Archives for October 2013

It’s time, once again, for children of all ages to dress up like sluts and embarrass themselves in public. Who could ask for a better holiday than that? I mean, we surrendered the Saturnalia to Christmas, so officially being allowed to be who you’re not was missing from our lives. Halloween brings that back. Speaking of back, as in bringing sexy back, you’ll be pleased to note that thick chicks tend to be smarter and live longer than those chicks who need a biscuit. ABC News spent a lot of time sharing that knowledge with the universe yesterday morning. For me this is great news. Some women, hello Miley Cyrus, more closely resemble a 12 year old boy and, to be quite honest, 12 year old boys do not turn me on. By the way, the link for Miley is for when she still had talent. I wouldn’t twerk on you. I’m better than that. Nevertheless, I like a little cushion when I’m pushin if you catch my drift. As the old saying goes, straight lines are for boys and soap box derbies, real men handle curves.

I think I got off track there. Sorry about that.

Halloween. This blog is supposed to be about Halloween.

Okay, first a nice overview of the day from Halloween History.

Halloween is a holiday celebrated on the night of October 31. The word Halloween is a shortening of All Hallows’ Evening also known as Hallowe’en or All Hallows’ Eve.

Traditional activities include trick-or-treating, bonfires, costume parties, visiting “haunted houses” and carving jack-o-lanterns. Irish and Scottish immigrants carried versions of the tradition to North America in the nineteenth century. Other western countries embraced the holiday in the late twentieth century including Ireland, the United States, Canada, Puerto Rico and the United Kingdom as well as of Australia and New Zealand.

Halloween has its origins in the ancient Celtic festival known as Samhain (pronounced “sah-win”).

The festival of Samhain is a celebration of the end of the harvest season in Gaelic culture. Samhain was a time used by the ancient pagans to take stock of supplies and prepare for winter. The ancient Gaels believed that on October 31, the boundaries between the worlds of the living and the dead overlapped and the deceased would come back to life and cause havoc such as sickness or damaged crops.

The festival would frequently involve bonfires. It is believed that the fires attracted insects to the area which attracted bats to the area. These are additional attributes of the history of Halloween.

Masks and costumes were worn in an attempt to mimic the evil spirits or appease them.

Trick-or-treating, is an activity for children on or around Halloween in which they proceed from house to house in costumes, asking for treats such as confectionery with the question, “Trick or treat?” The “trick” part of “trick or treat” is a threat to play a trick on the homeowner or his property if no treat is given. Trick-or-treating is one of the main traditions of Halloween. It has become socially expected that if one lives in a neighborhood with children one should purchase treats in preparation for trick-or-treaters.

The history of Halloween has evolved. The activity is popular in the United States, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Canada, and due to increased American cultural influence in recent years, imported through exposure to US television and other media, trick-or-treating has started to occur among children in many parts of Europe, and in the Saudi Aramco camps of Dhahran, Akaria compounds and Ras Tanura in Saudi Arabia. The most significant growth and resistance is in the United Kingdom, where the police have threatened to prosecute parents who allow their children to carry out the “trick” element. In continental Europe, where the commerce-driven importation of Halloween is seen with more skepticism, numerous destructive or illegal “tricks” and police warnings have further raised suspicion about this game and Halloween in general.

In Ohio, Iowa, and Massachusetts, the night designated for Trick-or-treating is often referred to as Beggars Night.

Part of the history of Halloween is Halloween costumes. The practice of dressing up in costumes and begging door to door for treats on holidays goes back to the Middle Ages, and includes Christmas wassailing. Trick-or-treating resembles the late medieval practice of “souling,” when poor folk would go door to door on Hallowmas (November 1), receiving food in return for prayers for the dead on All Souls Day (November 2). It originated in Ireland and Britain, although similar practices for the souls of the dead were found as far south as Italy. Shakespeare mentions the practice in his comedy The Two Gentlemen of Verona (1593), when Speed accuses his master of “puling [whimpering, whining], like a beggar at Hallowmas.”

