Archive for the ‘religion’ Category
Talk to the – wait, WHERE'S THE HAND GONE? news trawl
March 12th, 2010 | 
Author: Hi Southern USA, would you mind not cheesing me off today? Oh never mind, forget it:
US school cancels prom 'over lesbian date'
Fine. OK, China, you're still on probation. Don't let me down now… oh hell, why do I bother ungrounding you lot.
Eleven rare Siberian tigers die at Chinese zoo
Australia, Australia, I hardly dare even ask. Well wait a second, what do we have here?
Atheists meet in Melbourne to celebrate lack of faith
Sounds like lots of fun. I almost wish I could attend.
Female porn director to fight Parliament seat in Kent
It doesn't say if the films she directs make an attempt at being 'healthy', or are the usual creepy exploitative crap. Either way, well, if she wants to run, best of luck to her in evading the Daily Wail and not sabotaging the whole gig for Lib Dem voters country-wide… that's what I care about most here.
In pictures: PUPPIES! Crufts 2010
I can't remember if I've linked this older story before. Japan's patient pets
This is one of those stories where you almost don't need to read the text, because nothing could outdo the headline. (Any suggestions for a snappy term for this kind of story?)
Mummified hand disappears from Wiltshire pub again
For some time I was wondering why E-Type's song "Fall from the Sky" was in my head, then I remembered I'd seen this story:
Mystery of 75 starlings falling from the sky
Genius.
Nanometre 'fuses' for high-performance batteries
UK treenage slang. A nifty section shows how kids in different areas express this phrase in their own patois:
"John's girlfriend is really pretty. But she got mad with him the other day because he wanted to hang out with his friends rather than take her to the cinema. She got really angry and stormed off. It was very funny."
Posted in 
Fight for your right to poke fun at Avatards
OK… so…
First people were in the news mentioning how they had suicidal urges because Bluecahontas — sorry, Avatar — isn't real.
*writes up a prescription for some red pills* All right, carry on.
But now, via an otherkin-with-senses-of-humour thing I read, I give you the Na'vi Anti-Defamation League.
This is a travesty.
How dare the dandelion-herding, psychic-pony-riding Violet Beauregarde brigade rob us of our pretend racism?!?
Time to take to the streets and take back our right to disrespect people who don't exist! When will this end? Next they'll be saying people who don't believe in invisible magic things aren't fully human!
Oh dear. Did some of you just stop laughing?
So anyway.
I think combining the shininess of Avatar with the dark, cynical thoughtfulness of District 9 (and some doggies) would have produced about the best film I can imagine. District 9 was fantastic in its own right, but there's no denying the visual loveliness of Avatar. Films don't actually have to come with a brown-grey filter to make an impactful point. Honest. There's nothing wrong with a bit of beauty for its own sake.
Incidentally, Avatar was lacking in one important regard. Nobody said "They're attacking Home Tree! Quick, I need root access!" (Indeed, one loses count of the tree/computer puns they fail to make after being informed that the entire biosphere is essentially a distributed natural intelligence.)
Dog, deer, "it" and why the Egyptians thought umbrellas were unlucky
Rare Barbastelle bat found on the Isle of Wight
White hind caught on camera in Scotland; Queens Susan, Lucy, Kings Peter, Edmund, seen rushing to site
This article can't make up its mind whether the hind (which is a female deer) should be referred to as "it" or "she". Come on, folks, language guidelines should state that if an animal's sex is known, he or she should be referred to appropriately. Possibly non-sexually-dimorphic arthropods and small fish could be exempt, but it's stupid to refer to a queen bee or ant drone as "it".
Dog lost in Afghan battle returns. Again with the "its"! What is this rudeness? To a war veteran, no less! (Oh, sorry, Sabi, I meant to say war experienced person.)
28,000 people in the UK have black and white television sets.
Nu Labour in a nutshell:
The superstitions around opening an umbrella indoors apparently date back to the Ancient Egyptians.
Nurse shark? This one's a midwife.
Smart wife launches her own entrapment operation to catch her paedophile husband in the act. Also, they live in Pantygog.
Chile says "thanks but no thanks" to statue of authoritarian paedophile-abetting misogynist with creepy Virgin Mary fixation. Sadly not on those grounds, just because of an underground car park.
This one's fascinating: Traditional African rulers should apologise for the role they played in the slave trade, a Nigerian rights group has said.
'I agreed to become a suicide bomber' – after days of beatings and being shouted at, poor kid. I admire him.
Greek Church throws a hissy fit about a ban on "the compulsory display of crucifixes" in classrooms.
Darwin foiled by ambulance service
Lion is taken on midnight safari. Disapproves of stop signs but enjoyed drive-thru.
I took a rank in 'Knowledge (celebrity)' lawlz
My job has improved my knowledge of pop culture SO much, seriously.
[Mel] Gibson… is he the Scientologist or the anti-Semite? Directed Lord of the Rings or Lord of the Flies or something too, didn't he?
Herm, today
I wouldn't have known that much before.
