Monday, January 30, 2017

At the Wall Street Journal I wrote a comment about Muslim scum.

BBC News: "The president of the mosque, Mohamed Yangui - who was not inside at the time - said the shooting had happened in the men's section of the mosque."
They keep men and women separate. Muslim men are afraid of Muslim women.
Another website said the murderer was saying Allahu Akbar. This was Islamic terrorism. The problem that will never end is Islam.
Thank you President Trump for not letting these people get in.

I wrote this at a website infested with liberals but I did not publish it because I figured I would be harassed about it until the end of time. Liberal crybabies never stop crying.

I seen this here and elsewhere: "Trump will be impeached"

Just because some people disagree with his ideas is not a good reason to impeach a president who won the election.

The liberals lost. Elections have consequences. I suggest the liberals fix their problems because they were wiped out in 2016. Complaining about everything did not work. Time to try something else.

Wimps who suck up to retards.

THIS IS WHAT I WROTE:

"Calling them sick and stupid isn't going to help."

I never once used the word "stupid" here. It's wrong, it's not allowed here, and I don't do that.

What is going to help? Nothing. You have seen for yourself this person refuses to do anything to understand. He's a total waste of time, as are all science deniers. They really do have a disease and it really is incurable.

It's like teaching a dog how to play chess. The only difference is the dog has an excuse. The science deniers have no excuse for their extreme laziness and being too cowardly to grow up, educate themselves, and face facts. Cowards will always be cowards. It's a total waste of time to help these disgusting worthless people.

THIS IS WHAT I WAS NOT ALLOWED TO WRITE BECAUSE THE FUCKING IDIOT WHO OWNS THE THREAD WOULD RATHER SUCK UP TO A FUCKING MORON. 1/30/2017. THESE ARE SUCKERS WHO LET CREATIONISTS WASTE THEIR TIME. THE STUPID, IT BURNS.

"your last post is inexcusable and unproductive"

Perhaps inappropriate but what I wrote is completely correct. I did not make anything up.

If you want to see comments that are extremely unproductive take a look everything every science denier wrote. With every word they prove I was right.

Sorry but I don't believe in censorship especially when I'm being censored. I respect freedom of speech, especially when it's my speech. Some people like to suppress freedom of speech. One way they do that is they say it's inexcusable and unproductive (which is just an opinion).

I would rather be thrown out instead of suppressing my own freedom of speech. Until then I will say what I want which has the advantage of being true. Unlike the science deniers you love so much, I don't make things up.

I HIT THE POST BUTTON AND I FIND OUT THE FUCKING ASSHOLE WON'T LET ME WRITE A COMMENT BECAUSE I DON'T SUCK UP TO RETARDS. SUCKUPS ARE WORSE THAN THE DIPSHITS THEY SUCK UP TO.

Sunday, January 29, 2017

I wrote this for an evolution denier, aka fucking moron. The stupid, it burns.

Why do you call magic "intelligent design"? Believe in childish anti-science nonsense if you want but at least be honest about it. You believe magic is real. Admit it.

Instead of showing off your total ignorance of evolution and your total refusal to learn anything about it, why don't you provide evidence for your childish magical fantasies? Lying about science is not evidence for magic. You can't say evolution wrong therefore magic. Even if evolution was not the strongest fact of science and the foundation of biology, that doesn't mean magic is real. You got to provide evidence for your magic. Let's have it. Maybe you can ask your fairy to loan you its magic wand so scientists can test it.

My point is you and all other science deniers are pathetic. Thinking makes them cry. Education hurts their brain.

FFS, this is the 21st century. Grow up and face facts.

And stop pretending there is a debate about the established truth of evolution. There is no debate. Just because you science deniers think there is a debate does not mean there is a debate. It only means you know nothing about mountains of evidence, powerful evidence that continues to grow every day, evidence you know nothing about because you're too lazy and too cowardly to educate yourself. FFS, look things up.

Saturday, January 28, 2017

What I wrote about the brain-dead creationist retards:

Perhaps it's better to ignore the science deniers and the reason evolution makes them cry (religion). Perhaps it's better to pretend they don't exist. They know nothing. They are equal to dogs. Their opinions don't matter because they're idiots.
I have 5 books about evolution. The best of those 5 books is "Your Inner Fish, A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body" by Neil Shubin.
Mr. Shubin completely ignores the existence of religious science deniers and that's the way it should be.

Thursday, January 26, 2017

I wrote this at Amazon on 1/26/2017.

This is why I'm 100% certain the Magic Man (Zeus, Allah, God) is not real.

Even though some theists might deny it, all theists invoke the god of the gaps to justify the existence of their magic god fairy. That doesn't work.

We know all species evolved and we know all life shares a common ancestor. This is scientific fact. Also we know a god fairy had absolutely nothing to do with it.

If something as complex as the development of new species did not require a god fairy's magic wand, it's ridiculous to pretend the god fairy was ever necessary for anything else. A god fairy who never did anything is a fairy who doesn't exist.

Even without the science it's childish to pretend a magical being, aka a god, is hiding somewhere in the universe. If theists ever learned how to think they could figure these things out.

You people can believe any nonsense you want. I don't care. It's your wasted life.

https://www.amazon.com/forum/religion/ref=cm_cd_pg_oldest?_encoding=UTF8&authToken=&cdForum=Fx1M9TK6UGAX6EO&cdPage=1&cdSort=newest&cdThread=TxRIF65U6ZIN4N

About 6 years ago something about science deniers was written by a brilliant Australian. This is fantastic. Here it is:

A curious thing about creationists. I try to study the minds of these strange people, who still, 150 years after Alfred Wallace, retain the primitive mindset of the eighteenth century when people thought that animal species, including the naked ape, had been created, each in its own place, by a finger-pointing white-bearded figure in the sky. It is as if we still had, living among us, people who believed in phlogiston, or humors, or the heart as the seat of emotions; a glimpse back into a distant past of primitive ideas about the world around us.

So I study them, much as a time traveler visiting the Dark Ages might, or a traveler to the deepest Amazon finding a previously uncontacted tribe.

And in the case of creationists, these strange throwbacks living still among us, I try to see the world through their eyes, wonder what strange shadows that imperfect organ is throwing on to the retina of these good simple people as they struggle to come to grips with the realities of several hundred years of scientific advances.

Here is one for you. What do creationists see when they look in the evolutionary mirror? What do they see when they look at Chimpanzee or Gorilla? Do they see both as just another mammal, like Cat or Dog, Kangaroo or Opossum, Platypus or Echidna? Do they not see the close resemblances to us in the face, the expressions, the hands and feet, the body, the behavior, the movement, the social groups, the young? Do they not say, well, my cousin is a hairy man, but he is still my cousin? Do they not say there but for the grace of Darwin go we? That these close cousins just traveled a different path from an obviously identical starting point?

And looking at the faces of their cousins, are they not inspired to investigate further, find that the resemblance is not just skin deep but extends through brain and skeleton and into the most fundamental unit of evolution the DNA?

I mean it is one thing to believe that the old silverback in the sky created beasts of burden and sheep and cattle, obviously different to, and, from an anthropocentric view, inferior to, humans, as part of his reward of dominion over all as long as you didn’t eat of the “tree of evolutionary knowledge” scheme. But the bronze age sheepherders typing out the Old Testament on a piece of goatskin didn’t know about the great apes, or even the monkeys, which did not live around what the desert nomads thought of as the centre of the universe but which we now call the Middle East, a kind of evolutionary backwater with barely enough species known to fill a boat.

If there had been a band of gorillas living by the Dead Sea, or a band of chimpanzees living on the Mount of Olives, do you think one of the sheepherders might have modified the relevant bit of his creation mythology to read, “And then Yahweh created the great apes, and he took a rib from a chimpanzee and it became the first human”?

