Tetherd Cow Ahead

It seems that the punchline gag that Violet Towne came up with for my recent comment on the stock market catastrophe is more on the money (heh) than we’d anticipated.

Apparently, the current financial problems besetting the global economy are not the fault of contemptible grasping money-traders at all, but were in fact inevitable, because they were written in the stars! At least that’s what Raj Kumar Sharma, an ‘astro-finance specialist’ in Mumbai is telling everybody, according to this morning’s Melbourne Age. Spouting incomprehensible drivel about Saturn and the Sun ‘not getting along’ and invoking the influence of the ‘shadow’ planet ‘Ketu’ which doesn’t even exist, Sharma attributes the Lehman brothers collapse and the beginning of the fiscal disaster to Saturn and Ketu ‘fighting like dragons’.

Using impenetrable logic, he rationalizes the effects of distant astronomical bodies on our fortunes thus:

“You cannot avoid the coolness of the moon or the heat of the sun. And if you cannot avoid heat and cold, you cannot avoid the influence of Jupiter, Saturn, Mercury or Venus.”

No wonder there’s an economic fiasco taking place if people are using this kind of hooey to guide their investment strategies.

Elsewhere in India, astrologer Christopher Kevill, who writes a financial astrology column for India’s Daily News and Analysis, agrees with Sharma that movements of remote astronomical bodies predicted the fiscal turbulence. Invoking the influence of ‘Rahu’ (another entirely fictional planet) and its ‘150 degree relationship to Saturn’ as the cause of the market calamity, he condescendingly prevaricates with the qualification that:“It’s a lot more complicated than that but that’s one layer of explanation.”

The really amusing thing is that anybody at all in India lost money on the markets with these incisive augurs on the scene.

So, what do they see for the resolution of all this kerfuffle, then? What should we do with our money? According to Sharma, Venus is entering Libra, and that means stability and recovery, so all is dandy. Kevill, on the other hand, says the rallies will fizzle quickly with the markets slumping at 50 percent lower than current levels by 2010. Both of them agree that the turmoil will continue for some years.

Let me simplify – that’s a safe guess for the short term with a bet each way for the outcome.

My advice for the your pecuniary future? Invest in the exploitation of gullible chumps. That’s an industry that’s never going to tank.

It warms the cockles of my heart* to know that Cow Readers are ever-vigilant for tidbits to whet my whistle†. JR sent me the above flyer which was popped through his door recently by some vagrant evidently disenfranchised from the Land of Normal Thinking.

Let’s deconstruct it, shall we?

•IS EVOLUTION PART OF SCIENCE OR IS IT A TAX SUPPORTED RELIGION?

Given the tone of the nonsense that follows, this is probably meant to be a rhetorical question. Sadly for the person who wrote it, evolution is, in fact, part of science. A tax-supported religion is something like Catholicism or Scientology or Mormonism or just about any other whacky belief system that calls itself a religion. Governments seem to be real happy about allowing those kinds of organizations to accumulate cash and avoid their social financial responsibilities. Calling yourself an Evolutionist, on the other hand, doesn’t attract any tax benefits. Trust me – if there was even the remotest chance of that, I’d have the certificate.

•HAS EVOLUTION EVER AIDED MAN IN TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCEMENT AND PROGRESSION?

Well, duh, yes. That’s why we’re not in still in caves hiding from Big Noise and Light That Come From Sky When Gods Make With Much Falling Water. You idiot.

•WHAT ARE THE FRUITS OF EVOLUTION?

Well, I really want to say ‘bananas’ here but that would just be flippant wouldn’t it? What do you mean by that you loon? It’s a question that defies any sense whatsoever. I couldn’t make up a stupider question if I spent a month trying.

•WHAT ROLE HAS IT PLAYED THROUGH RECENT CENTURIES AND WHAT ROLE DOES IT PLAY TODAY?

