I'm Still Here!

 Lots of changes in my life since 2010. New content just as soon as I find time in my hectic life. I hope I'm not like Forrest Gump taking that shrimp boat out into a barren fishing ground.

Jesus the Bartender

For fun, I lurk around Fundies Say the Darndest Things. That particular link will take you to the following quote by Andy Schlafly, Phillis Schlafly's brain-dead son and, um ... author of Conservapedia. Follow the link if you want to see the rest of the commentary.

"The second chapter of the Gospel of John describes the conversion of water into wine by Jesus at a wedding reception. Intuitively one would expect the conversion to occur before anyone tasted the drink. But under quantum mechanics, it is not until observation that matter acquires a definite state. John 2:9 describes this precisely as required by quantum mechanics, and the KJV misses this subtle issue of timing in the conversion." - Andy Schlafly, Conservapedia, Biblical scientific foreknowledge

Of course, trying to derive quantum mechanics from a Bible quote is like trying to get a signed prenuptial agreement from a blow-up doll. Really, there are just so many levels of fail! Here, thanks to another poster on FSTDT, is what the Bible passage says.

John 2:7-10

7 Jesus said to them, "Fill the waterpots with water." So they filled them up to the brim.
8 And He said to them, "Draw some out now and take it to the steward." So they took it to him.
9 When the steward tasted the water which had become wine, and did not know where it came from (but the servants who had drawn the water knew), the steward called the bridegroom,
10 and said to him, "Every man serves the good wine first, and when the people have drunk freely, then he serves the poorer wine; but you have kept the good wine until now."

Sure.

My first comment was to state that this is an often-repeated parlor trick that has nothing to do with magic and/or miracles. So many people have reproduced this that I can't understand why anyone would pay any credence to this. I fear I was less than diplomatic. My exact words were:

It's an f-ing parlor trick you dipshit. How many people have to repeat it before you admit that it isn't magic? It's fraud!

Water: H-O-H
Wine: A complex mixture of water, alcohol, esters, organic components of grapes, Lactobacillus vini, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, and other agents of fermentation. It is a product of the controlled decomposition of juice pressed from grapes. You don't happen across it. You find it in barrels, casks, bottles and boxes because humans made it and put it there.

Maybe you should try to explain it with cold fusion, or wormholes to a parallel universe.

Andy: ever the dipshit.

This comment drew the following observation from a poster going by the name of nutbunny.

@ breakerslion:
He is Jesus.
He can do anything.
Chemistry means nothing when God decides to fuck around.

That got me thinking about this in a whole different way. What proof could one offer directly from the narrative that this was a gimmick and not a miracle? This is what I came up with.

(Yes, but) starting with that premise opens up a larger can of worms.

1. Is the end product real wine or synthetic pseudowine? (edit: To be clear, is this a whomped-up, exact chemical copy of wine, or did it come from grapes?)

2. If real, where did it come from?

3. If synthetic, why was it necessary to start with water? Where did all the other elements come from (Carbon, Nitrogen, Misc other trace)?

4. If real, why was it necessary to start with water? Was this some kind of "packrat" teleportation, and some poor slob wound up with several wine jars full of water? Stealing is not all that miraculous.

5. Why allow your minions to get close enough to fuck with it? A really impressive miracle would be, "Go pick up that empty wine jar," and hey presto! it's full again!

In short, if this is a miracle, why did it need a stage magician's set up?

There is one explanation that occurs to me that does not require chicanery on the part of the god-man alleged to be Jesus in this story. The story is pure fiction, written from the perspective of a first century storyteller. Water is a necessary ingredient in the transmutation into wine because water is one of the four elements, earth, air, fire, and water. At the time this story was circulated, people believed that anything could be created from the proper combination of these four "elements". Wine being liquid, the closest "element" to wine is water, and this becomes the natural starting point for any being incapable of grasping all the ramifications of "all-powerful".

Unfortunately for the credibility of our storyteller, no matter which way you look at it, the universe doesn't work that way.