Yet there is no evidence that souling was ever practiced in America, and trick-or-treating may have developed in America independent of any Irish or British antecedent. There is little primary Halloween history documentation of masking or costuming on Halloween in Ireland, the UK, or America before 1900. The earliest known reference to ritual begging on Halloween in English speaking North America occurs in 1911, when a newspaper in Kingston, Ontario, near the border of upstate New York, reported that it was normal for the smaller children to go street guising (see below) on Halloween between 6 and 7 p.m., visiting shops and neighbors to be rewarded with nuts and candies for their rhymes and songs. Another isolated reference appears, place unknown, in 1915, with a third reference in Chicago in 1920. The thousands of Halloween postcards produced between the turn of the 20th century and the 1920s commonly show children but do not depict trick-or-treating. Ruth Edna Kelley, in her 1919 history of the holiday, The Book of Hallowe’en, makes no mention of such a custom in the chapter “Hallowe’en in America.” It does not seem to have become a widespread practice until the 1930s, with the earliest known uses in print of the term “trick or treat” appearing in 1934, and the first use in a national publication occurring in 1939. Thus, although a quarter million Scots-Irish immigrated to America between 1717 and 1770, the Irish Potato Famine brought almost a million immigrants in 1845-1849, and British and Irish immigration to America peaked in the 1880s, ritualized begging on Halloween was virtually unknown in America until generations later.

My grandfather, who was born in Cork, used to bitch that we practiced Halloween on the wrong day. Not that he or I could do anything about it. On the other hand, I was 4, I would have been thrilled if every day was Halloween.

Yes, that’s a link to the extended remix. It’s a party here, after all.

Halloween, as you can tell, is just another way to celebrate life. You chat with your ancestors, make sure evil is abated and share a feast & treats. These are all good things.

Or, as Damian (THE OMEN) Thompson points out, it’s a holiday that must be cleansed from the earth according to those who would rule us.

Fundamentalist Christians are also in their element. Given that Halloween is the feast of Satan (they have decided), they feel they have permission to go into rhetorical overdrive – and these aren’t exactly folks who hold back in the first place.

Meet William J Schnoebelen, former “witch high priest” – funny how ex-Satanists always insist that they were senior devil-worshippers, not just part of the demonic rank and file. He writes:

Halloween used to be called Samhain, and is still celebrated as an ancient pagan festival of the dead by witches all over the world. Unfortunately, just giving the date a “holy” name like All Hallows’ Eve or All Saints’ Eve cannot change its grisly character. Halloween is an occasion when the ancient gods (actually demons) are worshiped with human sacrifice. The apostle Paul warns us: “But I say, that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils, and not to God: and I would not that ye should have fellowship with devils” (1 Cor. 10:20).

If you are a Christian parent, God has given you a precious responsibility in your children. Remember, their ability to resist spiritual wickedness is much less than yours. If you allow your children to participate in Halloween (Trick or Treating, costume parties, etc.) you are allowing them to play on “the devil’s turf,” and Satan will definitely press his home court advantage. You are opening up doorways into their young lives for evil by bringing them into a kind of “fellowship” with these ancient “gods”.

Some of this is actually true: the Celtic festival of Samhain, when the spirits of the dead were supposed to return, does seem to have been adapted by the early Church to become Halloween. But Halloween as an occasion for human sacrifices? There’s no evidence of that – you just have to guess that if the Celtic druids were into human sacrifice, which they were, then they may have killed people on this feast day.

Meanwhile, demonbuster.com is so alarmed by Halloween that it tells readers to “Do some major Deliverance on yourself” if you ever celebrated the holiday. That means self-exorcism. Says demonbuster:

Burn any left over halloween stuff in your home. Don’t even open your doors to pass out “tracts”. If you do, then you are celebrating this unholy day.

Really? In which case, those of us who are irritated by anti-Halloween campaigners have a ready-made response. If they try to press a fundamentalist tract into your hand today, just yell: “Keep away from me, inadvertent agent of Satan!”

Or, you could do as a guy I know did last year. He put out a big, empty, bowl with a sign that said “Free Candy.” Kids assumed all the candy was taken and left him alone.

Yes, he is the dictionary definition of an asshole.

You might want to have headphones on if you click that particular link.

Oh, never mind, your coworkers will figure it out once you start singing along, and you will, everyone does.

Nevertheless, this must be the favorite time of year for practicing witches, right?

According to Daniel Burke, not so much.

Like lots of people, when October 31 rolls around, Trey Capnerhurst dons a pointy hat and doles out candy to children who darken the door of her cottage in Alberta.

