Before I start I’d like to thank everyone for all of the encouragement I was given to get back to writing.

As I just mentioned, I’ve been away for a few days and rather than espouse my opinions on the political goings on of our nation I think I’ll warm up with a couple of philosophical questions. They both pertain to the controversial topic of religion. I hope I don’t offend anybody too terribly much, but to be honest I’m not that worried about it.

WHY #1

Why do people want us to pass and follow laws whose only justifications are religious? I don’t get it. What’s the motivation? I have no problem with people that base their moral standards on a particular religion, but what I don’t get is where the idea of forcing others to behave according to their beliefs came from.

Where do you people get off? I am for the legalization of marijuana but I’m not interested in forcing everyone to smoke weed. I am for gay marriage but I wouldn’t think of making all Americans pair of with someone of the same sex and tie the knot. I feel that abortion should remain an option but I understand that it would be horrific to require every pregnant woman to get one.

Do you see what I’m getting at? I’m A Okay with you believing in God and living your lives accordingly. BUT, when you people start trying to mandate your religion you push me into a place that causes me to start pointing out the intrinsic flaws in your whole belief system. I’d just as soon smile and play nice but I would also just as soon you keep your religious opinions to yourself as they concern the laws of our nation.

I’m not even worried about the separation of Church and State in this argument. I’ll accept, for the sake of argument, the Right’s position that there is no legal support for such separation (even though the Constitution as well as Supreme Court precedent says otherwise). Anyway, under this scenario you have the right to legislate religion. That doesn’t explain why you would WANT to. What is it with religion that makes otherwise sane people want to control the way nonbelievers behave? I’m willing, in this instance, to give you your way on whether you can legally make us behave the way you want us to but now what? Now that you've gotten your way it still doesn't explain why is it so important to you that we live according to your beliefs?



WHY #2

Why do 54 % of Americans believe that humans did not evolve from lower life? How can this be? A minority of the opponents of evolution will point out the fact there are holes in the fossil record, this, while being a pretty weak argument, at least makes a certain kind of sense. That being said, the argument that you hear most often isn’t actually an argument at all. What you hear the most is that there is just no way that beings as complicated as humans could have come to be by chance and chance alone.

I’ll inevitably take some flack for my feelings on this but I’ll go ahead and answer my own question and say that it is due to ignorance. I, and I am by no means the only one, believe that it is due to the lack of knowledge that the average American has of the inner workings of Evolutionary biology. That’s the only answer that makes any kind of sense. How else can the citizens of a nation that leads the world in almost all sciences trust a book as contradictory as the Bible over the massive amount of evidence that scientists have accrued in support of Evolution?

I can call the Bible contradictory because I, unlike most creationists and intelligent designers, have a working knowledge of both topics. I’m not going to start listing facts that validate my point of view, or attempt to tell you about any of the myriad of direct contradictions that the Bible holds. I don’t have that kind of time nor do I want to take up that much space. What I WILL say is that on one side of the argument there is scientifically analyzed proof and on the other side there is a book of parables that contradict themselves even on the topic of Creation.

Knowing what we do, how did we get here? At what point did we become a nation that has so little respect for science that we will stubbornly turn our backs on it just to protect our belief in a book that is its own worst enemy?

This section is likely to be described as biased opinions of a heathen. I won’t argue with the “biased” and “heathen” parts but I will take offense to my writings on this subject being called opinion. Here are the facts: A) While every link in the evolutionary chain has not been found (nor will they be) we have enough proof of evolution’s legitimacy that to argue that it is false can only be due to ignorance of the proof we do have. B) The Bible is a book that has been rewritten more times than we have any way to count. Even if we assume that the Bible we have now is the original text it contradicts itself all over the place. Let's take it even farther and say that the Bible doesn't contradict itself. Even if that were the case, if the Bible is taken literally, as it is with creationism, it is in support of slavery.

Those are the facts and yet we, as a nation, have chosen the archaic, contradictory, and morally suspect Bible over chemistry, biology, geology, and the theory of Evolution that they all support…WHY?