Pissing on Great Moments in History: The Boston Tea Party

Proudly copied from Urban Dictionary without permission but with all advertising links and attributions intact. What's a dictionary for?

6.	teabagger	2700 up, 2170 down
	buy teabagger mugs, tshirts and magnets A misinformed, right-wing corporate media consumer who often fails to understand that BOTH major parties represent a corrupt plutocracy that steals from the middle class by taxing labor and profiting from corporate tax subsidies. A teabagger also often fails to acknowledge that George W. Bush and his neo-conservative minions perpetrated one of the boldest and most egregious executive power grabs in the history of the United States. Furthermore, teabaggers mistakenly continue to blame a newly elected President Obama for all that ails the United States of America, based on a grossly flawed perception of reality (including latent racial prejudice) and despite the fact the U.S. economy collapsed on the previous administration's watch. Teabaggers are also known to base their misguided, right-wing-media-inspired beliefs about President Obama on stupid conspiracy theories about totalitarian takeovers, FEMA camps, etc., despite the fact these very same theories have been circulating around on the Internet for years, and were originally ascribed to neo-conservative cabalists at a time when Barack Obama had not even entered national politics. Teabaggers also are known to be particularly paranoid, xenophobic and intolerant, especially with regard to immigrants and anyone who isn't white. Additionally, teabaggers generally echo stupid myths about entitlement spending (it actually only accounts for about 1% of federal budget spending), have no idea that most poor people in America are not lazy, actually do work and don't want to be on welfare, and have no idea what socialism actually means or that socialist reform in this country is actually what allowed a middle class to flourish and ultimately make the U.S. one of the most prosperous nations in human history. Furthermore, teabaggers incorrectly equate socialism with Stalinism, think a system that rewards greed (capitalism) is the divine preference (despite Gospel evidence to the contrary), and are shameless champions of a misguided belief in American exceptionalism. Teabaggers also fail to recognize the inherently unpatriotic nature of their failed every-man-for-himself ideology that ultimately vilifies anyone who supports public policy aimed at reaching out to fellow Americans in need. They celebrate an exploitative corporatocracy (holy creator of jobs, blah blah blah) while denigrating the little guy for being "weak." Interestingly, teabaggers uphold an immoral, morbidly obese, twice divorced, draft-dodging, college dropout and known drug addict as their de facto leader, and are even known to advocate burning books. Of course, teabaggers fail to recognize the blatant hypocrisy within the GOP and tend to oversimplify all political debate and social issues, much like their pseudo-intellectual, fat-ass leader. Finally, incredibly, teabaggers fail to recognize the hysterical double entendre associated with their proudly adopted teabag moniker. Every village has its idiots, of course, but it's sad when citizens of any nation allow themselves to be whipped into a frenzy en masse by a state-run propaganda machine masquerading as a legitimate, fair, balanced and independent news organization. Teabaggers are right to believe the future of the U.S.A. is in jeopardy, but sadly they have not yet correctly identified the real enemy. Perhaps when teabaggers finally grow up and mature into thinking adults, they will see the right-leaning power establishment for the oppressive and cunning beast that it is. Teabagger: We don't care that George Bush tripled the deficit and lied us into a war. The new administration only cut taxes for 90% of the population... fascists. Let's go throw some Lipton tea bags into a fountain! brainwashed misfit idiot fool foxlover by deepshot Apr 20, 2009 share this

"Reality is defined by the craziest person in the room" - Scott Adams

I am unimaginably weary of having my reality defined by the ignorant, senile, deliberately misinformed, and the lunatic fringe, or some combination thereof.

Messed-Up Bible Stories 4: Noah's Ark

If civilization were to fall tomorrow, would Gilligan's Island be inerrant Truth 2500 years from now?

The Idiots are Taking Over NOFX Kinetic Typography

That would explain it. I have a Life magazine from the Eisenhower era. Cover story: "What's Wrong With Our Schools?"

Hello little pigs, welcome to the ideological sausage factory.

