Tuesday, 13 November 2012
Saturday, 1 September 2012
Ladies and Gentlemen; Jackass of the week. 1st September 2012
Hello. I've not posted a weekly Jackass for the last 10 weeks or so. there is a reason for this, but it's none of your business.
(By the way, I have no fucking clue why the text here is centred, it did it automatically when I inserted the video, and now I can't align it left again. Whatever)
3 seconds. I timed myself saying the phrase 'you either have something or you don't'. 3 seconds is how long it took me to say it. so I have to wonder, how the fuck has BD managed to make that sentence last 7 minutes? That is basically all this video is; her saying the same thing over and over and over, each time slightly tweaking the phrasing or changing the wording slightly, then finding a clip of someone else saying the same thing, and then her saying it a few more times just for good measure.
I think the really problem I have with Bionic Dance is that she epitomises everything that is cringe-inducing about the new atheists movement, especially the one on Youtube. These self appointed champions of logic and rationalism spend there time saying the same things about how religion sucks and there's no god and high-fiving each other. Really, there just like the corner of dickish guys at a party who see an attractive girl and make a lurid sexist comment to her then congratulate themselves on being good with women. I'm an atheist, and I just find people like this embarrassing as they regurgitate the same clap-trap over and over and bang on about how awesome Christopher Hitchens was. Which he was, precisely because he wasn't the sort of person to make Youtube videos saying the same things over and over.
The only thing that got me through this video was watching the planet in the background close up on her and see if she got squished. Sadly it didn't and so we will have to suffer more from Moronic Dunce as she adds yet more inane drivel to her back-catalogue of 700+ videos.
However, Bionic Dance is not this weeks Jackass Of The Week although I'm sure her time will come.
This weeks Jackass has fought off stiff competition from Todd Akin, George Galloway, Clint Eastwood and even Richard Dawkins.
Ladies and Gentlemen, the Jackass of the Week this week is: Julian Assange.
Go and face trial and stop conflating rape allegations with censoring free speech you absolute prick!
Tuesday, 12 June 2012
Jackass of a week. This week in fact. 12.6.2012 (That's the 12th of June, not the 6th of December)
I've casually followed the evolution vs creation debate on YouTube for some time now, although it's hardly fair to call it a debate. Normally in a debate both sides have an argument which they can back up with demonstrable evidence and interdependently consistent facts, or at the very least an internally consistent and logical case.
This is Adnan Oktar (which sounds like a rejected name for a Marvel comics baddie). I'm not too sure who he is, or what this show is; and I don't really care to find out. This show seems primarily to exist so that he can stroke his own ego by wooing young women with his pseudo-scientific gobshite. What impresses me about this video, and what has earned this gentleman the prestigious honour of 'Jackass of the Week' is that he seems to have crammed into it just about every fallacious, inaccurate and miss representative creationist statement ever made. This is first class commitment to bullshit.
Well here's a surprise, It's a creationist video with the interview with Dawkins from 'expelled' in it. No doubt used because Dawkins is of course the king of all biologists and atheists (only half true)! For those who don't know, 'expelled' is a pseudo-documentary from droopy lookalike Ben Stein which claims that there is a scientific conspiracy to keep creationism covered up. It is amongst the lowest rated films ever made and when I watched it, provoked in me that quite wonderful mix of hysterical laughter and the uncontrollable desire to punch the TV. Now, I'm not a massive fan of Dawkins, as an atheist I find his childish and ill-informed attacks on religion to be , if not wholly disagreeable, to be somewhat embarrassing. That doesn't mean however that he can be straw-manned to shit, as the two clips of him in this video do.
But whatever. I'm not gonna take the trouble to debunk this guy, all the claims he makes have been repeatedly debunked before, by people far more qualified and informed than myself. so I'll allow Doctor Cox to address this man's arguments on my behalf.
Jackass.
Incidentally, for anyone who is interested in the evolution/creationism "debate", I'd recommend YouTube Users Potholer54, AronRa and Thunderf00t (Although in the case of Thunderf00t, steer clear of his non science stuff. He is a fully fledged jackass in his own right when it comes to religion and political commentary, but his series 'why do people laugh at creationists' is well worth a watch). These 3, amongst several others have systematically handed creationism it's ass over, and over, and over.
Tuesday, 5 June 2012
Jackass of the week: 5th of June.
What's next? Like it or not, you're about to find out.
I've never liked being given the answers to questions I haven't asked. I think it's somewhat arrogant of people to assume I'm interested in their opinions. To be fair, this works a little differently on the internet than it does in real life as computers generally have a mute button. And this Jackass's diatribes are definitely what your computers mute button was designed for.
