Religion

Suck it, Jesus

Posted on by Timothy Foreman

I just want to point you to RadicalRuss’ essay over at Pam’s House Blend about Kathy Griffin’s Emmy award comment “Suck it, Jesus!”

RadicalRuss says (among other things):

Bill Maher says this often, and I agree, that we Americans have way too much faux moral outrage. I mean, c’mon, you believe that the Creator of all time, space, physics, and energy, who went to the trouble of engineering a Big Bang and shepherded tens of billions of years worth of cosmic thermonuclear reactions in order to create a life sustaining planet upon which He could create bodies to house souls and send His son to death by torture so you could go to Heaven forever even though you’re a sinner by virtue of a fraud perpetrated by talking snake who offered a magical apple to a rib-woman, and you want to base our nation upon those principles and overturn 231 years of secular Constitutional rule, and YOU’RE offended by a D-list comedian saying “suck it, Jesus”?

Russ then goes on the deconstruct (again) the proposition that this is a “Christian Nation”. Which it most definitely is not.

Oh, and there is this bit I like also:

No, most people believe in God in the nebulous “there must be a Higher Power” sense, as in “the world’s a scary, infinite, and sometimes unexplainable place; I hope something bigger is running it all.” (It’s not. Sorry, it’s a whole lot of orderly processes affected by random events plus nearly infinite time. Human beings were as likely as silicon rock-eating creatures writing “No Kill I” on the dirt near Captain Kirk’s feet. The fact we exist and think only proves we exist and think, not that there is a purpose leading to our creation, or even that there is a creator.)

Well worth a read.

Politics

What Women Want

Posted on by Timothy Foreman

Over at Shakesville, Melissa McEwan throughly deconstructs What Women Want – a piece in today’s Wall Street Journal Opinion Journal, authored by WSJ editorial board member Kimberley Strassel and subtitled “How the GOP can woo the ladies.”

Right out of the box, I can tell I’m going love Ms. Strassel, given that she subscribes to one of my favorite theories of politics: Vagina Voting. That’s the theory which proffers that Vagina-Americans (aka “Women”) are politically attracted to the closest vagina. Hence, all women should want to vote for Hillary. And if Hillary weren’t in the race, they’d want to vote for John Edwards, because of Elizabeth—and also because John Edwards, what with his hair fetish, is practically one big vagina himself.

It’s spot on and demonstrates how completely out of touch the GOP is. (As if you didn’t already know that.)

Link

Politics

Papers please!

Posted on by Timothy Foreman

Tell me again how we are not turning into a police state?

(CNN) — Americans may need passports to board domestic flights or to picnic in a national park next year if they live in one of the states defying the federal Real ID Act.

The act, signed in 2005 as part of an emergency military spending and tsunami relief bill, aims to weave driver’s licenses and state ID cards into a sort of national identification system by May 2008. The law sets baseline criteria for how driver’s licenses will be issued and what information they must contain.

The Department of Homeland Security insists Real ID is an essential weapon in the war on terror, but privacy and civil liberties watchdogs are calling the initiative an overly intrusive measure that smacks of Big Brother.

More than half the nation’s state legislatures have passed or proposed legislation denouncing the plan, and some have penned bills expressly forbidding compliance.

Several states have begun making arrangements for the new requirements — four have passed legislation applauding the measure — but even they may have trouble meeting the act’s deadline.

The cards would be mandatory for all “federal purposes,” which include boarding an airplane or walking into a federal building, nuclear facility or national park, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff told the National Conference of State Legislatures last week. Citizens in states that don’t comply with the new rules will have to use passports for federal purposes.

“For terrorists, travel documents are like weapons,” Chertoff said. “We do have a right and an obligation to see that those licenses reflect the identity of the person who’s presenting it.”

There is much more to the article on CNN.

I am so tired of the “War On Terror” being use to scare us and strip us of the rights that make us Americans.

Hobbies

Mashups, Mashups, Mashups

Posted on by Timothy Foreman

I do love the mashups.

The Bootie Top Ten for July is finally out. Nothing outstanding on the first listen, but it’s still fun stuff.

One of the songs in the top ten is from a concept album called Number of Da Bootz – a collection of mashups featuring Iron Maiden songs.

That collection is featured over on a blog that is new to me called Mashup Town. I’m going to have to add that one to my blog roll.

