BIBLE WARNING

You will want to pass this on. It's fundimentally hilarious.

Googlebomb McCain for Peace

We must destroy his credibility in order to save it. Or is it that "It takes a global village to raze some McCain?"

On The Left Tip: Googlebombing is In The Air

Via this post by Chris Bowers on the recommended list at Daily Kos:

--1. Finding a recent new article from an established news sources that focuses on McCain's support of George Bush. I have determined that the first such article will be the beautifully titled McCain Defends Bush's Iraq Strategy from the Associated Press. It is hard to get any better than that. In fact, it was seeing that headline today that gave me the idea to conduct this campaign.
--2. For an extended period of time, several weeks if necessary, having as many people on the internet as possible embed a hyperlink to the chosen article whenever they use the word McCain, John McCain, Senator John McCain, McCain 2008, or any other popular search term on McCain.

--3. Having as many bloggers as possible place that same embedded hyperlink into the templates of their blog. Instructions on how to do this, and why it is important, can be found here. This will multiply the impact of any Googlebomb on McCain several hundred times. This process is also helped if people on community websites place the appropriate embeded McCain hyperlink in the signature line of their user interface.

--4. Monitoring the progress on the current McCain Googlebomb until it moves into the top five results on McCain in Google. Once this is accomplished, and it should only take a few weeks, we then start the process over again at step one with a different news article that tells the truth on McCain.

So Google Bomb John McCain. No McCain 2008, No John McCain, No McCain, no Straight Talk Express, and certainly no maverick can spew the party line and not get called on it.

I have to emphasize that the "new plan" is no more a plan than the old, completely non-existent plan. And to answer McCain's collywobbling - the worst that could happen in the region is - in my humble opinion, still no worse and slightly better than having it happen with us still there. The odds of some sort of worst happening, Sen. McCain, are not improved by staying this course, the previous course or any course supported by you or the Miserable Failure.

Celeb Kisses for Homeless Pets

I suppose there is something brutally cynical I could say about this, about our cult of celebrety, about cheap guestures... but I just can't. It's cheap, obvious and it probably isn't true. Besides, who wouldn't kiss a postcard for the Humane Society. The story would be, if any, who was too damn self-important to muss their lipstick.

Extra points to Gene Simmons, of course. He had to take his off and apply fresh. Black just isn't the right color...

Gene Simmons
by
SealedWithAKiss

Get this custom postage at Zazzle

Even more popular than this one?

Jessica Alba
by
SealedWithAKiss

Get this custom postage at Zazzle

Go figure. Of course, this is pretty good and pretty easy publicity for the stars, as well as a really good way to crank out some memorabilia for fans and support a good cause.

But there's one celeb who's sincerity in supporting this cause is utterly unquestionable:

Benji
by
SealedWithAKiss

Get this custom postage at Zazzle

20% of the net sale for all Humane Society Postage goes to support the programs of The Humane Society of the United States. Net sale is defined as the difference between the sale value and the face value of the postage. For more information regarding The Humane Society of the U.S. programs and services, please visit www.hsus.org, or write to: The Humane Society of the U.S., 2100 L Street, N.W., Washington, DC 20037

tag: Gene Simmons, Jessica Alba, Jeri Ryan, Persia White, Tina Majorino, Jenna Elfman, Rachel Bilson, Amy Smart, Kristen Bell, Julie Sommars, Loretta Swit, Benji

Mentioned In Dispatches

You know, in the old days of print journalism, where I started out, at keyboard and layout "stone", an entire career could pass without being quoted in the Columbia Journalism Review.

But I have been Mentioned in Dispatches!

CJR Daily: Reporting (and Blogging) Across the Pond: "While the fear of losing access is undoubtedly real, many in the blogosphere felt it was not a compelling enough argument to go soft on politicians. Bob King of graphictruth questioned the very necessity of the Washington press corps, opining: 'Journos seem terrified that they will be denied access to the President's incoherent ramblings and Tony Snow's nonsense. I figured out years ago that all I need to know about either is that their lips are moving. Why in heavens name would you waste a perfectly good reporter on such a meaningless job?' King continued, criticising American journalists' 'unwillingness to ask awkward questions' as well as their 'unwillingness to deal with complicated issues.'

Goodness, mercy me. This Internet thing is really starting to catch on.

The Number is (646) 652-4337

I've just signed up with BlogTalkRadio to do a show this weekend. I'll be chatting and live blogging for at LEAST fifteen minutes about the whole KSFO mess. Who knows, maybe even one of the nutters from that show will call in and give me a piece of their minds. If, yanno, they can spare it.

Here's the details, so far.

I'll keep everyone posted. Meanwhile, add the call-in number to your mobile and while you are at it, the show's IM address, graphictruthdotcom on yahoo!

tag: KSFO ABC Disney, Hot Talk, culture war, SLAPP suits, spocko, spocko's brain

I have to warn you, this IS satire.

YouTube - FBI phone tap LEAKED! Bush arguing with Condi over Hu Jintao




And now you know why I had to warn you.

tag: You Tube, Publish"tag" >video, humor, politics, , george w. bush, ridicule, joke, instapundit, incompetence

A Thoughtful Quickie

This great Valentine's Card template lets you make a great impression this Valentine's Day. Grab an image of his or her website, or a picture of you and put it somewhere handy. Write a verse or two of poetry and clipboard it. Then click on the template and follow the prompts. Yes, it's THAT easy to avoid getting unlaid this Valentine's Day.

Scrapbook Valentine Template
by
webcarve

Get this custom card at Zazzle

Framing the unspoken debate.

Metaphor, Morality, and Politics

Or,

Why Conservatives Have Left Liberals In the Dust

---

by George Lakoff

© copyright George Lakoff 1995

Please go read it now, than bookmark it and blog on it.

Here's the bit that I found of particular importance (because, of course, it validated my own thinking, and put words to some incoherent gut instincts.)

Moral Pathologies

It is one thing to analyze a moral system and another to criticize it. Criticisms of moral systems are often suspect because they come from within opposing moral systems. I would like to suggest that it is possible in various ways to criticize a moral system on other grounds -- either on structural or empirical grounds. I believe that is is meaningful to speak of moral pathologies, and I will briefly discuss three of them, namely:

1. Deviational Pathology: Here a deviation from an ideal model turns out to harm people the ideal model was supposed to help.

2. Foundational Pathology: Here a moral system contradicts its own foundations.

3. Empirical Pathology: Here the moral system simply makes an empirical error about the helpful effects it is supposed to produce.

