The Squid Zone

Ever wondered what it would be like to have complete idiots for neighbours?

Like, say you were really creative and made a snow-sculpture of the Venus de Milo.  Most people would think that's pretty cool.  Some people might think you have too much free time on your hands.  But if you have complete idiots for neighbours, they might call the police and complain that it's too naughty... as happened to someone in New Jersey recently:

 

(click picture to head to the BBC article)

That picture is a before and after shot.  The creator of the sculpture had to choose between taking it down or covering it up on orders of the local police.  Why the police couldn't go pimp-slap the complainant is beyond me. Just because someone complains about something doesn't mean action has to be taken to remedy the complaint.  Some complaints are just stupid... like the complaint about this snow sculpture.

I can't imagine what kind of pervert would think that snow sculpture is risqué, but I'm willing to wager there's more than the usual number of Bibles and Jesus imagery that you might find in a residence, and a lot of severe sexual repression  in the complainant's house.  Now the sculpture looks cheap and skanky... as if that's somehow an improvement over a reproduction of a famous piece of art.  Way to go Captain Complainer!

Definitely there are some neighbours there who need to spend a lot more time minding their own damn business.  This sort of complaint is pure unneighbourly douchebaggery.

Here's a sentence you don't see very often in Canada...

... at least not among people who are rational.  Check out the sentence I marked in red:

Jen says:

February 11, 2010 at 9:36 am

The MSM(usual gang)should blame no one but themselves for the ‘comming’ of their own downfall. They keep attacking the PM for no apparent reason what so ever but that, he is Conservative.
The National media make it a point to deny the prime minister’s speeches to the public especially areas where CBC is heavily situated.
Many canadians don’t have a clue ‘what the prime minister has done for them in the international scene. they are kept secluded from reality.
Some canadians still blame Mulroney for the liberals problems. It never ends. Not until we have another media like FOX to set the ‘record straight’.

In the meantime, the usual HYPOCRISY continues.

That was one of the comments over at a Conservative blog companion post to my dig at proroguing and hypocrisy.  I think it's important to set the record straight, so that it's clear that not every Conservative supporter is questionably sane, so I decided to put this post up.

Let me state unequivocally that I agree with Jen's general opinion that the national media in Canada are unfair to the various Conservative parties across the country, especially the federal party.  I also agree that it would be very nice indeed if we had a fair and balanced news option.  I do not, however, think that Fox News is the model of fair and balanced.

Fox News is known internationally as a laughing stock of the news media business.  They are rightly considered a puppet station of the US Republican party.  And not just any Republicans either... they are stooges of the fundamentalist religious right.  Fox reporting is ALWAYS biased heavily to the extreme right.  Their most popular commentator is a religious, racist, douchebag.  Fox News fans would happily turn the USA from the land of liberty into a theocracy like the Republic of Gilead, and that must be resisted at all cost.  Watching Fox news would be high comedy if there weren't actually people who think it is fair or balanced.  Because of the latter, it's just plain scary.

Canada does not need a news organization that tries to associate everything promoted by the Liberals or NDP as some kind of ploy by an imaginary left-wing cabal in league with Satan.  In fact, regardless of anyone's personal religion, the less religion in law, the better for everyone.  You see, while some Christians in this country might be all giggles and smiles about having Jesus guiding the government and media, you can bet they'll not be so happy if a future PM was guided by Allah and the "fair and balanced" conservative news source was more like Al Jazeera in flavour.  Yes, Al Jazeera is about as fair and balanced as Fox. 

The only truly fair way is for government not to be guided by bronze-age superstitions and for news media to report FACT, not bollocksy opinion from some talking head who believes that Jesus walked the Americas, or worse, that we're in the "end times" and the return of Jesus is imminent.  Reporting FACT means that sometimes the Conservatives will be supported by the media, and sometimes they will not, depending on what the facts say. 