With that kind of mythology, one of Darwin’s early ancestors, say living in Ancient Athens, might well have been inspired to discover the reality of evolution long before Alfred Wallace. And in that case, would the primitive members of the Texas School Board still be demanding that creationism be taught? How long does it take for the blindingly obvious to be accepted?
-- David Horton

Wednesday, January 25, 2017

The breathtaking stupidity of American Christians and Muslim terrorists. What I wrote about them at another website:

The title of this post is "The Science of Evolution" so maybe it's OK to say something about the millions of dense Americans (not to mention thousands of terrorists) who want to throw out this science.
Their idea goes like this: Evolution is wrong therefore magical creation is how the world works. Everything is magical.
Besides being ridiculous, childish, insane, and idiotic, this idea has a very big problem. Evidence against evolution (imaginary evidence because there is absolutely zero evidence against this important branch of science) would not be evidence for something else.
If the extremely dense evolution deniers what to throw out evolution, they have to explain why any other idea is correct. They can't say "evolution is wrong therefore magic". They have to provide evidence for magic. For example can they test this magic? Do they have one shred of evidence for it? No. Of course not. It's a just a fantasy for cowards who fear reality.
Is there any cure for their disease? Almost always the answer is no. The brain damage can't be fixed.
When a uneducated coward complains about evolution I ask them "what is your explanation for the diversity of life?" When they say a fairy magically created every creature I tell them to get psychiatric help. Then I tell them to shove it because they are equal to dogs. Of course that's not being fair to dogs. Dogs have a brain.

Monday, January 23, 2017

I wrote this for a "The magic man did it" retard at the Wall Street Journal.

The difference between scientists and the religious reality deniers is scientists never invoke supernatural magic to solve scientific problems.
One of the advantages of being a normal person, aka atheist, is we don't have a reason to give up and say "The magic man did it." Atheists, who by the way are vast majority of the best scientists in the world, and even the rare religious scientists if they are competent, would never give up and say god did it. That's not science. It's called being lazy. Invoking a god fairy's magical powers is for people who have no curiosity. Curiosity is what makes scientific progress possible. Being lazy, giving up, and invoking a god, contributes nothing.

A little boy copied and pasted bullshit from an idiotic anti-science bible website but he did not provide a link. I looked it up. Found out it was Answers in Genesis. The stupid, it burns. This is what I wrote for the retard.

A google search showed something interesting. It took me 5 seconds to find it.
Twpsyn  copied and pasted his bullcrap from Answers in Genesis, also known as Answers in Stupidity. This is why the little boy will never learn anything. All he does is copy and paste bullcrap from dishonest brain-dead anti-science websites.
Notice he did not provide a link because everyone knows Answers in Genesis claims the entire universe was magically created 6,000 years ago. I'm not making this up. They really are totally insane.
Nice try little boy. 
Next time little boy provide a link so I don't have waste 5 seconds of my time to look it up.
Maybe someday you will grow up, educate yourself, and face facts, but I doubt it.
-----------
"the only part from answers in genesis was:"
As if that makes it OK. Answers in Genesis thinks the entire universe was magically created 6,000 years ago. In other words these people are insane, and this where you go for science education. Do you see the problem?
"such estimates for H. habilis are highly suspect"
As if these insane science deniers are qualified to say anything about it.
A 6,000 year old universe. The scientific consensus has it at about 3,700,000,000 years old. Compare these 2 numbers. Your favorite idiots are 3.7 Billion years wrong.
There is absolutely no excuse for copying and pasting ridiculous dishonest bullcrap and then not provide a link. Did you think you could get away with it?
Science deniers deny science because they go out of their way to avoid real scientists. The idea is knowing nothing is a good thing.
These people are cowards. Scientists make them cry because they threaten the magical fantasies that make these feeble-minded people feel good.

What I wrote for the religious retards who infest the Wall Street Journal.

Did God Die in 1859?
Yes and thank goodness. We don't need the violence, the brainwashing, the stupidity, the insanity, and the war against science.
Look at the newspaper. Virtually all the violence has something to with religious stupidity. Enough is enough.
The ridiculous god fantasy was thrown out in 1859. Unfortunately not everyone got the memo. The other problem is cowards can't live without their magical 2nd life, a ridiculous childish fantasy American Christians share with the Islamic State terrorists.
Typical theist:
"Duh, I don't understand science therefore the Magic Man did it."
Every moronic religious fantasy is the wishful thinking of cowards. The cowards need to grow up, educate themselves, and face facts.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/did-god-die-in-1859-1484951708

Saturday, January 21, 2017

"Religion is outdated, harmful to the individual, harmful to society, an impediment to the progress of science, a source of immoral acts or customs, and a political tool for social control."

"Critics of religion in general often regard religion as outdated, harmful to the individual, harmful to society, an impediment to the progress of science, a source of immoral acts or customs, and a political tool for social control."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_religion

Wednesday, January 18, 2017

Translation of what I wrote at chess.com: Chess.com is crap. Their stuff is inferior and they expect you to pay for it. Lichess.org is better and it's totally free.

"I have become a better player over the past few years, but I still shy away from Sicilians due to the massive amount of theory and preparation required."
It's not necessary to memorize lots of stuff for this fantastic opening (especially the Najdorf Variation) for Black. Just understand the basics by studying how Fischer played it. Then just use it. When you get wiped out you have something to work with. Get a free and complete computer analysis of your game and find out what you did wrong. Never throw out the Najdorf Variation no matter how many times you are defeated. This advice was given to me a long time ago and I'm grateful for it.
I noticed that if use the Najdorf and I survive the opening and middle game, I usually have an advantage in the endgame. So it's important to study the endgame first, both strategy and how to do things.
Where can you get a fantastic and totally free computer analysis of your games? I can't answer that question because Big Brother is watching. My answer would be vaporized and I would never again be allowed to write comments here.
I suggest just pay for what this place offers. Chess.com has been improving everything so it's OK to help them pay their bills. I'm not writing this because Big Brother is watching. Chess.com really is getting better and that costs money.

A Christian fucktard at a chess website wrote for someone else: "Your statement - " but later this was confirmed in dramatic fashion by the discovery of a quite arbitrary genetic code that is almost identical across all living organisms." could just as easily be because a creator uses similar code because it's the most efficient way to create something." This is what I wrote for the uneducated moron.

