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Arrrgh. Bad Pirate Jokes!

Care of Robot Chicken:

Pirate #1: Harrr. What's that steering wheel be?

Pirate #2: Arrr. It's driving me nuts!

Bwahahahaha!
posted by corsair the rational pirate at 00:35

WTF?!?

A Japanese Santa with Hasidic assassins? Must be Robot Chicken from Adult Swim!



That's some funny shit.
posted by corsair the rational pirate at 23:52

Infantile Obsession... Sort Of

Well, they aren't all Koreans and they aren't Lady Golphers... But I can say: Korean Bellybutton!



Bellybuttons and not much else...
posted by corsair the rational pirate at 22:58

I didn't Think It Was That High

You scored as Modernist. Modernism represents the thought that science and reason are all we need to carry on. Religion is unnecessary and any sort of spirituality halts progress. You believe everything has a rational explanation. 50% of Americans share your world-view. Modernist 100% Materialist 100% Existentialist 94% Postmodernist 81% Romanticist 44% Fundamentalist 25% Cultural Creative 25% Idealist 13% What is Your World View? (updated) created with QuizFarm.com

50% think like I do? I got to get some new thoughts! I don't want to be in the majority. What fun is that? As a Pepsi drinking, Apple using, import beer drinking non theist where will I get street cred if I think the way everyone else does?
posted by corsair the rational pirate at 09:59

Truer Words Haven't Been Written

Especially on this site (seeing as how inarticulate I am), read on:

Mixing Faith and Science

Friday, May 27, 2005; Page A26

Michael Powell's fascinating article about Phillip Johnson ["Doubting Rationalist," Style, May 15] raised questions that science has not answered and has not tried to answer.

What seemed to get lost in the article was that faith and science live by different rules. Faith requires belief; science requires evidence. In faith, certainty is necessary; in science, it is impossible. Because faith and science live by different rules, one cannot be judged by the criteria of the other.

Some aspects of evolution may be in doubt. But doubts are a beginning, not a theory. And a sense of wonder at the universe should not be seen as an invitation to irrationality. Considerable scientific evidence exists for evolution, and no scientific evidence for intelligent design or creationism.

All people are entitled to free practice of their faith; they are not entitled to distort science in the name of faith.

MORTON RUBINGER

Reston

This comes at a time when plenty of people want to include ID in their children's classroom discussions because evolution is "just a theory" and "ID is just another theory" so why not "teach them together". Mainly because ID is not a theory about anything much like astrology is not taught in astronomy class beacuse it is not scientific.

If religoids want to talk about ID and creationism and 6,000 year old earths in their Sunday bible schools, fine. You can't stop people from being ignorant. But they have no standing to drop that worthless shit in my tax supported school and waste my kid's time with their nonsense. You know that the next argument will be for the theory or prayer healing people or angels watching out for you or dead popes fixing your cancerous growth. People believe all that idiocy and there is no good eveidence to say that the pope can't cure you from beyond the grave so maybe we need a Theory of Pope Healing that gets taught right up there with Germ Theory (just a theory, after all).
posted by corsair the rational pirate at 07:47

More Pics



This is Glenwood Springs as seen from above.

I took the previous as 8 different pics and then had PS stitch them together. It was pretty amazing how well it worked.

Clicking on it will bring up a much larger version.

RS, you know some way of blending all the sky sections to make them look like one pic?



That is a big green wheel used to power the gondolas we rode in.



The cavern wall. Notice the fairy in the middle?
posted by corsair the rational pirate at 20:55

Some Pics From the Trip



Airport Escalator



Some sort of Weed or Flower (I'm not Corsair the Botanist!)



A big ole mountain with snow on it.



Prarie Dogs out in front.
posted by corsair the rational pirate at 23:17

Trip Report I

Some of the Corsair Clan spent the weekend in Eagle, CO on the occasion of Coorsiar Nephew's High School Graduation. If getting there is half the fun we didn't have any fun at all.

