Comment

Comment by Neal 1 hour ago

Infrastructure and jobs, no thanks. We'd rather watch everything collapse.

Truck may have brought down I-5 bridge over Washington river; only 3 injuries

MOUNT VERNON, Wash. — A portion of an Interstate 5 bridge over the Skagit River, about 60 miles north of Seattle, collapsed Thursday, sending three vehicles and people plunging into the cold water at least 50 feet below.

Amazingly, there were no fatalities, Skagit County authorities said. Three people were pulled from the river and taken to Skagit Valley Hospital and United General Hospital; two were reported to be in stable condition, the other had minor injuries and was being released Thursday night.

The survivor who was released was identified as Dan Sligh, 47. His wife, Sally Sligh, 56, remained in the hospital. The other injured person was reported to be a 20-year-old man.

” I just heard back from our state bridge engineer who said an oversized load struck the bridge, and that was the cause of the collapse,” said Bart Treece, an official with the Washington State Department of Transportation.

However, the WSDOT issued a statement later saying that the cause of the bridge collapse was still under investigation.

A large semitrailer was seen parked on the side of the road north of the bridge, but it was unclear if that was the truck that might have struck the bridge.

Both the northbound and southbound lanes of the northern section of the bridge collapsed at about 7 p.m.

This section of I-5 runs between the Washington cities of Burlington and Mount Vernon.

When rescuers arrived, people were sitting on top of their submerged cars. The water is about 18 feet deep where the bridge collapse took place.

Gov. Jay Inslee headed to the scene to monitor the rescue efforts, and the National Transportation Safety Board said it was monitoring the situation as well.

Inslee later told a news conference that repairing the bridge is “job No. 1″ and that it’s unknown how long it will take to replace the bridge. I-5 is a main north-south arterial for northwestern Washington state. He said he will authorize the Transportation Department to establish detour routes to minimize impact on traffic and commerce.

q13

Comment by Neal 1 hour ago

This is an example of how the conservative right treats women:

At 21 weeks, Zink’s doctors discovered that her fetus had no brain function. That type of fetal abnormality was impossible to detect earlier in her pregnancy. “If this bill had been passed before my pregnancy, I would have had to carry to term and give birth to a baby whom the doctors concurred had no chance of a life and would have experienced near-constant pain,” Zink explained. “If he had survived the pregnancy — which was not certain — he might never have left the hospital. My daughter’s life, too, would have been irrevocably hurt by an almost always-absent parent.”

In order to justify his support for H.R. 1797, Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) suggested that Zink should have given birth to her son anyway, regardless of the pain that may have caused her family. The congressman told a story about a different couple who decided to give birth to a fetus with different types of disabilities — suggesting that Zink should have made the same choice for her son, instead of deciding to “rip him apart”:

GOHMERT: Ms. Zink, having my great sympathy and empathy both. I still come back wondering, shouldn’t we wait, like that couple did, and see if the child can survive before we decide to rip him apart? So. These are ethical issues, they’re moral issues, they’re difficult issues, and the parents should certainly be consulted. But it just seems like, it’s a more educated decision if the child is in front of you to make those decisions.

Comment by Neal 23 hours ago

Unreal but easily believable stat. =(

Comment by doone 23 hours ago

Reality Check

MAY 23 2013 @ 10:38AM

What we spend on our pets:

Americans spent approximately $61.4 billion in total on their pets in 2011. On average, each U.S. household spent just over $500 on pets. This amounts to about 1 percent of total spending per year for the average household.

Timothy Taylor puts this in perspective:

[T]he World Bank often uses a poverty line of $1.25/day in consumption to measure deep destitution in developing countries. Nearly one-third of the population of South Asia and nearly half the population of Africa has a consumption level below this line.  Over 365 days in a year, $1.25/day works out to $456.25.  Thus, the average U.S. household spends more on pets than the poverty line for humans in the developing world. And the statistics don’t include the fact that pets live rent-free.

(Photo: Henry the dog talks to his owner through Skype on May 13, 2012. Luxury pet accommodation group Hanrob Pet Hotels is launching Petskype so people can watch and even chat to their cats and dogs while travelling interstate or overseas. By Tess Follett/Newspix/Getty Images)

Comment by Neal yesterday

‘Despicable little monster’ Jessica Ahlquist wins prestigious Hugh ...

BY 

BARRY DUKE

 – MAY 23, 2013POSTED IN: ACTION, ATHEISM, CHRISTIAN FUNDIES, CHURCH/STATE SEPARATION, RELIGION AND THE LAW,RELIGION IN EDUCATION, THE FREETHINKER

LAST January we carried news that  a 16-year-old atheist, Jessica Ahlquist, was at the receiving end of a tsunami of insults and threats after she forced the removal of a 50-year-old prayer plaque in the auditorium of Cranston High School West in Cranston, Rhode Island.

