Louis CK - If God Came Back...

After God created the heavens and the earth, he thought to himself:

Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let him have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

Traditionally, this has been understood to mean that God created everything for the benefit of humans, and at the expense of everything and everyone else. Quite convenient for us, but what if what has been translated as "dominion" (in the sense of ownership) should really have been more accurately translated as "stewardship" (in the sense of "look after this for me till I come back, and don't fuck it up in the meantime!")?

Comedian Louis CK has a few thoughts on the subject...

I bet God is wondering how successfully He managed to make us in His image :p

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Filibustering to Abort the Abortion Bill

When the Texas Senate wanted to pass a new abortion bill that would severely restrict abortion guidelines and ban abortions after 20 weeks, Senator Wendy Davis decided to literally stand up for women's right to make their own reproductive health choices by filibustering the bill for 13 hours in what has quickly become a national sensation that has galvanized liberal support from all corners of the nation.

Of course, conservatives are furious about her stance, and Governor Rick Perry (most likely afraid of losing his own office to her come next election), has decided to attack Davis on a personal level by going after her and her family. In addition, in one of his statements, Perry claimed that "in Texas, we value all life," apparently completely oblivious to the fact that on the very same day, his state had committed its 500th execution...

And just to give you a sense of the double-standards and dirty tricks some conservative opponents tend to use when approaching their core issues, here's what they tried to do with respect to the fact they saw that their bill wasn't going to pass:

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And although Davis ended up talking non-stop for about eleven hours, she can also be quite concise:

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Blowing the Whistle on Whistleblowers

Whistleblowing and information leaks have been spearheading news headlines recently. Among the highest profile cases in America we've had Bradley Manning and, most recently, Edward Snowden. Many have jumped on the character assassination wagon, calling them traitors, cowards, and a lot of other things, even calling for their heads!, all of which tends to distract from the more pressing issue: the information leaked, what it tells us about the sources that were trying to keep it secret, and the implications going forward.

Directly or indirectly, both men did work for the government, so a case could potentially be made that they betrayed our government. Though I disagree with that position, I'm willing to grant it for the sake of argument. What they did not betray, however, is their country. They saw that the government was violating human rights, the constitution and the principles upon we always claim our nation was founded, and they decided to stand up to power so that we could rescue our country back from the forces that want to corrupt it for their own purposes. These men are American and moral heroes. Few have the courage to stand up and risk so much when it would be so much easier to just stay silent and look the other way, and now, in their time of need, we ought to stand by them and support them.

Yes, the information they revealed is shocking and damaging to our reputation, no doubt, but our reputation ought to be based who we are, not on what we hide. And claims regarding national security, at least in these two cases, have been completely fabricated or at least blown way out of proportion. Unlike the previous administration, which actually outed individual secret agents and put their lives at real risk (all in the name of politics, I might add), Manning and Snowden have leaked information about highly questionable programs and practices that have been institutionalized without having gone through the proper checks and balances (you know, pesky little things like the Constitution and such)...

But of course, how you feel about and refer to these folks depends on where you're coming from, as the hilarious Samantha Bee beautifully and succinctly shows:

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And just to give you a taste of the backward twilight zone world we seem to be living in, here's an example of those in (financial) power trying to silence those who report on their corruption by trying to turn the law on them! (and apparently without noticing the irony and contradiction):

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Ok, this is going to sound horrible, so be warned, but was it deliberate that the public relations spokesperson sort of looks like a piggy, to make it look like they sympathize with the plight of animals, or was it just an unfortunate and ironic coincidence?

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Buy Starschmucks, Attack God?

Apparently evangelical Christian and right-wing conservative 'historian' David Barton and I have something in common: we kind of hate Starschmucks. Our reasons, however, differ. My antagonism is based on the condescending pretentiousness of the brand and many of its 'baristas,' and on the fact they have driven many humble mom-n-pop coffee shops into the ground. Barton's problem, however, is that StarBucks believes in marriage equality.

It's typical of right-wing conservative fundamentalist Christians like Barton to be obsessed with questions of sexuality (especially other people's) while ignoring questions of poverty, social justice and loving our neighbors. After all, given everything Jesus said about homosexuality... oh wait, he never said a word about it! He only wasted his time trying to make people kinder and more accepting and forgiving of others...

