Tag Archives: blasphemy

big brother, bizarre, blasphemy, cannabis, corruption, drugs, i am a terrorist, jeezis, links, pictures

another week closer to the eschaton…

Future Chaos: There Is No “Plan B” – sooo… have fun while you can, i guess, ’cause if plan A fails, there’s going to be a whole hell of a lot of chaos, almost immediately, and there’s nothing you as an individual, and not much you as a group of well armed and well prepared people can do about it… 😐

norman foster and the dymaxion carIt’s the 1930s car that was meant to change American lives. And now the Dymaxion’s back. – one of my lifelong dreams has been to own and/or drive a dymaxion car. maybe someone will be able to pull it off this time. 🙂

Tooth Regeneration Gel Could Replace Painful Fillings – Could this new gel be the biggest dental breakthrough since the introduction of fluoride?

Squishable, Breathing Smart Phones – for high paid geeks with way too much time on their hands.

David Harmer GOP Tea Party congressional nominee from California says ‘Abolish’ public schools and California shooter says he saw Glenn Beck as ‘schoolteacher’ and Republicans’ ‘scary’ immigrant photo depicts Mexicans in Mexico, photographer reveals – we’re still losing to these morons?!?

and this is for those who think that the budget crisis that we’re currently in the middle of is the fault of the democrats: Democrats shrank US spending, deficit in last fiscal year, figures show – and we’re still losing to these morons?!? 😐 admittedly the democrats are nothing to write home about, but they’re not the source of the current problems, and i really wish the republicans would remember that when they put all these ads on TV about how evil the democrats have been recently: we’re still recovering from the bush years, which were principally republican, and we will be for quite a while yet, so just cool it.

Multnomah County stops prosecuting dozens of illegal acts as crimes or Oregon county decriminalizes heroin, meth, cocaine and shoplifting, among others – but the federal government is going to continue to prosecute drug crimes anyway, even if states legalise or decriminalise them, so there’s really not an awful lot of news here.

Holder: US will enforce marijuana laws despite how Californians may vote – this is the reason why the only way we’re ever going to make any kind of substantial change in the “war on drugs” is to legalise them at the federal level…

according to a new RAND study, either Legalizing pot won’t hinder Mexican cartels or Marijuana Legalization Would Markedly Cut Mexican Drug Cartel Profits… you decide which is really the truth… 😐 here’s the Marijuana Policy Project’s spin on it – What Exactly Did that RAND Study Say About Cartels and Marijuana?

Tracking devices used in school badges – big brother waches over your kids, too, whether they’re at school or not.

Microsoft’s search engine will mine Facebook data – another reason not to use either microsoft or facebook. i have placed a directive in my robots.txt file that specifically denies microsoft’s search engines from indexing my site (while allowing everyone else), and i don’t use facebook… but my wife does…

Facebook is ‘killing privacy for commercial gain’ – a law against facebook… now there’s an idea… 🙂

Can a Person Be Moral without Being a Christian? – hint: his answer is no. “[I]f God is not your god, you will serve Buddha. Or, if not Buddha, perhaps Allah. Or, if not Allah, perhaps Baal. Or, if not Baal, perhaps Confucius.” let’s see: buddhism, confucianism and islam are recognised, but i don’t know of any modern baal-worshippers, except for jews, and, by extension, “christians”, who worship בעל (ba’al, or “lord”)… and he apparently doesn’t recognise hindus, or jaina, or taoists… maybe i shouldn’t expect so much. i keep this guy in my regular news feed primarly because he is so absurd. he gets more absurd with every new post. maybe he’ll follow the pingback to my site and learn how truly absurd i find his views. maybe not. who knows…

Barack Obama and Sarah Palin are Related – isn’t internet wonderful?

NSFW – the National Schools Film Week, you pervert… 🙂 now if it was NSFW it wouldn’t be so bad…

bizarre, blasphemy, brazil, corruption, i am a terrorist, jeezis, links, rants, technology

another week closer to the eschaton…

Think US politics are absurd? Brazilians elect actual clown to Congress – brazil has its collective shit together in more than two ways that i’ve noticed recently… maybe american politicians should be paying more attention to the brazilians…

60% of countries will be bankrupt within 50 years – the only hopeful thing about the future is that i will very likely die before that happens.

Drug cops smash into wrong house, terrorize elderly couple and Pot raid at school turns up tomatoes – if it were legal, they could be spending their time going after real criminals instead of hassling immigrant grandparents, and kids about their tomatoes… 😐

Why Comcast can (but probably won’t) read your e-mails, IMs – every now and then i need to remind myself why i am NOT a comcast customer. this will do for a couple of years, until something else awful and terrifying is revealed about their policies…

GPS directs driver to death in Spain’s largest reservoir or Un hombre fallece tras hundirse su coche en la presa de La Serena – i, for one, welcome our new, robot overlords… or not…

Caught Spying on Student, FBI Demands GPS Tracker Back and Student finds tracking device on his car; FBI demands it back – what…?

Hello, this is your ISP. You have been disconnected from internet. Have a nice day. – if micro$awft gets its way, this could happen to you if you get any kind of malware or virus. more reason to use linux, of course, but why would anyone think this is a good idea to begin with is a little mystifying.

