Right on Redundant

I took this picture in Washington DC this past weekend. "Except authorized vehicles only"? Isn't 'only' implied in the word 'except'? That's bureaucratic redundancy for you!

We Won!

BBC: Mars gets veggie status back

Mars has abandoned plans to use animal products in its chocolate, and has apologised to "upset" vegetarians.

The firm had said it would change the whey used in some of its products from a vegetarian source to one with traces of the animal enzyme, rennet.

Mars said it became "very clear, very quickly" that it had made a mistake.

"There are three million vegetarians in the UK and not only did we disappoint them, but we upset a lot of the consumers," [Mars said].

The Learned Pig applauds Mars's correction of what was indeed a grave mistake. Granted, this change of heart was induced by a threat to profits rather than a moral epiphany, but at least now I won't have to support the veal industry when I buy a Milky Way.

Now, if we can only get Junior Mints to stop including gelatin in their recipe, we'll be all set.

Wall of Separation

Ever wonder where the phrase "a wall of separation between church and state" comes from? It was coined by our nation's third president, who couldn't have made it any more clear that he didn't want religion mixing with politics:

"Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between Church and State."

-Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to the Danbury Baptist Association, 1 January 1802

English

Idaho Legislature Declares English Only Language They Know

BOISE, ID—The Idaho Legislature passed a unanimous resolution Monday declaring English the only language the elected assembly knows how to speak, write, or understand.

"We're putting into law a general feeling that everyone here has had for years: English is the only language we know, and English is the only language we want to know," Lt. Gov. James E. Risch said during a press conference outside the State Capitol building. "It's a good language, serves us well in matters of communication, and we can't think of any good reason to go around knowing some other language that we have no use for."

The legislature is expected to pass a separate resolution later this week officially declaring out-of-towners "suspicious."

He should have prayed for lower cholesterol

Today we celebrate the passing of a man whose life was a blight on the moral and intellectual state of the nation. The Reverend Jerry Falwell is dead. For the past several decades, his puritanical morality, stunted intellect, and expansive waistline have made him the shining model of right wing evangelism. Who can forget his incisive commentaries on American immorality, like the time he told us all who was really to blame for 9/11:

The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way -- all of them who have tried to secularize America -- I point the finger in their face and say: "You helped this happen."

Brilliant. Falwell's other accomplishments included starting the Moral Majority, an organization that opposed the rights of anyone who was not a wealthy, white, straight, male Christian, and founding Liberty 'University', a place for especially backward Christians to insulate their ignorance from the kind of rational examination that is so pervasive in most other institutions of higher learning.

Goodbye, you obese Jesus-loving freak. You will be missed, but not by me.

Milk Chocolate, Creamy Nougat, and Bovine Stomach Acid

Damn it. I used to love eating Snickers, Milky Way, and Twix. But now, if I want to eat any of those, I also have to eat the stomach of a tortured calf.

BBC: Mars starts using animal products

Masterfoods [owner of Mars chocolate] said it had started to use animal product rennet to make its chocolate products.

"If the customer is an extremely strict vegetarian, then we are sorry the products are no longer suitable, but a less strict vegetarian should enjoy our chocolate," said Paul Goalby, corporate affairs manager for Masterfoods.

A 'less strict vegetarian' should still be able to enjoy their chocolate, eh? Well, let's see what exactly this rennet stuff is:

Natural rennet is produced in the inner mucosa of the fourth stomach of young ruminants. These stomachs are a by-product of veal production.
Deep-frozen stomachs are milled and put into an extracting solution – in this solution the enzymes are extracted. The crude rennet extract is then activated by adding acid...

So rennet is extracted from the stomach of a veal calf - an animal that lived out its short, miserable existence in a narrow box, so that its soft, atrophied flesh could appeal to the palate of sophisticated diners.

I fail to see how anyone who considers him/herself to be a vegetarian - or even anyone who harbors an ounce of real compassion - could 'enjoy' a product made with such barbarous and vile methods.

Looks like I'll be a strict Hershey man from now on. No animals need to die in order for them to make their chocolate.

Two H, One O, No Matter What You Pay For It

What's in a name? That which we call Dasani
By any other name would taste as refreshing....