In any case, while the following analysis by The Young Turks commits a bunch of logical mistakes of its own, they do manage to drive home the point regarding the arbitrary double-standard on which most religion-based objections to homosexuality are based and what the consequences of taking their own reasoning seriously entails...

And I've never understood this, but how exactly do beards have corners???

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Stephen Colbert - The Word: Medical Leave

As political philosopher Michael Sandel has argued in the past (as in this video and in this article from The Atlantic), when we turn from a market economy to a market society, we have taken a decidedly wrong turn... Instead of valuing people as persons with dignity and worthy of respect and consideration, with goals and projects that may have meaningful, intrinsic, emotional or educational value, we start to see everything (and everyone) around us through money-colored filters, and valuing them only in terms of their economic value: how much money they can contribute to our own financial goals or how much money they're going to cost us; and in the process we rob them of their personhood and humanity.

Stephen Colbert reports on some instances of this downward trend as it applies to hospitals and health-care providers...

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And what does it say about the insane cost of our healthcare system that deporting people overseas on a private plane is cheaper than just taking care of their injuries???

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Viktor Frankl on Those Who Survived The Holocaust and Those Who Did Not

I just finished reading Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning. I'm not sure anyone can read that book without getting knots in one's throat and/or getting teary-eyed...

The book isn't so much an account of events that took place during the Holocaust, but of the individual, subjective experiences of those who were sent to concentration camps, what they had to endure, what happened to their minds and bodies, and the life-or-death dilemmas they had to confront on a daily basis. This is an account written by a particularly thoughtful, honest and courageous psychologist who was able to interpret such experiences in light of larger issues about humanity in general.

The following is just one chilling example of the kind of insight and epiphany that makes this book one everyone ought to read:

On the average, only those prisoners could keep alive who, after years of trekking from camp to camp, had lost all scruples in their fight for existence; they were prepared to use every means, honest and otherwise, even brutal force, theft, and betrayal of their friends, in order to save themselves. We who have come back, by the aid of many lucky chances or miracles—whatever one may choose to call them—we know: the best of us did not return.

That quote just sends cold chills down my spine...

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Wealth Inequality in America

If you consider the difference between what people think is the distribution of wealth in America vs what they consider the ideal distribution vs the actual distribution... you'd be flabbergasted...

The Occupy Wall Street movement tried to raise awareness about the fact that the bottom 99% of Americans have to live under the oppression, greed and corruption of the top 1%.

If you need to visualize these ratios in order to get a better sense of what's going on in the US, the following animation will be an eye-opener.

Go share...

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Porn Stars and Beauty Queens

Any lovers of irony or fans of Joseph Heller's Catch-22 out there? If so, I have a story for you...

So it turns out that Melissa King, a girl who did some porn to be able to make the money necessary to enter a beauty pageant, ended up losing her Miss Delaware crown for having been in said porn... oh irony of ironies...

Before my rant, because I do have a couple of things to say, here's the story:

Obviously, given the puritanical attitude our society has toward sexuality and how quick we are to condemn stuff that we privately can't live without, that wasn't the smartest choice on her part, but the real problem is the hypocrisy and double standards created by beauty pageants: on the one hand, they don't want their contestants to engage in public displays of sexuality, and punish them when they do; on the other hand, beauty pageants are in the business of objectifying women and exploiting their sexuality. Sure, they pretend that it's about etiquette, sophistication, intelligence, grace, talent and so on, but you know the kind of debacle you get when you actually ask these girls even simple questions whose answers are not as simple as "world peace."

Now, don't get me wrong, I have nothing against shallow physical attraction, or even against using our bodies to achieve certain ends, provided no one gets hurt or exploited in the process. I have no objection to the "beauty" aspect of beauty pageants, and I have absolutely no problem with the sexiness of non-exploitative porn (those assholes that try to degrade girls in their videos really are douchebags, though, and should be castrated).

