One of my blog posts — the one about Satan — appears on Carnival of the Godless this week. Welcome to all the new readers. Hope you enjoy the posts, and check out the other Deconversion Stories as well. And comment! Love to hear from you.
Oh, and the other CotG articles are good too.
Miss Perfect and I observed the condensation on the window on a lovely morning.
“That’s odd,” said I. The streaks of water only start from a certain place.”
“The droplets must have some kind of critical mass at that part of the condensation cloud,” said Miss P.
“Or could raindrops be hitting the window only at that point?” I wondered.
We noticed that the condensation was on the inside of the window.
“Critical mass, then,” said I. “But how do we explain the bar with no streaks on the left?”
“Very strange,” said Miss P.
“Well,” said I, “I think we’ve exhausted the natural explanations and it’s time to resort… to the supernatural.”
“It must be the Window Fairy,” said she.
“Indeed,” said I. “There’s no other explanation. Now some may say that it’s just condensation. But who do they think created condensation in the first place?”
Miss P. agreed. “The Window Fairy works through condensation, in her infinite wisdom. Or his wisdom. We don’t know yet whether it’s a boy or a girl.”
“Let’s not get speculative,” said I. “It may not be important to our salvation.”
“There is still much we do not know about the Window Fairy,” said she. “But we trust that our understanding will grow as he or she reveals more about him or herself.”
I nodded. “We aren’t arrogant like scientists, thinking we know everything. One day, they too will know the truth as we do.”
I have two new reasons to like Obama: he stands up against the English-only movement, and then he stands up for his comments against the screaming lunatics.
Here’s the clip.
I get three things out of this video:
1. Obama rejects ‘English-only’ laws
2. Immigrants should learn English
3. Americans, especially the young, should learn foreign languages
Simple enough? Not for the howler monkeys, who turned Obama’s remarks into the outrage du jour.
The Americans for Legal Immigration PAC said in a statement, “Barack Obama has stepped on a political land mine by stating Americans should be forced to learn to speak Spanish.”
Force, schmorce. Listening comprehension is too much for these people. Maybe they need to learn English.
Why would the Right Wing care about this? Simple. Learning a foreign language a) makes you smarter, and b) helps you become more culturally aware. Smart, culturally aware people don’t vote Republican, so they’re just protecting their racket. But doesn’t it make sense that it’s better to be able to do something than to be unable to do something?
So I want to hang this all over them. Let’s see these headlines:
Americans should be ignorant: Republicans
Obama claims ability better than inability
Conservatives say US kids should be uncompetitive
Obama’s response to the flap:
“The Republicans jumped on this. I said, absolutely immigrants need to learn English, but we also need to learn foreign languages,” the likely Democratic nominee said as the 1,000-plus crowd in a school gymnasium cheered. It’s a position he long has held.
“This is an example of some of the problems we get into when somebody attacks you for saying the truth, which is: We should want our children with more knowledge. We should want our children to have more skills. There’s nothing wrong with that. That’s a good thing. I know, because I don’t speak a foreign language. It’s embarrassing,” Obama said chuckling as his audience did the same.
I love how he’s not backtracking against the noise machine, and I hope to see a lot more of this.
Get ready to shake your head slowly.
George Bush surprised world leaders with a joke about his poor record on the environment as he left the G8 summit in Japan.
The American leader, who has been condemned throughout his presidency for failing to tackle climate change, ended a private meeting with the words: “Goodbye from the world’s biggest polluter.”
He then punched the air while grinning widely, as the rest of those present including Gordon Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy looked on in shock.
I get the feeling that we haven’t yet heard one zillionth of the stories about all the stupid crap he’s done. They’ll dribble out slowly over the next decade.
PZ Myers has been getting death threats from (apparently) Catholic believers because of his stated intention of cracker cruelty. Seems it’s okay to abuse a person, but not a snack.
Let’s just remember this, shall we? when people tell us that Islam is dangerous but Christianity is comparatively moderate. In fact, religious believers of any stripe will do whatever their culture will allow them to get away with. You just have to hit that sensitive spot to get them into an instant frenzy.
Then there’s Catholic League president Bill Donohue, whose frenzy meter is stuck on ‘maximum’. He’s trying to get Myers fired by falsely implying that Myers’ blog is hosted on the University website.
He adds:
“It is hard to think of anything more vile than to intentionally desecrate the Body of Christ. We look to those who have oversight responsibility to act quickly and decisively.”
I can think of five more vile things off the top of my head:
Seriously. Twenty-first fucking century and here we are. A cracker. You bet I’m angry.
Jesse Helms was a bad man who hurt a lot of people with his unrepentant racism and homophobia. He died decades too late. Though he should not have been honoured in any way, the state of North Carolina ordered the flags flown at half-mast.
But L.F. Eason III, a technician at the Agriculture Department, said no.
“Regardless of any executive proclamation, I do not want the flags at the North Carolina Standards Laboratory flown at half staff to honor Jesse Helms any time this week.
“This is in no way a political decision. I simply do not feel it is appropriate to honor a person whose epitaph of government service was to have voted against or blocked every civil rights issue that came before the US Congress. His doctrine of negativity, hate, and prejudice cost North Carolina and our Nation much that we may never regain.”