Android phone auto reverts jailbreaks – i agree, that people who are required to pay for a piece of hardware to make their lives easier, should be able to use that piece of hardware for whatever they choose. the company from which you buy a cell phone does not retain an “interest” in the hardware, once you buy it… much as i like the approach taken by the makers of the android cell phone, i don’t think they should be able to arbitarily “take back” a phone that has been modified.

Woman screamed about God while destroying art and California Stem Cell Agency Rewards Blasphemy While Admitting the Humanity of Embryos Slated for Destruction – yep, people are still concerned about what other people do being “blasphemy”. in one case, a woman broke into a protective plexiglass housing and destroyed a piece of art, and in the other, people, for whom it did not make any difference, were “forced” to comply with the wishes of the people who were crying “blasphemy” and take down an otherwise inoffensive piece of art. i wrote to the contact person for CIRM (i encourage you to write to him as well) and sent him this:

i am not offended by any language, but because of the fact that you have seen fit to remove the poems in honour of stem cell awareness day, i can no longer see them, and that offends me.

No-one has the right not to be offended.
     — John Cleese

A truly great library contains something within it to offend everyone.
     — Jo Godwin

What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist.
     — Salman Rushdie

Being offended is a natural consequence of leaving the house.
     — Fran Lebowitz

The most efficacious method of dealing with deviancy is to ignore, to the furthest point of our tolerance, those items which we find offensive.
     — Ilbert Geis

Christianity is the most ridiculous, the most absurd and bloody religion that has ever infected the world.
     — Voltaire (Francois Marie Arouet), 1694-1778

by the way, if you’re interested, the poems that were too “blasphemous” to post on CIRMs web site, can be seen here. USAToday is good for something after all.

Insane Clown Posse is actually a Christian band, and nobody knew – i knew there was a fundamental reason why i didn’t like them apart from their encouragement of drunken violence…

blasphemy, blasphemy day, pictures

Happy International Blasphemy Day

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happy international blasphemy day! blasphemy is “impious utterance or action concerning god or sacred things” or “irreverence toward holy personages, religious artifacts, customs, and beliefs.” it comes from greek words βλάπτω which means to “hurt” or “injure” and φήμη which means “fame” or “report”. essentially, “blasphemy” is something that we can do that causes a “bad report” for God.

if that “god” is not unchanging, limitless and eternal, that “god” is not a God at all, and we have no need to worry about creating a “bad report” for him.

if, on the other hand, that God is unchanging, limitless and eternal, then nothing that we, as human beings, can do will ever affect that God, and His love (or whatever you may call it) for us will never be affected by anything that we can do, regardless of how “blasphemous” it may seem to be.

therefore, it is my opinion that “blasphemy” means “something that can get you in trouble with another human being”, and it is, therefore, more-or-less meaningless except when used as a way to keep people under control, and then only when the people are scared enough to believe it is actually possible for “god” to do bad things to them.

i am not that scared.

for “christians”:nude, blue-eyed jeezisfor “muslims”:mohammed with a bombfor “jews”:Ganesha Yantra on the roof of Ganesha The Car

for buddhists…? hindus…? anyone else even have the concept of blasphemy?

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blasphemy, crazy people, evolution, jeezis, rants, the very big stupid

but i don’t believe in gravity!

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i’ve subscribed to a number of anti-evolutionist blogs (for entertainment purposes only, mind you). this one, from It’s Harvest Time typifies the combination of laughable, and frightening ignorance which i frequently find so disturbing that i question my own sanity in subscribing to wingnuts like this. i originally wrote “freaks like this” but then i realised that it would be a significant put-down for freaks – like myself – and i decided that a hardware reference would be more along the lines of what the guy actually is.

Stephen Hawking’s Recent Stupidity
British Professor Stephen Hawking, one of Britain’s most noted professor [sic], was quoted recently giving his explanations on the origins of the universe. Let me give an EXACT QUOTE – “Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing.” FROM NOTHING! This man believes that the universe was created BY ABSOLUTELY NOTHING! I don’t [sic] who you are – that’s STUPID! Don’t laugh, though. This is a quote from the atheists’ best! This is a prominent professor of theirs [sic]! This is not one of their uneducated paupers on the streets of downtown Detroit; this is the VERY BEST THEY HAVE TO OFFER! And, rather than believing in a Creator who created the universe with nothing, for a specific purpose, they would rather believe that the massive amount of matter and order in the universe came from nothing! How pitiful!

