So a few days ago the new President of Mexico demanded that Spain apologize for conquering the Aztecs nearly 500 years ago (note: in reality, Cortez and his 200 guys didn’t so much conquer the Aztec empire and they showed up and led tens of thousands of *other* people to conquer the Aztecs, because the Aztec empire sucked and everybody around them hated them). And so now who is jumping on board the demand-Spain-apologize gravy train?
A Spanish Mosque is demanding that Spain apologize for conquering… Spain.
So far, the Spanish government has told the Mexican government to get bent. I imagine they’ll do much the same with this more recent demand that Spain apologize for taking back its own land from foreign invaders.
I’ve heard of a lot of rich people planning on pulling up stakes and moving to New Zealand, apparently thinking that there’s liberty there. As the fallout from the Christchurch shootapalooza shows, though… liberty in New Zealand is a transitory thing, deletable at a moments notice on a government bureaucrats whim.
You can be sentenced to 14 years in Federation prison alongside Tom Paris for the vile crime of simply having a text file.
Is it illegal to own a copy of “Mein Kampf” or Mao’s “Little Red Book” or “Twilight” or any of the rest of the books that have resulted in unspeakable horrors? Are there any ahem religious texts that advocate hate and violence that have been banned?
What’s more, Australian and New Zealand internet service providers are blocking access to sites like 4chan and Liveleak that do not block uploads of the livestreamed video. This is strange on many levels. The reasoning given is typically something along the lines of “it’s objectionable,” to which a rational person would response with “yeah, so?”
I’ve watched the livestreamed video. It is… meh. I’ve seen worse. I’ve seen lots worse. Not too many weeks ago I watched the video where the Moroccan jihadis cut the throat of the Scandinavian tourist woman. *That* was worse. I’ve seen Isis videos where they set prisoners on fire. I’ve seen videos of the 911 attacks, of car bombings, suicide bombings, animal cruelty, plane wrecks, car wrecks, the Bataclan Jihadi school attack, Nancy Pelosi, you freakin’ name it. I frequented Rotten.com and Ogrish back in the day, back when that meant something, for the specific purpose of hardening my sense of the horror the world produces. There are *lots* of *far* worse videos out there, worse in every sense. The livestream is kinda “meh” image quality, so so you don’t really see much; the shootings are surprisingly video-gamish in that it’s “bang, he’s dead.” But a lot of the jihadi videos are in Glorious Extra High Rez; and while it might only be one person rather than dozens, they *lavish* attention on the one person and you not only see but hear that person suffer in fear and agony for an extended period.
Why do I bring this up? Because Australia and New Zealand didn’t care about *those* videos. You want to saw some Danish woman’s head off? New Zealand was fine showing that video. You can doubtless have downloaded copies of those videos. You can share those videos without fear of getting locked up in the hoosegow. 3,000 Americans die? That’s cool. But the Christchurch attack? Oh, no, we need special protections.
Two stories… technically unrelated, but they cover similar ground.
First, lying to justify your religious beliefs. I know people with strong religious faith, faith based on… well, faith, I guess. You cannot argue with faith; there is no rational argument to be made against “I believe X.” What you *can* argue argue about is “there is hard evidence for X.” And anyone who lies about matters of fact, who claims to have done things they didn’t, who misquote people… well, one can feel justified in kinda hoping that their religious beliefs are true, at least in their case, and that there will be divine retribution for deceiving lots of people.
In short: Strobel claimed to be an atheist, hard-nosed investigative journalist, who tried to disprove the Bible and wound up becoming an evangelist because the evidence all turned out to be in favor of Biblical historical accuracy. His process of doing so involved “challenging” theologians, to prove they’re wrong… and lo and behold, they turn out to be right. But his actual process involved softball questions, taking things out of context, misquoting, being generally dishonest. This is not the approach of someone taking a hard-nosed approach to disproving the other guy, but instead someone *pretending.* And in his own words:
“My attitude was ethics were fine to discuss in journalism school, but they shouldn’t get in the way of getting a good story.”