If we think that it's okay to employ someone based on their intellectual abilities, it strikes me as hypocritical that we couldn't do the same for physical attributes. In fact, we do! That's what professional sports are about. It's only when it comes to sex that everyone gets bent out of shape. But here's the thing, as a person, you are both a mind and a body. To focus only on one of these to the exclusion of the other is to really objectify you, to ignore the totality of who and what you are, and to focus only on the part of you, whatever it may be, that turns you into some kind of object. Given this basic reality, it is probably impossible not to objectify people.

My problem with beauty pageants is the farce, the hypocrisy, the claim that you can't use your own body to express your sexuality unless they get to use your body for their purposes, the idea that displaying your body in their parade is okay, but that displaying it in a video somewhere else is not. You might say that beauty pageants want to set a good example for younger girls, and porn doesn't do that for obvious reasons, but here's the thing: neither do beauty pageants. Beauty pageants teach young, impressionable girls that the most important thing in the world is to be beautiful, not smart, not educated, not curious, not interesting... beautiful above all else. When was the last time you saw a fat or ugly chick win one of these pageants, no matter how interesting, articulate or intelligent she may have been? Hell, have you even seen them participate, let alone win? And worse, because beauty pageants are deemed as socially acceptable, they are more pernicious than porn. Most little girls don't want to grow up to be a porn star, but lots of them do want to be princesses and beauty pageant queens.... and we wonder why we have a problem of female under-representation in academically challenging subjects...

And another thing that's been bothering me for a while now is the number of people whose professional careers are ruined because of personal choices they've made in the past (or concurrently), and that have absolutely nothing to do with their jobs. Why are we punishing people for living their own lives? If you are a doctor during the week, and then make sexy videos on Saturdays, and you don't botch up your surgeries, what business is it of anyone else's to tell you you can no longer work for a particular hospital because of what you do on your own time?

If I go to the doctor, what matters is her ability to treat whatever is ailing me, not her personal choices (at least not if they will not affect my physical health); if I go to a lawyer, his weird foot fetish has absolutely no relevance to my corporate merger; if I attend a lecture, the professor's pole dancing skills at the strip club last weekend has nothing to do with her lesson on epigenetics; if I get arrested by a police officer, I don't get to resist on the grounds that I've seen videos of her naked online...

I may pass personal judgment on any of these people, or not, but why should they lose their jobs because other people and their delicate sensibilities are offended?

And the saddest thing in this story, having seen her video by now, is that this poor girl doesn't even have a future in porn: she kinda sucks... She really got screwed  :(

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If Richard Dawkins Died and Met His Maker...

Religious apologists have a long history of using the idea of death-bed conversions by skeptics as proof that God is real. Apparently, if you're afraid of one thing, that proves the existence of some other thing. One of the most often cited such conversions was Darwin's. That such conversion never actually took place matters little to charlatans who will lie and deceive in honor of their god, not realizing what an insult that is to the very god they worship... but that's how it goes, I guess.

When it comes to philosophers, it was David Hume's intellectual integrity and courage that shocked the world, and especially the renowned biographer James Boswell, who could not understand for the life of him why his literary mentor didn't think it was at all rational or prudential to bet on Pascal's wager as he was nearing death...

When Christopher Hitchens was diagnosed with terminal cancer, he took it one step further, pre-emptively arguing (starting at 7:52 in the video below) that any such possible conversion on his part, were it to happen, would most likely be an indication of his illness, medicine administered by doctors, or some sort of dementia.

Finally, and although he has not kicked the bucket yet, it seems that if Richard Dawkins were to die and find out he was wrong after all, and that there is a god, god who would be the one to end up getting bitch-slapped :)

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What Do You Get When You Mix Russian Drivers and Dashboard Cameras?

A few days ago news spread all over the world about a 15-meter (roughly 49 feet), 10,000-ton meteor that hurled towards Earth over central Russia and exploded in mid-air, sending sonic shockwaves that damaged hundreds of buildings. Although over a thousand people were injured, apparently there were no casualties.

The interesting thing about this news, though, is that the footage of this amazing celestial event was captured by dashboard cameras installed in many vehicles. Apparently, this is sort of a necessary fad there because a lot of Russians simply cannot be trusted to be peaceful, honest, law-abiding citizens. So what do you get when you mix Russian drivers and dashboard cameras? Apparently, Benny Hill-styled footage. Jon Stewart reports.

