It’s Time for a Conversation, Climate Change Deniers - Truthdig: June 2011 to June 2012 was the hottest 12-month period ever recorded in the mainland United States, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The report from the National Climatic Data Center does not even include early July’s scorching temperatures that broke more than 2,000 individual heat records across the nation. The heat wave resulted in the deaths of 22 people and left millions without power for days.
For the next 24 hours I am blacking out TheOatmeal.com in protest of SOPA and PIPA. If one of these bills were to pass, this page is what many sites on the internet would look like.
As someone who creates content for the web, earns a living from it, and has had his content pirated, I do feel that we need better legislation against online piracy.
I do not, however, think that SOPA or PIPA are the legislation we need.
Want to help in the fight against SOPA / PIPA? First, go learn about the bills. After that go contact your elected officials. Wikipedia has a handy-dandy page set up which allows you to locate your state representative.
Hugs and jet skis, -The Oatmeal
P.S. Please pirate the shit out of this animated GIF.
For thousands of years, people have been predicting the end of the world. People in the Middle Ages were certain, 100%, that bad weather was a sign of the end times. Credit cards were the mark-of-the-beast. Rock and roll was the end of morality. Americans, a few at least, have called every President since Washington the Anti-Christ. Technocrats believed that Y2K would shut all the lights out for good.
The current apocalypse du jour involves the Mayan Calendar ending on December 21st, 2012. As Todd Armstrong puts it in his comedy routine, if the Mayans could predict the future, why couldn’t they see the Spanish coming?
Rick Santorum found himself debating the rest of the GOP field from inside a gay bar over the weekend. Actually, that was just where SNL placed Andy Samberg as he was portraying the candidate in a sketch.
Neither Samberg’s Santorum not the candidate himself were pleased with the placement.
In an interview over the weekend, Santorum claimed that the sketch was “bullying.”
“We’ve been hammered by the left for my standing up for the traditional family and I will continue to do so,” Santorum said. “The left, unfortunately, participates in bullying more than the right does. They say that they’re tolerant, and they’re anything but tolerant of people who disagree with them and support traditional values.”
Actually, I am in complete agreement with him on Obama. Someone who speaks in paragraphs was definitely all I was expecting out of his presidency (the system is too rigid for real change on the pace most people were hoping for), so I am much less disappointed than many on the left.
Anyway, I love Black. His host, much less so, but she doesn't talk too much.
Spotted this on Moveon.org. Funny and fun. What is great is that it works for all sides, the left, the right, and the center, because whomever you are... Well, I am pretty sure it wasn't my side who fucked it up.
Well, according to very few, that is. Personally, I'd be looking forward to a little looting, but I haven't been getting enough sleep the last couple weeks to feel up for the zombies that many others are predicting for today. Knowing life, that means zombies, surely.
I mock a lot, but this is why shit like this is actually very dangerous...
BOYES HOT SPRINGS (CBS 5) – On Friday night, animal control officials in Sonoma County seized three animals belonging to a man who planned to euthanize the pets ahead of Saturday’s predicted “Judgment Day.” ... “I plan to put my babies to sleep when the earthquake hits Denver,” said Tinker who thinks that a massive world-wide quake will signal the beginning of the end. “I don’t want them to suffer.”
"The Bible tells us no man, not even Jesus, knows the day he will return," Harrelson said, and so those predicting the day are trying to elevate themselves to the status of God.
Anderson Cooper mocking, and Harold Camping explaining the math:
From the article:
He and his fringe group of churchless followers believe that at 6 p.m. on Saturday, May 21, a massive earthquake will make its way around the earth, beginning in Fiji and New Zealand. Graves will open and two hundred million 'saved' individuals will float up to heaven. The doomed remainder will live on an unruly earth for five months before God annihilates it five months later.
Complex Biblical numerology partially based on a literal reading of the King James Bible and partially based and obscure interpretation of the book’s many symbols form the basis for Camping's warnings.
He says certain numbers repeat in the Bible along with particular themes. The number five means "atonement;" ten equals "completeness;" 17 is "heaven." Multiply those numbers by each other and multiply the result by itself. It equals 722,500.
"Christ hung on the cross April 1, 33 A.D.," he says. "Now go to April 1 of 2011 A.D., and that's 1,978 years."
If you multiply that number by 365.2422 -- the number of days in the solar calendar -- it equals 722,449. And if you add 51 (the number of days between April 1 and May 21) to that number, it equals 722,500.
It gets more confusing.
Camping also believes that May 21 marks the 7,000 anniversary of Noah's flood and the end of a 33-year-year period of Tribulation, during which he claims Satan has ruled churches. He points to the increasing acceptance of gay clergy, for example, or the rise in charismatic and Pentecostal movements as signs that churches have gone astray. To him, rituals such as baptism and confession are worthless.
Huff Post Comedy received the following photo from tipster @Chuck915 on Twitter. Is this shirt, pants, and shovel the remains of someone Raptured? Or are these items just left out on the grass for some other reason? If you see any naked devout Christians floating into the sky, please contact us immediately.
This is brilliant. Wish I'd though of it. But they did first...
6:05 am ET: A note of caution: both Reddit and Gizmodo are hosting posts calling for people to punk the rapture by leaving piles of clothes around their neighborhoods. If you see such piles, but they don't look like the kinds of clothes worn by the kind of people who would get raptured, it's probably a prank.
And, of course, it is tired and overused, but if I can't use it today then I (hopefully) never can...
Well, that is more than enough for today. There is plenty of good stuff out there, look for it. We'll be picking this theme up again on December 21, 2012. Can't wait. Really. This shit is just too funny. Except for the dangerous crazies. They're never funny. Just dangerous. And sad.
Now I know I shouldn't be mocking people's deeply held spiritual beliefs, but I have a hard time seeing this as really being a deeply held spiritual belief for most sane Christians.
Anyway, unless some words I said back in Assembly of God Sunday School back when I was in elementary school really do get me out of jail, er, hell for free, then I suppose I will be available for a good bit of post rapture looting.
You know, just thinking... Maybe people should put those "In case of rapture, this car will be unmanned" bumper stickers on their front bumpers? If the car in front of me swerves suddenly and spiritually out of control, I can probably avoid it. However, if the car behind me might suddenly not have a driver present in an earthly form to apply the brakes, I would like to know that I am at risk and that I should be prepared to be hit and possibly be killed by some unguided, out of control Jesusmobile!
From the article:
May 21, 2011, according to loyal listeners of Family Radio, a Christian broadcasting network based in Oakland, California, will mark the Day of Rapture and the start of Judgment Day (which, they say, will last five months). Those who are saved will be taken up to heaven, and those who aren’t will endure unspeakable suffering. Dead bodies will be strewn about as earthquakes ravage the Earth, they say. And come October 21, they’ll tell you, the entire world will be kaput.
It’s the kind of belief that riles up churchgoers who insist no one can know when Judgment Day will come, and the sort that many say does a disservice to Christianity. And it’s the kind of message that delights the types who are planning tongue-in-cheek End of the World parties and are responding to a Facebook invitation to attend a post-rapture looting.