Moody

As you can tell, I've made some major changes here at the Jerk Store (with a ton of help from Renegade's post titled "Blogstream Font Changes, Colors, Complete Overview" on her Cherokee Musings Blog).

I think I'm pretty happy with it. If anyone has trouble reading my blog with the changes I've mad then please say so and I'll see what I can do to clear it up. Once again, thanks for your patience and I'll be back writing very shortly.

Moody

I'm not sure if any of you have noticed but I haven't been writing as much this past week. I was getting kind of burned out. Not only that, but for some reason the past few days have all ended with late nights filled with much imbibing of spirits.

Over the next few days I think I'm going to raid our fellow blogger's posts concerning HTML. We'll see if I can't spruce the place up a bit.

I just wanted to touch base with everyone and let you all know that I'm still here and plan on getting back to writing my blog as well as reading and commenting on yours.

Thanks for your patience.

Moody

This is the opening paragraph from an article in today’s Washington Post by staff columnist Dan Eggen.

"The FBI reported more than 100 possible violations to an intelligence oversight board over the past two years, including cases in which agents tapped the wrong telephone, intercepted the wrong e-mails or continued to listen to conversations after a warrant had expired, according to a report issued yesterday"

The rest of the article goes into the details of the violations as well as the Republican's assertion that this report some how proves that our rights aren't being violated.

I haven't checked yet, but I'm sure our good friend Renegade is all over the facts and stats of this most recent proof that our rights are being stepped on. With that in mind I think I'll relegate today’s blog to pissing and moaning about this bullshit.

On the surface, 100 instances in 2 years may not sound like much, but I think we can all assume that those are only a fraction of the violations that actually occurred. When people break the rules they try their best not to get caught, our President and his staff are living proof. It should be obvious to those of us willing to exercise the smallest amount of common sense that the instances referred to in the FBI report are just the ones in which people were weren't slick enough to get away with it.

In honor of all of the "bleeding hearts" that have been fighting the Patriot Act since it was concieved in the bowels of the earth I will say, WE TOLD YOU SO!!

I’ve done so much bitching about how obviously assed out our Republican Government's policies are. I’m beginning to see a pattern here and this is my version of the formula that is becoming as predictable as the President’s use of the word Freedom:

The Repugs have an idea. Liberals kick and scream. Repugs call us un-American. The nation agrees. Whatever cockamamie plan the Repugs are trying to institute is adopted. We wait for a little while. BOOM! The liberal's fears prove right on the money. The Repugs tell us that the bad news is actually good news. Everyone goes back to watching American Idle.

I suggest that all of us that have had the disturbing habit of being right about our nation's leaders start recording our opinions in a note book so that when we are left with no freedoms and a military draft we can prove that we were against it the whole time. This may seem like a weird proposal but it might just help us gain citizenship in a liberal foreign country that, I'm sure, will hate us by then when we're forced to move to a nation not run by a Christian Plutocracy.

All right, all right, I know, I'm being a bit melodramatic, but I just don't know what else to say about the systematic watering down of our rights as Americans.

The REALLY fucked up part of this situation is that there's not much we can do about it any more, at least not for a while. The story that inspired this post is about the implications of the Patriot Act, which we were told we "needed" for our "National Security". In this instance it's too late. We didn't let our leaders know that we weren't going to stand for this when we had the chance. Not only did we let them do this to us once but we have just recently sat by silently while they renewed the laws that give the people in charge the power to treat our freedoms with such disdain.

I'm not even mad. I'm just emotionally exhausted as far as the state of our nation is concerned. I'm having one of those days where you just feel overwhelmed by the bullshit reigning down on you on a daily basis.

This is a pointless request but I'll make it any way. Can all of us Americans PLEASE stop watching shit reality TV and open our eyes to the fecal matter that is falling on us out of the mouths and minds of the people we have chosen to rule us?

