Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Old Rant: Net Illiterati

Something I wrote back in the late 90s… [original here]

I need to start updating this site, so I dragged this nugget out of my old closet to build on a Tweet I made earlier:

Dear radio ad writers: URLs *never* hv a “backslash” in ‘em. VO peeps, if u see it in a script, complain! I won’t buy from proven idiots…

I think that if someone is going to build a website, especially if they plan to CHARGE for something there, they should take a few minutes to at least spell check the damned things! How in the Hell did these people manage to get out of high school, and even in some cases get college degrees without knowing the difference between the possessive word “your” and the contraction “you’re?” I’d guess that 8 out of 10 web sites that I visit have multiple instances of the confusion of the two!  Another word that is consistently misspelled is “categories.” It’s obvious to me that many people have gone through life learning everything from television, and have very little experience with the printed word.  Since I’ve read thousands of books, misspellings and grammatical errors LEAP off a page at me; but apparently the Illiterati of the Net are the rule and not the exception.  I suppose this speaks volumes for the state of our educational system.  I wonder sometimes if it isn’t a government plot - after all, the ignorant and stupid are more easily led, and if the Net is a fair representation of the American public we’ve got a disproportionately large population of morons in this country.

Yup. It’s only gotten worse in the years since my original post. Pretty sad.

Saturday, August 22, 2009

Laurie Higgins Wants Parents to Know a HS Math Teacher is an Atheist

A call to arms for the godless, for the sake of our CHILDREN!

Laurie Higgins of the Illinois Family Institute Sends an Open Letter to the Friendly Atheist - Repost of my comment on Hemant’s blog:

This makes my blood boil. Who the hell does this woman think she is? Christian busybodies injecting their views into educational settings BY COMPLAINING about things their small minds find “offensive” is a reprehensible tactic that’s proven effective more often than not.

The reason the so-called “New Atheist” movement is an absolute necessity (like yesterday), is because these fundamentalist crybabies like Laurie Higgins have enjoyed 30 years of empire-building in the media, accomodation, appeasement and outright, illegal government endorsement allowing them to manipulate public policy in their favor. They insist on their First Amendment rights while seeking to restrain everyone else’s. They’re out of control and it’s long past time to remind them of their place. In church and homeschooling, if they’re so determined to raise generations of Jesus-bots devoid of intellectual curiosity.

With the sorry state of affairs in American education – in large part due to the dumbing down of our curriculum in order to not piss off Christians – I’m thrilled to have good teachers out there, and what they say or do outside the classroom is none of my concern.

These bullshit “Family” organizations are an obstacle to our kids’ education and a threat to the First Amendment liberties of every citizen. I consider this attack upon the Friendly Atheist (a teacher, no less!) yet another call to arms for all the rest of us, from closeted to militant. Ladies and gentlemen get those arms in (ergonomically correct typing) position and fire at will. No quarter given.
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