Gah.
Strobel, as it turns out, was working as a pastor to a megachurch preacher (who later resigned after an army of women came forward to accuse him of sexual harassment) when he wrote a book claiming to be an atheist. Odd form of atheism, that.
And then there’s this story about Jim Jefferies, a TV comedian/interviewer who has been accused of severely editing interviews to make people look bad. It’s an easy accusation to make, but unless you can prove it… what can you do. But if you know you’re going to be involved in a hit piece, and you’re able to get away with it, set up a hidden camera in advance and then release the video showing just what a dishonest scumbag the interviewer is.
Given the lack of videos recorded by interviewees, I’m assuming that it must be standard practice for interviewers to disallow the interviewees from recording the interview. But given this new video, I think it should be standard practice to come to an interview with a GoPro or two of your own.
John Oliver isn’t exactly Penn & Teller or The Amazing Randi, but anything that points out the shocking ridiculousness of anyone in Current Year buying into psychic bullcrap will have my attention.
The bill bans the sale, manufacture, transfer and importation of 205 military-style assault weapons by name, but it does say existing owners may keep existing weapons.
Any assault weapon that accepts a detachable ammunition magazine, has one or more military characteristics (including a pistol grip, a forward grip, a barrel shroud, a threaded barrel or a folding or telescoping stock) will be banned. Owners may keep existing weapons.
Magazines and “ammunition feeding devices” that hold more than 10 rounds of ammunition, which allow shooters to quickly fire many rounds without needing to reload will be banned.
Unlikely to pass the Senate or White House, but eternal vigilance against this sort of evil should nevertheless be forever maintained.
Full text and list of everything Feinstein wants to ban (for now) follows…
Short form: An American citizen living in East Jerusalem has been sentenced to life at hard labor for facilitating the sale of “Palestinian” land to Jews.
As the “criminal” is a US citizen, I wonder what the official US government response to this is going to be.
Ten years ago I posted a review of the execrable movie “The Happening.” It was just so very, very wrong on every level. Today I watched a movie that is quite similar in basic concept, yet is infinitely superior: “The Bird Box,” now out on Netflix.
What both flicks share: there is a mysterious force that is causing people to suddenly suicide themselves to death, and the characters are not the Great Heroes who figure out the thing and solve the problem, but rather are just schmoes trying to survive. But one of the great flaws of “The Happening” is avoided by “The Bird Box:” there’s no explanation made. In TH, the insultingly stupid explanation is that plants are annoyed with humanities hijinks and have spontaneously evolved the ability to emit a Suicide Gas. In TBB, there are some sort of “creatures”that if you look at them, you go buggo and kill yourself. It’s still a silly premise, but it’s wisely a premise that doesn’t get answered. Are the creatures aliens? Demons? Ghosts? Some escaped bioweapon? It’s left unclear. Since there is no good explanation for such a nonsensical effect, leaving things unexplained is the precisely proper way to go.
TBB does a good job of maintaining an air of doom and horror. Unlike TH, there is a distinct hint of Lovecraftian cosmic horror here: there’s no fighting the monsters, only avoiding them and their influence. The monsters don;t rip and tear; they make people do themselves in. The focus isn’t on showing innovative ways for people to kill themselves, but people being horrified by and confused about what’s going on. Additionally, there is one group of people who are sorta immune: crazy whackos. This fits in with Lovecraft, and is distinctly unhelpful for the survivors. You never see the creatures, but you see how someone who has seen them depicts them… and these images would fit in with the standard mythos critters.
Sandra Bullock is the main character, an uncharacteristically unsympathetic mother-figure. She’s a bit unpleasant as a person and a mother, but not outright villainous… just not the usual perfect person. She ends up with two infants, which in her finite motherhood, names them Girl and Boy… probably because she doesn’t actually expect them to live long in this unfortunate new world, so why get attached?
The basic concept is of course silly, like any supernatural horror movie. But unlike “The Happening,” “The Bird Box” was effective horror and was entirely serious, with little in the way of goofiness.