When I started writing this piece I was pissed off at the people that have written and voted these dictates into law. But as of right now that anger has turned into disgust at the apathy and ignorance that we have all shown regarding the running of our country. I'm not even in the mood to come up with a new way to tell you guys that the you-know-what called. Hey ass holes, the Jerk Store called. They ran out of us.

Moody

This post is very long but most of it is the third unrelated topic I’m writing about. If you aren’t the least bit interested in Douglas Adams or Richard Dawkins then you can skip section #3. If you skip the third part then this blog entry is really pretty short.

1.) I have been researching the single payer health care plan lately. It's easy to find all sorts of websites using facts and statistics along with Doctor's testimony to support its adoption.

What I couldn't find was any reasons for why it is bad other than people saying stuff like "Dou you want socialized medicine?" Basically, the only arguments I saw against the single payer universal health care plan were based solely on using the words socialism and communism as opposed to any real facts defining why it would hurt the nation.

My question is this: Why is a single payer universal health care plan a bad idea?

2.) A blogger here that goes by the name of Blue with Envy was kind enough to post a URL in the comments section of one of my recent blog entries.

This website proposes a plan that I think might be a start in mending the divide between the religious right and the rest of us. I propose adding another state to the "promised land" but we can expand the plan if it takes root. This website should be especially interesting to those of you that feels we liberal sinners are taking over your beloved country.

Here’s the URL to the afore mentioned website:

http://www.christianexodus.org/

3.) I have recently started reading the highly acclaimed book "The Blind Watchmaker" by author Richard Dawkins.

In an unrelated turn of events I have also recently read a book called the "The Salmon of Doubt". "The Salmon of Doubt" is a collection of writings by Douglas Adams consisting of unfinished works, magazine articles, and a seldom seen story based on one of the main characters from his, now legendary, "Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy" series.

These two men's writings converge in the Adams reader "Salmon of Doubt". Apparently some time throughout their lives Dawkins and Adams became friends. This isn't surprising knowing that both of them had a deep love of science.

I am developing a great respect for Mr. Dawkins' writing and I have loved Adams' writing since the first time I picked one of his books.

A short time after Douglas Adams' death Richard Dawkins wrote what he called a lament. This next piece of writing is the lament that Richard Dawkins wrote about Adams after his death in 2001. This piece of writing is a touching eulogy by a scientific genius morning one of the world's great literary geniuses. It is one of the most sadly beautiful things I have ever read.

"Richard Dawkins
Guardian

Monday May 14, 2001

A lament for Douglas Adams, best known as author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, who died on Saturday, aged 49, from a heart attack.

This is not an obituary; there'll be time enough for them. It is not a tribute, not a considered assessment of a brilliant life, not a eulogy. It is a keening lament, written too soon to be balanced, too soon to be carefully thought through. Douglas, you cannot be dead.

A sunny Saturday morning in May, ten past seven, shuffle out of bed, log in to email as usual. The usual blue bold headings drop into place, mostly junk, some expected, and my gaze absently follows them down the page. The name Douglas Adams catches my eye and I smile. That one, at least, will be good for a laugh. Then I do the classic double-take, back up the screen.

What did that heading actually say? Douglas Adams died of a heart attack a few hours ago. Then that other cliche, the words swelling before my eyes.

It must be part of the joke. It must be some other Douglas Adams. This is too ridiculous to be true. I must still be asleep. I open the message, from a well-known German software designer. It is no joke, I am fully awake. And it is the right - or rather the wrong - Douglas Adams. A sudden heart attack, in the gym in Santa Barbara. "Man, man, man, man oh man," the message concludes. Man indeed, what a man. A giant of a man, surely nearer seven foot than six, broad-shouldered, and he did not stoop like some very tall men who feel uncomfortable with their height. But nor did he swagger with the macho assertiveness that can be intimidating in a big man. He neither apologised for his height, nor flaunted it. It was part of the joke against himself.

One of the great wits of our age, his sophisticated humour was founded in a deep, amalgamated knowledge of literature and science, two of my great loves. And he introduced me to my wife - at his 40th birthday party.

