More Ravings From a Conservative Wingnut

Yesterday I posted about a conservative effort to retranslate the Bible and purge it of suspect "liberal" corruptions. Not content with rewriting history, conservatives now have the Bible on their list. Astonishingly, they would like to leave out the story about Jesus protecting the adulterous woman from being stoned to death! They also have problems with Jesus saying, "Forgive them, for they know not what they do." I imagine "Judge not lest ye be judged" is probably on their list to things to omit.

It really seems like they want to create a document that would justify biblical punishments against gays, liberals, feminists, atheists or abortionists. Curiously, while professing to be Christian they seek to dismiss all the teachings that promote gentleness, compassion, humility and generosity, and instead seem to long to "go Old Testament on peoples' asses".

Here, in their own words, are the benefits of this undertaking. (My use of boldface)

Benefits include:

* mastery of the Bible, which is priceless
* mastery of the English language, which is valuable
* thorough understanding of the differences in Bible translations, particularly the historically important King James Version
* benefiting from activity that no public school would ever allow; a Conservative Bible could become a text for public school courses
* liberals will oppose this effort, but they will have to read the Bible to criticize this, and that will open their minds

Why on earth the author believes that this new text would be acceptable material for public school, I have no idea. But then, he is not very smart. Check out his understanding of the concept of open-mindedness! I copied this large tract just in case he decides to remove it for some reason----like someone convinces him people are laughing at him!

Essay: Quantifying Openmindedness

We quantify intelligence (IQ), academic performance (grades), body weight (pounds or kilograms), running speed, and all sorts of other personal characteristics. But perhaps more useful than any of those numbers would be a measure of open-mindedness.

By "open-mindedness" I mean a genuine willingness to consider the evidence before rejecting an idea. I do not mean tolerance, or a rejection of absolute truth, or skepticism. Open-mindedness means here what the dictionary says: "receptive to arguments or ideas."[1]

One way to measure open-mindedness is to test for close-mindedness, and then take the converse. A subject for our measurement can be asked if he views certain proposals as impossible. By impossible I do not mean mathematically impossible, but so unlikely as to be considered absurd. Belief in impossibility is a sign of close-mindedness, because it reflects the unwillingness of the subject to be "receptive" to the possibility.
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Example Questions and Topics

1. Do you resist admitting the possibility that a conservative approach to education is far more effective for students than a liberal one?
2. Do you resist admitting that something you accepted for over a decade is, in fact, completely false?
3. Do you resist the possibility that Hollywood values result in significant harm for those who believe in them, and to innocent bystanders?
4. Do you think it is impossible that increased gun ownership reduces the rate of crime?
5. When President Ronald Reagan told Mr. Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall, did you think that it was impossible for the Berlin Wall to be torn down?
6. Did you think, or still think, that the Strategic Defense Initiative ("Star Wars") is impossible?
7. Do you think that it is impossible that the Shroud of Turin is authentic?
8. Do you think that there must be a material explanation for remarkable homing and migration behavior of birds and butterflies?
9. Do you think that it is impossible for the speed of light to have been different in the past?
10. Do you think that it is impossible to measure openmindedness?
11. Do you think that evolution [2] must have occurred?
12. Do you think that is impossible for the power of 2 in Newtonian gravity, whereby the gravitational force is proportional to 1/r2, to be more precise with an exponent that is slightly different from 2, such as a gravitational force proportional to 1/r2.00000001?
13. Do you resist admitting that some things taught to you in school are completely false, and even known to be false by some responsible for the material?

A dozen such questions can be posed, and one's closed-mindedness can be scored based on how often they answered "yes" above. Answering more than half as "yes" reflects acute closed-mindedness.

Seems rather like his definition for open-mindedness is gullibility for notions without any evidence or support whatsoever. What a tool!

An "Updated" Conservative Bible ?

Conservatives are eyeing the bible with suspicion as it does not really fit in all that well with their belief system. (Too much sharing, caring & forgiving and not nearly enough judging, stone throwing and smiting!) Some of them are now proposing to update it, to make the conservative values more apparent, and to eliminate the "liberal bias" that permeates many translations.

I'm not making this up!

Included in the list of ways to improve the bible is the following suggestion.

Express Free Market Parables; explaining the numerous economic parables with their full free-market meaning

Gee, so much for teaching about the love of money being the root of all evil. They also reccommend:

Prefer Conciseness over Liberal Wordiness: preferring conciseness to the liberal style of high word-to-substance ratio; avoid compound negatives and unnecessary ambiguities; prefer concise, consistent use of the word "Lord" rather than "Jehovah" or "Yahweh" or "Lord God.

