Category: Uncategorized

The Girl Guides battle the mighty power of the massive breasts:

The initiative also follows a recent survey of teenage girls which revealed that 63 per cent would rather be a topless model than a doctor or a nurse, while one in four considered lap-dancing a good profession. Only 3 per cent aspired to be teachers.

The Teen Emotional Health Survey 2005, commissioned by Bliss magazine, found that Jordan, the glamour model, was a role model for more 15 to 19-year-olds than Rowling.

And here I thought it was amusing when “hard currency prostitute” was the dream profession for schoolgirls in the former Soviet Union some years ago. This is perhaps a lot funnier if you happen to know what a cheeseball Katie Price is.

At least feminists can console themselves that they haven’t taught young women seek marriage and motherhood like their poor oppressed predecessors. The irony of Shirley Manson being the face of this initiative is particularly sharp, given how she fronts a band comprised of extremely accomplished middle-aged men who write all the music. But hey, at least she looks all right in a corsette….

Guess which one is my contribution?

FANGS [Jonah Goldberg]

From a reader:
The things you think of on Monday morning . . . since I was out at a rattlesnake hunt this weekend and have kept some of those obstinate creatures in the past, I can guess that the top-fang tradition comes from human interactions (often fatally) with venomous snakes . . . which I would also bet is part of the vampire tradition as well (the bite does you in either way!) Bottom fangs are more associated with large predators (the big cats primarily, with their essentially equal upper and lower canines.) Now on to matters of statecraft . . .

And another reader:
Fangs pointing down are more civilized, hence vampires. Fangs pointing up are more bestial, like pig tusks, hence orcs, demons and so forth. The less human and less sympathy the reader/viewer are supposed to have for the monster, the more likely the fangs will point up.

I don’t know if National Review has a formal policy on not quoting WND or its writers, but in many years of reading it, I think I’ve seen about ten direct references and dozens of indirect ones such as this. I suppose they’re competitors and all, but they don’t seem to have the same problem with Salon and Air America. (Admittedly any similarly indirect references would escape me.)

I should be grateful to remain anonymous, of course, considering the creative grammar. One of these days I’m going to learn to stop changing direction in mid-sentence or at least read my emails before sending them.

Hellboy is one of the few exceptions to the rule that I can think of, but he’s supposed to look bestial even though he’s a hero of sorts.

A biography of Flaubert is reviewed in the NYT:

In a sense, Flaubert would always remain the Kid, the boy who dropped out of law school and came home and never left again, the writer who likened writing to masturbation (and sentences to ejaculate), and who, late in his life, would claim that “two things sustain me: love of Literature and hatred of the Bourgeois.” This is what Flaubert meant when he said that “Madame Bovary, c’est moi.” His most famous novel oscillates between this realism and romanticism. On the one hand, Emma Bovary’s dreams of escape, her reading of popular romances, are seen as deluded and vulgar; on the other, the “realists” who would condemn her are people like her dreadful mother-in-law and the pompous chemist, Homais. Flaubert scourges Emma and indulges her. He sees from her perspective, and seems to agree with her when she denounces life as “all lies.”

I read “A Simple Heart” last week, which reminded me of why I prefer Maupassant to Flaubert. When it comes to short stories, anyhow, the student surpassed the master. But I think I might have to pick up this biography anyhow, as I find the contradictory aspects of Flaubert’s character to be compelling. I particularly find his interest in historical fiction to be intriguing, as it is a much-dismissed genre these days in the eyes of the high literary circles that still nevertheless consider him to be one of the greats.

I wouldn’t go as far as the reviewer does in declaring Flaubert the originator of the modern novel, however, as modern is such a hopelessly relative term, if not completely meaningless. I champion no other author’s claim to the title, you understand, it’s only that seems overly arbitrary to place Dickens, Cervantes and Murasaki together in one category and Flaubert, Hemingway and Gibson in the other.

Scott Adams is a very successful and amusing cartoonist. On his blog, he occasionally writes about philosophy, science and religion, wherein he demonstrates that he is… an amusing cartoonist:

I also wonder if showing respect for all beliefs is causing more problems than it’s avoiding. The only thing that keeps most people from acting on their absurd beliefs is the fear that other people will treat them like frickin’ retards. Mockery is an important social tool for squelching stupidity. At least that’s what I tell people after I mock them. Or to put it another way, I’ve never seen anyone change his mind because of the power of a superior argument or the acquisition of new facts. But I’ve seen plenty of people change behavior to avoid being mocked.

