What’s the nerdiest argument you’ve ever been in?

By Mojo

This happened awhile ago but a) demonstrates by extreme preoccupation with the accuracy of other people’s statements and b) my tenacity in arguing points when I know I am right. I feel these aspects of my personality are important for me to pass on to you lest you get the impression that I’m a jerk. I’m not… I just have a lot of pet peeves. Also, this story is hilarious and demonstrates the type of people I work with.

This is where I have to disagree with you, PZ

Really, people: boycott the HuffPo. I never read that slurry of watery dog crap anymore unless you cruel readers send me a link — it’s not worth it.

The thing is, lots of people do read HuffPo so as annoying as it is to keep having the same conversation over and over to dispel their dangerous nonsense, we still have to have patience and do it.

Atheism in the military

The sermon was based on what he claimed was a well-known fact, that there were no Atheists in foxholes. I asked Jack what he thought of the sermon afterwards, and he said, ‘There’s a Chaplain who never visited the front.’ [Kurt Vonnegut, Hocus Pocus, pg. 182]

Apparently Victor Stenger doesn’t get it

Over on Friendly Atheist, they reviewed this guy’s book and he didn’t like what they had to say about his neglect of blogs. His responses:

Flu shots – to prick or not to prick

Reader Kay Marie asked me via Twitter to weigh in on the whole flu shot deal: “Would love to hear your take on flu shots: necessary , evil, for everyone, part of life, part of mass hysteria…..?”

Ok, everyone. Short answer: yes, no, not necessarily, yes, and that depends. Long answer:

I smell bullshit

But as I’m no longer in university, I don’t have access to their vast library so I can’t get this paper to make sure. I smell bullshit because I don’t buy that women make up only 10% of gamers. That number seems ridiculously low. I mean, I know fewer women than men are gamers, but 10%?!

Rapture not so much

So the good folks at, um, here were kind enough to warn us that the rapture was yesterday with this lovely website:

This was taken 21 September 09.

Now to be fair, it is posed as a question rather than a statement. But now the site looks like this:

This was taken 22 September 09.

Hrmmm, something is missing. So it looks like 1 of 2 things happened here. Either the rapture didn’t happen as guessed and they are trying to cover their asses or they had someone on their staff that wasn’t raptured who was kind enough to change the website to…um…not worry us or something? For some reason…

Either way, their prediction of 21 September in “fall 2009” was technically wrong anyway – because fall starts at 21:18 today. Unless they go by the definition that the equinox falls in the middle of the season, but I don’t give them that much credit.

[Slow clap of fail.]