I have once again resorted to vlogging in an effort to get attention. Here’s my Vanity Fair piece to which I refer.

Tyler, Texas is in many ways the exact opposite of New York, for better or worse or both. The best coffee in Tyler is found at Jack-in-the-Box, as I finally discovered after hours of aimless marching – a practice which is frowned upon here, apparently. Traversing a cross-walk during one of many coffee-getting expeditions, I was nearly run down by a woman who really, really wanted to make a right-hand turn but whose plans were being stymied by my own entirely legitimate and fait accompli crossing-the-street agenda. After nearly hitting me, she honked and sped off. Not having a cup of coffee to throw at her car, I simply gave her the finger. This is something I never had occasion to do in four years of living in New York – the capital of Unreal America, devoid as it is of Wal-Marts, meth, and federal farm subsidies.

In the interest of full disclosure and self-indulgence, allow me to note that I myself am originally from Texas, de facto stronghold of Real America. My parents are from Texas, their parents were from Texas, and so on and so forth going back to the days when Texas was still Mexico. My mom’s family used to raise rabbits, name them, and then eat them. I own a .243 and a fifty-year-old shotgun and do so much hunting you’d think I was running for president on the 2004 Democratic ticket. My dad just bought a Blackwater-issued .45 for God knows what purpose. The less said about my extended family back in ranch country the better, as I don’t want the ATF burning them alive. In short, I am as Texan as one can be without getting shot at the Alamo, and thus I reserve the right to say mean things about my home state, which I have always regarded as being akin to a hot girlfriend who is also batshit insane. I may sleep with Texas when the mood strikes, but I tend to disregard its text messages. “didja no tomas jeferson didn’t rly exist plus husane obamas frum kinya in irak???? also im pregnant or mabe not call/me.”

Coming back to the matter of Tyler and New York, there is another, more fundamental difference between the two cities, one that is even more crucial than the matter of coffee availability and anti-pedestrian sentiment: whereas the great bulk of the NYC-based media operates largely by way of deliberately amoral careerism without regard to the consequences of such ethical negligence, the Tyler-based media is driven by abject incompetence and blatant advocacy of movement conservatism. In the wake of the most recent Sarah Palin rally, for instance, a reporter from one of the several Tyler-based network affiliates that serve East Texas described “an electrifying speech” delivered before a “crowd full of patriots and constitutionalists.” Directly before the electrifying speech in question, Palin was hit with the conservative news outlet equivalent of a tough question when a reporter asked her about a possible 2012 presidential run alongside Texas Governor Rick Perry. “Oh, I love your governor!” Palin responded. “He’s so great, I think he’s a great guy, and Texas is lucky to have him, and I don’t know why Texas wants to change horses in mid-stream.” Frankly, I had no idea Texas was in the midst of some potentially earth-shattering war that requires continuity within the executive branch lest we be overrun by the Oklahomans or whomever it is that we’re fighting, but then I’d been away for a while. At any rate, Palin was referring, with some difficulty, to Perry’s apparent vulnerability in the upcoming gubernatorial election, which could very well put a Democrat in office for the first time since the Ann Richards era. I can’t remember the opponent’s name and couldn’t care less anyway; if recent history is any indication, he’ll likely end up deploying an additional 30,000 troops to Tulsa upon taking office.

I am reluctant to describe the speech itself as it’s difficult to know how one is supposed to go about writing on the subject of Sarah Palin. Many conservatives have come to the convenient conclusion that anyone who describes the woman as anything other than a provider of electrifying speeches before crowds of patriotic constitution-lovers is some biased partisan intent on transferring his or her own views to the public at large, sort of like the reporter described above. Likewise, Palin backers such as Larry Kudlow have gone so far as to compare their favorite to Lady Margaret Thatcher. And so I will do likewise. In fact, I’m going to one-up all the Palinistas by pretending that Palin actually is Margaret Thatcher, and I shall write the rest of the piece accordingly.

In the speech previous to the Tyler variant that we shall examine presently, Lady Thatcher began by assailing what she termed the “lamestream media” for having revealed that her confidential speaking contract included demands for bendable drinking straws to be provided at the podium. It was an odd moment for Thatcher, whom I do not recall ever having been so concerned about such commonplace and inconsequential reporting of the sort to which every politician is subjected. This was behavior one might more readily expect from Sarah Palin or Axl Rose.

