Hat tip to John Lynch over at A Simple Prop for the link.

Also, if The End of the Line didn’t con­vince you, John has dis­covered another reason not to des­troy the world’s fish pop­u­la­tion: if there are no fish to eat, the Otters will have to find some­thing else to eat: Human Flesh!

Don’t look so cha­r­is­mic now, do they?

I was going to make some quip about Sarah Palin here, but really, I guess I just did. :)

From the Tele­graph, about the Large Had­ron Col­lider (emphasis mine, for the good bit):

Such is the angst that the Amer­ican Nobel prize win­ning phys­i­cist Frank Wil­czek of the Mas­sachu­setts Insti­tute of Tech­no­logy has even had death threats, said Prof Brian Cox of Manchester Uni­ver­sity, adding: “Any­one who thinks the LHC will des­troy the world is a twat.”

’nuff said.

The prob­lem with throw­ing around phrases like epic fail for trivial things like incor­rectly rat­ing fruit, get­ting roman numer­als wrong right on a watch, or fall­ing out of your exercise-​​wheel, and with get­ting irate about someone incor­rectly identi­fy­ing a har­vest­man as an insect or a spider or both, is that it leaves you very little room to express your even greater incredu­lity when you see some­thing like this.

I’m going to assume that no-​​one needs me to point out the obvi­ous flaw with that?

Appar­ently, in Sweden, people are gran­ted the human right to be invited to any birth­day party they want. Bur­eau­cracy ftw!

Jok­ing asside, this is a symp­tom of some­thing we’re see­ing more and more; this per­vas­ive idea that people have the right not to be offen­ded. Yes, it’s pretty harsh not to be invited to a party that every­one else is going to, but that doesn’t mean you have the right to go. You have the right to call the kid a jerk for not invit­ing you, and you have the right to recip­roc­ally not invite him to your party, but that’s it. It’s his party and it’s his right to decide who’s invited. It’s a pretty stu­pid, trivial example, but it’s just a symp­tom of the same sort of think­ing that leads people to think they have a right not to have their beliefs chal­lenged or their stu­pid­ity ridiculed. It’s a dan­ger­ous trend, because often one person’s “right” not to be offen­ded is indir­ect oppos­i­tion to someone else’s actual rights. In this case it’s the right of a child to not invite people he doesn’t like into his house, which is import­ant enough, but in more extereme case, it might be someone’s free­dom of speech or of expres­sion that’s being sup­pressed to keep people from being put out, and I don’t care how you dress it; free­dom of speech is more import­ant than anyone’s sensibilities.

This might just be the most awe­some thing ever.

From You­Tube; check out his other tracks.

Props to my friend Brian for the link.

Edit: OK, no, him doing Sweet Child of Mine is the most awe­some thing ever.

I have to say, I wouldn’t nor­mally link to the Tel­graph, but this is just too good (and sur­pris­ingly on-​​the-​​ball for the Tory­graph.) I mean, obvi­ously, it doesn’t qual­ify as news per-​​se, but it’s good to see the concept is sink­ing in.

Video on You­Tube.

We’re a long way from the truth, but at least someone’s finally ask­ing the right ques­tions!

Next Page »