Daily Archives: December 19, 2011

Is Bon Jovi Dead? And, who is he anyway?

According to The Skepchicks, as well as Facebook, Bon Jovi is not dead.

Bon Jovi holding up a sign saying he is not dead.
A photograph of Bon Jovi rom Facebook. Despite the date scribbled on the piece of paper, it is possible that this photograph was taken at any time. Nonetheless, he does look fairly alive here.

Apparently, Bon Jovi is either a rock musician or some sort of rock band. Hey, wait, wasn’t he the plumber in Ally McBeal?

Absolutely Last Second Holiday Gifts Made In America!!!

I just saw something on TV about people running around with “Made in America” tee-shirts trying to talk everyone else into buying Christmas presents that were made in America, and naturally, my cynical self wondered which East or Southeast Asian Sweat Shops the tee-shirts were made in.

So I looked and it turns out that at least some of these shirts are actually made in America! So that’s cool.

So, it got me thinking, what other cool last second gifts are there that are Made in America that an American Citizen might want to buy for their Uncle they forgot to get a present for. And there are some:

One idea is Buck Knives. They’ve always been made in the Good Old USA, and they are a reliable and trustworthy brand …. oh, wait, no … it can’t be true. It turns out that Buck Knives are often made in China these days. Here’s what Chuck Buck of Buck Knives says:

Now that you are family, you might like to know a little more about our organization. The fantastic growth of Buck Knives was no accident. From the beginning, management determined to make God the Senior Partner. In a crisis, the problem was turned over to Him, and He hasn’t failed to help us with the answer. Each product must reflect the integrity of management, including our Senior Partner. If sometimes we fail on our end, because we are human, we find it imperative to do our utmost to make it right. Of course, to us, besides being Senior Partner, He is our Heavenly Father also; and it’s a great blessing to us to have this security in these troubled times. If any of you are troubled or perplexed and looking for answers, may we invite you to look to Him, for God loves you.

OK, forget Buck Knives.

How about toys by “Green Toys” such as this cool dump truck. . They have other toys as well that look pretty cool. I see no overt God references. This could be a good choice. Anybody got any experience with Green Toys?

How about this giant Stuffed Gorilla Ape Also Known as Giant Monkey??? The claim is that is was made in the USA too.

Then there’s the gift basket. The Made in America Artisan Gourmet Basket in Wood Crate is a little pricey at nearly 90 bucks, but it is Made in the USA!

There. That should just about do it for my Holiday Shopping this year.

Wait, wait, Mad Scientists suggests Dremel Tools. That is an excellent idea!

Linking Elevators, Rebecca Watson, Richard Dawkins and of course, Hitler and the Nazis!!!11!!

As you know, I’ve shifted some of the topics I have discussed on this blog over to The X Blog. However, some topics can very reasonably go on both. One of these is how we communicate, and argue, and sometimes make progress in this crazy, zany place we call The Blogsophere. Also, as an Anthropologist, I see topics related to gender, sexism, feminism and related topics as fully at home here, as well as at The X Blog. So, I just completed a series of posts over there which I’m sure will be of interest to those of you who tend to hand out here and might not otherwise notice. I hope you visit them, read them, love them or hate them, send them to your family to enjoy for the holiday season, and hopefully scream at me about them in the comments. They are:

This started out as a big-huge blog post which I then decided to break down, and I decided that for a number of reasons. One is that some of the subtopics (i.e., the one on sex positiveness and calibration) may be more of a side issue. Another is that I didn’t want any one of the topics to get sidelined by shifting focus should there be extended discussion. Mainly, though, I wanted to have bite size pieces to avoid the tl;dr effect, and to later have more narrowly defined items to point or link to as appropriate.

We’ve Talked About This Enough, We Can Shut Up Now (Or, Don’t Feed the Trolls)

Continuing from the previous conversation

I’ve written about this before (Shut up about everything all the time unless what you have to say is HITLER!!!!) and it relates to the previously discussed topic, as Godwin-Scaping is a way to tell someone to stop talking. Richard Dawkins told Rebecca Watson that her comments were not about the repression of women by Islam, therefore she should shut up. Numerous Nuclear Power Apologists have told Ana Miller and me to Shut Up about Fukushima because more people die in automobile accidents world wide every day than were killed by radiation at that power plant. Recently, Rebecca Watson wrote about how being told to “not feed the trolls” might sound like friendly and helpful advice (and may even be meant that way sometimes) but it is actually just another way to tell people to shut up. Continue reading We’ve Talked About This Enough, We Can Shut Up Now (Or, Don’t Feed the Trolls)