…
“I made a decision to refuse to lower our flags at the NC Standards Laboratory to half mast in honor of Jesse Helms as soon as I heard of his death. I cannot in good conscience honor such a man who fought so hard against Civil and Human Rights throughout his life. Even to his death bed, he refused to apologize for the damage he caused. Now, I stand by this decision.
He got fired, and the flags went up anyway. It may seem pointless, like he should have given in. But he didn’t, and for that, Mr Eason is my hero of the week.
I take back what I said about Hinduism. Catholicism takes the cake, though I didn’t realise it until the wafer-napping incident. You must read this article.
A University of Central Florida student, upset religious groups hold church services on public campuses, is holding hostage the Eucharist, an object so sacred to Catholics they call it the Body of Christ.
For me, this was the most surreal paragraph.
Regardless of the reason, the Diocese says its main concern is to get the Eucharist back so it can be taken care of properly and with respect. Cook has been keeping the Eucharist stored in a plastic bag since last Sunday.
I don’t see the fuss. Three days later, it comes back by itself.
What happens when a Christian couple tries to ban swearing in the pub they were running? You’d expect some resistance. After all, language behaviour is social behaviour, and social change doesn’t happen just like that.
The couple have since been fired because of the business fall-off. Now everyone can employ their dialect without fear of reprisal.
The couple, who took over the pub in March this year, imposed a ban on swearing.
It was supposed to make for a nicer atmosphere but regulars disagreed and the pub emptied.
…
Regulars said that Mrs Fleming would walk round the pub with a Bible, and lecture people for bad language.John Rudkn, 61, a regular for years, said: “Any swearing and you were barred. It was well over the top.”
John’s wife, who did not wish to give her name, said she had been told off by Mrs Fleming for bad language.
“You can’t run a pub and not swear,” she said. “If they are Christians they should run a church, not a bloody pub.”
George Whipps, 68, another regular, said people should expect foul language in a pub.
“She put a sign up outside saying no swearing,” he said. “This pub in the last eight days has perked up 100 per cent. All of the old regulars are back.
Hey, we’re English speakers. We impose language norms on other people.
Here are the worst comment threads on the Internets:
3. Facebook Discussion groups. They may no longer be extant, and I don’t dare check. Some intelligent people and some of the most ignorant babbling fools on earth.
2. I Can Has Cheezburger comment threads. I love lolcats, but the comments are unreadable. So cute, you’ll think you’re diabetic.
1. YouTube comments. So many morons, it fills me with despair and makes me want to kill myself.
I don’t know why I bothered, but I made a comment on this YouTube thread, a video about someone whose car was crushed by a truck, but walked away. Believers are hailing it as a miracle. It’s pretty surprising, but in this wide world full of accidents, it would be more surprising if we didn’t see this kind of thing once in a while.
So, me commenting as ‘fontor’:
A miracle? So that would mean…
Thousands of people die in accidents every year. God could rescue any of them, anytime he wants… and for some reason he refuses?
What a jerk!
Response 1, from ‘gorgouesprincess15’:
ur the jerk but dont worrie ur surly going to hell have fun there loser
Response 2 from ‘adriennexxxx’:
yeah ur right
the reason god does this is because its time for us to go to heaven and live happier!!
instead of living in this shitty world!!
ur right gorgousprincess15!!
fuck u fontor!!
watch ur going to hell!!
Hateful of life and gleeful of torment. Behold: extreme Christianity.
When you make a sentence like “Englebert licked the donuts”, there are lots of ways to arrange Englebert and the donuts. And the licking. You could put Englebert first and the donuts somewhere later, which seems logical. Or the licking could come first, with Englebert at the end of it all and the donuts in the middle.
How you order them has a lot to do with which language you’re speaking. English speakers like to put Englebert (which your grade school teacher used to call the ‘subject’) at the front, the verb ‘licking’ next, and the donuts (the ‘object’) last. So English is a Subject-Verb-Object language, or SVO. Japanese, on the other hand, tends to go SOV.
A curious thing, though, is that about 90% of the world’s languages put the subject first, with 75% being either SVO or SOV. Only about 10 percent of the world’s languages put the object before the subject. Perhaps that’s not so strange. Subjects are the doers (usually), so it makes sense to most of us that the most active agent comes first.
That’s with words. But what kind of word order do we see when people are asked not to use words? That’s the subject (or object?) of this study.
For the study, the team tested 40 speakers of four different languages: 10 English, 10 Mandarin Chinese, 10 Spanish and 10 Turkish speakers. They showed them simple video sequences of activities and asked them to describe the action first in speech and a second time using only gestures.
…
When asked to describe the scenes in speech, the speakers used the word orders typical of their respective languages. English, Spanish, and Chinese speakers first produced the subject, followed by the verb, and then the object (woman twists knob). Turkish speakers first produced the subject, followed by the object, and then the verb (woman knob twists).But when asked to describe the same scenes using only their hands, all of the adults, no matter what language they spoke, produced the same order –– subject, object, verb (woman knob twists). When asked to assemble the transparencies after watching the video sequences (another nonverbal task, but one that is not communicative), people also tended to follow the subject, object, verb ordering found in the gestures produced without speech.
Is there something about the SOV order that most closely mirrors the structure of thought? Or is it just the easiest way to get the message across?
I’m filing this under ‘complicated, but interesting’.
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