Yes, I consider this spamming and ban-worthy:

From an alleged zine on my myspace bulletin board (all typos left intact):

Subject: "Interesting indeed"

Body: "Billy Graham's daughter was interviewed on the Early Show and Jane Clayson asked her "How could God let something like this Happen?" (regarding Katrina) Anne Graham gave an extremely profound and insightful response. She said, "I believe God is deeply saddened by this, just as we are, but for years we've been telling God to get out of our schools, to get out of our government and to get out of our lives.
And being the gentleman He is, I believe He has calmly backed out. How can we expect God to give us His blessing and His protection if we demand He leave us alone?"
In light of recent events...terrorists attack, school shootings, etc. I think it started when Madeleine Murray O'Hare (she was murdered, her body found recently) complained she didn't want prayer in our schools, and we said OK.
Then someone said you better not read the Bible in school . the Bible says thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal, and love your neighbor as yourself. And we said OK.
Then Dr. Benjamin Spock said we shouldn't spank our children when they misbehave because their little personalities would be warped and we might damage their self-esteem (Dr. Spock's son committed suicide). We said an expert should know what he's talking about. And we
said OK.
Now we're asking ourselves why our children have no conscience, why they don't know right from wrong, and why it doesn't bother them to kill strangers, their classmates, and themselves.
Probably, if we think about it long and hard enough, we can figure it out. I think it has a great deal to do with
"WE REAP WHAT WE SOW."
Funny how simple it is for people to trash God and then w onder why the world's going to hell. Funny how we believe what the newspapers say, but question what the Bible says
Funny how you can send 'jokes' through e-mail and they spread like wildfire but when you start sending messages regarding the Lord, people think twice about sharing.
Funny how lewd, crude, vulgar and obscene articles pass freely through cyberspace, but public discussion of God is suppressed in the school and workplace.
Are you laughing?
Funny how when you forward this message, you will not send it to many on your address list because you're not sure what they believe, or what they WILL think of you for sending it. Funny how we can be more worried about what other people think of us than what God thinks of us.
Pass it on if you think it has merit. If not then just discard it... no one will know you did. But, if you discard this thought process, don't sit back and complain about what bad shape the world is in."

You know what? Katrina turned out so badly because people ignored what scientists told them would happen. Well, yes, that's only part of it, but it's a very large part. And that's what I wrote to the person who used what I thought was an "underground music zine" to proselytize inappropriately. So I removed them. I also removed somebody who wrote racist and eugenics based trash. You know what? I don't care what you believe in just so long as you act like a decent person. But when you start judging the world based on what I consider trash and ignoring my rights to NOT BELIEVE (what ever it is you might believe in) you're gone. I have no patience with bigots. Nor should I. There's enough pain and suffering happening in the world and I've seen it happen to people who believe just as often as I've seen it happen to don't. Actually that's a lie. By statistics more people who believe have bad things happen.

I actually had a relative tell me tonight that I just think I'm an atheist because I do good for the sake of doing good. That's right. Apparently real atheists don't do good.

You know what? Fuck that noise. I've had enough. PZ Myers is right. The religious are mostly tools and bigots. There's no point to even trying to have a dialogue with most of them. They're not interested. And it's just sickening.

Working on an essay: Part 1 of debunking The pH Miracle

I received the book (The pH Miracle) from my sister and immediately started drinking the greens and eating avocados as well as trying to cut back on dairy and sugar while reading the book.

I've found several fallacious statements, and the fact that they use pure anecdotal evidence rather than any "real" research should let people know that this is not actual science or medical help he's practicing. And anybody who says to sneak multi-vitamins and minerals by the numbers he and his wife mention into a hospital setting while somebody's healing in supervised care without telling the doctors what's going on is just completely irresponsible.

The idea of him talking about his "research" with a group of 12 West Point students to the point of having such lax control that he uses a "magnetic pendant" at the same time (so you know, it could be that and not the diet that worked!) and talking about "healthy" versus "unhealthy" blood in the manner he does just screams fraud to me.

