Behold: Your Liberal Media!

So, I log on tonight and catch the headline on msn.com:
A 'major milestone' in search for Earth's twin
NASA's Kepler telescope confirms first alien planet found in habitable zone

Check it out: They found a planet, 600 light years away from us, that appears similar to earth and has a global climate in the 70's all year round.

OK... That? Is fucking MIND BLOWING! That's AMAZING! It's ASTONISHING! It's ball-bashingly HUGE NEWS!

And what does NBC's strait-News Anchor Brian Williams have to say about it?  Maybe some profound, "One small step..." style quote? Nah: He starts out saying "Imagine what we could do with this," and leads into a sarcastic suggestion that we colonize it, and start building Cell-Phone Towers and Parking Lots.

Yeah: He was kidding. I realize that.

But think about it. Consider the EARTH SHATTERING implications of this for a moment.

If it's within a couple million years of age of our planet? I guaren-god-damned-tee you something sentient is living there.  We were a single cataclysmic event away from having scales on our skin so, barring something similar in the past million years or so over there, there's a damned good chance they're looking back at us right now. (And possibly have been for some time.)

I wonder what they would have to say about religion, if we ever met them.

Would they laugh at us because we're so irrational as a species? Or would they see a lot of themselves in us?

Suppose they've been watching use for a couple thousand years now. (Like... more than six or so.) It's certainly possible. Would anyone still believe in young earth creationism after learnig that?

Those was the first things that came to my mind, once I was done geeking out about it. And that a hundered years from now, we'll be GOING THERE, and WOW: I was alive to witness it being discovered. This is 'first man on the moon' big, in terms of scientific milestones, and it happened in my lifetime.
So please pardon my digust as Mister Williams' choosing to mark the event with a jaded, throwaway joke about Cell Phones and Parking Lots, never considering for a moment, that we might arrive to find an indiginous population already there. (But it's not like THAT'S ever happened before, huh America?)

I'm sorry.  I just don't know how the "Liberal" media can see something as profound as this, and have their first thoughts go to Cell Phones and Parking lots. (Not to mention implied Colonization with nary a thought for who might already be there!) If America has been dumbed down by Consummerism, that one joke, used to mark so momentous an occasion, is exemplary of it.
Behold: Your liberal media?

Gold Star Awards. August, 2011

MADE IT! lol

This was a weird month. I started it with only a handful of reserve sites left for the HoF - nothing I was really excited about, just some sites I keep in my back pocket in case I run out of ideas.  Well... I ran out of ideas!  Then about six or seven different sites, blogs, web comics, etc... All came to my attention at once and I'm set with enough Golds and Silvers to carry me though the end of the year!  The only question was who to put into which month. LOL.  That's of particular importance this month, since the year is 1966 and the lone inductee is...


The Ted Williams GOLD STAR #38: Potholer54

I don't know how I managed to have missed this channel for so long.  I got linked to it recently via a comment on MMFA, and the minute I started watching I was HOOKED.  Complex Science about Climate Change, the Creation of the Earth and the Universe, the beginning of life on this planet, Human Evolution, and other things, all boiled down to perfectly digestible short documentaries that even the most brain-dead Right Winger can understand.  And beyond the fact that they are FASCINATING in and of themselves, they represent a solid argument that no Right-Wing True-Believer can deny or debunk, especially since he often specifically addresses the very talking points and urban myths that those on the Right try to use to discredit the Science they can't accept.  Very well done, and a FANTASTIC resource for arguing with Conservatives.  I HIGHLY recommend subscribing.

Also... I want to thank everyone who's read and commented on Utopia.  If you haven't checked it out yet, please take a look. I'd love to hear what you have to say, even if it's only to tell me that it's an incoherent mess! But please feel free to leave comments there, here or email me at niceguy9418@usa.com. (That goes for anything, anytime, BTW, not just that!)  I'm not always on top of every comment and email, but I do try to reply as soon and as often as possible.  And thanks again to ALL of you, for all of your participation in this conversation over the past two years. (It will be two years, officially, in just one more week - 9/7/11.)

NPR Fallout

okie, your email is going to have to wait...

Metal Matt left this link in the Juan / Queen post's comments section.  It's a petition urging Congress not to cave to the Right and their hissy fit over Juan Williams ouster. 

http://www.credoaction.com/campaign/stand_up_for_npr/?rc=homepage

We all know the Democrats are as useless as they are spineless, but just as the site says: we cannot let them do to a critical resource like NPR what they did to Acorn, Shirley Sherrod and Van Jones.