Truly the biggest triumph of coporate marketing in the past 10-15 years has been the rise of the bottled water industry. Every day, millions of suckers buy water for a cost that is several thousand times its actual value, just because it comes in a plastic container and has some artist's depiction of a mountain spring on the label.

Guess what? The water that comes out of my tap is H-O-H, just like the water they're buying. It has the same nonexistant taste, the same chemical composition, and the same thirst-quenching properties. Except I get it for free.

We don't live in Russia, people. The water is safe. Buy a Brita filter, fill it up a few times a week, and stop shelling out piles of cash for the cheapest and most abundant liquid on Earth.

Today's Most Popular Beatdowns

Notice how the four "most popular" videos on CNN today all have to do with beatings.

Ah, the 24-hour news networks. If they're good for anything, it's perpetually sating our society's thirst for violence.

Highway to Hell

Religious Bondage

"Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind, and unfits it for every noble enterprise, every expanded prospect."

-James Madison, in a letter to William Bradford, 1 April 1774

Thou Shalt Not... Pluck?

Know this, ye faithful: hair gel is hateful unto the Lord.

CNN: Iran bans Western haircuts, eyebrow plucking for men

I understand that hard-line Muslims want to discourage vanity. I think that's it's idiotic to heap moral condemnation upon metrosexual hairstyles, but I understand that the negative perception of vanity is the religious context from which this puritanical nonsense emanates. But where does one draw the line? Are brushing teeth or taking baths next on the list? Does wearing deoderant make me sinful in the eyes of the Lord? Will owning a mirror in my house condemn me to eternal damnation in the afterlife?

Solely Because of Their Race

The Civil Rights movement may have taken place four decades ago, but apparently some of us still have catching up to do.

CNN: Students Attend First Integrated Prom

Yes, you read that correctly. The students of Ashburn, Georgia were still holding segregated proms right up through 2006.

But don't worry, it's not as bad as it sounds! Mindy Bryan, a student who attended a segregated prom back in 2001, had this to say:

"There was not anybody that I can remember that was black," she said. "The white people have theirs, and the black people have theirs. It's nothing racial at all."

Nothing racial at all. Yes. The segregation of black people from white people was nothing racial at all. That's the dumbest goddamned thing I've ever heard in my life.

Apparently, though, Mindy isn't the only Rhodes Scholar in the bunch. Nichole Royal, who attended a white prom and commented that black students could have attended too but didn't, said: "I guess they feel like they're not welcome."

Now there's a startling sociological inference: black people might not feel welcome attending a prom for white people!

I think it's appropriate to end this heated post with a dispassionate analysis from Earl Warren's opinion in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954. Note that this was written 53 years ago. We should be past this.

To separate [black children] from others of similar age and qualifications solely because of their race generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone.

Nonsensical Advertising

"New and Improved": This is a nonsense phrase. If something is improved, then it can't be new. And if something is new, what is it improving on?

Facts

"Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored."

-Aldous Huxley

Punishment

Notable loser Fred Phelps and his band of ignorant reprobates, the Westboro Baptist Church, have made headlines in the news the past several years for protesting the funerals of gay people and soldiers. He and his church believe that the Iraq War is God's punishment on us for allowing gay people to exist in our country.

In fact, they believe that pretty much anything bad that happens to Americans must be the work of a vengeful, homophobic god. Case in point: this past week, they wanted to picket the funerals of those killed in the VA Tech shooting. Clearly, they argue, the massacre was another punishment inflicted by god on a society that tolerates homosexuals.

They ended up not doing the pickets in exchange for getting some air time on a radio show.


But you know what the real punishment is for tolerating gays in America? Fred Phelps. Fred Phelps and other ministers of idiocy like him are the inevitable byproducts of a tolerant society that ensures equal protection under the law and protects the freedoms of speech, belief, and expression.

As long as we in this country tolerate gays - and blacks, and asians, and hispanics, and anyone who differs in religious creed or political ideology - we will have to put up with a few mentally stunted bigots who feel threatened by the freedom enjoyed by those around them.

The Right to Maintain and Display Ignorance

I didn't think that anyone would actually be so imbecilic as to put forth the proposition that the incident at VA Tech last week might not have been as bad, had only more students been carrying guns.

Surely, I thought, such a position would be self-satirizing. No one could be that dumb.