"could just as easily be because a creator uses similar code because it's the most efficient way to create something."
Translation: The Magic Man did it.
Your idea, besides being ridiculous, doesn't work for ERVs. Look it up.
Oh wait. You can't look it up because education makes you science deniers cry.
The most accurate explanation would be a copy and paste job from a real biologist. Of course you won't read it or if you did read it you wouldn't be able to understand it. Here it is anyway:
"We also harbor dead genes that came from other species, namely viruses. Some, called 'endogenous retroviruses' (ERVs), can make copies of their genome and insert them into the DNA of species they infect. (HIV is a retrovirus.) If the viruses infect the cells that make sperm and eggs, they can be passed on to future generations. The human genome contains thousands of such viruses, nearly all of them rendered harmless by mutations. They are the remnants of ancient infections. But some of these remnants sit in exactly the same location on the chromosomes of humans and chimpanzees. These were surely viruses that infected our common ancestor and were passed on to both descendants. Since there is almost no chance of viruses inserting themselves independently at exactly the same spot in two species, this points strongly to common ancestry."
-- Jerry Coyne, University of Chicago biologist
My point is those ERVs we have in common with chimpanzees can't be explained by the childish "The Magic Man did it" fantasy because there is no reason a fairy with a magic wand would magically insert ERVs in the exact same locations of two species. The only possible explanation is those ERVs were inherited from the common ancestor of human apes and chimpanzee apes.
Any child could understand this. Unfortunately the science deniers will never be able to understand. Their disease can't be fixed.
Professional idiots have tried to lie about this evidence. Not easy to lie about this one so what they do is try to change the subject. They say "the ERVs are functional therefore the evidence is wrong." It doesn't matter if that's true or not. That's not the point of this evidence. What matters is the ERVs were inherited from a common ancestor. These ERVs (about 16 of them unless more have been discovered) were not there when the creature evolved (or according to the science deniers when they were magically created) therefore the magic fairy had nothing to do with it.
I could use puppets to help science deniers understand but even that wouldn't work.
One more thing: There is a YouTube video that explains the whole thing in extreme detail. Here's the video and a quote from that video. Recommended for normal people. The science deniers would not be able to understand.
"WHAT IF INSERTION IS NOT RANDOM"
"If you run the numbers with the assumption that ERVs can only insert in 1% of the genome, i.e. highly nonrandom, you still get enormously low probabilities with only 16 ERVs. So even if insertion is highly nonrandom, getting the thousands of matched ERVs between all primates is unbelievably unlikely just like I show in the video (don't believe me, do the math)."
"Endogenous Retroviruses (ERVs) are the relics of ancient viral infections preserved in our DNA. The odd thing is many ERVs are located in exactly the same position on our genome and the chimpanzee genome. There are two explanations for the perfectly matched ERV locations. Either it is an unbelievable coincidence that viruses just by chance inserted in exactly the same location in our genomes, or humans and chimps share a common ancestor. It was our common ancestor that was infected, and we both inherited the ERVs. ERVs provide the closest thing to a mathematical proof for evolution. And remember, ERVs are just one of the millions of FACTS that support the theory of evolution. Think about it."

Sunday, January 15, 2017

The chess openings I use.

I use only these 3 openings:
If I have White I always use the King's Indian Attack.
If I have Black and my opponent's 1st move is anything except e4 I use the King's Indian Defense.
If I have Black and my opponent's 1st move is e4 I use the Sicilian Defense, preferably the Najdorf Variation.

A stupid asshole at Lichess.org wrote "I've found a startling opposition to draws on this site. Whenever I offer a draw in a draw-worthy position, my draw offer is repeatedly declined. Then when my opponent tries to make progress, they inevitably worsen their position and I end up winning. So I want to know, why the opposition to draws?" This was my reply:

"Whenever I offer a draw in a draw-worthy position, my draw offer is repeatedly declined."

The first time your draw offer is declined that means your opponent does not want a draw. When you offer a draw a 2nd time you are distracting your opponent and I call that cheating. When people do this to me they get blocked. Actually they get blocked if they ask for a draw only once. I don't need the distraction when I'm trying to think.

I suggest if you want a draw then try to repeat the position 3 times. If your opponent does not cooperate that means the answer is no. This way you're not distracting your opponent. This is called "being civilized".

I have no tolerance for quitters. If they start a game they should finish it.

Thursday, January 12, 2017

At the Wall Street Journal a Christian asshole ordered me to provide evidence for evolution. This is what I wrote for the fucktard.

I don't understand why you lazy know-nothing science deniers think I should be your free science teacher.
Ask a 5 year old child to hold your hand and walk you thru how to use Google. If and when you figure that out, then use it. You could google search the following subjects:
Human evolution
ERVs.
Human Chromosome Two
Evidence for evolution from embryology
Evidence for evolution from DNA sequencing
Evidence for human evolution from paleontology
We are one of the Great Ape species. Look it up.
There are thousands more things you could look up. You just got to stop being so lazy and do your own homework.
Avoid bible and other anti-science websites if you want to learn something about science.
Of course you're going to do nothing to educate yourself. If you had any desire to understand the science that makes you cry you would have looked it up a long time ago.

The Islamic State terrorists share your cowardly fear of human evolution. You should be ashamed of yourself.

There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."
-- Isaac Asimov

You never have and never will read a book about evolution written by a real biologist.

These are 5 excellent books I have read. You will never study this stuff. You're too lazy and too cowardly to grow up, educate yourself, and face facts.

Your Inner Fish - A Journey Into The 3.5-Billion-Year History Of The Human Body by Neil Shubin
Why Evolution Is True by Jerry Coyne
The Making of the Fittest - DNA and the Ultimate Forensic Record of Evolution by Sean B. Carroll
Evolution - The Triumph of an Idea by Carl Zimmer
The Greatest Show on Earth - The Evidence for Evolution by Richard Dawkins
Your Inner Fish - A Journey Into The 3.5-Billion-Year History Of The Human Body by Neil Shubin

Wednesday, January 11, 2017

What I wrote at Lichess.org about resigning.

"On the contrary. People should mostly learn to resign earlier. When you are playing at a certain level it's just rude to play on."

I don't think it's rude. I appreciate the opportunity to practice how fast I can finish the game.

I have seen a game between 2 very strong players. The losing side would not resign. The player who had an easy win got careless and there was a stalemate.

Another game I watched, 2 strong players, one had an easy win. The loser would not resign. I appreciated that because I learned something about endgames.

Chess players with very little experience should never resign because then they can learn how to win.

I usually resign but only after it's totally hopeless. Sometimes I play until the end. If anyone complains they get blocked.

Numerous times I have lost my queen but I still won the game. Most people would just give up and I think that's wrong.

https://en.lichess.org/forum/lichess-feedback/remove-resign-button?page=3#30

Sunday, January 8, 2017

I wrote something at the Wall Street Journal about evolution for a bible thumping retard.

"The Bible does not say that the earth is 6,000 years old. It does say that mankind is 6,000 - 10,000 years old."
Scientists know our ancient ape ancestors started to look like modern humans between 100,000 and 200,000 years ago. So your bible is totally wrong.
"Creatures do evolve, but there is no substantial evidence, let alone proof, that species evolved into something different."
Actually sir, if you ever bother to look things up you will notice the evidence for the evolution of new species is overwhelming. If you want you can get started here: necsi evolution Have fun with it sir. You will find out evolution is the most interesting fact of science, a lot more interesting than the magical creation fantasy. Evolution also has the advantage of being real.

I used Google Search at Google Chrome and I was able to speak instead of write: I said "evidence for evolution" and the female voice read the whole thing which of course I could see. An amazing feature, better than Apple's Siri. Here is what I saw:

Some types of evidence, such as fossils and similarities between related living organisms, were used by Darwin to develop his theory of natural selection, and are still used today. Others, such as DNA testing, were not available in Darwin's time, but are used by scientists today to learn more about evolution.

Tuesday, January 3, 2017

What I wrote about my favorite chess quotes at Lichess.org

What are your favorite quotes about chess?

This is the best chess quote in my opinion:
"lichess is better, but it's free." -- Thibault Duplessis

Some people might disagree with this quote but I like it so much I put it in my lichess profile. I found it in the book "Bronstein on the King's Indian" by David Bronstein with Ken Neat.
"Winning or losing is not the main idea of chess at all. A chess game is in fact a friendly exchange of intentions, hidden in individual moves. You always have the choice either of putting into action your planned move, or of first calmly preventing the intended move of the friend with whom you are playing chess in this brief, finite moment of your life."

This is good advice:
"It is a well known phenomenon that the same amateur who can conduct the middle game quite creditably, is usually perfectly helpless in the end game. One of the principal requisites of good chess is the ability to treat both the middle and end game equally well."
-- Aron Nimzowitsch

"How can I lose to such an idiot?"
-- Aron Nimzowitsch

"The game of Chess is not merely an idle amusement; several very valuable qualities of the mind are to be acquired and strengthened by it, so as to become habits ready on all occasions, for life is a kind of chess."
-- Benjamin Franklin

"There are two types of sacrifices: correct ones and mine."
-- Mikhail Tal

"If Tal sacrifices a piece, take it. If Petrosian sacrifices a piece, don't take it."
-- Mikhail Botvinnik

"Chess is war over the board. The object is to crush the opponents mind."
-- Bobby Fischer

"The turning point in my career came with the realization that Black should play to win instead of just steering for equality."