We left DC early Friday morning and winged our way to Atlanta. Atlanta was in the process of being Atlantis due to the inordinate amount of rain, so we had to fly around in circles for an hour and a half. Something you never think of until it happens to you: when you fly around in circles, the plane is heeled over to one side (the right side in our case) and you can see the ground (if it isn't covered by clouds) on one side and the sky on the other... Who knew.

We finally landed in ATL and were shunted to a particular gate (C1) which, of course we didn't stay at. After about an hour they told us to go to D1 in a different concourse. So we got to sample the wonders of the ATL underground system. Not very exciting. Once we had emplaced ourselves in front of D1 we were then told to go to D5. Of course there wasn't any place to sit so we stood until the plane became available.

The flight to Denver was uneventful. Corsair Jr. and Princess Corsair I behaved themselves and kept themselves busy most of the time allowing me to relax and ewat my "gourmet" pretzels. What makes a pretzel "gourmet" anyway? Better flour? Better marketing? Airline customers? They didn't taste any different to me than the pretzels one finds in the Big Bucket O' Pretzels one finds at the Costco.

After landing in Denver's overpriced Airport on the Edge of Nothing, we retreived out bags, met up with Corsair Brother II and headed up into the clouds. Eagle, Colorado is 6,600 feet in elevation and you can feel it when you try and climb the stairs. We arrived there 5 hours later than planned and immediately headed for bed.

Saturday arrived bright and early. The light at that altitude in the mountains is fantastic. Clean, clear, and crisp (the famous three C's of repetitive writing) don't begin to describe it. Saturday was a free day so the younglings (Star Wars term) and I headed to Glenwood Caverns to play tourist. We drove out to Glenwood Springs and got a gondola ride to the top of the mountain where we descended into the earth for a 1.5 hour tour of the caverns. It was nice and cool and the kidlings seemed to like all the twists and turns.

After the trip back down the mountains it was off to Hot Springs Pool and a quick dip in the mineral waters. Who knew it would be salty? I acutally shot down the water slide a couple of times to see what it was like and enjoyed it. The water in the nose thing wasn't that great but it did get you wet.

After the trip back to Eagle, we got ready for out night out at the movies where we saw Star Wars: Revenge of the Whiny Bitch. When did the scourge of the universe have time to become so evil when he spent most of his adolescence whiny about how no one liked him and no one believed in him and no one listened to him. Well no wonder! Everyone else just wanted to shove a light saber down his throat to shut him up! My god, what a putz. And then agreeing to join with the Emporer with the promise of getting super powers from the dark side but really only getting an IOU? What a maroon!

Don't get me wrong. I liked it mainly because it was so much better than the last two but that wasn't a hard milestone to surpass. And what ever happened to Queen Amidala. Didn't she spend time piloting starships and shooting at bad guys and running aorund looking all hot and stuff? Now she sits in her boring apartment pining for the fiords and wating for Ani to come around and slip her some saber. Boring!

The wrap up at the end was nice to get you to the next (first) movie but all in all a disappointment when the first trilogy is viewed as a piece. We waited nearly 30 years for this?

More later as I have to go and do some work.
posted by corsair the rational pirate at 13:24

Some Notes

Some notes from the trip so far:

Don't fly to Atlanta on AirTran in the rain
Denver airport is nice but in the middle of nowhere
You can't buy less than a gallon of Bombay Saphire at Costco but it is cheap ($34)
While it might be 80 degrees out, mountains can still have snow
Colorado needs more trees
3 people do not need 3 20 oz root beers
Glenwood springs caverns... ok
Why do fat people see the need to go to the hot springs pool and ruin my view
Star Wars: Ani whines like a little baby
Star Wars: much better graphic integration (not so much "see what we can do")
Star Wars: The green Jedi chick with the wierd hair... Kinda hot

I'll write these up later.
posted by corsair the rational pirate at 09:06

Going on a Trip

Corsair Jr., Princess Corsair I, and I will be going to the infamous, Kobe-Bryant-almost-rape-trial town of Eagle, Colorado over the weekend for a graduation. I'll be sure and take plenty of pics and post them next week, but until that time I won't be much in evidence.

