Hold it, just hold on a fucking second. The last several Olympics, summer and winter, have carried a certain sporting elitist criticism on various new sports added to the games. Sports like snowboarding and BMX have been derided by various idiots as not being true sports, presumably because the sports’ elite athletes utter words like “stoked” — or the more vehement “totally stoked” — to explain the inner workings of the sport. Frontside. Backside. Fakie. McTwist. Apparently these are unacceptable bastardizations of the English language, but somehow Slachow is perfectly acceptable conversation if you are listening to Scott Hamilton.

Well, this shit all annoyed me but I pawned it off as old school stupidity and narrow mindedness — until tonight, when an event called “Skeleton” was advertised; I tuned in.

Skeleton, Salchow, what’s the difference? The difference is that the latter is an old move that figure skaters do, something about inside edges and outside edges, and landing, and ice, and skates, and I’m bored already. The former, well, the former is not some Halloween prank or costume but rather a freakshow stunt that seems like it made its debut on the MTV show “Jackass” and not a “sport” worthy of any attention on national television or awarding of precious metal medals for the “best” performers of same idiotic activity. But there it is, skeleton, men’s and women’s events, on the TV, with people talking about it like it’s an actual sport. Medals awarded. Let’s compare and contrast “Skeleton” to another winter Olympic sport that proponents should question whether theirs is any more or less a sport than snowboarding or BMX, shall we?

Luge: insane thrillseekers pull through a standing start, then lay on their backs, and proceed to head, feet first, on rails at speeds of 70 MPH and steer — dubiously, I might add — with their legs while they careen down an ice chute toward certain death; winner is the one who gets down the chute fastest while remaining alive. People yell “whoo!”, and ring bells, in encouragement.

Skeleton: insane, moronic, retarded thrillseekers get a RUNNING start, then lay on their STOMACHS on a plastic tub attached to steel rails and proceed to careen, HEAD FIRST, on the same ice chute with little to no directional control, toward certain death; winner is the one who gets down the chute fastest while remaining alive and with their skulls still attached to their spinal columns. People yell “whoo!” and ring bells in encouragement, but the “whoo’s” and the bell ringing has this tentative feel to it, like they are being emitted by people who are feeling like they are about to witness a horrific, decapitating crash at any moment.

This skeleton shit, this is a goddamned freakshow, is what this is. And yet, the commentators talk about this insanity as if it’s a perfectly legitimate “sport”. My questions for these puppets are: Is Johnny Knoxville on the US team, maybe in a coaching capacity, and do they foresee a companion event where instead of using carbon fiber slabs to careen to certain death, they will do a variation of skeleton where they use shopping carts instead? I think it would be awesome to see those uniforms: maybe a red, white and blue leopard print thong or something — with scrotum padding of course.

What do you think?

Today is the 150th anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin’s “On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection”, and I for one am feeling a little celebratory. The importance of Darwin’s work cannot be understated. Last year, I took a couple of semesters worth of biology classes, and natural selection could be seen at work throughout those two very entertaining semesters, chapter after chapter, after chapter.

Evolution’s important shit, man!

That Darwin concluded what he did before modern genetics science existed, is a testament to his genius. That evolution can be called into question as “just a theory” by noted scholars such as George W. Bush, and that this stance is perceived as acceptable to any rationally thinking human being, is testament to the gullibility of the American Religious Confused.

And yet the Confused are organized, and powerful, and manipulative, and their members are looking for something to believe, so here we are, with fully 44% of Americans in a Gallup Poll indicating that they believe God created the Earth and everything on it about 10,000 years ago. Today, 44% of Americans believe this. This is the greatest advertising campaign ever. And like cigarettes, it’s a product the advertisers should be ashamed they are promoting. What I find ironic is that the creationists are borrowing heavily from Darwin’s work in the promotion of their agenda. Let me explain.

In evolutionary science, there is the concept of adaptation. This is both a process and a feature. Viewed long-term, adaptation is the process (over generations) where a species, uh, adapts to its environment in a way that increases its chances of continued survival. Viewed more in terms of output, an adaptation is a new or changed feature in a species — say, better eyesight, or faster-twitch muscle fibers, or changed color or markings on your fur, or any one of a billion changes that could randomly come about through genetic mutation, that somehow increases your fitness, your chances of surviving predation and passing on those genetic bits to the next generation.

Now, what’s happening over there, in church? Well, for a while the Book of Genesis worked, but this pesky “theory” of evolution started gaining traction because it was all sciency and stuff. One dude having an incredibly productive week just doesn’t stand up to the scientific method, and so we’re sorry, we simply will not teach that in public school (because, for starters, it is absolutely ridiculous). And so what has come along is a “scientific” alternative to evolution, so-called intelligent design, the whimsical notion that nature is so complex that there simply has to be a “designer” behind it all.

Intelligent design has been packaged as an alternative scientific reasoning, which of course is as oxymoronic as “military intelligence”. But you have to admit it’s clever marketing of a really dumb idea, so clever it appears as rigorously researched and defended science. Genesis was never gonna fly in a biology textbook, but ID just might, and that, my friends, is an adaptation!

