obfuscated.org

Notorious ex-lawmaker Tom DeLay sees a War on Christianity in our fair nation.

“But in a sense, there always has been and always will be,” he said. “Our faith has always been in direct conflict with the values of the world. We are, after all, a society that provides abortion on demand, has killed millions of innocent children, degrades the institution of marriage and all but treats Christianity like some second-rate superstition.”

I think Scalzi’s counterpoint to this nonsense is rather on point:

There is no war on Christianity, save, perhaps, the one being perpetrated by “Christians” who by their deeds show themselves to be either ignorant of or manifestly opposed to the ideals espoused by Jesus, against the Christians who are somehow under the impression that what Jesus was really about was charity, compassion, justice and love; you know, all that stuff you’ll find in that New Testament thingy you hear so much about. The idea that Tom DeLay, whose track record on the Hill is appallingly unChristly, is somehow a model spokesman for Christian values of any sort is one that is best met with a giggle and a remembrance of Matthew 7: 21-23. For Mr. DeLay in particular, remembrance of Matthew 6:19-24 is also fervently advised.

You’d think the fun would stop there, but not so much. Apparently DeLay was at a conference geared towards cramming his faith as far up government’s behind as humanly possible when he announced his little war.

The conference was convened by Vision America, a group founded by the Rev. Rick Scarborough to mobilize “patriot pastors” of all denominations to promote Christian involvement in government.

I don’t know about you, but this makes me more than a little uncomfortable. Religion and the state aren’t supposed to interfere with each other. I don’t have a problem with people trying to change government to do what they think is right, but going in with the expressed purpose of pushing one religions’ values is awfully close to simply pushing a religion, which is bad for obvious reasons. (See, for example, Afghanistan.)

Go in to government saying that you’re against killing and I won’t disagree with you. Say you’re against stealing or for charitable works and nobody will argue. These are all traditionally “Christian” values.

Say, on the other hand, that you’re in it to “promote Christian values” and I have no way of knowing if you’re in the pro-charity, justice / anti-killing, stealing, etc. crowd or if you’re one of those people who thinks the greatest evils in the world are Janet Jackson’s nipple, monogamous homosexuals and people who won’t let you post your religions artifacts in the courthouse. We’ve seen in other parts of the world that ruling by scripture doesn’t work out, and these folks seem to want to do it. It’s hard to get behind the potential for so much Taliban-flavored bad no matter how well-intentioned it is.

Now, I hate to pile on, but there’s more. DeLay is on a mission from God!

Scarborough, the former pastor of the First Baptist Church in Pearland, is a long-time DeLay ally.

“This is a man, I believe, God has appointed … to represent righteousness in government,” Scarborough told the audience, which included Eagle Forum Founder Phyllis Schlafly, former ambassador Alan Keyes, and Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan.

Well, at least we know that these folks are on an even keel when they make these claims. They’re just the sort of people I want running my government. Yes sir, religion + government is just like Mr. Pibb + Red Vines.

Via Coop, it’s the 1956 GMC Firebird II. It’d be so rad if cars today — i.e., The Future — had tail fins and some sort of rocket booster looking things on the back.

From the conceptcarz.com writeup:

The Firebird II, which was a highlight of General Motor’s 1956 Motorama, is the family firebird. A four-seater with a titanium body, the Firebird II features a 200-horsepower Whirlfire GT-304 gas turbine engine, all-power accessories and a fully integrated air conditioning system, similar to current systems found in cars today. The Firebird II was GM’s attempt to make a luxury turbine powered vehicle with acceptable performance and fuel economy.

I think Coop sums things up pretty well:

I’m still disappointed that we didn’t get the chrome-plated, tailfin-encrusted future we were promised by the hyper-optimistic postwar propaganda of the American military-industrial-consumer complex.

Word.