As if that bothered anyone.
posted by corsair the rational pirate at 08:22

Oh, Yeah. That's a Great Idea to Announce to the World

Here is a real smart thing to be telling the "insurgent" terrorist bastards in Iraq:

BAGHDAD, May 16 -- The Iraqi government said Monday that its soldiers would no longer raid mosques in their fight against insurgents, ending a practice that Sunni Arab leaders had long opposed on grounds that it provoked sectarian strife.

I can hear the discussion now:

Achmed: Muhammed! The Army has said that it will stop raiding mosques!

Muhammed: Thank Allah, Achmed. Now we will no longer use them for storage of our insurgent devices!

Achmed and Muhammed: Buwahahahahaha! Stupid idiots!

I may not be a big military tactician, but I would think that as soon as you tell the bad guys where you will not be searching for them, that is where the cockroaches will scurry.

So what happens when someone reports that a mosque is being used as a car bomb making facility? Will the army just hang around outside waiting for the bad guys to come out with their hands up?

Me, I would start with raiding mosques and move on from their.
posted by corsair the rational pirate at 08:21

Will I get to see it?

I am having some problems with DashBlog but am working with the author to fix them.

Thank you for your time.
posted by corsair the rational pirate at 21:23

Blah blah blah

I am testing the title!
posted by corsair the rational pirate at 21:17

Can I blog in Korean?

한국어안에Iblog은 할 수 있는가?

Aaaaand, back to English: The possibility of doing there is a Iblog inside the Korean language?

Will anyone be able to read what I wrote?

나가 쓴 것을 읽는가 누군가는?

Aaaand back to English? It goes out and read the fact that it writes the troublesome does army song?

Huh?

If you couldn't figure it out, I was putting the first phrase into the translation tool in dashboard to get the second and then going back to English with the result.

Probably what my Korean sounds like to most Koreans.
posted by corsair the rational pirate at 21:22

Supposedly this is a dashboard widget (yes, I have 10.4 on my machine) that will allow me to post something to the ole blog.

Well, does it work?

I am off to pust the "Post" button now!
posted by corsair the rational pirate at 20:48

Just Shut Up

Am I wrong for thinking that this sort of response is completly inappropriate when you are talking about two girls allegedly killed by the anger-management-class-needing father of one of them:

About 500 people gathered Tuesday night at a junior high school in Zion to hear about the case from Harrison and other city leaders. Pamphlets on helping children cope with death and grief were available on tables in the gymnasium, and School Superintendent Connie Collins got a standing ovation for the leadership she has shown in the wake of the killings.

"This evening, before you go to bed, get down on your knees and pray to God ... that your children are safe," Harrison told those gathered at the school.

What the hell does that mean? Did the dead girls not get god's protection because maybe Mom didn't pray hard enough? Are you supposed to beseech god into not killing your kids like he did in that big flood thing (Genesis 7:21-23)? Or when he sent the bears to kill all those little kids (2 Kings 2:23-24)?

I would instead ask why this supposed god of all the universe allowed these two innocent little girls to be killed in the first place. What did they ever do to anyone besides be a duaghter to and know the daughter of a deranged lunatic?

Hobbs was released from prison in Texas in April after serving nearly two years for violating probation for an assault charge he had pleaded guilty to in 2002, said Rick Mahler, an assistant district attorney in Wichita Falls, Texas.

The assault charge stemmed from a 2001 altercation with Laura's mother, Sheila Hollabaugh, Mahler said.

"He started chasing people around with a chainsaw that was running," he said. "Somebody hit him with a shovel, knocked him down. Those people held him until the police arrived."