Lakoff then details things you need to read and think on yourself, in relation to your own moral priorities, ideals of family, and how things ought to work in general. This 'graph is what I wish folks to consider deeply before proceeding:

In short, both models can be misused. Many of the critiques of the models are really critiques of the misuse of the models. Are such critiques fair? Yes and no. No, because they not critiques of the ideal models in themselves. Yes, because those ideal models have to be used by real people, who will fall short in many cases in just the ways indicated.

That is what I find so electrifying about Lakoff's work. It's not that it justifies my own ethos, it's that it accurately predicts where the failure points for my particular ethos will be, and what my sort of screw-ups will look like.

In a somewhat more abstract sense, it clearly outlines the period of cultural warfare we have engaged in; a cultural warfare that not only explains the foundation of the War on Terror, but all the other Conservative, Christianist crusades against what progressives see as abstractions.

All sides see the behavior of their opponents as being deeply and fundamentally immoral, and I confess I'm no different in that regard. But through this lens I can begin to understand how those on the "opposite side" can have come to hold their positions sincerely, and I can start to actually argue the morality, rather than attacking persons.

I'll stake out my personal positions and observations in a subsequent and probably long essay, but I'm as much interested in the viewpoints of others; please forward this post to anyone who you would think of having a particularly interesting take on it.

tag: What Would Jesus Do, dominionism, social engineering, religious abuse, social control, submission, spirits of rebellion, homeschooling, psycological torture, The strong-willed child, discipline, punishment, politics, reason, rationality, abortion, choice, abortion debate, plan b, foreign policy, terrorism, domestic terrorism, ABA, marrige rights, julian of norwich, reasons for blogging, Christianism, Christian, hatred, prudery, pornography, charity, children, impeach bush, faith, fundimentalism, jehadis, international law, ethical realism, moralism, authoritarianism, antiauthoritarianism, individualism, morality, social welfare, social insurance, neoconservatism, republicans, suspension of civil liberties, theocracy, nonconformity, conformity, individualism, individual differences

Mouse sez bring it on. Libs show up packin' glueboards.

This is one of those things I would ordinarily consider off my beat; blog wars and talk show wars are "Hard Copy" and "ET" material in my arrogant opinion, akin to gossip about whether or not Rosie and The Donald are really fighting or just hyping their respective ratings. But as the blogswarm spreads across the Internets, it's making navigation difficult in these here "tubes," One particular obstacle to navigation showed up in this comment thread on Echidne of the Snakes. unintentionally brought attention to issues vital to all bloggers - not just Libs, Lefties and Litigants.

It's a bit self-serving to reference a thread in which I gleefully participated... so let us just say that the consensus was that they just had to be a corporate shill. Considering the exact points (and the exact and particular bits of misinformation about "fair use" and "copyright,") I can't imagine what or who else they could be.

(I have yet to be visited by such a corporate shill. Just the odd spammer. I clearly need to work harder.)

Anyway, KSFO's response to all this was to pre-empt three hours of regular programming and devote it to Spocko-slamming. Their management referred to it as their "response."

I wonder how their advertisers feel about that hearty little "fuck you?"

Media Matters - KSFO's Morgan: "I wouldn't describe Friday's show as apologetic by any means"

Go read the Media Matters article for full - and I do mean EXHAUSTIVE context - in contrast to KSFO's blustering and whining about being "taken out of context."

One wonders what context would make it appropriate to require a caller to "call Mohamed a Whore," to refer to Barack Obama as a "Halfrican," or agree with a caller that all mosques in Syria should be blown up by cruise missiles when they are most likely to be full of praying Muslims?

Tell, me do, oh Disney/Viacom/ABC? Explain to us why this sort of speech is something that should not be brought to the attention of your advertisers?

The First Amendment guarantees the right to free speech - it does not guarantee the right to speak without response or consequence. Anyone who really respected the first amendment - rather than trying to hide behind it - would not have acted in any way that KSFO/ABC/Viacom/Disney have.

But fair use requires me to take this chunk... out of context. (from Media Matters, and quotes from their KSFO transcript.)

During the January 12 program, the hosts certainly did defend many of the inflammatory remarks that, in 2006, San Francisco-based blogger Spocko highlighted on his weblog and in letters to KSFO advertisers, before ABC Inc. issued a cease-and-desist letter that ultimately led to his blog being shut down. Nonetheless, on several occasions throughout the broadcast, the hosts emphasized that they had already apologized for some of the comments in question. For instance, when discussing his October 2005 remarks in which he asked a caller to "[s]ay Allah is a whore" in order to prove he was not a Muslim, host Brian Sussman said, "I realized what I said was over the top. It offended a lot of people. It could be deemed as being highly insensitive. And not only did I apologize once, but I've apologized several times since." Later in the show, Sussman addressed another controversial comment from December 2006 in which he referred to Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) as a "Halfrican" -- a term that Morgan repeated. Sussman said on January 12, "[A]gain, this is one that I've apologized for and I've mentioned that my comments were insensitive." He then complained that people "don't want to hear any mea culpa. They don't want to hear any excuse. They don't want to hear any forgiveness or the asking thereof."

Media Matters went to look for the apologies and could not find them. Perhaps there's a script involved that detects liberal readers and adjusts contents accordingly? Hm. I wonder if it can detect First Amendment lawyers?

Even the venerable and Very Professional New York Times has taken notice - and over at DKos, that notice is put into context. The Times has a long memory, and has not escaped the notice of Hate Radio Talkers heard on KSFO.

Their summation was this, and their "slant" on the story may be inferred in these three graphs:

Most of the callers were sympathetic during Friday’s broadcast, but one blogger who has supported Spocko’s cause, Mike Stark, was encouraged to call in. The extended dialogue perhaps can best be summarized by one exchange.

Mr. Stark: “You’ve spoken of the number of apologies you have tried to make. How many apologies does a professional get before they realize they are an incompetent and move on to another line of work?”

KSFO’s Lee Rodgers: “Well I haven’t apologized for anything and I am not going to start with you. How the hell do you like that, creep?”

From your lips to the FCC's ears, Mr. Rodgers. And thank you for a tour of your neighborhood.

tag: blogswarm, Hate Speech, KSFO, Officer Vic, Lee Rodgers, Brian Sussman, ABC, Viacom, Disney, Halfrican, Media Matters, Fair Use, Copyright, First Amendment, 1st Amendment

Wanna make your point about KSFO-ABC?

The Freeway Blogger has some ideas for getting a word or two in edgewise...

Fun With Hate Radio

Follow the simple instructions and maybe you can make a hate talker plotz on air.

George Bush: His greatest strength...

...we were told, was that he didn't overthink things. That he wasn't wishy-washy or flippy-floppy, and by God would not second guess decisions he'd made once he made them.

