Well, John Moore, it is not the arms that deter, you know. A knife or a gun is just harmless iron. The danger comes from the lunatics that touch it and bear it. Anyone idiot enough to want to bear weapons, is idiot enough to be afraid of when you’re sane. The arm is just an advertisement saying: I’m being held by a lunatic! But don’t tell the lunatics…
It’s always amazing to me that there are literally millions of guns in the US alone and only dozens of stories about freaks who feel the need to shoot others for no reason. If your conclusion were correct there would be thousands of stories of people going bezerk and killing folks. If more people had guns fewer would be incouraged to slaughter the helpless. Imagine Columbine – if everyone had a gun do you think those guys would have waltzed onto that campus with the intention of killing as many as possible?
Re: the gun thing…. Years ago there was a DJ on a rock station in San Francisco who put forth the idea that if everyone had a gun it would be very noisy for a little while, and then it would be much quieter. It’s hard to argue with that logic, unless of course you’re eh…. strapped, as the kids say now.
The Barmaid didn’t say Sikhism was perfect. She just said that the Bullshit Factor was comparatively low in Sikhism. I am not sure, that is true, but hey… Who am I to second-guess the The One Who Is Never Wrong a.k.a. The Knower a.k.a. The Seer a.k.a. The Well Of Infinite Wisdom a.k.a. The Barmaid.
Sikhism is rather militant (and without rivals in militancy expressed through visual appearance). I think the main reasons Sikhism gets a free ride is a) low impact on the world compared to Islam and Christianity, b) there is no compelling reason for a westerner to investigate what particular Bullshit, that relates to Sikhism, so nobody around here really knows how to mock them (obviously closely related to Reason A).
In Richmond, B.C., Canada, the Sikhs were murdering each other over the issue of whether to have chairs in their temple. A father sent his daughter a kettle full of dynamite because she refused the arranged marriage and married the man she loved. Bullshit factor lower? I think not.
Did you know that Checkpoint software technologies LTD has blacklisted
jesusandmo for, get this, violence! I guess all it takes is one little crucifixion
in the first strip and you’re damned for life.
Here’s the message that pops up on Checkpoint protected systems when someone tries to surf J&M:
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Time: Sat Mar 6 19:14:44 2010
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Interesting points. I think the reason Sikhs don’t figure on our radars is that
1) They don’t prosletise or seek conversions- rather like the Hindus in this regard
2) They don’t want westerners converted or dead -unlike Christians or Moslems
However if you are a Moslem then they are rather less sanguine about you- they have a set of traditional martial arts specificaly formulated to kill Moslems (ਸ਼ਸਤਰ ਵਿਦਿਆ shastar vidiyÄ) and the whole business was, arguably, set up to resist Moslem occupation.
Oh, and they can be just as nutty as the Moslems about unflattering depictions of their traditions- witness what happened over the play Bezhti.
The lunacy is in the desire and deed to carry a weapon. That is sick, sikh or not. Some lunatics are worse than others, and the worst go berserk. Lunatics they are, every single one of them. Religion is no excuse, nor is the misunderstood ‘right of the people to keep and bear arms’, neither are these a valid plea against lunacy.
I have been, for the record, a military officer, I have been shot at and have been shooting in return. In my experience, confirmed by science, about 98% of those carrying arm may know how to operate the mechanism. It is commonly known as ‘I know what I’m doing’. Yet, only 1 or 2%, does know how, when and why to operate his arm sane, beyond just ‘operating the mechanism’.
Just like about 98% of the religious fanatics certainly very well know how to operate the rules of their religion, but only the remaining few of them know how, when and why to apply them with sanity. The lunacy of the fanatics is in their desire and deeds to apply their religious rules.
The Sikh faith was founded by the (first) guru Nanak about the time Martin Luther was busy in Germany. Co-incidence? Sikhism is a cross between Islam and Christianity. Though they are against the Indian caste system, many practise it, as a cultural and not religious institution. Perhaps there is not a lot of male bovine droppings, but certainly strange customs in Sikhsm. The present and last guru is a ….. book, the Gur? Granth S?hib, which is treated like a human being, i.e. ceremoniously wrapped at night and put to bed in a locker and got out again in the morning. It was two Sikhs, members of the Khalsa, who assassinated Indira Gandhi.
Author, I love the strip. It is very funny.