This is YouTube user 'DrinkingwithBob' and judging by his persona, he hasn't been drinking alcohol as I assume his name is supposed to suggest, but rather a blend of battery acid, caffeine and transcripts of Fox News special reports blended into a smoothie with juice from his own ego.
To get a full flavour of why Bob is a Jackass, you have to watch a fair few of his videos. Or, you could dismiss him as a Jackass without watching them to save time. Listening to Bob is like being punched in the face with a fist of pure ignorance. Right from the start of every one of his videos, Bob demonstrates his Jackass qualities by posing the the future-tense question "What's next? I'll tell you what's next!" then proceeding to tell you about something that has already happened.
But to the particular video in question; the source for Bob's inane rant is this article, which he links in his video. http://gma.yahoo.com/blogs/abc-blogs/8-old-gets-catastrophe-award-most-homework-excuses-113936385--abc-news-topstories.html. I can't be certain, but my working assumption is that this is his only source of information relating to the story. The article does indeed say that the 8 year old in question was having homework issues and that she had been enrolled on an after-school homework program, abut which the mother appears to have been unaware. But nowhere does it say anything about the Mother watching TV or hanging out with her friends and neglecting her child. Bob is making shit up to fit his antagonistic, contrived and holier-than-thou world-view that everyone is a lazy scrounger out to get his tax money.
It doesn't seem to even occur to Bob that maybe the Mother has to work two jobs, that maybe the current economic hardships experienced by so many affect this mother as well, who may well love to spend more time with her child but cimply can't for reasons outside her control. Also, what the fuck makes him assume that the daughter is on the internet speaking to strangers? The only way he could possibly know that is if he's been talking to her...
I don't know what this woman's circumstances are, but the point is, neither does Bob. He may well be right, she may well be an irresponsible parent. But he doesn't know that, and until he can show that he does, he should stop bad-mouthing people he knows nothing about, who's circumstances he knows nothing about, just to make a cheap political point. Not only is that the behaviour of a Jackass. It's just downright nasty.
Moreover, Bob completely skirts over the other key point in this article (It's a good half a page long, so I understand how he may have missed it, that's a lot of information to take in), that is that the teacher publicly humiliated the child, by giving her the award in front of her whole class. I'm not a teacher, and I don't know that much about child psychology. But it seems pretty fucking obvious to me that humiliation is not a way to encourage an 8 year old, or improve their educational attainment. Bob need only have done a quick Google search to have found out what other teachers and child psychologists have to say on the matter. He may have stumbled upon something like this http://www.humiliationstudies.org/documents/ThukralJournalHumiliation.pdf A journal article which suggests that public humiliation of children can cause severe emotional trauma. This took me 2 minutes to find, and a further 5 minutes to skim-read to get the gist. You don't have to be an academic to check up on things. You do however have to be a Jackass to go on YouTube and shriek and yell about things you know nothing about after reading half of one article.
Bob likes to compensate for his lack of content by faking passion and anger (I wrote a whole section about how you can tell his anger is fake, but it's so fucking obvious that to spell it out to you would just be condescending). But being a blow-hard does not make up for talking absolute gobshite about shit he knows nothing about.
What's next? Drinking with Bob? No thank you.
Jackass.
I've never liked being given the answers to questions I haven't asked. I think it's somewhat arrogant of people to assume I'm interested in their opinions. To be fair, this works a little differently on the internet than it does in real life as computers generally have a mute button. And this Jackass's diatribes are definitely what your computers mute button was designed for.
This is YouTube user 'DrinkingwithBob' and judging by his persona, he hasn't been drinking alcohol as I assume his name is supposed to suggest, but rather a blend of battery acid, caffeine and transcripts of Fox News special reports blended into a smoothie with juice from his own ego.
To get a full flavour of why Bob is a Jackass, you have to watch a fair few of his videos. Or, you could dismiss him as a Jackass without watching them to save time. Listening to Bob is like being punched in the face with a fist of pure ignorance. Right from the start of every one of his videos, Bob demonstrates his Jackass qualities by posing the the future-tense question "What's next? I'll tell you what's next!" then proceeding to tell you about something that has already happened.
But to the particular video in question; the source for Bob's inane rant is this article, which he links in his video. http://gma.yahoo.com/blogs/abc-blogs/8-old-gets-catastrophe-award-most-homework-excuses-113936385--abc-news-topstories.html. I can't be certain, but my working assumption is that this is his only source of information relating to the story. The article does indeed say that the 8 year old in question was having homework issues and that she had been enrolled on an after-school homework program, abut which the mother appears to have been unaware. But nowhere does it say anything about the Mother watching TV or hanging out with her friends and neglecting her child. Bob is making shit up to fit his antagonistic, contrived and holier-than-thou world-view that everyone is a lazy scrounger out to get his tax money.
