I believe that I'm legally required as a blogger to post this:

09-f9-11-02-9d-74-e3-5b-d8-41-56-c5-63-56-88-c0

A brief explanation here, if you haven't heard. More here. Finally, you can be a part of the establishment* and get your own 128-bit integer!


*To be a part of the establishment, you must be an elderly white guy.

Correlation does not equal causation. That's all I have for today.

On a not entirely unrelated note, Newsweek conducted a poll. There's a lot in there, I'll quote:

14. Do you believe in God?

91%	Yes
6%	No

Nothing new there. This is consistent with most polls. But look at the very next question:

15. People who don't believe in God are called atheists. Do you personally know any atheists, or not?

49%	Yes
48%	No

I suspect someone is lying. How is it that half of the people all know the same few atheists? It's probably easier to come out of the closet as gay than it is to say that your atheist. At least gays had Will & Grace.

Every four years, almost like clockwork unless the Supreme Court gets involved, we in the US of A elect our president, the person who is, as leader of the most powerful nation on Earth, arguably the most powerful person on Earth. Essentially, it all boils down to a Republican vs a Democrat. Last night, the Republican hopefuls held their first televised debate. I didn't watch it, as I have grass growing in the yard and it is just fascinating, but I've read a bit about it this morning. I've mentally glossed over everything except for this one fact:

[...] on the issue of Evolution, the following three candidates raised their hands to indicate they did not believe in it: Sen. Sam Brownback, Gov. Mike Huckabee, Rep. Tom Tancredo.

How bizarre is that? It's almost as though a man goes in for a job interview for a doctor (fancypants though they may be, surely they still have to interview?) and indicates that he thinks that leeches and mercury baths are just the thing for that pesky illness. Which illness? What does it matter? They're all caused by demons.

How is that someone can be entirely science illiterate and still have some standing in the polls? Why is it okay to say that you don't believe in something that is literally the basis for modern biology? What if they didn't believe in gravity?

"Gravity? No, sir, I don't go in for those libral notions. The Bible don't say nothing about Einstein's general theory of relativity nor Newton's much simpler approximation laws of universal gravitation. Spacetime curved by matter? Nope, it's curved by Jesus."

Yes, I've threatened to move to Canada before. But so help me, if one of those guys gets to run the country, I'll... well, mostly just bitch and moan, really. Probably cry a lot. And then threaten to move to Canada. Do you think they're hiring?