Sunday, January 1, 2017

What I wrote for Christian fucktards at chess.com.

"Now, that you have completed your mission of calling us cowards, will you please calm down a little bit and explain to me why you think that a person who knows that there is a Creator for this universe, and that there is a Day of Judgement, and is willing to give his life for that belief is considered a coward by you?"
I already answered your question. Anyone who believes in a magical 2nd life is a coward. Reality makes them cry. This means most Americans and all Muslims are cowards.
Besides being cowardly all your fantasies are ridiculous. For example your "Day of Judgement" as if your magical master of the entire universe gives a crap about you.
Look at what's out there. There are countless trillions of other solar systems and you think your magic fairy is going single out the human apes on this insignificant little planet in the middle of nowhere for special treatment. Also even if your imaginary fairy was real, why would it invent a magical paradise? You believe this idiotic fantasy only because this is what feeble-minded cowards wish was true. Wishful thinking is not evidence for anything. Wishful thinking does not make childish nonsense real.
Your worst problem is the word "belief". If something require belief and/or faith it most certainly is bullcrap. Normal people, aka atheists, demand strong scientific evidence that can be tested. If no evidence or the evidence is weak the idea is thrown in the garbage where it belongs.
But you people love the words belief and faith because those words are your excuse to believe in any ridiculous childish idiotic fantasy that makes you feel good.
Religions are brain damage and a total waste of a life. Also religions are evil because children are brainwashed and the religious violence is out of control and getting worse.
The other problem with these disgusting death cults (Christianity and Islam) is they make people stupid. For example most of you or all of you are evolution deniers even though evolution is the strongest fact of science and the foundation of biology. You people want to throw out two centuries of scientific progress because you're too dense to understand any of it and too lazy to educate yourselves.
Another problem is your disgusting holy book about a god fairy who loves slavery and genocide. It was obviously written by uneducated morons who knew they were making everything up. But you people think it's the word of a magic fairy. You people are children who refuse to grow up. You're the victims of brainwashing and you don't have what it takes to realize your brainwashers are idiots.
Fine with me. It's your wasted life. Just stay way from children so they are infected with your disgusting disease.
One more thing: "a person who knows that there is a Creator for this universe" This shows you people know nothing about science. Scientists do not yet fully understand everything but these are research opportunities. These points for future understanding are not hiding places for your god of the gaps. You people think just because you don't understand something that means it was a magical event. That's being childish. People like you contribute nothing to human progress. You just get in the way.
https://www.chess.com/clubs/forum/view/the-god-of-jesus-christ]

A few days later I wrote this:
This is why the magic god fairy of the gaps was thrown out of its most important hiding place:
"Darwin was the first to use data from nature to convince people that evolution is true, and his idea of natural selection was truly novel. It testifies to his genius that the concept of natural theology, accepted by most educated Westerners before 1859, was vanquished within only a few years by a single five-hundred-page book. On the Origin of Species turned the mysteries of life's diversity from mythology into genuine science."
-- Jerry Coyne, University of Chicago biologist

The next day I came back there and I wrote this for the Christian fucktards:


"Still waiting on that Missing Link."
I'm still waiting for you anti-science Christians to stop being so lazy, grow up, educate yourselves, and face facts.
The fossil record is excellent and still growing but what you dense people don't understand is the biologists don't need any fossils to show evolution is how the world works. The evidence from embryology, DNA sequencing, and many other branches of science all confirm the established truth of evolution.
I suggest read "Why Evolution Is True" by Jerry Coyne, University of Chicago biologist.
If you science deniers don't want to educate yourselves, then I suggest you should STFU about the science you know nothing about.
By the way dense people, the fossils that show the transition from land animals to whales is complete. There are not any of what you people call "missing links". And this overwhelming evidence is confirmed by DNA sequencing which is another branch of science you know-nothing science deniers know nothing about.
Same thing for the transition from ancient apes to modern human apes. The fossils which you know nothing about show our ancestors first developed the ability to walk upright and then after that the fossil record shows a gradual increase in brain size, all made possible by natural selection which is another thing you science deniers don't understand.
One more time to help dense people understand: While the fossils are useful because they show how a species developed we don't need any fossils to show evolution is the strongest fact of science.
Take your complaints to the best encyclopedia in the world (not to mention every biology department of every university on this planet):
There is probably no other notion in any field of science that has been as extensively tested and as thoroughly corroborated as the evolutionary origin of living organisms.
-- Encyclopedia Britannica
EVOLUTION: "The supporting evidence is abundant, various, ever increasing, solidly interconnected, and easily available in museums, popular books, textbooks, and a mountainous accumulation of peer-reviewed scientific studies."
-- National Geographic
The Islamic State terrorists share your fear of evolution. Evolution makes terrorists cry.
If your disgusting death cult completely depends on throwing out 21st century science, it's not going to last forever. Science always wins because it works.
One more thing: If you science deniers don't like being called "dense" then stop being dense. Educate yourselves FFS.
Another one more thing: There is no debate about the established truth of evolution. Biologists have accepted evolution as fact for more than a century. Today the evidence is many thousands of times more powerful than Charles Darwin could have imagined possible. Just because you people think there's a debate doesn't mean there's a debate. It only means you know nothing about the science that makes you cry.
Evolution does not need defending because it's a basic fact of science. While the evidence for evolution is overwhelming, your supernatural explanation for the diversity of life has not one shred of evidence. Magical Intelligent Design Creationism, beside having no evidence, is one of the most childish fantasies ever invented. Also, it's ridiculous. It goes like this: "I don't understand how species evolved and I'm too lazy to educate myself therefore the Magic Man did it."

Dave Barry’s Year in Review: 2016 — What the ... ?

BY DAVE BARRY

In the future, Americans — assuming there are any left — will look back at 2016 and remark: “What the HELL?”

They will have a point. Over the past few decades, we here at the Year in Review have reviewed some pretty disturbing years. For example, there was 2000, when the outcome of a presidential election was decided by a tiny group of deeply confused Florida residents who had apparently attempted to vote by chewing on their ballots.

Then there was 2003, when a person named “Paris Hilton” suddenly became a major international superstar, despite possessing a level of discernible talent so low as to make the Kardashians look like the Jackson 5.

There was 2006, when the vice president of the United States — who claimed he was attempting to bring down a suspected quail — shot a 78-year-old man in the face, only to be exonerated after an investigation revealed that the victim was an attorney.

And — perhaps most inexplicable of all — there was 2007, when millions of people voluntarily installed Windows Vista.

Yes, we’ve seen some weird years. But we’ve never seen one as weird as 2016. This was the Al Yankovic of years. If years were movies, 2016 would be “Plan 9 from Outer Space.” If years were relatives, 2016 would be the uncle who shows up at your Thanksgiving dinner wearing his underpants on the outside.

Why do we say this? Let’s begin with the gruesome train wreck that was the presidential election. The campaign began with roughly 14,000 candidates running. Obviously not all of them were qualified to be president; some of them — here we are thinking of “Lincoln Chafee” — were probably imaginary. But a reasonable number of the candidates seemed to meet at least the minimum standard that Americans have come to expect of their president in recent decades, namely: Not Completely Horrible.

So this mass of candidates began the grim death march that is the modern American presidential campaign — trudging around Iowa pretending to care about agriculture, performing in an endless series of televised debates like suit-wearing seals trained to bark out talking points, going to barbecue after barbecue and smiling relentlessly through mouthfuls of dripping meat, giving the same speech over and over and over, shaking millions of hands, posing for billions of selfies and just generally humiliating themselves in the marathon group grovel that America insists on putting its presidential candidates through.