It doesn't seem to even occur to Bob that maybe the Mother has to work two jobs, that maybe the current economic hardships experienced by so many affect this mother as well, who may well love to spend more time with her child but cimply can't for reasons outside her control. Also, what the fuck makes him assume that the daughter is on the internet speaking to strangers? The only way he could possibly know that is if he's been talking to her...
I don't know what this woman's circumstances are, but the point is, neither does Bob. He may well be right, she may well be an irresponsible parent. But he doesn't know that, and until he can show that he does, he should stop bad-mouthing people he knows nothing about, who's circumstances he knows nothing about, just to make a cheap political point. Not only is that the behaviour of a Jackass. It's just downright nasty.
Moreover, Bob completely skirts over the other key point in this article (It's a good half a page long, so I understand how he may have missed it, that's a lot of information to take in), that is that the teacher publicly humiliated the child, by giving her the award in front of her whole class. I'm not a teacher, and I don't know that much about child psychology. But it seems pretty fucking obvious to me that humiliation is not a way to encourage an 8 year old, or improve their educational attainment. Bob need only have done a quick Google search to have found out what other teachers and child psychologists have to say on the matter. He may have stumbled upon something like this http://www.humiliationstudies.org/documents/ThukralJournalHumiliation.pdf A journal article which suggests that public humiliation of children can cause severe emotional trauma. This took me 2 minutes to find, and a further 5 minutes to skim-read to get the gist. You don't have to be an academic to check up on things. You do however have to be a Jackass to go on YouTube and shriek and yell about things you know nothing about after reading half of one article.
Bob likes to compensate for his lack of content by faking passion and anger (I wrote a whole section about how you can tell his anger is fake, but it's so fucking obvious that to spell it out to you would just be condescending). But being a blow-hard does not make up for talking absolute gobshite about shit he knows nothing about.
What's next? Drinking with Bob? No thank you.
Jackass.
Tuesday, 29 May 2012
Jackass of the week: 29th of May this year.
It’s another religious person. I don’t mean to be picking on
religious people, but they do seem to come up with some of the most stupid,
offensive and often down-right bizarre things.
I’m a fairly politically minded person, as such there are
many views I hold, and many more that I don’t hold. There are some views and
political positions out in the big wide world which, whilst I don’t share them
or agree with them, I can see how people reached that conclusion. Homophobia is
not one of them. I simply do not understand why anyone could have a problem
with homosexuality; I simply cannot think of any good reason to be homophobic.
Fortunately for the amusement of the rest of us, homophobes themselves can't come up with a good reason either, and those who
attempted to justify their bigotry sound like complete pricks. This is
exactly what Pastor Charles L Worley has demonstrated with the finesse and
grace of a cement cat. He’s so again’t[sic] homosexuality that he feels that
the time for drastic action has come! And he has a plan!
This is just a 2 minute extract from this epic 13 minute ode
to horseshit. As for his plan... Really? Are you sure that'll work? Dip-shit. I don’t expect a clergyman to be an expert in architecture
or engineering, but it must have occurred to him that his suggestion of a fabulously
impractical huge structure built for no good reason is the kind of thing a child
would come up with. But then I guess so is having an invisible friend in the
sky and freaking out over men kissing. I wanted to send him a picture of me
kissing another man, but his rant has generated so many hits on his churches
website that it’s crashed the server.
So for now I’ll have to make do with calling him this:
Jackass.
Tuesday, 22 May 2012
Jackass of the Week: 22nd of May 2012.
This is Reverend Jesse Lee Peterson. If you're a woman, then he doesn't like you. He'd like to return to the 'good old days' where women didn't have power and were subordinate (he seems to think it particularly important that they are sexually subordinate) to men. I wonder if he's referring to the same good old days when people of his skin pigmentation had to sit at the back of the bus or drink from separate water fountains and had the pleasure of being randomly lynched by people dressed as ghosts?
Unlike the other jackasses I've posted; vloggers in their own rooms or an ill-conceived rant in a government hearing, this guy actually has some influence. Not just as a head of a church, but also as a radio host and regular commentator on Fox News, making his brand of ignorance and hatred doubly concerning
The Reverend seems to live in a world where filling less than 10% of all positions of power constitutes a take over by women that's going to destroy society. We can only assume then that in the world he inhabits, the likes of Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot didn't exist. In fact if there's one thing we can say looking at the way the world is, men have done really quite a shit job of looking after it. If women are capable of doing any worse, I'd actually be impressed.
What was the defining moment in causing the downfall of civilisation? Ah, of course! Giving women the right to vote! Before universal suffrage, everything was fine and dandy.Women of course can't handle political decisions, they can't possibly understand the important issues involved in politics like who they'd most like to have a beer with. Women are also irrational and freak out when faced with a stressful issue. As opposed to men, who of course haven't spent the last several thousand years beating each-other over the head with sticks in an ongoing argument over who's invisible friend is the real creator of the universe.
