Stay with it, PZ

Posted on January 2, 2012 by Michael

I had the fun of seeing a talk by PZ a few towns over back in 2009. I noticed two things right away. First, the beard really is quite respectable. Second, the guy has quite a few extra pounds. I found this a bit dismaying. He was someone I admired (and simply enjoy now), so it was disappointing to see that he had what was likely a strong moral failing. No, no, I don’t mean being fat. That has nothing to do with morality. I mean not trying to be healthy. For all I know he was on a diet at the time, but even so, no one can doubt that he has spent long periods of time not caring much about his body. I see that as an issue of morality, and I have written about it here. Fortunately, PZ looks to be turning things around:

I don’t make them. But I will lose more weight this year. Out of fear.

I was just at the grocery store, standing in the check-out line, which has become a gauntlet of terror. It’s the magazines.

Today, it was Paula Deen, round-cheeked and grinning, teeth bleached white, eyes like cold blue LEDs, photoshopped into perfectly plasticky plump grandmotherliness — a grandma with the complexion of an irradiated sixteen year old, glowing and sparkling — and she was holding a bowl of livid yellow macaroni and cheese that was bigger than her head. And I said to myself, this is the new face of death. And I said to myself, this is the American face of death, the death of viscid excess, the death that ends not in bones, but a quivering mass of adipocere. And I said to myself, don’t piss yourself, Myers, but that’s goddamn terrifying.

And I thought about buying that magazine and pasting that freakishly leering face on my refrigerator, but decided that placing a potent ward in my kitchen that would cause me to starve to death instead probably wasn’t a good idea.

Good. I hope he stays with it. Losing weight and/or being fit isn’t always easy. I devote a significant amount of my time to picking shit up and putting it back down again. I do enjoy it, but I would lying if I said it was easier than turning on Netflix.

I doubt PZ will read any of this, but if he does I hope he remembers: the keys to fitness are consistency and will. I realize it sounds like some hippie bullshit, but it’s true. A person who exercises irregularly will see minimal benefits, presuming he doesn’t just give up first. It takes a concerted effort – and the payoff for that is always great.

Filed under: Politics and Social | Tagged: , , , , , , | 4 Comments »

What a frothy douche

Posted on January 2, 2012 by Michael

Rick Santorum, perhaps the easiest Republican to loathe since Satan, has said he would invalidate all gay marriages to this point, given the chance:

In an interview with NBC’s Chuck Todd at his campaign headquarters in Iowa, Santorum said there needs to be one marriage law for all 50 states. When asked if he would make same-sex couples get divorced, he responded, “Well their marriage would be invalid. If the constitution says ‘marriage is this,’ then people whose marriages are not consistent with the constitution … (shrug.) I’d love to think that there was another way of doing it.”

Yep, there is another way. Allow gays to get married since, aside from marriage not even being about procreation anyway, it is illegal to give one group a set of rights whilst simultaneously discriminating against another group for no good reason. That is, after all, the very definition of bigotry.

But hang on, I haven’t even gotten to the best part of Frothy’s hatred:

Santorum said he has hesitations about the Supreme Court taking the decision about marriage away from the people. “32 times marriage has been voted on, in 32 different states from Maine to California, and 32 times marriage has won,” he said. But later in the interview Santorum acknowledged that “just because public opinion says something, doesn’t mean something’s right if it’s not right.”

For someone who hates homosexuals so much, he sure does like to have it both ways.

I’m really excited for the years to come. I can’t wait to see how religious bigots change their arguments from “It’s the will of the people! Listen to the will of the people!” to “Well, what’s right is right.” Santorum seems to have gotten a head start, but I don’t think there can be any doubt that this is the way conservatives will be stating their case in the future. After all, gay marriage will become the law of the land. It may happen in the next few years, or it may happen in 30 years. Either way, it is going to happen (and we will look at today’s laws as we now see anti-miscegenation laws). That means the religious will necessarily need to change their arguments to fit the changing landscape – a landscape on which they will enjoy ever-shrinking relevancy.

Filed under: Same-sex marriage | Tagged: , , , , | 3 Comments »

And if it was all true…

Posted on January 2, 2012 by Michael

Cee-Lo Green, an artist who I think has a pretty good voice, took a big poop all over John Lennon’s “Imagine” during one of those awful New Year’s Eve shows. Instead of saying, “Nothing to kill or die for, and no religion too”, he opted to say, “Nothing to kill or die for, and all religion’s true”. So let’s imagine what that means:

You’ve got Muhammad and Quetzalcoatl fighting the Titans in Valhalla while Vishnu commands the Taurus bull. The Galatic Overlord Xenu is dodging djinns and Anubis to tempt Jesus in the desert before he breeds with giant Aryan women to bring them down to size. Who’s in charge here, Ra, Jehovah, Zeus or Taiyang Shen? Can the light side of the force prevent Cthulhu from bringing Ragnarök to the world, which is made from the dead dragon Tiamat, or will the ancestral spirits and great mother turtle have to create a new one. Do faeries have chakras?

It’s going to take an eternity to sort all of this out.

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