And then the Virginia Citizens' Defense League went ahead and exceeded my expectations.

"They had gun control on campus and it got all those people killed, because nobody could defend themselves," [the president of the league] told AFP.
"You want people to be able to defend themselves -- always," he said.

Yes, you read that correctly: the responsibility for the Virginia Tech Massacre lies with gun control. There just weren't enough guns at VA Tech.

Well, now we know what the problem was. But at least there's a clear solution: more students need to carry guns. How patently logical. I'm sure such a trend will ensure a marked drop in gun violence on campuses. And we can't forget how much college students like to drink. Surely, binge drinking + concealed firearms = safety for all. Problem solved!

Now, using the same intrepid logic, let's ensure permanent world peace by giving every country on Earth a nuclear weapon.

Thank you, Virginia Citizens' Defense League. You are inspiring proof that things like illiteracy and a lack of a high school education shouldn't stop you from getting out there and solving the world's problems.

Survival of the Fittest

Most people assume that Charles Darwin coined the famous phrase 'survival of the fittest'. Actually, Darwin never used those words in any of his writings. The man who invented the term was Herbert Spencer, the 19th-century thinker and founder of the school of thought known as Social Darwinism.

Darwin used the phrase 'natural selection' to describe the process that lay at the center of his theory of evolution. 'Survival of the fittest', though still a term commonly used as shorthand for Darwin's theory, is actually misleading: it makes it seem as if survival is the standard for evolutionary success. Actually, reproduction is what counts, and survival only matters insofar as it allows reproduction. If you compared a parent of three who died at 25 years old with another person who lived to 100 but never had children, the former of the two would be the more successful in evolutionary terms.

Inside the Multimedia of a Killer

Welcome to the 21st century, when an extensive massacre is accompanied by a 'multimedia package'.

At least it removes all doubt regarding the meaning of this tragedy. There was no meaning. It wasn't political, it wasn't religious, it wasn't even a personal vendetta. It was just an addle-minded scamp with a severe martyr complex and a gun.

Note, however, that without the gun, he would have been just another addle-minded scamp. So much for the second amendment.

This just in: teens have sex even when you tell them not to

BBC: US sex-abstinence classes queried

US students attending sexual abstinence classes are no more likely to abstain from sex than those who do not, according to a new study.

Duh.

I've asked this before, and I'll ask it again: how is it that conservatives can get away with calling liberals naive?

Conservatives actually believe that telling teenagers not to have sex will prevent them from having sex.

Yeah. Right. Problem solved. Because we know that if there's one thing teens love, it's doing exactly what adults tell them to do.

This study proves what anyone who's ever been a teenager, had contact with a teenager, or seen a teenager on TV should have inferred: that teenagers will have sex. Period. As the study shows, it doesn't matter whether you throw 10 million dollars or 176 million dollars at programs trying to stop them. You can't. They're teenagers!

The question is not whether teens are going to have sex. The question is, when the time comes that they do have sex, will they do so safely?

As long as this administration continues to model its sex education policy after that of the 17th-century Puritans, the answer is no.

So It Goes

Listen:

Kurt Vonnegut is dead. He always quipped that he was "committing suicide by cigarette," and it finally worked.

So it goes.

He will live on in his writing. He had a unique gift for conveying profound truths through simple reductionism - stepping back from everyday life like an anthropologist would (he actually did have an M.A. in anthropology), and explaining conventions in such simple terms as to reveal their absurdities. (I still remember how, in the beginning of Breakfast of Champions, he called the American National Anthem "gibberish sprinkled with quotation marks.")

What Mark Twain was to the 19th century, Kurt Vonnegut was to the 20th. Whereas Mark Twain revealed the insecurities of a post Civil War America, Vonnegut exposed the incoherencies and hypocrisies of the America that emerged after WWII. America after the war was catapulted from depression to prosperity, from devastating world war to nuclear brinksmanship in a cold war. Advances in science had improved our quality of life, while simultaneously improving our capacity to take away life. And Vonnegut, the master satirist, was there to write about it all, with a simple, honest narrative voice that had the power to make you look at the world with fresh eyes.