And we voters did our part, passing judgment on the candidates, thinning the herd, rejecting them one by one. Sometimes we had to reject them more than once; John Kasich didn’t get the message until his own staff felled him with tranquilizer darts. But eventually we eliminated the contenders whom we considered to be unqualified or disagreeable, whittling our choices down until only two major candidates were left. And out of all the possibilities, the two that We, the People, in our collective wisdom, deemed worthy of competing for the most important job on Earth, turned out to be …

… drum roll …

… the most flawed, sketchy and generally disliked duo of presidential candidates ever!

Yes. After all that, the American people, looking for a leader, ended up with a choice between ointment and suppository. The fall campaign was an unending national nightmare, broadcast relentlessly on cable TV. CNN told us over and over that Donald Trump was a colossally ignorant, narcissistic, out-of-control sex-predator buffoon; Fox News countered that Hillary Clinton was a greedy, corrupt, coldly calculating liar of massive ambition and minimal accomplishment. And in our hearts we knew the awful truth: They were both right.

It wasn’t just bad. It was the Worst. Election. Ever.

And that was only one of the reasons why 2016 should never have happened. Here are some others:

▪ American race relations reached their lowest point since … OK, since 2015.

▪ We learned that the Russians are more involved in our election process than the League of Women Voters.

▪ F​​or​​ much of the year the economy continued to struggle, with the only growth sector being people paying insane prices for tickets to “Hamilton.”

▪ In a fad even stupider than “planking,” millions of people wasted millions of hours, and sometimes risked their lives, trying to capture imaginary Pokémon Go things on their phones, hoping to obtain the ultimate prize: a whole bunch of imaginary Pokémon Go things on their phones.

▪ A major new threat to American communities — receiving at least as much coverage as global climate change —emerged in the form of: Clowns.

▪ In a shocking development that caused us to question our most fundamental values, Angelina and Brad broke up even though they are both physically attractive.

▪ We continued to prove, as a nation, that no matter how many times we are reminded, we are too stupid to remember to hold our phones horizontally when we make videos.

▪ Musically, we lost Prince, David Bowie, Leonard Cohen, George Michael and Debbie Reynolds; we gained the suicide-inducing TV commercial in which Jon Bon Jovi screeches about turning back time.

Did anything good happen in 2016? Let us think …

OK, the “man bun” appeared to be going away.

That was pretty much it for the good things.

And now, finally, it is time for 2016 to go away. But before it does, let’s narrow our eyes down to slits and take one last squinting look back at this hideous monstrosity of a year, starting with …
JANUARY

… which actually begins on a positive note with the capture of elusive Mexican drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, who in 2015 escaped (for the second time) from a Mexican prison when authorities failed to notice the signs reading (in Spanish) “WARNING: ESCAPE TUNNEL UNDER CONSTRUCTION.” Since then Guzmán has been in hiding except for an interview with Sean Penn, a guest spot with Jimmy Kimmel and a series of commercials for Buffalo Wild Wings. Mexican police finally are able to track him down during his four-week stint as a guest judge on “America’s Got Talent.” He is taken to Tijuana and incarcerated in what authorities describe as “a very secure Motel 6.”

In health news, the Centers for Disease Control and prevention, responding to the spread of the little-understood Zika virus, cautions Americans not to have unprotected sex with foreign mosquitoes. Meanwhile the Flint, Michigan, water crisis worsens when samples taken from the city’s main water supply are found to contain traces of a Chipotle burrito.

The United States of Powerball

If the record-breaking Powerball jackpot has you dreaming of how you would spend the winnings — you are not alone. But where you live plays a big role in how much of the prize you would get to keep. BY: Nicole L. Cvetnic and Sarah Whitmire / McClatchy

North Korea successfully tests a hydrogen bomb, although this achievement is tarnished somewhat by the fact that the explosion causes the death, by startling, of the isolated nation’s lone remaining chicken.

In what critics cite as yet another example of declining U.S. prestige, Iran seizes two U.S. naval vessels and captures 10 crew members; what makes the incident particularly embarrassing is that these vessels were docked in Cleveland. The captured sailors are released, but only after Secretary of State John Kerry assures the Iranian government that he will not deploy James Taylor.

The Powerball jackpot reaches a record $1.6 billion, with an estimated 45 percent of the tickets being purchased by the city of Detroit using money budgeted for “infrastructure.”

Speaking of huge amounts of money being wasted, in …

FEBRUARY

… the presidential primary season takes center stage. On the Republican side, the big issue — as you would expect, given the stakes in this election — is Donald Trump’s hand size and whether it correlates with the size of his portfolio, which he claims is huge, although he is reluctant to show it to the non-supermodel public. The hand-size issue is raised by Marco Rubio, who scores in the early polls, then fades as voters realize that he is still in the early stages of puberty. Trump’s strongest rival is Ted Cruz, a veteran debater so knowledgeable and confident that Mahatma Gandhi would want to punch him in the face. Meanwhile Jeb Bush, who was considered the early favorite, fails to gain traction with the voters despite having by far the most comprehensive set of policy initiativezzz

Sorry! We nodded off thinking about Jeb, as did the voters.

On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton is widely presumed to be the front-runner based on being a historic woman with a lengthy resume of service to the nation who, with her husband Bill, has serviced the nation for decades to the tune of several hundred million dollars. She is declared the winner of the Iowa caucuses via a controversial and confusing process that, in some precincts, involves dodgeball. But Clinton faces an unexpectedly strong challenge from Bernie Sanders, a feisty 217-year-old Vermont senator with a message of socialism, but the good kind of socialism where everybody gets a lot of free stuff, not the kind where starving people fight over who gets the lone remaining beet at the co-op. Sanders wins the New Hampshire Democratic primary, followed — in what some observers see as a troubling sign — by Vladimir Putin.

Dave Barry goes searching for protesters on the campaign trail

Miami Herald columnist Dave Barry goes in search of protesters in New Hampshire - the "live free or die" state - and ends up in a gaggle of passionate Ted Cruz fans.Natalie Fertig McClatchy

In other February news:

▪ A lengthy standoff at a federal wildlife refuge in Oregon finally comes to an end when anti-government militants, after protracted negotiations, are eaten by the federal wildlife.

▪ Following the death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, the nation’s political leaders observe a period of mourning and reflection lasting three billionths of a second, then commence the important bipartisan work of not making any progress whatsoever on a replacement.

▪ The troubled Chipotle chain temporarily closes all of its restaurants after several customers are attacked by what health authorities describe as “E. coli bacteria the size of adult pythons.”

▪ The Denver Broncos win the Super Bowl, thanks in part to a costly unsportsmanlike conduct penalty called on the Carolina Panther defense for stealing Peyton Manning’s walker.

Speaking of unsportsmanlike, in …
MARCH

… the Republican presidential race grows increasingly nasty, spiraling downward in tone to the point where Ted Cruz makes the following statement, which we swear we are not making up: “Donald Trump may be a rat, but I have no desire to copulate with him.” This sounds as though Cruz is saying that he would copulate with a rat, as long as the rat was not Donald Trump. Presumably that is not what Cruz meant, but nobody really wants to know what he did mean. Meanwhile Ben Carson announces, in his extremely low-key and soft-spoken manner, that he is going to suspend his campaign. Or visit Spain. Or possibly rob a train. There is no way to be certain.

Dave Barry and Carl Hiaasen talk politics, Florida and a presidential bid at the Miracle Theatre

From Florida's Python Challenge to the candidates most likely to get us into World War III, Dave Barry and Carl Hiaasen lobbed a few choice zingers about the 2016 presidential campaign at the Miracle Theater in Coral Gables.Matias Ocner mocner@miamiherald.com

On the Democratic side, Clinton and Sanders are also in a tight and testy battle, although Clinton slowly gains the upper hand thanks to the Democratic Party’s controversial formula for allocating “superdelegates,” which is as follows:

▪ 57 percent go to Clinton.

