“Moses can sing this one too. Where has he gone to, these days?”
JohnM, I hear the poor sod has severe spinal problems. Some thick deity was not clever enough to invent the notepad and forced him to carry a few messages on a couple of large pieces of rock.
Have some empathy, please. Back then everyone who was anyone was inscribing stuff in stone if they wanted it paid attention to. You couldn’t trust that new-fangled foreign papyrus after all. Since the Israelites were a-wandering in the desert, allegedly*, at the time they didn’t have large stone edifices to inscribe stuff on. Moses didn’t even have a nice stone portico for his tent. Hence the need for an Ark of the Covenant to make their inscribed stones transportable.
*By the returning Babylonian Exiles. Exodus is simply one big allegory for their exile and return. There is absolutely no archaeological evidence for it at all. There are deep settlement layers in Palestine that show at the base people who kept pigs (there are cooked pig bones in the layers) and who gradually become more and more Hebrew in culture and practice (the pigs go for one thing). There are no interrupts, no evidence of sudden invasion and displacement.
In forty years a quadriplegic using only his chin could drag himself from Egypt to Tierra del Fuego.{Note 1} The Israelites could have done Egypt to Canaan in about a week.
That tale makes less sense than flying deer and money-giving, teeth-stealing flying humanoids.
One small point: if there were thousands of mammals shitting all over the Zilch-forsaken desert for generations how come it’s still a barren Random-damned desert for Xzelphth’s sake? That strip of dirt should be hip deep in arable soil and should have been the bread-basket and orchard of the world for the last three millennia.
Personally, I think the stupid story was dreamed up to cover up the fact that a whole generation couldn’t give up pigs and beer so they hid out in Abydos until the old folks died then they merrily skipped off to the land of endless rules and no bacon sandwiches.
That makes some sort of sense in human terms. And it accounts for the fertility of the Nile Valley.
It doesn’t account for the Greeks and Latins, being notorious sexual egalitarians and not being averse to the odd non-hetero encounter, passing on a religious work of utter nastiness and perversion. But not everything human makes sense.
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Note 1 : he’s going to speed up some when he hits the ice shelf at the top end, remember. Ice is slippery and good for skidding on.
Empiricist… “Random-damned”? Are you a fellow worshiper of the Randeemer, and His prophets, Monty Python? Greetings to you, and may you find many fish!
Also, this calls to mind Dawkins’s metaphor illustrating the absurdity of an overly gradualistic view of evolution – it’s as if, every day, the Israelites packed up, moved a few feet in the direction of the Promised Land, and pitched their tents again.
Empiricsist: You will come to understand how clean the desert is if you watch “Mr Deity and the Promised Land” ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6sdpc8stqI ). El (oh, him!) had a 30 year lease on the desert, but he got an extra 10 years for promising that his people would clean it up totally and there would be no evidence that they were there.
[ Hey, it makes as much sense as any of the rest of it. đ ]
Traditional values are fine
You have yours and I’ll have mine
If we can share them, that is ok
But demanding submission is the wrong way
There are some control freaks who walk a fine line.
Most of the stories in the bible that purport to be from times most ancient were adapted from the stories of the Israeli captors within a few decades of 560 BC and seem to be a combination of civilization envy and religious propaganda. So for example, Israel was never an empire, but upon coming into contact with the Babylonian Empire and then the Persian Empire, they invented that they too used to have an empire. This (civilization envy) was the impetus for the story of Saul/David/Solomon. There is no actual history in that story line. On the religious front, the Israeli ruling class had recently decided that worshipping only one deity would consolidate their power by taking power away from priests of other deities. So the whole story becomes âWe used to have an empire, but lost it do to polytheismâ. The stories of Adam and Eve, Noah, and Moses were lifted from the Babylonian/ Sumerian myths and then edited with propaganda about how it goes badly for those who fail to obey the one true god.
I wonder to what extent they believed their own inventions. If they accepted the flood story from the Gilgamesh epic as true and also accepted as true that they were the central people of history then it sort of follows that the story must be about them. Or maybe they treated their stories like Aesopâs fables. Here is a false story but it has a good moral, so it is a good story.
floridakitesurfer, I’m probably in trouble for this but I do not imagine that any priest has ever believed anything in the delusional ramblings and fairy tales that they use to control other people and as cover for their crimes. From the tiniest nun to the proudest popes and Roman God-Emperors (with the possible exception of Caligula who was a tad nuts), I suspect they know they are telling porkies.
If they really suspected they would go to Hell forever for diddling the babies there would be a lot less baby-diddling going on. {Note 1}
The same probably goes for many of the “upright citizens” who visit and support churches but that is obvious.
Religion is a sham, a farrago of hypocrisies and lies and everyone knows it. Would it not be better were we to just admit it, drop the ludicrous pretence and get on with real life?
It would swell the unemployment figures for a while but I’m sure any confidence trickster who can Tele-evangelise can get a job selling member-expanding pills on the Intertubes.
And all of those churches would be useful as meeting halls and homeless shelters among other civic functions.
All it would take is a little honesty for once.
Is that too much to ask for?
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Note 1: would anyone sane chance such a thing, hoping the stories about the big daddy being all-forgiving and merciful were really, really true, if they thought there was a bat in Hell’s chance of ending up toasted for a very, very long time? If they truly believed, no priest would rape anyone and the ones who didn’t would instantly shop any that did. They would have to to protect two immortal souls. Three if you count the boss priest covering for the diddlers.
They do not believe. They never have. They lie. Extensively. All of them.
@ TRIALNERROR; “Moses had two tablets. Way ahead of his time…”
An iPad and a Samsung, presumably. He had a car as well, according to the Bibble; “and Moses came down the mountain in his Triumph…”
I have to disagree, Empiricist. I think the priests (or most of them) really do believe all that nonsense, and the more devout they are, the more nonsense they are prepared to believe.
A definition of faith I came across somewhere is ‘the ability to accept as true things that you know damn well are NOT true’.
Canneloni, what is supposed to be true, so true that all other truths are mere vague notions of iffyness, is that there is a very, very smart jailer who is all-seeing and who *KNOWS* when you have been bad. He knows more even than Santa. This jailer watches you throughout your entire life and tots up all the bad things you’ve done. If the sum weighs more than a feather [mixed religion but bear with me] then you get toasted, stabbed, burnt and generally molested for a helluva long time. Then your torturers get inventive for a very much longer time, just to vary their pleasures.
Now you have thousands of years of nasty, vile, evil cruds boffing little girlies and raping little boys and using the cover of their robes as both authority and shield. And you have the other, reported 45 to 99%, “good, worthy and innocent” priests who don’t steal, don’t rape, don’t molest, don’t lie and don’t shop their evil brothers.
I don’t know about you but if I thought there was someone watching and weighing my deeds I would be very, very tempted to risk my fucking job and all of its perquisites to stop the evil BadGuy(TM) dudes. Indeed, were I to believe in an all-wise daddy, I would reckon my soul at risk were I not to.
They don’t believe. Empiricist is right.
He does not, however go far enough, they not only do not believe and never have believed, they know for a solid iridium fact that their little stories are all lies dreamt up by demented druggies, syphilitics and control freaks and used only to gain power and prestige and the ability to diddle children with impunity.
No priest believes. None ever has. None ever will.
The corrupt vileness that are churches could not exist as they are if even one single priest honestly believed in a big daddy.
They lie. As Empiricist said extensively and always.
Not shopping the BadGuys(TM) is being a BadGuy(TM). If they honestly believed that torturing someone for a while is justified because it will gain them paradise forever, save their immortal soul, then they would be very willing, eager, zealous even in accepting a little temporary discomfort of the dislike of and rejection by their peers for the sake of their own.
If the rack, the stake, the dunking stool and the other instruments of godliness are all fine then reporting to the civil authorities is, too.
They do not believe.
Not really.
They may say they do but they really do not.
Millennia of sadism and rape and general horror tell us this without doubt.
Of course there is this beautiful American lady who does not really like Islam very much.
People seem to be rather emotive over this entire field of thought, don’t they? This lady is a little … shall we just say enthusiastic.
But one is lead to wonder whether she has read Leviticus any time recently and whether she agrees that fifty shekels is a good price for a raped ex-virgin daughter? Her blessed pornographic trash is a little better than the Koran but not by much.
Still, she has some good stuff. Even if Ms. Bernhardt is a little biased. I get the vaguest of impressions that she may be playing a Christian in her movies but it is a very subtle performance she gives so I may be wrong.
How much is 50-sheckels in Real Money? I only ask because I’m rather sad and alone and need a cuddle. Not that I would buy a little daughter but it would be nice to know whether I could afford it. Just out of curiosity … Shall I stop digging, now?
Oh … according to a converter, the New Shekel is five to the pound that would make the price of a rape about a tenner. That’s actually … I think I’ll stop now before I use the word “reasonable” and get lynched. Justifiably.
Leviticus is a horrible book.
Empiricist – Penn Jilette said something very similar (sorry, can’t find the exact quote) … but words to the effect that he doesn’t even believe that believers believe.
