It is the truth.

I don’t get what is unfair about this question.

I haven’t read this book yet but I just added to my wishlist. I heard an interview with the author, Sam Harris, posted over at Skepticality and it was very good (although the audio quality sucks).

But what cracked me up was the description for this book at amazon.com:

“Thousands of people have written to tell me that I am wrong not to believe in God. The most hostile of these communications have come from Christians. This is ironic, as Christians generally imagine that no faith imparts the virtues of love and forgiveness more effectively than their own. The truth is that many who claim to be transformed by Christ’s love are deeply, even murderously, intolerant of criticism. While we may want to ascribe this to human nature, it is clear that such hatred draws considerable support from the Bible. How do I know this? The most disturbed of my correspondents always cite chapter and verse.”

This is scarily true. The more religious people are the more they despise the non-religious. Most of them act like they know nothing at all of the teachings of Christ. It’s a joke and those people deserve all the abuse they get. If you read the reviews and discussions at amazon you’ll see what I mean.

Now I do understand that people get offended when atheists act like we get it and you religious retards don’t. I can understand the desire to defend one’s point of view when, as it must seem to them, they are under attack. What I don’t understand is why the principles of love, compassion and tolerance seem to disappear from people even as they try to convince us of the “truth” in their faith.

So here’s my own little Letter to a Christian Nation:

Hey, Christians, you would be a hell of a lot more convincing about how true and wonderful your faith is if you didn’t turn into a bunch of evil, petty, intolerant asses every time we debate this stuff.

Steve Balmer of Micro$oft, over at TechEBlog, exposing himself as a dinosaur in charge of a waning empire, discusses the iPhone.

First of all, as we all know, Microsoft has not come up with a new idea EVER. Microsoft Word is a ripoff of MacWrite, Windows is a ripoff, the Zune is a ripoff. Those guys invent nothing.

Second, he mentions, as have others, the price of the iPhone. They seem to be forgetting that it has a built-in video iPod. So rather than spend $250 on a video iPod and $200 on a phone, you spend it all on the iPhone. The math works out. Plus the rather obvious fact that people will pay more for superior technology. All that and, as we know, v2 of the iPhone will probably be half the price, include GPS and have twice the space.

Just once I’d like to see someone like Balmer say something like “The iPhone is really cool and I congratulate Apple on a great new product.”

It just cracks me up that the nay-sayers can’t admit how cool the iPhone is because they enjoy so much feeling superior to us Apple zealots. They can’t recognize the obvious innovation in the iPhone because they so want to believe that Apple just isn’t that great. No, folks, Apple is insanely great, especially compared to old-school losers like Balmer.

I just saw the iPhone in detail. Holy shit, that is cool. Apple just innovated again. Most companies have never demonstrated they know what that means. Apple does it all the time. Bye bye old fashioned phones. Phones are computers now, it’s just a matter of which network you’re getting on.

It’s hard not to side with Peter Jackson on this.

But today the dispute reached breaking point, with Mr Shaye telling the Sci-Fi Wire: “He’s got a quarter of a billion dollars paid to him so far, justifiably, according to contract, completely right.

“And this guy… turns around without wanting to have a discussion with us and sues us and refused to discuss it unless we just give in to his plan.

“I don’t want to work with that guy any more. Why would I? So the answer is he will never make any movie with New Line Cinema again while I’m still working at the company.”

A: Mr. Shaye sounds like a complete Type-A asshole. He should have started his quote with WAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaa. B: The film has brought in $US4 billion. So Jackson, who made a butt-pile of money, got $250,000,000 which is roughly 6.25% of gross. So Mr. Shaye is being pissy because his company only made 3.75 BILLION dollars on Mr. Jackson’s work. What a fucking asshole.

UPDATE: I just found Jackson’s statement about the above:

“Our issue with New Line Cinema has only ever been about their refusal to account for financial anomalies that surfaced from a partial audit of The Fellowship of the Ring.” The statement continues with Jackson saying, “Contrary to recent comments made by Bob Shaye, we attempted to discuss the issues raised by the Fellowship audit with New Line for over a year but the studio was and continues to be completely uncooperative. This has compelled us to file a lawsuit to pursue our contractual rights under the law. Nobody likes taking legal action, but the studio left us with no alternative.” The statement concludes by saying, “It is regrettable that Bob has chosen to make it personal. I have always had the highest respect and affection for Bob and other senior management at New Line and continue to do so.”

I just finished Neil Gaiman‘s book Neverwhere. It was very good. I had previously read American Gods and Anansi Boys but Neverwhere was definite the best of the three.

I’m playing a few games right now. Mainly I’m playing X2: The Threat. It’s an odd game and I still haven’t really figured it out. I still play a little World of Warcraft but not too much. I’m also playing the original Half Life after I had finished Half Life 2. On my Mac I’m playing Call of Duty 2.

I’ve also been listening to Tegan and Sara. Good stuff!

An idea from mopsa.

Your results:
You are Green Lantern

Green Lantern 85% Iron Man 75% Superman 70% Hulk 65% The Flash 60% Supergirl 55% Spider-Man 50% Wonder Woman 50% Catwoman 50% Batman 40% Robin 37%

Hot-headed. You have strong will power and a good imagination.

Click here to take the “Which Superhero are you?” quiz…

I know, some of you don’t like it when I insult complete fucking morons by associating them with Bush, but it has to be done.

Courtesy of Bad Astronomy we have this report:

“In order to avoid offending religious fundamentalists, our National Park Service is under orders to suspend its belief in geology,” stated PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch. “It is disconcerting that the official position of a national park as to the geologic age of the Grand Canyon is ‘no comment.’”

Now I blame Bush for this because he is the one at the top of the pyramid. He could change this and he doesn’t. Bush, and his administration, should state clearly that the Grand Fucking Canyon is millions if not billions of years old, the earth is billions of years old and the universe is 13.7 +/- 0.1 billion years old.

Young earth creationists are free to believe whatever faith-based nonsense they want but our government has a duty to present the scientific consensus on issues like this and there is absolutely no scientific disagreement on the age of the Grand Fucking Canyon.