Assisted by her dad, Ahlquist brought a lawsuit against the school, and a judge agreed that its presence was in clear violation of church-state separation. He ordered its immediate removal.

Jessica Ahlquist

Branded by one outraged Christian as “a horrible little monster”, Ahlquist has since been giving talks all over America about her lawsuit, and yesterday she was among several winners of the Hugh M Hefner First Amendment .... She won in the education category for her “courageous and successful lawsuit.” Her prize was $5,000 and  – erm – a plaque.

Comment by Neal yesterday

I would have to agree.

Comment by Lester Unega Waya on Tuesday

On the Boston bombing, the question it raises is why the police department did not prevent it.

Comment by Lester Unega Waya on Tuesday

Neal.

The rational don't buy into conspiracy theories. The most famous and still ongoing conspiracy theories is the 'witchcraft is evil' theory. Because of the idiots who bought into the conspiracy theory is why about 280 million people were burnt at the stake.

Comment by Neal on Tuesday

People believe in all kinds of ridiculousness.

Why Rational People Buy Into Conspiracy Theories

Illustration by Matt Dorfman
By MAGGIE KOERTH-BAKER
Published: May 21, 2013 18 Comments

In the days following the bombings at the Boston Marathon, speculation online regarding the identity and motive of the unknown perpetrator or perpetrators was rampant. And once the Tsarnaev brothers were identified and the manhunt came to a close, the speculation didn’t cease. It took a new form. A sampling: Maybe the brothers Tsarnaev were just patsies, fall guys set up to take the heat for a mysterious Saudi with high-level connections; or maybe they were innocent, but instead of the Saudis, the actual bomber had acted on behalf of a rogue branch of our own government; or what if the Tsarnaevs were behind the attacks, but were secretly working for a larger organization?

Crazy as these theories are, those propagating them are not — they’re quite normal, in fact. But recent scientific research tells us this much: if you think one of the theories above is plausible, you probably feel the same way about the others, even though they contradict one another. And it’s very likely that this isn’t the only news story that makes you feel as if shadowy forces are behind major world events.

“The best predictor of belief in a conspiracy theory is belief in other conspiracy theories,” says Viren Swami, a psychology professor who studies conspiracy belief at the University of Westminster in England. Psychologists say that’s because a conspiracy theory isn’t so much a response to a single event as it is an expression of an overarching worldview.

As Richard Hofstadter wrote in his seminal 1965 book, “The Paranoid Style in American Politics,” conspiracy theories, especially those involving meddlesome foreigners, are a favorite pastime in this nation. Americans have always had the sneaking suspicion that somebody was out to get us — be it Freemasons, Catholics or communists. But in recent years, it seems as if every tragedy comes with a round of yarn-spinning, as the Web fills with stories about “false flag” attacks and “crisis actors” — not mere theorizing but arguments for the existence of a completely alternate version of reality.

NYT

Comment by doone on May 16, 2013 at 12:15pm

Racism In The World

MAY 16 2013 @ 11:56AM

First you have to find a measurement for racial prejudice. I think Swedish researchers hit upon a rather good data point:

The survey asked respondents in more than 80 different countries to identify kinds of people they would not want as neighbors. Some respondents, picking from a list, chose “people of a different race.” The more frequently that people in a given country say they don’t want neighbors from other races, the economists reasoned, the less racially tolerant you could call that society. (The study concluded that economic freedom had no correlation with racial tolerance, but it does appear to correlate with tolerance toward homosexuals.)

Leave that fascinating parenthesis behind for a moment and what do we find? Max Fisher’s map above shows us. And the racist, imperialist Western powers turn out to be among the most tolerant. Money quote:

People in the survey were most likely to embrace a racially diverse neighbor in the United Kingdom and its Anglo former colonies (the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand) and in Latin America. The only real exceptions were oil-rich Venezuela, where income inequality sometimes breaks along racial lines, and the Dominican Republic, perhaps because of its adjacency to troubled Haiti. Scandinavian countries also scored high.

And the most racist? India, Jordan, Bangladesh and Hong Kong. There’s also one stand-out of racial intolerance in Europe: France. Duh. My favorite line from Max’s piece:

The Middle East not so tolerant.

I might also note that one common factor in the most prejudiced countries seems like Islam to me, with India and Hong Kong And Vietnam the obvious exceptions.

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