Do priests believe in their god. I think you are all ignoring the fact that they are royally fucked up people themselves, and their holy book gives them a get out of jail free card. All they have to do is repent, confess, and accept Jesus as their lord and saviour and ALL sins are forgiven, even the diddling of children.
Then there’s the question of self loathing and flagellation. After his murder, Becket was discovered to be wearing a lice infested hair shirt. There is some serious pathological fuckupedness going on with the whole crowd, and for a sane and intelligent person to try to assess their true minds and hearts is like trying to understand the mind and motives of a serial killer.
I hate to see us falling into the same mistake the Christians make when they accuse atheists of really believing in god and being angry at him, which justifiably pisses us all off. Let’s not project rationality onto the irrational.
Iâve always said that I donât respect people who donât proselytize. I donât respect that at all. If you believe that thereâs a heaven and a hell, and people could be going to hell or not getting eternal life, and you think that itâs not really worth telling them this because it would make it socially awkwardâand atheists who think people shouldnât proselytize and who say just leave me alone and keep your religion to yourselfâhow much do you have to hate somebody to not proselytize? How much do you have to hate somebody to believe everlasting life is possible and not tell them that?
I mean, if I believed, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that a truck was coming at you, and you didnât believe that truck was bearing down on you, there is a certain point where I tackle you. And this is more important than that.
Darwin Harmless</b, understanding the mind of a serial killer is easy. You just imagine all of the people the world would be better off without – Joe, Adolf, Idi, Tse-Dong, Pol, Terry Wogan, Widdles, Terry Wogan, Tony Blair, Senators, Popes, Terry Wogan, Cheery Blare, Tv Evangelists and twee American kids who get caught up in “Olympus Has Fallen” type situations every damned day – and you imagine yourself with a magical erasing device, like a machine pistol, several nukes, a handy local volcano or the skills of Liam Neeson and the powers of Chuck Norris and dream of how clean the world would then be.
Oh, my, Xzelphth-random-zilch-fuck, I understand serial killers!
Does that make me a bad person?
But if you were a potential but not practising kiddy-diddler would you really take the chance that a little repentance would get the unrelenting nutcase of the OT to forgive you? After Sodom, Gonorrhoea and Lot’s inquisitive wife? Would you bet (assuming you believed) your immortal soul on it? Or, more sensible, would you just not do it in the first place? I don’t do bad things because I’m a fairly decent person and I don’t want to hurt people. I don’t expect to get caught by a super-being in the sky because I know there aren’t any but I don’t let that stop me from not hurting people. If I also had a fear of being caught and really punished for ever and ever and more than a long weekend in Wales, that would surely provide extra motivation for not doing it. Would it not?
I’m with LastResort on this one. I don’t think they could be evil and believe.
I could be wrong.
But I doubt it.
Meanwhile, just for our Last Resorting friend, here is perhaps the only reasonable explanation I have ever seen for Daddy’s aversion to sex. It doesn’t like sex because sex prolongs the bet.
Though one would expect two eternal super-beings to have a bit more patience.
two cents’ worth, yes, that is what I am saying. If they truly believed they could not be evil. Could not. It would be impossible. Far more impossible than me watching Mr. Jillete’s truck mow down a bystander.
If they do evil, if they support evil, if they do not immediately report evil then they do not believe.
And if they do not believe then they are not a religion, they are a corrupt enterprise hiding criminals and involved in a massive criminal conspiracy.
RICO.
Empiricist, if I remember correctly, it was Paul (the vision-on-the-road-to-Damascus guy) who started the aversion-to-sex fad, at least among Christians. (As far as I know, Jesus’ philosophy regarding sex was never recorded.)
Far from being averse to sex (or, at least, to all sex), Daddy is on record as having commanded humans to be fruitful and multiply. I’ve heard that, for Jews, having sex on the Sabbath is a double mitzvah đ .
Of course, Daddy is known for being capricious (or, as they say, his ways are beyond our understanding), so maybe the amazingsuperpowers cartoon is correct, and the Jews are following an instruction manual that’s out-of-date.
I apologize if my comments are non sequiturs–if they are, it’s because I’ve misunderstood the thread. I’m not sure whether I’ve missed an important part of the context because I haven’t watched the video of the “beautiful American lady who does not really like Islam very much.” Given the video’s title, I figured it was NSFW.
two cents’ worth , I have wondered how “be like fruit flies and multiply” was supposed to work with three related males and only the one single, solitary female but I suppose if they lived for millennia and she had lots of eggs that isn’t really an issue.
The consanguinity consideration does neatly explain politicians and Televangelists. Several millennia of inbreeding can give you things like sheep from what were almost smart goat-like creatures. The same dulling of the wit process no doubt happens in the Adam’s family.
The rest of us, being “the Other People” and unrelated to the line of Adam are, naturally, unaffected by this.
And you are correct, two cents’ worth that the sky daddy is not against all fornication. It does seem to have rather a liking for raping the women and children of the enemy.
The early Old testament books are terrible guides to civilised behaviour.
I was being slightly sardonic with a dash or irony and perhaps a smidgeon of naked sarcasm when I described the gentle American lady and her works. You are correct, they are exceptionally NSFW. Indeed I would suggest headphones if there are children or adults in the house. Or horses.
She seems to have developed a minor dislike of Islam for some small reason that is tremendously subtle and never fully explained.
I don’t think she would like me, either.
Empiricist, the best laid HTML of mice and keyboards can oft have typos to disarm us. It is all good fun.
And should you ever find your good self to be a spammer, do feel free to lie to the validator. It is, when all is said and all is done, but a script and scripts are there to be ad libbed upon.
Additionally, I am sure random-fuck will forgive you if it is in a good cause and you truly repent.
*Empiricist* … not a spammer? I’ve always liked that on the immigration form when you enter the USA. “Are you a terrorist?” … after all, a terrorist is not likely to lie about that sort of thing, is he?
I was on some Joy Behar show on CNN. There was some smart guy sitting next to me. We were talking about religion. I described myself as a âhard-core atheist.â Joy and the smart guy scoffed, and Joy said mockingly, âWhatâs a âhard-core atheistâ?â
âI donât even believe that other people believe in god.â
Suffolk Blue, on a similar theme, I find a part of the exit card from Australia hard to believe, especially it it is an unnecessary waste of card to produce these things for about three fairly pointless questions, all of which could be logged electronically. The part in question is where you have to sign to state you are not taking more than $12,000 (not sure if exact amount) out of the country in Aussie currency.
I did ask an officer if by signing that would it stop them bothering to count any money I had during a search. He replied no, so I asked what was the point of wasting the card and my time to do it. He did not answer.
Stephen Mynett, do Oz Border Guards search everyone for money? What do they do if they find two dollars more than their arbitrary limit, do they steal confiscate it all or merely the excess? Do you get it back when you return home or is it kept “to fund the war on smuggling”?
If they only search some of you Ozlings do they use the cards as a guide? Do they search only the ones who admit to having more than the limit, ignore those ones as stupid jokers to only search all those who claim not to on the assumption that everyone is a criminal and a liar or do it “randomly” [meaning a high proportion of the weak, vulnerable, little girls and knock-out stunners]?
If Oz-BG’s don’t search everyone and steal confiscate the excess cash is Australia’s currency deflating? It wouldn’t be *inflating* as there would be fewer notes casing more goods. So, were all the exiting Ozlings sneaking cash out prices would drop, wages would drop and imports would cost more … less …more definitely less.
More than all of those questions I would like to know why they bother? I could transfer everything I own to a bank account in Mongolia, Ulan Bator Main Street branch, in about a minute or less. So why, apart from legacy, antediluvian laws would they bother about a few bucks in cash?
Or would it just be one more excuse to harass and control?
No, it couldn’t be that.
Yahweh-Allah-Zilch-Xzelphth-Random-Fuck the merciful wouldn’t allow it.
Also … does anyone, anywhere *accept* Ozzian dollars? Apart from inland Australians and maybe the Americans. [A “dollar” is a “dollar”.]
Border guards are bothered by cash because it is anonymous and untraceable, and so is often used by criminals. A wire transfer has your name on it, account numbers to and from, and all that.
I once read of a Central American immigrant in Florida who worked as a dishwasher at some restaurant. He saved up something more than $10,000 and tried to carry it back to his family in C.A. in a duffel bag on an airplane. His money was confiscated; the article said he was trying to get it returned, since he could document that it was innocent money, but was having a hard time.
Yes, John B. Hodges, your second message with the anecdote shows why such rules are demonstrably wrong.
In England they have “money laundering laws” (I would have thought they should have *anti*-money-laundering laws but that is not what the Bank called them) which prevented me from paying off my mortgage and other debts when I retired because the sums I tried to move were beyond an arbitrary limit. My money, paying my debt and they wouldn’t let me do it.
The random-damned Bank eventually relented when I explained that I wasn’t a money laundering, kiddy-fiddling member of an Islamic group and I had no connection to anywhere foreign and I was actually trying to pay another bloody Bank. I imagine had I been paying a family member we would still be in negotiations or I would have been investigated by the heavies.
