.
Thank you.
It's a pretty trivial point, then
There's a name in Net English for people who go out of their way to offend: trolls. Darksyde doesn't go out of his way to offend the Kossacks. He didn't go out of his way to offend the Redstaters back in the day, either, as far as I remember.
Obviously, sometimes not trying to offend doesn't work out very well; I can tell you of more than one radical I've pissed off not particularly intentionally (and of a few people I thought I'd piss off but didn't). But that's just because of conflict of interest, and when you're a single-issue science blogger, you're not going to run into too many of them with Daily Kos.
Comm
when I say I'm an atheist and a skeptic, that includes astrology. When I post that I don't buy magic or mysticism, that includes astrology. There's a whole slew of specific religions or whacky belief systems I haven't gotten around to mentioning specifically on Dkos and I may never get around to them--good grief there's thousands of them. The members elected me to write/rant/scream about science and politics, so that's what I do. Astrology, scientology, Heaven's Gate, etc., ad nauseum, that stuff just doesn't come up much in that context. I also don't go out of my way to offend anyone at Dkos, be they Christians or Wiccans because--Get this through your head--UTI is a skeptic and atheist blog, Dkos is not.
Dodging
Don't post about petty spat and meta-blog shit.
Post about astrology.
You dont even have to mention Jerome by name.
I'm
not likely to post a petty spat on the fp of Dkos and we've had enough of that meta-blog shit over at DK this past week to last me a year. But I will be doing an interview with Brent on the fp of Kos in the near future, we talked about it this last week--it had nothing to do with this--and I will ask him about atheism and skepticism and politics, the religious right, the whole deal.
To DS
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Pure snark. You're entitled, I suppose.
Post the guts of what Rasmussen said on dKos. Or something similar. You're independent of Markos and all that, right?
Or read Myers' post. He (of course) took his shots at me, but eventually said the right thing.