For some strange reason — I would like to think it “open mindedness”, but it is more likely a genetic defect — I occasionally go looking in places where I know I will find abhorrent opinions that illustrate how the root of much right wing thinking these days is, at its heart, intellectually dishonest.

And so I found an article titled Registering the Poor to Vote is Un-American.

In it, the author argues that, because poor people disagree with him, encouraging them to vote is un-American. It completely escapes the author that one of the fundamental principles of democracy — American democracy, in particular — is that people are permitted to think what they wish, say what they think, and vote for their own leaders.

Elsewhere, he shows an inability to connect the dots between raising barriers against society’s vulnerable voting, and denying them the vote.

And here at the Big Bad Blog, we’re simply flabbergasted.

Photo found at Coffee, coffee, coffee. Origin unknown.
Webcomic is Cat Ghost, by Sarah.

This Rolling Stone article about Michele Bachmann is excellent. It shows just how crazy and frightening the woman truly is.

An excerpt:

And don’t look her in the eyes; don’t let her smile at you. Michele Bachmann, when she turns her head toward the cameras and brandishes her pearls and her ageless, unblemished neckline and her perfect suburban orthodontics in an attempt to reassure the unbeliever of her non-threateningness, is one of the scariest sights in the entire American cultural tableau. She’s trying to look like June Cleaver, but she actually looks like the T2 skeleton posing for a passport photo. You will want to laugh, but don’t, because the secret of Bachmann’s success is that every time you laugh at her, she gets stronger.

Photo is the jump by(?) Marcus Estes. Found at The Lumberjack Special.
Webcomic is Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, by Zach Weiner.

Happy Friday, Internet. Here are some strange new laws you should be aware of:

In Florida, an attempt to ban bestiality triggered speculation that the state may have banned sex altogether. While this is not true, it’s still sad that the speculation was believable.

And why is it believable?

Because legislators are prone to such stupidity. Take Maine, for example, where they are in the process of banning the act of looking at children in a public place.

Censorship sunglasses, from Urban Outfitters.
Webcomic is .

There are video game competitions. Some, like the one celebrated in The Wizard, are about playing video games. The more interesting ones are about designing video games.

The Game Design Challenge of 2011 challenged designers to create a game that was also a religion. The winning game, Chain World, sounds like a game that I would love to play:

There’s only one true copy of Chain World and it exists on a USB drive Rohrer carried with him into the GDC session. This USB drive contains a Minecraft world and a custom script that Rohrer created. A player of Chain World inserts the USB stick and loads a Minecraft world onto his PC. He then plays in this Minecraft world as usual and does whatever he desires.

He plays until his character dies. Following the character’s death, the player must immediately save, quit to the main menu, and leave the game. Rohrer’s script than creates a duplicate of this altered world, saves it onto the USB drive, and deletes it off the player’s PC. The player can never play again and must pass the drive on to the next player.

Of course, the game will only truly become a religion once somebody has hacked it and returned to life after being dead for three days.

Photo by Brent Stirton, found at Smashing Picture.
Webcomic is Murray the Nut, by An unidentified individual.