You really are a halfwit, aren’t you. Evolution plays the ‘role’ of having gotten us where we are. Maybe you think it would do better playing the role of Hamlet? Or Riff-Raff from Rocky Horror? And ‘recent centuries‘? Hello? Missing the point bigtime there fella.

ALL QUESTIONS ARE ANSWERED! ALL SIDES ARE SHOWN AND EXPLAINED THOROUGHLY AND FUNDEMENTALLY SUPPORTING MUCH EVIDENCE.

AND ALL IN CAPITALS WITH SPELLING MISTAKES AND NONSENSICAL SENTENCE CONSTRUCTION!

KENT HOVIND, A SCIENCE TEACHER AND A BIOLOGIST WITH A DEGREE IN PHD AND OTHER AREAS OF QUALIFICATION

Hmmm. A degree in PHD. That either makes no sense at all (surprise!) or possibly stands for ‘Phony Historical Dissertations’ or maybe ‘Preposterous Hysterical Diatribes’, seeing as Kent Hovind, a well-known Creationist, knows as much about science as George Bush knows about, er, science. As for ‘other areas of qualification’, well sure, if you accept a Bachelor of Religious Education from a non-accredited college, or a ‘Master’s’ Degree in Christian Education gained via a correspondence course as qualifications. I guess they could be considered ‘areas’ of qualification. As in, “Yeah, they’re in the general area, but not actually qualifications.” Of course, anyone with actual qualifications that meant anything could just say what they were.

– IS A FEARED OPPONENT IN DEBATES, AND YOU WILL KNOW WHY

Well, that’s true, anyway. He’s a feared opponent in debates because he’s a pig-headed close-minded bible literalist of dubious (if any) intellect, with a track record of making ridiculous and unsupportable claims. Richard Dawkins, a well-known champion of evolution, refuses to debate people like Kent Hovind because, really, who could be bothered? It’s not so much a fear of losing the debate, as a fear of losing your sanity.

Oh I can’t go on. Suffice to say that if you did waste valuable time visiting Kent Hovind’s ‘Dr Dino’ site, you would not get an explanation of ’60+ Hours of Science’ so much as an irritating spew of biblical silliness. How Atlantis quite fits in there I’m not sure, but it doesn’t surprise me in the least that it’s included. They probably have stuff on UFOs and unicorns too.

As for the promise that ‘you won’t be dissappointed‘, well, aside from the fact that you might be dissappointed by the awful spelling, you certainly won’t be dissappointed if you’re looking for more of the kind of claptrap that the flyer spruiks. There’s LOTS of that.

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*What does that actually mean, ‘cockles’? Since when did you ever hear a doctor talking about your heart cockles? “I’m sorry Mr Smith, but it seems you have near-frozen heart cockles and we’ll have to operate”.

†And what the heck does that mean, too?

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OK, in what must rank as one of the stupidest things that an Australian has said in public since John Howard announced that global warming was just fiction, Dr Mark Rose, the general manager of the Victorian Aboriginal Education Association, has told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation that girls may become infertile (or worse!) if they play the didgeridoo.

The VAEA has called for the Collins-published The Daring Book for Girls to be pulped because it encourages girls to just put their lips to the didge and blow, thus demonstrating ‘an extreme cultural indiscretion’. According to (some) aboriginal beliefs, you see, the didge is strictly Men’s Business.

This great cultural respect for the didgeridoo is apparently new-found – as far as I can see, the didgeridoo hasn’t been any kind of ‘sacred instrument’ for decades. It gets played on pop songs, in film scores, by buskers (aboriginal and white alike) on street corners for money and in performances in pubs to rock arenas. Didjeridoos are sold in just about every tourist shop from here to Innamincka (and they most certainly don’t come with warning labels saying ‘Not to Be Played by Women’). No-one seems to have been overly-concerned about any of these secular appearences of the painted hollow tree branch that makes noises.

I’m all for respecting people’s cultural beliefs, but sometimes the earnestness of some folks to do so has them bending so far over backwards that their head goes straight up their arse.