@Neuseline: the neat trick about Guru Grant Sahib is that by declaring it the Final Guru no future fraudsters can elevate themselves to guru-status and take over. The problem could be that a book can be a fixed point of reference thus making it hard to adapt to changes in The Real World, but I don’t know how fixed the GGS is in that respect.
Neuseline calls Sikhism “a cross between Islam and Christianity.”
I could have sworn it was a cross between Hinduism and Islam. I know their temples serve vegetarian food, which neither Muslims nor Christians have religious reasons to care for.
I think religions are all equally bullshit, but it is how the religious group interacts with the larger community that really determines how much on the radar they are.
If they want to ghettoize themselves and not convert or push into the public space, then it’s a bit much for an atheist group to go to the group’s turf.
Atheist groups are getting proactive – but it’s about the public space intrusions – not what religions do within their own group.
But as a society, we do need to be aware of what goes on inside closed groups that shun mainstream interactions – especially in immigration groups where too often, the women are unaware that they have rights that are their own, not dependant on the generosity of their husband.
Or in isolationists polygamous groups – although, with only the three known communities – 2 in the US and 1 in Canada – they are probably within a couple generations of gene pool collapse
Land sakes, John: a high school filled with hundreds of armed teenagers. Would the last kid standing please turn out the lights before you expire of your wounds?
Your nicely sarcastic remark is a witty turn on the American Dream. Speaking of, I dreamt once the Zombies were in my bedroom. If I had had a gun in the night stand, I’d have shot my closet, lamp, chair, Teddy Bear and cat. Poor Richard says, “A person with tongue in cheek should know when to bite down.”
The purpose of a pencil is to write. The purpose of a gun is to kill/wound.
An idiot with a pencil will make a spelling error. An idiot with a gun will kill/wound someone.
Lots of idiots with pencils result in stupid new words entering the dictionary and an overall lower standard of spelling. Lots of idiots with guns result in bloody massacres and an overall higher level of fear amongst the population.
John Moore apparently agrees that it is people, not their tools that are reponsible for their deeds. Unnecessary and dangerous tools should not be unnecessary accessible for people – if in the first place some kids had not had access to arms Colombine and other school shootings would have been practically impossible. Or a 3-year old shooting herself mistaking a gun for a wii-controller… And when less people have arms, less other people would feel compelled to keep up with the Jones’s. In the Old World, violence (and the use of arms) is a goverments monopoly and that works quite well.
But having firearms is some kind of religion in the States, isn’t it?
@ Shaugh Since when are tools responsible for anything. Do you sue the scapel manufactuers for the mistake a doctor makes? Do you sue the alcohol company for the driver in an accident? It is the people who are responsible for their actions period. Would you feel better if the deaths from guns were caused by screw drivers?
Neither, John Moore, should one sue tobacco makers because of what smokers do to themselves – although some are apparently crazy enough to do just that in Barry O’bama’s country. 😀
But I was entirely serious in my remark on you agreeing that [etc] without a trace of irony or sarcasm intended. There is at least one point we agree on, that’s all.
No, I don’t really have a dagger.. But as someone said, Sikhs get a free pass because they don’t go around telling people to convert to sikhism..
And to respond to the whole them being terrorists, the terrorism failed because most sikhs opposed the militancy hence Khalistan never became a reality..
Sikhism is a relatively young religion, so many people still adhere to the real “values” of it.. Not to say there isn’t any bullshit, it’s there, A LOT OF IT, it just hasn’t touched non sikhs yet… Give it a few more decades, and it will happen..
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Air India Flight 182
Same reason people tend not to mess with someone carring a gun in the US. Advertised deterrance.
Indeed. The largest mass murder in Canadian history.
http://archives.cbc.ca/war_conflict/terrorism/topics/1018/
Well, John Moore, it is not the arms that deter, you know. A knife or a gun is just harmless iron. The danger comes from the lunatics that touch it and bear it. Anyone idiot enough to want to bear weapons, is idiot enough to be afraid of when you’re sane. The arm is just an advertisement saying: I’m being held by a lunatic! But don’t tell the lunatics…
It’s always amazing to me that there are literally millions of guns in the US alone and only dozens of stories about freaks who feel the need to shoot others for no reason. If your conclusion were correct there would be thousands of stories of people going bezerk and killing folks. If more people had guns fewer would be incouraged to slaughter the helpless. Imagine Columbine – if everyone had a gun do you think those guys would have waltzed onto that campus with the intention of killing as many as possible?