Bush: 'We're Going Forward' - washingtonpost.com: "'I began to think, well, if failure is not an option and we've got to succeed, how best to do so? And that's how I came up with the plan I did,' Bush said."

Still, at one time, a few years back, say; around 2002, 2003, there was a general, bipartisan feeling that he must actually think.

Left, right and center, we disputed the presumed basis of his thinking, argued the merits of evidence we assumed decisions were based upon, and again, left, right and center, made rational predictions as to the way forward or back based upon the best information we could come up with and our best understanding of our own ideological premises and those of our dissenting colleagues.

All of us have found ourselves looking like fools after presuming in public that whatever we thought of the President and his stated policies and beliefs, that he was sincere, the best informed person on the globe, and capable of putting two and two together to arrive eventually at four.

We were all wrong to the extent that we assumed his thinking was based upon noble goals, nefarious agendas, resource imperialism, the spreading of democracy, concern for human rights or even the desire to enslave every human being on the globe.

All of those goals - though ranging from silly to blackest evil - are based in some sort of sanity. The problem here is that we relied on a weak reed - and he snapped on 9/11. He was never the sharpest crayon in the box, Lord knows. Not the most incisive thinker, but we always presumed that he was amplifying his brains with the very impressive cerebellae that any President has at their beck and call. It never occurred to us that he was literally too stupid, mad or delusional to make sense of the advice given him, and we, in our need to have a good leader in such a time of crisis, turned a blind eye to the evidence of a man who's mind had gone - or was never there to begin with.

This whole situation boils down to his particular form of madness; an incapacity to take "no" for an answer or accept any limitations on his actions compounded with a complete inability to take real responsibility for the messes and mistakes he's made.

Even his most recent "assumption of responsibility" boiled down to "I got bad advice from The State Department."

You know, I generally work by the premise that you attack the position, not the person. I usually reject Ad Hominum attacks as invalid by definition.

But this is based on the unspoken assumption that the person HAS an argument based in a valid thought process that can be attacked or defended upon it's merits. This assumption has proven to be deadly. We have wasted six years believing there was a functioning, sane, rational brain attached to the hand upon the tiller. We have been governed and guided by the tics and twitches of an "intellectually challenged" madman surrounded by people with competing agendas and no leadership, trying desperately to rationalize his decisions after the fact.

From a perspective of principle and justice, I have favored impeaching the President - but now that I realize that he would have a legitimate defense of "diminished capacity," I realize this is a job that falls within the authority of the Surgeon General, not the Speaker of the House.

Those who are truly guilty are those who mindfully took advantage of a weak man - and that charge falls unerringly in Dick Cheney's lap. As do the consequences - to him personally and to the nation as a whole. As a nation and as a people, we have to come to terms with the fact that the good among us - and there are good amoung us of every political stripe - have done nothing useful to prevent evil from flourishing, because we have been seduced by partisanship and supposedly competing idiologies.

The saddest thing about this is that George W. Bush had all the advantages and experiences that make truly great presidents. He had personal contacts that are literally of strategic value. He had a family with unspeakable clout and experience. He had a Yale education and an inside track with both friends and foes. Most importantly, he'd been blessed with enough personal demons and occasions of failures to learn the many otherwise unteachable lessons truly great leaders need.

As philosophically partisan as I am and as little as I care for the "strict father" model of leadership that my philosophical opposites work from, I'd never say that it precludes good leadership, nor would I say it to be incomparable with coincidence or ethics. I just say that my way is inherently better, believing that sincerely to be arguably true.

What IS inarguable is that the strict father model requires far better, far wiser and far better informed leaders and followers than we have been given to rely upon. We are led by those who believe that Authority is both sacred and infallible.

As Dr. Phil would say: "How's that been workin' out for ya?"

tag: ethics, dangerous president, iran, iraq, lies, miserable failure, stupidity, unitary executive, commander in chief, constitution, energy policy, impeach bush, nancy pelosi, war crimes, international law, Bush administration, Geneva Convention, 9/11, national security, republicans, political, incompetence.

Difference, Disability or Distinction?

Down's Syndrome
Originally uploaded by Richard Bailey.

I've been thinking a lot lately about disability and mental difference - and not in the usual terms. You see, I've known deaf people (with and without hearing aids), autistic spectrum people, people with multiple personalities, schizophrenics and rather a lot of people who thought of themselves as "normal." I've known folks who couldn't see, folks who couldn't walk and more.

Some quantity of each were disabled by their mental or physical limitations. But it's come to me that most of the truly disabled people I've met would call themselves "normal," because of limitations they put upon themselves or put up with in order to be seen as "no different than plain folks." Those of us who can't contort ourselves in that way are, I think, somewhat blessed.

This is Georgina.
She works part-time as a chef at a leading restaurant in Cheshire.
She has won many, many medals at Special Olympics over the years in swimming and gymnastics and now she is a swimming coach for youngsters.

On top of all this she is a spokesperson for the Special Olympics.
I have been producing calendars to raise awareness of Down's syndrome and this image was shot for the 2006 calendar.
You can find out more information at:
www.ds2006.com
Also you can look at: www.ds2005.com to see images from the 2005 calendar.

Uploaded by Richard Bailey on 7 Aug '06, 12.54pm PDT.

Thing is, there is really no linear scale running from ability to disability, any more than there is a true "normal," even in the conditional sense of "a normal What?" (I consider myself a normal aspie, once I discount the PTSD.)

Granted, there are people who are really incapable of doing much at all. But this does not apply to most folks.

There are two primary sources of disability, in my experience; one is imposed from outside, and the other comes from inside. There is a tremendous fear and intolerance of difference in our culture, and one of the ways of coping with it is to define differences as "disabilities" that make such people inherently "inferior" instead of different.

We also have a strong streak of Calvinism that says that a normal person "ought" to be able to do every conceivable thing they need for themselves. That's absolutely laughable in this increasingly complicated world; there are very few people who can honestly claim to be self-sufficient at a standard of living most of us would consider "normal" or acceptable.

The fact is that we all need accommodation and consideration; different sorts in different ways. The thing that has yet to penetrate the collective skulls of this culture is that people like Georgina bring as much to the party as they need to take from it. This is true of me as well - and I hope it's true of you.

Whoever and whatever you are.

tag: autistism awereness, down's syndrome, disability, conformity, nonconformity, aspergers, aspies, individualism.individual difference

Praised with Faint Damns

Is CBS considering revisiting to legitimate TV News? It certainly seems to be engaging in "self criticism" sessions; this is from "Outside Voices." The blurb reads:

Each week we invite someone from outside PE to weigh in with their thoughts about CBS News and the media at large. This week, we turned to Bob Giles, veteran journalist and curator of the Nieman Foundation at Harvard University. Here, Giles discusses the harm in U.S. news outlets' lack of tough questions. As always, the opinions expressed and factual assertions made in “Outside Voices” are those of the author, not ours, and we seek a wide variety of voices.