Unlike Axl Rose, Lady Thatcher had aged well, as I was happy to observe at her Tyler address. The uncommonly comely octogenarian began with a joke at the expense of California, the state which had just hosted her a few days before. It was pretty funny if I’m remembering it right, which I’m not.

But then I am being unfair to the baroness, whose eloquence speaks for itself. “Many in the lamestream media,” she proclaimed, “want to keep suggesting that I, and others who are pro-energy independence, pro-drilling advocates, that somehow we are too cozy with big oil – you guys feel free to shout out to them, ‘You lie!’ Because it isn’t true.” I would take issue with Thatcher’s assertion that such suggestions on the part of the “lamestream media” are deliberate lies; perhaps the lame-o’s in question are honestly confused due to such incidents as GOP Representative Joe Barton’s public apology to the CEO of a British oil firm on behalf of what he characterized as criminal activity on the part of the United States government, or the fact that Barton’s assertion has been echoed by a great number of conservative institutions ranging from the Heritage Foundation to Rush Limbaugh, or that Barton’s own apology was followed by a Twitter link from his account to an American Spectator piece entitled “Joe Barton was right,”

or that this link was later deleted by Barton’s office after causing another outcry. If Barton himself can’t figure out whether or not he’s overly cozy with foreign oil interests, and if the conservative movement appears split on the question of whether or not his coziness was appropriate or even insufficiently cuddly, then perhaps the media – disadvantaged as it is with lameness – may be forgiven for it’s own confusion on the matter.

Thatcher continued to build her case with the ease and erudition that has marked her half-century career of public service. “Their other argument is because I and other energy independence advocates support the free market, pro-drilling, that we can’t possibly be in favor of strict oversight. Man, these guys in the White House, they are just so blind to ever believe that. I am for strict oversight because I’m for that allowance for drilling.” To wit, the baroness favors strict oversight because she is for it.

Once in a while, Thatcher would realize in mid-sentence that she wasn’t currently pacing across the stage and gradually raising her voice into an oddly deliberate shriek, but then she would immediately correct herself. “I want this most exceptional country in the nation to be free, to be prosperous! To not be beholden to the foreign countries that soon we are going to be [shriek increase] bowing to [slightly less alarming shrieks from the crowd] if we become more reliant on them to drill for us!” Here Lady Thatcher has made a pretty good case for prosperity, freedom, and the exceptional nature of the country in the nation. Still, I would quibble that she missed an opportunity to really drive home the risk we face of bowing down to foreign countries insomuch as that she neglected to point out that, in fact, our last president was in the habit of literally bowing down before theocratic Saudi monarchs who happen to provide us with a great deal of oil.

“I’m a firm believer in the free market and I know you are too,” Thatcher continued. “But being free market doesn’t mean being for or against any particular company or any particular industry. It means being in favor of competition and an honest level playing field and for government really to get out of the way and let the private sector do what it does best. But the government does have a key role to play in overseeing some of our natural resource developments obviously, because our natural resource development is so impacting on our economy and on our environment. The president and the anti-energy independence crowd, they don’t seem to see how you can be pro-free market and pro-drilling and pro-constitutionally limited government and at the same time be pro-strict oversight, all at the same time, which is what they can’t understand and can’t wrap their arms around.” Thatcher elsewhere reiterated that she favored “appropriate regulation of industry like the energy sector, because there are far-reaching adverse consequences for our public, for our economy,” which is to say that regulation is apparently warranted in any case in which far-reaching adverse consequences may be hypothesized by someone. To sum up, “I don’t think that they understand the proper role of government in the free market.” Frankly, I was a little confused myself at this point; it was surprising to see someone as typically coherent as Thatcher accidentally make the case for socialism while attempting to make the case for the free market while simultaneously attacking others for advocating socialism and then accusing the opposition of failing to understand her views. I suddenly remembered that I wasn’t actually watching Margaret Thatcher speak, but rather Sarah Palin. Then it all started to make sense.