Those treated like caged animals tend to revert to animal behavior. Good examples of this can be found in the alpha ape behavior that can be observed in our prisions and in the schoolyards. The more repressive the regime, the more animal behavior it produces.

Parents and teachers alike seem to think it's important that young children know fun facts like, "George Washington is the Father of our Country." That and $1.50 will buy you a cup of coffee. Nobody teaches these kids how to think, reason, and argue because no one likes a wise-ass kid. Then too, such a child is less easily exploited in later life. There's only so much room at the top, after all.

Boned Agian

I wrote about this the first time when I read the book and found myself simultaneously furious and disappointed at the ending. I'm talking about The Lovely Bones. Now, one of my favorite young actresses, Saoirse Ronan, is playing the dead-girl lead, Susie Salmon. Isn't that a name that just screams DC Comics? Right up there with Lois Lane, or Lex Luthor, only cutesy, wholesome, and innocent, like Raggedy Ann.

I'm sure she'll do just fine, financially and career-wise, but I think making someone so alive "do" dead is a criminal act. That's not to mention the mental gobbledy-gook this "story" reinforces. I was so annoyed by the book that I went looking for reviews that might help me understand the cause of such a visceral reaction. I found Wonder Bread, by Melvin Jules Bukiet, on The American Scholar. He nailed what is so profoundly wrong with this lovely finger painting of a picture much better than I ever could.

(Spoiler alert) Excerpt:

Generally speaking, the sex-murder of an adolescent offers little that’s good. But in The Lovely Bones, mom and pop hook up and so do Ray and Ruth, whose body Susie is allowed to occupy just long enough to have real, true, beautiful sex for once in her afterlife. “I had never been touched like this,” she tells us. “I had only been hurt by hands past all tenderness. But spreading out into my heaven after death had been a moonbeam that swirled and blinked on and off. . . . Inside my head I said the word gentle.” The book ends with a glow.

Every impulse in every sane reader must shriek No! at this pabulum. It’s not lovely that Susie’s been slaughtered, hacked, and dumped in a pit. It’s not lovely that icy Mr. Harvey gets his comeuppance by a conveniently dropped icicle as the pit containing Susie’s body parts is being drained, leading us to assume that her remains will be found and that she will finally get a lovely stone.

Nice thought if you can abide it. Unfortunately, it’s false to all human experience to find “growth” in tragedy. In fact, the dull truth is that pain is tautological. The only thing suffering teaches us is that we are capable of suffering.

The Wonder Bread article is a long read, but well worth it. If you don't care to read it all, skip to the end and enjoy Bukiet's nice strong finish. You might not agree with his position, but this man knows how to support an argument.

Hat tip to the New Yorker cartoon for the tombstone idea.

Who Wants to be a Fundamentalist?

The new game show loosely based on “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?”

You are on the honor system for “Ask a Friend” (two lifelines) and are free to consult the archives at Rapture Ready or Free Republic as often as necessary in place of “Ask an Expert”.

Question 1, Value 10.

Complete this phrase: “The weather outside is … “

A. Frightful
B. Nauseating
C. Wiry
D. Pre-Apocalyptic

Question 2, Value 100.

Barack Hussein Obama is …

A. President of the United States
B. President of Iran
C. “Happy New Year” in Turkish
D. Satan

Question 3, Value 1,000.

Evolution Theory is …

A. The theory that living organisms mutate over time, leading to new species.
B. The theory that explains how the Earth moves around the Sun.
C. A sitcom on CBS
D. Satan’s evil plot to discredit God.

Question 4, Value 10,000.

Abortion is …

A. The premature termination of an unwanted pregnancy by medical means
B. A political hot button that gets pushed more often than a drug dealer’s doorbell.
C. A video game with killer robots.
D. Satan’s way of thwarting God’s divine right to insert souls into unborn children.

Question 5, Value 100,000.

Democracy is …

A. Government “of the people, by the people, and for the people.”
B. A tyranny of the majority, created by skillful manipulation of popular opinion, and mitigated by an occasionally impartial judicial system.
C. An artistic expression that is the opposite of a caricature.
D. Heretical

Question 6, Value 1,000,000.