Evolution
NPR (National Public Radio) has been trying to figure out recently how humans became the dominant species. Again, instead of believing in an intelligent Being who created the world with a divine plan, they believe that over a period of BILLIONS OF YEARS, the human race evolved from primates. That is the most laughable theory I have ever heard. Evolution is philosophy, not science. It is not science because it has NEVER BEEN OBSERVED. No species has even been witnessed to evolve into another. No organism has ever been witnessed to reproduce another organism of a different species. IF IT HAS NOT BEEN OBSERVED, IT IS NOT SCIENCE. As laughable as it is, they are “making it as sure as they can.” It’s weak, but it’s the best they have.

to say that he disagrees with stephen hawking would be one thing, but to say that the man is stupid is another thing entirely, and when he offers no proof whatsoever that stephen hawking is, actually, mentally deficient in some way, it borders on libel. personally, i have a tendency to think that it’s possible that stephen hawking may have thought about these things a fair amount more than i have, and, while i don’t completely agree with him about the creation of the spiritual universe, i have a tendency to think that his theories about the creation of the physical universe are more correct than not.

i would point “rev.” bob board (who doesn’t have a wikipedia page, to give you an idea of how significant the world considers his opinions) towards something like this:
since i get the impression youtube is where he has gotten most of his current ideas about evolution. i also believe that he’s a lot more likely to watch an animated cartoon, even a poorly drawn one, than he is to read a book, no matter how simple it is…

but i doubt it would make any difference in the way he thinks…

blasphemy, crazy people, i am a terrorist, jeezis, the very big stupid

a message to pastor terry jones and his ilk:

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all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them

i guess that means it’s okay for me to advocate burning bibles…

of course, he should be entitled to burn qur’ans; it’s his right to be stupid in this free country. it’s also right for me to organise a protest against him, which will be just as offensive to him as his is to me.

seriously, i think the proper way to protest this is to organise a mass bible burning on christmas, to protest the stupidity that brought this qur’an burning on september 11th into fruition.

No-one has the right not to be offended.
     — John Cleese

Where books are burned in the end people will burn.
     — Heinrich Heine

i’ll even contribute my collection of gideon bibles that i have stolen out of every single hotel room that i have ever stayed in (there’s at least a dozen)… that oughta’ get the protest rolling…

bizarre, blasphemy, dreams, gulf oil spill, i am a terrorist, jeezis, links, rants

another week closer to the eschaton…

Crabs provide evidence oil tainting Gulf food web – oil spill? what oil spill? wasn’t that two weeks ago? 8/

and, while we’re on the subject of oil, 2,487.5 mpg! Catchy headline unneccessary – “We find it incredibly thrilling to report mpg ratings that require a comma so we’re going to write it again: 2,487.5 mpg. Wow.” that’s right, they’re talking about two “prototype” internal combustion, gasoline powered cars, in measured competition one got 437.2 miles per gallon, and the other got 2,487.5 miles per gallon… detroit is still hyping their 20 – 25 mpg cars as “energy efficient”, “fuel saving”, and other preposterous blather, despite the fact that mileage on my cars hasn’t changed significantly in over 30 years. apparently, we “umayrakins” are swallowing it hook, line and sinker, and begging for more. it’s my understanding that you can’t sell a car in europe these days that doesn’t get at least 40 mpg… what do we have to do to get these “prototype” cars into mass production?

oh, and by the way, Senior U.S. scientist rescinds previous claim that ¾ of oil from spill is gone, says most is still there and Top Expert: Geology is “Fractured”, Relief Wells May Fail … BP is Using a “Cloak of Silence”, Refusing to Share Even Basic Data with the Government – what? were they really thinking that we would believe that they could clean up two months worth of oil spill in less than a month? and once they got the well plugged up, the first thing BP did was go back to it’s habit of not sharing information with anyone again… it all goes back to that link that i found a couple weeks ago, where the guy was claiming that the BP gulf disaster may have triggered a ‘world-killing’ event…

Time To Terminate Western Civilization Before It Terminates Us – right on! its about time somebody said it! it’s about time we all get down to learning at least Ten Reasons to Become Self-Sufficient and Ten Ways to Get There

It’s time to presume the web is guilty – it’s an interesting way to look at it, but i think he may have something there. especially considering that Trojan-ridden warning system implicated in Spanair crash – when i was a software tester, there was this thing called “good enough” which was a state where the software still had bugs, but it was “good enough” to release to the public, because the bugs that it had were small, inconsequential, difficult to show, or inconsistent enough that there wasn’t an immediate need to fix them. there were exceptions to the “good enough” rule, which included software on which peoples’ life depended, such as avionics, medical software, and that kind of thing, but when i was a software tester, the concept of a virus that spread through email was something that had only recently been realised and hadn’t been around for more than a couple of years, and most of what appeared on the web was presumed to be innocent. now we’ve gotten to the point where software testers can’t assume that “good enough” really is good enough any more, and even when it is completely bug-free, software may be vulnerable to a specifically designed attack. moral: your computer is suspect. be wary of anything it tells you, and watch your back at all times.

cardinal francis george, head of the u.s. conference of catholic bishops, has gone on record regarding proposition 8, saying no court of civil law has the authority to reach into areas of human experience that nature itself has defined. he obviously hasn’t seen this video, shot at the honolulu zoo on november 11, 2004, of a chimp raping a frog. that’s about as natural as it comes, and if nature intended for a frog to provide oral pleasure to a chimp, then two people of the same sex having the right to marry, or an individual’s choice to use cannabis shouldn’t be far off, right?