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President Obama's 2013 Inaugural Speech

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Stephen Colbert - America Again: Re-Becoming the Greatness We Never Weren't

Sorry for the sparse presence recently folks, but I've been buried under a mountain of work with the end of the semester. Last night, for instance, I got a chance to have some breakfast only after midnight, and as I poured myself a bowl of cereal, I started watching a recent interview with Stephen Colbert at Google that just had to be posted here.

Why? Because in trying to explain the title of his latest book, Stephen Colbert starts the whole interview by explaining how St. Anselm's ontological argument for the existence of god works, and he actually does a phenomenal job for someone explaining it off the cuff.

Later on there's talk about the unexamined life, so you automatically start thinking of Socrates, and even though the whole thing is humorous, there are bits and pieces of philosophy, and ideas worth thinking about, all over the place, so enjoy:

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Michael Sandel - The Moral Limits of Markets

There are some things that money can't buy... for everything else... oh crap, there's no anything else! Over the past couple of decades, and without almost anyone noticing, we have turned from a market economy—one in which we use capital as a tool to achieve certain ends—to a market society: one in which market values replace all other values, and in which profit becomes its own end and the standard against which everything else is measured.

Philosopher Michael Sandel is worried about this growing trend. You might think that if people were paid for their services, their abilities, their bodies, and that if this is done with the consent of all involved, everyone benefits and it's all good. But if that's how you think, you've been bitten by the market society bug already... When we think that it's okay for corporations (or presidential candidates) to pay people to tattoo their bodies with company logos, for instance, or when we think that it's a good idea to privatize prisons and strip people of their civil rights so a bunch of corporate shareholders can maximize their profit, we have ceased to think of people as persons with dignity and worthy of respect, and we have started to think of them as commodities that can be bought and sold, used, abused and discarded like garbage.

There are some things money can't buy... and in the end, those are the things that really matter. Don't let the market society cheapen them by turning them into commodities to be sold to the highest bidder...

This could present problems for my endorsement of the legalization of prostitution... crap...

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Dan Ariely - The Truth about Dishonesty

If I were to ask you if you are an honest person, chances are that you'd say yes. Yet, if we look at the details of your everyday behavior with a magnifying glass, we'd most likely discover all sorts of ways in which you lie, cheat and steal, on a regular basis! Notice the irony? In answering a question about your own honesty, you behave dishonestly! Well, it's not quite that straightforward. It's not so much that you'd be lying to me; it's more that you'd be lying to yourself, and then to the rest of us as a consequence.

Our minds have an incredible capacity for compartmentalization: we separate into distinct groups instances of what ought to be logically identical situations, such as when you create the double standard that it's okay for you to take home some office supplies from work, but that it's not okay to steal an equivalent amount of money from the petty cash box. The other thing we're really good at in this context is rationalization: when confronted with our dishonesty, we are masters at justifying our behavior and turning it around to sound heroic: "it's okay for me to illegally download music because that means I'm standing up for freedom and fighting the corruption of multi-billion dollar music label companies, so if you think about it, I'm kind of a moral hero."

Well, in the following RSA animated presentation, Dan Ariely shares some of the fascinating findings of how everyday people like you and me cheat all the time, and what might be some useful mechanisms we can use to decrease our own corruption.

If you liked that, you might also like to check our our selection of TED Talk presentations.

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Take the Money, Donald Trump! Do It for the Children!

Apparently Donald Trump wants to help charities, but he won't donate the money without extorting President Obama to release documents that, let's face it, will not satisfy the birthers and their conspiracy theories.

Fortunately, Stephen Colbert has an offer of his own for Donald Trump :)

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And of course, once it's all over, those will be the smartest things ever to come out of Trump's mouth...

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Richard Dawkins - Sex, Death and the Meaning of Life (1)

Dostoevsky's dictum "without God, anything is permitted" is often used by religious believers to make the point that, quite aside from the issue of its truth, religion plays an important role, perhaps even a necessary one, in fomenting moral behavior and virtue. Without God, where would morality come from? If we were simply left to our own devices, what would be there to prevent absolute chaos, violence, crime and wanton lasciviousness?