"
"Liberal wordiness"! This is funny especially because just a few lines before they object to the "dumbing down" in many other modern bibles. Another linguistic peeve of theirs is the inclusion of so many "liberal" terms in the Bible:

Utilize Powerful Conservative Terms: using powerful new conservative terms as they develop;[4] defective translations use the word "comrade" three times as often as "volunteer"; similarly, updating words which have a change in meaning, such as "word", "peace", and "miracle"........(Socialistic terminology permeates English translations of the Bible, without justification. This improperly encourages the "social justice" movement among Christians. For example, the conservative word "volunteer" is mentioned only once in the ESV, yet the socialistic word "comrade" is used three times, "laborer(s)" is used 13 times, "labored" 15 times, and "fellow" (as in "fellow worker") is used 55 times.)

It does not seem to bother them that 'volunteer' means something very different from 'laborer', that is that laborers are supposed to get paid------perhaps that's against their conservative principles. (And don't even get me started about their need to use pomp-speak------they used the bombastic "utilize' where 'use' would have been sufficient.)

And then there's this:

Combat Harmful Addiction: combating addiction by using modern terms for it, such as "gamble" rather than "cast lots";[5] using modern political terms, such as "register" rather than "enroll" for the census

Sure, it makes sense to use modern words like 'gamble' or whatever. But they just might want to run this one by Conservative word smith and spin guru, Frank Luntz, who earned a pretty penny from the casino lobbies by spearheading the campaign to have 'gambling' referred to as the more innocent sounding 'gaming'. And how on earth is using the modern term 'register' rather than 'enroll' supposed to "combat harmful addictions"? Their logic on this point escapes me.......

The writing throughout their proposal suffers from poor grammar, inferior structure, faulty logic and questionable style. Given their evident inability to write well, this new Bible should be a doozie! Given their audience it will probably be a bestseller.

Real Ignorance-------Prepare To Be Really Ashamed

The ignorance on parade in this clip is so profound that PZ Meyers thought it was likely a spoof. I checked. It's not; these arrogant American bimbos are for real.

Watch them display a complete ignorance of geography and foreign culture, and then try to convert a Hindu to Christianity. Chances are you won't be able to stomach this whole clip. It's really hard to listen to so many cringe-worthy statements and such vacuous blather all delivered in such substandard English. Gird your loins before attempting to view!

"You're not Hindu; you just think you are." (t=5:25) Wow!

Dumb and Dumbest

This is the dumbest thing I have heard in a while, and I live in a country with the likes of Coulter and Palin.

In Ireland they have just narrowly passed legislation that makes it illegal to blaspheme. They have defined blasphemy as any statement, written or spoken, that offends a substantial number of adherents of any particular religion. The fine for such behavior is 25,000 euros.

Naturally they have a good reason to want to suppress religious hate speech as they try to put their past behind them. But their writing of the law is so vague that it is completely open to question what sorts of speech-----or books!-----would be considered criminal. Would a book of philosophy that includes essays about the existence or nature of God be criminal? What about a book about evolution? Many Christians find that offensive.

The ironic thing here is that they seem to think that they are protecting religions from blasphemers. But really, all religious claims are in effect blasphemous to other traditions. Can a pastor say that only through accepting the sacrifice of Jesus can one attain salvation without offending Muslims, Hindus or Jews? Can priests say that Protestants are doomed to Hell without committing blasphemy according to this new definition? Can anyone in Ireland object to the practice of stoning adulterers (rape victims?) to death without offending Muslim traditionalists?

According to the new law in Ireland, police can forcibly enter your home and confiscate materials (books?) that have 'offensive' material in them.

I see a book burning coming on. I hope they can tap that energy source for cap-and-trade tax benefits, or nothing good will have come of this.

Spring Fashion Update

Even a super expensive handbag cannot save this look! YIKES! Her face makes clear how painful her shoes are. She's not the only one hurting------MY EYES, MY EYES!

(This picture was in the Dailymail.co.uk, but I can't track down the URL. The woman is the mother of a British football star who has launched his own fashion line------she is wearing a shirt from his line! What advertising! It reminds me somehow of a funny comment about ads that I read recently. "With a name like Smuckers, it's got to smuck.")