As he dedicated the library at Connecticut College thirty years ago, Vonnegut had this to say:

By reading the writings of some of the most interesting minds in history, we meditate not only with our own poor minds, but with those interesting minds, too.
This to me is a miracle.
Yes - and when I speak of interesting minds, I am not limiting my admiration to belletrists, to poets and story tellers and elegant essayists and the like. We should be equally in love with astronomers and physicists and mathematicians and chemists and engineeers - cooks, bakers, mechanics, musicians - people telling, sometimes clumsily, sometimes not, what they have perceived as the truths of their trades.
On occasion, even children have written instructively. Anne Frank was a child.
So much for that.

If Vonnegut's worldview could be encapsulated in one sentence, it would be 'so much for that'.

Rest in peace, Mr. Vonnegut. And thank you.

Forgetting Anna

I've tried to insulate myself as much as possible from the past two months' media orgy surrounding the death of Anna Nicole Smith. Nevertheless, when I logged on to CNN's website today, I couldn't miss the big headline announcing the dramatic news that the father of Smith's child has been identified at last.

Great. Fine. Nice. Can we forget about her now?

It is a depressing commentary on the state of our culture that our media spend two months ranting and raving about the death of a woman whose only contribution to society was her enormous rack. Certainly more ink has been spilled about Anna Nicole Smith in the past two months than about the Darfur genocide in the past year. And for what?

A woman who became a B-list celebrity by taking her clothes off died in a hotel of a drug overdose, leaving behind a child with doubtful paternity. Truly an unexpected, unprecedented, consequential event. She will continue to be mourned by masturbators everywhere, but can we please now give more media attention to news that actually matters?

The 'N' Word

The word 'nigger' connotes some of the most terrible aspects of our nation's history and heritage. It invokes memories of over two hundred years of chattel slavery, and another hundred years of continued social oppression. It conjures images of the overseer's whip, of mob lynchings, and of the segregationist campaigns to keep black people separate, indigent, and powerless.

Does that mean we should make a law banning the word 'nigger'?

Since the Michael Richards gaffe last year, the debate over whether there should be formal laws or bans prohibiting the use of the notorious 'n' word has heated up.

But no no word should ever be banned, regardless of how derogatory, how ugly, or how inappropriate it may be. Freedom of speech is the foundation of a free democracy, and the reason that such a freedom exists is precisely for cases like this. The very reason we have a constitutional protection of free speech is because there are people who will voice unpopular opinions and use unpopular language. But freedom of speech also allows the more rational and ethical among us to openly criticize such opinions and language. That's the free exchange of ideas, and it's what makes a democracy work.

Also, if we were to ban the word nigger, what about kike, fag, chink, spic, dyke, gook, wop, dago, cracker, guinea, towelhead, and redskin? And what about bitch, idiot, and dumb - words that are pejorative to women, the mentally handicapped, and the mute, respectively?

How would you enforce such a ban? Fine people who are overheard saying the word? One would think there are more serious crimes that the police should be fighting than the use of naughty words.

Lastly, and most importantly, banning words won't change people's mindsets. A law might stop a racist from saying 'nigger', but no law can stop him from thinking it.

The whole problem with the word 'nigger' is not the word itself; it's the profound ignorance that is a precondition for using the word. Banning words won't solve anything; it's as impracticable as it is contradictory to our nation's ideals. Curtailing free speech is not the solution to the problem of racism. Education is the solution to racism, and keeping free speech free is necessary for an educated, open-minded society.

Nurses Uniforms Place

Part 4 of my ongoing series of pictures of ruined English:



That's not even ungrammatical. That's agrammatical. It's like three random nouns collided in a train wreck of nonsense.

Is that really the name of their business? Do they actually print that nonsensical combination of words on their tax forms?

I wonder what their company motto is. The Nurses Uniforms Place: you're one stop solution four nurses uniforms!

Picture taken in Philly PA. Thanks to KW and KAO for the image.

Damned If He Knew, Damned If He Didn't

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has denied that he knew anything about the firing of US attorneys for political reasons. I don't buy that for a New York minute.

But it really doesn't matter, now, does it? If he knew, he's culpable for allowing it to happen, and if he didn't, he's culpable for not knowing about it going on under his watch. Either way, he's in trouble.

Step 23

Dear Learned Pig,

I came across the following passage in the book 100 Simple Secrets of Happy People by David Niven. It is listed as "Step 23." What do you make of it?