But she’s not celebrating Halloween. In fact, she kind of hates it.

Capnerhurst says she’s a real, flesh-and-blood witch, and Halloween stereotypes of witches as broom-riding hags drive her a bit batty.

“Witches are not fictional creatures,” the 45-year-old wrote in a recent article on WitchVox.com.

“We are not werewolves or Frankenstein monsters. We do not have green skin, and only some of us have warts.”

Warts or not, many witches say they have mixed feelings about Halloween.

Some look forward to the day when witchcraft is front and center and no one looks askance at big black hats. Others complain that the holiday reinforces negative stereotypes of witches as evil outliers who boil children in black cauldrons.

Capnerhurst falls into the latter camp.

Hanging up witch decorations at Halloween is no better than wearing blackface costumes or taking a slur, like “Redskins,” as the name of your football team, she says.

“Unless one actually is a witch, dressing up as stereotypical witches is bigotry,” Capnerhurst said.

In June, the wife and mother of two started her own church for “traditional” witches called Disir, an old Norse word meaning “matron deities,” she says.

(Capnerhurst draws a distinction between “traditional” witches, like her, who were born into the religion, and Wiccans, most of whom are converts.)

Most Wiccans identify as witches, and they form the largest branch of the burgeoning neo-pagan movement, said Helen A. Berger, a leading scholar of neo-paganism at Brandeis University.

A 2008 survey counted about 342,000 Wiccans in the United States and nearly as many who identify simply as “pagans,” a significant increase from the last American Religious Identification Survey, taken in 2001.

Three-quarters of American Wiccans are women, according to Berger.

“It’s harder to train male Wiccans,” Capnerhurst said with a cheery sigh. “Most men just aren’t going to sweep the kitchen and think about sweeping out the bad energy.”

The faith is fiercely individualistic. Although there are umbrella groups like Wisconsin-based Circle Sanctuary, most Wiccans practice their own blends of witchcraft.

After centuries of persecution in Europe and colonial America, modern witches still bear a sharp suspicion of authority. The rede, or ethical statement at the core of Wicca, is: Harm none and do as you will.

Despite the rising popularity of their faith, many Wiccans remain “in the broom closet,” fearful of losing their jobs, their families or their reputations, said Berger and other experts.

Here’s the thing, true Wiccans are the most peaceful people on the planet. Their whole gig is based on being in balance with nature. Oh sure, sometimes they want to get a little naked, paint themselves blue and frolic with a tree but, really, who among us hasn’t? If you think it’s evil to be au naturel in the middle of nature, I assure you that the problem lies within you and not in anything Wiccan.

Let’s make a deal; it’s Halloween and I like you. Each of you. So be safe, have fun, send pics of all the hot naked chicks you meet and come back to us tomorrow for the radio show.

But, most of all, respect each other out there. You’d be amazed at the rewards you’ll reap.

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During the history of history the Catholic Church has accomplished some tremendous things. It has also been responsible for some of the most vile atrocities know to man or woman or beast or what have you. I have friends who can’t get past the Spanish Inquisition. I can understand that. However, having been raised Catholic my world view is a tad more nuanced. Or so I hope. I have covered how porn led to people learning to read the bible and helped literacy in general. It’s a simple fact. It doesn’t make me anti-this or pro-that. What simply is cannot be denied. It doesn’t help, either, when people in power within the church, such as Chicago’s very own Francis Cardinal George, make dogmatic statements like “It has always been this way” when “no it hasn’t” and “who cares” are both correct responses. Still, softly at first and now, with Pope Francis at the helm, more decisively, the Church has been making forays into humanity that don’t feel as though they were scripted in the Middle Ages. And they’re doing so in a way that every beer swilling sports fan can appreciate.

In 2010 the Vatican quietly got Vatican City certified to compete in the Olympics. In 2012 they fielded a small, ragtag group – no sorry, that’s Battlestar Galactica – they fielded competitors. They showed up in London and did well for first timers, even coming home with a silver medal in synchronized swimming.

The Vatican Olympic team 2012 participated in the fields of football, synchronized swimming, athletics, canoeing and boxing. During the London Olympic Games of 2012, the Vatican Olympic team managed to win one medal: a silver medal in synchronizes swimming.

