Kentucky, Seriously, WTF?

Okay, here is the story.

The 2006 law organizing the state Office of Homeland Security lists its initial duty as "stressing the dependence on Almighty God as being vital to the security of the Commonwealth."

This is the kind of nonsense that makes me shake my head. I firmly believe everyone should have every freedom to believe anything they damn well please. I'm only ever interested in stopping someone from doing things, not stopping them from believing things so I have no problem with people believing that their deity is going to help protect them. I think they're completely full of crap but it doesn't hurt anything so it's no nevermind to me.

But why the hell write it into the law?

It doesn't get the job done. The point of the bill is public safety. Public safety is more cops, better equipment, maybe more preparedness of medical facilities, stockpiling treatments for anthrax or whatever. Why the hell stick god in the middle?

Obviously, a step further into it is that people actually friggin' believe that it does help but a step further one has to ask…if your god is interested in keeping you safe what difference does having your homeland security department giving him a blowjob have to do with it?

Indian Girl Kills Herself For No Reason

I'm resurrecting this bad boy with this horrific story out of India.

Everyone who matters has heard of the Large Hadron Collider and the fears some had that it would create strangelets and or microscopic black holes that would potentially destroy the world. Apparently the media in India have played up the doomsday scenarios and a 16 year old girl named Chayya got scared, didn't want to face the end of the world, and killed herself by drinking pesticide.

There is so much wrong with this story.

The right to freely communicate ideas is one that I hold damn near sacred but having a right to say anything you damn well please doesn't mean you should. With great power comes great responsibility--I learned that from Batman--and mass media outlets have great power. I realize that they are out to make a profit and there is nothing wrong with that but profiting from baseless fearmongering is despiccable.

When the girl was worried he father says he tried to distract her and tell her she shouldn't worry about such things. Bullshit, if you think the world is getting fucked up you should worry about it. What the father should have done is some research. Get on the goddamn internet and read about what the LHC is and what it does and what the theory about strangelets is and explain to your daughter what it is and what it does and that the fears are completely groundless.

I am just disgusted that the exploration of the universe gets turned into an agent of fear that kills people.

Obama wins Democratic Nomination

I love my country.

Understand me. I am not talking about flag waving pseudo political bullshit where I wrap myself in a flag and march down Main Street. I'm talking about what really is unique about America. We, as Americans, formed a government out of whole cloth and built it on the fundamental principle that people matter.

I literally grew up with the names of the people and places on my walls. Lexington and Concord. Valley Forge. Ben Franklin. Thomas Jefferson. Crispus Attucks. George Washington. Cowpens. The Old Wagoneer, Daniel Morgan and his riflemen. Colonel John Glover and his Marbleheaders.

These are the names that come down to us through the centuries of the people who struggled to give us our freedom and the places where they fought and died, ultimately, because people matter.

I think we all know that people aren't perfect. You're not. I'm not. The people that wrote the Constitution weren't. As flawed people they put together a flawed document to help other flawed people lead a nation of flawed people. Many were left behind in that original document. Women, of course, were ignored entirely and what's worse black Americans--even though they fought and died to give us our liberty--were considered less than a person and relegated to the worst kind of human bondage. The blueprint for the nation that would serve as a beacon for liberty throughout the world was tainted with the execrable stain of slavery. It was--and is--our original sin and like Lady Macbeth we've never been able to wash the blood out.

But we have returned, time and time again to the fundamental principle that people matter.

When men starved and died at Valley Forge, they did it because people matter.

When the pioneers of American feminism met at Seneca Falls they did it because people matter.

When the best young men of a generation gave the last full measure of devotion on Little Round Top, at Pittsburg Landing, and in that last terrible charge at Cold Harbor, they did it because people matter.

When workers rallied in Haymarket Square on the First of May they did it because people matter.

When nine black students enrolled in Little Rock Central High, they did it because people matter.

When the National Guard escorted those students past the howling mob they did it because people matter.

Tonight, we take a big step. Barack Obama has clinched the Democratic Party's nomination for the Presidency. A black man stands closer to the Presidency than any has ever stood before.

Obama will accept the nomination on the 25th of August, forty-five years to the day since Martin Luther King stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and told the world about his dream of an America free from prejudice.

Tonight, we're a little bit closer to realizing that dream.

Tonight should send a message to every young black man and woman in America. You matter. When you're told that you can accomplish anything you can believe it.

First, My Expelledly Duties

Expelled

Stupid movie, stupid people, stupid post.

One Point Twenty One Gigawatts...pikers

Some smart guys at the University of Texas have powered up a really strong laser. It's over one petawatt. I never heard of a petawatt before and I'm guessing neither have you. Lets put this in perspective. If 1.21 gigawatts is enough to send a Delorean through time, a petawatt can do it 826,446 times.

The pulse only lasts a tenth of a trillionth of a second but for that brief moment in time, it's the brightest light in the universe, brighter even than a gamma ray burst.

That's just sick.

Sox Win!

Jehosephat!

Human sex and marriage with robots by 2050.

As is perhaps unsurprising, Isaac Asimov anticipated this in Robots of Dawn.