I can’t speak for LastResort who might merely be being facetious, flirtatious and flippant but I wonder whether those laws have slowed down a single criminal anywhere on the planet, or whether they just inconvenience the innocent?
Which, come to think of it, could be the purpose of much of Leviticus.
But John’s anecdote did answer one of LastResort‘s questions. Once the money is stolen confiscated it seems to be difficult to have it returned. Presumably that is so in Australia so much as it is in the U.S.
There is another point. Taking cash from one country to another neatly avoids the money-changers in the temples and the credit card and debit card charges for extracting foreign currencies from your account. Financial institutions generally don’t very much like it when we lesser beings avoid their taxes, bribes, kickbacks, charges and backsheesh. It may also get you a far more favourable exchange rate than the beggars in Banks are willing to offer.
LastResort, do you honestly suppose that the scions of sixty generations of sibling matings in Kansas and Tennessee could not differentiate between Australian and their own currencies just because both say “dollar” in huge letters on the front?
Do you really think the wise and wonderful denizens of the Bible Belt are so lax in their critical thinking, logical skills, observational skill, judgement and other powers?
…
…
… Hmmm… Bible Belt. Evolution. Education. “Intelligent design”.
…
I wonder whether Hong Kong dollars are still around and whether they are worth more or less than American ones? Oh, didn’t Zimbabwe use “dollars”? Are we onto a get-rich-scheme here?
Or would it be unfair to take advantage of the afflicted?
But remember, we’re discussing Bible-Belters. They may see “dollar” and the digits and ignore the rest.
They do something similar with a certain book they are rather fond of.
I wonder where all the religious trolls of days past are?
You would think they would be eager to defend their invisible friend from such a scurrilous attack.
And it would be a fun recapitulation of all the really bad logical arguments they use, like the strawman and the no true scotsman.
Give me the honest, non hypocritical religious person who revels in the misogyny, homophobia and xenophobia of organized religion and is not ashamed to admit that this is exactly what religion is all about.
Well, steve, the Christians have been *proved* *right*once again with a sign from their Daddy. Not only is there a *A* *TRUE* *CROSS* and an *arrow* pointing to it on the top left of today’s evil satanic satanist so-called-“Astronmony” Picture of the Day, but there is *also* a line drawing of a cute, cuddly teddy-bear abusing itself with a falling rock falling direct from Heaven poised to smash it for its sin. Wow!!
What more proof do you need?!! Obviously Bid daddy Jove (or was it “Jehove”? Or “Hovis”) is telling us to convert and to stop self-abusing and to stop being homo’s and to stop fornicating or he’ll mercifully and lovingly smash us!!!
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I think I’ve lost it.
Only one of the typo’s in the previous message was intentional, and very difficult to leave in even for comedic effect.
The other two were less so.
Prue is not freeding well.
Poor Prue.
@ hotrats
I interpreted LR’s apostrophes as indicating abbreviation, as in can’t for example. But it was a good opportunity for you to insert an (for me at any rate) educational link. Thanks.
N.b. LRs Oz-BG’s couldn’t be “greengrocer’s apostrophe” unless you accept that BG is truly written BeeGee, in which case the apostrophe doubles up for both varieties (abbr. and grngrcr.) Then the green in greengrocer becomes, as Sir Terence Milligan had it,”more of a dirty yellow colour, really”)
hotrats, as JohnM said, abbreviation not belonging. I do, however, also use it in plurals, as in the phrase: “… we saw the 1990’s end in December, 2000.” Though truly I have never been quite certain if that plural is a plural and not a collective.
I am old enough to have been trained to abuse the poor apostrophe in ways the more modern users of English are not, as well as other marks of punctuation and syntactical tools. The language has changed somewhat since I was first taught when these were appropriate, and when not, I admit, but my habits remain.
I do not mind being corrected by you youngsters. You are not wrong, you are different and different is cool.
Pretentious, pompous pillock, aren’t I?
Just to be clear, children, remember what you priest has told you: if you are going anal always use a prophylactic, no matter what the video and Jehove says.
Condoms make it easier and more fun to get it in, less painful when it is in and less likely that you will get nasty boy cooties like AIDS, HPV and syph.
It will also make it less likely that you will give your sweetheart girl cooties and watch his knob turn purple and oozy fall off.
They also keep the evidence nice and safe.
Oh, and put condoms on all those fruits, too. Wouldn’t want your arse to turn green and sprout icy cucumbers would we? It would be embarrassing at the beach.
Fun video, cosmicstargoat but I thought the Important Public Health Message was lost in the laughter track.
Apologies if I’ve come across as heavy-handed but I do think rubbers are useful for slowing down the spread of cervix-rotting HPV and other friends of the family jewels.
Vaccinations are cool, too.
Also … “your priest”, I am not an American. This is a good thing for America. “Watch his knob turn purple and oozy and fall off.” The “purple and oozy” are one compound adjective with the “fall off” being a separate phrase so both need conjunctives.
âWatch his knob turn purple and oozy and fall off.â The âpurple and oozyâ are one compound adjective with the âfall offâ being a separate phrase so both need conjunctives.
Yes we can all play, but we can’t all win. A conjunctive is an adverbial structure linking whole clauses or sentences, such as ‘therefore’, ‘still’, ‘anyway’ etc. What both phrases need in this case is a conjunction – and not just any old conjunction; and and or are the only candidates (the non-starters being for, but, nor, so and yet).
Just out of clinical interest, what colour was the knob before it ‘turned’ purple?
What about “then”, hotrats? As an alternative to “and”.
I suspect you are correct about “-ve” against “-ion”., though.
The knobs were possibly brass which could make them any colour if anodised, alloyed or painted.
Are you perhaps hinting that yours starts off as purple?
Are you from The North?
Everyone is correct, correction accepted. I intended to type “conjunction” but something went horribly awry.
That’s my story and I think I’ll stay with it.
On the subject of borders and nonsense, I had to send a video from Canada to Florida. To do this, I had to fill out a form, with a copy for each airport the video would travel through. The form said that the video contained no pornographic material (as if the Internet is not our source of porn now, and ignores all borders) and that the video did not include any instructions or information intended to bring harm to the United States of America. So I filled out three copies of this form, and sent them off with my video.
Now think about it. Every time somebody wants to send a home video of the grand kiddies to grampa and gramma in Florida they have to fill out this form. There must be stacks and stacks of the form piling up someplace. Who is reading them? What could they possibly do with the information? Is a porn producer or a terrorist ever going to answer yes to the questions? What possible justification could there be for this form?
The only thing I can think of is that the form is designed to keep the battle against porn and terrorism on the minds of the people. We should all be afraid. And we should all be aware that the authorities in the Untied States frown on wankers watching porn. Personally, I’m not impressed.
âWatch his knob turn purple and oozy and fall off.â
Might I propose the use of a comma after oozy – especially if “then” is to begin the second phrase – to really hammer home the point that ‘falling off’ is a new order of activity from purpling and oozing.
Yes, yes, I just committed the sin of split infinitive – unless I claim that “really hammer” is not the same verb as “hammer” but a novel compound verb derived from it. Let’s face it, grammar isn’t immutable these days – not within English, the current lingua franca đ
There has never been a problem with ‘splitting’ an infinitive, except in the minds of scholasticists who believe that English grammar should conform to the rules of Latin. Fowler’s Modern English Usage only recommends that it be avoided in ‘solemn and elevated writing’, but that hasn’t stopped almost every great writer from using it. Given a choice of ‘Boldly to go…’, ‘To boldly go…’ and ‘To go boldly…’, only the ‘wrong’ one sounds natural.
JohnM, you could have avoided the splitting of infinitives by : “really to hammer home” – but that has a slightly different nuance. It emphasises the “really”.
The use of a comma in the knob sentence would have been debatable.
And the like has been debated endlessly in UseNet newsgroups and, no doubt, their bastard offspring TwitFace. Possibly also in every university in the English-speaking cosmos by every first-year class.
I only suggested “then” because it was said that only “and” would work. In English there is always something else that works, some other way to express yourself and a way to break the rules yet still sound wise and wonderful.
And then there also is additionally comedic effect.
It’s true what they say, English is the One True Language Of The Gods and was invented for puns and other funs. Academically esoteric discussions among them.
We were very generous when we allowed the gods to use our tongue for the original copies of all of their sacred works. It is a far more beautiful, powerful and useful language than the ones the books were so poorly translated into afterwards.
English is the language of magic, the elder urges and the Powers of Science. We should treasure it.
And argue friendlily over commas.
Interestingly, no one, yet, has mentioned that the content of the purpley, oozy sentence could be inappropriate or even wrong.
Don’t we have any anti-evolutionists among us? Or anti-condomists? Or even priests?
Where are all the ranty guys of yesteryear? The WhatsGoingOns and Ephthathas.
Have we won the argument over raincoats and cooties?
This one may also be on topic:
“If you rearrange the letters in the words Faith and Religion, you can make ‘Microwave.’