During the London Olympic Games, the Vatican Olympic team was represented by some of the following athletes: Synchronized swimming was represented by Paolo Moretti and Ahmed al-Abdulla; marathon was represented by Cardinal Enrico Domeniconi; boxing (light flyweight) was represented by Matteo Albani; canoeing was represented by Federico de Luigi.

The Vatican City national football team surprised many by beating Portugal 2-1 in the opening match. However, the Portuguese coach said that the defeated resulted from his players’ fear of scoring against the “God’s football team” which could be seen as desecration. Unfortunately, the Vatican City national football did not manage to win against San Marino and Sao Tome and Principe; which were in the same group. The Vatican national football team finished last in that group with three points.

Speaking of the Vatican’s football team, that’s soccer for those of us on the right side of the pond, they are painfully bad but need not be. Currently the only people who can play on the Vatican’s official team are members of the Swiss Guard. They are the Catholic equivalent of the Secret Service here. Just like our guys and gals train day and night to take a bullet for the president and/or his family, the Swiss Guard trains the same amount to protect the pope.

A job made especially difficult now that there is a pope who truly believes his life or death truly is God’s will so he just traipses out into crowds at random. That’s fun for the faithful but I bet guard members are drinking heavily now.

That’s a joke kids.

Nevertheless, according to the Vatican’s media department, that may change.

The soccer thing, not the drinking thing.

The Vatican national football team is fully supported by the Vatican. During the papacy of Pope Benedict XVI, the pope used to visit the team when training and encourage the players stating the importance of sports and playing as a representative of their state.

As a way of improving the Vatican national football squad, there have been suggestions to take some players from the Catholic seminaries from different parts of the world. This suggestion has not yet been acted upon. If accepted, this will be one way of enabling a teem where the players have some time to train and play with other teams.

I think this is a good idea. While I doubt that young seminarians would compete with Man U, at least teams comprised of players like that would stand a shot at competing.

Also, tiny trivia, the Vatican is one of only nine fully recognized sovereign states whose national team is not a FIFA member. The others are Monaco, Tuvalu, Kiribati, Federated States of Micronesia, Nauru, Marshall Islands (they have no national football team), Palau and the United Kingdom.

there’s no UK team due to the fact that England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland all field their own teams.

Now you know.

Anyway, about 500 years ago the Catholic Church got into a near war with the Anglican Church, because nothing shows the love of Jesus like a good war.

Well, Pope Francis of “Who am I to judge” fame, thinks that it might be a good idea to revisit that particular conflict. But, because this pope is very different than any pope I can remember, Philip Pullella is reporting that he wants to revisit on a cricket pitch.

The Vatican officially declared its intention to defeat the Church of England on Tuesday – not in a theological re-match nearly 500 years after they split, but on the cricket pitch.

The challenge was launched at the baptism of the St. Peter’s Cricket Club.

Vatican officials said the league will be composed of teams of priests and seminarians from Catholic colleges and seminaries in Rome.

The seminaries and religious colleges will play each other in a “Twenty20” tournament, where games last about three hours.

After that, the best players will form a Vatican team, which will be called the “Vatican XI,” and challenge the Church of England to form its own team of Anglican priests and seminarians to play in London at Lord’s, the home of cricket.

“The Vatican team will be able to play anybody in the world. We hope to see a Vatican team playing at Lord’s,” said Alfonso Jayarajah, a Sri Lankan who was the first captain of the Italian national team and a board member of St. Peter’s Cricket Club.

“We hope to have ecumenical dialogue through cricket and play a Church of England side by September,” said Father Theodore Mascarenhas, an Indian official at the Vatican’s Council for Culture, who once played as an off-spin bowler.

The idea for a Catholic cricket club was the brainchild of John McCarthy, Australia’s ambassador to the Vatican. He wanted to see something similar to the Clericus Cup, a soccer tournament among the religious colleges and seminaries of Rome.

He enlisted the support of other diplomats and prelates from what he called “other cricket countries” – including Britain, South Africa and Pakistan – and found “anonymous sponsors from the cricketing world”.

In response to a suggestion that cricketing terms and field positions might be translated into Latin or Italian, McCarthy was firm: “English is the language of cricket and will remain the language of cricket”.