Outside Voices: Bob Giles Has A Tough Question For The U.S. Press - Public Eye

Television’s great advantage is that it can take the viewer along for the interview. The audience can look into the eyes of the news source as he or she responds to the reporter’s queries. It is what sets TV news apart from print and radio news reporting. In an era when elected officials try to manipulate the news and spin it to their advantage, when they are able to speak anonymously or have hired spokespersons speak for them, this special role of television reporting as visual surrogate for the public is critical. The public knows that reporters who can be seen asking strong questions is one antidote to misinformation.

My, wasn't that trenchant? Move over, Bob and let Bob have a swing.

I've become less and less impressed with US media as I've had more exposure to international media, something that's probably true of most other bloggers.

It's not simply the unwillingness to ask "awkward questions" - it's the apparent unwillingness to deal with complicated issues. Very likely this is due to the effect actual news has on ratings; reality is complicated and often requires graphs and numbers to explain. It can be hard to compete with a car chase over on Faux.

But I learned a hard lesson on the web long ago; raw numbers of eyeballs are meaningless. You need the right eyeballs. You need those eyeballs to think of you first, and regularly. Profit comes from the right eyeballs relying upon you and your credibility. That credibility rubs off on the advertisers, it does, and vice versa.

"Crap traffic" degrades the brand. Listen to Limbaugh's sponsors sometime. Viagra alternatives, weight-loss nostrums and get rich quick schemes.

This tells you a lot about Rush's respect for his demographic. It tells you a lot about the advertiser's dependence on the outright gullibility of his audience. One of my key evaluation critera for ANY form of media is to look at who the advertisers are, and what sort of readership sales of their product will depend on.

And there are other factors here. "News as Entertainment" isn't all that entertaining because all that pretending to be news that's worthy of my time gets in the way of being fun.

The Daily Show and the Colbert Report have demonstrated that it's possible to do accurate news analysis and do it with wicked and pointed humor. By contrast, the Big Three seem to have abandoned analysis entirely, along with any detectable sense of humor or irony, leading otherwise respectable journalists to refer to the Daily Show as "Fake News."

My sons and daughters, if it was actually fake, it wouldn't be funny. CBS and the rest of the MSM have been relegated to being the straight man for the Comedy Channel.

CBS needs to hark back to the good old days, voluntarily reclaim the old "fairness doctrine" for itself and by doing that, announce it has grown a pair.

Journos seem terrified that they will be denied access to the President's incoherent ramblings and Tony Snow's nonsense. I figured out years ago that all I need to know about either is that their lips are moving. Why in heavens name would you waste a perfectly good reporter on such a meaningless job?

An intern could do it. Monica Lewinsky could do it. She's pretty good at fluffing Presidents, from what I've been told by the media. Ad Nausium.

Take the pool feed, pick any non answer or prevarication at random and show them to be the fools and liars they are with it. A couple news cycles like that, and the phone will start ringing.

How do you think John Stewart gets some of HIS improbable guests? He's had Dick Cheney. Note to Dick - that didn't go so well.

This administration needs to be reminded that the sword has two edges. They need you to get their story out. So make it clear that it has to be a factual, verifiable story before you put the Tiffany stamp upon it.

It used to be that miscreants feared "Hello, We're from 60 Minutes" nearly as much as a justice department raid or an IRS audit. Let's take CBS back to that happy place, where reporters were named by Nixon on tape with many unprintable adjectives wishing improbable conjunctions upon them.

People like me can do opinion - it takes little more than hubris and good typing skills. Some of us can come up with some pretty good analysis of what the facts mean to our particular readerships. What we cannot do is compete on a fact for fact basis with a professional news organization. We therefore seek out stories, stake out our take on them, and refer our readers to the sources. When I seek out intelligence, my first criteria is that my sources of intelligence do not insult my intelligence.

CBS has not been a source of mine for... well, years now. Why you, when there's Greg Palast? Why you, when there's the BBC? Why you, when there's CNN? Hell, the Daily Show is a better quote.

It would behoove you to pay close attention to your website referrer logs to see how often you are cited, and by whom. (I got to this story via fark.com. But it wasn't a complementary reference.)

When the Right Wing pays pundits under the table while trying to muzzle PBS news, that should tell you something about how much they fear the shock and awe of fact-based inititatives.

And yes, I know, the Owners Object to many factual stories and will kill them given half a chance, along with Dan the Messenger Man. But, well, it seems to me that enough of you journalistic glory-boys and girls have enough loose change rattling around to buy some corporate influence yourselves. Ain't capitalism wonderful? CBS is trading at around $30 a share right now. It' s looking like a not bad investment. Consider how rewarding polishing that tiara could be.

The alternative is stark; I already outsource my news, relying for the most part on CTV news and BBC news for television coverage and The Guardian and the Globe and Mail for print. All of these organizations routinely report domestic news that never appears in US media, and generally in greater depth.

Meanwhile, as all the networks try to integrate their news slants into their shows, I become less and less inclined to watch TV at all. Last night, your hit show "Numb3rs" revolved around a plot twist so very improbable that the lead characters should have refused to show up; it involved smuggled guidance systems for "Katusha style" rockets, which were also being smuggled in via Singapore.

Dear Lord in heaven. I do hope all terrorist plots are that amazingly silly and overcomplicated. Mythbusters made a quite functional rocket using commercial pipe, a chunk of graphite, a tank of nitrous oxide and a large salami. College students routinely build far more sophisticated science projects than a short-range missile guidance system. A really sophisticated one - using, say, GPS navigation or a laser designation system shouldn't cost more than a couple-hundred bucks in parts. Rocket Science just ain't rocket science anymore.

If all I wanted to do was create widespread terror, well, a couple pounds of talc would do as well as anything. But it's not that difficult to come up with a somewhat impressive Fuel-air explosive warhead, either.

According to one Russian military scientist writing for the Russian military magazine Voyennyye Znaniya (Military Knowledge), FAE weapons are effective against exposed personnel, combat equipment, fortified areas and individual defensive fortifications, clearing passages in minefields, clearing landing sites for helicopters, destroying communication centers, and neutralizing strongholds in house-to-house fighting in a city.⁽²⁾ In addition, he stated that "fuel-air explosives are capable…of completely destroying in a given area vegetation and agricultural crops that have been planted." "In its destructive capability, it is comparable to low-yield nuclear munitions."⁽³⁾

(gif animation)

The best thing about a crude FAE is that it doesn't even have to work properly to work pretty well.