I’m pretty sure that the commercials below, showing at least the commercial aspects of the Japanese take on Christmas, would be *exactly* the sort of thing that would drive SJWs up the freakin’ wall if it was, say, white folks in America making commercials about Kwanza or Dia de Muertos (i.e. “Mexican Halloween”). Since Christmas is a “white folks in America and Europe” holiday, I imagine I am, by SJW logic, supposed to be all kinds of upset about this, people from a foreign land taking “my” holiday and turning it into something laughably weird. But you know what? Shrug. You do you, Japan. Tell anyone who whines at you about “cultural appropriation” to cram it where the rising sun don’t shine.
I note a whole lot of Santa Claus, a *vast* amount of commercialism and a surprising number of Xmas Monsters, but I’m not seeing a whole lot of Christ or even Odin or Baldur in this. Again… shrug. The Japanese going gonzo over a weird, mutant version of a traditional Western holiday neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg, but it sure is interesting and weirdifying to watch.
I must admit, the confluence of Christmas, Japanese culture and Kentucky Fricken’ Chicken did make my brain sit on pause for a second or two. At least from these commercials, it would seem that Christmas is fairly big in Japan, which is odd because Christianity isn’t. What would truly weird me out is if Ramadan or Yom Kippur start becoming a big deal over yonder.
That said, there was one part that *did* offend me: the Pizza Hut commercial. What THE HELL is on those pizzas?!?! NOOOOOOO!!!! You’ve ruined pizza forever!!!
CNN seems to have gotten a copy of the prepared homily written by (or at least for) Reverend LaCuesta, the remarks given at the funeral of a teenager who committed suicide. It’s not exactly as has been previously suggested, but to me it doesn’t read as being entirely sensitive to the family. I kinda get where he was going with this, that suicides *can* get that golden ticket into Heaven if God is in a good mood that day, but it still comes across a bit… I dunno. Speechifyin’ for funerals isn’t really my forte. All I know about funerals is that the dead guy is the *least* important person there. Whether you say good thing about him or bad… he’s not going to give a damn. He’s dead. It’s like praising or damning a cinderblock: it’s just not going to care. The people that matter are the mourners (or potentially celebrants, depending on how bad of a scumbag the dead guy was), so the ramblings need to be tailored to them. The preacherman needs to balance saying things to soothe their pain with things to keep them from doing stupid stuff; I imagine that’s usually straightforward, but with suicides that’s doubtless trickier. From a Catholic standpoint I have no idea if this homily as written fits the bill. Additionally, without video evidence I have no idea if this was the speech as actually given. And the best written speech in the world can be trashed by a bad delivery. So… shrug.
One the one hand, calling a dead kid a sinner seems a tad tacky. On the other hand… have you *met* Christianity? That’s kinda the point. Humans are terrible, terrible creatures: flawed, imperfect beings slapped together by a perfect and infallible supreme being who loves us so much he has a lake of fire set aside just for us. Yeah, doesn’t make much sense to me either, but there it is… turn on a televangelist or radio preacher, and that’s what they’re forever yammering on about. Really, the only truly surprising thing a Catholic homily for a dead person could contain that would really surprise me would be if the priest started going on about how the dead guy has very likely found a home in the halls of Valhalla alongside Odin and the Einherjar. That would make me raise an eyebrow somewhat.
In short: a teenager killed himself, apparently due in part to bullying from his coach. So, the family asks the coach to stay away from the funeral. Guess whether or not he stayed away. Go on, guess.
And then the preacherman goes on a gleeful tirade about how suicides all go to Hell…you know, Because Reasons. Even after the kids father asks Reverend Sunshine to STFU, he continues to yammer on, then tried to prevent anyone from eulogizing the kid.
This funeral doesn’t sound like it was at all fun.
Here’s a thought: if I need to have a special license from the government to design, manufacture and sell fully automatic weapons to whoever I like, maybe anyone who wishes to distribute religion should go through the same process, including having to make sure that their records are available to inspection by government agents at their whim.