Get Cynical

I just have to watch about 30 seconds of a clip from that show and I feel like watching all 4 seasons over again. (Yes, FOUR seasons. The 5th one never happened)

Not from The Onion. I said NOT from The Onion:

The Large Hadron Collider, the world’s most powerful particle accelerator, just cannot catch a break. First, a coolant leak destroyed some of the magnets that guide the energy beam. Then LHC officials postponed the restart of the machine to add additional safety features. Now, a bird dropping a piece of bread on a section of the accelerator has, according to the Register, shut down the whole operation.

The bird dropped some bread on a section of outdoor machinery, eventually leading to significant over heating in parts of the accelerator. The LHC was not operational at the time of the incident, but the spike produced so much heat that had the beam been on, automatic failsafes would have shut down the machine.

Sheriff Joes’ Brownshirts are at it again:

A Maricopa County detention officer tried to explain Friday why he and a fellow sheriff’s office employee swiped a document from a defense attorney’s file in a bizarre scene that was caught on courtroom videotape.

Detention officer Adam Stoddard sputtered nervously through his testimony at a hearing in Maricopa County Superior Court, where he was ordered to give reasons for taking the document. For every reason he gave, however, he retreated just as quickly, contradicting himself throughout the two-hour hearing.

The whole thing surrounded a scene that took place in a Maricopa County courtroom on Oct. 19, all caught on a courthouse security tape.

The tape shows Stoddard walking to the defense table during a sentencing that day. He leans over the table and begins reading from a document in the file of defense attorney Joanne Cuccia, who was speaking before the judge and had her back turned to the table.

Stoddard can then be seen motioning to a fellow sheriff’s employee, deputy Francisco Campillo, and the two men pull the document from the file. Campillo leaves the courtroom with the document, then comes back moments later and places the original back in the attorney’s file. Cuccia quickly figures out what is going on and brings up the issue with the judge.

(via Metafilter)

List of cats with fraudulent diplomas:

Colby Nolan is a housecat who was awarded an MBA degree in 2004 by Trinity Southern University, a Dallas, Texas-based diploma mill, sparking a fraud lawsuit by the Pennsylvania attorney general’s office.[1]

Colby Nolan belongs to a deputy attorney general. In looking to expose Trinity Southern University for fraud, some undercover agents had the then six-year-old Colby Nolan obtain a bachelor’s degree in business administration for $299. On the cat’s application, the agents claimed that the cat had previously taken courses at a community college, worked at a fast-food restaurant, babysat, and maintained a newspaper route. Then the school informed Colby that, due to the job experience listed on his application, he was eligible for an executive MBA for $100 more. The agents then sent for Colby’s transcript, which claimed that Nolan had a 3.5 grade point average.

(via TYWKIWDBI)

(via Atheist Media Blog)

Hi Chris,

I have a question that you may be able to help me with. My wife is very religious and I’m an atheist and we’re about to have our first child. She wants to raise the child as a christian and I don’t. What do you think we should do?

Compromise is key. Raise the child Jewish.

Ministers wonder how I can be wicked enough to attack the Bible.

I will tell them: This book, the Bible, has persecuted, even unto death, the wisest and the best. This book stayed and stopped the onward movement of the human race. This book poisoned the fountains of learning and misdirected the energies of man.

This book is the enemy of freedom, the support of slavery. This book sowed the seeds of hatred in families and nations, fed the flames of war, and impoverished the world. This book is the breastwork of kings and tyrants — the enslaver of women and children. This book has corrupted parliaments and courts. This book has made colleges and universities the teachers of error and the haters of science. This book has filled Christendom with hateful, cruel, ignorant and warring sects. This book taught men to kill their fellows for religion’s sake. This book funded the Inquisition, invented the instruments of torture, built the dungeons in which the good and loving languished, forged the chains that rusted in their flesh, erected the scaffolds whereon they died. This book piled fagots about the feet of the just. This book drove reason from the minds of millions and filled the asylums with the insane.

This book has caused fathers and mothers to shed the blood of their babes. This book was the auction block on which the slave- mother stood when she was sold from her child. This book filled the sails of the slave-trader and made merchandise of human flesh. This book lighted the fires that burned “witches” and “wizards.” This book filled the darkness with ghouls and ghosts, and the bodies of men and women with devils. This book polluted the souls of men with the infamous dogma of eternal pain. This book made credulity the greatest of virtues, and investigation the greatest of crimes. This book filled nations with hermits, monks and nuns — with the pious and the useless. This book placed the ignorant and unclean saint above the philosopher and philanthropist. This book taught man to despise the joys of this life, that he might be happy in another — to waste this world for the sake of the next.

I attack this book because it is the enemy of human liberty — the greatest obstruction across the highway of human progress.

Let me ask the ministers one question: How can you be wicked enough to defend this book?

Robert Green Ingersoll – “About the Holy Bible” (1894)

(First posted on June 14, 2007)