"Well, MY cat can dowse and read auras" news trawl
"I felt I'd test my hypothesis and I did that by getting my cat certified by a number of the most prominent lay hypnosis organisations in the United States. It was a frighteningly simple process."
Cat registered as hypnotherapist
Look at the picture of the cat, though. That's an intense expression – every bit as convincing as Derren Brown. And less trustworthy.
'Lying down' NHS staff reinstated
Honour killings given Bollywood flavour
Uruguay approves sex change bill, jubilant blogger tries desperately not to type "You mean Uragay lol lol :D"
Cut them off with a rusty butter knife.
I don't celebrate Hallowe'en, but that Methodist minister has just caused me to drink some water as a proxy libation to Bau and Anubis (which I reasoned ought to count as Satan in his book). Self-important arsenoses like Rev Jonathan Campbell make Satanism look more attractive than do 19-year-old skinhead trick-or-treaters or noisy drunk people having fun.
Yes they should – why don't they already?!
Berners-Lee 'sorry' for slashes, fanfiction writers up in arms
Beaver-call news trawl
Egypt to become den of vice and harlots with visible eyes
Saudi to become den of vice, mixed-sex conversations and literate car-driving harlots
Witch schools. I wonder why this upsets me so much less than Christian missionaries doing the same. Probably some ill-defined idea of cultural naturalness.
World's oldest POWs returned home
These people are spawning 10+ mini-mes and imbuing them with their Invisible Magic Friend disease while Brits raise one or two apiece and teach them about things like open minds. Something's going wrong here. Something's going very wrong.
In shock news, several gay Conservatives have been found to be able to live with themselves.
Very Important religious-atheistic lunchtime musing
If one could summarise the beliefs of an atheist-suitheist, what would that look like?
"There is no god, but if there were, it'd be me"? Not self-assuredly autotheistic.
"There is no god BUT me"? Not atheist at all; that's plain monotheism.
"I'm god and I don't exist"? Kind of nihilist. I'm more of an existence-affirming type.
"I might as well be god because religion's a joke"? Doesn't sound like it's being taken seriously. (Funny, that…)
Well, I'll tell you. There is no logically sound statement to be made in your language, because IT'S A SODDING MYSTERY. Yes, like the (patently illogical and unbiblical) trinity, or transubstantiation, or chinchilla persians or something. So ha! Suck on that!
(This is the sort of thing a nontraditional dual-classing chappy like me has to consider, and by "has to consider", I mean "tends to think about idly because someone suggested 'goddidit' as an excuse, which amusingly fails to work for either of my supposed categories". (N.B. in such situations, go to the standby of solar flares))
Long have I waited for this day.
The day when I finally have a legitimate excuse to Bel-Air Christianity.
Blame Brian Draper for setting it up so perfectly, and my apologies to Peter Hearty for lowering the tone on his most excellent blog, which is full of intelligent and witty readers and me.
J&M comic on top, biting form
A little preamble for those who don't follow Jesus and Mo
. The comic contains depictions of Jesus and Muhammad, with guest appearances from Moses – who, in his later years, has developed an interest in philosophy and New Age religious 'experiences'.
The barmaid is a recurring character, an atheist who strongly disagrees with Muhammad and Jesus on most things. Here's a rare moment of agreement between the three.
Today's episode appears to have been inspired by this, also a good read.
God you're numbskulls — er, I mean, got your number
118 118 man seen in Marmite
It may not be immediately obvious to everyone, but one family is convinced they can see the mascot of a directory enquiry service on the lid of a jar of Marmite.
Claire Allen, 36, said she was the first to notice the image on the underside of the lid as she was putting the yeast spread on her son's toast.
Her husband Gareth, 37, said he could not believe his eyes when he saw it.
Mr Allen, of Ystrad, Rhondda, said: "The kids are still eating it, but we kept the lid."
He explained: "Claire saw it first and called her dad to come and take a photo of it.
"When I first looked at it I wasn't sure, but when I moved it away from me it started coming out. I thought yeah, she's right – that's the moustache bloke from the adverts.
Mrs Allen told the South Wales Echo: "Straight away Jamie said "that looks like 118", and my other boys (Robbie, four, and Tomas, 11) even said they could see a face.
"People might think I'm nuts, but I like to think it's 118 118 looking out for us.
"We've had a tough couple of months; my mum's been really ill and it's comforting to think that the jogging man from a commercial directory enquiries company advert is watching over us."
Read the original story here. Doesn't make much more sense than my parody, does it?
So I've been was agonising with colleagues about how this was ever considered to be 'news' within the BBC's remit to inform (no), educate (…no) and entertain (?).
Other text services are available, including AQA, which has sexy goffboi harlots working for it.
And now it's time for….
Psalm or Marmite advert?
Marmite advertisements use the attention-grabbing tactic of claiming you may hate their product.
But are the following quotations prophecies from the psalms associated with Jesus, or adverts for the goopy black stuff? You decide!!!!
