Day: June 18, 2007

Neuharth on Limbaugh: What a Comedian!

Buck Banks

From Al Neuharth, the guy who brought us USA Today (or the Newspaper for Dummies Without Comics) comes this little gem about right-wing blowhard Rush “I Know a Babe When I See One” Limbaugh:

Well, when I travel across the country, my amusement comes from Rush Limbaugh’s show. I find that that’s one of the funniest programs on the air. I don’t become offended by the idiotic things he says; I become amused by them. But I also think that from my perspective that it’s OK for idiots like him to voice their opinion because that’s what this country is about and that’s what the First Amendment is about. I might add that I have become convinced, although a little reluctantly, that all the bloggers on the Internet have a right to all of their stupidity, too. And there’s a lot of it.

But I really think we’re better off with those kinds of opinions and dissenting voices than we would be if we or the government tried to control them.

Pentagon Planned to Turn Enemy Troops Gay

Trish

The Pentagon’s 1994 plan to devise a “gay bomb” is making new headlines.

More significant than whether the Pentagon has really abandoned the plan is what their research proves: sexual orientation is biologically determined — not a lifestyle choice

The DOD requested $7.5 million over six years to develop the “weapon,” which they hoped would chemically alter straight enemy troops so they would become attracted to each other. Theoretically, the hostiles would become distracted by their new relationships and stop paying attention to blowing us up. Later, morale would suffer as Joe breaks up with Jim, and Jim’s friends all tell him he’s so much better off because everyone knows Joe is jerk. Then one of them starts going out with Joe. And so forth.

The official line is that almost as quickly as the idea was hatched, it was scuttled. But the Sunshine Project, which monitors such hair-brained Defense Department activity via the Freedom of Information Act, says that ain’t so.

[Sunshine Project Director Edward Hammond] went on to state that the Joint Non-lethal Weapons Directorate, based out of Quantico, actually used the “gay-bomb” idea as a marketing tool in a CD-ROM from 2001-2002 and that “the Pentagon… submitted it to the highest scientific review body in the country.”

More significant than whether the Pentagon has really abandoned the plan is what their research proves: sexual orientation is biologically determined — not a lifestyle choice. That fact could blow up more Republican and Christian right fund raising campaigns than the best placed bomb, gay or otherwise.

Quote du Jour

Buck Banks

We work by exorcising incessant superstition that there are mysterious tribal gods against you. Nature has neither rewards nor punishments, only consequences. You can use science to make it work for you. There’s only nothingness and chaos out there until the human mind recognizes it.

— Edwin H. Land (1909-1991), American scientist, inventor