The Vatican team will wear the official colors of the tiny city-state – yellow and white – and their jackets will have the seal of the papacy, two crossed keys.

By all accounts Pope Francis is not much of a cricket man. He still supports the San Lorenzo football club of his native Buenos Aires.

But Mascarenhas, the Indian priest who is the chairman of the St. Peter’s Cricket Club said: “I am sure that cricket will be another thing that he accepts as part of his openness.”

How nice. If the Pope can accept gays I guess he can tolerate cricket players.

If that sentiment doesn’t prove the new pope has his priorities right nothing does.

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There are people who demand that no one be allowed to buy condoms. They claim it is a command in the bible. It’s not and they’re stretching that spilt seed thing way past its limit, but this isn’t about logic or truth, it’s about control. They also demand that you not have sex but, if you do have sex, have it without a condom. That way, after you have your condom free sex and get yourself or your partner pregnant, they can forbid either of you from getting an abortion. Then you both can share the joys of giving birth to an unwanted child who will grow up with many issues and, one day, end up in prison where they will demand that the state spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to kill said child all while ignoring the fact that all of this could have been avoided for the price of a $1.00 condom. I’ve always felt that there’s a special place in hell for these people. What I did not know was that we need not wait for them to greet their due reward. We can just drive them over to the gates and drop them off.

Before I begin, we need to have a brief history of hell.

In the Old Testament there really was no defined hell. Oh, sure, you had the beginnings of Satan, but he was more of a trickster than ruler of the underworld. In fact, when Abraham was putting together what would be the rule book for what would become Judaism, there was no mention of a nether realm at all. Just do good and good things will happen. As example “A” he could point to Adam and Eve. When they disobeyed God they were kicked out of the garden, not swept, Spawn-like, into an eternal inferno. Oh, yeah, they were also cursed with mortality and Eve got the raw end of the deal when it comes to monthly pain, but still no pits of unending flame.

Later Egyptians, Romans and Greeks – not necessarily in that order – added a new element of an underworld to religion. Even so, what Anubis, Pluto and/or Hades oversaw wasn’t a place of punishment, just a place where all souls went. Even the Disney flick Hercules knew that.

Then, not all that long before Christ was born, all that changed.

There became two types of after lives. One good, the other not so good. And, when you consider how long normal theological changes take, this one happened rapidly. And, more importantly, it spewed forth clearly defined. It had the River Styx, it had a three headed dog, it had a serpent and, most of all, it had death. Lots and lots of painful death.

That’s a little too specific for multiple visions.

Francesco Cerri, of the Anna Lindh Foundation, says that’s because the ancient Greeks stumbled on a real place that, to abuse the obvious, scared the hell out of them.

Few doubts remain that a cave discovered by a team of Italian archeologists led by Professor Francesco D’Adria in the ancient city of Hierapolis in classical Phrygia is indeed the mythical ‘Gate to Hell’ of Greek antiquity.

Celebrated as the portal to the underworld in Greco-Roman mythology and tradition, the cave called Plutonium or Pluto’s Gate was a destination for the VIPs of antiquity, such as the philosopher Cicero and the great Greek geographer Strabo.

It was discovered in March this year amid the ruins that lie adjacent to the modern city of Pamukkale in Turkey. D’Adria’s team found it thanks to the bodies of some small birds, who appeared to have dropped dead at the mouth of a cave that was spewing deadly carbon dioxide fumes. Cicero, who visited the cave in in the first century BC, spoke of the same phenomenon.

”Any animal that passes inside meets instant death”, wrote Cicero. ”Bulls that are led into it fall and are dragged out dead; and I threw in sparrows and they immediately breathed their last and fell”. ”The Plutonium…is an opening of only moderate size, large enough to admit a man”, wrote the geographer. ”(It is) full of a vapour so misty and dense that one can scarcely see the ground”. Fittingly, D’Adria on Thursday told ANSAmed his team has made what he called ”a one-of-a-kind discovery”: a 1.5-metre-high marble statue of Cerberus, the Greek mythological three-headed dog guarding the entrance to Hades, or the Kingdom of the Dead, at the entrance to Pluto’s Gate.

Next to the three-headed dog – whom Hercules alone managed to subdue by feeding it a loaf of bread laced with narcotic poppy seeds – the Italian team found a marble statue of an enormous serpent, another mythical guardian of the gates to the next world.

