I’m absolutely cracking up right now! Enough to get weird looks as people walk by…

One of my current favorite songs is Love Like Crazy by Lee Brice.

Another of my favorite groups, Lady Antebellum, has done a parody of the song called Biscuits and Gravy. I almost wrecked my car this morning when I heard it because I was laughing that hard.

See the videos after the jump and decide for yourself!

Continue reading »

I’ve been following the story of Ms. Sherrod and her forced resignation and then the eventual apology she received (along with an offer of a new job in the Agricultural Department).

The day the story broke, I was watching the news with my stepdad who agreed that she should have been fired. And me, being me, laid into him because obviously no one did their homework and she was being punished for something that happened in a different context a quarter of a century ago.

I was reminded of the conversation when I read this article in today’s Times:

By Tuesday, Ms. Sherrod’s forced resignation was the talk of cable television news, and it was becoming clear that the Breitbart video clip had been taken out of context. After seeing the full video, the N.A.A.C.P., which had initially applauded Ms. Sherrod’s resignation, reversed itself, saying it had been “snookered” into believing that she had been acting with racial bias.

Bullshit. This is just an excuse to justify lazy reporting and obvious bias. It’s an excuse not to take responsibility for what the N.A.A.C.P. initially said.

This whole experience is a substantial example of the effects of bias in the media. And it’s pretty ridiculous.

And you wonder why I don’t watch the news.

**UPDATE:

Of course, I find someone who says what I mean in a much more concise and succinct way.

Here’s Blair Scott, of American Atheists, referring to the Shirley Sherrod incident:

Critical thinking skills and the ability to use rational thought are vital to the survival of the species. We saw that break down this week as every politician (right, left, and center) and every news outlet (right, left, and center) took the word of a single person and ran with it. There was no verification of facts, no burden of proof, no skepticism, no questioning of the source, etc. The accumulation of logical fallacies was like watching an algae bloom in the Gulf of Mexico: spreading its devastating effects the bigger it gets.

Well put, don’t you think?

I’m not really sure what to think about this. On the one hand, it’s creative. And true. On the other, part of me wants to get offended because of where I come from. But logically, there’s nothing for me to be offended over. I even laughed during some portions.

But really? That baby is just too cute.

(via)

I am loving this clip from The Daily Show:

It’s been a long time since I’ve watched Jon Stewart. And, at least in this case, he’s the only one saying what needs to be said.

He’s the only one drawing the necessary comparisons and standing up for those who need a voice.

It’s great.

The Friendly Atheist also tells about a Christian’s response to the clip and the situation at large.

Today, I read a response to this story from Rachel Held Evans — she’s a Christian who recently published the book Evolving in Monkey Town, about her upbringing in Dayton, Tennessee, home of the Scopes Monkey Trial.

She saw that clip and this ABC News report and wrote the following (emphasis hers):

But what brought me to tears was the fact that, according to the report, there were “no public comments in favor of the mosque.”

None.

No one spoke up for their neighbors.

No one stood up for the oppressed.

No one was willing to face the inevitable disdain that would have followed had they done the right thing.

…

The Muslim community, however, often suffers in silence. And around here, I get the sense that the hatred runs deep. It amazes me that the same folks who so loudly champion their rights to guns and free speech guaranteed by the constitution seem to think freedom of religion is negotiable.

As Christians, we must speak up, for it is no coincidence that when Jesus was asked, Who is my neighbor? he chose the most hated religious-ethnic group of the day — Samaritans — to tell his story.

Yes! That’s the type of response more Christians ought to be giving. If they’re going to pick and choose which parts of the Bible to follow, standing up for minorities is a good lesson to get behind. Many pastors talk about this in church, but how rarely do we see Christians actually following through on it? Certainly not the ones opposing the mosque.

(For what it’s worth, speaking up for the rights of others isn’t limited to Christians — it’s just a decent, human thing to do and atheists do it all the time — but if her faith makes her do something positive, fantastic.)

Love. It.

The New York Magazine has an article that talks about how the healthcare profession is trying to make abortion more mainstream. They want to move abortion away from the secrecy of clinics and towards hospitals or family practices.

For years, medical school programs offered no mention of abortion healthcare in courses offered. This is slowly beginning to change, and as a new generation of doctors are graduating it looks like they may be able to move the procedure from the red-headed stepchild of medicine to being respected.

In the first generation after Roe, abortion providers were mostly men because doctors were mostly men. Since then, women have streamed into the ranks of OB-GYN and family medicine. They are now the main force behind providing abortion.