- "More in number than the hairs of my head are those who hate me without cause"
- "You either love it or hate it"
- "All who hate me whisper together against me"
Marmite's next campaign: "For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law. And a man's foes shall be they of his own household. Some of whom will eat peanut butter. Shun them. Shun them."
Septicaemia for Jesus
runs the gamut from
"How could hell be worse than going around with that on you for the rest of your life?"
all the way to
"Hey, that would be quite nice if it wasn't carved into someone's flesh."
Enjoy.
Atheism ahead
On Wednesday, Peter Hearty of Platitude of the Day wrote a reaction to some of the usual waah by Andrew Brown. (On which note, Brown's selective quoting is shown up by one commenter.)
My own take can be found in the comments to Hearty's post. Since I posted, though, the conversation has continued, covering the wider issue of public atheism, public atheists and the whole idea of debating with POF. The later comments are a good read, quite representative of the frustrations of the thoughtful British atheist. Or I think so.
I like the POTD commenters. Like Hearty, basically all of them are reasoned, intelligent and generally quite witty.
News: Super-duper-stition, and Serious Ethical Discussion involving kissing Retrievers.
US teacher broke law by describing creationism as 'superstitious nonsense'.
Creationism is superstitious nonsense. So are most religious beliefs. I live in the UK and am not a government employee, or indeed anyone with editorial responsibility, so either live with it or tell me my atheism is superstitious nonsense. Atheism1 is a treasured part of my identity too, but the law and I give you express permission to whinge about it all you want.
I don't know if this is the teacher's actual words being quoted, but if he truly said he had an "unequivocal belief that creationism is superstitious nonsense", how can that be attacked under the First Amendment?
If we're getting petty, this judge's ruling breaks the First A. Emphasis mine:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
So there. Anyway—I'm not particularly bothered by the finding represented by the headline.
The most interesting part for me is that most of the teacher's comments were protected. They include, in appropriate contexts, "when you put on your Jesus glasses, you can't see the truth", "conservatives don't want women to avoid pregnancies – that's interfering with God's work" and "[there's as much evidence that Jehovah created the world] as there is that there is a gigantic spaghetti monster living behind the moon who did it".
Those statements are now protected by law or precedent or something, which gives the good guys some kind of framework within which to work.
Should we care about animals? Discussion of animal ethics.
From Julian Baggini's answer:
The simplest and clearest motivation for taking animal welfare seriously is the recognition that pain is in and of itself a bad thing, and that to inflict significant amounts of it unnecessarily is wrong. Of course, until you cash out "significant" and "unnecessarily", the principle remains vague, but without these qualifications, the rule is a clearly nonsense.
From HE Baber's answer:
In fact there is no principled way to sort all and only humans into one moral category and everything else into another, so we face a moral dilemma. Either we hold that there is no objective criterion grounding moral consideration or we hold that when it comes to common practice we fall short.
They may post more responses; I'm not sure. Just those two at time of writing.
If I had a Retriever, I'd admit to kissing him or her good morning.
So here's a thought. When it comes to ethical choices regarding companion animals, if in any doubt, substitute "my infant child" for "my dog" and see how you feel about it then.
Following that principle, and if we allow (although I realise some (particularly in parts of the US?) don't) that debarking and declawing are not defensible, you won't find much that's morally taxing or lifestyle-inhibiting until we get to neutering. Because I wouldn't permit an infant child in my care to be sterilised, I'm forced to adopt the view that spaying and neutering companion animals is wrong. Putting that into practice, of course, as Baber points out, is difficult.
Our dogs weren't spayed, although Bracken had a hysterectomy in adulthood to cure a bad infection. Our male cat, however, is neutered. I do think if I ever own a cat I still would have it sterilised, albeit with qualms, but not a dog. Handling bitches in season is fine; we had doggy equivalents of panty pads for ours, and most people in suburbia these days don't let their entire males roam the streets. Males are easy to control, although that seems to have escaped my father, whose entire male Labrador regularly drags his bedding outdoors after meals and copulates with it.
I have seen neuters and spays performed on cats, and noted the enormous difference between the operation on a tom (literally 30 seconds. Slash, snip, snip, done) and the operation on a female (much longer and more invasive). For that reason alone, given that I would have a cat neutered, I would be much more likely to own a male cat than a female.
1 Actually, technically, that treasured part of my identity is better described as "intelligence" and "freethinking cynicism with a generous helping of Occam", because I don't define myself by negatives. Except perhaps that I'm not blond. And, of course, that I'm not the werewolf/saboteur/traitor/cylon.
If you think it's funny for a self-described neuter (-gendered individual) to be arguing about neutering, I agree.
Epic \m/ (and Puranic, Vedic and Classical)
We have a nifty new Hindu history section, put up last Friday. It's much better than the old.
It was written for us by a real professor. (And illustrated by me by courtesy of stock.xchng, Wikimedia Commons et al.)
Just call me Hrymr…
This post marks the official beginning of the campaign to have "naglfar" declared the correct collective noun for thumbnail images.
Each web image gallery now comprises one naglfar, or several naglfars, of thumbnails.
So mutt it be.