I have been accused in the past of being overly conservative when it comes to the evolution of language. To dispell this myth, I present an initial draft of my all-encompassing rule regarding the evolution of language, and a fine source of news on the continuing march forward of the English language.

First things first: It’s perfectly fine to create new words or extend the use of existing words, but not if you’re an MBA All Star. Now, MBA All Stars. You know who you are. You’re young. You went to B-school. You wear khakis and a blue Oxford shirt every day of your life. You aspire to one day drive a BMW. Most damning of all: you use the word “incentivize” without a hint of irony.

Yes, these are the people who brought us the notion that you can plop “ize” on the end of any word and make a verb of it. This is wrong. It’s very, very wrong. For this, the entire categorization of people has lost their neologism privileges for the rest of time. You heard it here first.

Now, for continuing trends in word and phrase creation, I point to Neologasm. On this site you can find exciting new words like antfucker:

antfucker

n. (Dutch miereneuker, translation into English; via Jeremy Keith)

1. Nitpicker.

Now that is a useful new word. I encourage you to visit Neologasm and learn, for it is indeed good.

And I swear that if any of you antfuckerize this post and go on about “but they have a listing for incentivize over on Neologasm,” HEADS WILL BE FLOWN.

I think this is best presented without commentary: CNN asks the pressing question “Who would you rather have overseeing operations at U.S. ports? Arab-based ports company or U.S.-based mafia?“

If you’re interested in science, it’s hard to find more authoratative sources than Science and Nature. Both provide rigorously peer-reviewed research, so you don’t have to worry so much about the speculation and science ficiton creeping in to the letters and journals they publish.

Now, I mention this today because it’s just now came to my attention that HOLY CRAP NATURE HAS A TON OF RSS FEEDS AVAILABLE. I’m not 100% sure what I’m going to do with all of those feeds. What’s worse is that I don’t even have an excuse for not importing them, because they offer a handy OPML file listing each and every one of them.

So there you go: Today’s science news PSA. Have a nice day.

The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster is available tomorrow in stores.

Within these pages, Bobby Henderson outlines the true facts — dispelling such malicious myths as evolution (“only a theory”), science (“only a lot of theories”), and whether we’re really descended from apes (fact: Humans share 95 percent of their DNA with chimpanzees, but they share 99.9 percent with pirates!)

Stick that in your school board and smoke it!

Worldmapper offers chart upon chart upon chart of world statistics by country. Population over time, cereal exports, rail transport, tourism reciepts — you name it, they’ve got it.

I’d really like to see the tourism maps redrawn with the EU as one nation. Also, mouseover labels would be handy, especially for when rarely-mentioned nations get blown up to double the size of anything else on the map. (See Japan on the Fish Imports map for example.)

You knew it would happen. 37signals responded to Caterina Fake’s critique of present day entramanures. Per-usual, it’s seemingly on the money, but with that special 37s brand of kool-aid.

You don’t need a swarm of worker bees to take off. Of course its hard to find 10 or 20 great people by tomorrow, but you don’t have to. We’re entering a golden age of small teams capable of doing big things. Just get a band of three together and you’re good to go for v1. Using modern tools and simply doing less software means that having more people is likely to slow you down rather than speed you up.

Flickr’s Carerina Fake thinks it’s a bad time to start a company.

Your competition just got funded too. You’ve got $5 million in the bank, and they do too. Their VCs want them to succeed every bit as much as your VCs want you to succeed. This gets you into a horse race, which no one wants: it’s exhausting and expensive.

It goes on and on like that, likening the bubble’s excess executives to today’s entramanures — the Chief Party Officers, if you will. Chris’ greater fool theory — there’s easy money to be had, so grab at it — suggests that Caterina is all the way missing the boat here.

All’s I know is this: three cheers for anything that makes developers more expensive. The Bubble turned out to be so much horse puckey, but it kept me in single malt and broadband while it was going.

“I hear you have a killer break room up on nine.”

For the record, it’s more bitchin’ than it is killer.