▪ The remaining 43 percent also go to Clinton.

Responding to charges from the Sanders camp that the Democratic National Committee is tipping the scales in Clinton’s favor, chairperson Debbie Wasserman Schultz states that “the DNC is scrupulously neutral in the contest between Secretary Clinton and the senile Commie fart.”

In other political news, President Barack Obama nominates Merrick Garland to replace Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court. Republican leaders are quick to note that, while Garland appears to be qualified, his name is an anagram for “Rancid Lark Germ.”

But by far the most controversial political issue of the month — which nobody thought about before, yet which all of a sudden is the defining civil rights struggle of the 21st century — is the question of who can pee where in North Carolina.

In foreign affairs, Obama pays a historic visit to Cuba but is forced to leave after three days when he discovers that there is only one golf course. A historic baseball game between the Tampa Bay Rays and the Cuban national team has to be called off in the fourth inning because all but four of the Cuban players have switched sides.

Speaking of historic, in …
APRIL

… England observes the 90th birthday of Queen Elizabeth II, who celebrates the occasion by wearing a large hat and smiling grimly at horses.

Meanwhile world tension mounts when satellite imagery reveals that North Korea has positioned an 18-story plastic bottle containing an estimated 40 million liters of Diet Coke on the border with South Korea, and has somehow obtained what one military analyst describes as “Mentos mints the size of barns.” North Korea insists that the project is “strictly defensive,” but the United Nations Security Council, responding with its toughest sanctions yet against the rogue nation, votes to unfriend Kim Jong-un on Facebook.

In another alarming international development, Russian fighter jets, continuing a pattern of increasingly provocative behavior toward the U.S., attack the control tower at La Guardia airport. After assessing the damage, airport authorities announce that departing flights will be delayed an average of four months, nearly twice as long as usual. Secretary of State Kerry calls the act “a deliberate provocation” and, in his strongest response to date, warns that the U.S. is considering “a harshly worded memorandum.”

In U.S. presidential politics, Ted Cruz, making a last-ditch effort to stop the Trump juggernaut, announces that his choice for running mate is — prepare for a game-changing jolt of high-voltage excitement — Carly Fiorina. This would be the same Carly Fiorina who dropped out after the New Hampshire primary because she got approximately six votes. On the plus side, Cruz manages to make this announcement without mentioning rats.

In other political news, Hillary Clinton is troubled by a persistent cough that leaves her unable to speak at some campaign stops, forcing her to express her commitment to working families by shattering a porcelain figurine of a Wall Street banker with a hammer. A Trump spokesperson, speaking on condition of anonymity, says that the Trump campaign “will not speculate on Mrs. Clinton’s health,” adding that “she obviously has some terrible disease.”

Speaking of bad news, in …

MAY

… tragedy strikes the Cincinnati Zoo when zoo authorities, fearing for the life of a 3-year-old who has climbed into the gorilla enclosure, are forced to shoot and kill a gorilla named Harambe, who instantly becomes way more revered on the internet than Mother Teresa.

In other domestic news, passengers at major U.S. airports complain that they are missing flights because security lines are so long.

Q. How long are they?

A. One of them contains a Wright brother.

Asked for an explanation, a spokesperson for the federal Transportation Security Administration, which is responsible for screening passengers, blames the airline industry, pointing out that “If the airlines didn’t keep selling tickets, we wouldn’t have all these people showing up at airports trying to catch flights.” The spokesperson suggests that people planning to travel by air during busy times should consider other options, such as suicide.

In a medical breakthrough, doctors at Massachusetts General Hospital announce that they have performed the first successful penis transplant in the United States. The patient’s name — we are not making this item up — is “Manning.”

Abroad, satellite surveillance reveals that North Korea has constructed what military analysts describe as “an extremely large slingshot” as well as a latex balloon believed to be large enough to hold a quantity of water equivalent to Lake Tahoe. The North Korean government insists that these items are intended for “medical research.”

In sports, suspicions of doping by Russian Olympic athletes resurface after little-known sprinter Vladimir Raspatovsky, who has never previously posted a world-record time, wins the Kentucky Derby.

Speaking of winners, in …
JUNE

… it becomes evident that, barring some highly unlikely political development, the next president of the United States will be either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump. Meanwhile, the nation is in the grip of a worsening heroin epidemic. Coincidence? You be the judge.

Speaking of coincidences: Bill Clinton happens to find himself in the same airport as U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch, and — as any two people would do if one of them was the nation’s chief law-enforcement officer and the other was married to the subject of a federal investigation — they meet privately aboard Lynch’s Justice Department jet. When word of the meeting leaks out, Lynch assures the press that she and Bill did not discuss the FBI investigation into Hillary’s email, adding, “nor did we inhale.” For her part, Hillary continues to insist that she never emailed anything classified, and even if she did she actually didn’t, besides which so did a lot of other people such as Colin Powell and Harry Truman, and this so-called “scandal” is ancient history from literally years ago that just makes a person sigh and roll her eyes because it is preventing her from fighting for working families while at the same time being a historic woman.

Also for the sake of balance we should note that throughout June, Donald Trump continues to emit a steady stream of truly idiotic statements.

In sports, Cleveland — in a historic upset — actually wins something.

The day Cassius Clay and The Beatles shared the ring

On February 18, 1964, The Beatles were in Miami Beach to perform on the Ed Sullivan show and were taken to the training camp of boxer Cassius Clay, later known as Muhammad Ali.Charles Trainor ctrainor@miamiherald.com

But the big sports story for June, and the year, is the death of Muhammad Ali, a person so remarkable that even the tidal wave of phony saccharine media-manufactured grief-hype that engulfs modern celebrity deaths cannot detract from the simple truth that he really was as great as he said he was.

Internationally, the top story is “Brexit” — the decision by voters in the United Kingdom to leave the European Union. This comes as a big surprise to professional pollsters, who had confidently predicted the opposite result; they enjoy a hearty laugh, then head across the Atlantic to apply their talents to the forthcoming American presidential election.

Meanwhile British politics is plunged into chaos, the result being that in …

JULY

… Prime Minister David Cameron and other top officials resign, new people take office, and the UK essentially has a new government, ready to move on. This entire process takes about two weeks, or less time than it takes the major American political parties to agree on the seating arrangements for a “town hall debate.”

In U.S. politics, the Republicans gather in Cleveland to nominate Trump, although many top party officials are unable to attend because of an urgent compelling need to not be there. Nevertheless Trump receives enthusiastic prime-time endorsements from former celebrity Scott Baio, several dozen Trump children and current Trump wife Melania, who enthralls delegates with a well-received speech in which she tells her heartwarming story of growing up as an African-American woman in Chicago. The dramatic highlight comes on the final night, when Trump, in his acceptance speech, brings the delegates cheering to their feet with his emotional challenge to “grab the future by the p---y.”

On the Democratic side, the month gets off to a rocky start when FBI Director James Comey, announcing the results of the bureau’s investigation, reveals that when Hillary Clinton was secretary of state, her official emails, some including classified material, were basically as secure from prying eyes as a neon beer sign. Nevertheless, Comey says he is recommending that no criminal charges be brought against Clinton, because, quote, “I don’t want to die.”

With that legal hurdle cleared, relieved Democrats gather in Philadelphia for their convention, which opens — in a bid to placate Sanders’ delegates — with the ceremonial caning of Debbie Wasserman Schultz. This is followed by several hundred speeches praising Hillary Clinton for the many accomplishments she has achieved, as well as the achievements she has accomplished, while at the same time being, historically, a woman. In her acceptance speech, Clinton calls on Americans “to join with me in building a better world for us and for our children,” adding, “or I will crush you like an insect.”