“You asked for the job, Mr. President, so buck up,” added Palin, who quit her job as governor of Alaska after two years because people were being mean to her.

Be sure to watch till the end, which is particularly amusing. Further details on what I was saying may be found here. I have pasted a summary of Project PM’s coming media network below. Note that we are also building another, larger body, the governing network, which will serve other purposes and which you may join regardless of whether you are a journalist simply by virtue of being reasonable and intelligent. For more information, e-mail me at barriticus@gmail.com.

Project PM Media Network Summary

Information flow is fundamental to the success of every manner of human collaboration. Nonetheless, the processes by which information is gathered, handled, transferred, and acted upon receive far less attention than is warranted. The purpose of Project PM is to change this dynamic by developing new techniques with which to more efficiently conduct information.

Because the great preponderance of information crucial to the success of a representative government is transferred through the media, Project PM focuses primarily on media reform. Our first and foremost effort has been to establish a distributed media cartel made up of bloggers as well as journalists who work at least in part through online media. Rather than simply assembling this group of exceptional media professionals into an online outlet similar to those currently in existence, we are instead organizing our participants into a network which itself operates under a unique schematic designed to take best advantage of the internet as a medium while simultaneously avoiding the drawbacks common to even the best online communities.

In order to seed the network, we have recruited around two dozen bloggers and journalists whom we have identified as particularly competent and intellectually honest. Each of these individuals is encouraged to bring other bloggers into the network based on their own judgment; these new participants are then connected to the blogger who has brought them in and may likewise bring others into the network,and so on . As such, the network grows perpetually while maintaining a high average quality in terms of its participants, as is explained further below.

Upon the launch of our network, each of the initial bloggers will be connected to each other via a widget which is embedded on their respective blogs, as well as connected to those whom they’ve recruited. When a particular individual composes a piece of work that he considers to be of particular merit, the individual pushes a single button which causes the article in question to be sent to all of the bloggers to whom he is connected. Each of those bloggers in turn then decides whether or not they agree that the article is worthy of greater attention; if so, they push the button and thereby send it along to every blogger to whom they themselves are connected. Thus it is that information deemed worthy of attention by some great number of erudite and honest individuals from a variety of backgrounds will tend to perpetuate through the system and gain a larger audience than they might otherwise receive.

As the network expands by way of the process described above, it is inevitable that there will be failures of judgement on the part of participants when choosing additional bloggers to bring into the network. Let us say that Blogger X, who is rather competent, brings in Blogger Y, who is only moderately so, and who in turn brings in Blogger Z, who is a giant douchebag. Blogger Z begins composing and pushing forward posts to the effect that Barack Obama was born in Tehran or that ethanol subsidies are awesome or some such thing – but these posts only initially go to Blogger Y and whatever horrid bloggers Blogger Z has brought in himself, assuming he has brough in any. Blogger Y may or may not be inclined to push forward these nonsense posts, but Blogger X will almost certainly delete them immediately and is quite likely to disolve his connection to Blogger Y for displaying such poor judgement. Thus it is that the system is defended from deterioration by the high competence of the initial round of bloggers and consequently comparable competence of those brought in gradually afterwards, coupled with the nature of the schematic itself. No supervision is necessary for the network to expand while maintaining a high level of quality.

A few other characteristics bear noting. Any participant may connect to any other participant who agrees to the connection, no matter “where” each participant resides in the network, and thus the network is likely to evolve from the shape of a pyramid to that of a web, which is advantageous in terms of ensuring that good information does not become overly “regionalized.” All participants are equal regardless of the order in which they joined. Participants are free to bring on as many other bloggers as they would like, although they will find that it is to their own advantage to be selective in this regard.

The system is capped off with another widget distinct from that used by the bloggers – the reader widget, a downloadable application which displays those posts which have been pushed forward a certain number of times (as set by the individual reader). The end result should be the best system of news and information filtration that has ever existed.

I’ll be appearing on Russia Today tonight at 8 EST to talk about my latest Vanity Fair piece, the incompetence of National Review, the fine work of Michael Hastings in reviving American journalism, and the failures of Western reporters and commentators to provide their audiences with crucial information on Russia. I’ll also be making a certain announcement. A live stream may be viewed here.