Charo says "Happy Valentines," sorta

Love (fringe, bongos, more fringe, and a few extra bongos) will keep us together.



Now you know the secret. Pu-pu-di-do.

President or Dictator

McCain calls on Bush to spend 1 trillion dollars----that's $1,000,000,000,000-----without seeking Congressional approval.

So much for a return to limited executive power, and checks and balances.



I thank Jed Lewison of the Huffington Post for the following quote .

This is the same John McCain who just a couple of days ago was railing on the $1 trillion price tag of the bailout (when it was actually $700 billion).

But just a few days after railing against the unbridled power of government, McCain now seems to envision the presidency as a dictatorship. He now thinks that Bush should just spend $1 trillion without allowing anyone to ask any questions -- and he supports doing it just one day after the House of Representatives voted down a $700 billion bailout.

This won't surprise anyone on the left. The question I have is this: when are conservatives going to wake up and realize that despite all his bluster about being a conservative, the Republican nominee for president has proposed the single largest expenditure in the history of this nation -- and that he's proposed that it be made without the approval of Congress?

Nietzsche updated for the new century.

Can I has Superman?

And with this I say a fond farewell to my LOLcats period.

Happy Birthday Alan Turing!

Alan Turing was not only the saint of computer science, creating the mathematical framework for the field, and hence, the modern world; but he was also the single human most responsible for winning WWII for the Allies. You see, he deciphered the "Enigma Machine," not to mention diverse other German codes, with the result that for the last five (5) years of WWII we could read the Germans' most secretest transmissions. With this knowledge, we won. For this astonishing feat, the British awarded him with, uh, well, they discovered in 1952 that he was homosexual, and so not only chemically castrated him, but also fired him. He killed himself two years later.

Today he would have turned 92.

Happy Birthday.

Smoke, drink, and be merry, or tomorrow we may have arthritis.

Moderate drinking cuts chance of getting Rheumatoid arthritis almost in half. Drinking and Smoking, even better (for the arthritis.)

What next, Heroin as a baldness cure?

People who had a moderate alcohol consumption were 40 and 45 percent less likely to develop rheumatoid arthritis compared with people who did not drink or drank only occasionally, it found.

Among those who had a high consumption, the risk was reduced by 50 and 55 percent respectively.

Most surprising was that the biggest benefits were seen among smokers with a genetic profile known to make them vulnerable to the disease.

How to read an astrological chart

Derren Brown gives accurate astrological readings. Turns out to be pretty simple.

Embarassing personal admission: It has always seemed to me that humans are basically simple creatures with language. The language allows us to convince ourselves otherwise. Just out of my grasp are the few rules that we follow. The video above, is a hint.

'Cause i haven't posted any riot grrrls for awhile

(fan video--has the original recorded track, listen for the song, what? You still think it sounds like it was recorded in a well? Quityerbitchin'.)


Actual Bikini Kill in concert--sound quality somewhat less? more? than horrific, but still awesome. Which reminds me, dear readers, any adjectives, hmmm?

That girl she thinks she's the queen of the neighborhood.
she's got the hottest trike in town.

Rebel Girl.

When she talks, I hear the revolution,

I think I want to take you home
I want to try on your clothes.

Kathleen Hanna in all her Bikini Kill Glory.


The rather absurdly emo boy (6 4 155 lbs, low cut girls jeans too small tshirt black rooster hair) at the local video store played this song once. He's not there anymore. I still mourn his passing.

Ps. I consider this a cure for, uh,

Barbie? Pop culture in its various forms? Though for the full vaccination, the Ramones should also be involved.

Yet another post about God.

The incomparable Douglas Adams:

"I refuse to prove that I exist," says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing." "But," says Man, "the Babel fish is a dead giveaway isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. Q.E.D." "Oh dear," says God, "I hadn't thought of that," and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic. "Well, that was easy," says man, who goes on to prove that black = white, and is promptly run over at the next zebra crossing."

People are weird; or the more porn, the fewer sex crimes.

Pornography occupies some weird liminal position here in America. Somewhere around 90% of men view it (I've had trouble finding actual statistics), but it is widely seen as a horrific societal evil. Recent posts at feministmormonhousewives.com have docmented sad tales of men so "addicted."

I decided to do a review of the literature to see what science says about such sad stories. What did I find out? Human sexuality = paradox. Every "common sense" argument is not only wrong, but produces the opposite effect you would suppose.

