This is quite a day for birthdays. And frankly, I threw a bunch of people into “other birthdays” that I normally would have highlighted. So don’t take offensive. Not that you would.

On this day in 1917, the great jazz pianist Thelonious Monk was born. I am not often in the mood to listen to him, because he is challenging. But if I’m up to really listening, there really is no one better. Here he is with his quartet doing his most famous song “Round Midnight”:

The great playwright Harold Pinter was born in 1930. I like his work, but I’m not a big fan. In fact, I’m only listing him because I had no idea that he died back in 2008.

Musician John Prine is 67 today. I still love his very first album and listen to it at least a few times per year. He is a great songwriter. Here he is doing “Hello In There,” which still gives me chills:

Julia Sweeney is 54 today. Here she is doing the beginning of Letting Go of God:

Other birthdays: scientist Henry Cavendish (1731); the Romantic composer Giuseppe Verdi (1813); art forger Han van Meegeren (1889); actor Charles Dance (67); and complete entertainer Ben Vereen (67).

The day, however, belongs to the film director Ed Wood. He is known for making “bad” films, but people who think this are idiots. Wood made low budget films with lots of problems. He certainly could have used a second unit crew because his films often lack proper transitions. But at their best, they are wild and wonderful. My favorite thing about his films is that they are subversive. Plan 9 from Outer Space attacks the whole idea of the Cold War nuclear arms race. In it, the aliens have come to earth to destroy the human race because we are about to develop a new bomb that will destroy the universe and they don’t think we are mature enough, “See! Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!” And so we were and are. Here’s the scene; it’s great:

Happy birthday Ed Wood!

As the Republican demand for not destroying the economy continues to change, I am curious. If the government had to be shut down because Obamacare would otherwise destroy the very fabric of our society, how is it that they would accept something else for returning to regular order? First it was just a repeal of the medical device tax. That at least had the advantage of relating to Obamacare. More recently, it is entitlement and tax “reform.” (Note: entitlement reform is entitlement cuts; tax reform is tax cuts for the wealthy.) Why don’t the mainstream press admit that the Republicans are only interested in, “Winning!”

By that I don’t mean to suggest that the Democrats aren’t trying to “win” this political crisis. But it is clear that the Republicans caused this crisis because they wanted to win. They wanted to defeat Obama. And all the talk of Obamacare and budgets is just a cover. If they were honest, the Republicans would have said, “Unless Obama admits that we totally rock and he totally sucks, we will shut down the government.” Because that’s all it is about. And that’s all it has ever been about.

But what a dangerous game we are now playing. This morning, Paul Krugman wrote, Automatic Destabilizers. It’s a tad technical, but the bottom line is terrifying. If the Treasury Department manages to pay bond holders and the banking system doesn’t flip out, a long term Debt Ceiling crisis (and if things are quiet in banking, it will be long term) will cause the economy to contract by 10%. A normal downturn of this absolute magnitude would cause a decrease of 6%, but because automatic government stabilizers would be unavailable, the effect would be much worse.

This amounts to a loss of five million jobs on top of our already large 11 million unemployed (pdf)—not to mention the under-employed and discouraged. Yet we have increasing talk that a Debt Ceiling breach wouldn’t be that bad, or if it was, it would be just because Obama made it that way. Representative Ted Yoho even went so far as summon the Confidence Fairy, “I think, personally, it would bring stability to the world markets.” Let’s think about that for a moment. The 2008 crisis caused a contraction of the government of about the same amount. So what Ted Yoho (Personally!) thinks will add “stability” will in fact, be as bad as the downturn we saw 5 years ago.

So right now we stand on the verge of hurting not just our economy but the world economy. And that will hurt countless people. In fact, it will cause people to die. And what is the reason? Is it Obamacare? More tax cuts for the rich? More benefit cuts for the poor? No! It’s the oh so principled stand that Republicans don’t like the president. This is what they would destroy the world for.

According to CNN’s Belief Blog, there are six types of atheists:

I identify myself as an atheist just because it’s easier, but it seems that I am a particular “type” of atheist more accurately categorized as a non-theist. It’s comforting to be put into the tiniest box possible; it makes it so much easier for people to quickly assess whether or not I’m best avoided.

As a non-theist, I thoroughly enjoyed this video from The Atheist Voice.