As an atheist who serves as director of communications for an atheist oriented PAC that once went by the name The Godless Americans Political Action Committee until we decided to switch to the less antagonistic-sounding moniker of Enlighten the Vote, and also being a regular contributor to Skeptic and Skeptical Inquirer, I am understandably privy to a steady of flow of mean e-mails. And frankly, I deserve them. Atheism is a supremely impolite attribute, amounting to a perpetual insult against the reasoning ability of billions of believers. Skepticism is even worse, being an asshole-driven movement intent on ensuring that no one gets to believe in awesome things like the pyramids having been built by fourth dimensional lizard beings who created humanity through genetic engineering before fleeing to the far side of the moon for reasons about which it would be irresponsible to speculate.

In my defense, though, I didn’t choose to be either an atheist or a skeptic; rather, these were simply mindsets I came to adopt around the age of 13 or so simply because I determined them to be the most accurate frameworks by which to view the universe. I much preferred my happily mystical childhood to my killjoy adulthood; having been raised by a New Age single mother who suggested that I was an Indigo Child with an alien soul, required that I meditate with her daily, prompted me to learn the more potentially significant quatrains of Nostradamus, and had me keep a dream journal next to my bed in order to better divine the future by way of my eternal connection to the collective unconscious, my pre-adolescence was far more interesting than my post-puberty sentience, devoid as it is of ghosts and prophecy and reincarnation and other such things in which I would very much like to believe simply out of appreciation for novelty. Also, I find atheism embarrassing, it being a stereotypical product of teenage angst, Nietsche-derived pseudo-intellectualism, and the mediocre thinker’s fetish for shock value. Being an atheist is like not owning a TV – completely rational, but best kept to one’s self.

So I feel no animosity for my various magic-oriented opponents, whether their respective manifestations of mysticism involve intelligent design, demonology, faith healing, Islam, majoring in English in expectation of becoming an English professor, homeopathic medicine, or whatever. Such irrational beliefs as this make the world a more enchanting place, one in which the failures of human reason are on perpetual display for those of us who lack the means to travel all the way over to South Africa in order to ask a Zulu whether raping a virgin is more or less likely to cure AIDs if the victim has had her clitoris ritually mutilated during infancy by way of a custom justified by religious patriarchy. Anyway, a little superstition never hurt anyone.

Despite my possibly sarcastic tolerance for the civilization-stifling beliefs of my de facto opponents, I will admit to some irritation that the e-mails they send me in response to my various works of secularism tend to be pretty formulaic. The Christians inevitably inform me that they have interceded on my behalf in order to convince Jesus to refrain from torturing me, the Jews like my articles because I’m usually too busy making fun of Christians to make fun of Jews, and the Muslims always send me kind and supportive notes because I have been posing for several years as a devout Sunni on several websites in order to pick fights with other atheists because I am the greatest internet troll in history.

Tonight, however, I received a pleasant surprise in the form of an e-mail from a fellow who calls himself David Mabus and with whom I was initially unfamiliar but felt compelled to Google due to the wonderfully strange nature of his message. The curmudgeonly blogger-biologist P.Z. Myers, I learned, noted a couple years back that this individual has long been contacting prominent figures within the skeptical community in order to keep everyone updated on a variety of matters ranging from the one million dollars allegedly owed to him by magician and psychic debunker James Randi to whatever the fuck it is he’s trying to say in the e-mail I just received from him (which I’m assuming was prompted by my latest column for Skeptical Inquirer, itself having gone up on the pub’s website a few hours earlier). For his part, Myers once floated the idea of calling the authorities on the guy due to his demonstrable insanity and stalky behavior. But then Myers’ idea of fun is to spend years studying up on a crucial branch of science with the proven ability to enhance endless facets of the human condition while also answering age-old questions about past origins and future possibilities and then to pass on that knowledge to those who will in turn use it to advance the cause of mankind, whereas my idea of fun is to talk to crazy people. Thus it is that I have just replied to the aforementioned e-mail – reprinted below – with a polite offer to debate the fellow on whatever subject it is that is intended to be addressed here:

Let me show you how SKEPTICS were partially responsible for 911

You don’t even have SCIENCE on your side…

You’re a perfect example of when PHILOSOPHY becomes an ENEMY OF LIFE…

http://stephenlaw.blogspot.com/2010/06/playing-mystery-card.html

not quite samantha with her *supernatural spit*, eh?

