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.

Mob Psychology Part II

My intention is to edit this post over the week end (or maybe over the week) and throw out a bunch of little snippets as examples of mob behavior and mob manipulation.

I.

Today on Yahoo News:

"Web Mourns Two Deaths - The Internet faces the tragic loss of a young athlete and a beloved actor. (link) Sadness dominates the week"

This refers to the deaths of Karine Ruby and David Carradine. My first reaction was, "Oh no, the Internet is so young! I wonder if it's ready to face a double blow like this one! Maybe there's grief counseling, like for high school students."

Beyond the lazy construction however, there is the comfort of knowing that, not only am I being told how to think and feel, I've just been told how I was supposed to feel all week! Gee, now I feel guilty. I'm such a cold-hearted bastard. I gave Karine one raised eyebrow for succumbing to the Law of Averages for doing something stupid, egotistical, and dangerous. I gave Carradine one raised eyebrow for the rope. I've got a good friend down the street with a wife and two kids in college who is probably going to die from cancer sooner or later, but if things don't improve, sooner. This shouldn't happen to a dog, but he is a great guy. He didn't do anything intentionally dangerous to purchase this fate. Too bad he's not famous, or the rest of the world could be told how to feel about this situation. Good people die every minute. I don't mourn because I don't know them. I don't know these celebrities either; I know of them.

II

January 23, 2008, Birmingham.

After leading police on a high-speed chase, and attempting to run over one officer at a road block, the perpetrator rolls his minivan and is ejected from the vehicle. Several police officers proceed to beat the perpetrator, who appears to be unconscious. Story and video here.

In the eyes of the law, all are equally chargeable with the crime of assault. In psychological terms, two of the officers are more guilty of starting this beating frenzy than the others. First, there is the obvious choice, the one that struck the first blow. The second cop to join in created a psychological trigger point. By imitating the actions of the first beater, number two simultaneously established the first cop as the alpha, and established the scenario as a mob action. The rest joined in by reflex, without much, if any, conscious decision. Something tribal and ugly was fired off here. Emotions were at a fever pitch. The Blue Skins joined forces against a common enemy. It is probably a source of personal shame to these officers that they were unable to resist such a soft target. They are however, the warrior class of the community tribe. They are the man-hunters. That scene is not unique. It has been repeated in every major city throughout the years. If it resembles the monkey scene from 2001, a Space Odyssey, this is no coincidence. The tribal programming is there, courtesy of our ancestors, natural (and unnatural) selection, and instinctive behavior. We have only our fore brain to discriminate between impulses with desirable and undesirable consequences. Sometimes it's not enough, and the consequences follow. This is not an excuse for the officers' lack of vigilance. It's just a reason.

III

Oprah.

Master manipulator. Oprah says, "Look under your chair!", get a reward. Operant conditioning. Do what Oprah says, get a reward. She creates a nice, carnival atmosphere, and engages in the kind of generosity and philanthropy that has a huge pay-back in terms of her own image. She did not get super rich by giving it away or finding the cure for cancer. She's selling. The only difference between her operation and that of the Televangelist of your choice is her product mix is broader and includes very emphatically herself.

Mob Psychology

The name of this blog is “Confusion of Ideas” because it’s devoted to the theory that, given enough conflicting information, the human mind will completely lock up. Rather than sort through the evidence backing up a particular claim, the multitude of claims will make that process appear to be an overwhelming task before it is even attempted. At this juncture, the individual will choose the theory that is best liked, or most insistently asserted, regardless of basis or lack thereof. This is the basic abdication of reason, and is helped greatly along when one is surrounded by others equally willing to abdicate and be told what to think. Not only does it then seem like the thing to do at the time, you are surrounded by people beaming approval at your decision.

Knee-jerk mob psychology was a survival mechanism at first. Mobilizing the tribe against a common threat without a long debate has obvious advantages. When it works the way it’s supposed to, abdicating your judgment and following the orders of a social leader can insure the common good, and enrich the community. When it doesn’t work, often the consequences are dire. One of the roles of the capricious gods in early society was to explain away the blunders of social leaders. “The gods were against us. We were screwed from the get-go. It’s not my fault. Sacrifice a virgin and let’s move on.”

Mob psychology is a valued commodity in modern society. The fear and mistrust required to throw a given group into “us versus them” mob mode is carefully nurtured in various ways. Here is a South Park clip describing one of the more subtle ways we are continually being divided against one another. All the while we are being separated out, we are repeatedly being required to re-identify with our designated or chosen sub-groups. What is the purpose of injecting the National Anthem into the beginning of sporting events? And why, as George Carlin asked, must we remove our hats? What does a hat, or lack thereof have to do with patriotism? What is this tribal ritual bullshit? Can someone get me a picture of one of those grease-painted, half-naked idiots standing solemnly with hat on chest? Meanwhile, if I removed my hat to reveal a little revolving propeller on my head, there would be outrage. I would be “making a mockery” of this sacred ritual. Why don’t we cheer an excellent play made by “their” team? In one-on-one sports like tennis, golf, or billiards, excellent play is acknowledged no matter who pulls it off. It’s all about belonging to the mob and letting your emotions go along for the ride.

