Creationism: The Back To School Edition

"This is a great set of resources to prepare to for the School year. Complete with Dr. Hovind's award-winning seminar video number 4 (Lies in the Textbooks), this package will teach you how to defend your faith, and do so effectively. Also included "Are you being Brainwashed?" - a book designed to help students quickly and effectively defend Science from the attacks of evolutionism in their public school classrooms. The Gap Theory is also included, which will debunk the compromising idea of a gap between Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 1:2 allowing for millions of years to be inserted. And finally, Claws Jaws and Dinosaurs will be included in this limited-time offer. This insightful book covers many interesting stories of cryptozoology and other fascinating stories!"

This extensive "Back to School Preparation Package" is now available from Creation Science Evangelism, a website I found when I went to Rapture Ready's Blog on Yahoo 360. Rapture Ready says, "The Bible is the only truth in this corrupt world. And the Bible tells us the age of the earth quite plainly, about 6000 years old. Man wants to make the Bible fit into his own flawed thinking, so he interprets and believes what other men have told him."

Why would anyone take a document that was written by people who did not know that the Earth was round and consisted continents far beyond the Mediterranean? A thinking Christain would interpret the bible as documents that are limited by what men knew and believed at the time they were written. These documents were written for contemporary, pre-literate humanity in terms they could understand with the intent to grow a religion. These documents can be interpreted differently based on various translations of the original texts. This particular man, Rapture Ready, chooses to believe men who believe that everything in the bible is to be interpreted literally even if it contradicts a huge body of evidence and common sense. You can be a follower of Christ and believe in evolution and in science that is evidence-based rather than belief-based.

It is disturbing that there will be a generation of kids that will be learning to reject evidence-based science for belief-based science. This will certainly add to the trend of America falling behind in science globally. This ignorance education serves to undermine real science being done in global warming, stem-cell research, safety standards of our food, water, drugs, and other products we come in contact with. Planting doubt in the scientific method and the scientific research allows for the acceptance of propaganda that there is faux controversies about global warming, second-hand smoking causes cancer, mercury in our fish, etc.

Rumors, Insinuations, and the Ridiculously Guilty or Castro, Clinton, and Canine Cruelty

Rumors
My husband was playing World of Warcraft when he asked me to check CNN, because someone online said that Castro was dead. There was nothing on CNN, MSNBC, or the BBC. So I dug deeper to Wonkette who was making fun of the guy , who normally blogs about celebrities and supposedly broke the Story. Since these stories suggested that the State of Florida was making plans, I checked the local media which noted the buzz in the air, but seemed to remain doubtful of the rumors. Not being a Cuban-American, I have never got the whole anti-Castro thing. I am occasionally fascinated how cigar-smoking Fidel has been able to hold onto power and stay alive so long. Despite numerous attempts to overthrow him and assassinate him, he keeps on going like the energizer bunny. I guess I don't get too excited either way because I doubt that bringing capitalism along with Starbucks and Walmart to Cuba is going to improve things there.

Insinuations
It appears that Hillary has made quite a stir suggesting that a terrorist attack would benefit the republicans during this election. Everyone is SHOCKED! I don't know why everyone is so shocked since there are countless examples how republicans have milked the whole 9/11 tragedy for every ounce of political advantage during these six horrible years. Just recently they have advertisements that try to link the severely botched quagmire that is Iraq with the 9/11 attack. While I can see the reasoning that another attack may help the republicans, I am also thinking that it may hurt them. For all these years this war in Iraq has been waged, Bush and his cronies have claimed that the reason we haven't been attacked here is because we are fighting Al Queda in its entirety there. If we are attacked while we are still in Iraq and during The Surge, it would completely crumble that world view. Even without an attack, you can argue that Al Queda waited 8 years between attacks on the World Trade Center and Al Queda cells have been busy attacking our allies Britain and Spain during this time. One wonders if part of the anger of the native insurgency in Iraq towards American troops is having their own country turned into a front line battlefield between the US and Al Queda.

Ridiculously Guilty

Hazzah to the NFL for indefinitely suspended for funding a dogfighting and gambling operation. Vick deserves to be kicked out of the NFL and sent to prison. Here is a guy who is making a spectacular living and he uses that privilege to support brutality of animals for sport. What kind of person thinks that having dogs rip each other apart is entertainment?