Many of our biggest world problems are caused by different religious views. But it’s not socially acceptable to even discuss whether those views originate from the almighty or a drunken guy wizzing on a tree stump. At a bare minimum, just to pick one example, either Christianity or Islam is completely and utterly wrong. The beliefs are mutually exclusive. Muslims believe all Christians will burn in Hell. Christians believe that the Koran is fiction. They can’t both be right. (They could obviously both be wrong if the Heaven’s Gate guys turn out to have it right.)

First, I note that Mr. Adams must not associate with many intellectually curious individuals, because nearly every individual I know has changed his mind based on the acquisition of new facts. The public school advocate who now homeschools, the former Republican Inner Circle member who is now a libertarian anarchist, the girl with the Pro-Choice checks who now opposes abortion, the career girl with an MBA turned wife and stay-at-home mother, the staunch liberal Democrat turned Reaganite Republican… why, I even know of an agnostic hedonist turned Southern Baptist.

Like many maleducated atheists, Mr. Adams substitutes parroting a few false “truisms” he has heard and foolishly found compelling for original thinking. This is easily demonstrated, only consider this statement: “Many of our biggest world problems are caused by different religious views.”

Very well, what are those problems? Mr. Adams himself is apparently concerned about Global Warming. We can probably assume that War would make the list, along with Hunger, Disease, and, according to Mr. Seth Blatter of FIFA, Diving in International Football is a global issue as well. Interestingly enough, one can probably make a better religious case for Diving than for any of the other four “biggest world problems”.

Global Warming, if it exists at all, is caused by carbon emissions. According to the Natural Resources Defense Council, Carbon dioxide and other air pollution that is collecting in the atmosphere like a thickening blanket, trapping the sun’s heat and causing the planet to warm up. Coal-burning power plants are the largest U.S. source of carbon dioxide pollution — they produce 2.5 billion tons every year. Automobiles, the second largest source, create nearly 1.5 billion tons of CO2 annually.

Which religion is responsible for coal-burning power plants and automobiles, Mr. Adams? Is solar power banned in the Book of Exodus? The Islamic Republic of Iran’s pursuit of uranium processing would seem to make it clear that the Koran is okay with nuclear power. And while there are those who preach against the internal combustion engine, they seldom do so from a position of authority within a church, mosque, synagogue or temple.

War, as I have demonstrated in the past, predates every existing religion. Of the 500 wars chronicled in Wikipedia, only 11 percent have any relation to religion at all and leaving out Islam – a religion of the sword – drops that percentage to less than 3 percent. Which of America’s wars were caused by religion, Mr. Adams, the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Spanish-American War, the Civil War, World War I, World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Gulf War or the present Iraqi Occupation?

Hunger, as Mr. PJ O’Rourke proved so conclusively in “All the Trouble in the World” is a primarily a political phenomenon. Specifically, it is a socialist political phenomenon and a LACK of religion is more correctly considered a causal factor here. While it is possible for a socialist to be religious, (there are no shortage of Christian and Muslim socialists), the specific form of socialism dominant in nearly all of the famine-struck countries of the last eighty years, from the former Soviet Union to modern Zimbabwe, was an atheist one. It is not a coincidence that most of the socialist dictators who presided over the various African mass starvations were educated at Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow.

Disease, insasmuch as it has any relation to religion at all, is negatively correlated with religion. This is true on the individual level, as New Scientist magazine reports that religious individuals get sick less often than non-believers, and on the societal level as well. In Uganda, for example, the abstinence-based ABC program has been far more successful in reducing the incidence of AIDS than the condom-based “safe sex” progams used in Kenya, Zimbabwe and other African countries. Does Mr. Adams argue that there would be less disease without the hundreds of thousands of Christian charity workers active around the world? Has the rejection of religious doctrine reduced or increased the incidence of STDs in America’s heterosexual and homosexual communities alike?

Diving in International Football, on the other hand, is at its worst in Italy, a Catholic country where footballers often cross themselves upon entering the game. Here, and only here, Mr. Adams just might have a point. Whether Diving is as serious a global problem as Global Warming, War, Hunger and Disease I leave to the reader to decide. And perhaps readers might be able to suggest other “biggest world problems” I have neglected to address here, so that we can consider whether or not religion is the primary cause of them.

As far as the contradictions between Islam and Christianity are concerned, I merely recommend to Mr. Adams a literary criticism of the two foundational documents by the atheist Christopher Hitchens as a useful starting point.

Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance. So she came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, and said, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don’t know where they have put him!” – John 20:1-2

Orac misses it again:

Deep down Vox is chikcenshit. He’ll wait a few days and then call Orac a girl without linking so his followers can read for themselves. That’s just his way.
Posted by: LB | April 15, 2006 09:34 AM

Actually, Vox only does that when it’s about a topic that he thinks he knows something about, for example, when I made fun of him for using bad Nazi analogies. When faced with incontrovertible evidence showing that he doesn’t know what he’s talking about, he usually stays silent. When I fisked Vox for his comments on Dan Olmsted’s article about a population in Chicago that was supposedly unvaccinated and had a very low rate of autism, he never responded.
Posted by: Orac | April 15, 2006 09:55 AM

Good point, Orac. I stand corrected. He is a bigger chickenshit than I gave him credit for.
Posted by: LB | April 15, 2006 12:26 PM

Or maybe not, ladies. A simple blog search shows past links to Orac’s blog. And as I have stated numerous times in the past, my opposition to the current vaccine schedule is not due to any adherence to existing theories as to WHY particular vaccines are harmful or precisely HOW they are harmful, but due to the political and legal structure behind the vaccine schedule which logically suggests that vaccines are far more harmful than parents or doctors understand.

This, combined with the way that obviously unnecessary vaccines are aggressively marketed to politicians and school districts, is far more persuasive to me than the many unscientific surveys of surveys that are used in the absence of genuine double-blind experiments with a control group to “prove” the safety of mercury in particular and various vaccines in general. The studies that Orac criticizes may well be scientifically questionable; it is certain that many of those which are cited to contrary purposes are. If Orac would like to try “fisking” away the logic of VAERS, the various related Congressional acts and the millions of dollars paid out in damages, I’ll be happy to respond to that.

What’s amazing about these logic-free lightweights is that they seem to think I have some inexplicable motive for opposing the vaccine schedule, when the reality is that it was the obvious dishonesty of health officials and others defending the need for the schedule that first got me interested in learning why those who were delivering what I considered to be an obvious public good should need to hide behind Congressional immunity and lying press releases.

Keep in mind, too, that unlike most Americans, I have spent a good deal of time outside of the country. So, I happen to be privy to the opinions of a number of European doctors, none of whom are in accordance with the idea that giving 20+ shots to children under the age of two likely to be entirely harmless.

My apologies to Pretty Lady and Rainman, but the promised posts will have to wait at least a day, as I was bushwhacked by a bit of a cold that seems to have clogged up my synapses as well as the sinuses. I’m just going to lay around reading Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, a Nebula-nominated novel by Susanna Clarke that is really very good indeed.

From National Review:

Comedy Central Censored Mohammed

I’m not sure if it’s been reported yet, but for what it’s worth, I just got off the phone with a Comedy Central spokesman. I asked him about last night’s episode of South Park in which, at a moment right before the prophet Mohammed was supposed to make a cameo, the words, “Comedy Central has refused to broadcast an image of Mohammed on their network” appeared on the screen.

I asked him whether this truly was Comedy Central’s decision or whether this was just another gag (with South Park, you never know). He said: “They reflected it accurately. That was a Comedy Central decision.”

Just in case there was any confusion, that settles it. Comedy Central censored the image.

It seems pretty obvious now that the only effective resort Christians have in the face of the many blasphemers determined to mock their faith and their God is threaten to lop a few heads off. Beheadings certainly appear to be more effective than boycotts. This would likely benefit the arts, too, as one probable benefit would be to focus artists on producing actual art rather than merely attempted shock schlock.

By the way, whatever happened to all that posturing about defending my free speech to the death and whatnot? How am I supposed to take that seriously when they won’t even defend their own?

Jeroboam is one of the men in the Bible who’s been saddled with a reputation as a godless idolater. Throughout the books of 1st and 2nd Kings, the phrase appears like an ominous drumbeat with the description of almost every kingly reign; “He did evil in the eyes of the Lord and did not turn away from any of the sins of Jeroboam son of Nebat, which he had caused Israel to commit.“ What a terrible legacy to carry down throughout the ages!

And yet Jeroboam had once known the favor of God’s hand, in a way that few ever had. Like David, he had been anointed as king over Israel by one of the Lord’s own prophets, and his ascendancy was promised at a time when it must have seemed impossible. Solomon was a powerful king, the greatest leader Israel had known in its history; he was rich, his armies were strong, and his kingdom was at peace with all the surrounding neighbors. Considering his seven hundred royal wives, he certainly could not have lacked for royal heirs. The thought of Jeroboam succeeding to the greater part of his kingdom would have no doubt seemed laughable, except for the promise of God.

Nor did the prophet Ahijah leave Jeroboam in any doubt as to why God was going to take most of the kingdom away from Solomon. “…because they have forsaken me and worshipped Ashtoreth the goddess of the Sidonians, Chemosh the god of the Moabites, and Molech the god of the Ammonites….” Jeroboam knew, long before he became the king of Israel, why the Lord had withdrawn his favor from Solomon’s line, and what he had to do if he wanted to found a dynasty that would endure. “…do whatever I command you and walk in my ways and do what is right in my eyes by keeping my statutes and commands….”