So yes, even stupidity can evolve. This concept was brilliantly (and hysterically) extrapolated in the movie “Idiocracy”, and scarily is playing out in real-time right here in real-life, in 2009.

Our friends in the midst of a God delusion will never admit it, but the very formulation of ID is proof of Darwin’s work. Hopefully someday everyone will see the real truth and allow reason and rational thought to pervade everyday life, and relegate religion to the fiction aisle at the bookstore where it belongs. But appreciating the timescales involved in real evolutionary change, I know I won’t see it in my lifetime.

So today I’m going to resolve to enjoy the incredible evolutionary jackpot I was born into for as long as I can, and continue to be a Good Guy, and yes, smugly enjoy the fact that I don’t need a book or a congregation or a pile of dogma to tell me how to do that, or why I should.

Salut, Charles.

below is a photo I snapped while wandering atound MIT’s campus last month; apparently one of the greatest scientific institutions in the world feels old Chuck is engravement-worthy (I agree!).

Maureen Dowd’s Op-ed piece in the Times yesterday was just great.

As many Americans continue to struggle, Goldman, Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan Chase, banks that took government bailout money after throwing the entire world into crisis, have said they will dish out $30 billion in bonuses — up 60 percent from last year. The saying used to be, whatever happens, the lawyers win. Now, it’s whatever happens, the bankers win.

This kind of stuff just pisses me off, and it’s the kind of stuff that needs to be constantly brought to the surface because, well, because it does. And I was invigorated with a fresh dose of skepticism and hatred for these people, thanks to Ms. Dowd. Dare I say, MoDo is filling the giant void left in my Op Ed life by the sad departure of Molly Ivins.

And then today, I read in the NYT OpEd section a letter from the National Chairman of the Anti-Defamation League, whining about Ms. Dowd’s piece. It stems from the final paragraph of her editorial:

And as far as doing God’s work, I think the bankers who took government money and then gave out obscene bonuses are the same self-interested sorts Jesus threw out of the temple.

But, oh no!:

However unintentional, Ms. Dowd’s invoking the New Testament story to illustrate our current financial mess conjures up old prejudices against Jews. - Robert G. Sugarman

Jesus christ (invoked here as an expression of grief/disgust/rage, not asking for his help or anything (or trying to piss off any Jews)), this is the kind of shit that makes me crazy. Can we please keep our eyes on the ball, people? I realize Mr. Sugarman is just doing his job, but it irritates me that the Times ran the letter. On second thought, this seems a clear case of the Times’ Editorial Board just doing theirs, and, sadly, it’s not journalism. What does that say?

I knew this would be a fun World Series, with two teams I like in there, and a good matchup to boot. With a large percentage of my Facebook friends hailing from the Philadelphia area, I detected a certain bias toward the Lesser League’s team in the growing wave of “go team!” status messages over the last few days, and that’s to be expected. After all, trash talking is how we as fans can participate in the game.

Unfortunately, many of the sentiments expressed in the many Facebok status messages I saw last night ranged from infantile to eerily homophobic. Apparently, a favorite pastime is to call an opposing player a homosexual. For example, this zinger floated across my laptop screen last night:

“Gayrod is Cliff Lee’s BITCH!”

Is the implication that if you have one bad night offensively you become a homosexual? Kind of a “one, two, three strikeouts, you’re gay” standard? This seems to violate all logic and scientific research. And besides, with his statement, didn’t our Facebook scholar just implicate Mr. Lee as being a little light in the loafers too? After all, it takes two to tango, and I think that whether Cliff gave A-Rod a reach-around or not (which he does not mention in his comment), he’s gay, according to my little Facebook friend. So, there!

I’ve never understood this knee-jerk reaction to call the opposition gay. Hurling these random ad hominem (ad homonem?) attacks on teams when there are plenty of other suitable insults and jabs available just make you look stupid. Besides, everyone knows that it’s just the Boston Red Sox that are a flaming bunch of queers.

Personally, I’m looking forward to at least four more awesome games in this series, and great performances on both sides of the Great Baseball Divide. I think we truly have one of the best World Series matchups in years, and that both teams truly deserve to be there. This brings me to my second favorite idiot of last evening, the guy who said the Yankees were “overrated”. 103 wins is not an opinion, you homo.

Game Two tonight. Bring it.

Ever since Brenda & I moved to Boulder there has been one glaring omission from our daily lives, and that is settling down to read a good local newspaper. Back in Jersey, the Star Ledger was an excellent paper that originated from the local county where we last lived in that state. We got great reporting and writing, on everything from the international to the very local. The sports page was phenomenal. Molly Ivins’ column was printed regularly, and we had almost no use for the New York Times and its holier-than-thou masthead font (and pricing).

Here in Boulder, we have the Daily Camera.