He was exactly her age, they had worked together on Dr Who. Should I tell her now, or let her sleep a bit longer before shattering her day? He initiated our togeth erness and was a recurrently important part of it. I must tell her now.

Douglas and I met because I sent him an unsolicited fan letter - I think it is the only time I have ever written one. I had adored The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Then I read Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency.

As soon as I finished it I turned back to page one and read it straight through again - the only I time I have ever done that, and I wrote to tell him so. He replied that he was a fan of my books, and he invited me to his house in London. I have seldom met a more congenial spirit. Obviously I knew he would be funny. What I didn't know was how deeply read he was in science. I should have guessed, for you can't understand many of the jokes in Hitchhiker if you don't know a lot of advanced science. And in modern electronic technology he was a real expert. We talked science a lot, in private, and even in public at literary festivals and on the wireless or television. And he became my guru on all technical problems. Rather than struggle with some ill-written and incomprehensible manual in Pacific Rim English, I would fire off an email to Douglas. He would reply, often within minutes, whether in London or Santa Barbara, or some hotel room anywhere in the world. Unlike most staff of professional helplines, Douglas understood exactly my problem, knew exactly why it was troubling me, and always had the solution ready, lucidly and amusingly explained. Our frequent email exchanges brimmed with literary and scientific jokes and affectionately sardonic little asides. His technophilia shone through, but so did his rich sense of the absurd. The whole world was one big Monty Python sketch, and the follies of humanity are as comic in the world's silicon valleys as anywhere else.

He laughed at himself with equal good humour. At, for example, his epic bouts of writer's block ("I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by") when, according to legend, his publisher and book agent would lock him in a hotel room, with no telephone and nothing to do but write, releasing him only for supervised walks. If his enthusiasm ran away with him and he advanced a biological theory too eccentric for my professional scepticism to let pass, his mien at my dismissal of it would always be more humorously self-mocking than genuinely crestfallen. And he would have another go.

He laughed at his own jokes, which good comedians are supposed not to, but he did it with such charm that the jokes became even funnier. He was gently able to poke fun without wounding, and it would be aimed not at individuals but at their absurd ideas. To illustrate the vain conceit that the universe must be somehow preordained for us, because we are so well suited to live in it, he mimed a wonderfully funny imitation of a puddle of water, fitting itself snugly into a depression in the ground, the depression uncannily being exactly the same shape as the puddle. Or there's this parable, which he told with huge enjoyment, whose moral leaps out with no further explanation. A man didn't understand how televisions work, and was convinced that there must be lots of little men inside the box, manipulating images at high speed. An engineer explained about high-frequency modulations of the electromagnetic spectrum, transmitters and receivers, amplifiers and cathode ray tubes, scan lines moving across and down a phosphorescent screen. The man listened to the engineer with careful attention, nodding his head at every step of the argument. At the end he pronounced himself satisfied. He really did now understand how televisions work. "But I expect there are just a few little men in there, aren't there?"

Science has lost a friend, literature has lost a luminary, the mountain gorilla and the black rhino have lost a gallant defender (he once climbed Kilimanjaro in a rhino suit to raise money to fight the cretinous trade in rhino horn), Apple Computer has lost its most eloquent apologist. And I have lost an irreplaceable intellectual companion and one of the kindest and funniest men I ever met. The day Douglas died, I officially received a happy piece of news, which would have delighted him. I wasn't allowed to tell anyone during the weeks I have secretly known about it, and now that I am allowed to it is too late.

The sun is shining, life must go on, seize the day and all those cliches.

We shall plant a tree this very day: a Douglas Fir, tall, upright, evergreen. It is the wrong time of year, but we'll give it our best shot.

Off to the arboretum."

I hope that you found at least some of this post worth reading. I originally just wanted to find out about the cons of the single payer health care plan but thought I’d spice it up with a few things that might be deemed as entertaining. Once again, I hoped you enjoyed this post.

Moody