No, don’t test it or question it, just believe me.”
I’m here all week. Cash preferred.
Anyone noticing the staleness should see the bread in the fridge. Even the local seagulls handed that back.
I would have used this year’s but, it being the BBC, they were all repeats.
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I can’t believe I did all that work for such a weak jab at them.
Those forms you fill out at the border are not intended to stop you from doing anything. They are intended to give a reason to throw you in jail if you lie about what you are doing.
The US wants to know if you are carrying a lot of money around, because, well drugs and stuff. Oh, and terrorism.
If you check YES on the form, they will demand that you give them another form that tells who you are, how much money you have, and so on. If you move a lot of money around all the time, they will try to figure out why.
( In fact, this happens inside the country as well. Deposits/withdrawals of more that $10 000 are reported to the government by the bank. It’s also illegal to make a deposit of $9 000 and another deposit of $1 000 in order to avoid depositing $10 000. )
Here are the rules directly from Customs and Border Protection:
I guess that I was raised in far too free a state to be entirely comfortable in the society of 2014, Mark S., for I find the entire idea of those forms odious, repulsive, invasive and nasty.
If it is my money then it is not your business where I take it nor what I spend it on.
I do know that this attitude is outdated, probably unlawful, un-American, un-British, anti-Democratic and certainly contrary to the peace and well-being of the common weal as well as being highly suspicious and possibly a little likely to raise eyebrows at Super-spy HQ’s globally but I hold it dearly.
The hard-won right to be left the fuck alone is a cherished boon in our society. It should not be easily handed over to any would-be gauleiter with a badge, a uniform or an attitude.
On another aspect of this; here is a BBC report where everyone misses the essential point.
I have just waited five hours in queues to get on to this flying tube of puke, screaming children, fat farters and drunken songsters. In that time I have been pushed around by stupid pre-literates who should never be employed anywhere but who have uniforms and badges the backup of a force of cops better armed than many armies. I have been gate-raped, groped, interrogated, sneered at by beings less smart than baboons who can’t spell my five-letter name the same way twice running and who argue when I manage the trick, irradiated, delayed, pushed-around, assaulted verbally and physically and watched my children and womenfolk being subjected to worse. I have had the multi-tool she bought me, my dead beloved bought me, for our last anniversary stolen by a thug who will break it the first time he tries to use it because he has all of the nous and mechanical intuition of a rotted cabbage. I have had my phone and laptop’s data copied and I have been yelled at for not instantly having every single piece of paper in the entire bunch of permission slips in the correct order, a different order at each exit gateway. All of this and then I try, for the first time in hours, to sit down without worrying about where every single piece of luggage is and who is either stealing it or smuggling stuff into it. Then some pig-ignorant cow tries to smash my knees in with her seat-back.
And they wonder why both of us are a touch irritable and short of fuse.
It is actually a surprise a brawl didn’t start which lead to everyone on the ‘plane killing everyone else.
It will happen.
I can feel it.
Next time that fucking screaming brat behind me kicks my seat, I will eat the shit’s liver raw and the cretinous scunners that spawned it…
Joined-up thinking seems to be a lost art. The consequences of treating the most dangerous, lethal, clever, revenge-driven, nutcase, neurotic, long-term-grudge-holding, paranoid, privacy-demanding predator ever to tread this planet like cattle seems to have escaped their long-term planning.
Coming soon, in 3-d, to every airport near you: “Riots on a plane”, starring Everyone as “The Dead Guys”. Followed next year by the awesome sequel, “Riots On A Plane II: Where Am I Gonna Park This Sukkah?”
The least they could do is offer a ten-minute cooling-off period between being crushed and gate-raped and being crushed and seat-battered. It could save lives. It could save aeroplanes.{More valuable than lives. Those cost money. Lives are made by unskilled labourers and cost little to replace.} One vast room where passengers could walk around free, with wobbly dummies they could batter the crud out of and foamy walled areas for screaming in. And a shooting range full of animatronic screaming infants and security dummies.
Or skip the animatronics and just have live ones?
.
No, I don’t fly. I have more respect for the health of other people than to subject them to me in a steel tube with no escape from the fat farters.
Yes, I did see that the imaginary me taking the journey was “pushed around” more than once. From what I gather from the media and other sources, it is a common occurrence in the world of mass public transport and could quite possibly happen to any hypothetical passenger – or victim – twice or more even on the one trip.
And I do find it surprising that the species who can kill big cats bare-handed accepts these things routinely.
All seriousness aside, I do think it is a volatile mixture, humans and rules. It will all end in tears.
There will be An Enquiry.
Steps Will Be Taken.
It will be worse the next time.
There will be An In-Depth Enquiry.
We will blame the False Believers and ban some random group.
Things will only get worse. They always do. They always will. That is life.
@LR If it is my money then it is not your business where I take it nor what I spend it on.
There is a downside to that, one that might become up close and personal, if a religiot you mock decides to buy in some ordinance to use against you.
It’s like everything in what we call freedom. There’s a trade-off to be made – because there’s a lot of mad buggers ‘out-there’, many of whom are total psychopaths forever searching for some action.
JohnM truthfully, I have no reason to deny anyone the joy of using their earned (or even charitably given or stolen) income to buy anything that which gives them pleasure. Should you wish to purchase drugs, gold, beryllium, bdellium, myrrh, Tsar Bombas or AK-399’s (those are the really *BIG* ones with the two thousand millimetre bore) I wish you every pleasure with your new toy.
The only exception I would have is people.
Persons are sacred and should never be bought.
Short of humans, buy what you like. Nor do I care what you believe. So having a True Believer armed to the eyeballs would not bother me.
Now using some of his toys could be objectionable should the business ends be pointed in inappropriate directions.
I don’t mind if you take your toys to a shooting range or defunct quarry and blast away at animatronic soldiers, cops, priests, mums, politicians and tourists. That is wasteful and noisy and not my sort of fun but I do like explosions – big ones with loads of flames – so I can see how others may see shooty things as fun. Blasting away at life-forms is just evil.
I’m entirely unapologetic if this upsets some but hunting is just wrong. There is no need for it. Supermarkets are full of meat. And killing humans is such a very big wrong that there are no words to contain it.
All that an I still don’t have a big spooky daddy in the sky to tell me what the rules are. I must be a very remarkable person.
Time for a smilie?
Jesus & Mo (the characters) are absurd, blinkered, and oddly very sweet. J&M (the cartoon) is brilliant: sharp, delicious, irresistible. Salman Rushdie
Jesus and Mo cartoons are wonderfully funny and true. Richard Dawkins
Jesus and Mo make the world a better place, bless their little hearts. Ophelia Benson
In a world defined by outrage and offence and liberal spinelessness, Jesus and Mo is a treasure, whose value we should never fail to recognize. Read them. Laugh. And think. Kenan Malik
The brilliant, celebrated, freaking hilarious atheist comic strip ... Greta Christina
...rays of sanity in a befuddled world. Keri Hulme
The liveliest depictions of Muhammad currently available... Malise Ruthven
J & Mo is the funniest and most consistently thought-provoking cartoon strip on the Net. In a saner world, it would run in a major newspaper. Nelson Jones, Heresy Corner
Consistently amusing, frequently thought-provoking and often heart-warming. New Humanist
Jesus & Mo is one of the most wonderful things on the internet.. JT Eberhard
Wittily captures much of the absurdity of religious apologetics. Mano Singham
I love jesusandmo.net cartoons - witty and sharp! Katha Pollitt
Often hilarious, frequently wry, these cartoons do what all the best cartoons do: they tell the truth through humour. Terry Sanderson, NSS President
...a wonderfully acid British cartoonist... Nick Cohen
I love the scrappy mockery of Jesus and Mo. Freedom of speech
includes the freedom to mock any person, any thing, any activity, and
any belief -- and J&M stands up for this unflinchingly Richard Stallman
...empowering, important and deeply progressive, not to mention hilarious... Council of Ex-Muslims
November 27, 2006
Moses can sing this one too. Where has he gone to, these days?
“Moses can sing this one too. Where has he gone to, these days?”
JohnM, I hear the poor sod has severe spinal problems. Some thick deity was not clever enough to invent the notepad and forced him to carry a few messages on a couple of large pieces of rock.
@Stephen Mynett
Have some empathy, please. Back then everyone who was anyone was inscribing stuff in stone if they wanted it paid attention to. You couldn’t trust that new-fangled foreign papyrus after all. Since the Israelites were a-wandering in the desert, allegedly*, at the time they didn’t have large stone edifices to inscribe stuff on. Moses didn’t even have a nice stone portico for his tent. Hence the need for an Ark of the Covenant to make their inscribed stones transportable.
*By the returning Babylonian Exiles. Exodus is simply one big allegory for their exile and return. There is absolutely no archaeological evidence for it at all. There are deep settlement layers in Palestine that show at the base people who kept pigs (there are cooked pig bones in the layers) and who gradually become more and more Hebrew in culture and practice (the pigs go for one thing). There are no interrupts, no evidence of sudden invasion and displacement.