The [blast] kill mechanism against living targets is unique--and unpleasant.... What kills is the pressure wave, and more importantly, the subsequent rarefaction [vacuum], which ruptures the lungs.… If the fuel deflagrates but does not detonate, victims will be severely burned and will probably also inhale the burning fuel. Since the most common FAE fuels, ethylene oxide and propylene oxide, are highly toxic, undetonated FAE should prove as lethal to personnel caught within the cloud as most chemical agents.⁽⁸⁾

Gee, I wonder where I could find someone with enough chemical know-how to put one of these together....

How about any junior college chemistry teacher?

Perpetuating absurdities upon the American people in the name of entertainment in either the news or entertainment divisions is no way to impress folks like me; people with actual three digit IQ's. You know, the demographic you used to have.

Unless you and the rest of the domestic MSM does something to repair it's credibility soon, it will find itself limited to that market segment that relies on rabbit ears from Radio Shack.

And tell me, do, what will THAT do to your stock options?

tag: MSM, CBS News, intelligence gathering, news reporting, 5th Estate, fark, the Internet, foreign press, The Daily Show, Steven Colbert

What sort of people rely on Open Democracy.net?

I got this in my email today.

You may recall that you generously gave your time to fill in our openDemocracy users' survey this summer.

Nearly 3,500 of you did so, a terrific sample. You can click here for a visual tour of the results. We really appreciate your help, it taught us a lot about what you are looking for from openDemocracy.

Survey Says (pdf)...

Overwhelmingly, well educated, well-paid white SMART people, even given a 4% 3d World readership.

In other words, folks like me that the Republican Party has taken for granted for decades upon decades. While the politics of the readership seem weighted heavily to left of center, it's because readership spikes in two places; Center Left (classical liberal, I'd assume) and No Category - where I live, as a Libertarian. "No Category" is arbitrarily placed to the right of Center - which has a lower readership.

From that strong Independant spike (were I bet they did not expect it) it slopes down to bottom out at 3% at Center Right and Conservative. That means a heck of a lot of old-fashioned Center-Right folks are relying on Open Democracy as a reality check - and of course, us generally Anti-authoritarian folks what likes at least three sources before we decide who's al is being gored.

So, my fellow Libs, and fiscal conservatives, dig down and donate. I don't about you, but I always figured the smart money was on freedom. This seems like confirmation to me.

To quote their email to me:

To make the process quick, efficient and secure we are using both a UK and a US service for charitable giving. Anyone in the world can donate, just click here and you can see how it is done.

Do that thing, willya?

tag: Open Democracy, individual liberty, libertarian, 1st Amendment, antiauthoritarian

The Law's fixation upon Ass.

Erotic Truth: From the mentality that gave us "don't ask, don't tell."

Teacher arrested under peeping-tom law - Yahoo! News

Ware was charged under a 2001 law meant to protect people from ultra-small cameras that can be used to peek into dressing rooms or up women's skirts. Under the law, filming a person without consent for sexual arousal is a felony.

...but merely watching teenagers wrestle and perform gymnastics in skintight Lycra fetish gear is perfectly OK - as long as you refrain from obviously masturbating.

Yep, when you think about it, it's not only possible to show that the Law is an Ass, it's pretty easy to illustrate that it's FIXATED upon ass.

Ask ANY Congressional page or White-House intern.

tag: sexual ethics, pornography laws, covert pornography, patriarchy, prudery, Republican Pedophiles, Pederast

Bush Sets New Course,,,

...in order to prove that his followers really will follow him into Hell.

"Where mistakes have been made, the responsibility rests with me," he told the nation. "It is clear that we need to change our strategy in Iraq."

The White House released a chart of Bush's "mistakes," (reproduced with the story) none of which addressed the most fundamental errors of policy, integrity and intelligence; such as invading a sovereign nation against the best foreign policy and military advice. It did not address the "mistake" of lying to congress and the American people about Weapons of Mass Distruction. Actually, it seems to be an exercise in blaming the victim. All of his "mistakes" seem to amount to depending too much on the Worthy Oriental Gentlemen of Iraq. (My Wog reference should remind history buffs of earlier and equally unsatisfactory imperial adventures into that region.)

Iraqis just ain't as easy to jerk around as Mexicans, are they, George?

Still, the president's admissions were calculated to advance his current political aims and came with significant limitations. He offered no regret for the March 2003 invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein and still argued for staying in Iraq until the job is done. His tone was sober but came without apology or contrition. As one aide put it, "This is not a speech being given on bended knee."

Allow me to sum this up: Bush is admitting past mistakes in order to gain support for entirely new ones. At some point, you have to cut an addict off. Bush's drug is power - and he can't handle this drug any better than cocaine or alcohol.

"He's pretty much alone on this," said William S. Cohen, [in the WaPo story] a former Republican senator from Maine who served as defense secretary under President Bill Clinton. Bush had an opportunity to draw Democrats in by embracing at least some recommendations of the Congressionally chartered Iraq Study Group, Cohen said: "It would buy you bipartisanship for five or six months. . . . By simply ignoring it and allowing it to die in the crib, so to speak, Democrats are now free agents."

And what might they do with their free agency? Well, Nancy Pelosi seems to be given to subtle hints, perhaps too subtle, and certainly deniable... but in regards to a threatened Presidential Veto of the overwhelmingly popular Stem Cell Research Bill:

"There is nothing wrong with this bill," said Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.). "We should pass this bill again and again and again and again, until we get a president who will sign it."

One way or another. One way or another. Pelosi is clearly hoping that she won't have to lead a charge for impeachment, but rather be in the position to reluctantly accede to the Will of the People. Smart politics, that - never interfere with an enemy who's busy destroying himself.

Should Bush veto stem-cell research for a second time, against the clear mandate and will of the people, in the name of maintaining the sacredness of saving the pre-born while at the same time insisting on further prosecuting a war that costs the lives of many, many more "post-birth" individuals, a lot more people are going to start waking up and smelling the hypocrisy.

It's a lot easier to notice hypocrisy if it's intended to advance unpopular causes, but these days I'll take what I can get.

tag: Nancy Pelosi, Impeach the President, Politics, , constitution, unitary executive, commander in chief, terrorism, foreign policy, incompetence.

From the Japanese Interest Desk of the Department of the State of Confusion

And the mystery ingredient is:

BURI!

