Thu 6 Jan 2011
Posted by anaglyph under In The News, Skeptical Thinking
[23] Comments
From the Washington Post this morning:
Thousands of blackbirds birds fall from the sky in Arkansas, fish deaths reported worldwide. Dozens dead in Sweden, hundreds washed ashore in New Zealand. Is the world witnessing the end of days or is this just a case of coincidence fueled by wild speculation?
Oh criminy. I wonder what the correct answer to that question could possibly be?
Sun 19 Dec 2010
Posted by anaglyph under Cow Matters
[17] Comments
Faithful Acowlytes all! It is that time of year again and for me, 2010 has truly flown by. I approach the end of my seven month visit to the USA and our project is almost finished. You will hear all about it in 2011, around about the beginning of March, so be sure to stay tuned.
Because I’ll be travelling with my family for the next few weeks things will be a bit quiet on the Cow, so I want to take this opportunity (with the help of a video from one of my favorite artists, Mr Luke Jerram) to wish you all a very happy festive season, and a joyous and peaceful holiday. Thank you for your visits, comments and intellectual rigor ((Well, except for Malach – no intellectual rigor there.)) over the past year and I look forward to offering you a more attentive Cow year in 2011, when I will be back on home turf with a little bit more time to devote to things Cow. Many new ideas in the pipeline!
One piece of news that will disappoint many of you – the annual Rasputin competition will have to be a little delayed this year. I will not have time to devote to it before New Year, sadly. But I’ll make it up to you in 2011, I promise!
Merry Christmas! Hyvaa joulua! Glædelig Jul! Natale hilare et Annum Faustum! Heughliche Winachten un ‘n moi Nijaar! Gozhqq Keshmish! QISmaS botIvjaj ‘ej DIS chu’ botIvjaj! Alassëa Hristomerendë! Alassëa Vinyarië! ᖱᒣᖳá’ᒉᑊᖿᒪᔪᖱᖽá§á’¡á’§á§á–¾á’!
Wed 15 Dec 2010
Posted by anaglyph under Strange Lands, Whimsy, Work
[2] Comments
The Sony Pictures studios where I’m working in Los Angeles was once upon a time owned by MGM. It’s nice to know that, if you know where to look, remnants of the Golden Era of movie making can still be found.
Mon 13 Dec 2010
Posted by anaglyph under Atheism, Religion, Skeptical Thinking, Strange Lands, WooWoo
[13] Comments
For example: the Talmud states that, as a devout Jew you should ‘Cover your head in order that the fear of heaven may be upon you’ and Jewish men are strongly recommended not to walk more than four cubits with their head uncovered. To this end, I see many local men in this neighbourhood wearing the small skull cap called a kippah (or yarmulke) as they go about their business.
Yesterday while I was in the supermarket, I noticed a guy wearing a kippah which must have been pretty much the most minimal thing you could put on your head and get away with calling a ‘head covering’. It was not much more than the size of a Ritz cracker, and if it hadn’t been for the fact that he bent down to take something off a lower shelf, I doubt I would have seen it at all.
The problem I have with this kind of thing is the way that humans have decided to interpret an edict from the Holy Scripture to suit their own, human, purposes. Followers of many religions propose that something is The Word of God and then seem comfortable with adding as many human caveats and qualifications as they see fit. They act like disobedient children, who, when asked to do something they don’t like, interpret it to suit their own agendas. Where is there any kind of rigor in this way of thinking? It is yet another example of the countless double-standards that riddle religious doctrine. ((Not that I’m advocating fundamentalism, you understand, but at least the logic of it is coherent.))
I’m betting that the original intention of the Talmud was that you should wear a proper head covering like a hat or a scarf. ((Which, even in itself, is a berserk religious instruction that makes little rational sense.)) It’s obviously a pain in the ass to wear a hat all the time, so someone, somewhere got the idea that they could interpret the ruling a little more loosely, and a generous head covering became a cap, and a cap became the kippah we usually see today. The ridiculous little cheese cracker that I saw yesterday seems to me to be the most grudging acceptance of religious commitment. It prompted me to wonder why, instead of wearing the daft thing at all, the guy didn’t just go bare-headed and pretend that the supermarket was less than four cubits from his house. As far as I can see, it’s exactly the same kind of logic.
Tue 7 Dec 2010
Posted by anaglyph under Words
[15] Comments
Yeah, now see, the problem with this supposedly comforting sign in the elevator in my apartment complex, are the words ‘little danger’. It leaves open the very real possibility that there’s some danger of uncontrollable elevator dropping or suffocation.
Mon 29 Nov 2010
Posted by anaglyph under Atheism, Idiots, In The News, Religion, Sad, Skeptical Thinking, Words
[96] Comments
You’ll all have heard about the mysterious and sad case of Kristin and Candice Hermeler, the Australian twins who apparently attempted to commit a double suicide ((Only one of them succeeded.)) at a Colorado shooting range a couple of weeks back. The weekend’s Australian Herald Sun ran this headline for the incident:
Suicide twins Kristin and Candice Hermeler had God Delusion in their luggage
The headline is, of course, referring to Richard Dawkin’s book of that name. I say no more than that the two women also had a copy of Eckhart Tolle’s ‘The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment’ ((Tolle is, as you may know, Oprah Winfrey’s guru du jour. I am deeply suspicious of people who think they’ve found the ‘answers to everything’ and especially of those who feel the need to impart this wisdom to others at a price.)) and The Wisdom of the Native Americans among their belongings as well, but apparently those weren’t as headline-worthy. Funny that. ((Shout out to Bruce Hood for catching this one.))
In other Australian newspaper news in the same vein, Cardinal George Pell, a religious man of big pretensions and small intellect, has called those without faith ((We are to take this as Christian faith, it goes without saying. I don’t think Cardinal Pell believes for a minute that Muslims have any leverage with the Invisible Sky Man.)) ‘coarse, uncaring and without purpose’. He accuses atheists of having ‘nothing beyond the constructs they confect to cover the abyss’, which is odd since it seems to anyone with half a brain that it’s much more appropriate to describe people who hold the fanciful beliefs of religion with those words. Atheists, as anyone with the faintest grasp of philosophy understands, don’t ‘confect constructs’ of any kind, because atheism is simply a lack of belief. And, unlike religious people, we don’t attempt to ‘cover’ the abyss with anything – we just accept it’s there. ((Cardinal Pell’s fear of the unknown is plainly profound. His contemplation of the ‘abyss’ obviously terrifies the wits out of him.))
In the same sermon Pell goes on (quite embarrassingly, in my opinion) to invoke the hoary old Atheism = Nazism argument, and so, via Godwin’s Law, automatically loses all credibility. ((C’mon. We’re tired of this one. It makes no sense. It never did, and it never will.))
George Pell accuses those without faith as being ‘fearful’, when it is plain to all but the most obtuse who’s really the scaredy cat in this picture.
Tetherd Cow RSS
Tetherd Cow Ahead
is powered by WordPress 6.2.8
and delivered to you in 0.084 seconds using 28 queries.
Theme: A highly modified version of Connections Reloaded