Church Vows to Burn Qur’ans Without Fire Permit – the church said they were going to burn qur’ans, but the gainsville fire department said that they can’t burn books without a fire permit (shades of Fahrenheit 451, anyone?). now the church says, permit or not, they’re going to go ahead with their “protest”, because islamic law “is totalitarian in nature,” islamic teaching contains “irrational fear and loathing of the west” and that the qur’an teaches that jeezis “was NOT the son of ‘god'”. again, i would ask, is "christianity" that much different? change “irrational fear and loathing” to the east, and remove the negative from the last statement, and i would say that the similarities are striking…

there are a couple of things from LiveScience – One Common Ancestor Behind Blue Eyes and Age Confirmed for ‘Eve,’ Mother of All Humans – that i’d be willing to bet are going to be abused massively and frequently by “christians” who will say that they just prove that “eve” exists, even though it’s only about 196,000 years older than the “young earth creationists” claim, and even though both of the articles specifically say “this doesn’t mean she was the first modern woman”… it’s just a matter of time before they latch on to this and try to twist the meaning of the words to fit their own schemes…

How Can You Control Your Dreams? – i have never seen, and probably will never see inception but lucid dreaming has always held a great deal of interest for me.

Simon’s Cat – that is all.

bizarre, blasphemy, cannabis, imaginary pooperty, jeezis, links, rants

another week closer to the eschaton…

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let’s start off with a bit of double-you-tee-eff, shall we? Topless sunbather accused of sensuously rubbing in sun cream – keep in mind, this happened in italy, where it is legal for women to go topless on the beach everywhere, and not just in secluded areas. apparently, however, that was okay with the mother of the teenage boys the sunbather was accused of troubling, it was when she started rubbing on the sunblock that the mother started to get upset. i wonder if anyone thought about asking the teenaged boys what they thought?

Radio, RIAA: mandatory FM radio in cell phones is the future – they’ve decided that we can’t have the music ourselves, but now they want to mandate that, in the future, all mobile devices will come equiped with an FM radio, so that other people can program our music for us… or something like that. honestly, the whole copyright system is so screwed up that i don’t pay that much attention to it any longer, except when it involves copyrights that i hold…

so i did a little bit of research into whether washington state has a water rights law that prohibits homeowners from harvesting rainwater. what i discovered is that rainwater collection is a complex issue, but homeowners are not prohibited from having a rooftop rainwater collection system, and that under certain circumstances, it is perfectly legal for property owners to have cisterns of 30,000 gallons or more. Rainwater Collection in Washington State is the place to start. i understand what the people are saying about modern folk thinking that we have to ask permission to excercise our inalienable rights, though. it’s time that changed.

Warning to Travelers About New, Drug-Resistant ‘Superbug’ – it’s the end of the world as we know it, and i feel fine…

Voogle Wireless – don’t… be… evil!

Senate Passes "The ______Act of____" – H.R. 1586 started out as one thing (TARP taxes), became another thing (an aviation bill), and is now a batch of spending policies… and it has one of the most unlikely names imaginable.

Marijuana legalization in Mexico gaining support – now all we have to do is convince our “leaders” to do the same thing… if the people lead, eventually the leaders will follow, even if it is begrudgingly.

Why hemp could save the world – this is an article by D.M. Murdock, otherwise known as acharya s, who i’ve been reading about for 20 years or so. she’s got a lot of interesting things to say, and this is one of them.

Science supports medical marijuana – this is a response to a journalist who is apparently misinformed concerning science and cannabis, but it’s good reading all on its own.

Taking God to School is an article about how we should be bringing back “Prayer, The Ten Commandments, learning about creation, readings from the Bible” in public schools. as you have probably already guessed, i think this woman is not only wrong, but crazy, and possibly dangerous, but apparently that doesn’t matter, because “God is not bound by policies and politically [sic] correctness”. that phrase catches my eye. first of all, i don’t know who they’re fooling by saying that they know what we should be doing in our public schools when they can’t even use proper grammar to form a sentence, and if they’re claiming that “god” isn’t bound by political correctness, then they are, essentially, saying that their “god” isn’t politically correct. for people who have such a hangup about conformity, it’s rather unexpected for them to acknowledge that their “god” isn’t politically correct, and it makes me wonder if even they don’t take what they say seriously…

Muslims Seek to Censor Gospel of Christ – another one from “christian” news wire that makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, this one is about muslim leaders having a press conference to plead with legislators to do something about “christian” protestors demonstrating in the public forum around mosques. of course the public thoroughfare around any place of worship is fair game for protesting, but let’s put the shoe on the other foot: what if muslims were “spreading the gospel” of mohammed outside a “christian” church? the “christian” leaders would be having seven kinds of a hissy fit, and demanding that laws be drawn up immediately to prohibit such a thing (see Strippers protest church for a change), so why the furor about muslim leaders heading them off at the pass? not only that, but it’s only a press conference, nevertheless these “christians” somehow interpreted this as their “potential for violence” and say that “gentle christian saints” (HAH!) will be holding their own “press conference” outside the mosque. then, there is something that made me wonder even more about these peoples’ sanity: they say that “Islam is not a religion, nor a cult, but a total and complete 100% system of life. It has religious, legal, political, economic, social, and military components.” — and “christianity” isn’t? and “christianity” is somehow different from all that? and “christianity” is somehow better than that? never, in the 2000 years since jeezis, has there ever been any evidence that is the case. PERIOD. “The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution states that Congress shall make no law prohibiting the free exercise of religion.” that means ANY religion, whether it is “christian” or muslim. they shouldn’t get a special law that prohibits islam any sooner than they should get a special law that prohibits “christianity”. people who get upset about things like this are stupid to think that they’re going to get special treatment just because they happen to believe in the right things, and they’re stupid to post things like this on the web, because there are people who will, undoubtedly, work out the flaws in their logic and see how stupid they are…

