A discussion of the eternal question: “Muslims stealing from non-Muslims: good idea? Or best idea?”

The Ruling on Dispossessing the
Disbelievers wealth in Dar al-Harb

In short: if you are a Muslim living in Dar Al Harb (literally: “The House of War,” or any land not under the control of Islam… like, oh, the USA), you are *supposed* to steal from the non-Muslim locals and use that money to fund jihad against ‘em.

Think I’m exaggerating or taking it out of context? Fine. Read it yourself.

Does this reflect the position of all Muslims? Doubtful. But Westboro Baptist Church hardly reflects all Christians, and those jackholes are worth pointing and laughing at.

They put it on the internet, so it must be true.

The latest bit of gossipmongering is that John Brennan, Obamas pick to head the CIA, converted to Islam while working in Saudi Arabia. The evidence for this seems lean… bsically, the FBI guy who wrote a “Muslim Brotherhood training a manual” for the FBI, says so.

Maybe true, maybe not. If it’s true, it’ll be interesting to see how the confirmation hearings go, if the fact of him being a convert to Islam is even raised at the hearings. It is, after all, somewhat akin to finding out that a prospective head of the CIA in 1955 was a convert to Communism. It would explain why Brennan purged such training manuals from the FBI as being “offensive” to Muslims.

A common enough cliche – common because there’s a whole lot of truth to it – is that converts to different religions or political ideologies are usually more fanatical than those born into them.

Another observation: it would be difficult to argue that the 9/11 attacks weren’t successful for Islam. Consider this: after the December 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor, Japanese Americans got tossed into internment camps. Loyal Americans were made to suffer due solely to their ethnicity, and had to jump through many hoops in order to simply serve. The idea of an American government official converting to the Shinto faith and becoming director of, say, the OSS is just patently ridiculous. Fast forward to the post-9/11 world: the first new President elected after the attacks was a guy raised in the Islamic faith, has an Islamic middle name and is considered by a great many people to be a Muslim.

The 70′s were just… *weird.* A whole lot of paranormal nonsense… ancient astronauts, psychic powers, Pyramid Power, crystals, Bermuda Triangle, Noah’s Ark, ghosts… bleah. From a rational standpoint, it was a whole lot of rubbish, right up there with lime-green polyester leisure suits and platforms shoes and white guys with great big Afro-perms. Still, if you’re of a certain age, some of it holds sentimental appeal. Right up front: “In Search Of.” This started out as a few hour-long specials narrated by Rod Serling, leading off with “In Search Of Ancient Astronauts.” I remember this being shown throughout the late 70′s and into the early 80′s, both on TV and on film at various functions for us kiddies. “In Search Of…” then became a regular weekly TV series; Serling was supposed to continue as narrator, but he had the ill manners to die, and so was replaced with Leonard Nimoy. I haven’t seen these shows in about 30 years, and remember them only vaguely, more like half-remembered dreams. I seem to recall that Nimoy creeped me out; I hadn’t seen much Star Trek at the time (remember, this was before DVDs, before Netflix, before YouTube, before cable TV had really made much of a dent in the market… you had three clear broadcast networks, one kinda scratchy PBS station and one UHF station that would come in, if the wind blew the radio waves just right), but apparently I’d seen him enough to associate him with being inhumanly pointy-earred.

So, huzzah! It turns out that the complete “In Search Of” collection has been released on DVD. It’s pretty pricey at $130… pretty good on a dollar-per-minute basis (at 3,600 minutes), but still a chunk of change. So, if a whole bunch of ya order it through this Amazon link, I’ll be able to buy it myself!

It’s more likely than you think! However, the ethnic/religious target may surprise you. Guess who’s being being bullied in Germany these days. Go on, guess.

embedded by Embedded Video

YouTube Direkt

One way or another, I suspect Germany is in for some ugliness.

After being reminded of a particular crackpot-type-person, I suddenly remembered a webpage that was a personal favorite, about a decade ago: Crank.net. This was an encyclopedia of the lunacy and whackjobbery that floods the internet. In the late 1990′s and early 2000′s I was a minor target of crackpots, cranks and loons due to a company I was associated with, and my excessive posting to various newsgroups and discussion fora and the like, and was really pretty sick and damned tired of ‘em. (Since then I have fallen into obscurity, which is generally for the best.)

Crank.net even linked to at least one web-nut that I submitted, some guy who was convinced that the US had operational SSTO spaceplanes. No, that wasn’t why he was a nut. He believed the XB-70 was a SSTO spaceplane. No, that wasn’t why he was a nut. He believe that the piston-engined Convair B-36 was capable of attaining orbit, and in fact did so. Yeah, THAT was why he was a nut. Sadly, it appears that Crank.net hasn’t been updated since 2005. Sad, given the vast amount of looney crap that has flooded the web since then. I’ve no idea why it ground to a halt.

Very likely this is old news to y’all, but just in case…

1) A pastor and her friends (a total of more than 20 people) go to Applebees. Applebees system automatically puts an 18% gratuity on the bill for more than 6 people (the actual group was more than 20). The pastor scribbles out the 18% and writes in: “I give God 10% why do you get 18″ and writes in “0″ for the tip.