And political correctness aside, Dr Rose’s declaration that:

We know very clearly that there’s a range of consequences for a female touching a didgeridoo — infertility would be the start of it, ranging to other consequences. I won’t even let my daughter touch one.

… is superstition of the highest magnitude. Who the hell ‘knows very clearly’ that a female touching a didgeridoo would be rendered infertile? There are lots of women didge players all over the world – I bet we could find at least one who’s managed to have a baby. And as for the ‘other consequences’, Dr Rose threateningly leaves dangling – well, like so much irrational belief, the vague open-endedness of that contention smacks of yet another attempt by a religion to replace reason with fear.

What century are we living in again?

In his longest correspondence to date, Prophet Peter Popoff is now offering to up the ante on his promises to bring me untold wealth. He’s evidently gotten the concept that I’m less than enthusiastic about his schemes so far, and figures he must be underselling himself. Which is well nigh impossible with Prophet Pete – he’s not too shy of blowing his own trumpet as you all well know.

So, what does he do to entice me when he feels he’s not being generous enough with the Lord’s Bounty? Why he DOUBLES his offer, of course!* In this latest epistle, he sends me ‘The Mantle of Elisha’ (which looks more like an over-sized napkin from some cheap fast food joint than something Elisha might wear in public) and no less than thirty repetitions of a pledge to pass on to me a DOUBLE PORTION of the munificent bounty which is rightfully mine. And all he asks in return is that I send him $42.00! Bargain!

Disturbingly, however, he quickly sets in once again with the pervy requests:

Yes, you read correctly faithful Acowlytes. I’m supposed to rub the Mantle of Elisha all over my body, and then put it in my bible and sleep on it. It would seem that Peter Popoff seems completely fixated on these bizarre and unsavoury nocturnal practices as at other times (I think we can feel free to hypothesize that maybe Prophet Pete has been hanging around altogether too much with his pal David).

After I’ve done that, Prophet Pete exhorts me to touch the mantle with my hand (who knows why he needs to single out my hand, since I’ve already been rubbing it over everything else) and send it back to him. Now I have an image in my brain of Prophet Pete’s closet filled with Mantles of Elisha that have been rubbed over various and sundry bodies.

Wait a sec… sorry… OK, I think the nausea has passed…

Along with all the garbage in this particular letter I found A Special Australian Update in which I learn that Prophet Pete is currently ‘re-organizing’ his television ministry in Australia. Well, if it’s organized like his letters, that’s not hard to fathom (and anyway, I didn’t know he even had a television ministry in Australia). He goes on to say:

As part of this re-organization we have also changed our mailing address. You will notice a new mailing address on the enclosed return envelope.

Well, I actually hadn’t, but it comes as no real surprise. That sort of thing happens when you get busted for junkmail spam. The tragedy of it is that the 14 reply-paid envelopes I have been saving are no longer viable. Damn. And just when I’d hit on a plan for them – I was going to send him, one by one, the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle of a portrait of James Randi. I thought Prophet Pete might be chuffed to see an old friend appear before his eyes!

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*It’s not like it’s going to cost him anything. He could triple it or quadruple it for all it matters. There’s some well understood maths in play here: A x 0 = 0 (where A is any monetary figure you care to nominate)

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Just like Jesus rolling aside the rock and walking from his tomb, it seems that the myth of the Shroud of Turin being The Son of God’s hunky-dory, true-blue winding sheet has risen once more from its grave. People, please, this one’s BUSTED! Carbon dating of the shroud, something for which the Shroudies were clamouring for decades, has placed the fabric unequivocally around 1260 – 1390 AD, a period that coincides with an artist’s confession of having forged the image as part of a faith-healing scheme (this admission is recorded in the Catholic Church’s own documents). Since relics of this kind were not at all uncommon at that time in history, it’s not remotely surprising that the science places the shroud there. Indeed, if you accept that the Bible is telling the truth, then it also contradicts the appearance of the shroud: John 19:40 claims that Jesus was wrapped in strips of linen rather than a whole sheet. John also says that the body had been anointed with large quantities of aloes and myrrh, no single trace of which has ever been found in the Turin Shroud.*

Unsurprisingly, no matter how much scientific and logical illumination is brought to bear on the shroud, there are still people who, for reasons that are impossible to fathom†, cling to the belief that the Shroud of Turin just has to be the genuine burial cloth of Jesus Christ.