Words: Japan Probe
Uncensored Pictures: Banana Hole
Censored Pictures and commentary from Lost in Ube

Interesting factoids: NHK is government owned. The occasion was a widely popular New Years Live TV event, the performance the doing of some person called DJ something-or-another (Doesn't seem to be lacking for free traffic already), who reminds me irresistibly of The Chairman from Iron Chef. Clearly the mystery ingredient is BURI!

Turns out that the fully-dressed performers were wearing body suits airbrushed to appear as if they were naked. (Note, a stunt that would not work with Vegas dancers).

It turns out that a large cross-section of the audience (pro and con on the issue, I might add) who saw these images in lower resolutions were convinced the girls were actually mostly nekkid, but a casual examination of a section of the still from the performance (featured above) clearly reveals how fake the nudity was.



Now here's a question for ya; which is actually more offensive: a pretty and fully naked Japanese girl, or a Japanese girl who is covered in an airbrushed body suit with a fully erect mushroom as a sop to "modesty?"

You know, I've been known to create erotic and even consciously pornographic works. Not only do I like playing with social taboos, I enjoy sucker-punching them, kicking them in the groin when they are down and then symbolically peeing on the whimpering metaphorical remains of my wrath. I am definitely down with consciously messing with misplaced and objectionable social taboos.

But, much to my surprise and vast amusement at my own expense, I personally found it objectionable. I was actually offended! Why the hell should it be offensive to ME, of all people- instead of just compellingly silly? Dear Lord, there is little in the world that could be sillier looking than a cheerleader apparently dressed in nothing but gold lame' gloves and a turgid "Hello Kitty" mushroom!

Where's Mario when you need him?

Anyway, I came to the conclusion that the concept I was searching for was "Tawdry." It includes the idea that nudity is so inherently dirty that the only way to depict it is to fake it - and then fake it as much, as broadly and as compulsively as possible in order to profit from those who want to participate in something that is dirty because it IS dirty.

It's seeing nudity and sexuality as being sinful - and deliberately rolling in the dirt to the wildly masturbating throngs. It's an appeal to the lowest expressions of the worst manifestations of the most basic of urges. It's taking advantage, in other words, of the moral and ethical failures of other folks.

In that, it's no different than equally offensive appeals to racism with the the goal of getting elected. A lot of folks see this as being comparable to the Janet Jackson nipple "slip," but in fact it's much closer to being DJ whatsisname's Macaca Moment.

Ok, now that was a pretty damn rude observation, so I'll soften it with a more general observation of human nature.

In my vastly cynical opinion, it boils down to this; prohibitions against nudity are not to protect us from the attractive naked flesh of pretty Asian cheerleaders. It's to preserve the male illusion (and indeed, a variety of female self delusion) that we would all be so attractive, if only we were permitted to shed the coverings that protect you, the viewer from an Occasion of Sin.

I've seen enough nekked people to know that the un-enhanced and unsorted human body when scratching it's butt and otherwise going about it's affairs is about as inspirational to lust as, well, your average damp and slightly smelly bath sponge.

This leads us to a genuine backstage truth. There ain't nobody LESS naked than a nude woman lookin' for to be An Occasion of Sin. And there's another, too. The fact that a significant array of males were perfectly happy with being deluded by a crudely airbrushed body-stocking clearly shows that most women are spending way too much on their hunting camouflage.

tag: ethics, sexual taboos, DJ Ozma, NHK, Japanese Culture, Japan TV, pornography, prudery, prudes, foreign press, moralism, ethical realism, morality

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A Delightfully Racist Holiday

Yes, I did say "racist." I mean, I simply say out loud what O'Rielly and his ilk are thinking, on the days when they are smart enough to not actually say "Kwanzaa is racist." They are correct in the narrow sense, as it's intended to boost the spirits and pride of an entire race of people; it's a black holiday with decidedly black roots and celebrating it is to buy into a set of values intended to improve and empower black people. But I'm not saying it as if it's a bad thing.

Any time any group of people wants to get together and collectively improve themselves, to earn respect from others and (often much harder) improve their own self-respect, I'm all for people "gettin' above themselves." It's generally not all that hard, either, considering the sort of folks that set that bar.

I think everyone of every sort should look through these principles and consider if they, their communities and their race are actually doing anything positive to improve the lot of others of their own community, their race, their country and their family.

Celebrating Kwanzaa

Umoja (Unity)
To strive for and maintain unity in the family, community, nation and race.
Kujichagulia (Self-Determination )
To define ourselves, name ourselves, create for ourselves and speak for
ourselves.
Ujima (Collective Work and Responsibility)
To build and maintain our community together and make our brother's and
sister's problems our problems and to solve them together.
Ujamaa (Cooperative Economics)
To build and maintain our own stores, shops and other businesses and to
profit from them together.
Nia (Purpose)
To make our collective vocation the building and developing of our community
in order to restore our people to their traditional greatness.
Kuumba (Creativity)
To do always as much as we can, in the way we can, in order to leave our
community more beautiful and beneficial than we inherited it.
Imani (Faith)
To believe with all our heart in our people, our parents, our teachers, our leaders and the righteousness and victory of our struggle.

The Sabbath was made for Man, not Man for the Sabbath.

Tip of the hat to Disinformation for this (via the title link).

The Guardian story illustrates a point I've believed since I was - oh, 14 or 15 years of age, when I stopped attending Church with my mother. The following was a large part of the reason why.

A rotten year for Jesus Christ, American - The Guardian

They say the devil has all the best tunes. It's been a rotten year for Jesus at the movies, too.

Used to be you could depend on the Church for great art, but not any more. The evangelical movement is also the bedrock of American philistinism and the anti-intellectualism diagnosed by the historian Richard Hofstadter. The De Medicis and the Renaissance popes were no less corrupt and hypocritical than this crew, but at least they had taste. At one extreme, there's Titian, Michelangelo, Tiepolo. At the other are the paintings that adorn the walls of Reverend Ted Haggard's mega-church in Colorado Springs: sub-heavy-metal album-cover art by way of some fascistically devout Aryan brotherhood prison tattoo parlour. All the paintings - of warriors for God in their ripped T-shirts, of chesty virgins bearing gourds of massage oil to soothe the toiler's aching bones - seem wildly, cluelessly homoerotic, no matter how many coyly half-exposed DD-cup breasts are depicted. In a subculture whose "artists", like LaHaye, can style themselves without irony as "salespeople for the Gospel", the battle for good art is already lost, and their Willy Loman will never arrive.

I was born an artist, much to the distress of my parents. This, aside from everything else, the autism that while nameless was surely visible, the multiple personality that probably became visible in bits and pieces, had they only looked; worst of all, I was an artist, and thus doomed to live and die in poverty, unable to support my parents in their old age, due to my inherent appreciation of symmetry, balance, composition, and the accurate perception and portrayal of reality.