Hobbs was arrested in 2003 after failing to show up for visits with his probation officer and skipping anger management classes. He was sentenced to two years in prison on the probation violation.

Why couldn't god send someone around to kill this waste of time and energy and clean up this world he supposedly made?

At least now this shithead (if it is proved he did it) is elligible for the death penalty and once again it will be up to man to correct the mistakes of god.
posted by corsair the rational pirate at 09:55

Religious People Are Scary and Violent

At least according to the courts in the District of Columbia. Where do I get proof of this unfounded allegation? Well, when a man tried to change his name to that of one he considered to be his lord and savior, he got denied:

Christ applied for the legal name change in May 2003, but it was denied by District of Columbia Superior Court Judge Tim Murphy because "taking the name of Jesus Christ may provoke a violent reaction or may significantly offend people."

You know, people never say these kind of things about atheists. "A violent reaction"? The scary part about this is that it is true.
posted by corsair the rational pirate at 07:56

Another Easy One

Makes me want to get all medieval on someone:

ZION, Illinois (CNN) -- Concerned parents accompanied their children to Beulah Park Elementary School on Tuesday morning, a day after two second-grade girls were found stabbed to death in a nearby park.

The bodies of best friends Laura Hobbs, 8, and Krystal Tobias, 9, were found early Monday in the park about four blocks away from the school, said Police Chief Doug Malcolm of Zion, a small town about 45 miles north of Chicago.

Find out who did it. Make sure. Make double sure. Then kill them in the parking lot behind the courthouse that afternoon. No appeals, no retrials, no last minute reprieve from the governor.

Anyone feels squeamish, fly me out there, I will take care of it.
posted by corsair the rational pirate at 11:09

What The Hell Is Wrong With People

So someone does something obviously wrong, gets caught easily, goes to courst and is swamped with support:

The woman who has become nationally known for allegedly planting a finger in a bowl of Wendy's chili smiled and appeared relaxed Monday as she mouthed "I love you all" to family members during her arraignment in a San Jose courtroom.

Authorities have accused Anna Ayala, 39, of being a scam artist who attempted to shake down the fast-food chain after the March 22 incident at a Wendy's in San Jose, but the Las Vegas woman appeared in court before a small fan club.

A dozen supporters came to the courthouse wearing T-shirts emblazed with "Free Anna Ayala" or "We Support Anna Ayala" on the front and "INNOCENT" on the back. Bailiffs required them to turn the T-shirts inside out to conceal the message before they entered the courtroom.

How the hell could someone support this stupid tool? Shed said she got a finger out of a bowl of chili at a Wendy's. But no one in the chili cooking chain lost a finger (or at least they don't remember losing one). So the police charged her with being an idiot (no, they didn't. Turns out being an idiot isn't illegal... yet).

But then all her supporters show up to root for her against "the man". Huh?

At the end of the proceeding, Ayala gave a big wave and told the judge: "Thank you, your honor."

The woman's sister, Mary Ayala, declined to speak to reporters, except to say: "She'll speak in her defense when she's ready."

What defense? It seems like an open and shut case. She claimed to find a digit. Wendy's said they didn't lose a digit. So where did the digit come from?

An investigator's statement cast doubt on Ayala's claim of finding the digit in the chili because scientific tests showed it hadn't been cooked for hours in the stew as is Wendy's practice, according to court records. Police acknowledge that they have yet to nail down where the mystery digit was obtained.

Maybe the whole person was in the stew! That is why they can't find anyone missing a finger!

Or maybe this woman has had a bad home life:

Ayala is also charged with grand theft for allegedly swindling a San Jose woman in 2002 by selling her a mobile home that Ayala didn't own for $11,000.

[...]

Meanwhile, Ayala's husband, Jaime Plascencia, 43, waived extradition in a Las Vegas courtroom Monday, a move that will speed his return to San Jose to face felony charges of failure to pay child support and committing identity theft by assuming the name and Social Security number of his young son, allegedly to avoid having his wages garnished for child support.

