"If science disagrees with your ideological/philosophical/ethical/political viewpoint, it is science that is wrong, not your subjective opinion."
--A thoroughly sarcastic Jen McCreight on BlagHag.
I'd stopped reading her for a while, but I'm swiftly catching up and kicking myself for missing the excellence. Keep it up, Jen!
"Is there any way you can think of to make the elder Gosselins go away? I AM ALL EARS."
--Mommy Wants Vodka. (Preach on, sister.)
"Whoever imagines himself a favorite with God holds others in contempt."
--Robert G. Ingersoll.
Epic win, PZ: "I get so tired of being told by the ignorant that (atheists') goal is to put a Stalin in power, when they dream of a Palin."
--PZ Myers.
"However much Playgirl paid Levi Johnston for that photo shoot, it wasn't enough....And, psst, Levi? If you did that Playgirl shoot only to drive your former future mother-in-law crazy—and if that was your plan, kiddo, it worked—imagine how much crazier she'll get if you do a little gay-for-pay porn. Just sayin'."
--Dan Savage.
"A study that tried to analyze how pornography affected men's views ran into an unfortunate problem: no control group. It seems there does not exist a population of males that doesn't see some porn regularly."
--PZ Myers.
"Let me put it in terms that golfers would understand. He played the wrong hole, had an errant drive and now he's got to get out of a bad lie."
--George Lopez, on Tiger Woods' alleged infidelity.
"The most reliable standbys of modern filmmaking are explosions and breasts."
--Gregg Easterbrook. How else to explain Jenny McCarthy?
"The only people who are obsessed with food are anorexics and the morbidly obese. And that, in erotic terms, is the Catholic church in a nutshell."
--Stephen Fry.
"Did any of them find a minute to wonder if their scraping of the hogwash/bullshit/celebrity-baked crap from the bottom of the news barrel and serving it up 24/7 doesn't have something to do with creating a climate that mistakes entertainment for news to an extent that it all but seduces a Richard and Mayumi Heene into believing they are -- even if what they dream up to qualify is a hoax -- entitled to their 15 minutes? I don't know, but I have some empathy for Balloon Boy's Dad.
--Norman Lear.
Via Doonesbury.com
"Studies of homosexual veterans make clear that having a same gender or an opposite-gender orientation is unrelated to job performance in the same way as is being left or right-handed."
--Defense Personnel Security Research Center study on homosexuals in the military, quoted by Shauna Miller.
Via Sullivan.
"Leave the matter of religion to the family altar, the church and the private schools, supported entirely by private contributions. Keep the church and state forever separated."
--Ulysses S. Grant, speech to the Army of the Tennessee, Des Moines, Iowa, 1875
Via Pharyngula.
Suzanne Summers brings teh crazie on Patrick Swayze's cancer death:
"Why couldn't they have built him up nutritionally and got ten (sic) rid of the toxins? . . . I hate to be this controversial . . . but I have to speak out."So do we, Ms. Summers; you're a fucking loon.
"Holistic hoo-ha."Via Pharyngula.
"If it was easy, everyone would be doing it."
--Chris McCormack, 2007 Ironman World Champion.
“It's almost Labor Day, which means that many of us are about to engage in the great American ritual of sitting in traffic on the way to a large body of water.”
--Jonah Lehrer, guest-blogging for Andrew Sullivan
"I strongly suspect that creationism as a movement would never have arisen if scientists hadn't insisted on encompassing the human species in evolution's family tree. Whatever the creationists say, they don't really care about turtles or oak trees or earthworms. If scientists were willing to grant that human beings were special, unrelated to the rest of Earthlife, creationists would probably have been happy to concede that every other species came about from a process of mindless natural selection. But the evidence doesn't support a separate origin for humanity, and the idea that we might be one of those animals - a relative of slime molds and toadstools, of centipedes and cyanobacteria - enrages creationists, who can't bear to believe in a universe in which they are not the central and most important figure. In their quest to reclaim that sense of specialness, they would gladly obliterate the best theory ever devised to explain the true origins and diversity of life as we now see it."
--Daylight Atheism
"It’s good for cycling and the Tour de France that we’re only talking about sporting issues during this Tour."
--Tour de France race leader Alberto Contador, on the lack of doping scandals to date.
"So, like, Britney and Jennifer were like BFF since like forever but now they hate each other because Britney was dating Kevin and they broke up and now Jennifer is all into Kevin but the only reason that Britney really broke up with Kevin in the first place was to make him like her more. OMG."
Joe Lindsey of Bicycling Magazine, explaining the bickering nature of the politics of professional road cycling.
"What I believe is that all clear-minded people should remain two things throughout their lifetimes: Curious and teachable."
--Roger Ebert.
"...the dedication of certain scientists is just amazing. I talked to a woman who is an expert on a certain kind of spider. And she had slept on a lava bed every night for seven years so she could be there in the morning when the spiders woke up."
Alan Alda, host of Scientific American Frontiers.
Via Skepchick.
