Internal Monologue

This is 100% batshit insane : PITTSBURGH (KDKA) ― The U.S. Military is demanding that thousands of wounded service personnel give back signing bonuses because they are unable to serve out their commitments. To get people to sign up, the military gives enlistment bonuses up to $30,000 in some cases. Now men and women who have lost arms, legs, eyesight, hearing and can no longer serve are being ordered to pay some of that money back. Kos and Sullivan both react. Fortunately, a member of Congress has introduced a bill to put the kibosh on this sort of thing: Mr. Altmire's legislation, the Veterans Guaranteed Bonus Act, would require the Defense Department to pay bonuses in full within 30 days to veterans discharged because of combat-related wounds. I'm proud it's a Democrat doing this, but I imagine such a bill would have bi-partisan support. There have been so many examples of our veterans being treated poorly recently. It's a disgrace. How about we defund some w

The Ultimate Showdown for Ultimate Destiny:

I think Republican Mike Huckabee has jumped the shark with this Chuck Norris ad currently playing in Iowa. Yeah, it's kinda funny. But what does it say about our level of political discourse that this is the ad he's running in Iowa? Lots of people are reacting to this ad: Ezra Klein: It's increasingly hard not to really, really like Mike Huckabee. I'm definitely going to vote for him for neighbor, or possibly for friend. That said, this is Huckabee's first ad in Iowa, and it seems strangely conceived. Chuck Norris facts are very well known amongst plugged-in hipsters who read Gawker. They are not very well known, I'd guess, among Iowans. If this were a web-only ad meant to get the campaign some YouTube pick-up, it would be very well-designed. As an introduction to Iowans? I think it'll confuse more than it will convert. Pam Spaulding on Pandagon: This is funny, but probably not for the reasons Mike Huckabee thinks it is.

"Imbecility that is not even meek, ceases to be pitiable, and becomes simply odious." -George Eliot, "Evangelical Teaching", from The Portable Atheist anthology When I read this recently, I immediately thought of the Bush administration.

I didn't realize how bad it had become, and it's getting worse all the time. Here's a message from the sysadmin of Macalester: Since the volume of spam we receive was a critical factor in causing the e-mail delay problem, we'd like to take an opportunity to make clear just how bad the situation with spam really is. During October and November, the average number of incoming e-mail messages has been between 800,000 and 1,000,000 per day. Of this traffic, between 90% and 99% is spam. (For comparison, a year ago our daily traffic load was approximately 200,000 messages per day, of which approximately 80% was spam. Worst of all, this proportion of spam to legitimate traffic is not unique to Macalester. It's a worldwide problem, and affects everyone's e-mail everywhere. Thankfully, all but a handful of such spams are blocked before reaching your Inbox. It's a sobering thought, but realize that for every spam message you receive, there are thousa

I guess the fact that I can reach a young audience is a good thing. Gotta let the yunguns know about how cool atheism is and how not-cool Republicans are. But some snobby part of me would have liked to have had a higher level of education required to comprehend my sublime profundity.

Image from the joystiq story It's Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper! Americans aren't the only ones stunningly ignorant of politics : Mario is more recognizable to Canadian citizens than their own prime minister, according to a Harris/Decima survey. As reported by Joystiq , researchers found that more Canadians could identify a picture of Nintendo’s famed plumber than they could of PM Stephen Harper, who has been on the job for nearly two years. On the other hand, Nintendo commissioned the survey. To be fair, I wouldn't have recognized Stephen Harper either. Until now, that is. OK, looking at the report on the survey , the quote above isn't really accurate. Only in some areas of Canada was Mario more recognizable. Nationwide, they both have 70% name recognition: Even in Calgary, which includes Harper's home riding of Calgary Southwest, Mario was more recognizable (47 per cent vs. 41 per cent). More women across Canada were also able to identify Mario than