Enter John and Rebecca Jackson who have somehow convinced Oxford University to re-examine the carbon-dating data from the 1988 test. Among other things they assert that the major portion of the cloth scrutinized at that time was not from the ‘original’ shroud, but from Medieval repairs made in the 14th century. Of course.

In an effort to aid their new investigations, John and Rebecca have enlisted the help of a styrofoam dummy they have dubbed ‘Roger’, who serves as a stand-in for Jesus. Roger, wrapped in a cloth similar to the shroud, is, I gather, supposed to help the Jacksons understand how bloodstains might have behaved on a real body prepared in this manner. It seems to me that Roger also makes for good photographic copy; a physical form that can be offered up in ‘evidence’ by the indiscriminating news purveyors, for a body that was never there. After all, the shroud image has been so widely propagated that it does have a certain ho-hum factor. It’s even made appearances on t-shirts.

Since Roger has now become a surrogate Christ, I propose that we start up a new religious movement that is based on actual concrete (well, polystyrene, anyway) evidence! Rogerism! Henceforth, Roger is inducted into Sainthood in The Church of The Tetherd Cow, to sit proudly at The Cow’s Right Hoof and dispense his foam-packing-nuggets of wisdom to all who seek.

Well, it makes at least as much sense as this person, who attempts to draw comparisons between the Face on the Turin Shroud and the Cydonia ‘Face’ on Mars, for reasons that I can’t even begin to fathom.

I’ll leave you to reflect on the astonishing similarity:

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*Joe Nickell ‘Inquest on the Shroud of Turin’ (Prometheus 1998)

†As I’ve said before on The Cow: this desperate need for proof of Christ’s divinity would apparently demonstrate an absence of Faith. And unless I’m wrong, that’s the whole point of accepting the Word of God at face value. I await, as always, any correction of my misunderstanding on this matter.

Thanks to Pil for the heads-up on Woger!

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These are the Scientology offices in Russell St, Melbourne. Whenever I walk past, I look in and often see the inhabitants industriously doing things. Some of these things make sense to me, like putting files in cabinets and drinking out of coffee cups. Other things seem odd and miserable, like the big bunch of sad-but-earnest-looking people listening to a guy talk while he points at a chart with diagrams like something out of a 1950s science fiction film. Or the young and impressionable kids barely out of school, filling in the ludicrous Scientology ‘Personality Tests’.*

Not so long back, Violet Towne, as part of her job†, was taking photographs in this general area, and some of the sad-but-earnest-looking people came out of the building and in a very paranoid manner demanded to know what was going on. One woman kind of just ‘stood’ wherever VT and her colleagues went, saying nothing, gazing blankly ahead of herself and exerting some kind of invisible unpleasantness. It was not what any sane person would consider normal behaviour. This building is in a very public place and VT & Co were well withing their legal rights to be doing what they were doing (which had absolutely nothing to do with Scientology, until the Scientologists appeared).

Quite coincidentally, later on the very same day as I took this photograph (Saturday July 12, 2008), the Melbourne Chapter of the anti-Scientology group Anonymous staged a protest outside the building.

I wonder if they got any pictures exactly like mine?

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*My use of quotes in this case (and in the image if you picked it up), is to indicate sarcasm. Unlike the perpetrators of last post’s efforts, I actually know how punctuation is supposed to work.

†I’ll leave that with you for speculation… suffice to say it’s not something that you or I would find in the least peculiar, offensive or even slightly unusual.

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