THE PROVIDERS THAT make up the new vanguard don’t define themselves as “abortion doctors.” They often try to make the procedure part of their broader medical practice — by spending much of their week seeing patients for general gynecology or primary-care visits, and by being on call on the labor and delivery floor. If the young doctors succeed at making abortion mainstream and respected within medicine, abortion could move from clinics to doctor’s offices and hospitals. And if that happened, would the politics surrounding it finally change? Would protesters stand outside a hospital or a primary-care clinic or a group practice that treats all kinds of patients?

That’s an interesting question. I think it wouldn’t make much of a difference right now. Over time, it’s possible that Christian and other religious views towards abortion would become more lenient, but I just can’t see abortion suddenly becoming acceptable simply because the location of the procedure has changed.

The article is long, but worth reading. It’s eye-opening about how abortion providers feel and why they choose to do what they do.

When I read this article, I couldn’t help but think about Veruca Salt. More specifically, the song the Oompa Loompas sang when they had to go fish her out of the furnace (yes, I’m talking about the original Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory movie).

Who do you blame when your kid is a brat
Pampered and spoiled like a siamese cat
Blaming the kids is a lie and a shame
You know exactly who’s to blame

The mother and the father

I’ve always loved that bit because, for once, someone is telling it like it is. Spoiled brat kids are products of their parents. Plain and simple.

But what about those kids who have good and generous parents yet still turn out to be unkind and rude?

Dr. Richard A. Freidman asserts that it is possible for good parents to have bad children.

But while I do not mean to let bad parents off the hook — sadly, there are all too many of them, from malignant to merely apathetic — the fact remains that perfectly decent parents can produce toxic children.

…

Not everyone is going to turn out to be brilliant — any more than everyone will turn out nice and loving. And that is not necessarily because of parental failure or an impoverished environment. It is because everyday character traits, like all human behavior, have hard-wired and genetic components that cannot be molded entirely by the best environment, let alone the best psychotherapists.

“The central pitch of any child psychiatrist now is that the illness is often in the child and that the family responses may aggravate the scene but not wholly create it,” said my colleague Dr. Theodore Shapiro, a child psychiatrist at Weill Cornell Medical College. “The era of ‘there are no bad children, only bad parents’ is gone.”

I recall one patient who told me that she had given up trying to have a relationship with her 24-year-old daughter, whose relentless criticism she could no longer bear. “I still love and miss her,” she said sadly. “But I really don’t like her.”

For better or worse, parents have limited power to influence their children. That is why they should not be so fast to take all the blame — or credit — for everything that their children become.

I can agree with him, to an extent. Some people are hardwired to be one way or another. However, I don’t believe that people have to stay that way. And I do believe that environment (the way you are raised, the things you experience and/or see) has a lot to do with the choices you make.

And ultimately, behavior is a choice. And everyone makes choices based on their own worldview that has been shaped by both nature and nurture.

My fear is that an article like this is going to further open the door for parents to stop parenting because “she’s just that way.” It provides an easy way out of tough situations for parents who do have difficult children.

I’d never heard of Hungry Girl before, but after this article in the NYTimes, I’m definitely intrigued.

Ms. Lillien has been criticized for advocating a path to weight loss that is slippery with Cool Whip Lite, onion soup mix and other foods of debatable nutritional value. She says that the recipes reflect the reality of what American women eat, sometimes despite their best intentions. “I live in the middle of the supermarket,” she said: the aisles that are stocked with packaged processed foods, many of which are loathed by locavores and nutritionists alike.

She says she also encourages her readers to eat soy products, almond milk, fiber cereals and butternut squash. Although Ms. Lillien herself espouses conscious eating, Hungry Girl ducks the issue on matters like seasonality, carbon footprint, organic status and saturated fat. She cares about just two things: How does it taste? And how much of it can I have?

Where do I sign up?

This made me smile. I love watching him and seeing the expression on his face.

I cracked up when I watched this. Poor guy!

The mayor of San Francisco has declared a city-wide ban on sugary drinks:

Coca-Cola is out, and soy milk is now part of San Francisco’s official city policy.

Under an executive order from Mayor Gavin Newsom, Coke, Pepsi and Fanta Orange are no longer allowed in vending machines on city property, although their diet counterparts are – up to a point.

Newsom’s directive, issued in April but whose practical impacts are starting to be felt now, bars calorically sweetened beverages from vending machines on city property.

That includes non-diet sodas, sports drinks and artificially sweetened water. Juice must be 100 percent fruit or vegetable juice with no added sweeteners. Diet sodas can be no more than 25 percent of the items offered, the directive says.

There should be “ample choices” of water, “soy milk, rice milk and other similar dairy or non dairy milk,” says the directive, which also covers fat and sugar content in vending machine snacks.

In theory, this is a good idea. I’m personally trying to cut soda out of my life in favor of water or Steaz. But this is a personal choice that I have made for myself. I don’t want or need the government dictating what I should or shouldn’t be drinking.

What do you think? Are these kinds of guidelines good or bad?