In a media shakeup, Roger Ailes resigns as chairman of Fox News following allegations that his name can be rearranged to spell “I ogle rears.”

As the month ends, skydiver Luke Aikins sets a world record by jumping out of a plane 25,000 feet over California without a parachute or wing suit. He manages to land safely in a net despite the fact that on the way down — in what John Kerry calls “a deliberate provocation” — he is strafed by Russian fighter jets.

Speaking of provocations, in …
AUGUST

… Donald Trump goes to Mexico, having been informed by his team of foreign-policy advisers that this is where Mexicans come from. He meets with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto, and although he does not try to persuade Peña Nieto that Mexico should pay for the huge imaginary wall that he has promised to build, Trump does demonstrate his legendary prowess as a hard-nosed businessman by negotiating what he describes as “a fantastic price” on a souvenir sombrero that he claims is “easily 4 feet in diameter.”

Meanwhile, newly released State Department emails cause some people to suggest that the reason a variety of dodgy foreign businesspeople and nations gave millions of dollars to the Clinton Foundation while Hillary Clinton was secretary of state was that they expected — get a load of THIS wacky right-wing conspiracy theory! — to receive special access to or favors from the U.S. government. Hillary has no choice but to roll her eyes and laugh in a violently unnatural manner at this latest attempt to use these discredited smear tactics to prevent her, a historic and lifelong woman, from fighting for working families as well as working for fighting families.

Dave Barry discovers something other than fish in the ocean off Rio

Miami Herald columnist Dave Barry roams the streets and beaches of Rio de Janeiro to discover (and make sense of) all the sights and sounds surrounding the 2016 Olympic Games.Nicole L. Cvetnic and David Eulitt / McClatchy

Abroad, the summer Olympic games open in Brazil amid dire warnings about Zika, riots, muggers, muggers with Zika and windsurfers being attacked by predatory oceangoing feces. But the games for the most part go smoothly, the biggest glitch being when one of the diving pools mysteriously turns a dark, murky green. The mystery is finally solved when the pool is drained, revealing a Russian nuclear submarine, which Russia insists is in international waters.

In the athletic competition, Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt becomes the first athlete ever to win the men’s 100 meter final wearing flip-flops. But the U.S. team dominates the games, with the most memorable performance coming from a team of athletes led by swimmer and rocket scientist Ryan Lochte competing in the Four-Man Gas Station Wall Pee.

Elsewhere in sports, the opening of the National Football League season provides a much-needed diversion to Americans who are sick of being bitterly divided over politics and welcome the opportunity to be bitterly divided over how players respond to the National Anthem.

Speaking of bitter, in …

SEPTEMBER

… Clinton and Trump square off in the first presidential debate, which leads to a national conversation about an issue of vital concern to all Americans, namely the alleged weight gain of Alicia Machado, Miss Universe 1996. This topic is raised by Clinton in an obvious attempt to bait Trump into wasting valuable campaign time talking about something that cannot possibly benefit him, so naturally Trump, who by his own admission has an extremely high IQ, latches onto it like a barnacle onto the Titanic. He focuses on the former Miss Venezuela with laser-like intensity for the better part of a week before getting back to his previous campaign strategy of engaging in bitterly personal Twitter feuds, often with other Republicans.

But it is also not a totally great month for Clinton, who appears to collapse while being helped into a van after hastily leaving a 9/11 memorial ceremony. Her campaign, responding with the transparency, openness and candor for which it is famous, initially downplays the incident, saying that Clinton felt “overheated.” Ninety minutes later she appears outside her daughter’s apartment building and tells reporters “I’m feeling great.” But later that afternoon her physician releases a statement saying that two days earlier, Clinton was diagnosed with pneumonia. This leads to renewed speculation about Clinton’s health, which is quickly quelled by a vast army of Clinton campaign officials, surrogates, allies, lackeys, henchpersons and media flunkies, all heavily armed with talking points and declaring, in unison, that she has no undeclared health problems and is going to power through this minor, pesky, so-called “pneumonia” which is old news and will not distract her from being a historic person of gender with a lifelong commitment to fighting for working etc.

Speaking of overheating, Samsung announces a recall of all Galaxy Note 7 phones after an attempt to re-brand them as “smart charcoal lighters” meets with consumer resistance. Adding to Samsung’s woes are reports that some of its top-loading washers have exploded, although the company insists that the machines are “perfectly safe when operated using the delicate cycle,” provided that “there are no humans nearby.”

In other technology news, Apple announces the release of the iPhone 7, which is basically the iPhone 6 with the added convenience of not having a headphone jack. The marketing slogan is “At Least It Doesn’t Burst Into Flames.”

In entertainment news, “Game of Thrones” once again wins the coveted Emmy award for Drama Series With The Most Naked People.

But for sheer drama, no TV show can compare with what happens to the American political system in …

OCTOBER

… when the U.S. presidential election, until now a cross between farce and soap opera, mutates into a full-on horror show.

The early part of the month goes badly for Trump with the release of a 2005 video in which he talks about kissing and groping women, which according to him he can get away with because he’s a star who uses Tic Tacs. Trump quickly apologizes for the video, noting that (a) it was recorded long ago when he was just 59 years old; (b) his remarks were “locker room banter” such as you would hear in any locker room in America occupied by morally deficient billionaire pigs; (c) Bill Clinton did way worse things; and (d) WHAT ABOUT BENGHAZI?

But the story does not go away. Over the next week Trump is accused of improper groping by enough women to form a professional softball league. Trump responds to these allegations with a five-pronged defense:

Prong One: These women are lying.

Prong Two: ALL of them. They are LIARS.

Prong Three: They are frankly not attractive enough to be groped by a star of his magnitude.

Prong Four: The election is rigged!

Prong Five: WHAT ABOUT BILL CLINTON AND BENGHAZI?

Meanwhile the Clinton campaign is dealing with a steady stream of WikiLeaks emails suggesting that the Clinton Foundation is dedicated to humanitarian relief in the same sense that the Soprano family was dedicated to waste management. But this kind of scandal is ho-hum stuff for the Clinton campaign, whose campaign slogan has slowly morphed from “Stronger Together” into “At Least She’s Predictably Corrupt.” As the month wears on and Trump continues to flail away unconvincingly at his alleged groping victims, it appears more and more likely that Clinton has established herself, with just enough voters, as the least-loathsome choice in this hideous, issues-free nightmare of an election.

And then, just when we thought it could not get any weirder or any worse, we are hit with the mother of all October surprises in the form of the incurable genital wart on the body politic known as Anthony Weiner. While probing Weiner’s laptop (Har!) for evidence of alleged sexting with an underaged girl, the FBI reportedly discovers thousands of emails that were sent from or to Hillary Clinton’s private email server, which apparently had a higher internet profile than Taylor Swift. FBI director James Comey sends a letter informing Congress that the FBI is taking another look at the email issue. In a display of the intellectual integrity that has made our political class so respected by ordinary citizens, all the Democrats and allied pundits who praised Comey in July as a courageous public servant instantly swap positions with all the Republicans and allied pundits who said he was a cowardly hack. This new development sends the political world into Full Freakout Mode, with cable-TV political analysts forced to change their underwear on an hourly basis. Meanwhile millions of critical swing voters switch from “undecided” to “suicidal.”

In non-campaign-related October news:

▪ A government report concludes that the Affordable Care Act (Motto: “If You Like Your Doctor, Maybe You’ll Like Your New Doctor”) is going to cost many people a lot more, while continuing to provide the same range of customizable consumer options as a parking meter.

▪ In a chilling reminder of the nation’s technological vulnerability, a series of cyberattacks disrupts popular internet sites such as Twitter and Netflix, forcing millions of Americans to make eye contact with each other.

▪ In yet another blow to Samsung, the Federal Aviation Administration announces that it will not permit commercial aircraft to fly over states known to contain Galaxy Note 7s.