Whole family full of losers.

UPDATE: I was wrong. It was all on the up and up, I guess:

The finger allegedly found in a bowl of Wendy's chili belongs to an acquaintance of the husband of Anna Ayala, the 39-year-old Las Vegas woman who claimed she had bitten into the finger, San Jose police said this morning.

Wow, what are the odds that this woman's husband's friend's finger ends up in her bowl of chili?! Quite a coincidence, I think. I hope Wendy's paid her a lot of money for all the emotional trouble of eating her husband's friend's finger. And who knew her husband's friend worked somewhere where pieces of her anatomy might fall off into bowls of Wendy's chili?!

Life is weird, huh?
posted by corsair the rational pirate at 10:57

Where do I Live?

This is where I would like to live (make remembering the address easy and all)


posted by corsair the rational pirate at 19:15

Why Only One?

I have asked this question before but, knowing the crowd of pagans who normally read anything on this site have never gotten an answer. Well, I am going to ask it again today. To whit:

3:16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

What does begotten mean exactly:

be·got·ten Pronunciation Key (b-gtn)
v.

A past participle of beget.

Well, that doesn't help. How about beget?

beget: tr.v. be·got, (-gt) be·got·ten, (-gtn) or be·got be·get·ting, be·gets

1. To father; sire.
2. To cause to exist or occur; produce: Violence begets more violence.

OK, so we have god who supposedly made the whole universe and all the billions of galaxies and stars and molecules residing therein. He now takes a fancy to earth and decides to send his "only begotten" son down there to clean up the mess that god should have forseen in the first place when he made that crazy pair Adam and Eve. So he (the son, who is really the father) dies for our sins, yadda yadda yadda cross yadda yadda come again yadda flaming sword whatever.

So my question today is why can't god make more sons? Corsair the Fecund Pirate has not one but three offspring (my boys can swim) and could probably have more if he didn't have to worry about college tuition. Surely god of the universe can find enough to set aside a little every month so that his possible future kids won't have to work in the school library while they are getting their degrees?

It is not a matter of impotence, is it? Is god shooting blanks? His boys don't swim? Is Rambo out of ammo? Robin Hood's quiver is empty? I find that almost as hard to believe as his existence.

So someone explain to me why all the histrionics around this Jesus fella. If there are problems in the world, seems to me like god should just have some unsuspecting women pop out Jesus II, III, IV and more! Remeber the scene in Attack of the Clones where we see the hangar full of stormtroopers who all look alike! Something like that shouldn't be so hard to whip up after all the galaxies and whatnot that god has already done. The the Jesus army can go around kicking ass and taking names! Now that I would believe in.

If you see him, let him know about my idea.
posted by corsair the rational pirate at 12:56

Well, Eff Y'all Too!

Someone tell me again why Russia is our "friend"?

WASHINGTON, May 5 - Shortly after the White House announced that President Bush would expand his trip to Moscow on Monday with stops to promote democracy in the former Soviet republics of Latvia and Georgia, the Russian foreign minister took the unusual step of sending a letter of protest to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

Americans who have seen the letter describe it as an audacious objection by Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov to the itinerary of the president of the United States. Ms. Rice promptly shot back, in effect, that Mr. Bush could visit whatever countries he wished.

Excuuuuuuse me? Since when does the Russina foreign minister get say over where the leader of a soveriegn country (the likes of which could wipe the floor with said foreign minister's barely solvent, third world style dictatorship)?

Well! Did we cower in our boots? Did we hide behind mommy's skirts? Did we shove our noses further up Russia's behind and accede to their demands? Hell no!

"Rice doesn't scare worth a damn," said a senior Bush administration official who insisted on anonymity because he did not want to be identified as taunting Moscow.

Damn right, she don't!

