November 2016 - Rampant Discourse

Climate Change Deniers Don’t Want to Be Bad People

November 29, 2016

There’s been plenty written about climate change the past few decades. Ranging from massive IPCC reports with peer reviewed data written collaboratively by thousands of scientists across the world to random blog posts paid for by conservative think tanks. The latter cite figures like “over 31,000 scientists have signed on to a petition saying humans aren’t causing global warming” while conveniently ignoring that less than 1/3 of these people have Ph.D.s and…

Things I Like: Podcasts

November 23, 2016

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I love my job, but my commute is less than ideal. It’s about an hour to and an hour from work. That’s a lot of time stuck behind the wheel of a car during the course of a week. I probably spend more time commuting each week than I spend doing anything else beyond sleeping and working. In fact, I estimate I’ve spent roughly 5% of my life commuting during the…

Book Review: Transmetropolitan, Vol. 3: Year of the Bastard

November 22, 2016

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“Just once, I’d like to get through the day without hating anyone.” The third Transmetropolitan collection kicks off Spider Jerusalem’s coverage of the presidential election with the six issue story “Year of the Bastard.” This is where the series truly takes off and becomes something special, and eerily predictive of the 2016 US presidential election campaign. That remains the tragic magic of this series: how well it can be applied…

Quick Take: Planned Parenthood Donations in Mike Pence’s Name

November 15, 2016

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Apparently the hot new thing to protest the upcoming presidential administration is to donate to Planned Parenthood in Mike Pence’s name. Why? Because Planned Parenthood sends certifications to the donor’s address to thank them for their donation, so those certificates are getting sent to Mike Pence’s address. And Pence holds anti-abortion views and believes federal funds should be cut off to organizations such as Planned Parenthood. It’s clever. People get to…

Some Thoughts About Processing What Just Happened

November 14, 2016

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Well … that just happened. Unlike a lot of other folks, I wasn’t primed for Election Day to be some sort of Democratic blowout, but this was just beyond shocking. I didn’t think a Trump win was that outside the realm of possibility, but these results are rather decisive. Though the final results have yet to be tallied, Donald Trump might top over 300 Electoral Votes, though it looks like…

2016 Election: The Aftermath

November 10, 2016

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Wow. It somehow seems fitting that in an election that has been unconventional in every way, it ends with a tremendous upset. If a lifelong Democrat who is on the record as being anti-gun, pro-choice and openly disdainful of members of the military can win the Republican nomination, why can’t that same person win the presidency by doing everything “wrong” and seemingly insulting every non-white, non-male group of people? It doesn’t…

Book Review: Transmetropolitan, Vol. 2: Lust for Life

November 8, 2016

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Warren Ellis‘s Transmetropolitan series continues to ramp up in its second volume. While the first volume was focused on a single issue (the transients’ secession from The City) this volume is mostly episodic dives into different areas of The City’s culture. This serves to flesh out the series’ setting before the bigger story lines in subsequent volumes while still being invective and funny as hell. “You learn about a culture…

Xbox Fitness Challenge Kickoff

November 3, 2016

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For those who don’t know, Xbox Fitness was a free app that was launched with the Xbox One that took advantage of the system’s Kinect peripheral to track the user’s movements and grade how well they were following the exercises and provide helpful advice on how to improve. Users earned Fitness Points for each exercise done, and completing certain challenges rewarded users with stamps that helped them earn new fitness cards….

Why Liberals Shouldn’t Vote for Hillary Clinton (But Should Consider Gary Johnson)

November 1, 2016

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With the Trump campaign seemingly self-destructing before our eyes, it doesn’t seem necessary to sell a ticket of two successful Republican governors to conservatives looking for a better option. However, it might surprise people to know that polling has shown that the Gary Johnson campaign pulls support fairly evenly from Trump and Clinton. It shouldn’t be a surprise, though, as there are a number of liberal issues where Clinton is actually pretty conservative and where Gary…