The above sounds as if it were written tongue in cheek. But indeed, all these things - and the imagination that drives it - were anathema to the culture of the day. It doesn't capture the visceral fear and resentment my mother and father respectively held for me, as advised by rather a lot of perfectly respectable books on the subject of raising children. In both cases, they tried in every way possible to interfere with, distract and discourage any "impractical" pursuits and "sinful, willful" interests. An imagination, a sense of proportion, the ability and willingness to question authority in expectation of a sensible answer is all that was condemned during my childhood as the worst combination of beatnik and hippie culture.

Being a good son, in my way, I did try; but I'm as unsuited for being other that what I am as a porpoise is to sprinting.

But before coming to that conclusion, I tried everything I could to become "normal," and of course the single greatest bastion of social conformity and unquestioning obedience to authority that is "normalcy" in our culture is Christianity.

If only they could agree on which sort of normal would allow one to avoid Hell, eh?

But Mother covered all the bases; I was raised Episcopal, went to Catholic school and was dragged every Sunday to a series of increasingly wacky Fundamentalist, Evangelical and Charismatic churches, sects, movements and outright cults; the weirdest and most obviously heretical being the "Name it, Claim it" churches.

- As the name "Positive Confession"/"Word-Faith" implies, this movement teaches that faith is a matter of what we say more than whom we trust or what truths we embrace and affirm in our hearts. The term "positive confession" refers to the teaching that words have creative power. What you say, Word-Faith teachers claim, determines everything that happens to you. Your "confessions," that is, the things you say -- especially the favors you demand of God -- must all be stated positively and without wavering. Then God is required to answer. Word-Faith believers view their positive confessions as an incantation by which they can conjure up anything they desire: "Believe it in your heart; say it with your mouth. That is the principle of faith. You can have what you say" (Charismatic Chaos, pp. 281, 285).

I had yet to deeply study the occult, but I had read my Andre Norton - "Witch World" was the Harry Potter of my day - and I recognised ritual magic when I saw it. And when the spirits started moving and tried to climb into my ears and up my pants legs, I found out that the shielding rituals mentioned in Norton's stories actually worked.

I'm rather surprised that I thought to try them, but when you have a congregation babbling in "tongues" in a rented hall that is neither consecrated nor shielded in anyway against spiritual contamination, you will find yourself up to your elbows in members of the spiritual ecology - all of them some variety of "hungry." Given the ability to notice, it's not so surprising as it seems. Turns out that Andre Norton cribbed heavily from Diane Fortune and other respected occult writers current to her time, such as Gardener and perhaps even Crowley.

Like all good SF writers, she based her work on known technology and extrapolated from there, so of course they worked.

I'm a big fan of pragmatism. I can't think of a single serious engineer or occultist who is not. It's only the theorists and theologians that trip over doctrine.

I was not poking under those rocks to find a new religion - by that time, I was getting pretty cynical about any human religion as having any deeper significance than "coffee hour." It's only been of late that I've realized that is indeed the primary significance - an hour a week with friends and family, not talking about work, or sports, but of spiritual matters, or of worldly things from a spiritual viewpoint. That is what was meant when it was said, "The Sabbath was Made for Man, not Man for the Sabbath." If it's not a useful means of fulfilling your own, individual spiritual needs, you should be looking elsewhere.

What I did not realize at the time is that my own peculiarities, my own unique wetware, would always keep my communions down to "two or three." At most. At the root, even before my rational objections based on obvious hypocrisy, mindless babbling in "tongues," the evident presence of spirits other than anything I'd recognizes as God-Like, the sheer, eye-glazing banality that was and is the American Protestant movement in general; all of these objections were in fact my rationalizations for my neurological aversion to being forced to be in loud, echoing caverns filled with strangers and badly-tuned sound systems.

So I decided I would be a heathen. It was far easier to be a heathen in my mother's eyes than it was to try and explain my as-yet nebulous and under-founded objections to the expression of faith that is American Christianity. If you have ever tried to explain such concerns to anyone who faithfully watches the 700 Club and who considers Robert Schuyler to be a Really Deep Thinker, you probably understand my choice.

Of course, if you faithfully watch the 700 Club, and consider any Televangelist to have the last word on the meaning of Scripture - you probably stopped reading four paragraphs ago. The reason for that is simple - there ain't any preachers on the 700 Club who's message much resembles the red letters in the Bible.

Now me, being Aspie and therefore somewhat literal-minded, was told as a child that the red letters in the Bible were the words that Christ supposedly spoke, and all else was other folks trying to explain them or tell us how He got from, say, Jerusalem to Sardis.

So I never paid all that much attention to Peter, much less Paul. After all, you could almost feel the triple rap of Himself's knuckles on Peter's Saintly Noggin when He said, "upon this rock, I shall build My Church."

It may not have been an unmixed complement, any more than His references to the people as "sheep" and his disciples as "Shepherds."

Anyway, in my own clandestinely stubborn and willful way, I set out to find Christ for myself; I'd already found that anyone willing to point the way for me, all altruistic-like, was holding a pair of shears behind their back with an eye toward fleecing me.

I came to admire the relative skill of Jesuits compared, say, to Pat Roberson. With Jesuits, you can be fairly sure that you are considered a renewable resource, and that a superior mastery of the flock is a mastery that appears to be mere advice and influence.

One thing about aspies that can and does make us socially insufferable upon occasion is that we do not see things in emotional terms. During this entire time, I was getting a high-resolution, brutally vivid view of the hidden motivations behind all the convenient alterations and re-interpretations of The Word. I had absolutely no insight at all into the why of it; I considered it in my own private arrogance to be some combination of gullibility and stupidity.

Of course, that arrogance led me right into my own ten years of enforced humility; Aspies have emotions, they just have little or no connection to the verbal parts of our brains. But we can be as easily manipulated with them as anyone else; more so, really, as we tend to think we are above all that, and are therefore emotionally vulnerable to appeals to very good opinions of our own inherent, superior-minded objectivity.

It took me ten years to see through that one, and it took some particularly blatant lapses on the part of my "guru" to realize that preaching and practice had diverged to the point that they were out of bow-shot of one another.

One can almost hear the angels snicker at moments like that.

But along the way, I realized something else. You see, as a side-effect to that ten-year purgatory and a series of emotional mishaps that would make for a very implausible reality show, I ended up in mental health triage and was diagnosed with profound clinical depression, a depression that was either somewhat cyclic, or which had predated my cultic diversion.

One of the most important characteristics of clinical depression and it's bastard cousin, anxiety disorder, is a complete inability to think in terms other than black and white, off and on, good and evil, Hatfield and McCoy, Cowboy and Indian, Christian and Islam.

