Insert a Trite Metaphor for a Corral #57

Posted on February 23, 2007 in Roundup

Just listen to the accent. Look at the skin color.

Insert a Trite Metaphor for a Corral #56

Posted on February 22, 2007 in Roundup

5And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full.

6But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.

7And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words.

8Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. – Matthew 6

Have you ever been [[love bombing|love-bombed]]? It’s a technique used by dominionists to draw new people into their cause. You get three or four people to gang up on a person and listen intently, comment intensely on whatever they are saying. Eventually, the person breaks down and signs up for Jesus. [[Brainwashing]] is another name for it. Of course, love-bombers seldom leave their own class, their own circles. This is why the extremes of Christianity and their televised leadership are so overwhelmingly white.

Christian [[dominionism]] represents the largest cult in America today. And it wants to take over. Thanks to the [[Rapture]] [[heresy]] it preaches, it divides America up into “us versus them” and delivers good minds, good hearts, and good souls over to men who are so sure that the Kingdom of Heaven awaits them that they’ll drag others down to Hell rather than entertain an uncertainty. I think that it is to guard the honest believer that the sixth chapter of the Gospel of Matthew was written.

It surprises me that opponents of the fundamentalists seldom, if ever, quote these passages against them. But many are silent because many are also living off the church till. [[Jerry Falwell]], [[James Dobson]], [[Rick Warren]], and [[Pat Robertson]] do not hold a monopoly on Christian jingoism: they are merely the most insidious.

Two items deserve your attention: The first is this page of statistics from Lilith which shows that Christianity and Judaism have experienced a loss in the number of believers worldwide. The second is an interview with Chris Hedges about the techniques and objectives of Christian fundamentalism.

I’ve been gone awhile, so I will only share a few choice bits from the last few days:

• Too Kenyan to be African?: Elkit brought my attention to the swift boating of Barak Obama as being not “African American enough” because his ancestors never experienced slavery (as far as we know). I think that Obama represents a truly frightening factor in America politics: a political outsider with the power to woo insiders and the public at large away from the political agenda of the country’s elite. So pundits and prognosticators must grab at anything to bring him down: he has the charisma and the ideas to wreak real change. Let’s ask instead: how can Obama’s unique experience catalyze the African American experience? What new insights can he bring for all of us?
• Forget Obama and Clinton: Could Senator Mike Gravel be a shrewder [[George McGovern]]?
• Anti-Spanking Law Changes: Assemblywoman Sally Lieber has backed away from her blanket no-spanking law and proposed instead that the hitting the heads of children younger than three, vigorous shaking, and hitting children under 18 with closed fists and implements such as belts a possible felony. Nadine Block, executive director of the Center for Effective Discipline in Columbus, Ohio, congratulated Lieber on “hanging in there” despite the criticism. She called the legislation “very reasonable as a first go.” “We would all like a perfect world . . . where we just stopped hitting children,” said Block, whose nonprofit advocates against corporal punishment. “In the imperfect world, you sometimes have to do things incrementally.” If this law had been in effect in the Sixties, I wonder, how would my life had been changed?
• To the Dead from the Dead: Anna Nicole Smith left her entire estate to her dead son Daniel. Oops. Someone wasn’t atop of her legal affairs. Expect a trial grand enough to keep the tabloids busy for years.
• Ivory-billed Woodpeckers: The hope of sighting one of these unicorns has led scientists to set up a robot capable of scanning the skies for birds. Unfortunately it can only do its job at one location. The system can also only scan the sky because the algorithms used in the analysis can not cope with staring deep into the forest and trying to pick out moving birds from the gently swaying branches of trees. But they’re working on it. Personally, I think someone saw a [[pileated woodpecker]] and just hoped for a miracle.
• History is Bunk: One of two gigantic blimp hangars located in the city of Tustin will be razed to make way for new homes and shopping centers. The hangar is one of the two largest all-wood buildings in the world. Plans will preserve the other one, for the time being.
• Web Site: When Handwriting is Illegible
• A Different Mass Extinction: Nearly all of the 6000 languages that humans speak could be gone in two centuries. “Every time we lose (a language), we lose that much also of our adaptability and our diversity that gives us our strength and our ability to survive.” says University of Alaska Fairbanks professor emeritus Michael Krauss. One wonders, however, if this will be as catastrophic as Krauss suggests. In the age of the Internet, will the 6000 languages be merely replaced by new jargons fitting new niches? When has human language not been the subject to change?