▪ In the arts, Bob Dylan refuses to answer his doorbell, forcing members of the Swedish Academy to leave the Nobel Prize for literature in his mailbox.

The month ends on an upbeat note as Americans celebrate Halloween, a welcome escape from the relentless drumbeat of bad news, as evidenced by this FoxNews.com headline which we swear we are not making up: “Some Florida Parents Plan To Arm Themselves While Going Trick-Or-Treating Over Clown Concerns.”

Speaking of treats, in …

NOVEMBER

… the Chicago Cubs win the World Series. Finally! Yay! What a fun month! OK, that’s our summary of November. Now it’s time to move along to the events of …
DECEMBER

No, that would be wrong. This is supposed to be a review of the whole year, warts and all, and we have to face reality. So let’s all take a deep breath, compose ourselves and go back to …
NOVEMBER

… which begins with yet another letter to congressional leaders from FBI Director Comey, who lately has generated more correspondence than Publishers Clearing House. This time he says, concerning the newly discovered emails on Anthony Weiner’s laptop: never mind. This forces Republicans and Democrats to again swap positions on whether Comey is a courageous patriot or total scum. For a brief period members of Congress are so confused about who stands where that they are in real danger of accidentally working together and accomplishing something. Fortunately before this happens the two sides are able to sort things out and resume being bitterly deadlocked.

As Election Day approaches, a consensus forms among the experts in the media/political complex, based on a vast array of demographic and scientific polling data evaluated with sophisticated analytical tools. These experts, who have made lucrative careers out of going on TV and explaining America to Americans, overwhelmingly agree that Hillary Clinton will win, possibly in a landslide, and this could very well mean the end of the Republican Party. The Explainers are very sure of this, nodding in unison while smiling in bemusement at the pathetic delusions of the Trump people.

Unfortunately, it turns out that a large sector of the American public has not been brought up to speed on all this expert analysis. And so it comes to pass that the unthinkable happens, in the form of …
DECEMBER

No, dammit! We have to do this! What happens in …
NOVEMBER

... is that Donald Trump is elected president of the United States, unless this turns out to be one of those really vivid dreams, like the one where you’re at the dentist but you’re naked and your dentist is Bette Midler and spiders keep coming out of your mouth.

Trump’s victory stuns the nation. Not since the darkest days of the Civil War have so many Americans unfriended each other on Facebook. Some even take the extreme step of writing “open letters.” Angry, traumatized protesters cry, march, shout, smash windows, set fires —and that’s just the New York Times editorial board. Leading celebrities who vowed to leave the country if Trump won immediately start making plans to … OK, to not actually leave the country per se, but next time they definitely will and YOU’LL BE SORRY.

In Washington, Democrats who believed in a strong president wielding power via executive orders instantly exchange these deeply held convictions with Republicans who until Election Day at roughly 10 p.m. Eastern time believed fervently in filibusters and limited government.

On TV, the professional Explainers, having failed spectacularly to predict what just happened, pause for a period of somber and contrite self-reflection lasting close to 15 minutes before they begin the crucial work of explaining to the rest of us what will happen next.

Joe Biden lies awake nights, staring at the ceiling.

Meanwhile a somber Trump, preparing to assume the most powerful office on the planet, puts the pettiness of the campaign behind him and — facing a world rife with turmoil — gets down to the all-important work of taking Twitter shots at the cast of “Hamilton.” He also begins assembling a cabinet that — reflecting the diversity of the nation he has been elected to lead — includes several non-billionaires. The president-elect also receives classified briefings, during which he learns, among other things, that there are a LOT of foreign countries, including some where he does not even have golf courses.

Meanwhile, the Democrats — now on a multi-year losing streak that has cost them the presidency, both houses of Congress and a majority of the state legislatures — desperately seek an explanation for their party’s failures. After a hard, critical look in the mirror, they are forced, reluctantly, to stop seeking scapegoats and place the blame where it belongs: the Electoral College, the Russians, Facebook and, of course, James Comey.

In the month’s biggest non-election news, the death of Fidel Castro is greeted with expressions of sorrow from several dozen world leaders who never had to live under his rule, and tears of happiness from many thousands of Cubans who did.

As the bitter and tumultuous month finally draws to a close, Americans briefly stop fighting over politics and come together to celebrate Thanksgiving in the same way the Pilgrims did in 1623: fighting over flat-screen TVs.

But the focus turns back to politics in …
DECEMBER

… during which Trump continues to dominate the news, his face appearing 24/7 on every channel including the Food Network, even when the TV is turned off.

The president-elect is busy, busy, busy. Early in the month he ruffles the feathers of the Chinese government when — in what is viewed as a departure from diplomatic protocol — he texts Beijing a poop emoji. Also he threatens a drone strike against Alec Baldwin.

But the big story continues to be the cabinet. Trump’s choice for secretary of defense is James N. “Mad Dog” Mattis, who impresses Trump with his sophisticated understanding of modern military strategy and also by biting the head off a live hamster. Most of the drama, however, involves the herd of hopefuls auditioning for secretary of state, including former Trump foe Mitt Romney, who dons wingtip kneepads for his pilgrimage to Trump Tower, after which he explains to the press that his previous criticisms of Trump have been taken out of context, particularly his use of the phrase “scum toad,” which Romney says he meant “in the spirit of constructive dialogue.”

In the end, Trump gives the job to ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson on the basis of having a name that sounds like a spaceship captain in a movie called “Escape From Planet Doom.”

Chris Christie dines alone in a Golden Corral in Freehold, N.J., pondering whether to accept the ambassadorship to Belize.

Meanwhile, allegations of Russian interference in the election resurface after intelligence satellites detect the presence of 43,000 stolen HILLARY yard signs in Vladimir Putin’s garage. This leads Democrats, who spent the fall mocking Trump for claiming the election was rigged, to claim that the election was rigged. Vote recounts in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin fail to change the outcome, although several hundred Wisconsin ballots are found to contain disturbingly high levels of cholesterol.

The question of who won the election is formally laid to rest on Dec. 19, when the Electoral College meets and votes to go back to 2015 and start over.

No, seriously, the Electoral College formally elects Donald Trump, confounding professional pollsters who claimed to have detected a late surge for Mike Huckabee.

The New York Times and Washington Post, seeking to improve their understanding of pro-Trump America, partner with TV network news divisions to create “Operation Outreach,” in which teams of reporters will travel to non-coastal regions carrying rucksacks full of chewing tobacco and moon pies, which they will trade with the natives in return for colorful quotes about their political views, religious beliefs, sex practices involving livestock, etc.

Meanwhile abroad:

▪ French President François Hollande announces that he will not seek re-election, leading professional pollsters to predict, based on scientific analysis of the data, that he will win in a landslide.

▪ In a disturbing development, North Korean troops mass near the South Korean border armed with what intelligence sources identify as “a large quantity of Samsung Galaxy Note 7s.”

Finally, mercifully, 2016 draws to a close. On New Year’s Eve, a festive crowd gathers in Times Square, and millions more tune in on TV, to watch the ball drop that marks the dawn of the new year. This is one of the great traditions that connect us as a nation, and it serves to remind us that, although we disagree on many things, we are all part of the same big family — the American family — and when all is said and done, we hate each other.

This is what we are thinking as the big lighted ball begins to slowly descend the pole, traveling roughly two feet before it is vaporized by Russian fighter jets.

Happy New Year, fellow Americans. It’s going to be exciting.

Dave Barry's 2016 Holiday Gift Guide

The challenge, in this hectic season, is always to find enough unnecessary things for all the people on our gift list. That’s where this Holiday Gift Guide comes in. We sincerely believe that you will not find a collection of products this useless anywhere else. These are all real products; we did not make them up. You can actually buy them. – Dave Barry