Every thinking person not blinded by religious dogma already knows that the Christian “Ten Commandments” are not the foundation of modern Western civilization. Not to mention that there are more than “ten” commandments documented in the Jewish and Christian holy books. Yet I can’t help but link to this marvelous deconstruction of that absurd claim by Aron Ra in response to an absurd video by Dennis Prager:

[https://www.youtube.com/embed/8u3z69YpLx0?feature=oembed]

_Update 2015-01-28: Watch the second half of this video by the British Humanist Association wherein David Silverman makes the same point I do below. _ _Update 2015-01-16: Please watch this YouTube video by Mr. Deity for why Pope Francis is wrong to condone violence against those who criticize religious beliefs. _ _Update 2015-01-11: Please see this article by Jerry Coyne and Matthew Cobb for more about Charlie Hebdo’s equal opportunity lampooning.

Senator Joe Manchin (D) recently made this stunningly stupid remark: That’s just not the way you do legislation, it’s not the way a democracy works, and it’s not the way the … three branches of government should work. That was in response to President Obama declaring that he would veto the Keystone XL Pipeline legislation Sen. Manchin authored. If Sen. Manchin were a Republican such a stupid comment would barely deserve a comment.

Roughly two decades ago I spent 19 months working in the Asia-Pacific region. I literally slept in a hotel somewhere in the AP region every night for 19 months. I frequently could not believe how thin-skinned the China, Singapore, etc. governments were in response to commentary critical of their behavior. So I was not in the least bit surprised when North Korea went figuratively nuclear over the movie “The Interview“. Yet I agree with Ben Railton in his article at Talking Points Memo that America is no better in that regard.

I’m almost salivating over the prospect of Louie Gohmert becoming the head of the GOP congressional majority (i.e., “Speaker of the House”). Charles P. Pierce brought this possibility to my attention. Google gohmert idiot for a sense of why this would be both horrifying and strangely appealing. It seems likely that the demise of the right-wing, fundagelical, Republican party would be facilitated by Gohmert leading the GOP congressional party. The question is whether our nation can survive the short-term damage in order to take advantage of the long-term gains.

This video of Richard Dawkins teaching evolution to teenagers is absolutely marvelous. I love how he solicits a series of question from the students at various points of his talk then uses those questions to create a dialog relevant to the students. The title of this post is a quote from approximately 35 minutes into the video in response to a student asking if Charles Darwin’s book “The Evolution of the Species” isn’t the same as any other religious holy book.

A lot of my web server blacklist rules are due to requests for URIs (i.e., paths) which don’t exist on my web server. For example, /tmUnblock.cgi and therefore resulted in a HTTP 404 status. Almost always these represent attempts by malware to exploit known vulnerabilities. But once in a while I see a request for a URI that isn’t valid yet isn’t an obvious attempt to exploit my web server. The most recent is for “/notify-Flag1-User_Notified?

I don’t recall how “The Wranglerstar” YouTube videos came to my attention. I found the first two videos I watched very interesting (at least for a woodworker who thought he might become a USA forest ranger as a teenager circa 1979). And then I watched his latest video wherein he can’t resist spending the last minute proselytizing for his Christian faith. That behavior is the hallmark of a fundamentalist/evangelical xtian that is unable to separate their religious beliefs from their interactions with the secular world.

Patrick Lynch, head of the New York police department benevolent union, recently claimed New York Mayor Bill de Blasio was responsible for the Saturday deaths of two Brooklyn cops who were murdered by a lone gunman from Georgia. Note that the killer was known to be mentally unstable. Patrick Lynch is a prime example for why even white, middle-age, males like myself now view all police officers with suspicion. My brother is a police officer.

I don’t have a lot to add to this article about abortion clinic escorts. What I do know is that the protestors never, and I do mean never, consider that their might be good reasons for terminating a pregnancy. Such as a genetic defect that guarantees the fetus, assuming a live birth, will have a hideous and short life span. Furthermore, the people who protest at abortion clinics are almost guaranteed to distort reality; e.