@JohnM
Fellow’s got lost again.
In forty years a quadriplegic using only his chin could drag himself from Egypt to Tierra del Fuego.{Note 1} The Israelites could have done Egypt to Canaan in about a week.
That tale makes less sense than flying deer and money-giving, teeth-stealing flying humanoids.
One small point: if there were thousands of mammals shitting all over the Zilch-forsaken desert for generations how come it’s still a barren Random-damned desert for Xzelphth’s sake? That strip of dirt should be hip deep in arable soil and should have been the bread-basket and orchard of the world for the last three millennia.
Personally, I think the stupid story was dreamed up to cover up the fact that a whole generation couldn’t give up pigs and beer so they hid out in Abydos until the old folks died then they merrily skipped off to the land of endless rules and no bacon sandwiches.
That makes some sort of sense in human terms. And it accounts for the fertility of the Nile Valley.
It doesn’t account for the Greeks and Latins, being notorious sexual egalitarians and not being averse to the odd non-hetero encounter, passing on a religious work of utter nastiness and perversion. But not everything human makes sense.
.
Note 1 : he’s going to speed up some when he hits the ice shelf at the top end, remember. Ice is slippery and good for skidding on.
Note 2: Grasslands, too. And the rasputitsa would help a lot.
There once was a duet called Jesus and Mo
They desired to aspire
Until they discovered
They had expired…sure wish it were so.
Empiricist… “Random-damned”? Are you a fellow worshiper of the Randeemer, and His prophets, Monty Python? Greetings to you, and may you find many fish!
Also, this calls to mind Dawkins’s metaphor illustrating the absurdity of an overly gradualistic view of evolution – it’s as if, every day, the Israelites packed up, moved a few feet in the direction of the Promised Land, and pitched their tents again.
Empiricsist: You will come to understand how clean the desert is if you watch “Mr Deity and the Promised Land” ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6sdpc8stqI ). El (oh, him!) had a 30 year lease on the desert, but he got an extra 10 years for promising that his people would clean it up totally and there would be no evidence that they were there.
[ Hey, it makes as much sense as any of the rest of it. đ ]
Traditional values are fine
You have yours and I’ll have mine
If we can share them, that is ok
But demanding submission is the wrong way
There are some control freaks who walk a fine line.
Most of the stories in the bible that purport to be from times most ancient were adapted from the stories of the Israeli captors within a few decades of 560 BC and seem to be a combination of civilization envy and religious propaganda. So for example, Israel was never an empire, but upon coming into contact with the Babylonian Empire and then the Persian Empire, they invented that they too used to have an empire. This (civilization envy) was the impetus for the story of Saul/David/Solomon. There is no actual history in that story line. On the religious front, the Israeli ruling class had recently decided that worshipping only one deity would consolidate their power by taking power away from priests of other deities. So the whole story becomes âWe used to have an empire, but lost it do to polytheismâ. The stories of Adam and Eve, Noah, and Moses were lifted from the Babylonian/ Sumerian myths and then edited with propaganda about how it goes badly for those who fail to obey the one true god.
I wonder to what extent they believed their own inventions. If they accepted the flood story from the Gilgamesh epic as true and also accepted as true that they were the central people of history then it sort of follows that the story must be about them. Or maybe they treated their stories like Aesopâs fables. Here is a false story but it has a good moral, so it is a good story.
floridakitesurfer, I’m probably in trouble for this but I do not imagine that any priest has ever believed anything in the delusional ramblings and fairy tales that they use to control other people and as cover for their crimes. From the tiniest nun to the proudest popes and Roman God-Emperors (with the possible exception of Caligula who was a tad nuts), I suspect they know they are telling porkies.
If they really suspected they would go to Hell forever for diddling the babies there would be a lot less baby-diddling going on. {Note 1}
The same probably goes for many of the “upright citizens” who visit and support churches but that is obvious.
Religion is a sham, a farrago of hypocrisies and lies and everyone knows it. Would it not be better were we to just admit it, drop the ludicrous pretence and get on with real life?
It would swell the unemployment figures for a while but I’m sure any confidence trickster who can Tele-evangelise can get a job selling member-expanding pills on the Intertubes.
And all of those churches would be useful as meeting halls and homeless shelters among other civic functions.
All it would take is a little honesty for once.
Is that too much to ask for?
.
Note 1: would anyone sane chance such a thing, hoping the stories about the big daddy being all-forgiving and merciful were really, really true, if they thought there was a bat in Hell’s chance of ending up toasted for a very, very long time? If they truly believed, no priest would rape anyone and the ones who didn’t would instantly shop any that did. They would have to to protect two immortal souls. Three if you count the boss priest covering for the diddlers.
They do not believe. They never have. They lie. Extensively. All of them.
Moses had two tablets. Way ahead of his time
And for the next number, our cover of “This Land is Mine”. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-evIyrrjTTY
TRIALNERROR said: “Moses had two tablets.”
And then he saw *me* in the morning.
He’s still running.
@ TRIALNERROR; “Moses had two tablets. Way ahead of his time…”
An iPad and a Samsung, presumably. He had a car as well, according to the Bibble; “and Moses came down the mountain in his Triumph…”
Yes, a Triumph Herald. That girl band The Angels performed a song about it đ
I have to disagree, Empiricist. I think the priests (or most of them) really do believe all that nonsense, and the more devout they are, the more nonsense they are prepared to believe.
A definition of faith I came across somewhere is ‘the ability to accept as true things that you know damn well are NOT true’.
Canneloni, what is supposed to be true, so true that all other truths are mere vague notions of iffyness, is that there is a very, very smart jailer who is all-seeing and who *KNOWS* when you have been bad. He knows more even than Santa. This jailer watches you throughout your entire life and tots up all the bad things you’ve done. If the sum weighs more than a feather [mixed religion but bear with me] then you get toasted, stabbed, burnt and generally molested for a helluva long time. Then your torturers get inventive for a very much longer time, just to vary their pleasures.
Now you have thousands of years of nasty, vile, evil cruds boffing little girlies and raping little boys and using the cover of their robes as both authority and shield. And you have the other, reported 45 to 99%, “good, worthy and innocent” priests who don’t steal, don’t rape, don’t molest, don’t lie and don’t shop their evil brothers.
I don’t know about you but if I thought there was someone watching and weighing my deeds I would be very, very tempted to risk my fucking job and all of its perquisites to stop the evil BadGuy(TM) dudes. Indeed, were I to believe in an all-wise daddy, I would reckon my soul at risk were I not to.
They don’t believe.
Empiricist is right.
He does not, however go far enough, they not only do not believe and never have believed, they know for a solid iridium fact that their little stories are all lies dreamt up by demented druggies, syphilitics and control freaks and used only to gain power and prestige and the ability to diddle children with impunity.
No priest believes. None ever has. None ever will.
The corrupt vileness that are churches could not exist as they are if even one single priest honestly believed in a big daddy.
They lie. As Empiricist said extensively and always.
Not shopping the BadGuys(TM) is being a BadGuy(TM). If they honestly believed that torturing someone for a while is justified because it will gain them paradise forever, save their immortal soul, then they would be very willing, eager, zealous even in accepting a little temporary discomfort of the dislike of and rejection by their peers for the sake of their own.
If the rack, the stake, the dunking stool and the other instruments of godliness are all fine then reporting to the civil authorities is, too.
They do not believe.
Not really.
They may say they do but they really do not.
Millennia of sadism and rape and general horror tell us this without doubt.
The priests believe almost so much as I do.
Chiefy I really like “This Land is Mine”. Thank you. Nina’s animation is lovely and very effective. It should be used at the beginning of morning assembly in schools as a reminder of how inane this conflict really is. And I adore her sweet lttle ninja, hoodied, terrorist guys. They are so cute. Like Marvel(R)(TM) Comics superheroines with smaller boobies. They are so adorable and huggable. If you ignore their intent.
Meanwhile, here’s a couple of well-meaning Mormon-looking Americans with a simplistic but fairly accurate overview of Palestine and an idea for a resolution. And then we have a slightly pro-Israel explanation of why those damned Jews are so stubborn. The audacity of those people, thinking they have a right to secure borders!
Of course there is this beautiful American lady who does not really like Islam very much.
People seem to be rather emotive over this entire field of thought, don’t they? This lady is a little … shall we just say enthusiastic.
But one is lead to wonder whether she has read Leviticus any time recently and whether she agrees that fifty shekels is a good price for a raped ex-virgin daughter? Her blessed pornographic trash is a little better than the Koran but not by much.
Still, she has some good stuff. Even if Ms. Bernhardt is a little biased. I get the vaguest of impressions that she may be playing a Christian in her movies but it is a very subtle performance she gives so I may be wrong.
How much is 50-sheckels in Real Money? I only ask because I’m rather sad and alone and need a cuddle. Not that I would buy a little daughter but it would be nice to know whether I could afford it. Just out of curiosity … Shall I stop digging, now?