Now, being a Boulder newspaper, the Camera boasts some interesting and fun features that definitely pander to the local culture. There is a “trail dogs of the week” section, where reader-submitted photos of their dogs out on the many local trails are featured; there is a rock climbing column, as well as what has to be the highest percentage of sports section coverage devoted to cycling and running in all their forms. And of course the letters to the editor section—replete with outlandish requests and complaints from both ends of the liberal-conservative continuum—never fails to entertain. But the editing of this newspaper has been sub-par from day one, and pretty much every single day I can spot at least a couple of grammatical and spelling errors in what is supposed to be a professional newspaper, and one of the articles in today’s business section encapsulates this dilemma so well I just had to share the first paragraph:

Camera’s Circulation Falls By Alicia Wallace, Camera Business Writer

New statistics show circulation at major US newspapers continued to tumble, and the Camera does not appears to be immune to the trend.

‘nuff said? Thought so.

Well, my silly little piece on “green” email signatures is in the news again, this time in the L.A. Times. When I wrote that, it was cathartic because I was so frustrated by a particular co-worker and his sanctimonious ways, and his mindless insistence that we all preach to our clients this message that I felt went without saying. Who knew it would become the single most popular post on my website and the source for two newspaper articles on green email signatures (and a television interview that as far as I know landed on the cutting room floor)?

Of course the fact that I work in sustainable design and live in left-leaning Boulder Colorado made my frowny post on green email signatures the perfect ammo for conservative papers like the Wall Street Journal and the L.A. Times—here was a guy who supposedly cared about the environment and even he is saying these signatures are stupid! Co-workers (and strangers reaching me through my website) have accused me of being a hipocrit (sic), but I think they miss the point. These whiny, sniveling exhortations to “please consider the environment” make you look exactly like the stereotype the Fox News windbags are trying to perpetuate. I’m not playing along, and you shouldn’t either. Save that unbridled environmental enthusiasm for flipping the bird at the next Hummer you see.

Working for a sustainable design consultant, as I do, I am continually exposed to exciting and interesting individuals with progressive views and ideas. The climate change crisis is real, and I’m excited to be helping in some small way to affect architectural design in a positive and sustainable way. But the sustainable message is bubbling over into my colleagues’ email signatures, as evidenced by a recent email, which carried the following message after the author’s signoff:

“please consider the environment before printing this message.”

• Like, don’t print this, OK?
• Printing this message kills trees. Print is murder!
• Please consider filing this email in an email folder and refraining from printing it, since that would be redundant and a waste of space, time and paper. Just make sure you back up your hard drive, you idiot.
• Please respond to this email as soon as possible, as I am soon unplugging all my electrical devices and moving to the woods. And this should go without saying, but you should NOT print this message, since the more you print, the less woods I will have left to live in. Again, please hurry.
• You know pal, you really should think about what you’re doing there, with your mouse cursor on the “print” button; don’t you realize that trees are a precious and beautiful resource? You already have the material, right there in front of your oil-thirsty face, in digital format. You should read it on your monitor instead of wasting precious paper to print out what you already have, you heartless bastard! I can’t believe you could be so stupid, you PAPER WASTER! Of course, by reading it on your monitor you’re running your computer which consumes about 450 watts of power while it’s running whereas you could print this out on a few sheets of paper and power down. Hmmm. Let me think about this for a second. I’ve got it! I’ll just bet you don’t do two-sided printing, thereby wasting TWICE as much paper as I do when I print things duplex (even though I almost never, ever, print things, because I am pleased to consider the environment before doing so)! Oh you climate change accelerator, you! I hate you! Yes, far better that you read this on screen, especially since you don’t have a duplex printer. Come to think of it, you should really get a duplex printer; I can’t believe you don’t have one of those! Jesus, you are a resource hogging pig! Aren’t you glad you have me to help you think about these issues? By the way, how many miles per gallon do you get with you car? You DO drive a hybrid, don’t you? Put that hamburger DOWN, dammit! LISTEN TO ME!!

The other day I signed and emailed a message to Congress calling for action to solve the climate change issues facing the planet, and sent it to Al Gore as part of his presentation in Washington. Yesterday, I got this thank you email:

Dear Rob,

Thank you!

By 10:00 AM yesterday, as I took my seat in the hearing room, an incredible 519,414 people had signed our message to Congress demanding immediate action to solve the climate crisis.

All of those boxes chock full of your messages, sitting right next to me as I testified, were a fantastic show of support and one that is already having an impact as our Representatives and Senators begin to debate solutions to the climate crisis. In fact, so many people signed our message in the 24 hours before the hearing, we are still working on printing them.

Still working on… printing them.

JFC, this is why no one takes this shit seriously, even though they really, really should. Al, do me a favor, and start walking the fucking walk. You of all people can’t afford to generate more fodder for the right wing and their oily-eyed shortsightedness and agenda, m’kay?

Besides, if all you want is a big old pile of papers as a symbolic prop, just fill a box with recycling; the right wing won’t know the difference, since it appears half those morons can’t read, anyway.