Women are …

A. The female of the species Homo Sapiens Sapiens.
B. The most frequently underpaid and abused subset of society as a whole.
C. The adult form of girls
D. God’s accursed baby factories, and the sole property of their fathers until sold to a husband.

Question 7, Value 10,000,000.

Faith is …

A. Belief in something without the requirement of positive proof.
B. Another word for prejudice, delusion, or self-delusion.
C. Never having to say, “I don’t know.”
D. Compulsory

Question 8, Value 100,000,000.

Armageddon is …

A. The Biblical vision of the end of the world.
B. The ravings of St. John, the Mentally Deranged.
C. A famous East End nightclub of the 1960’s
D. Next Wednesday.

Question 9, Value 1,000,000,000.

The Bible is …

A. The holy book of the various sects of the Christian religion.
B. A book of Middle-Eastern mythology, badly-remembered history, and plagiarism used to indoctrinate children into subservient behavior and hierarchical thinking.
C. An instrument used for load-testing drawers in hotel bedside tables.
D. The absolute, inerrant, Word of God, written by God, edited by God, typeset by God, sold and distributed by God. The absolute pinnacle of history, science, and information available to the human race, and God’s love in convenient book form without which you will burn for all eternity in Hell. And furthermore, GodGodGodGodGodGodGod! Correction: one capital letter is not enough. GODGODGODGODGODGODGODGOD!

Answers: D, D, D, D, D, D, D, D, D.

Score: 0 = Not Fundie. 10 – 1,111,111,110 = Seek help.

So ...

Has the Dahlia, I mean Dalai, Lama ever reincarnated as a woman? If not, why not? I would think the odds be 50 - 50, as the Great Zappa used to say. Could it be that the seekers have a misogynistic bent? How would that affect their accuracy? What story do they tell themselves to explain this lack of ... curiosity? ... flexibility? ... ability? on the part of their god-man? Inquiring mind would like to know.

Until I get a better answer, I'll just have to imagine that the monks who run that circus can't stand the idea of their leader titty f-ing some stud, or maybe getting pregnant. Pretty much anything else is gender independent. Then again, maybe it's just the old bleeding hangup. Any way you look at it, it doesn't look that enlightened to me.

Incidentally, I have no hangup about using the f-word, but other people seem to think a euphemism will protect children's sanity, so there you go. And you boys in high heels? Yes, I know about boob jobs, but can you really see the Dalai Lama getting a boob job?

More Fun With Python

One of my small vices is to read and comment on Fundies Say The Darndest Things while taking my break at work. Lately, they have been getting a lot of mileage out of a dolt by the name of Andy Schlafly, and his two insane projects, Conservapedia (Think, bigot gets banned from spewing bullshit on Wikipedia, starts his own lemonade stand.) and a conservative rewrite of the Bible. Let that sink in a minute. Andy is trying to remove the liberal bias parts. He's either the most masterful Poe since Ann Coulter (kidding, sadly) or he really is the most demented individual ever to be the editor of an encyclopedia. Perhaps his first job out of high school was felting hats, or developing Daguerreotypes.

When this little nugget of lunacy caught my attention, it inspired me to write a response that I feel is worthy of languishing virtually unnoticed in more than one place, so here it is.

Joaquin, "Allahu" has to mean "Allah", not God. The Muslim chant, which is what this is from, is to Allah, not God.

["Andy, the word "Allahu" means in Arab "God". It comes from: Al-lâh. "Al" means "the" and "ilah" means "god""]

Joaquin, I have an open mind about this, but Muslims chant to "Allahu" and they're not chanting to "God", but to "Allah".

Andy Schlafly , Conservapedia 51 Comments [11/24/2009 12:57:46 PM]

*****

(In the voices of the Python "Pepperpots".)

'Ello Haynoo!

'Ello Heem!

What's on the Telly?

It looks to be a pogrom.

I can see that! ... What's it about?

Some sod by the name of Amos Shitfly or something's gone and started a dispute about the name of God.