Oh … according to a converter, the New Shekel is five to the pound that would make the price of a rape about a tenner. That’s actually … I think I’ll stop now before I use the word “reasonable” and get lynched. Justifiably.
Leviticus is a horrible book.
Empiricist – Penn Jilette said something very similar (sorry, can’t find the exact quote) … but words to the effect that he doesn’t even believe that believers believe.
Anyone help me out with this one?
Do priests believe in their god. I think you are all ignoring the fact that they are royally fucked up people themselves, and their holy book gives them a get out of jail free card. All they have to do is repent, confess, and accept Jesus as their lord and saviour and ALL sins are forgiven, even the diddling of children.
Then there’s the question of self loathing and flagellation. After his murder, Becket was discovered to be wearing a lice infested hair shirt. There is some serious pathological fuckupedness going on with the whole crowd, and for a sane and intelligent person to try to assess their true minds and hearts is like trying to understand the mind and motives of a serial killer.
I hate to see us falling into the same mistake the Christians make when they accuse atheists of really believing in god and being angry at him, which justifiably pisses us all off. Let’s not project rationality onto the irrational.
Suffolk Blue, are you thinking of this?
Iâve always said that I donât respect people who donât proselytize. I donât respect that at all. If you believe that thereâs a heaven and a hell, and people could be going to hell or not getting eternal life, and you think that itâs not really worth telling them this because it would make it socially awkwardâand atheists who think people shouldnât proselytize and who say just leave me alone and keep your religion to yourselfâhow much do you have to hate somebody to not proselytize? How much do you have to hate somebody to believe everlasting life is possible and not tell them that?
I mean, if I believed, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that a truck was coming at you, and you didnât believe that truck was bearing down on you, there is a certain point where I tackle you. And this is more important than that.
For the full video of Penn Jillette’s talk about this, see http://vimeo.com/52957285
Darwin Harmless</b, understanding the mind of a serial killer is easy. You just imagine all of the people the world would be better off without – Joe, Adolf, Idi, Tse-Dong, Pol, Terry Wogan, Widdles, Terry Wogan, Tony Blair, Senators, Popes, Terry Wogan, Cheery Blare, Tv Evangelists and twee American kids who get caught up in “Olympus Has Fallen” type situations every damned day – and you imagine yourself with a magical erasing device, like a machine pistol, several nukes, a handy local volcano or the skills of Liam Neeson and the powers of Chuck Norris and dream of how clean the world would then be.
Oh, my, Xzelphth-random-zilch-fuck, I understand serial killers!
Does that make me a bad person?
But if you were a potential but not practising kiddy-diddler would you really take the chance that a little repentance would get the unrelenting nutcase of the OT to forgive you? After Sodom, Gonorrhoea and Lot’s inquisitive wife? Would you bet (assuming you believed) your immortal soul on it? Or, more sensible, would you just not do it in the first place?
I don’t do bad things because I’m a fairly decent person and I don’t want to hurt people. I don’t expect to get caught by a super-being in the sky because I know there aren’t any but I don’t let that stop me from not hurting people. If I also had a fear of being caught and really punished for ever and ever and more than a long weekend in Wales, that would surely provide extra motivation for not doing it. Would it not?
I’m with LastResort on this one. I don’t think they could be evil and believe.
I could be wrong.
But I doubt it.
Meanwhile, just for our Last Resorting friend, here is perhaps the only reasonable explanation I have ever seen for Daddy’s aversion to sex. It doesn’t like sex because sex prolongs the bet.
Though one would expect two eternal super-beings to have a bit more patience.
two cents’ worth, yes, that is what I am saying. If they truly believed they could not be evil. Could not. It would be impossible. Far more impossible than me watching Mr. Jillete’s truck mow down a bystander.
If they do evil, if they support evil, if they do not immediately report evil then they do not believe.
And if they do not believe then they are not a religion, they are a corrupt enterprise hiding criminals and involved in a massive criminal conspiracy.
RICO.
Should we mention this one?
Yes, there should have been a close-angle-bracket after that first /b.
Sorry.
Edit function?
And what do I do if I am a spammer? Lie? I couldn’t do that, it’s naughty.
Empiricist, if I remember correctly, it was Paul (the vision-on-the-road-to-Damascus guy) who started the aversion-to-sex fad, at least among Christians. (As far as I know, Jesus’ philosophy regarding sex was never recorded.)
Far from being averse to sex (or, at least, to all sex), Daddy is on record as having commanded humans to be fruitful and multiply. I’ve heard that, for Jews, having sex on the Sabbath is a double mitzvah đ .
Of course, Daddy is known for being capricious (or, as they say, his ways are beyond our understanding), so maybe the amazingsuperpowers cartoon is correct, and the Jews are following an instruction manual that’s out-of-date.
I apologize if my comments are non sequiturs–if they are, it’s because I’ve misunderstood the thread. I’m not sure whether I’ve missed an important part of the context because I haven’t watched the video of the “beautiful American lady who does not really like Islam very much.” Given the video’s title, I figured it was NSFW.
ID10T HTML error. That should have been, “to all sex.”
two cents’ worth , I have wondered how “be like fruit flies and multiply” was supposed to work with three related males and only the one single, solitary female but I suppose if they lived for millennia and she had lots of eggs that isn’t really an issue.
The consanguinity consideration does neatly explain politicians and Televangelists. Several millennia of inbreeding can give you things like sheep from what were almost smart goat-like creatures. The same dulling of the wit process no doubt happens in the Adam’s family.
The rest of us, being “the Other People” and unrelated to the line of Adam are, naturally, unaffected by this.
And you are correct, two cents’ worth that the sky daddy is not against all fornication. It does seem to have rather a liking for raping the women and children of the enemy.
The early Old testament books are terrible guides to civilised behaviour.
I was being slightly sardonic with a dash or irony and perhaps a smidgeon of naked sarcasm when I described the gentle American lady and her works. You are correct, they are exceptionally NSFW. Indeed I would suggest headphones if there are children or adults in the house. Or horses.
She seems to have developed a minor dislike of Islam for some small reason that is tremendously subtle and never fully explained.
I don’t think she would like me, either.
Empiricist, the best laid HTML of mice and keyboards can oft have typos to disarm us. It is all good fun.
And should you ever find your good self to be a spammer, do feel free to lie to the validator. It is, when all is said and all is done, but a script and scripts are there to be ad libbed upon.
Additionally, I am sure random-fuck will forgive you if it is in a good cause and you truly repent.
*2 cents* … thanks, I like that argument from Penn Jilette, but it was actually a different one I was thinking of. I’ll have another look for it!
… but that kind of sums up the same point.
*Empiricist* … not a spammer? I’ve always liked that on the immigration form when you enter the USA. “Are you a terrorist?” … after all, a terrorist is not likely to lie about that sort of thing, is he?
Suffolk Blue:
I was on some Joy Behar show on CNN. There was some smart guy sitting next to me. We were talking about religion. I described myself as a âhard-core atheist.â Joy and the smart guy scoffed, and Joy said mockingly, âWhatâs a âhard-core atheistâ?â
âI donât even believe that other people believe in god.â
– from God, No! by Penn Jillette
Suffolk Blue, on a similar theme, I find a part of the exit card from Australia hard to believe, especially it it is an unnecessary waste of card to produce these things for about three fairly pointless questions, all of which could be logged electronically. The part in question is where you have to sign to state you are not taking more than $12,000 (not sure if exact amount) out of the country in Aussie currency.
I did ask an officer if by signing that would it stop them bothering to count any money I had during a search. He replied no, so I asked what was the point of wasting the card and my time to do it. He did not answer.
Cheers, hotrats – that’s the one.
Stephen – crazy, isn’t it?
Stephen Mynett, do Oz Border Guards search everyone for money? What do they do if they find two dollars more than their arbitrary limit, do they
stealconfiscate it all or merely the excess? Do you get it back when you return home or is it kept “to fund the war on smuggling”?If they only search some of you Ozlings do they use the cards as a guide? Do they search only the ones who admit to having more than the limit, ignore those ones as stupid jokers to only search all those who claim not to on the assumption that everyone is a criminal and a liar or do it “randomly” [meaning a high proportion of the weak, vulnerable, little girls and knock-out stunners]?
If Oz-BG’s don’t search everyone and
stealconfiscate the excess cash is Australia’s currency deflating? It wouldn’t be *inflating* as there would be fewer notes casing more goods. So, were all the exiting Ozlings sneaking cash out prices would drop, wages would drop and imports would costmore … less …moredefinitely less.More than all of those questions I would like to know why they bother? I could transfer everything I own to a bank account in Mongolia, Ulan Bator Main Street branch, in about a minute or less. So why, apart from legacy, antediluvian laws would they bother about a few bucks in cash?
Or would it just be one more excuse to harass and control?
No, it couldn’t be that.
Yahweh-Allah-Zilch-Xzelphth-Random-Fuck the merciful wouldn’t allow it.
Also … does anyone, anywhere *accept* Ozzian dollars? Apart from inland Australians and maybe the Americans. [A “dollar” is a “dollar”.]