In theory, we're supposed to have such a news source in Canada - the CBC.  Given that they're supported by the tax dollars of people from all political stripes, religious opinion, skin colour, language, whatever, you would think they'd go out of their way to be fair and balanced.  And perhaps that's where people should be concentrating their efforts... imagine, a national broadcaster that reported facts without spin...  Wouldn't that be something?  The BBC isn't perfect, but it seems to be a better model than what we have and certainly much, much better than Fox.

I tend to be fiscally conservative and socially moderate... and I'm not crazy enough to want anything like Fox in Canada, thanks.

Comments are welcome, even if you disagree.  However, if you're just going to flog the awesomeness of your religion, I'll flag your comment as spam.  There's plenty of other fora and even posts on this blog to talk about how awesome your religion is.  Stay on topic please.

Free Speech on trial in the Netherlands

We often look to Europe, and the Netherlands in particular, as the model of a tolerant and open society, free of religious and conservative bollocks that so often taints our own culture.  Unfortunately, the winds of change are blowing in the Netherlands and it's an ill wind indeed.

Geert Wilders, a Dutch politician, is now on trial for offending Muslims.  His horrid crime?  Making statements like:

Those Moroccan boys are really violent. They beat up people because of their sexual orientation. I have never used violence.

The truth of that statement, however, is not the issue... Wilders is being tried because people were offended - nobody denies the veracity of his statements.

Also at issue is his movie Fitna.  Apparently displaying Islamic douchebaggery to the world is a crime in the Netherlands.  Again, it's not the veracity of the things in the film that is being questioned, it's that he said them at all.

I make this post because Canada is not far behind.  We sacrifice people on the altar of political correctness not usually because people are performing flagrantly racist, discriminatory and hurtful acts, but rather because they say things that offend people, EVEN IF THOSE THINGS ARE TRUE.  That's what's happening with Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, and that's what happens here.  At least Wilders gets a public trial in court... in Canada he'd be jacked up in a secret kangaroo court called a Human Rights Commission.

What kind of culture suppresses truth?  Certainly not a healthy one.  All Canadians should be watching the Wilders trial with interest.  We have hate speech laws that could easily be perverted into the same kind of truth suppression.  What's really bad here is that Wilders is an elected politician... that's right, his political enemies are using a perverse law to suppress political opinion.

In a free and democratic society, nobody has the right to not be offended.  You may not like what your neighbour says, but if it's true, suck it up buttercup.  Part of being free is being allowed to speak the truth.  People who can't handle the truth simply don't deserve to be here.

Religious douchebag blames Haiti destruction on "pact with the Devil"

Ever wonder why rational people think religious people are crazy/dangerous?  It's because religious douchebags use their privileged positions not to help people, but to hurt them (and often to raise money primarily for themselves and their friends).

In this case, it's not just any run-of-the-mill religious douchebag either... it's the popular and well-marketed Pat Robertson of the 700 Club.  Read about his idiot comments here.

Pat Robertson commands a huge television and radio audience, complete with all the sycophantic toadying that such a presence begets.  Instead of using this force for good - for helping people - he has chosen (again) to use it to defame and hurt people... people who basically can't fight back.  What a hero!

This is the same asshole who:

1. On TV agreed with Class-A Religiotard Jerry Falwell when Falwell said God allowed the 9/11 attacks because of moral decay in the USA: the ACLU, abortionists, feminists, and gays.
2. Blamed the devastation of Hurricane Katrina on God's revenge on abortionists.
3. On TV in 2007 warned of a major bomb attack "not necessarily nuclear" on the USA, but said that prayer ultimately saved the USA when it didn't happen.
4. On TV accredited God for giving Israeli PM Ariel Sharon a heart attack as retribution for trying to make peace with the Palestinians.
5. Wrote, in a 1992 fund-raising letter: "The feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians"
6. Suggested, on TV, that President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, be assassinated by the USA.

Certainly this guy is entitled to his free speech, I can't deny that.  However, thinking people must oppose his brand of idiocy wherever it appears.  Use free speech to shout him down.  He'll probably apologize for this after a hail of protest... until he does it again in a few months on whatever the next issue is that pops up.  I'm not a supporter of the compelled apology anyway.