If one is Good, the other is Bad. If what I am is "normal," than everything different than me is "abnormal," and dangerous. Here's where Anxiety comes in - Anxiety makes you obsess about the dangerous "other" while clinical depression makes you cling to your own idea of normalcy, no matter how objectively insane and potentially dangerous it is. Anxiety is no relation at all to Prudence or Caution.

Once I got some antidepressants into my system, I realized very quickly how very stupid I had been, and how impossible it would have been for me to realize that, short of hitting that wall.

So I don't make fun of people who see the world that way. I do consider them very, very dangerous, for I know what sort of excesses I would have accepted and committed in the name of maintaining my comfortable, if somewhat bizarre sort of "normal." I thank Goddess every day for the blessing of an unambitious cult leader. Consider the extent to which the followers of Jim Jones went to prove their own righteousness to themselves - they poured cyanide-laced kool-aide down their children's throats before taking their own lives.

I should point out that if you were to take all the followers of Jim Jones before their mass suicide and give them a battery of psychological tests, the vast majority would have tested "normal." This tells us something about our cultural ideas of what "normal" is, and perhaps something about the need for better testing.

At any rate, I had a mess of conflicts from that period that I needed to resolve. First, I had less trust for Authority than ever, both self-proclaimed spiritual authorities, and temporal authorities claiming the mantle of God. I considered both to be deceptive and dangerous by definition - and still do. Now I admit there are some of each who are quite sincere. Those I consider even more dangerous than the the unrepentant Marjoe Gortners of the world. Marjoe was quite happy taking your cash - the sincere want your soul, and will cheerfully crush your spirit or even kill you to "save" it.

Now, I should know; because of my peculiar blessings, it takes a lot more crushing to put a really permanent dent in me. While I did not think of my life as man and child as being any more remarkable than anyone else, I was forced to revise that opinion when it's exceptional negativity was brought to my attention during an emotional abuse assay that likened it to physical abuse on the level of frequent broken bones.

I can say that based on what I now understand of my parenting, my schooling and my later life, I should be a paragon of apparent normalcy. Or at least, should have been until a probable breakdown at or about the same time. I know a fair bit about the predictable courses of both legitimate and illegitimate psychological influence and pressure and I should have grown up as externally "normal" as, say, Donald Rumsfeld, had I taken my father's example or at least Al Gore had I taken more after my Mother's side.

Instead, I withstood far more stress without ever entirely losing at least a compass pointer toward the direction of reason and right action; being aspie and a multiple personality, I'm very resistant to pressure, and at the same time adept at avoiding it.

I speak of that as a blessing, as it's very difficult to take credit for being either dissociative or autistic; both are probably genetic to a large degree and if you happen to have both, whether it's a blessing or an affliction is pretty much a question of choice. I view it as a different mental toolkit and figure that it's better to explore what I can do with the relatively rare tools I have lucked into than try to compete at a disadvantage in areas I'm poorly equipped to handle.

But one thing I will say is that aside from the ability to mentally evade and ignore the worst pressures set against me by the people in my life, mostly with with the best of intentions, there is one thing that has sustained me since I was a very little child who took Sunday School very seriously:

My faith.

You see, I've always somehow always known that there is a God, a God who is somehow much larger and more pervasive than most commonly think, a God who is both compassionate and practical, loving and yet sometimes moved to outright schadenfreude by our misadventures, or at least, more than willing to let us suffer our bruises for as long as it takes us to get a clue.

I know this in a tangible sense, as surely as I know that I'm typing. It's something I consider to be so obvious as to be self-evident, and I believe that would be true of more people if they were willing to be less religious and more spiritual.

The key phrase for me was one that leapt out of the Bible at my face, years and years ago. "God made the Sabbath for Man, not Man for the Sabbath."

I'm constantly surprised that that phrase has survived accidents of translation, for you will not find the concept enshrined in any church or at the root of any mainstream doctrine; quite the opposite. Indeed, the Catholic church goes even further, to trump the entire Bible and any individual ethical collywobbles by stating with authoritarian arrogance that "church tradition is a superior guide than scripture or conscience."

Now, the only intelligent response to that is "g'wan with ye, ya heathen." No doubt the priests of B'all and the Quezaquatl human sacrifice cult would have said much the same thing - and for much the same reasons. It's the priests what live off the leftovers of sacrifice, you see, with an evident reluctance to do much sacrificing of their own.

Well, those particular red letters, "The Sabbath was made for Man, not Man for the Sabbath" was aimed straight at their bottom line. THAT sort of teaching was why He was crucified, and that is why the same thing will happen today, unless and until we laugh the greedy bastards out of our Churches, our Mosques, our Temples and our Groves.

Religion is for OUR benefit, not God's. We seek out particular religions and flavors of religions because they speak to us, not because one is superior to one or another. Being created first for the benefit of people, and then controlled for the benefit of those in charge, religions are imperfect by definition, and not to be taken any more seriously than they should be, as a means to an end. They are merely a means of structuring a time and a place where you can be spiritual in company better than you could if you stayed home, and if that costs a bit, and a priest or a preacher is good at bringing you to a place where you can be spiritual, well, then; "The worker is worthy of their hire."

Just so long as they don't get too uppity about their place in the grand scheme of things.

If you can do it better staying home, you should. If you are at all like me and find that groups of people and personal spiritual awareness are directly incompatible, you'd have to be some variety of stupid to put up with it. It's not just uncomfortable, it's BAD for you.

If you find that you are subjecting yourself and your children to the cold, judgmental stares of the dour and humorless, adjusting your daily life and routine to meet their approval, choosing your friends and your interests to avoid scandal, shopping and interacting only under the Sign of the Fish, - you would do better to dive head-first into a river of Triple-X porn. At least you might gain some insight into some pretty basic human motivations, that's never a wasted exercise. It's also never a wasted exercise to peek behind the Curtain that hides the Great and Terrible Oz.

Aside from that, a good orgasm is a more spiritually productive than an hour of feeding your anxieties with hellfire and your delusions with "pie in the sky."

There is a Jewish teaching that says that it is a Mitzvah, a Good Deed, to give your partner an orgasm, because it is the closest a person can come to seeing the face of God.

I'm sure that's a metaphor - but it certainly does have a profoundly liberating effect; it literally takes you out of your mind and body; the very opposite experience that those fearful Augustinian types would suggest.

Makes you wonder why they keep trying to paint white as the new black, doesn't it?

tag: dominionism, social engineering, religous cults, psycological torture, The strong-willed child, truth, Christianism, Christian, faith, fundimentalism, authoritarianism, individualism