2) Another server at Applebees photographs the bill, and posts it to the Atheism page on Reddit… without obscuring the pastors signiture

3) The Internet does what it does, and finds the pastor. Pastor calls Applebees and demands that everyone involved be fired.

4) Applebees fires the server who posted the photo, because “customer privacy.”

5) The Smoking Gun interviews the pastor, one Alois Bell, and splashes her photo across Teh Intarwebs.

6) *Now* the pastor is embarrassed.

There are three dumbasses here. The pastor, the server, Applebees management. The pastor was, I think, the worst of the bunch: the server was just a little thoughtless in not cropping the signature; Applebees management are probably much like any collection of corporate drones, incapable of thinking outside of some rulebook. But the pastor was beyond thoughtless, she was *mean.* And some might consider a worse problem was that, as a pastor, she’s something of an ambassador for her faith. And who wants to sign on to a faith where the local figurehead is such a jackass?

Well, not too many, it seems. Her “church” is a rented storefront, with a congregation of about 15. The pastor claims to tithe 10% of her income from another job to the church… but since she pretty much *is* the church, I fail to see any heroics there.

As for Applebees… they’ve just dug themselves a PR nightmare. Wait till Anonymous or the /b/tards get hold of this…

A comment I saw on one of the Youtube videos noted the irony that it took an atheism discussion board to teach this preacher some humility.

Here’s a ponderable for you:

Bioethicist: Here’s why creating a Neanderthal clone is such a bad idea

Recently the idea of cloning a Neanderthal has been floating around the human noggin-o-sphere, due to a geneticist saying that such a thing may be possible fairly soon. But the bioethicist who wrote the linked piece thinks that’s a terrible idea, for several reasons. But consider this one:

Risking a deformed or dead fetus simply created only for reasons of human curiosity is not a sufficient reason to take the chance, now or ever.

Now consider: if you were the geneticist working on cloning a Neanderthal, at every stage in the process you’d have the lil’ dickens under careful 24/7 scrutiny. If during gestation you found out it was a horribly deformed mess, the logical thing to do would be to abort it, learn from your mistakes and try again. But the bioethicist is here declaring that that would be unethical. But… why would it be unethical to destroy a mutant experimental embryo, but not any of the hundreds of thousands that are aborted annually in the US? Without getting into an abortion debate, this just seems to be a basic contradiction.

The hypothetical Neander-enbryo would be created for “human curiosity,” which to my mind is *not* a bad thing. What could be learned even from a failed attempt would advance mankind infinitely more than a standard embryo aborted because it simply wasn’t wanted.

If it would be wrong to abort this one, why would it be ok to abort a million? If it’s ok to abort a million, why would it be wrong to abort this one? Or a dozen like it in the process?

The second issue raised by the bioethicist is “what if it’s not able to handle our bacteria and virii?” The third is “what if it’s violently aggressive?” Well, do these not apply to *every* baby? If a link between genetics and criminal tendency, say, is found, should not babies with that particular genetic mix be prevented? How about embryos that are shown early on to be genetically predisposed to illness? Or the parents are genetically so disposed, and likely to pass that on to the next generation?

The ethicist finishes off with the rather remarkable complaint that the Neander-baby would be created out of curiosity, not love. Ummm… honestly, how many babies are born annually out of something other than love? How many babies enter the world to a family – which may well only be the mother, or not even that – that does not love them?

Finally: how does one get to be a professional bioethicist? Seems like an easy gig.

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A vaguely similar ponderable. From my experience, if a person holds one of the following views, the chances are good they hold all:

A: Abortion should not be hindered… if the mother wants it, she gets it

B: Sexual orientation is something you are born with (thus most likely genetic in basis), and all orientations are valid and should be cherished and blah, blah, blah.

C: Medical care, including screenings, should be readily (very likely: freely) available to all, especially pregnant women.

OK. Assume all are true. So, here’s the ponderable hypothetical situation:

A pregnant woman goes to her local Free Clinic for a thorough exam. A genetic test of Lil’ Dickens reveals that there is a 95% chance that the baby will grow up to be gay. Mom takes this info to heart and promptly wanders over to the Abort-O-Suck clinic and has Lil’ Dickens removed because she doesn’t want a gay kid. Are the people who are big fans of A, B and C going to be quite so supportive of this? If sexuality *is* genetic and can be tested for, and certain orientations are aborted at a higher rate than others specifically because of the orientation… is there going to be a sudden spike in interest in maybe clamping down on abortion? Could a sudden decline in the birth rate of gay kids lead to an Endangered Orientation Act? On the other hand, if sexual orientation is proven to be a gene, not a choice… are certain religious organizations and the like that today stand squarely against abortion going to soften their stance?

‘Satanists’ praise Fla. governor for prayer bill

It looks like this was some sort of actor-based stunt, but the short form is that some people claiming to be Satanists are thrilled that Florida Governor Rick Scott has signed a bill allowing student led prayers and “inspirational messages” in public schools.

I bet Flying Spaghetti Monster will get some love. I can only hope that someone, somewhere, will beseech Great Cthulhu to either spare them or – perhaps most sensibly - eat them first.

The Cthulhu Tracts may come in handy.