I'm sure there's money to be made selling videos of communist, witchcraft-using lesbians, however, and I'm surprised there isn't a line of videos at the local XXX store put forward by some arms-length subsidiary like "69 Club" or something.

If you're wondering why this is relevant to Canada (where I am), it's because 700 Club is broadcast here and this guy has a following here.  I've known people who watch that show, although I do try to avoid associating with people who follow it.  Right now, as you read this, there are people all over Canada thinking (if you could call it that because "thinking" isn't really the right word) "Damn Haitians... deal with the Devil and look what it got them" because of this guy.

And if you are of the same religious stripe as Robertson, I have to ask you this: Why won't God heal amputees?

Doing something else I haven't done in a while... And my annual Christmas rant

I pulled the previous post (after St. Andrew, and before this one).  If you didn't read it, it was  a rail against Christmas with a lot of content intended to torque up religious fundamentalists.  After some discussion with people whose opinions I value, however, I decided that the post didn't really convey what I wanted to convey in a way that made sense.  It had a hodgepodge of stuff that, in retrospect, just didn't work.  So I am officially admitting my failure on that one.  One idea per post... I should know that by now.

Frankly, it's pretty easy to dig up quotes from the Bible that are contradictory, and although some of them are very weird - even when taken in historical context, something that is important when reading old texts like the Bible - I clearly got off on a tangent.  So using my mighty administrative powers, I'm giving myself a mulligan on that one.  The internet never forgets, and I'm sure someone can probably dig it up if they're really interested.

Moving on...

Christmas is coming soon and we are once again surrounded by the output of the vast marketing engine that is "the Christmas Season".  Personally, I saw the engine sputter to life in October, before Hallowe'en.  I consider that to be a travesty.

It is a travesty not, as some might think, because I am an atheist and thus don't believe in gods or Jesus and so on. 

It is a travesty because it flouts the words and teaching of the very person the day is supposed to be celebrating.  In fact, I would say that it goes well beyond flouting and well into the realm of "is diametrically opposed to".

Our culture has turned, in the last 75 years or so, what was a quiet, minor holiday celebrated with close friends and loved ones into a hedonistic festival of greed, where greedy merchants wield guilt to compel us to spend money we don't have on gifts that we give, often only because we're expected to give gifts; and of false sincerity where we pretend to be nice to each other for at best a few weeks in the "spirit of the holiday".  Like drones, people march into stores racking up debt and reducing savings to satisfy the insatiable merchant appetite.

Merchants will go on, as they often do, about how weak Christmas sales will hurt them.  "Dig deep," they'll say, and spend! Spend! SPEND!  But isn't it the mark of a poor businessman whose livelihood is threatened if he can't compel people to spend in one short season as opposed to the rest of the year?  Businesses should be embarrassed if Christmas makes or breaks their year.

Here's some better ideas:

1. Is it really so difficult to be nice to each other for the rest of the year?  Do we really require Christmas to put on our best face?  Don't we owe it to each other to have that best face showing all (or at least most) of the time?  There's not even a religious overtone required for this, although it would certainly appear that Jesus thought so.

2. Gifts should be given from the heart, not because a merchant tells you its time to buy a gift.  Rather than blow your wad on Christmas, wouldn't your gifts mean a whole lot more if you gave them whenever the mood struck you.  You're out one day and see something and think "Gee, Deb would like that", then why not give the gift right then?  Waiting for Christmas (or birthdays, for that matter) kind of takes away from the whole gift giving experience that is sincerely giving a gift because you genuinely feel it is the thing to do.

3. Let's give Christmas back to the Christians... make it the way it was 150 years ago.  Personally, I think we'll all be better off for it, whether or not you're a Christian.  Imagine a world where there was no marketing blitz after the end of October.  No Sears Christmas Wish Book to make your kids beg for stuff they absolutely NEEEEEEEEED even though they didn't know it existed the week before the catalog came.  No being guilted into buying presents.  No awkward moments meeting a person, to whom you gave a gift and who gave you one, in the store while you both exchange said gifts.  Just family, friends, and maybe a nice meal on one day.