Man tries to get his name legally changed to Boomer the Dog and Unicorn Being a Jerk – now there’s some craziness that i can get behind… 8)

blasphemy, jeezis, links, the very big stupid

child pornography and the meaning of life

They called me a child pornographer is the story of two families who went camping and took family photos which were misinterpreted as “child pornography” by untrained photo-finishing drones, resulting in a year and a half of hell for the families involved… however, in memphis a pedophile-protecting pastor is the greatest opposition to an ordinance that would have stopped the predator he is accused of protecting with his silence. it really confuses me that innocent people are regularly treated to the “guilty until proven innocent” routine, when people who we are supposed to believe have our best interests in mind are actually the people who are most adamantly against society’s attempts to protect itself.

and, along the same lines, Some Pentagon employees found with child porn still working – so if you work at the pentagon, if you are in to child pornography, it apparently doesn’t matter. it reminds me that ALL ANIMALS ARE EQUAL BUT SOME ANIMALS ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS.

Meaning of life – at least according to wikipedia…

blasphemy, dead people, depression, frustration, gulf oil spill, i am a terrorist, jeezis, rants, the very big stupid

blargh!

Rarely Seen Pictures Of The Devastating Consequences Of The BP Disaster and You Are Not Authorized to See These Pictures of the Oil Spill – i was gone for a week and the oil spill got worse… 🙁 the problem i see is that they’re still referring to this as “The BP Disaster” when, in reality, it’s a disaster that affects every being on the planet, and most directly the wildlife, which doesn’t have the option to relocate when things get too awful in their part of the world. i keep looking at the pictures of eyes of the oiled beasts and thinking that it could, just as easily, be human eyes at which i am looking…

also, there are apparently Live feeds from the Gulf of Mexico ROVs which are, at this point, showing that the oil spill has been shut off showing that their cap has sprung a leak, and even if you can’t see it, they’re planning on releasing the cap within the next 24 hours anyway. good work, BP… 😐

more of the “can’t leave well enough alone” syndrome that we’ve been suffering through, and if the gulf oil spill weren’t disaster enough, now the FDA nears approval of genetically engineered salmon – i would think that there have been enough science fiction movies produced in the past 50 years or so to put some fear into the types of people who would think of ideas like this. but, apparently, if i did so, i would be wrong. just goes to show how our rulers are stupid, stupid, STUPID!!

and, speaking of “can’t leave well enough alone”, Poachers kill last female rhino in South African park – it reminds me of that native american aphorism, which goes “Only when the last tree has died, and the last river been poisoned, and the last fish has been caught will we realise that we cannot eat money.”

GodBlock – “a web filter that blocks religious content. It is targeted at parents and schools who wish to protect their kids from the often violent, sexual, and psychologically harmful material in many holy texts, and from being indoctrinated into any religion before they are of the age to make such decisions.” okay, i realise that turn-about is fair play, but i was under the impression that any internet filtering was wrong, and that we were above all that…

speaking of GodBlock, Forget about Noah’s Ark; There Was No Worldwide Flood – if the bible-thumpers won’t listen to their own scholars regarding the “truth” of the bible, then the entire human society is screwed, and there is nothing that we, as sensible humans can do about it. 😐

Tuli Kupferberg died. i’ve said it before, and i’ll probably say it again: all of the cool people of my generation are dying. i say stop it!!

Dwile Flonking? – what. the. fuck??

Continue reading blargh! →

bizarre, blasphemy, i am a terrorist, important things to remember, pictures, the very big stupid

things you learn from r. crumb…

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so i recently broke down and purchased R. Crumb’s monumental project, The Book of Genesis, and i was flipping through it appreciating the elaborate artwork, when i came across this:

this is an illustration of a story i had located many years ago, and then promply forgot, but this is actually a better way of looking at it, and illustrates my point even better than i could have previously.

namely, what is this ancient biblical patriarch doing worshipping a shiva lingam?!?

i’ve wondered about this for a long time, and now that i have an actual illustration of it, it will be easier to ask unsuspecting “christians” why this founder of “christianity” felt it was okay to worship the way those “godless heathens” do…

blasphemy, cannabis, depression, geek stuff, gulf oil spill, i am a terrorist, links

☹

What The Hex? is a game where you guess the colour based on the hex-triplet for the RGB value.

Oregon officially recognizes marijuana for medical value – "The Oregon Board of Pharmacy voted to change marijuana from what’s known as a ‘Schedule I controlled substance’ to a ‘Schedule II.’" only 49 more state governments and 1 federal government to go… 😐

Titan’s atmosphere oddity consistent with methane-based life
also
‘Grow-your-own’ organs hope after scientists produce liver in lab from stem cells – more evidence (if you needed any) that the “christians” are wrong, wrong, wrong!!

