I don’t know which is more questionably ingenious…
“Olympic Figure Farting” by Ghost+Cow Films:
(h/t to Joe Veix at Death and Taxes for both videos.)
In Case You Thought the Winter Olympics Weren’t Quite Silly Enough
Reply
Here’s Something for Your Valentine’s Day Angst, with Fluffy Bunnies
I’ve posted this video before, but I thought I’d offer it again for anyone experiencing any anxiety or angst about Valentine’s Day.
My favorite part comes right after the bridge:
Our lives have to die
Of that there’s no help
My favourite way to end them
Is the orb-weaver spider’s whose pedipalp
Enters the female pudendum.Then dies on the spot
His corpse there still stuck,
Left for his rivals to curse at.
He would rather die than not get to f^ck
Personally I reckon it’s worth it.
That’s, uh, bleak.
Now that we have the angst out of the way, I recommend following The Oatmeal’s advice:
In that spirit, here’s a good sexy rumpus song. Sort of.
In case you’re wondering, the dwarf mime is not Peter Dinklage.
This Week in WTF, February 14, 2014
– Cannot unsee: W. T. F. Is. This. Thing????!????
I didn’t really want to, but I did some Googling, and found that this is the “Face Bank – Coin Eating Savings Bank,” available for $19.72.
The face bank is a uniquely designed piggy bank that literally eats your money! It’s fun for kids because the mouth moves as you put your hand close to it. It’s the savings bank that will make them want to save. They’ll be running around the house searching for coins to ‘Feed’ their face bank.
Something that moves its mouth as your hand gets closer is this company’s idea of fun??? I’m no expert on kids, but it seems just as likely that they’ll be running around the house screaming.
– Poe’s Law gets a new corollary: If you start an auction on eBay as a joke, someone somewhere will take it seriously, no matter how patently absurd it is: Continue reading
Many Ways to Answer Creationists’ Questions
![By Pelf at en.wikipedia [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons](http://crypticphilosopher.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/475px-Turtles_all_the_way_down-237x300.png "By Pelf at en.wikipedia [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons")
Yup. All the way down.
An interesting thing happened after the debate, though. A BuzzFeed staffer asked creationists in the audience to write down questions, comments, etc., which he published as a listicle entitled “22 Messages From Creationists To People Who Believe In Evolution.”
I admit that the questions/comments mostly just annoyed me, because it’s the same thing again and again, e.g. “Are you scared of a Divine Creator?” Luckily, it’s not even remotely up to me to respond to these questions. The responses people have written have ranged from the derisive to the snarky to the earnestly helpful. I’ll start with that last category.
Phil Plait, of Bad Astronomy fame, took the time to answer all 22 questions on Slate, treating the questions, and the questioners, with respect and dignity: Continue reading
What Really Happened on Easter Island, Maybe
![Aurbina (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons](http://crypticphilosopher.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/450px-Moai_Rano_raraku-225x300.jpg "Aurbina (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons")
An article by Robert Krulwich at NPR offers a relatively new theory on what happened to the Easter Islanders, who allegedly turned an isolated, tree-covered Pacific island into a comparatively desolate wasteland covered in statues. In my opinion, the competing theories of what happened all seem lacking in something. I’ve read that the Easter Islanders (or Rapa Nui) cut down all the trees in order to move the moai statues, or that they nearly drove themselves into extinction through warfare. Thanks to Google, I now know that there is also an alien “theory” (scare quotes intentional), although I don’t know why I’m surprised.
The new theory, from University of Hawaii anthropologists Terry Hunt and Carl Lipo, might make quite a bit more sense, although it is perhaps more discomfiting than the other theories. I won’t spoil it for you, because the article is worth a read and has interesting illustrations. In short, though, they believe that Easter Island was a success, not a failure—meaning that the bedraggled condition in which Europeans found them was the result of their survival. But it’s only one particular view of “success.” As Krulwich puts it:
Humans are a very adaptable species. We’ve seen people grow used to slums, adjust to concentration camps, learn to live with what fate hands them. If our future is to continuously degrade our planet, lose plant after plant, animal after animal, forgetting what we once enjoyed, adjusting to lesser circumstances, never shouting, “That’s It!” — always making do, I wouldn’t call that “success.”
Anyway, go read it.
Photo credit: Aurbina (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.