Well, whatever you may think about the moral foundation of morality, as an empirical claim, it simply isn't true that without God or religion we would turn into savages. How do we know? For one, because non-human animals, presumably not being religious believers, do have all sorts of customs and rules by which they abide without having to descend into anarchy. And second, because when you look at the behavior or religious and non-religious people, you find that there is almost no difference there.

What religious people do have, though, is a lot of shame and guilt for things that should not be quite as big a deal as they think. So it seems as though religion is a self-perpetuating industry of devotion based on making its followers feel bad about themselves and then making them turn to religion for "salvation." Not much different from drug pushers, huh?

And it's getting to the point that religious people will go to all kinds of extremes to reconcile the inevitable cognitive dissonance they experience from the conjunction of their religious beliefs and their biological nature. Richard Dawkins explores these and other related issues

What exactly is the fascination with virgins? I never understood that one...

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Obama on Romnesia: Don't worry. Obamacare Covers Pre-Existing Conditions :)

Romnesia is a serious and highly contagious medical condition, usually related to Paulzheimers. As its name suggests, it's most obviously related to Mitt Romney's almost daily political flip-flopping depending on what particular constituency's votes he's trying to secure. If he's in Massachusetts, for instance, he will advocate for various liberal platforms and women's issues. When he's in the Bible Belt, he is all about religion and the need to go back to that time when people did whatever they thought their invisible friend up in the sky wanted them to (including, but not limited to, restricting the rights of women, minorities, immigrants, gays, etc.). When he's in a secret meeting with corporate moguls, he'll make fun of and dismiss 47% of the American public as moochers and irresponsible leeches, and when that tape becomes public, he's suddenly all about 100% of Americans. Poor guy...

This is a very serious affliction, but President Obama has some great news :)

That made my day...

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Children's Television Chop Shop - This Week With George Snuffleupagus

Romney wants to fire Big Bird, and conservatives seem to agree that we spend way too much money on things like the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and NPR. And while reigning in excessive spending is generally a good idea, do programs that educate the public count as a waste of money? No, it's actually an investment; one that will pay off in great dividends!

So how about we cut other forms of outrageous spending? Like, I don't know, the stupid wars we're always waging all over the world? Or maybe the gigantic tax cuts given to the rich, and the enormous subsidies given to corporations? Oh, but conservatives wouldn't like that, so in order to distract the nation from the real forms of outrageous and frivolous spending that go to benefit Wall Street, they'll just exaggerate how much tax-payer money goes to Sesame Street...

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But this is really hilarious part

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How awesome was that? :)

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Rumble 2012 - Bill O'Reilly vs Jon Stewart

The recent presidential debate between Romney and Obama turned out to be a disaster. Romney came loaded with a semi-automatic shotgun full of soundbites and lies, he threatened to fire Big Bird, and once again flipped flopped on his position (I've never known a prostitute who can assume so many positions, but I guess if you're a corporate whore, you gotta be extra flexible). Obama, on the other hand, just let Romney get away with all these bs claims, and acted as though he hadn't slept in a few days. Maybe Clint Eastwood was right all along when he talked to that empty chair at the Republican National Convention...

So if that debate left you unsatisfied, worry not, my friends because Jon Stewart and Bill O'Reilly had a little debate of their own this weekend, which turned out to be more substantial and more entertaining. President Obama, take some notes from Jon Stewart on how to call a spade a spade, and how to have substantial and nuanced points to make while not being a total bore...

Check out more debates in our debate tag.

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Samuel Jackson, Wake the F**k Up! - A Rebuttal

You may remember from a few days ago that video reminiscent of the children's story Go the F**k to Sleep, in which Samuel Jackson highlighted the importance of civil and political involvement, and complained about voter apathy by inciting voters to Wake the F**k Up! Of course, of the two main candidates running, Obama is clearly the better choice over Mitt Romney, but the least of two evils is still not the best state of affairs.

So, the folk over at Reason.com decided to play Jackson's game... and sort of kick his ass :)

Ouch!

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