Border guards are bothered by cash because it is anonymous and untraceable, and so is often used by criminals. A wire transfer has your name on it, account numbers to and from, and all that.
I once read of a Central American immigrant in Florida who worked as a dishwasher at some restaurant. He saved up something more than $10,000 and tried to carry it back to his family in C.A. in a duffel bag on an airplane. His money was confiscated; the article said he was trying to get it returned, since he could document that it was innocent money, but was having a hard time.
Yes, John B. Hodges, your second message with the anecdote shows why such rules are demonstrably wrong.
In England they have “money laundering laws” (I would have thought they should have *anti*-money-laundering laws but that is not what the Bank called them) which prevented me from paying off my mortgage and other debts when I retired because the sums I tried to move were beyond an arbitrary limit. My money, paying my debt and they wouldn’t let me do it.
The random-damned Bank eventually relented when I explained that I wasn’t a money laundering, kiddy-fiddling member of an Islamic group and I had no connection to anywhere foreign and I was actually trying to pay another bloody Bank. I imagine had I been paying a family member we would still be in negotiations or I would have been investigated by the heavies.
I can’t speak for LastResort who might merely be being facetious, flirtatious and flippant but I wonder whether those laws have slowed down a single criminal anywhere on the planet, or whether they just inconvenience the innocent?
Which, come to think of it, could be the purpose of much of Leviticus.
But John’s anecdote did answer one of LastResort‘s questions. Once the money is
stolenconfiscated it seems to be difficult to have it returned. Presumably that is so in Australia so much as it is in the U.S.There is another point. Taking cash from one country to another neatly avoids the money-changers in the temples and the credit card and debit card charges for extracting foreign currencies from your account. Financial institutions generally don’t very much like it when we lesser beings avoid their taxes, bribes, kickbacks, charges and backsheesh. It may also get you a far more favourable exchange rate than the beggars in Banks are willing to offer.
LastResort, do you honestly suppose that the scions of sixty generations of sibling matings in Kansas and Tennessee could not differentiate between Australian and their own currencies just because both say “dollar” in huge letters on the front?
Do you really think the wise and wonderful denizens of the Bible Belt are so lax in their critical thinking, logical skills, observational skill, judgement and other powers?
…
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… Hmmm… Bible Belt. Evolution. Education. “Intelligent design”.
…
I wonder whether Hong Kong dollars are still around and whether they are worth more or less than American ones? Oh, didn’t Zimbabwe use “dollars”? Are we onto a get-rich-scheme here?
Or would it be unfair to take advantage of the afflicted?
I thinks even Babble-Belters might just notice that Aussie dollars are:
1) made of plastic
2) printed in bright, garish colours
3) feature a small transparent window containing a hologram.
hotrats you’re a spoilsport.
But remember, we’re discussing Bible-Belters. They may see “dollar” and the digits and ignore the rest.
They do something similar with a certain book they are rather fond of.
I wonder where all the religious trolls of days past are?
You would think they would be eager to defend their invisible friend from such a scurrilous attack.
And it would be a fun recapitulation of all the really bad logical arguments they use, like the strawman and the no true scotsman.
Give me the honest, non hypocritical religious person who revels in the misogyny, homophobia and xenophobia of organized religion and is not ashamed to admit that this is exactly what religion is all about.
At least you know where you stand with them.
Well, steve, the Christians have been *proved* *right*once again with a sign from their Daddy. Not only is there a *A* *TRUE* *CROSS* and an *arrow* pointing to it on the top left of today’s evil satanic satanist so-called-“Astronmony” Picture of the Day, but there is *also* a line drawing of a cute, cuddly teddy-bear abusing itself with a falling rock falling direct from Heaven poised to smash it for its sin.
Wow!!
What more proof do you need?!! Obviously Bid daddy Jove (or was it “Jehove”? Or “Hovis”) is telling us to convert and to stop self-abusing and to stop being homo’s and to stop fornicating or he’ll mercifully and lovingly smash us!!!
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I think I’ve lost it.
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And I’ve run out of beers.
Only one of the typo’s in the previous message was intentional, and very difficult to leave in even for comedic effect.
The other two were less so.
Prue is not freeding well.
Poor Prue.
LastResort:
You keep adding apostrophes to your plurals – homo’s, typo’s – are you by any chance a greengrocer?
http://grammar.about.com/od/fh/g/Greengrocer-S-Apostrophe.htm
@ hotrats
I interpreted LR’s apostrophes as indicating abbreviation, as in can’t for example. But it was a good opportunity for you to insert an (for me at any rate) educational link. Thanks.
N.b. LRs Oz-BG’s couldn’t be “greengrocer’s apostrophe” unless you accept that BG is truly written BeeGee, in which case the apostrophe doubles up for both varieties (abbr. and grngrcr.) Then the green in greengrocer becomes, as Sir Terence Milligan had it,”more of a dirty yellow colour, really”)
We sorely need that edit function back, Author.
Meanwhile, readers will have to struggle with parsing parts of my previous comment
hotrats, as JohnM said, abbreviation not belonging. I do, however, also use it in plurals, as in the phrase: “… we saw the 1990’s end in December, 2000.” Though truly I have never been quite certain if that plural is a plural and not a collective.
I am old enough to have been trained to abuse the poor apostrophe in ways the more modern users of English are not, as well as other marks of punctuation and syntactical tools. The language has changed somewhat since I was first taught when these were appropriate, and when not, I admit, but my habits remain.
I do not mind being corrected by you youngsters. You are not wrong, you are different and different is cool.
Pretentious, pompous pillock, aren’t I?
This video is awesome. NSFW for language and sexual content. Subject: ridiculous treatment of women and pre-marital sex. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KaM2JTkDREI#t=25
Just to be clear, children, remember what you priest has told you: if you are going anal always use a prophylactic, no matter what the video and Jehove says.
Condoms make it easier and more fun to get it in, less painful when it is in and less likely that you will get nasty boy cooties like AIDS, HPV and syph.
It will also make it less likely that you will give your sweetheart girl cooties and watch his knob turn purple and oozy fall off.
They also keep the evidence nice and safe.
Oh, and put condoms on all those fruits, too. Wouldn’t want your arse to turn green and sprout icy cucumbers would we? It would be embarrassing at the beach.
Fun video, cosmicstargoat but I thought the Important Public Health Message was lost in the laughter track.
Apologies if I’ve come across as heavy-handed but I do think rubbers are useful for slowing down the spread of cervix-rotting HPV and other friends of the family jewels.
Vaccinations are cool, too.
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Condoms are cool, especially on icy cucumbers.
My dear LastResort, yes.
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Also … “your priest”, I am not an American. This is a good thing for America. “Watch his knob turn purple and oozy and fall off.” The “purple and oozy” are one compound adjective with the “fall off” being a separate phrase so both need conjunctives.
Yes, darling LastResort, we can all play.
Empiricist:
âWatch his knob turn purple and oozy and fall off.â The âpurple and oozyâ are one compound adjective with the âfall offâ being a separate phrase so both need conjunctives.
Yes we can all play, but we can’t all win. A conjunctive is an adverbial structure linking whole clauses or sentences, such as ‘therefore’, ‘still’, ‘anyway’ etc. What both phrases need in this case is a conjunction – and not just any old conjunction; and and or are the only candidates (the non-starters being for, but, nor, so and yet).
Just out of clinical interest, what colour was the knob before it ‘turned’ purple?
What about “then”, hotrats? As an alternative to “and”.
I suspect you are correct about “-ve” against “-ion”., though.
The knobs were possibly brass which could make them any colour if anodised, alloyed or painted.
Are you perhaps hinting that yours starts off as purple?
Are you from The North?
Everyone is correct, correction accepted. I intended to type “conjunction” but something went horribly awry.
That’s my story and I think I’ll stay with it.
Why “brass”, LastResort? And “anodised”?
On the subject of borders and nonsense, I had to send a video from Canada to Florida. To do this, I had to fill out a form, with a copy for each airport the video would travel through. The form said that the video contained no pornographic material (as if the Internet is not our source of porn now, and ignores all borders) and that the video did not include any instructions or information intended to bring harm to the United States of America. So I filled out three copies of this form, and sent them off with my video.
Now think about it. Every time somebody wants to send a home video of the grand kiddies to grampa and gramma in Florida they have to fill out this form. There must be stacks and stacks of the form piling up someplace. Who is reading them? What could they possibly do with the information? Is a porn producer or a terrorist ever going to answer yes to the questions? What possible justification could there be for this form?
The only thing I can think of is that the form is designed to keep the battle against porn and terrorism on the minds of the people. We should all be afraid. And we should all be aware that the authorities in the Untied States frown on wankers watching porn. Personally, I’m not impressed.
@ LR, Empiricist & hotrats
Might I propose the use of a comma after oozy – especially if “then” is to begin the second phrase – to really hammer home the point that ‘falling off’ is a new order of activity from purpling and oozing.