“It’s a free country”??? Well, if you’re not doing cartoons about a certain prophet or jokes about a certain religion, I guess it might be.
Re: the gun thing…. Years ago there was a DJ on a rock station in San Francisco who put forth the idea that if everyone had a gun it would be very noisy for a little while, and then it would be much quieter. It’s hard to argue with that logic, unless of course you’re eh…. strapped, as the kids say now.
The Barmaid didn’t say Sikhism was perfect. She just said that the Bullshit Factor was comparatively low in Sikhism. I am not sure, that is true, but hey… Who am I to second-guess the The One Who Is Never Wrong a.k.a. The Knower a.k.a. The Seer a.k.a. The Well Of Infinite Wisdom a.k.a. The Barmaid.
Sikhism is rather militant (and without rivals in militancy expressed through visual appearance). I think the main reasons Sikhism gets a free ride is a) low impact on the world compared to Islam and Christianity, b) there is no compelling reason for a westerner to investigate what particular Bullshit, that relates to Sikhism, so nobody around here really knows how to mock them (obviously closely related to Reason A).
AFAIK, the Sikhs don’t go around trying to tell everyone else that they ought to become Sikhs. That helps.
the Sikhs don’t go around trying to tell everyone else that they ought to become Sikhs
I’m pretty sure adult Sikhs tell their children that they ought to become Sikhs …
John Moore still showing his intellectualism is on par with his knowledge of climate change, I see.
Don’t bring a knife to a gun fight.
who said they are not made fun of?!! in india, there is a genre of jokes itself called the “Sardarji jokes”. check it out…. 😀
In Richmond, B.C., Canada, the Sikhs were murdering each other over the issue of whether to have chairs in their temple. A father sent his daughter a kettle full of dynamite because she refused the arranged marriage and married the man she loved. Bullshit factor lower? I think not.
Did you know that Checkpoint software technologies LTD has blacklisted
jesusandmo for, get this, violence! I guess all it takes is one little crucifixion
in the first strip and you’re damned for life.
Here’s the message that pops up on Checkpoint protected systems when someone tries to surf J&M:
The requested URL is blocked according to the web filtering policy. For more information,
please contact your system administrator.
Time: Sat Mar 6 19:14:44 2010
URL: http://www.jesusandmo.net
Category: Violence
Ticket ID: {6EA10F6C-297E-11DF-AF44-00000000CECE}
Interesting points. I think the reason Sikhs don’t figure on our radars is that
1) They don’t prosletise or seek conversions- rather like the Hindus in this regard
2) They don’t want westerners converted or dead -unlike Christians or Moslems
However if you are a Moslem then they are rather less sanguine about you- they have a set of traditional martial arts specificaly formulated to kill Moslems (ਸ਼ਸਤਰ ਵਿਦਿਆ shastar vidiyÄ) and the whole business was, arguably, set up to resist Moslem occupation.
Oh, and they can be just as nutty as the Moslems about unflattering depictions of their traditions- witness what happened over the play Bezhti.
@ John Moore:
The lunacy is in the desire and deed to carry a weapon. That is sick, sikh or not. Some lunatics are worse than others, and the worst go berserk. Lunatics they are, every single one of them. Religion is no excuse, nor is the misunderstood ‘right of the people to keep and bear arms’, neither are these a valid plea against lunacy.
I have been, for the record, a military officer, I have been shot at and have been shooting in return. In my experience, confirmed by science, about 98% of those carrying arm may know how to operate the mechanism. It is commonly known as ‘I know what I’m doing’. Yet, only 1 or 2%, does know how, when and why to operate his arm sane, beyond just ‘operating the mechanism’.
Just like about 98% of the religious fanatics certainly very well know how to operate the rules of their religion, but only the remaining few of them know how, when and why to apply them with sanity. The lunacy of the fanatics is in their desire and deeds to apply their religious rules.
The Sikh faith was founded by the (first) guru Nanak about the time Martin Luther was busy in Germany. Co-incidence? Sikhism is a cross between Islam and Christianity. Though they are against the Indian caste system, many practise it, as a cultural and not religious institution. Perhaps there is not a lot of male bovine droppings, but certainly strange customs in Sikhsm. The present and last guru is a ….. book, the Gur? Granth S?hib, which is treated like a human being, i.e. ceremoniously wrapped at night and put to bed in a locker and got out again in the morning. It was two Sikhs, members of the Khalsa, who assassinated Indira Gandhi.