The original message of Christmas is a good one, whether or not you are religious.  Peace and goodwill...  Wouldn't it be nice to go back to that, rather than the current message of "spend yourself into destitution to give gifts to people because merchants tell you that you have to."

P.S. A personal bugbear of mine relates to people who get insulted when they see/hear "Merry Christmas".  When someone wishes you a "Merry Christmas", they mean it as a wish of peace and good will.  Even if you don't believe in their god, you'd have to be an ass to take it any other way.  "Season's Greetings" is a cop-out.  So is "Happy Holidays".  Like it or not, it's Christmas... not some generic no-name holiday.  I say "Merry Christmas" and I don't believe in god.  Somehow, I've survived.

It's almost 2010, can we please keep our health care rooted in science instead of magic?

Rumour has it that the Ontario government is about to permit naturopaths to write prescriptions.  If you're not familiar with naturopathy, it's a branch of magical healing where the healer believes that they can control the magical healing forces of nature to bring about physical change in the patient.   Naturopathy is often associated with discredited practices such as homeopathy (the giving of pure water to treat any symptom), colon cleansing, iridology, and colour therapy.

Read about this travesty-to-be here at Skeptic North.

Let's hope they don't kill too many people.

An event equivalent in significance to putting a man on the moon...

In the history of all douchebaggery that has ever taken place, this one is the douchebaggery equivalent of landing a man on the moon.  Conservapedia wants to rewrite the Bible to remove "liberal bias".

I thought it was a joke, when I first heard of someone wanting to rewrite the horribly liberal Bible... but when I saw that it was the folks at Conservapedia, I wasn't surprised.  I invite anyone who feels brave enough to risk the brain cells to poke around their site.

The idea of Conservapedia is to be a sort of Wikipedia without "liberal bias".  Of course that means going light on facts and long on religion and ultra-right-wing rhetoric.

So what's wrong with the Bible?  It is, after all, their guiding light.  Allow me to quote:

First Example - Liberal Falsehood

The earliest, most authentic manuscripts lack this verse set forth at Luke 23:34:

Jesus said, "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing."

Is this a liberal corruption of the original? This does not appear in any other Gospel, and the simple fact is that some of the persecutors of Jesus did know what they were doing. This quotation is a favorite of liberals but should not appear in a conservative Bible.

Second Example - Dishonestly Shrewd

At Luke 16:8, the NIV describes an enigmatic parable in which the "master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly." But is "shrewdly", which has connotations of dishonesty, the best term here? Being dishonestly shrewd is not an admirable trait.

The better conservative term, which became available only in 1851, is "resourceful". The manager was praised for being "resourceful", which is very different from dishonesty. Yet not even the ESV, which was published in 2001, contains a single use of the term "resourceful" in its entire translation of the Bible.

Third Example - Socialism

Socialistic terminology permeates English translations of the Bible, without justification. This improperly encourages the "social justice" movement among Christians.

For example, the conservative word "volunteer" is mentioned only once in the ESV, yet the socialistic word "comrade" is used three times, "laborer(s)" is used 13 times, "labored" 15 times, and "fellow" (as in "fellow worker") is used 55 times.

I suppose it's finally dawned on these mental leviathans that Jesus was a bit of a lefty himself.  It's interesting to see them complain about Biblical inaccuracy, and then map out a plan to retcon it to better suit their own purposes.

These people are truly scary.  It's the sort of thinking that leads to Al Qaeda and Tim McVeigh.  Even if religion itself can't be expunged from the planet, *THAT* sort of religion has to go, and the sooner the better.

Jesus H. Christ, it's International Blasphemy Day!

And it's not about making fun of religious beliefs... that can be done any day.  No, today is about something that is, frankly, much more important.

