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Philosophy is/has been described as the root of all bullshite, and it is a fact that BS can baffle brains. The religiously orientated, faced with an ever increasing secular reality, can and will grasp at all straws in order to make their ooga-booga based reality seem reasonable and not a reason to be laughed at.
Variants of the Ontological argument fly thick and fast, just waiting to trip up the unprepared. Fear the the BS no longer as this tidy chunk of youtube education will inoculate you and provide the means to show your opponent that, once again, they are wrong.
What would you suggest as a metric for determining the quality of governance? Gail Dines has a simple suggestion (taken from a counterpunch article on contrasting styles of governing):
” […] a government that has demonstrated a capacity to work for the people rather than just corporate interests, and a government that works for the people has a compelling interest in protecting citizens from harmful corporate practices.”
The capacity to work for the people. Wouldn’t that be nice?
I’m not sure what it is with a British accent that makes a smack-down so much more viscerally satisfying, but whatever it is; it works. This video dismantles the tomfoolery surrounding the end of the world ballyhoo that was making the rounds in late 2012.
Edmonton’s Upcoming Fiscal Black Hole
Edmonton needs a new hockey arena about as much as an elephant needs that desperately sexy pair of high heels. Before breaking metaphorical language any further, lets look at the price tag for this boondoggle in waiting. Thanks to the Edmonton Journal for the numbers.
All in, $601 million. That breaks down as:
– Arena construction, $480 million
– Winter Garden pedestrian bridge across 104th Avenue, $53 million
– Arena land, $25 million
– Community rink attached to arena, $21 million
– Pedestrian corridor through the arena, $15 million
– Link to MacEwan LRT station, $7 million
$601 million so we can have rubber disk chasing in our downtown core. I know I am terribly excited over the entire notion. What is even more exciting is who gets to pay for these shiny new elephantine high-heels.
– The city: $219 million ($140 million for the arena, $25 million for the Winter Garden, $25 million for the land, $15 million for the pedestrian corridor, $7 million for the LRT and $7 million for the community rink).
– Katz Group: $143 million ($115 million for the arena, $28 million for Winter Garden).
– Ticket buyers, through a surcharge: $125 million.
– The province: $107 million ($100 million for arena, $7 million for community rink).
– The feds: $7 million for rink.
What is interesting to me, and by “interesting” I mean peeved, is that I fall into three categories that are donating to the Rubber Disk Arena construction fund. I reside in Edmonton and thus pay municipal taxes, Edmonton also happens to be in Alberta thus I pay provincial tax aaaaaand Alberta happens to be in Canada and ‘Lo I also pay federal taxes.
Therefore, I get to pay $335 million while the dude that owns the team chips in $143 million to build a house for his team and he will get to keep all the revenue generated once the Rubber Disk Arena is built. I need to get on the same plan as the Edmonton Oilers Owner; you know the one where you get to use public money to take the majority of risk and build stuff that will make me money once its built.
As the person indirectly responsible for funding this bedazzling misadventure, it would be sensical to point out that if private industry wants to build a new Rubber Disk Chasing Emporium, they should damn well pay for it themselves and not expect the public to fund their private ventures.
(ed. Very proud not to have used the words “fucking insane waste of public money” in this article.)
What if Anakin had made the right decision in one of the many poorly scripted moments from the prequels that shall not be mentioned. Less dramatic, but a nice thought none the less. Happy Family Day fellow Alberta dwellers. :)
NonStampCollector enlightens us with the special case of slavery in the bible. Feel the moral goodness flow.
A great place to start if you need encouragement to stop drinking the religious Kool-aid. From the video description –
Whether you’re a believer or non-believer, when confronting bible slavery, don’t let anyone throw up this ridiculous smokescreen that says that the slavery instituted in the old testament was so completely different to, say, pre-civil war US slavery. The usual tactic is to throw facts and rules about Israelite indentured servitude around, to throw you off the scent of a Yahweh-mandated form of slavery EVERY BIT as bad as anything we’ve seen in recent centuries. This line of argument is so prevalent that I’m confused as to whether its proponents actually believe it or not; but either way, this video is my attempt to inject a bit of reality into this very important area of discussion.
The god of the bible mandated oppressive life-long slavery of foreigners – pretty much a concise description of one of the worst forms of human rights abuses the world has ever had to grapple with. It’s as simple as that.
No, I don’t hate God for mandating slavery, and no I don’t believe that God is evil for mandating slavery. I don’t believe that THIS god, the absurd god of the bible, is even extant, let alone worthy of any adjectives beyond that! This god’s inhumane and ridiculously cruel commands say nothing about the god that they are ascribed to, simply because they are so obviously ascribed to a god by the men in whose image this god was made.
Deal with it folks; your god is the brainchild of some particularly awful humans. The bible simply and clearly gets this very easy human rights question utterly wrong.
Abandon it, and keep looking for answers. You’ll be ever so glad you did.
It has been too long since I featured a comic from Subnormality here on DWR.
bleatmop
Mystro
Dead Wild Roses 
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