Any kiddie in school can love like a fool,
But hating, my boy, is an art
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Outrage at free speech clamp on Pope’s Australia visit
Civil libertarians are infuriated at special regulations coming into force for the upcoming Catholic World Youth Day event in Sydney, Australia, where Pope Benedict XVI will be the guest of honour.
Legal experts say that restrictions will effectively make it illegal to dissent from the event, and have already described them as “draconian, repugnant and unnecessary”.
They claim the regulations could see situations such as someone deemed to be wearing an offensive T-shirt being arrested and given a hefty fine.
Green, student and atheist protestors against the Pope say they will mount a legal challenge and a campaign of civil disobedience if necessary.
According to news agencies, New South Wales Police say the measures are designed simply to ensure that World Youth Day is a peaceful and happy event.
Otherwise the peaceful Christian youths might turn violent against protesters?
It’s par for the course for Catholic events, though. If you read the terms of services for Catholic online forums, it’s not uncommon that you have to agree to be “respectful” of Catholic beliefs. I have yet to find an atheist forums that similarly excludes theists from speaking their mind.
Archbishops fail to condemn violence against lesbians and gays
I’m not aware of anybody but the Catholic Church having Archbishops, so let’s award points to this noble bastion of civil rights.
At the press conference Iain Baxter of the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement (LGCM) from the UK asked the Archbishops how they reconciled their faith with their support for jailing lesbian and gay people, which had led to cases of rape and torture.
He also asked why they had refused to speak out against such incidents which had taken place in their respective countries.
In response Archbishop Peter Akinola said that he was not aware of any such incidents anywhere in Africa. He also said he was unaware that anyone had been imprisoned for being gay or lesbian.
When given the example of a lesbian women from Uganda who had applied for asylum in the UK after being jailed, raped in the police station, and marched for two miles naked through the streets of Uganda, Archbishop Akinola said: “That’s one example. The laws in your countries say that homosexual acts, actions are punishable by various rules. I don’t need to argue.”
He’s in denial, ill-informed, defensive, and he just can’t bring himself to say what’s really on his mind: “Burn them! Burn them!”
“If the practice (homosexuality) is now found to be in our society” he continued, “it is of service to be against it. Alright, and to that extent what my understanding is, is that those that are responsible for law and order will want to prevent wholesale importation of foreign practices and traditions, that are not consistent with native standards, native way of life.”
Burn them! Burn them!
Archbishop Henry Orombi said it was not possible, or the church’s role in Uganda, to speak out favourably about gay and lesbian people. “The church’s practice is to preach, to proclaim” he said, “so that people who find themselves in a position where they go away from the word of God, the same word of God can bring them back to life. And that is in Uganda as already Archbishop Akinola is saying.”
Isn’t he supposed to pay lip service to the inane motto of “hate the sin, love the sinner”? All I see are executives of the church who are devoid of any redeeming human qualities.
Muslim countries win concession regarding religious debates
Muslim countries have won a battle to prevent Islam from being criticised during debates by the UN Human Rights Council. Religions deserve special protection because any debate about faith is bound to be “very complex, very sensitive and very intense”, council President Doru-Romulus Costea said Wednesday.
Scholars: Only religious scholars should be allowed to discuss matters of faith, he told journalists in Geneva.
Yeah, right.
Translation: We are getting hammered with our human rights violations, so let’s kill the debate by implicitly admitting that the human rights violations are directly connected to Islam and then arrogating the privilege of making (their) religion exempt from criticism. Presumably there’s an implied threat that the followers of the religion of peace may crank up the violence if their pet delusion is awarded all due respect (i.e. none).
Religious faith is defined as belief without evidence and there’s no complexity at all, unless one considers the elaborate and desperate attempts at rationalizations. The sensitivity is undeniably present, though. Religion has always been used as a means of crowd control and Islam is no exception. Criticizing Islam amounts to an erosion of the of the Middle Eastern autocrat’s and theocrat’s power base, which is something they don’t want to happen.
Cold reading takes a surprising number of marks, but it’s really just tradecraft that requires training and a bit of aptitude towards conmanship:
The highlights:
1. Remember that the key ingredient of a successful character reading is confidence.
2. Make creative use of the latest statistical abstracts, polls and surveys.
3. Set the stage for your reading.
4. Gain the subject’s cooperation in advance.
5. Use a gimmick, such as Tarot cards, crystal ball, palm reading etc.
6. Have a list of stock phrases at the tip of your tongue.
7. Keep your eyes open!
8. Use the technique of fishing.
9. Learn to be a good listener.
10. Dramatise your reading.
11. Always give the impression that you know more than you are saying.
12. Don’t be afraid to flatter your subject at every opportunity.
13. Remember the Golden Rule - always tell the subject what he/she wants to hear!
Now I have to watch the videoclip showing Randi stonewalling a Russian cold reader.
Wayward Alzheimer’s patients foiled by fake bus stop
A German nursing home has come up with a novel idea to stop Alzheimer’s patients from wandering off: a phantom bus stop. ...