Insert a Trite Metaphor for a Corral #55

Posted on February 16, 2007 in Roundup

It was good to hear that the House — including 17 brave Republicans — voted to tell the Commander the Creep that [[escalation]] in Iraq is not acceptable. Whether these will join the Democratic leadership in opposing the surely to be illegal bombing of Iran remains a vague plot on the pronosticators’ charts. We need to do more than hope: We must call.

• No Free Speech: The title was worth stealing from The Smoking Gun. Rudy Giuliani has found a way to let others fund his presidential campaign by arranging campaign visits through his speech booking agency. If elected, will he continue to expect a royalty for public addresses?
• Tax Cheats: A cabal of property owners in Troon, Arizona created a school district without school, administrative staff, or teachers so that they could avoid paying taxes and still send their children to school in adjacent districts. Just the sort of thing you’d expect in the Affluent [[Redneck]] Belt.
• Dowsing: Scientists continue to look for signs of water on Mars. Satellite photos appear to reveal crevices where water flowed up from underground sources. “It lends support to the idea that a substantial body of groundwater existed on Mars in the past and may still persist to the present day,” said Professor Stephen Clifford of the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, Texas. “The fact that there is such persuasive evidence of joints and fractures in the crust also suggests that this groundwater had the ability to flow enormous distances.” I wonder, however, if we aren’t looking at erosion caused by another liquid. Meanwhile, Terran scientists have mapped a network of undertheice rivers and lakes in Antarctica.
• Suicide Pact: Twice this month carmakers have been pressured to drop a commercial in which suicide figured as a selling tool. In a Volkswagen ad, a despondent man gets a new lease of life when a stranger drives past and informs him that three Volkswagen models – including the latest version of the Beetle – are available for less than $17,000.
• The New Dinosaurs: Scientists are scrambling to save 2000 species of amphibian from a deadly fungus that invades the surface pores of frogs and makes it difficult for them to regulate their water intake. The option is to build a series of amphibian arks that will protect the [[gene pool|gene pools]]. “Bringing [frogs] into an amphibian ark is really the last option,” said Kevin Buley, director of herpetology at Chester Zoo in England, and chair of the European Assn. of Zoos and Aquaria’s amphibian ark. “Everyone is aware of endangered pandas and tigers, but no one is making noise about these tiny creatures that have lived for 200 million years.” If the thought of [[Kermit the Frog]] failed to inspire humans to take action, Buley argued there was a more pressing incentive. “Think of them as the canaries in the coal mine,” he said.
• Youth in Asia?: The more a doctor fears death, the more likely he is to hasten the death of infants with untreatable mental or physical defects according to a survey of 78 neonatologists.
• Incest Ain’t Best: How do we know not to have sex with our siblings?
• Why Some Can’t Just Say No: Drug addicts underestimate the power of their cravings which may explain why people keep trying addictive drugs even though there is ample evidence of the harm.
• Beats Beanie Babies: Have you ever thought of collecting Dunnys?
• South Seas Revivalism: The world’s largest and one of the last cargo cults marked its official 50th anniversary. Devotees say that an apparition of John Frum first appeared before tribal elders in the 1930s. He urged them to rebel against the aggressive teachings of Christian missionaries and instead said they should put their faith in their own customs. Oddly there is a materialist angle to the worship which calls on followers to wait for the arrival of food, medicine, and other supplies from unspecified locations.