My sister's an actual medical doctor but she is very willing to try alternative treatments and doesn't understand research or control groups or even how to follow basic statistics. I feel the Young's feed into that sort of mentality.

1. On the first page of the book, the author introduces the premise by stating,"It's all about balance. The universe operates by keeping opposites in balance, and the universe contained within your body is no exception." Starting off with a completely backward statement means that this whole idea and Mr. Young behind it have nothing to do with science and everything to do with marketing. The universe does not "keep" opposites in balance. Opposites stay in balance because otherwise they would cease to exist. Take the orbit of the earth, for example. The earth does not stay in a balanced orbit around the sun because the universe forced the gathering of particles into a ball and placed that ball into a perfect orbit, forever checking to make sure it didn't fall out of balance for some reason. The earth spins around the sun this way because out of the immeasurable amounts of particles, the ones in just the right environment to support it, gathered into a ball (the earth) spinning around a much bigger ball of particles (the sun). The remainder of the particles in that cloud either got sucked into the sun or just went on their way, not getting close enough to the gravity pull of the entities around them. So...the universe does not "keep" things the way they exist today, things exist today the way they do, in a seemingly balanced state, because they would not exist otherwise.

A simpler example: if you have a cup hanging from a string in the middle of the room, open end up, and hurl a bucket of sand into the air, some of the sand falls into the cup. You did not force that specific sand into the cup, but do you see any other sand at that height in the room? No! Because it had nothing keeping it there and fell to the floor instead.

2. In Chapter 2, Mr. Young states that when certain ratios of acids and bases meet, they "cancel each other out" by which I assume he really means "explodes or otherwise reacts violently." Remember the baking soda and vinegar volcano from grade school? Acid + base = violent reaction.

** More later **

Don't mess with Texas standards (ripped from an lj friend):

A friend wrote in their journal:

"I spend a lot of time at my job (working at home today, so I can tell you this -- then I really have to get back to work) going through various states' language arts standards. Since we're attempting to create a curriculum that could be used nationally, we have to try to hit as many state standards as possible. This is a little tricky because every single state in the union has different standards. Some states have well-written standards that seem age-appropriate and reasonable and philosophically consistent with the field. Some states do not, and you have to wonder if anyone who touched the document had ever met a second grader in their lives. Which is sort of sad, because they're all essentally saying the same thing.

But I just had to note this one. While it is commonplace to state that kids should be able to answer various levels of comprehension questions (even though I have a problem with the idea that if you can answer a comprehension question, you understand what you have read), Texas is the only state whose standards say this:

Grade 3:
Practice different kinds of questions and tasks, including test-like comprehension questions.
Grade 4:
Answer different types and levels of questions such as open-ended, literal, and interpretative as well as test-like questions such as multiple choice, true-false, and short answer.

Yes, in the fine state of Texas, taking a test is a LEARNING STANDARD. That blows my mind. Talk about teaching to the test.

As Marge Simpson would say, 'I am so sick of that tautology!'"

I commented:

"Hello! Why do you think if we adopt there's no way our child(ren) will go to school and instead will be homeschooled? It's fucking sick here. Molly Ivins has written about it repeatedly through the years and many, many teachers have tried to fight the test standard as the be all and end all here in this state.

Ugh. It's pretty f**king horrible, I can tell you that.

Friend commented back:

"It's as bad in California, I'm afraid. Sign of the times. The pendulum will swing back soon (it always does), hopefully by the time we have kids in school...sigh.

Me again:

"Actually it hasn't swung in years here ... basically ever since Bush was governor and started cementing the whole thing in place. That's what his "No Child Left Behind" initiative here did. All these Texans screaming, "Look at what he did to us before you even think of voting him in charge of the US!" and people either ignored or (really) most of the MSM didn't even write about it. And he has done to the country as a whole what he did to Texas on a smaller scale while in charge. Taking a place in the black and putting it in the red all the while cutting things left-right-and-center and helping ruin education here.

If you ever get a chance to read Molly Ivins co-written book about life under Bush here in Texas that she put out right before he got elected (ha-ha) in 2000 I highly recommend it."