What, again? ... God's not a name anyway, it's a title.

It's Ya-way.

No it isn't, that's just Hebrew for "who am". The real name's a secret.

... Maybe it's Herbert.

It's not Herbert!

It could be, how would you know if it's a secret?

It's NOT Herbert!

(TV announcer) And now it's time for the internecine violence on your TV set to explode....

(explosion)

How'd he know that?

(announcer) It was the only logical outcome.

- Apologies to all at Python Ltd.

Check This Out!

I love the happy accidents in life. That lineup almost makes me believe in karma or a higher power. Of course, a higher power that wasn't totally ineffectual would have opened up a manhole for Beck to drop into, so I guess I have to go with karma. You look right at home there Beck.

Hit and Run

1. 2012: The Movie.

Review: Sight Unseen.

Are you fucking kidding me?

If you believe like I do that the World of Woo bullshit has to stop somewhere, some time, boycott this piece of shit. Don't see it. Don't rent it. Don't watch it on cable. I know our non-contribution to the supernatural bullshit mill will be as a fart in a wind tunnel, but it's the principle of the thing. It's one thing for Mel Gibson to regurgitate the anti-Semitic Passion Play from the Dark Ages. That wheezing, hurdy-gurdy of a religious scam is still going strong. It's quite another to revive the defunct superstition of a defunct, pre-Colombian civilization. That's just fucking stupid in light of the very provable fact that there are people here who are so brain-blasted by the everyday social bullshit that they will believe ANYTHING.

2. Applebee's has announced that they will give free food to Veterans and active Military Personnel on Veteran's Day. Consider taking the day off from work and providing shuttle service from your neighborhood VA Hospitals and Homeless Shelters. There are Veterans out there who could use a free meal, and I'm sure they are not the customers Applebee's had in mind when they made this offer.

Ass Groove Jesus

How did I miss this one from March 15 of this year? I think it looks more like Emmett Kelly's famous clown persona, Weary Willie. Would that make it an ass clown?

For other opinions try Skeptic Rant or Pharyngula. Hat tip to both.

DJD With Upper Extremity Radiculopathy

That's the fancy term for why I have not been blogging. Translation: The C4 vertebra in my neck is pressing on a nerve juncture that makes my right arm feel like a giant toothache unless I follow Homer Simpson's advice from the Guatemalan Insanity Pepper episode.

"Note to self: don't do anything!"

The Allege-ed Virgin Mary, Revisited

Like the man in They Live had to say, "I knew it had to be something like this."

http://www.blogster.com/anaibendai/now-illustratedthe

Hat Tip to Rita

Idiots at the Cato Institute?

The Cato Institute is a think-tank devoted to free-market, Libertarian ideals. It is no surprise, therefore, that they would adopt the following attitude. It always surprises me when smart people make dumb statements however, even though everyone is equally capable in that regard. Economist Chris Edwards was quoted on national television as saying, “The economy would have started recovering by now without government intervention.”

This is a stupid statement because it is demonstrably meaningless, having only emotional appeal to those who dispute the wisdom of current government policy. Don’t get me wrong. I am no fan of bank bail-outs that do not “trickle down” into real relief for those being foreclosed upon. I’m just equally annoyed at pundit inaccuracies.

The first problem with this statement can be compared to the insolvable question, “Do you get wetter running through the rain or walking?” There are too many variables to arrive at an answer. What “Economy” is Edwards talking about? The US economy? The global economy? The macro economy? The micro economy? Too many inter-connected variables. Once a change has been introduced, the chain of cause and effect without that change can only be imagined, not accurately predicted. It’s worse than trying to predict the weather patterns two months later if hurricane Bob had never existed. We do not have a parallel universe to observe and accurately chart the chain of consequences.

Problem two: the “X-factors”. Without an economic stimulus package, do things get so bad that one wild-card individual finds a stash of phosphate fertilizer and blows up the Commodities Exchange? Extreme example, to be sure, but all unpredictable consequences have to be ignored (low probabilities are discounted) when making “what-if” predictions. This idealizes the result, as at least some low-probability consequences are bound to happen, but which ones?