_________________

you were at the WRONG PLACE at the WRONG TIME…

_____________________

this isn’t one of your little WORD GAMES…

blasphemy is a DEATH SENTENCE

you people actually BELIEVE the BS you preach!

GOD 1 – atheists 0

Atheists,

you are ENEMIES OF GOD AND ARE GOING TO BE ANNIHILATED…

Repent and turn to God or be destroyed…

YOU HAVE NO CHOICE…

my interpretation of the STATUE FIRE… it symbolizes the SPIRITUAL DEATH of atheism…

http://www.latimes.com/news/custom/topofthetimes/national/la-naw-0616-jesus-statue-lightning-20100616,0,4295974.story

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2010/6/16/1276680110544/The-King-of-Kings-statue–005.jpg

http://www.latimes.com/media/photo/2010-06/54332292.jpg

http://friendlyatheist.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/butterjesus-1.jpg

PRINCESS DI IS WEARING A NEW DRESS!

http://www.princeofwales.gov.uk/speechesandarticles/a_speech_by_hrh_the_prince_of_wales_titled_islam_and_the_env_252516346.html

______________________________

http://skepticblog.org/2010/04/06/would-i-ever-pray-for-a-miracle/

Shermer, I WANT TO SEE YOU BEG FOR A MIRACLE…

___________________

we do like your music Lady Gaga, but…

The B**BQUAKE – 911

Let me show you the FATE OF TRAITORS…

http://www.loiterink.com/photos/products/182_3424_500×500.jpg

they are incapable of telling the difference between SCIENTIFIC *FACT* AND

RELIGIOUS AND PHILOSOPHICAL *TRUTH*… FATAL ERROR!

they also preach a *VALUE FREE SCIENCE* called *POSITIVISM* that ignores the

inequalities of wealth and power in capitalist civilization…

for a sample taste of PZ Myers’ GARBAGE…

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/06/sunday_sacrilege_imagine_no_he.php

HIJACKING IN PROGRESS!!!

http://hawaiiwebgroup.com/maui-design/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/website-hijacking.jpg

HIJACKING IN PROGRESS!!!

how can these HEADLESS IDIOTS BET AGAINST GOD!!!

________________________________________

what happens when you LOSE Pascal’s Wager…

http://www.peterkreeft.com/topics/pascals-wager.htm

____________

you FIGHT PAPER MONSTERS…

the blood and bodies of the atheist movement…

you mofos killed MICKEY MOUSE!!!!

this has more TRUTH then what Dawkins, Randi, Harris, Myers, and Shermer

combined have said in their entire lives…

they tried to BULLDOZE the entire METAPHYSICAL DIMENSION…

they LOST THE WAR……

you have FORFEIT YOUR SOUL, shermer… you have become an object in the material world, as you WISHED…

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/7/11792994_ffaaee87fa.jpg

we’re gonna smash that TV…

They had become ENEMIES OF THE PEOPLE AND OF GOD…

you pushed too much and *CROSSED THE LINE*

degenerates (PZ) or children (HEMANT) – ATHEISTS!

do you have anything to say, you STUPID LITTLE F*CKER?

how about I tell you, Mr. Shermer, EVERYTHING YOU THINK ABOUT THE WORLD is

*WRONG*

THE BOOBQUAKE – 911!

****************************************************

http://dissidentphilosophy.lifediscussion.net/philosophy-f1/the-boobquake-911-t1310.htm

RUN, ATHEISTS, RUN!!!

——————-

http://www.4degreez.com/misc/dante-inferno-information.html

the 9th and FINAL RING of Dante’s Inferno is designed for little blaspheming traitors like you…

“This is the deepest level of hell, where the fallen angel Satan himself resides. His wings flap eternally, producing chilling cold winds that freeze the thick ice found in Cocytus…”

but at least FREE AIR CONDITIONING is included!

Lady Gaga?