Count Four

Innovations in Energy

This would be laughable, if it weren’t so true.

(Flash required)

Unreason Versus Reason

Sam Harris takes the journal Nature to task for their review of a religious book, and their general, overly accomodating attitude toward religion.

Link via Doubting Thom.

Coming to a City Near You

This could so easily apply to DC, too.

Shame and Feminization

I’ve been meaning to write about the Thai cops and their new “Hello Kitty armband” punishment regime, but as usual Morford has beaten me to the punch and written a lovely bit of satire about this ridiculous practice. I especially love his introduction of the cutest kitty around:

We speak, quite naturally, of Hello Kitty, perhaps the most unspeakably evil icon of horrific cuteness since that time My Little Pony and Smurfette had a dirty threesome with a Cabbage Patch Kid at Circus Circus back in ’98, resulting in a mutant bastard offspring so repulsively adorable the U.S. government must now keep it locked away in an ironclad Area 51 bunker lest humans see it and instantly explode into bloody piles of candy canes and glitter and 2 billion pink Swarovski crystals.

Go read the rest here.

The thing he doesn’t mention explicitly is the inherent sexism at work in this “punishment.” The sexism that declares that somehow having to wear a Hello Kitty armband will make these (male) cops less manly, more feminine, and that this is somehow a bad thing. It’s a ludicrous practice, and it deserves every bit of ridicule it’s receiving.