The People You Meet in Heaven, Hell, and the Purgatory of Poor Fools

The Hell: Paving the Road to Hell by Convincing US it is going to Heaven

Red Rove'r, Red Rove'r send insane evil right over! Somewhere in Texas an arch-demon, MC Rove, re-enters his demon-cave from whence he spawned. I wish I could report that our long national nightmare is over now that this creature has retreated into his fiery liar with his "family" or demon-kin of fear-sprites, bible-twisting fire-imps, and oozing oil sludges.

We are still fighting this impossible war, which "Manchurian Candidate" McCain insists we are winning, when everyone agrees that a political solution rather than military might is far from being accomplished. There are no guarantees that we can prevent full blown calamity regardless if we stay or go. People will continue to die and be maimed with or without our assistance.

Then we have the economy that has been lauded as Bush's creation that is going downhill due to overly-permissive lending practices that will have far reaching consequences for all of us. People who were lead to believe that they could afford their no-interest or adjustable loans because the value of homes would continue to go up are going to lose their homes. The day-traders of the nineties turned into real estate flippers of the aughts have returned to the stock market creating the false illusion that the stock market can only go up. Due to recent volatile dips in the stock market, people will simply not know where to invest if they have any money left to invest. If people have trouble getting loans or refinancing they will be unable to afford to remodel their homes, effecting all the contractors: plumbers, electricians, furniture, landscapers, appliance makers, masons, home builders, and all the service providers that were making the economy seem to hum. Due to home values declining there is less incentive to make improvements even if the money is there, because there is no guarantee that you will get that money back on the resell of the home.

Oh...and we can also talk about our indebtedness to China, that seems to want to poison our kids with lead paint and pets with bad pet food. In fairness we cannot lay that on the laps of the pantheon of demon-kin that is the Bush Whitehouse alone. We can blame them though for our spiraling debt.


The Heaven: Coffee and Art

In the past days, I have been able to compare side by side Peets Coffee against Henry's House of Coffee, and we have discovered that hands down -- Henry makes better coffee. We have one of those Krup Carafe coffeemakers and often we reheat what is left over from the day before in the morning. Peets coffee turns rancid tasting if left over night, but Henry's tastes like it did when it was first brewed. I am telling you that with the free shipping Henry offers, there is no reason why you shouldn't be drinking his coffee. Walk in his San Francisco shop while he is roasting his beans and it is surely what heaven must smell like. You will be dizzy with pleasure. I promise.

Stop right now and dial: 1.800.578.5282 and order his coffee. I prefer his 1/2 french roast and 1/2 mocha java blend and Henry's Blend Decaf. He has a wide variety of beans. Do it. Do it. Do it.

I came across a wonderful art blog called dear ada, there are countless wonderful finds from the art world. It is my heaven when i want a fresh dose of art to discover.

Purgatory of Poor Fools: Pig Biting Madness In Print No More

I remember in my sophomore year in high school, my friends and I took a train to San Francisco from Menlo Park and we bought a Weekly World News. We were astonished by various tales of genetic mishaps of Batboy and Ed Anger telling us that he would would join the troops in Lebanon if it weren't for the fact that he had a steel plate in his skull.

The Weekly World News has recently announced that they will be going web only and ceasing to kill trees to bring us news of pending Armageddon or new mutant babies.

While I like saving trees for real news, I somehow feel like it is an end of an era of buying this rag and using it for wrapping paper for kitchy gift giving.

This paper lives in a space between heaven and hell. It is uniquely American, haven for Photoshop hacks, and provides empty calories of useless, false information (which FoxNews takes to a high art). I will miss the appropriately seedy and tactile experience of having the newsprint bleed on your fingers -- something a website just can't do.

The Buck Stops Nowhere

I wasn't at all surprised that convicted perjurer and justice obstructer, I. Lewis Libby, got his sentence commuted by Bush. What I am surprised about is how many people I run into in my highly educated enclave of suburban excess who have no recognition of who I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby is. It would be one thing if he was some obscure cabinet member who just recently got into the news, but Scooter has been in the news since the whole Plame scandal blew open and Fitzgerald handed down indictments. Reporters went to jail and there was a trial. You had deeper issues of an administration who would reveal the identity of a once covert agent which revealed every covert contact she dealt with that is still in the field trying to protect our country. It is weird to me that people seem so unaware of current events.

I am not surprised that Scooter got off. The Bush administration is in this alternative universe where the concept of personal responsibility is suspended in favor of praising gross incompetence. Mistakes were made and this job is hard are the constant mantras. This would be tolerable if there were not so many sobering and ghastly consequences of all these presidential failures, falsehoods, and foolhardiness.