Yes, yes, I just committed the sin of split infinitive – unless I claim that “really hammer” is not the same verb as “hammer” but a novel compound verb derived from it. Let’s face it, grammar isn’t immutable these days – not within English, the current lingua franca đ
JohnM:
There has never been a problem with ‘splitting’ an infinitive, except in the minds of scholasticists who believe that English grammar should conform to the rules of Latin. Fowler’s Modern English Usage only recommends that it be avoided in ‘solemn and elevated writing’, but that hasn’t stopped almost every great writer from using it. Given a choice of ‘Boldly to go…’, ‘To boldly go…’ and ‘To go boldly…’, only the ‘wrong’ one sounds natural.
JohnM, you could have avoided the splitting of infinitives by : “really to hammer home” – but that has a slightly different nuance. It emphasises the “really”.
The use of a comma in the knob sentence would have been debatable.
And the like has been debated endlessly in UseNet newsgroups and, no doubt, their bastard offspring TwitFace. Possibly also in every university in the English-speaking cosmos by every first-year class.
I only suggested “then” because it was said that only “and” would work. In English there is always something else that works, some other way to express yourself and a way to break the rules yet still sound wise and wonderful.
And then there also is additionally comedic effect.
It’s true what they say, English is the One True Language Of The Gods and was invented for puns and other funs. Academically esoteric discussions among them.
We were very generous when we allowed the gods to use our tongue for the original copies of all of their sacred works. It is a far more beautiful, powerful and useful language than the ones the books were so poorly translated into afterwards.
English is the language of magic, the elder urges and the Powers of Science. We should treasure it.
And argue friendlily over commas.
Interestingly, no one, yet, has mentioned that the content of the purpley, oozy sentence could be inappropriate or even wrong.
Don’t we have any anti-evolutionists among us? Or anti-condomists? Or even priests?
Where are all the ranty guys of yesteryear? The WhatsGoingOns and Ephthathas.
Have we won the argument over raincoats and cooties?
Jesus said “Come forth and receive eternal life.”
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Unfortunately I came third and won a toaster.
Blatantly stolen from a highly topical and seriously important news report.
This one may also be on topic:
“If you rearrange the letters in the words Faith and Religion, you can make ‘Microwave.’
No, don’t test it or question it, just believe me.”
I’m here all week. Cash preferred.
Anyone noticing the staleness should see the bread in the fridge. Even the local seagulls handed that back.
I would have used this year’s but, it being the BBC, they were all repeats.
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I can’t believe I did all that work for such a weak jab at them.
I know.
But I think my version is funnier.
Which came first, the chicken or the egg?
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The chicken, obviously. Eggs need more foreplay.
Those forms you fill out at the border are not intended to stop you from doing anything. They are intended to give a reason to throw you in jail if you lie about what you are doing.
The US wants to know if you are carrying a lot of money around, because, well drugs and stuff. Oh, and terrorism.
If you check YES on the form, they will demand that you give them another form that tells who you are, how much money you have, and so on. If you move a lot of money around all the time, they will try to figure out why.
( In fact, this happens inside the country as well. Deposits/withdrawals of more that $10 000 are reported to the government by the bank. It’s also illegal to make a deposit of $9 000 and another deposit of $1 000 in order to avoid depositing $10 000. )
Here are the rules directly from Customs and Border Protection:
https://help.cbp.gov/app/answers/detail/a_id/195/~/currency-%2F-monetary-instruments—amount-that-can-be-brought-into-or-leave-the
Just remember that if their web site is wrong, you have to follow the real rules, not what they told you to do. đ
I guess that I was raised in far too free a state to be entirely comfortable in the society of 2014, Mark S., for I find the entire idea of those forms odious, repulsive, invasive and nasty.
If it is my money then it is not your business where I take it nor what I spend it on.
I do know that this attitude is outdated, probably unlawful, un-American, un-British, anti-Democratic and certainly contrary to the peace and well-being of the common weal as well as being highly suspicious and possibly a little likely to raise eyebrows at Super-spy HQ’s globally but I hold it dearly.
The hard-won right to be left the fuck alone is a cherished boon in our society. It should not be easily handed over to any would-be gauleiter with a badge, a uniform or an attitude.
On another aspect of this; here is a BBC report where everyone misses the essential point.
I have just waited five hours in queues to get on to this flying tube of puke, screaming children, fat farters and drunken songsters. In that time I have been pushed around by stupid pre-literates who should never be employed anywhere but who have uniforms and badges the backup of a force of cops better armed than many armies. I have been gate-raped, groped, interrogated, sneered at by beings less smart than baboons who can’t spell my five-letter name the same way twice running and who argue when I manage the trick, irradiated, delayed, pushed-around, assaulted verbally and physically and watched my children and womenfolk being subjected to worse. I have had the multi-tool she bought me, my dead beloved bought me, for our last anniversary stolen by a thug who will break it the first time he tries to use it because he has all of the nous and mechanical intuition of a rotted cabbage. I have had my phone and laptop’s data copied and I have been yelled at for not instantly having every single piece of paper in the entire bunch of permission slips in the correct order, a different order at each exit gateway. All of this and then I try, for the first time in hours, to sit down without worrying about where every single piece of luggage is and who is either stealing it or smuggling stuff into it. Then some pig-ignorant cow tries to smash my knees in with her seat-back.
And they wonder why both of us are a touch irritable and short of fuse.
It is actually a surprise a brawl didn’t start which lead to everyone on the ‘plane killing everyone else.
It will happen.
I can feel it.
Next time that fucking screaming brat behind me kicks my seat, I will eat the shit’s liver raw and the cretinous scunners that spawned it…
Joined-up thinking seems to be a lost art. The consequences of treating the most dangerous, lethal, clever, revenge-driven, nutcase, neurotic, long-term-grudge-holding, paranoid, privacy-demanding predator ever to tread this planet like cattle seems to have escaped their long-term planning.
Coming soon, in 3-d, to every airport near you: “Riots on a plane”, starring Everyone as “The Dead Guys”. Followed next year by the awesome sequel, “Riots On A Plane II: Where Am I Gonna Park This Sukkah?”
The least they could do is offer a ten-minute cooling-off period between being crushed and gate-raped and being crushed and seat-battered. It could save lives. It could save aeroplanes.{More valuable than lives. Those cost money. Lives are made by unskilled labourers and cost little to replace.} One vast room where passengers could walk around free, with wobbly dummies they could batter the crud out of and foamy walled areas for screaming in. And a shooting range full of animatronic screaming infants and security dummies.
Or skip the animatronics and just have live ones?
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No, I don’t fly. I have more respect for the health of other people than to subject them to me in a steel tube with no escape from the fat farters.
Yes, I did see that the imaginary me taking the journey was “pushed around” more than once. From what I gather from the media and other sources, it is a common occurrence in the world of mass public transport and could quite possibly happen to any hypothetical passenger – or victim – twice or more even on the one trip.
And I do find it surprising that the species who can kill big cats bare-handed accepts these things routinely.
All seriousness aside, I do think it is a volatile mixture, humans and rules. It will all end in tears.
There will be An Enquiry.
Steps Will Be Taken.
It will be worse the next time.
There will be An In-Depth Enquiry.
We will blame the False Believers and ban some random group.
Things will only get worse. They always do. They always will. That is life.
@LR If it is my money then it is not your business where I take it nor what I spend it on.
There is a downside to that, one that might become up close and personal, if a religiot you mock decides to buy in some ordinance to use against you.
It’s like everything in what we call freedom. There’s a trade-off to be made – because there’s a lot of mad buggers ‘out-there’, many of whom are total psychopaths forever searching for some action.
LastResort, please cook the little shit’s liver to an internal temperature of at least 70°C. Safety first.
JohnM truthfully, I have no reason to deny anyone the joy of using their earned (or even charitably given or stolen) income to buy anything that which gives them pleasure. Should you wish to purchase drugs, gold, beryllium, bdellium, myrrh, Tsar Bombas or AK-399’s (those are the really *BIG* ones with the two thousand millimetre bore) I wish you every pleasure with your new toy.
The only exception I would have is people.
Persons are sacred and should never be bought.
Short of humans, buy what you like. Nor do I care what you believe. So having a True Believer armed to the eyeballs would not bother me.
Now using some of his toys could be objectionable should the business ends be pointed in inappropriate directions.
I don’t mind if you take your toys to a shooting range or defunct quarry and blast away at animatronic soldiers, cops, priests, mums, politicians and tourists. That is wasteful and noisy and not my sort of fun but I do like explosions – big ones with loads of flames – so I can see how others may see shooty things as fun. Blasting away at life-forms is just evil.
I’m entirely unapologetic if this upsets some but hunting is just wrong. There is no need for it. Supermarkets are full of meat. And killing humans is such a very big wrong that there are no words to contain it.
All that an I still don’t have a big spooky daddy in the sky to tell me what the rules are. I must be a very remarkable person.
Time for a smilie?
As normal, a typo. “All that *AND* I still don’t have a big spooky daddy in the sky to tell me what the rules are.”
Steeple Chokers are useful but they are no cure for laziness.
But it is an interesting question: where do the rules come from if the ultimate authority is me?