International Blasphemy Day is about freedom of expression - in particular, the freedom to "challenge, criticize, and satirize religion without fear of murder, litigation, or reprisal."  Certainly, in the last few years, the whole planet has taken a few very large leaps backward in this regard.  Oddly enough, it's not just about atheists either - remember that being a Christian can get you executed in some places simply because your very presence blasphemes against the Muslim view of God. Don't think for a second that the fact of your own religious belief somehow supersedes any risk from someone else perceiving your blasphemy.

Religious zealots will happily ban literature and art; pass hateful, medieval legislation; force medieval morality on the whole world; and, of course, kill people in the name of whatever fairy tale they happen to believe in.  That's why we need to uphold freedom of speech/expression, including the freedom to blaspheme.  Without it we'll be taking a trip back to the 5th century in short order.

Irreverent Humour

I originally found Mr. Deity through other blogs, but I've been watching the series (they're on season 3 now with about 10 episodes per season) and most of them are pretty funny.  If you like it, I encourage supporting them if you have the means.  

To watch them all you can click through to Youtube and poke around, or visit their web site at http://www.mrdeity.com

In 2012, nothing scarier than normal will happen.

There's a prediction that I make with confidence.  You can bank on that baby.  Or, if you're paranoid and dead-from-the-neck-up, you can follow this guy.

The Mayan calendar running out doesn't mean anything

In 2012, the Mayan calendar will roll over.  This is the same general effect as our calendar rolling over from 1999 to 2000.  In particular, the longest commonly used cycle measured by the Mayan calendar is a B'ak'tun, equivalent to 144000 days, or about 394 of our years.  In late 2012, the end of the current B'ak'tun (12) comes up.

So what happens at the end of the B'ak'tun?

Nothing.  They increment the B'ak'tun count by 1 (to 13 in this case), set the rest of it to zero and start counting all over again.  It is exactly like what happens when you go from 1999 to 2000.  The B'ak'tun isn't even the longest cycle in the Mayan calendar... there are four higher order cycles, each 20 times longer than the previous.  Thus, the Mayan calendar isn't "ending" in 2012.  It wouldn't end until 20*20*20*20*20*394.5 years (that's a long time, 1 260 800 000 years... longer than any of us have to worry about, although I'm sure Dick Clark will still be doing the Rockin' New Years show).  That really means that the roll-over is more like us rolling over from 2009 to 2010.

Something to Ponder

If the Mayan calendar was so good about predicting the end of the world, you'd think the Mayans would have been more prepared for the European invasion that pretty well wiped them out 500 years ago.  In fact, since 500 years is more than one B'ak'tun, it's worth noting that we've already passed the "end of the Mayan" calendar within recorded history (1617 or so) and nothing special happened then either.

What of the end of the world?

The doom-and-gloom predictions are made by what amount to death cultists and frauds.  The former want any excuse to hope for the end of the world, whether it's a magical battle like Armageddon, or UFOs to take the faithful to Nbiru and smite the infidels, or some other weird scenario involving the death of everyone or everyone but them.  The latter just want to separate stupid people from their money, and there's a lot more of them.  I think the last few lines of the news article I linked to above say it all:

So where will [Pinchbeck] be on the fateful day in 2012?

"I could be in a flying saucer, in a cave in Peru or on my roof in New York," he said. 

In fact, the ONLY thing anyone has to fear about 2012 is running into some crazy fool who is TRYING to bring about the end of the world in his own personal way.  I'd say that with the crazies coming out of the woodwork, there's probably a slightly higher chance of meeting some loonie with a firearm or a home-made gas bomb in late 2012.  I predict that some death cultists will commit a mass suicide near that time and we'll all say "what a shame."  I deliberately won't put bounds on "near" so my prediction will seem much more psychic.

So, in December 2012, near Christmas, have a cup of hot chocolate and think of the Mayans, who invented chocolate, not douchebaggy end-of-the-world crap.

Thanks to Eugen for finding the link to Mr. Pinchbeck.