- A Curious Reader

Don't Let Your Religious Beliefs Fade
Religion can show us the way in a world in which bad things happen. It can teach us that much of what we see is so complex we cannot understand why and how it occurred. (p. 42)


Dear Curious Reader,
Thank you for bringing this piece of mindless trash to my attention. Let's take it apart piece by piece.

"Religion can show us the way..."
Ok, wrong from the very start. Religion does NOT "show us the way"; it makes up a way. It encourages you to believe what you want to believe instead of believing what is rational. It values faith over reason and comfort over knowledge.
Any 'way' that religion 'shows you' is a path to ignorance. Religion insulates you from the truth, because the truth can be discomforting. Religion is a childish attempt by weak-minded people to project some sort of socially constructed meaning onto their contingent existences. But the fact that an idea is comforting doesn't make it true.

"... in a world in which bad things happen."
Aww, bad things happen? You poor little thing. Want a lolipop?
Actually, most people turn to religion as a metaphysical lolipop. It comforts them, because without the deluded belief that "all things happen for a reason," they wouldn't be able to deal with suffering.
Nobody likes the fact that bad things happen. That's why such things are called bad. But the mere fact that they happen means nothing in itself. The realization that the universe is indifferent to you is the first step towards living life for yourself.

"It can teach us that much of what we see is so complex we cannot understand why and how it occurred."
You know what's so complex that I cannot understand why and how it occurred? That fucking sentence. This man is as bad at writing as he is at thinking.
I suppose he's trying to say that religion teaches us that we cannot understand the world around us. He should try reading some books. Everything is rational - whether or not one is smart or brave enough to understand it.

So, dear reader, the idea that religion somehow makes life more meaningful is completely and utterly wrong. The advice I would give for a good life would read:

Don't Let Yourself Believe In Bullshit
Religion is a bunch of archaic, puerile nonsense designed to comfort the ignorant and the weak. Try learning about the world around you instead of explaining everything away with a bunch of ridiculous myths and outdated laws.

Trust

"No nation can be trusted farther than it is bound by its own interests."

-George Washington

Brutally Redundant

Reading a history book the other day, I came across the sentence "She was brutally raped." 'Brutally raped' or 'brutal rape' has become a phrase almost common enough to be cliche, but isn't it redundant? I mean, can one really imagine a rape that is not brutal? What would differentiate a brutal rape from, say, a sympathetic rape?
Brutality is an inherent quality of rape, a necessary condition for forcefully violating another human being. I think if the author had just left it at "she was raped", we'd still have an accurate picture of the wretchedly inhumane behavior to which he was referring.

Only Religion

The Onion's March 7 horoscope for Aries:

Remember: While faith can move mountains, only religion is capable of making you feel guilty for doing so.

Literally?

So Anne told me that tonight on NPR, some woman talking about a book had this to say: "And she quite literally poured her heart out onto these pages..."

Quite literally poured her heart out? Really? You're telling me that, as she was writing, she carved her own beating heart out of her chest and dumped it onto the sheet of paper? Wow. Personally, when I need tips on writing, I tend to turn to Strunk and White rather than ancient Mayan sacrificial rites.

People sometimes think that "literally" is just a word that adds emphasis, like "really" or "seriously". It's not. Use it only if the imagery you're employing should be interpreted without any metaphorical or idiomatic layers of meaning.

General Pace's Upbringing

The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Pace, believes that homosexuality is immoral. He doesn't give a reason why; he just declares that he believes it so. As if calling it immoral proves it to be immoral!

That's not an argument, that's a prejudice. But he seems to think that it is an argument, because he backs it up by saying that he believes gayness to be immoral because that's the way he was brought up.

So the outline of his 'argument' runs thus:

Premise 1: I was brought up to think that homosexuality is immoral.
Premise 2 (implied): If I was brought up to believe something, than it must be true.
Conclusion: Homosexuality is immoral.

Bulletproof logic, no?

Since he's so concerned with immorality, I wonder if he considers it wrong to weaken our ability to fight terrorism by dismissing over 50 Arabic specialists from the military for being attracted to members of their own sex.

I'm sure that's a perfectly acceptable policy. Clearly, our capability to understand the enemies' language is secondary to keeping the military loyal to the standards of General Pace's personal upbringing.