Two countries, Denmark and Japan, greatly liberalized their pornography laws in the 1960s and 1990's respectively. Both countries had spectacular declines in the number of sex offenses. Denmark even allows "child pornography"--it saw a 50% drop in such crimes, after the liberalization of pornography. Astonishing. Please understand that I am not condoning raping the occasional child for the good of the whole here, I find the idea reprehensible. I'm just reporting on the data.

Japan, who dramatically liberalized its pornography laws in the mid 1990's (or at least reinterpreted its existing laws much more broadly) saw an even more astonishing decrease -- an 85% decrease in sex crimes against children . If such an easy fix is available for such a horrific crime, we should all follow suit--in some non-horrific fashion; and yes, I realise that ay, there's the rub. To sleep, perchance to dream....

The most dramatic decrease in sex crimes was seen when attention was focused on the number and age of rapists and victims among younger groups (Table 2). We hypothesized that the increase in pornography, without age restriction and in comics, if it had any detrimental effect, would most negatively influence younger individuals. Just the opposite occurred. The number of juvenile offenders dramatically dropped every period reviewed from 1,803 perpetrators in 1972 to a low of 264 in 1995; a drop of some 85% (Table 1). The number of victims also decreased particularly among the females younger than 13 (Table 2). In 1972, 8.3% of the victims were younger than 13. In 1995 the percentage of victims younger than 13 years of age dropped to 4.0%.

Most significantly, despite the wide increase in availability of pornography to children, not only was there a decrease in sex crimes with juveniles as victims but the number of juvenile offenders also decreased significantly.

Another quote

"Other researchers have found the same effect. In Denmark homosexual child molestation decreased more than 50 percent from 74 cases in 1966 to 20 cases in 1969 (Ben-Veniste, 1971; pp. 254). These decreases in sex crimes involving children are particularly noteworthy since in Japan, as in Denmark, for the time under review, there were no laws against the personal non-commercial possession or use of depictions of children involved in sexual activities; so-called "childporn" (Kutchinsky, 1985a; pp. 5). Considering the seriousness in how sex crimes against children are viewed in both cultures, this drop in cases reported represents a real reduction in the number of offenses committed rather than a reduced readiness to report such offenses."

I looked at rape statistics by nation to determine where Denmark and Japan fit in world-wide.


US is at #9. Denmark is at #23, while Japan is at #54.

In retrospect, at right around 1995 this portal into the Hellmouth (no, wait, that's Sunnyvale), into the demimonde, previously only available to the wealthy or those willing to venture into the skeevier parts of town, was now but a click away, and in the privacy of your own home. Here, there, and anywhere with a dial-up phone line. This increased availability of porn coincides (mostly) with a similar drop in rape cases in the United States, so even if the the events in Japan and Denmark are correlative, not causative, something's happening here, even if what it is ain't exactly clear.

Ceiling cat made me make this post, srsly.

Blessinz of teh Ceiling Cat be apwn yu, srsly.

He wants you all to know that he is most definitely real, and, well, let's let him speak: Thees 11 awgooments ar in ur computer, teechin ur mind bout teh Ceiling Cat. They ar gud.

He also wants you to pay no attention to those other arguments against his existance. Dis makeded no sense. srsly.

Second shortest Christian Precis

Starts with a rape, ends in religion.

Shortest possible Christian Precis

Girl raped, son killed.

Patti Smith at 61, singing "Gloria."

Jesus died for somebody's sins, not mine.

My other unhealthy music obsession

I had a difficult time finding a version of this, my most favorite Mountain Goats song, that was high enough quality to post. But, I suppose, that's as it should be. The original was recorded on a boombox; you can hear the whirr and hiss of the gears, and a click at the end. This particular video appears to have been recorded from a camera phone and lit with matches.

When you punish a person for dreaming his dream,
don't expect him to thank or forgive you.
The best ever death metal band out of Denton
will in time both outpace and outlive you.

Hail Satan. Hail Satan tonight.

Tiny argument for the existence of God.

The Flying Spaghetti Monster will touch me with his noodly appendage, but not in a good way, if I don't admit to his existence. Plus, he thinks I'm being to negative.

So, for you, FSM, a happy song about clouds. All usual warnings apply.



For those too tentative to click, if you listen carefully, you can discern that this is Hole doing a cover of Joni Mitchell's "Both Sides Now."

Tiny argument against Christianity.

The Bible. You read it lately? And not just the fun verses, but the icky bits in between?