The Slacktivist discusses negative tweets and Facebook postings in response to the multi-colored Oreo cookie commercial meant to appeal LGBT customers.

…LGBT people are existentially controversial. …

The cookie endorses no candidate, advocates no piece of pending legislation, favors no political party. But it reminds others that LGBT people exist , and that is perceived as a horrific insult by those who would prefer they didn’t.

It boils down to something like “My right to be offended by your existence trumps your right to exist.” That’s a pretty dark and creepy place to wind up at in response to such a fabulously festive cookie.

via My right to be offended by your existence trumps your right to exist.

Oh my, this reads like my eulogy.

one day anyone died i guess

(and noone stooped to kiss his face)

busy folk buried them side by side

little by little and was by was

via Magnificent Glow.

Say you have a city councilman who lives next door. Or maybe he lives next door. That’s the weird thing: you never actually meet him. You’ve seen the councilman written about in the papers and you’ve seen the billboards at election time touting the many outstanding things he’s done for your family and community. The councilman himself apparently exists. But is he really living next door?

Maybe, from time to time, you think you catch a glimpse of him in the house through a window. Maybe, now and then, you think you see his car speeding away from your street, but you never see it while it’s pulling out of his driveway. Is the councilman, whom you’ve read about but have never seen for sure, really your neighbor?

What does “I believe in…” mean? You can “believe in” concepts like God, or the love of your spouse, or the goodness of humanity. In popular vernacular you can also “believe in” more concrete, fact-based formulations like evolution, or the monogamy of your spouse, or the success of a particular school of economics.

The difficulty for me comes in the fact that we use the same term — “believe in” — for matters of pure inclination (the very idea of eating raw meat is gross to me) and also for matters where we mean “I have been convinced by the evidence” (I got sick eating raw meat and so believe it’s unsafe).

Would “I operate as if X is true” serve as a functional replacement for “I believe X”? Then believe in God is operating as if God is really there; He’s a fact. Belief in evolution would be to operate as if evolution is a fact. Belief in a political position would not simply be the belief that the position represents the best course of action, but would also entail taking that action!

So is a held belief that doesn’t have any operational component in effecting how you act really any belief at all?

Fun quote from a webcomic.

We are the substrate that bacteria party on. Never forget who your true master is: the hundred billion bacterial cells living in your gut, thousands of species drinking your beer for free. Consuming yogurt is the only true form of revenge we can take on these microfloric lactobacillus loafers. This is a morally justified act.

via Scenes From A Multiverse – Yogurt Fear.