Not getting it:

On Wednesday the president of a Moscow research organization, Vyacheslav A. Nikonov, told the Interfax news agency that Mr. Bush's side trips to Latvia and Georgia were "a kind of slap in Russia's face." Mr. Nikonov, of the Politika Foundation, added that Mr. Bush's visits there would be comparable to Mr. Putin's visiting Washington between stops in Havana and North Korea.

What the hell kind of research does this clown do, vodka tasting? Russia taking over the Baltic states at the end of WWII and keeping them in state of thralldom that they only recently escaped from and our relationship to North Korea and Cuba are nothing similar. I would actually expect Putin to visit Cuba and North Korea on his way to the US as they have been some of Russia's (and the Soviets) biggest friends over the years. And you knwo what they say about the company you keep.
posted by corsair the rational pirate at 14:46

NPR Doesn't Even Get It

There was a report on NPR this morning (Morning Edition, probably) about the Kansas slide into the Dark Ages and Intelligent Design. OK reporting but several of the hosts kept repeating the line "evolution and the origin of life". We all know, I hope that the Theory of Evolution has nothing to say about the origin of life. It only concerns itself with the seconds after that and what happens to the new life and how it changes.

Could have god, or demons, or aliens, or Mars dust that "created" life. It doesn't matter in this debate. As soon as the life starts to change, evolution comes into the picture.

Now back to the world.
posted by corsair the rational pirate at 08:15

El Stupido Government

The one time that the government follows the advice of "smaller government" people and decides to do nothing, you get the following:

A defense attorney in the trial of four street gang members charged in the killing of a federal witness blamed the government yesterday for failing to protect 17-year-old Brenda Paz before her death in 2003.

As the defense began its case yesterday, attorney Nina Ginsberg asked why law enforcement officials did not immediately take Paz into protective custody in June 2002 when she began talking to authorities about the Mara Salvatrucha gang, or MS-13.

"Law enforcement made absolutely no effort whatsoever to provide for her safety,'' Ginsberg said as she questioned an Arlington police detective in U.S. District Court in Alexandria. "The government put Ms. Paz in a position where her life was in jeopardy and took no steps, at least initially, to protect her.''

Her remarks, which echoed the contentions of other defense lawyers, came as the case moved closer to reaching the jury. Prosecutors rested their case yesterday, and two of the four defendants chose to call no witnesses. Closing arguments are expected this week.

Is she serious? Her defense of her scumball gang bangers is that they were forced to kill a witness because the government wasn't around to protect her. It was almost as if the cops had set up a sting... and failed to show up for the inevitable.

Is there any jury in the land who would buy this shit? "Gee, Bob, I guess we got to let them go because the government didn't stop them from killing that girl." WTF?!? I suppose then that the only people who go to jail should be the ones that the government does stop from engaging in crime? So that would mean that the only people in prison should be the people who haven't committed any crimes... Or something like that.

Rivera's attorneys yesterday sought to cast him in a different light. They called Detective Rick Rodriguez of the Arlington police to the stand, where he acknowledged that Rivera had been working with police in an investigation of death threats MS-13 had made against law enforcement officials.

Ginsberg, who represents Cisneros, then questioned Rodriguez about efforts to protect Paz after she was arrested in June 2002 and began cooperating. She said authorities exposed Paz to enormous risks by questioning her while she was still in a juvenile detention facility in Alexandria with other MS-13 members.

"Is it fair to say that in fact you were really not concerned about Ms. Paz's safety?'' Ginsberg asked.

"No, I was concerned, to a certain extent,'' Rodriguez said, adding that interviews with Paz were conducted when she was in a "safe environment.''

Excuse me, who is on trial here again? The police? The victim? Or the waste-of-flesh that is the banger? Has the attorney asked him whether he was concerned about Ms. Paz's safety? I guess he was, up until the time she actually died.

Death penalty time.
posted by corsair the rational pirate at 07:30