We are constantly being played, and being played off against each other by people who know how this works and who want something from us. People who, for one reason or another, do not trust us as individuals to make a decision in their favor. Instead they resort to tricks of impulse and fear. The individual goes along with the group because he/she fears ostracism. The group holds itself apart from others for fear of loss of identity. It’s like a Mexican standoff, and no one will drop their guns first.

Open Letter to Tyler Frost

The Heritage Christian School in Ohio has threatened Tyler Frost with suspension for the remainder of the year if he attends his girl friend’s prom at a public high school (story here).

Excerpt: The handbook for the 84-student Christian school says rock music "is part of the counterculture which seeks to implant seeds of rebellion in young people's hearts and minds."

Oh noes! Young people challenging authority! What is the world coming to?

Here is what I have to say to Tyler Frost, and any other persons in similar institutions.

Dear Tyler,

Congratulations on taking a bold step toward being your own person. You have been given an opportunity to see the putrid white underbelly of the organization that has dominated you for many years. How you interpret what you are seeing is of course, up to you. I would like to share my perspective with you.

I am an atheist. I believe that the probability of the existence of such an improbable supreme being is so small as to be virtually non-existent. What then, do religious organizations represent but a hierarchy of men imposing their world view on others by means of an unassailable sock-puppet of authority? These are the control freaks of the world. They are the inmates running the asylum, and there is no agreement even among themselves as to what form their vision of control should take. Your institution is run by fundamentalists. Others cherry-pick that ancient book differently. Whether or not they actually believe in the existence of God, they believe that humans require control or else they will run amok. They also believe that they are the ones chosen to exert this control. One cannot be in the same room with these self-appointed authority figures without experiencing their sense of entitlement and their domineering attitude.

My advice to you would be to walk away and not look back. In my opinion, what has been done to your brain by this organization is every bit as psychologically damaging as trusting your welfare to a pedophile would be. This is one of several circumstances that the GED was designed to address. I realize that this advice is probably unrealistic. It is extremely difficult for young people to survive and prosper in this world at present without a support system. That same cold reality keeps many Amish children Amish. Ride this out any way you feel you have to. I hope you continue down the path of self-direction.

In closing, I would just like to add that I do not think everything you have been taught in terms of morality and ethics is wrong. This is something often claimed by religious authorities about the views of the atheistic community. I do however believe that what you have been taught regarding the origins, purpose, and justifications for these social contracts is wrong. I also believe that the justification for this deception grossly underestimates the strength of character in the average human being. Such a negative world view is both condescending and dangerous.

Best of luck in your personal journey of discovery.

C. O. I. Rumfuddle

It has just been discovered that Phillip Markoff, formerly known as the Craigslist Killer, used a Chevrolet vehicle to get to and from the scenes of his crimes. He will henceforward be known as the Chevrolet killer, and the Attorney General is looking into whether further regulation is required for the Auto industry. Fox News is conjecturing wildly that this might affect the automotive bail-out.

Fairpoint: Worst Phone Company Ever!

Last year, Verizon sold it's land lines in New Hampshire to Fairpoint Communications. the turnover was delayed and delayed until about January of this year. One ice storm later, Fairpoint was so backlogged with repair requests that they were struggling to fulfill customer expectations. Their solution? Take two weeks off to regroup.

This was enough to make me consider dumping them, but now this shows up on my bill:

"Starting mid-March, monthly billing statements were issued on regular cycles so your statement was sent to you on your regularly scheduled date. However, due to our recent system changes, prior to March, you may have received your monthly invoice later than your regularly schedule (sic) date. For this reason, if your payment for the invoice that we delivered to you late was not processed by the time your next billing statement was sent to you, your new invoice may (might, goddammmit!) reflect (state!) a past due amount. Remember, (ok...) you will always have 30 days to pay your bill from the date indicated on the bill. The past Due status on the indicator may (grrr!) not be accurate."

Seriously, WTF-ing F is the average person supposed to make of this?

Translation into 1960's Business English:

We have recently made a change to our billing cycle. Your bill might reflect a payment past due if your previous payment was not received before the current bill was issued. Please disregard, and we apologize for any inconvenience.

I'm moving my business to Comcast. I have no faith in their abilities either, but they're the only other game in town.

Religion - watch more funny videos

"Religion" Video banned on YouTube. Meanwhile, Venomfangx.... Proving once again that the delusional have no tolerance for anything that challenges the delusion.