But even more important than the political and economic management of our society, is the fact that women may be having more than one sexual partner, OUTSIDE OF MARRIAGE! Imagine that! choosing to be intimate to someone without binding yourself to them for life in an institution that traces its roots to bondage and servitude? Shocking! And then taking action to avoid getting pregnant? what has the world come to.
He like many religious commentators takes great exception to Sandra Fluke, who has had so many words put in her mouth that it's actually quite depressing. Is there a legitimate debate to be had about whether or not the state should provide birth control? Certainly there is, but the sheer vulgarity and vitriol of so many commentators, the hatred and contempt that women like Fluke have attracted is so grossly counter-productive.
It's the laughable short sightedness of this view that gets me. He is completely hung up on being asked to pay for Birth Control (the issue is actually a little more complex for this, but let as assume for the sake of argument that thisReverend Jackass is accurately representing the issue). Assuming this women have unwanted pregnancy's and are forced by the state to carry them to full-term. Who do you suppose is gonna be paying for the education and other services the state provides for children? If you wan't to put it in economic terms, it is far more cost effective for the state to pay for Birth Control. The fact is, the economic issue is a complete red-herring. This is about cynical old men trying to control the sexual habits of young women.
Sandra Fluke is a woman, and as such I give her the credit of knowing her own lived experience as a woman better than any man does. It is disgusting to see so many men distort her words, and the words of countless other women, and dismiss them as 'sluts'. It never ceases to amaze my just how threatened some men seem to be by female sexuality. It would be funny if it didn't have such horrendous consequences for so many people.
I would tell this guy to go fuck himself, but I fear it would bring forth a lecture about the evils of self-sodomy and how God forbids it and how it's going to destroy society. So I'll finish by just calling him this:
Jackass!
Unlike the other jackasses I've posted; vloggers in their own rooms or an ill-conceived rant in a government hearing, this guy actually has some influence. Not just as a head of a church, but also as a radio host and regular commentator on Fox News, making his brand of ignorance and hatred doubly concerning
The Reverend seems to live in a world where filling less than 10% of all positions of power constitutes a take over by women that's going to destroy society. We can only assume then that in the world he inhabits, the likes of Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot didn't exist. In fact if there's one thing we can say looking at the way the world is, men have done really quite a shit job of looking after it. If women are capable of doing any worse, I'd actually be impressed.
What was the defining moment in causing the downfall of civilisation? Ah, of course! Giving women the right to vote! Before universal suffrage, everything was fine and dandy.Women of course can't handle political decisions, they can't possibly understand the important issues involved in politics like who they'd most like to have a beer with. Women are also irrational and freak out when faced with a stressful issue. As opposed to men, who of course haven't spent the last several thousand years beating each-other over the head with sticks in an ongoing argument over who's invisible friend is the real creator of the universe.
But even more important than the political and economic management of our society, is the fact that women may be having more than one sexual partner, OUTSIDE OF MARRIAGE! Imagine that! choosing to be intimate to someone without binding yourself to them for life in an institution that traces its roots to bondage and servitude? Shocking! And then taking action to avoid getting pregnant? what has the world come to.
He like many religious commentators takes great exception to Sandra Fluke, who has had so many words put in her mouth that it's actually quite depressing. Is there a legitimate debate to be had about whether or not the state should provide birth control? Certainly there is, but the sheer vulgarity and vitriol of so many commentators, the hatred and contempt that women like Fluke have attracted is so grossly counter-productive.
It's the laughable short sightedness of this view that gets me. He is completely hung up on being asked to pay for Birth Control (the issue is actually a little more complex for this, but let as assume for the sake of argument that this
Sandra Fluke is a woman, and as such I give her the credit of knowing her own lived experience as a woman better than any man does. It is disgusting to see so many men distort her words, and the words of countless other women, and dismiss them as 'sluts'. It never ceases to amaze my just how threatened some men seem to be by female sexuality. It would be funny if it didn't have such horrendous consequences for so many people.
I would tell this guy to go fuck himself, but I fear it would bring forth a lecture about the evils of self-sodomy and how God forbids it and how it's going to destroy society. So I'll finish by just calling him this:
Jackass!
Wednesday, 16 May 2012
Last weeks Jackass
Last week this blog didn't exist. Now it does. Such is the miracle of technology. At the behest of my friends, I'm posting last weeks Jackass as well, here she is. A young lady who thinks health is an optional luxury like a sports car, has no understanding of human rights and in general lacks human decency and compassion.
Jackass
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