Whale Poop Cleans the Environment – The Sea Shepherds are probably already figuring out ways to use this against the japanese, politically and as a potential projectile. it also makes me wonder about how whale poop would do cleaning up the gulf oil spill…
Visualizing the BP Oil Spill Disaster – it couldn’t possibly make it any worse…

blasphemy, i am a terrorist, spiritual

the difference between God and “normal”

my raîson d’étre has caused some difficulties for some people who have very strongly held opinions: i would say that they’re strongly “christian” people in general, but i’d very likely be wrong. and i’ve been thinking, once again, about how i am more drawn to people like radical athiest skeptic evolutionist p.z. myers than i am to spiritual teachers or groups in general, in spite of the fact that i am a lot more spiritual than most people realise. i attribute this to the way that i think – my raîson d’étre – which, admittedly, doesn’t make a lot of sense to people. basically, the way i think, it is perfectly normal for me to say that A is exactly equal to not-A, in every way, despite the fact that “normal” people would say that A can’t be equal to not-A because not-A is the opposite of A. the easiest way i have to describe this difference is an aphorism i learned when i was in the seminary, which is that the opposite of a “small t truth” is a falsehood, but the opposite of a “big T Truth” is another “big T Truth”.

in the same way, when i think about God, i think about It (here is the reason for that pronoun) existing in spite of the FACT that God doesn’t exist.

i know that God exists, despite whatever proof p.z. myers and his cohorts may drag up. if they were to pull something out of their pocket and show it to me that would conclusively prove that God doesn’t exist, i would still KNOW that God exists. i know that God both exists, and doesn’t exist, because if It were to only exist, or only not exist, then It wouldn’t have the necessary attributes to be God. “if you ‘know’ something, you are confident because of familiar experience or clear perception of the veracity of a particular fact (regardless, i might add, of whether other people agree with you or not), whereas if you ‘believe’ something, you are taking someone else’s word that it is true, having not experienced it for yourself.” i know that God exists, because i have personally experienced Its presence. and, no, i can’t describe what It was like: it is impossible to describe that which is indescribable. you either have to experience It for yourself, or you’ll never know what i’m talking about. if you have experienced Its presence, you know exactly what i’m talking about.

that’s the only difference.

at the same time, i find myself agreeing with the rationalist p.z. myers a lot more than with dinesh d’sousa or bob larson, although i get irritated with all of them more or less equally, because i see where all of them are wrong about what they believe (i.e. “taking someone else’s word”) because they all have not personally experienced God’s presence. i don’t think that makes them less human beings than people who have experienced God’s presence, it just makes them “different”…

and i, the “different” one, am completely normal! 8)

as i have said to people before, if you have a problem with the way i think, you are cordially invited to think of me as that guy with the hole in his skull who believes things that aren’t logical. you won’t be the first, you won’t be the last, and i don’t care.

articles, big brother, blasphemy, imaginary pooperty, jeezis, links, rants, the very big stupid, windoesn't

linque dump Ⅴ, rants and others

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i got a spam comment from Anonymous – Operation Titstorm this morning. while i agree with anonymous’ motivation for such action, i am not part of the australian government and not in a position where i can do much of anything except agree with their motivation for their actions. go anonymous, but please go do it somewhere where it’ll make a difference, okay? mass spamming of random blogs is a really good way to make a lot more people not want to deal with you any longer.

Google shuts down music blogs without warning – this is the same company which has recently announced a “1GB bandwidth internet connection to every home” deal that is in the works. making it even more likely that, whether you like it or not, google will have access to all of your data. the fact that google already has their hands in pretty much everything from where you’re going to be to who you’re going to be there with and everything in between, their Gmail was marketed with “never delete another email, EVER” propaganda (which nobody seems to remember these days), and they are in bed with the CIA and have a team of specialists ready to scan every bit of information the unwitting public feeds into their jaws makes their “Don’t be evil” company motto a bit of a malapropism.

People browse by search (or ReadWriteWeb faces the Facebook Login problem) – of course, the problem is confounded by the fact that people don’t seem willing to actually learn what this computer-thingy on their desks is for to begin with. a very good example of this is one of my clients, who regularly calls me because he thinks his “anti-virus software is tired” of zapping viruses on his windows machine, or the fact that he can’t type into his computer because the keyboard is unplugged and he didn’t realise it.

Christians claim hate crimes law an effort to ‘eradicate’ their beliefs – no, hate crime laws are an effort to crack down on hate crimes… if your beliefs are the direct cause of the hate crime, then you’ve got something to worry about. if not, claiming that hate crime laws are an effort to eradicate “christianity” just makes you appear to be really, REALLY stupid, regardless of where you obtained your law degree. even a fifth grader can see that constitutionally protected speech does not apply, when it is clearly written into the law to begin with… ☹

New National Security Distraction: Arabic Language Students – a white-bread american physics major from pomona college is a terrorist, according to TSA officials and the FBI, who spent several hours handcuffed, under arrest and being questioned by no fewer than seven law enforcement officials, but unable to obtain legal council, because he tried to board a plane with… wait for it… not liquids, not matches, not a bomb. arabic flash cards. TSA Supervisor: You know who did 9/11? George: Osama bin Laden. TSA Supervisor: Do you know what language he spoke? George: Arabic. — therefore, you are a terrorist, because you are learning arabic… WHO TRAINS THESE PEOPLE ANYWAY?!? it’s a wonder that i am as nice to strangers as i am… 8/

finally, Security patch results in BSOD – i think this may actually be an improvement in windowsdoesn’t operation. at least now you go directly to the BSOD, rather than thinking your computer might actually be doing what it is supposed to before you go there. this is exactly the reason i don’t use microsoft products any longer. they’re releasing internet explorer eight with the same unfixed bugs in it that i reported to them before they released IE three, and they still haven’t even made an attempt to fix them. why people think that microsoft cares about anything other than making as much money as possible while exerting as little actual work as possible is totally beyond me.