The third problem is slightly different, but in the same vein. Granting for the sake of argument that the statement, “The economy would have started recovering by now without government intervention” is true, it leaves the following question unanswered. From what depth of misery would we be recovering? How deep a trough would the crash-landing of the economy have dug? See the problems above for why this question is equally unpredictable.

Spending time thinking about what would have happened, or what might have happened in these circumstances is living in the past and a waste of time, except from the standpoint of propaganda, or agit-prop. One is far more productive when attempting to chart a course based on what did happen, or what Lewis Black among others likes to refer to as, “FUCKING REALITY!” Chris Edwards of the Cato institute is either an idiot for making such statements, or he thinks his audience is stupid enough to accept these statements at face value, or both.

Wednesday August 5, 2009

Remember that date. Years from now, your Grandchildren might ask, Where were you on that day in August, 2009?

Why?

(CNN) -- The American Psychological Association concluded Wednesday that there is little evidence that efforts to change a person's sexual orientation from gay or lesbian to heterosexual are effective.

... And it only took them, what? Twenty years of supporting data? I guess they had to be sure.

Hat tip to Mister Jeb's Blog

Always Trash the Competition

From Morning Edition, an NPR Newscast, August 13:

"Catholic Church leaders in Italy are chagrined that a nearly $200 million lottery takes place Thursday. Church leaders say the drawing encourages greed, false hope and an idolatrous worship of money. Although entrants have about a one in 600 million chance of winning, there's no dearth of Italian municipalities entering."

Transcript and recording here.

One can just imagine the conversation that took place.

"Your Holiness, our Priests are reporting that the take for collections is down 23%!"

"What? What is going on around here? Have the Priests all gone soft?"

"No your Holiness. People are spending their money on lottery tickets."

"Oh sure! And how much you think they'd give the Church if they won? Greedy bastards! Chasing money all the time! They know they got a snowball's chance in Hell of winning right? .... They're worshiping money at the altar of false hope. Hey... Wait a minute... Greed... False hope... Idolatrous worship... THAT'S OUR RACKET! Put some muscle on 'em boys! Declare an edict or something! I want this stopped!"

The Prejudice of the Hypothetical

I am reading god is not Great by Christopher Hitchens. I’m less than half way through this book, and already I owe Mr. Hitchens a debt of gratitude. He has identified for me a type of confusion I had not noticed. From page 18:

“A week before the events of September 11, 2001, I was on a panel with Dennis Prager, who is one of America’s better-known religious broadcasters. He challenged me in public to answer what he called a ‘straight yes/no question,’ and I happily agreed. Very well, he said, I was to imagine myself in a strange city as evening was coming on. Toward me I was to imagine that I saw a large group of men approaching. Now --- would I feel safer, or less safe, if I was to learn that they were just coming from a prayer meeting? As the reader will see, this is not a question to which a yes/no answer can be given. But I was able to answer as if it were not hypothetical.”

His answer is long and excellent, but that would be a spoiler. Aside from the rephrasing required for a yes/no answer, Mr. Hitchens recognizes this type of question and identifies it elsewhere in the book as a “trick question.”

The human brain tends to evaluate hypothetical questions like this one subjectively. It is statistically doubtful that one living in the US has ever encountered a group of militant religious fanatics exiting a prayer meeting. Further, it is doubtful that the description “militant religious fanatics” would be employed in the process of elimination one would use to identify a group of men exiting a religious edifice in the US. Additional visual queues would be required to plant that suspicion, like the presence of side arms, or KKK robes, Nazi arm bands, and the like. Elsewhere around the globe, the possibility is more immediate to the casual onlooker, and including that possibility in one’s list of possible identifications could make the difference between life and death.