The idea emerged after the centre was forced to rely on police to retrieve patients who wanted to return to their homes and families but had forgotten that in many cases neither existed any longer. ...
“It sounds funny,” said Old Lions Chairman Franz-Josef Goebel, “but it helps. Our members are 84 years-old on average. Their short-term memory hardly works at all, but the long-term memory is still active. They know the green and yellow bus sign and remember that waiting there means they will go home.” The result is that errant patients now wait for their trip home at the bus stop, before quickly forgetting why they were there in the first place.
“We will approach them and say that the bus is coming later today and invite them in to the home for a coffee,” said Mr Neureither. “Five minutes later they have completely forgotten they wanted to leave.” The idea has proved so successful that it has now been adopted by several other homes across Germany.
This is so right and yet it seems somehow wrong.
Pope says Vatican will excommunicate women priests
The Vatican has issued its most explicit decree so far against the ordination of women priests, vowing to punish them and the bishops who ordain them with automatic excommunication.
They must be really scared of the womenfolk and of the patriachical grip loosening.
Rev. Tom Reese, a senior fellow at the Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown University, said he thought the decree was meant to send a warning to the growing number of Catholics who favour admitting women to the priesthood.
“I think the reason they’re doing this is that they’ve realised there is more and more support among Catholics for ordaining women, and they want to make clear that this is a no-no,” Mr Reese said.
I’m not holding my breath to see the first female Pope, but it’s good to see that the pressure from the tithe payers is mounting.
The Church says it cannot change the rules banning women from the priesthood because Christ chose only men as his apostles. Catholic law states that only a baptised male can be made a priest.
But advocates of women’s ordination say Christ was only acting according to the social norms of his time.
Christianity is designed to keep everybody in their place and for women that means away from positions that the male clergy doesn’t want to share. I have never bothered to peek at Catholic sites to see how they justify this particular gender discrimination, but I’m sure that there are many bucket of virtual ink being spilled and I also bet that brain-washed women are staunch traitorsdefenders of it.
In-flight surveillance could foil terrorists in the sky
Yeah, right.
CCTV cameras are bringing more and more public places under surveillance – and passenger aircraft could be next.
A prototype European system uses multiple cameras and “Big Brother” software to try and automatically detect terrorists or other dangers caused by passengers.
The European Union’s Security of Aircraft in the Future European Environment (SAFEE) project uses a camera in every passenger’s seat, with six wide-angle cameras to survey the aisles. Software then analyses the footage to detect developing terrorist activity or “air-rage” incidents, by tracking passengers’ facial expressions.
Let me give you a hint. If you have a bad-ass on board, you’ve already lost. A much more credible threat are air-rage incidents, but I wonder how many of these incidents are triggered by security theater and in any case, by the time you can figure out somebody’s blown a gasket, you’re already too late.
What will they do if passengers use masking tape on the camera? I would.
Bonus point: Shoot a video that will trigger an alarm when played back from ipod held in front of a seat camera.
Torontonian Tries to Board Plane at Kelowna Airport while Toting a Gun
And here’s the gun:
Oooh, scary.
Kelowna Airport in British Columbia has bad ass security. They know how to shake you down, and nothing gets past them. And if you don’t want a hassle and a half at their security checkpoints, one thing is clear: don’t try to bring a gun onto the plane - even if it’s under two inches in length, has no moving parts, and is hanging from a necklace around your neck.
“How do you know it wasn’t a real gun?” asked Guy, a security agent with the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority, who also declined to provide his last name.
“Who knows if there is a gun that small that can shoot bullets? You don’t know that. They followed the rules.”
This silliness serves as just one more reminder - we’ve lost our ability to embrace logic, and the terrorists have won.
And there you have it. Game, set, and match for the bad guys.
I don’t know what it would take to get me to voluntarily board an airplane again. Chances are I’d blow up (figuratively) when confronted with the security theater and this wouldn’t end well.
Copyright deal could toughen rules governing info on iPods, computers
That’s putting it mildly, eh.
The federal government is secretly negotiating an agreement to revamp international copyright laws which could make the information on Canadian iPods, laptop computers or other personal electronic devices illegal and greatly increase the difficulty of travelling with such devices.
The deal could also impose strict regulations on Internet service providers, forcing those companies to hand over customer information without a court order.
Called the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), the new plan would see Canada join other countries, including the United States and members of the European Union, to form an international coalition against copyright infringement.
Short version: Rather than actually finding infringers and delivering incontrovertible proof in a court of law, the copyright thugs want the taxpayers to fund a warrantless search, seizure, and prosecution of travellers (and ultimately, anybody within reach of a cop)—in other words, they want the taxpayers to fund their outdated and unsustainable business model. Oh, and in a stunning reversal of legal principle, rather than the alleged rights holders having to deliver proof, it’ll probably be up to the accused to demonstrate their innocence.
If anybody wants to know what I think about the RIAA, MPAA, and their international brothers in crime, George Carlin doesn’t begin to cover it.
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