Author, I love the strip. It is very funny.
@Neuseline: the neat trick about Guru Grant Sahib is that by declaring it the Final Guru no future fraudsters can elevate themselves to guru-status and take over. The problem could be that a book can be a fixed point of reference thus making it hard to adapt to changes in The Real World, but I don’t know how fixed the GGS is in that respect.
@John Moore
One word John: Escalation
Neuseline calls Sikhism “a cross between Islam and Christianity.”
I could have sworn it was a cross between Hinduism and Islam. I know their temples serve vegetarian food, which neither Muslims nor Christians have religious reasons to care for.
I think religions are all equally bullshit, but it is how the religious group interacts with the larger community that really determines how much on the radar they are.
If they want to ghettoize themselves and not convert or push into the public space, then it’s a bit much for an atheist group to go to the group’s turf.
Atheist groups are getting proactive – but it’s about the public space intrusions – not what religions do within their own group.
But as a society, we do need to be aware of what goes on inside closed groups that shun mainstream interactions – especially in immigration groups where too often, the women are unaware that they have rights that are their own, not dependant on the generosity of their husband.
Or in isolationists polygamous groups – although, with only the three known communities – 2 in the US and 1 in Canada – they are probably within a couple generations of gene pool collapse
http://tinyurl.com/ykc5zrg
Land sakes, John: a high school filled with hundreds of armed teenagers. Would the last kid standing please turn out the lights before you expire of your wounds?
Your nicely sarcastic remark is a witty turn on the American Dream. Speaking of, I dreamt once the Zombies were in my bedroom. If I had had a gun in the night stand, I’d have shot my closet, lamp, chair, Teddy Bear and cat. Poor Richard says, “A person with tongue in cheek should know when to bite down.”
As I’m sure you do.
Pencils do not cause spelling errors.
The purpose of a pencil is to write. The purpose of a gun is to kill/wound.
An idiot with a pencil will make a spelling error. An idiot with a gun will kill/wound someone.
Lots of idiots with pencils result in stupid new words entering the dictionary and an overall lower standard of spelling. Lots of idiots with guns result in bloody massacres and an overall higher level of fear amongst the population.
Your example is not equivalent. Try again.
@:John. Just so- but mistakes made with pencils can be rubbed out. People rubbed out with guns can’t be pencilled back in- so to speak.
John Moore apparently agrees that it is people, not their tools that are reponsible for their deeds. Unnecessary and dangerous tools should not be unnecessary accessible for people – if in the first place some kids had not had access to arms Colombine and other school shootings would have been practically impossible. Or a 3-year old shooting herself mistaking a gun for a wii-controller… And when less people have arms, less other people would feel compelled to keep up with the Jones’s. In the Old World, violence (and the use of arms) is a goverments monopoly and that works quite well.
But having firearms is some kind of religion in the States, isn’t it?
@ Shaugh Since when are tools responsible for anything. Do you sue the scapel manufactuers for the mistake a doctor makes? Do you sue the alcohol company for the driver in an accident? It is the people who are responsible for their actions period. Would you feel better if the deaths from guns were caused by screw drivers?
Neither, John Moore, should one sue tobacco makers because of what smokers do to themselves – although some are apparently crazy enough to do just that in Barry O’bama’s country. 😀
But I was entirely serious in my remark on you agreeing that [etc] without a trace of irony or sarcasm intended. There is at least one point we agree on, that’s all.
Many lives would have been spared if Julio González had used a gun.
No, I don’t really have a dagger.. But as someone said, Sikhs get a free pass because they don’t go around telling people to convert to sikhism..
And to respond to the whole them being terrorists, the terrorism failed because most sikhs opposed the militancy hence Khalistan never became a reality..
Sikhism is a relatively young religion, so many people still adhere to the real “values” of it.. Not to say there isn’t any bullshit, it’s there, A LOT OF IT, it just hasn’t touched non sikhs yet… Give it a few more decades, and it will happen..
@John: I do like it when someone ignores reality and states pure BS.
Perhaps someone could explain the more than 80 gun deaths every day in the US, but I think anyone who cares has left for the day. Or been shot.