I still have a small pet peeve about these mashups. At least 50% of them have missing or mangled IDv3 tags in them. I really get tired of having to cleanup the tags before I can import them into iTunes.

Ooo! More fun stuff from Mashup Town – Bootwerk – a collection of mashups of Kraftwerk songs.

Politics

Generation Chickenhawk

Posted on by Timothy Foreman

This is the definition of a “chickenhawk“.

Max Blumethal went to the College Republican National Convention Tour and discovered that these well-groomed young men and women strongly support the war in Iraq. But when Blumenthal asked them why they weren’t fighting in Iraq, the students offered creative and entertaining excuses. Link

(h/t to BoingBoing)

Motorcycles

The FJ Saga – One Step Forward, One Step Back

Posted on by Timothy Foreman

Grr.

On Saturday I synced up the carbs on the FJ. They were not far out of adjustment, just a little tweak.

Then I noticed that the fuel filter was leaking. Must have cracked it putting on and taking off the fuel line so many times. It looked pretty old anyway.

I headed over to Midwest Cycle to pickup Liz’ new tire and while I was there I bought a new fuel filter.

Did I bring the old one along? Of course not.

What size is the fitting? Hmm. Well, the fuel line I bought was 1/4″, so I bought a fuel filter with 1/4″ fittings.

I didn’t put the filter on on Saturday, other things grabbed my attention. So imagine my surprise on Sunday when I discovered that the filter needed 5/16″ fittings on it. On one side anyway.

This confuses me. The fitting on the petcock is 5/16″. The fitting on the fuel pump is 1/4″ So does the stock FJ filter have a 5/16″ inlet and at 1/4″ outlet? I suppose it’s possible.

In any case, I was fooked. Midwest is closed on Sunday.

So yesterday I stopped in at Midwest and exchanged the filter for one with 5/16″ fittings. You can push a 1/4″ hose onto a 5/16″ fitting, so that worked out.

On Saturday I also changed the oil and filter on the FJ.

Man, who figures out where the damned filter goes? Morons? I thought the K bike location was stupid.

The filter on the FJ is located on the side of the motor right in front of the sprocket and over the kickstand, the kickstand switch and the exhaust pipe collector under the bike. Sure, there’s a drain bolt at the bottom of the housing, but does all the oil drain out of it? Of course not.

Even with my McGyver’d piece of cardboard to deflect the oil I managed to make agood sized puddle on the floor and get oil all over the exhaust. Damn it.

I put in the new filter and put in three quarts of oil. (The engine case says it holds 3000l.) The sight glass is a nice dirty brown, so it’s hard to see the oil level. I couldn’t tell for sure, but it looked full up to the top.

This morning I started up the bike. Man it’s idling fast, wtf? Hmm. Maybe it will settle down when it warms up.

I head down the alley. About half way down the Oil Level light comes on! Hit the kill switch. Look at the sight glass. I can’t tell if it’s full or empty.

So I push the bike back to the garage (in my ‘stich – hot!) and get some oil. I pour some it. Oh, look, there it is at the very bottom of the site glass. So I add more. And more. It took a whole nother quart to fill it. Hrm. That’s annoying. And the sight glass is almost exactly the same color as fresh oil.

I climb back on and head to work. As I reach the first stop sign and pull in the clutch, the engine revs up to 2500 rpm. The choke is off. Damn it, now what? If I snub the engine with the clutch it will pull down to 1200 and stay there. Vacuum leak?

I decide to ride to work anyway. It continues to misbehave all the way in.

So why is it doing this? I sealed the carb mounting boots to the head with RTV. I replaced the carb diaphragms (all four.) The choke is fully releasing. The carb mounting boots don’t appear to be cracked.

There is a chance that the vacuum spigot covers are cracked and leaking, I’ll look at that, but does anyone else have any ideas? (Did anyone else read this far?)

On the other hand, I spent about an hour yesterday cleaning the wheels. Who knew they were painted a nice silver/blue to match the body paint? They looked black when I got the bike. (Sorry Charles.)

There are two current theories right now:

One: I may not have gotten all the needles into the carb diaphragms correctly – I have my doubts, as it was running better before the sync.

Two: that I messed up the sync – this is more likely as it was running pretty well before I synced it.