This insanity must stop.  Hit the link. Sign the petition. Pass it on. And, even more importantly:
 CALL YOUR CONGRESSMAN'S OFFICE and CALL YOUR SENATOR'S OFFICE.

We cannot allow objective reporting to be hijacked by partisan politics.

Maybe it was Muslims that attacked us on 9/11.  But that's going on ten years ago. The biggest threat to our freedom RIGHT NOW are these Right-Wing Fascists like Sarah Palin and all the others.  You know how they always cry about the first amendment when WE, PRIVATE CITIZENS want to organize a boycott of Fox's, or of Glenn Beck's sponsors?  That ain't the first amendment!  We're not the Government!  But what they want to do, right now? Is to USE the power to of the Government to punish NPR!  That is a far greater violation of the spirit of the first amendment.  Particularly when it comes down to a non-profit, public resource being bullied over partisan squabbles.  NPR was within theirr rights.  The Right is exceeding theirs.

DO. NOT. LET. THEM. DO. THIS. WITHOUT. A. FIGHT!

Juan Live the Queen!

Juan Williams IS a bigot.

Here's what he said on Fox, that (finally) got him fired from NPR:

"I mean, look, Bill, I'm not a bigot. You know the kind of books I've written about the civil rights movement in this country. But when I get on the plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous." ~Juan Williams, on the O'Rielly Factor

Now... I'm not a big......     fan of saying that if you start a paragraph out that way, then that means you probably ARE.  You can absolutely start a paragraph out that way, and NOT be a bigot.  But if you do start out a paragraph out that way, you probably shouldn't spend the REST of that paragraph proving yourself wrong.

Allow me to translate what he said from Conservative Black Man to ENGLISH:

I'm not a bigot.  I'm just going to use derogatory stereotypes to explain why I don't like certain people!

Doesn't that make a lot more sense?  And you gotta love that bit about not being a bigot because he's written books about the civil rights era. Translation:

I'm not a biggot. I love black people!

That would carry a little more weight if.... HE WASN'T BLACK!  By that logic, I can't be a bigot, simply because I don't hate WHITE PEOPLE!  And to think... this same crowd actually called Sonya Sotomayor a racist for not hating Latinas!

Oh and uh... Note to Juan: The actual terrorists don't come riding in on camels, waving scimitars and smoking hookah's while they stroke their long beards with fingers covered in bejeweled rings. They look like US. They BLEND IN!  That's how they got past security in first place: Nothing unusual about them! That guy you're talking about?  Even the TSA let him go, because they know that no terrorist would be stupid enough to get on a plane wearing something "identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims."

He's not only a bigot, but he's incredibly stupid to boot.  It's about time NPR dropped this clown.

Speaking of NPR... (shift gears)

Great story today detailing how the Conservatives over in England are about to tank their entire economy.

(No that's not how they said it! But that's pretty much the inevitable result, you wait and see!)

My favorite part (not included in the link) was the idea that after they shed something like 500,000 public sector jobs, they expect the private sector to pick up the slack.

Yep, the Conservatives over there are pretty much as stupid as they are here, folks.

Why he hell would any company hire ANYONE when there are soon to be about half a million more people who are going to be NOT BUYING ANYTHING?!  Demand is about to TANK. Who the heck do they think will be hiring?!

Morons.

Speaking of which...

HRM Queen Elizabeth II has decided that since the economy is so weak, that she shouldn't have her elaborate Christmas Parties and Holiday Balls this year.  You know... It just wouldn't be right to have all that elaborate celebrating and spending all that money when so many people are struggling.

(You, uh... see where I'm going with this, right?)

I just wonder how thankful the caterers, tailors, limo drivers, dressmakers, porters, cabbies, not to mention all the restaurants and other London attractions will be , knowling that all that money they the usually make of those kinds of fancy occasions will be denied them this year, on top of an already tough economy.

You know... because the economy's bad, it just wouldn't be right, to...

I don't know...

HELP OUT, I guess.

THANKS A LOT, YOUR ROYAL CHEAPSKATE!


They suck all over the world, folks.

(okie: I got one more and I'll answer your email, K?)