To Each Their Own, I Suppose
Some conservatives appear to have views on sex that are almost impossible to satirize (h/t Jason):
The original post on the Facebook page Hot Liberals includes a link to the source, a YouTube video I’d rather not watch.
The most common response to this guy’s remarks seem to be along the lines of “He must not be doing it right,” or, perhaps more crudely, “He just needs good BJ.” For my part, I don’t care one tiny bit what this guy personally thinks about sex. I only care that he’s trying to push one narrow view of sex onto everybody.
If a person doesn’t want to have sex except to procreate, that’s their thing, and no one except maybe their partner has any say in the decision. If someone doesn’t want to have sex at all, same deal. Being positive about sex does not mean making it mandatory in some way. Sex is awesome and joyful and magical and painful and terrifying and so on and so forth, and we still can’t seem to bring it up without making snickering quips about it.
To Jerome Corsi, I therefore say this: If this works for you, more power to you, but you don’t speak for everybody, and certainly not me.
To everyone else, please lay off the “he just needs to get laid” jokes. For one thing, they’re not helping. For another, by making jokes like that, you’re missing the opportunity to mine the gold that is Monty Python:
Texas Can’t Get Too Smug Over Russia
In the midst of everyone’s rush to give Putin’s Russia (much deserved) grief over the country’s law banning “homosexual propaganda” or whatever, the Washington Post published an article identifying eight U.S. states with laws that, while nowhere near the Russian law in letter, might seem close to it in spirit. The U.S. state laws, commonly known as “no promo homo” laws, presumably by people who never expect to have to say that out loud, apply specifically to public education regarding teh gayz. Unlike Russia’s law, they do not include provisions for incarceration and whatnot.
The Texas statute is worth examining, provided that any such examination is followed by peals of derisive laughter and ruthless mockery at our backwards legislators. Texas Health & Safety Code § 163.002(8) provides as follows:
Course materials and instruction relating to sexual education or sexually transmitted diseases should include…emphasis, provided in a factual manner and from a public health perspective, that homosexuality is not a lifestyle acceptable to the general public and that homosexual conduct is a criminal offense under Section 21.06, Penal Code.
I see four glaring problems here:
- “Emphasis, provided in a factual manner.” The absurdity of this provision should become clear once it is demonstrated that nothing following it in the statute is in any way factual.
- “From a public health perspective.” Similarly, this really does not apply to either of the assertions that follow.
- “Homosexuality is not a lifestyle acceptable to the general public.” This might have been sort of true in 1991, when the Legislature passed this particular statute, but times have undoubtedly changed and continue to change, and it was never really the public’s business anyway. What happened to liberty, Texas Legislature? I guess that only applies to things you don’t personally find icky, right?
- “Homosexual conduct is a criminal offense under Section 21.06, Penal Code.” This was certainly true in 1991, but it hasn’t been true since 2003, when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down that specific statute in Lawrence v. Texas. The fact that the Legislature hasn’t bothered to take it off the books in the subsequent decade is pretty embarrassing. Not as embarrassing, of course, as the law mandating that schools continue to teach kids that a statute ten years in its constitutional grave still has legal force.
EDIT (02/13/2014): Edited to correct a spelling error – “times have undoubtedly change” should say “times have undoubtedly changed.”
Not cool, Onion
Alabama’s Bold Legal Stand
[Trigger warning: Well, sort of. I shall allude to sexual assault and animal abuse in this post, but will also generally discuss things that some people might find inappropriate in polite company.]
Whatever feelings you have about this picture, please keep them to yourself.
Alabama’s state senate took a bold stand against bestiality last month, passing a bill that would make it illegal.
Wait, it wasn’t already illegal?
Nope. And it’s not in Texas, either—at least not expressly so.
Only 14 U.S. states and the District of Columbia have statutes specifically prohibiting sexual contact with animals. I’m of two minds on this, really. On the one hand, I am all for protecting animals, who, as far as any of us know, cannot consent to sexual activity with a human. On the other hand, do we actually need another law?
One state where it is expressly illegal is Louisiana, where a man was arrested last summer for alleged sex with livestock. He has been charged with four counts of “crime against nature.” I do not like the sound of that statute. Continue reading
Monday Morning Cute: Weirdos of the Deep
They say everything is cute as a baby. Does that apply to cuttlefish?
Yeah, I guess it does.
Here’s an adult cuttlefish, looking cute in a Cthulhu-esque sort of way: Continue reading