Quote of the hour

In a news article about President Obama refusing to participate in the National Day of Prayer I found this gem.

But, despite numerous attempts to get a representative from the executive office to attend, "it doesn't appear they are going to fulfill our request," said Becky Armstrong, marketing and media manager of the National Day of Prayer Task Force.

I understand that some can see Obama's refusal as a lack of religiosity. But when the National Day of Prayer has a marketing and media manager and a Task Force, how can we call it prayer? It sounds to me like one of those hyped events to force people into bandwagoning for an empty cause to promote religious affiliation. At what cost would non-participation come? Nothing but being the focus of whispered gossip in your small nook of Anytown, USA.

Gotta start somewhere

Intolerable Beauty

Beautiful photography

http://www.chrisjordan.com/

The eyes of a dialectical thinker

I knew you needed some kind of physiological enhancement to make the both-and move and make it stick.

I recall Burke writing in his Attitudes Toward History in a later foreward or afterword that he had begun seeing everything double for a bit there in early 1980.

So, mudskippers and chameleons might be the wisest creatures in the universe? Talk amongst yourselves.

The anatomy of a joke gone wrong

1.
Dear Friends,

I was wondering if anyone might be able to suggest a reasonably priced
(affordable to a graduate student) yet reliable plumber?

Thank you,
Matt Vorell

Matthew S. Vorell, MA
Department of Communication
University of Colorado at Boulder
UCB 270
_________________________________________-
2.
Mario, my building's superintendent , is a reasonable plumber.
.....................
Jason Lesko
Department of Communication, UCB 270
University of Colorado
Boulder CO 80309-0270
.....................
_______________________________________________-
3.

Hi Jason,

Thanks for the referral. What is Mario's phone number?

Matt


Matthew S. Vorell, MA
Department of Communication
University of Colorado at Boulder
UCB 270
Boulder, CO 80309
________________________________________________-
4.
I apologize Matt. It was a joke: Mario my superintendent = Mario the Super = Super Mario
Now that guy had a way with plumbing.

The facist ideology of Star Trek

http://www.friesian.com/trek.htm

Brilliance ensues.

Don't fear the reaper

Writer Hunter S. Thompson Kills Himself - Police

1 hour, 8 minutes ago Top Stories - Reuters



DENVER (Reuters) - Hunter S. Thompson, the renowned American journalist and novelist who wrote "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," fatally shot himself at his Colorado home on Sunday night, police said. He was 67. "We do have confirmation that Hunter Thompson was found dead this evening of an apparent self-inflicted wound," said Tricia Louthis, spokeswoman for the Pitkin County Sheriff's Office. Thompson was found dead at his home outside the ski resort of Aspen. The Sheriff's Office was unable to provide any further details.

Check out these pics though. I think he was racing the reaper.


May 15, 2001


June 21, 2004

That's either the three hardest years of living or he's cancer filled and fading fast.

White supremacists in the news

If only Karl Linnaeus knew the can of worms he opened when he classified the four races.

Supremacists Split After Race Allegation

Fri Feb 4, 9:36 PM ET Strange News - AP


SOUTH ST. PAUL, Minn. - A high-profile white supremacist record company appears to have gone out of business after one co-owner accused the other of having a Hispanic mother.



Panzerfaust was behind Project Schoolyard USA, which last year distributed thousands of free compact discs to teenagers across the country, particularly in Minnesota.


The company is now appears dormant, with its Web address directing views to another white power site called "Free Your Mind." No working telephone number for the Panzerfaust could be found Friday.


The Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups, reports that co-owners Byron Calvert, 33, and Anthony A. Pierpont, 38, had a falling out after Calvert saw a copy of Pierpont's birth certificate.


The document, which is posted on the center's Web site, indicates that Pierpont's mother was named Maria Marcola del Prado and she was born in Mexico. Also, Calvert claimed in an online posting that Pierpont had sex with Thai prostitutes.


As a result, and Pierpont's refusal to take a DNA test, Calvert wrote last month that he would quit the company and so would its webmaster. The center reports that influential hate groups Hammerskin Nation and Volksfront also denounced Pierpont.


The Free Your Mind site said that any business done with Pierpont should be considered "an act of treason."

Considering this from a rhetorical angle one can see the curious interplay between bureaucracy and the body. That a white supremacist would do a background check of sorts on his business partner to verify his racial identity (and purity), and that such a thing could be gleaned from a birth certificate demonstrates the curious nature of race in the world.

Race doesn't exist. Karl Linnaeus made it up. He also believed in troglodytes, a race of sub-human night-dwellers with light sensitivity and other such attributes.

Yet, so many legitimate discourses in the world still support a notion of race: census taking, social science surveys, birth certificates, national identity.

The issue that ruins racism as a constitutive discourse is that it's ultimately built upon an absurd foundation. Racialism and racism rest upon the presumption that that blood and body constitute the person and that the flesh does not lie. Yet the deeper you go into the flesh the more absurd a picture you get. Instead of more definitive answers, you muddy the concept of race and any notion of its integrity. Based upon genomic comparison alone the part that makes us human as opposed to plant or snail is so miniscule. Secondly, a genetic census of one person's body would reveal that most of the genetic material therein isn't at all human. Microbes off all types residing in and on the body quickly crowd out human cells at a ratio of 1.5 foreign cells to 1 human cells.

Racists and just about everyone in the world have drawn a line of demarcation that to them is as plain a fact as the sun in the sky: race exists. Differences exist, differences we see. Skin color, skull shape, and stature represent such a miniscule measure of difference I wonder why we bother. Overwhelming evidence about the material nature of our inheritance points to our likeness with all living things.

While we're on the topic of race, let's talk about the unicorn who rides down a rainbow to administer IQ tests.