So it seems like truly epic stupidity for Jeroboam to go and build the golden calves at Bethel and Dan right after the prophesied events came to pass. Why would he turn to the worship of the pagan gods almost immediately after witnessing the power of the Lord’s hand bringing the prophecy to completion right before his eyes? The answer is that he didn’t.

Jeroboam’s first sin was a lack of faith. Despite the accuracy with which the prophecies of Ahijah had come to pass, Jeroboam still feared that the people of Israel would revert to their previous loyalties if they continued to go to Jerusalem to offer their sacrifices to the Lord. So he made it easier for them, by building the two golden calves at Bethel and Dan, intending that the people could go there to worship the Lord instead of to the Temple. The calves were not intended to represent any foreign god, they were a symbol of strength and fertility, and in the pagan religions, served as a foundation upon which the idols of the pagan gods would stand. Jeroboam did not build an idol to any of these gods, and in building only the calves, was attempting to abide by the commandment not to represent the Lord as an idol. The foundational symbols of paganism were there, but not the pagan gods nor their worship.

Building a new place of worship to the Lord outside of the Temple could not have seemed like a transgression to the people of Israel at the time. In all the years from Joshua’s leadership until the end of David’s reign, they had freely offered sacrifices to the Lord in many places, subject only to the command not to sacrifice on the “high places”, where the pagan Canaanites worshipped their unholy gods. Jeroboam was only continuing in the older tradition, which must have seemed more familiar to many people, and easier since it didn’t involve a trip into what was now enemy territory. But Jeroboam did violate the Lord’s commands by building shrines on the high places, and appointing priests from tribes other than the Levites. Nevetheless, it must be remembered that these shrines were to the Lord, and these priests were dedicated to the Lord as well. His second sin was of disobedience, not the worship of the pagan gods.

That Jeroboam thought he was still faithful to the Lord is indicated by two things. First, the name of his son Abijah is translated as “My Father is the Lord”. Also, throughout the book of 2nd Kings, a clear distinction is made between kings who did evil in the eyes of the Lord by worshipping pagan gods, as Ahab, king of Israel, did by setting up altars for Baal and Asherah, and those kings, such as Azariah, king of Judah, who did what was right, but still failed to remove the altars to the Lord that were located in the forbidden high places. Of all the kings, only Hezekiah, king of Judah, did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, “just as his father David had done. He removed the high places” and even “broke into pieces the bronze snake Moses had made,” because the people had been burning incense to it. So Jeroboam’s sins, though serious enough to justify the eradication of his line and forfeiture of all that God had promised him, did not consist of the return to paganism that most people assume.

But what do Jeroboam’s sins have to do with us today? More than one would think, because the root cause of his sins is a temptation faced by most Christians today. Tolerance is a byword for virtue these days, but it was Jeroboam’s tolerance for that which was wrong which led to his disobedience, and ultimately culminated in the kingdom’s full-blown rejection of the Lord God of Israel. The Israelites did not immediately turn to Baal and Asherah, indeed, it took them many years to reach that state of apostasy. But the seeds of evil had already been sown by Jeroboam, in his willingness to tolerate forms of worship that God had expressly forbidden.

It is wrong and misleading to suggest, as many do, that Jesus Christ preached tolerance. He did not. “He who is not for me is against me, and he who does not gather with me, scatters.” One finds no call to tolerance in this teaching. Jesus preached forgiveness, for all men, but first he called for the repentance of sin. Tolerance is not the same thing as love; the Christian must love the sinner, but neither tolerate nor condone the evil that the sinner commits.

Even in the oft-referenced case of the woman about to be stoned, Jesus told her, “Go forth and sin no more.” It is not for the Christian to judge, as Jesus himself refused to judge while on Earth, but we have been given our commands, just as Jeroboam was given his – to “go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.”

It is not easy to do this in a world where even those who claim to be Christian leaders dare to criticize those who would attempt to follow Jesus Christ’s commands, call them intolerant and accuse them of somehow perpetrating hate. But Jesus told his disciples that they would be blessed when the men of the world hated them, and called them evil. If the world labels us intolerant because we preach that there is no way to the Father but through his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, we should rejoice and continue to speak the truth, not cower in fear and silence. And yet most of us fail to do as we have been told; we show the same lack of faith and obedience to the words of Jesus Christ that Jeroboam had for the commands of the Lord God of Israel.

The sins of Jeroboam make it clear that it is no virtue to be tolerant in a world of evil, and that it is no vice to be called intolerant by those who reject the Son of God. Jeroboam feared men, not God, and so brought down upon his house a devastating curse of death and destruction. Instead of following his example, let us emulate instead that of the Apostle Paul, who fearlessly preached the good news of Jesus Christ to all mankind.