Our life experiences color the internal picture we paint to interpret the hypothetical question. In addition, those fortunate enough to live in relatively peaceful countries are conditioned to give people and situations the “benefit of the doubt.” Those living in more dangerous times and places know this can get you killed. When a person asks a hypothetical question, and that person is depending on the generic nature of that question to color the audience’s perception of the answer to that question, a subtle trap has been laid. It’s obvious to me that Mr. Hitchen’s intellect, education, or both is superior to mine because he recognized this, and was able to avoid the direct, ambiguous answer with concrete examples supporting his position. Thanks to him, I will do the same should the situation arise.

Assholes in Florida!

What a surprise. There are assholes everywhere. Somehow, Florida seems to have a bumper crop of the brain-dead religious zealot variety, and a surplus of asshole clergymen to feed off them. The latest rash load of shit from the particular assholes in question has to do with the manufactured outrage and protest against the FLASH recruiting billboard seen here.

According to this WSVN story, the billboard, which can be seen from Interstate 95, is “next to a business owned by an African-American preacher.” Gee, I wonder who is winding up the little automatons and filling them full of moral outrage. Does this preacher really feel that the undeserving stranglehold religious corporations have on the minds, emotions and imaginations of the masses is threatened by this sign? Or, are these Christians so starved for stimulus for their built-in persecution complex that they are grasping at any excuse to feed it?

Citing fair use and further quoting the over-aggressively copyrighted WSVN story:

The members of the community cite two main problems: born-again Christians own the business right next to the sign, and the billboard is located right in the middle of an African-American community.

Now wait a minute here! First, we’ve already established that this is not just some Jesus drone that owns that business, it is a full-fledged man of the cloth, pan-handling exploiter of human fear, weakness and uncertainty. In short, a class A manipulator and user of the system. Second, and even more egregious, what the F- does the ethnicity of the neighborhood have to do with anything? Is this some bizarre form of denigration (look it up before you play the “race card”) of this community? Are they saying that African-Americans are less tolerant than white people? Do African-Americans have a problem with distinguishing a thing from that to which it is adjacent? Does this particular community have a problem with the concepts of tolerance, and free speech? Excuse me while my head explodes!

Just so I’m clear on this position, correct me if I’m wrong.

It’s okay for the myriad of religious machines to:

Broadcast religious, televangelistic, and telethon programming without apparent limit on TV and radio.

Post religious billboards on highways, and billboards advertising bottom-feeding religious “help” organizations.

Insinuate themselves into sporting events and college graduation ceremonies.

Monopolize every meaningful event in a person’s life, from cradle to grave, and insist on injecting religious overtones.

Insure that every politician and almost every prime-time television show injects a little God-belief into their scripts.

Foster all manner of superstitious twaddle that directly or indirectly supports the alleged power of the church, and the alleged afterlife.

It’s not okay for a secular organization to:

Put up a billboard that goes out of its way not to say anything offensive concerning contrary beliefs.

Another quote from the WSVN news article:

After seeing the billboard, Team of Life community activist Essie "Big Mama" Reed brought her students out to protest it Wednesday afternoon. "Nothing else matters, but that sign needs to come down. In the name of Jesus," Big Mama chanted, as she led her students in protest.
She said the sign affects something much deeper than business. "I don't know the reason for putting this sign up," said Big Mama. "It says 'Do not believe in God.' How are we going to make it? Look at our schools, everyday. Everyday there's something going on. Kids are out here killing each other, kids are here using drugs. Who else are they going to believe in?"

People like you, who are blind to their own narrow-minded bigotry, are reason enough for putting that sign up. Thousands of years of religious indoctrination have not made a dent in the social problems you see around you, but somehow, that is the only answer you have. Do you know what doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting a different result is called?

Nothing else matters but that sign needs to come down? Do you know how stupid that sounds? There are real issues to fight for the world over, and people are dying. But I forget, this life has no meaning for you. The only things you obsess on are the weird scenes you imagine await you when you die.

Who else are they going to believe in? How about themselves for starters. How would it be if every aspect of home and social life wasn’t telling them over and over that they were inferior, worthless, and weak. How if they were taught self-reliance instead of being taught to be a permanent child, and letting others do the thinking for them? All in the name of Gawd the Father of course. It’s great for your sense of self-worth that you can organize so many followers, but what about their ability to lead, even if only themselves? Do they move to achieve their goals, or pray and wait?