Continue reading linque dump Ⅴ, rants and others →

articles, big brother, bizarre, blasphemy, crazy people, doggles, jeezis, links, moe, rants, spiritual

link dump ? for a change

now that i’m finished frantically trying to put out a raging forest fire with a watering sprinkler (for the moment, anyway), i’ve got the time to post a whole bunch of things that i’ve been reading recently, that make me go everything from “hmmm” to “AARGH! *#%&!!?!”…

first up, in the “AARGH! *#%&!!?!” category, Religious Tefillin Prompts Scare On Plane – the way i see it, a 17-year-old jewish kid was putting on his tefillin (“phylacteries“, for the uninitiated) in preparation for morning prayer, while at the same time, one of the flight attendents, who thought he was a terrorist, diverted the plane, where he was met by clown homeland security and a bomb squad. there’s so many levels of stupid here… my mind boggles… 😐

continuing to boggle my mind, in more ways than one, Slime mold validates efficiency of Tokyo rail network – more evidence (as if we needed it, which apparently we do) that the creationists are wrong… in more ways than one.

which brings me to the fact the following symbol, a full colon followed by a dash::–is called “dog’s bollocks” by typographers (much in the same way that the name for the symbol that represents “the artist formerly known as ‘Prince'” is called “bruce” by typographers: they’ve got to have something brief to call it), according to the Oxford English Dictionary. the interesting part is when someone delves into The Secret History of Typography in the Oxford English Dictionary… it just goes to prove that you can read the dictionary and find vulgar, 60-year-old emoticons. the only thing remaining is to see how long it will be before the L33T kiddies figure it out and start using it themselves…

there’s a rare (she’s been spending all of her free time studying these days) post from moe, about her new birthday present – yes, another dog. we are now, once again, officially a four-dog family. and the new one is obsessed with staring at the cats, in order to try to get them to move… it’s really funny… or frustrating, depending on whether or not lucy’s been at home all day.

and finally, this evening, Man Stuck In No-Man’s Land – a story from right around here… and it’s from the onion. it’s good to see the onion doesn’t ignore the little people… 🙂

Continue reading link dump ? for a change →

blasphemy, corruption, i am a terrorist, links, rants, the very big stupid

death for xmas…

the way i see it, the possibility that uganda is not going to pass the “kill the gays” bill, and instead offer the option of “counseling and rehabilitation” will make it far more likely that the “christians” in the united states – who have been slapped in the face by the ex-gay ministry folks who have recently been forced to break ties with a guy who has been their affiliate for decades because of his “bizarre and unorthodox” therapies, and who are up against the psychologists associatiation saying that being gay is not a disease and not a choice, and who are also, ultimately, behind the “kill the gays” bill in the first place – will use the fact that uganda is saying that “counselling and rehabilitation” is “preferable” to their original plan is more justification that “counselling and rehabilitation” are effective “treatments” for this “disease”.

much as i hate to say it, i hope that uganda passes the “kill the gays” bill, so that it will be made plainly, blatantly, horrendously obvious to even the most uneducated “christian” on the planet exactly how “un-Christian” this legislation actually is. anything less will just give the “christians” more fodder, weak and meaningless as it is.

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JEEZIS IS A CUNT!

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by the way, today is international blasphemy day, and the catholic church has their panties in a twist because of it. in case you didn’t know, blasphemy is “to speak irreverently of God or sacred things”. be sure to blaspheme with vigour today (and every other day if you like, it doesn’t concern me, and God’s big enough to take it), and if you’re in the washington DC area, you might want to stop by this:
international blasphemy day

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what would jesus avoid doing? (why i’m a hindu)

please keep in mind that i differentiate between “christians”, christians and Christians. i’ve known about 10 Christians in my entire life, and about half of them were not actually Christians (people like Swami Bhaskarananda, for example). most of the people i have met in my entire life that profess to be Christian are actually “christian” to one degree or another.

during my last couple of years of high school, i was really getting interested in religion, and had started reading the bible and, significantly the gospel of sri ramakrishna, on a regular basis… and already i was getting the very strong impression that what the preacher said from behind his lecturn wasn’t always the way things worked in reality.

a friend and i went to the “christian” church that met in my school’s cafetorium on sunday. i was fairly sure that i wasn’t going to like it, but i wanted to show my friend that you can’t always trust a christian, especially when they’re the ones in charge. i brought my bible, and we were sitting close to the back of the auditorium. i was finding the scriptures the preacher was reading from and noticing right away that if you continued reading, not more than two or three verses later scripture was directly contradicting what the preacher was saying. this happened at least three times, each of which i pointed out to my friend, when the preacher took notice of me, and instructed one of his parishoners to escort my friend and i outside and “explain to them why they are being asked to leave”. we spent the rest of the service sitting on a bench outside the auditorium with my friend and i listening while the guy ranted on about things that i knew were not in the bible, but because of my unfamiliarity with it at the time, i wasn’t able to point out the discrepancies to his satisfaction.