It has just been reported that adjusted for inflation, we have spent just as much money in Iraq and Afghanistan as we did in Vietnam. Billions and billions are wasted and there is no accountability. The buck not only stops nowhere, but it evaporates into the ether of corruption and cronyism.

Homophobia

Thanks to my webspace friend, Dancing like nobodys watching, who thanks Jess for this. Read it and think and feel.

Whether you are homosexual or not, you should repost this in support of your friends and loved ones who are. Love is not defined by color, creed, or gender.

I am the mother who is not allowed to even visit the children I bore, nursed, and raised. The court says I am an unfit mother because I now live with another woman.

I am the boy who never finished high school, because I got called a fag everyday.

I am the girl kicked out of her home because I confided in my mother that I am a lesbian.

I am the prostitute working the streets because nobody will hire a transsexual woman.

I am the sister who holds her gay brother tight through the painful, tear-filled nights.

We are the parents who buried our daughter long before her time.

I am the man who died alone in the hospital because they would not let my partner of twenty-seven years into the room.

I am the foster child who wakes up with nightmares of being taken away from the two fathers who are the only loving family I have ever had. I wish they could adopt me.

I am not one of the lucky ones. I killed myself just weeks before graduating high school. It was simply too much to bear.

We are the couple who had the realtor hang up on us when she found out we wanted to rent a one-bedroom for two men.

I am the person who never knows which bathroom I should use if I want to avoid getting the management called on me.

I am the domestic-violence survivor who found the support system grow suddenly cold and distant when they found out my abusive partner is also a woman.

I am the domestic-violence survivor who has no support system to turn to because I am male.

I am the father who has never hugged his son because I grew up afraid to show affection to other men.

I am the home-economics teacher who always wanted to teach gym until someone told me that only lesbians do that.

I am the woman who died when the EMTs stopped treating me as soon as they realized I was transsexual.

I am the person who feels guilty because I think I could be a much better person if I didnt have to always deal with society hating me.

I am the man who stopped attending church, not because I don't believe, but because they closed their doors to my kind.

I am a warrior for my country serving proud, but can't be my true self because gays aren't allowed in the military.

I am the person who has to hide what this world needs most, love.

I am the person ashamed to tell my own friends I'm a lesbian, because they constantly make fun of them.

I am the boy tied to a fence, beaten to a bloody pulp and left to die because two straight men wanted to "teach me a lesson."

This is the boy, Matthew Shepard. On October 7, 1998 Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson lead him to a remote area east of Laramie where they demonstrated unimaginable acts of hate. Matthew was tied to a split-rail fence where he was beaten and left to die in the cold of the night. Almost 18 hours later he was found by a cyclist who initially mistook him for a scarecrow. Matthew died on October 12 at 12:53 am at a hospital in Fort Collins, Colorado. KILLED BECAUSE HE WAS GAY!!!






---IF YOU BELIEVE THAT HOMOPHOBIA IS WRONG... REPOST THIS

AS "HOMOPHOBIA."



---IF YOU ARE IGNORANT... IGNORE."

On June 6th, it was the 39th anniversary of the assassination of Robert Kennedy. No one better summed up his life than his brother, Edward Kennedy during his eulogy. I was only two years old at the time, but the words and ideals mean so much to me. It is why I am a proud liberal and why I care so much about those who are discriminated against in this country and around the world. I will never know and never claim that the Kennedys ever had the answer, but they had this enormous ability to articulate what liberals are trying to fight for.

Hot Fudge Sunday

[Painting by Mark Nobriga, "Chocolate Jesus", 2002, 67 1/2" X 67 1/2" - Oil and metal leaf on panel.]



So I am back from my journey, you all. Both fathers are home and recovering from their hospital stays. It is so weird, it seems like they always time their hospital stays so close together. One time they both went into the hospital for the same condition on the same weekend. Not only was I distressed, but I was kind of freaked out by the coincidence or fate of the whole thing.

Maven in Action...elsewhere...

I am in the process of reviving my old Voices of Adoption site, but this time calling it Voices in Adoption because some adoption agency horked the Voicesofadoption.com and voicesofadoption.org. Do you think they are holding them for me till I got back from my sabbatical? Anyway, I wrote a new article about the ethics and pitfalls of potential adoptive parents advertising their interest in adoption via road sign or other methods of casting a wide net.