Now you can be offended!

Hat tip to vjack at Atheist Revolution

Tales of the Weird

When I was in high school, my friends and I used to play a little game. We would stand outside the cafeteria doors before lunch, and roll pennies and the occasional nickel down the crowded hallway. The objective was to see whose coin could go the farthest before it hit someone or was stepped on. This was before the Gameboy was invented, so we did what we could to amuse ourselves. Like most schools the hall emptied out quickly when the bell rang, so that signaled the end of the game. So on this one day, I found my arm cocked back to throw when the bell rang and, what the hell, I threw it anyway. This is how I got to see my coin roll the entire 70 or so feet of the hallway and disappear into a stress crack in the opposite wall.

The gross improbability of this result led to my first independent hypothesis about the nature of the universe. One could roll pennies down an empty hallway, aiming at that crack, and never hit the mark before one’s arm fell off from fatigue. My 17-year old mind pondered this, and thought that maybe, just maybe, the universe existed in such a way that any possible act, no matter how improbable, would occur somewhere at least once before the end of time.

What happened between last Thursday night and Friday evening brought this back to me. See if you can come up with a number small enough to measure the probability of this chain of events.

Last Thursday night, there was a thunder storm. A bolt of lightning struck close enough to overload the two circuit breakers that feed power to outlets in the back yard. On Friday morning, I discovered that the land line phones were knocked out too. The handsets reported “line in use” on the display, but there was nothing but a few crackles on the line, like it was disconnected. As unusual as this was, I assumed that the storm had knocked out a transformer or a repeater or something. By evening, when nothing had changed, I began to suspect that the problem was in the house. I disconnected all the devices from the wall jacks and replaced them one by one, starting with the wireless base station. The problem persisted until I disconnected that and connected another phone. At first, I thought the base station was fried, but upon examining the RJ11 connector that plugged into the wall mount, I saw that it had a blackened look. One of the two contacts was completely missing. I immediately assumed that it had been fried in some kind of an electrical short. Much to my surprise, what at first looked burnt turned out to be something entirely different.

Last Fall, my kitchen was renovated. The renovation included a granite counter top, and moving a wall-mount for the telephone from the kitchen into the adjoining dining room. While this work was taking place, the Panasonic wireless phone system was removed from the wall mount and plugged in elsewhere. A plastic bracket was removed to convert the base station from a wall mount to a table-top configuration.

Some time after the wiring part of the renovation was complete, there was an ice storm, and the accompanying power failure lasted more than a day. This is how my only analog phone with wired hand set wound up plugged into the wall mount in place of the wireless system. This configuration was allowed to remain in place until Spring.

Meanwhile, the renovation completed, the contents of the kitchen were moved back into the cabinets. In the process, the bracket for the Panasonic base station found its way into the DJD (Designated Junk Drawer) in the new kitchen. Also during this process, a bottle of soy sauce was dropped and smashed on the granite. The junk drawer happened to be part open at the time, and the contents were splattered. During the clean up, several drops that had landed on a 3/4” x 2” upper surface of the plastic phone bracket were missed and remained there. Eventually, the bracket and the base station were reunited with the wall mount in its new home in the Dining Room. Once again, the semi-dry and sticky drops of soy sauce were overlooked.

Prior to the electrical storm, it had been raining here for a week straight; the humidity was through the roof. For the two days leading up to the thunderstorm, the temperature hit 80 degrees for the first time this Summer. At some point, the sticky soy sauce “melted” and dripped directly onto the phone jack. This was the dark substance on the RJ11 connector. Did the vibration from the clap of thunder cause it to fall or was it already there? Was the salt content sufficient to corrode the contact, or was there a final push from a current spike caused by the lightning? Was it sheer coincidence that the phone crapped out at the same time as the lightning strike? I’ll never know, but no matter how you add it up, it’s just weird.