it was at that point that i decided that, if they would only listen to people who made sense when they talked, that “christians” might be able to see the light that truly is Jesus Christ. i decided that i would learn as much as i could about the bible, so that when i encountered such people in the future, i would be prepared. shortly after that, i entered a seminary, where i was a student for seven years.

several years later, i was hanging out with a bunch of people who enjoyed bible study, and we decided that we were going to a halloween party in another part of town. we put on costumes – i was wearing a devil mask, and there was another guy who was wearing a santa claus mask – and we were walking down the street, when a group of people came out of a storefront church and assulted us. they knocked me down and hit a couple of other guys. one of my friends managed to get free and called the police, who said they would be there “eventually” and we never saw them. i was on the ground, surrounded by a whole bunch of angry young men who wouldn’t let me get up, when the “preacher” appeared. i thought everything was going to be okay, but then the “preacher” started chanting what at first sounded like nonsense, but then i realised that he was saying “the only name that can save you is christ, there is no other name” – over and over, without regard to what i was saying or the fact that i was on the ground, surrounded by an angry crowd.

later, the same group of guys and i went to another, bigger storefront church (it was in a building that, appropriately enough, was a porno theater before the church moved in) with hidden tape recorders, and interviewed the people there. one interview in particular was memorable because of the fact that, when asked why the guy was carrying such a large bible, he responded by repeating, several times, “it’s my bazooka”. then he said “i take it, and i aim it at the devil, and i go ‘buhda-duhda-duhda-duhda-duhda-dow’!” needless to say, he knew a lot less about “the ammunition” for his “bazooka” than he let on.

at the same time, i was progressing fairly well in the seminary, but i was feeling more and more uneasy about my relationship with the bible. i read it, and understood what it was saying, but i felt strangely uncomfortable with the words that were being used to convey certain ideas. at one point i approached the headmistress of the seminary with my concerns, and she recommended, since i had a fairly good understanding of the bible, that i read scriptures from other religions, with a mind towards finding similarities with what the bible says. i took this task very seriously, and i read pretty much any scripture i could get my hands on, from the more esoteric teachings of Christianity contained in the Philokalia, the nag hammadi library, the forgotten books of eden, the kebra nagast and others, to the teachings of the qur’aan, the sufis, three different forms of buddhism, the tao, Georges Gurdjieff, Zarathustra, the papyrus of ani, traditional celtic witchcraft, Aleister Crowley, and even several different forms of what is called devil worship or satanism. however when i read the scriptures of hinduism for the first time, i was struck with how much they spoke to my heart, and when i read the bhaghavad gita for the first time it was like i was coming home.

it wasn’t long after that – a matter of two or three years – before i decided that regardless of whether they were making sense or not, some “christians” were simply not going to see the light, regardless of how hard someone tried to convince them. it was at that point that my conversion to hinduism commenced. when i graduated from the seminary, i received my ordination, and two days later i recieved my first diksha as a dedicated hindu.

blasphemy, crazy people, important things to remember, pictures, the very big stupid

God is real, despite what the athiests think

my ear

i subscribe to this blog, pharyngula, which is written by professor p. z. meyers. he is a prominent evolutionary biologist and athiest whose rantings about “christianity” and the anti-scientific are the primary reasons why i read his stuff, although i freely acknowledge that the only reason i find him amusing and not childishly disgusting is because he’s not making fun of me, and i have no doubt that he would make fun of me if he knew that i exist. nevertheless, his rants about chiropractors and acupuncturists have gotten to me on several occasions, and i was going to ask my acupuncturist about it when i saw him today, but before i even remembered to bring it up, he mentioned something that convinces me even more that amusing as p. z. meyers is, he doesn’t come close to knowing everything, and about “mystical” stuff he is hopelessly clueless and will likely remain so for the rest of his life.

nervous system in the ear

what he brought up is the fact that i have been expanding my right earlobe for the past year and a half (i actually stopped about 6 months ago because my wife doesn’t like it). he’s been studying auricular acupuncture recently, and has noticed that a lot of people self-treat with piercings and modifications without realising it. he then showed me this page from his auricular therapy manual. i may agree with p. z. meyers about the perils of “christianity” and “intelligent design”, but this, if nothing else, convinces me that there are a lot of things that science knows about and dismisses as unproven, that are just as real as things that you can hold in your hand. clarke’s law: any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

blasphemy, jeezis, pictures

yeah, that sure looks like jeezis to me… 8/

people have apparently been flocking to a church on the island of reunion to see “the face of christ” that was left when an unnamed parishoner got up from their leather-lined pew.

jeezis face butt print

now to me, it looks like bozo the clown on acid. and what’s with those “horns”? it’s as though it were an evil devil of some sort, overshadowing bozo the clown. it sure doesn’t look anything like even the most stylised portraits of jesus that i’ve seen. i know there’s a word for it, but the only word i can currently think of is “idolatry”, which, while appropriate, is not the word i’m thinking of.