The Hierapolis dig proceeds with painstaking caution. Just two meters wide, the cave has yet to be fully investigated and might hold more surprises. Meanwhile, restoration work on the exceptional site of ancient Hierapolis, whose hot springs have been used as a spa since the 2nd century BC, is ongoing.

In a church next to the tomb of St. Philip, which D’Adria discovered two years ago, eight great marble columns have been restored to their original position. The city’s theater, one of the most spectacular Greco-Roman sites in Turkey, is almost completely restored.

Okay, put yourself in their sandals. These were not stupid people, nor were they overly superstitious. But they had their religions and they were confronted by vapors pungent enough to kill a healthy bull. They would have known volcanoes and the smells they make. They would have known that this wasn’t that. This place would have been completely out of their experience.

Gates of Hell would make as much sense as anything else. Although it was called Tartarus or the Underworld at first. Hell came much later when this myth met the myths of the Norse and the pagans of the north.

But that’s a story for another day.

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If you’ve spent more than one minute in public or watching TV in the last year you have probably noticed that racism, thought to be on the wane in years past, has been making a roaring come back. Or, to be more accurate, it is not going quietly into the good night. As the racial makeup of America skews darker each year there are those who cling painfully to a past that never was. And if their vitriolic screed injures another that is a price they seem far too willing to pay. Yet, as odd as this sounds, I find this whole thing slightly heartening. You see, these losers and xenophobes are no longer lurking in the shadows where they could do real harm and have for centuries. Instead they are out in the open and we can easily spy them. We know not to breed with, or encourage, them in any way. Also, now, when they do do something hateful or harmful society is more likely to hold them accountable. Slowly but surely humanity is bending towards justice for all. Not as some hoary phrase but as something being put into actual practice. But, boy oh boy, do we have a long way to go.

Pre-Christmas, 2011, I wrote an article about racist holiday traditions. Because nothing says “Happy Birthday Jesus!” (a dude born in the middle east) like belittling someone of a different race. Well, now, no longer satisfied to be a Dutch holiday tradition, the adherents to Sinterklaas have set up a Facebook page to celebrate wearing black face with giant red lips and try and make it a global tradition.

A Dutch Facebook page seeking to preserve the country’s fall “Sinterklaas” festival exactly as it is — including clowns in blackface makeup known as “Black Petes” — has received nearly a million ‘likes’ just 24 hours after it was created.

The swift growth of the ‘Pete-ition” page reflects the depth of emotional attachment most Dutch people feel to the tradition, and their annoyance at outsiders who judge it without understanding it.

On Tuesday a U.N. expert condemned the tradition as racist.

In the festival, St. Nicholas arrives in mid-November accompanied by a horde of helpers — the Black Petes, who also have red lips and curly hair. Opponents say they are an offensive caricature of black people; supporters say Pete is a figure of fun whose appearance is harmless.

Ahem. The “Black Petes” are based on the Dutch tradition of having Moorish (a/k/a black) servants to jolly old St. Nick hand out gifts at Christmas time. Since the Dutch East Indian Trading Company not only shipped tea, they also shipped slaves, you can guess where those Moorish servants came from and how they got their meager jobs. They are universally portrayed as not very bright. So you have white people wearing black face and pretending to be stupid. Yeah, I can’t imagine why anyone is offended.

Now, let’s look at this next photo.

That is from an African themed party in Australia. It was hosted by a young lady who wants to teach English in Africa. You have to read the rest to believe it.

As Halloween approaches it was only a matter of time before racially insensitive photos hit the web of people dressed up in blackface. This time, however, it’s connected with a young woman’s 21st birthday party rather than a Halloween themed gathering. Buzzfeed brought the offensive photos to our attention.

The Tumblr user “BlackInAsia” was alerted to the photos through one of his followers and shared them with this context:

Attendees were all asked to wear “African themed” clothing to depict the continent and this is what resulted… blackface, elephant and gorilla costumes, warpaint, native American headdresses (?!) and more…. I’m at a loss for words.And yes, this is from 2013.

The girl posted the pictures proudly and flatly refused to take them down when confronted by another individual about how they were racist apparently. Pictures were reported to facebook weeks ago and they still have not been taken down.

Wow.

In case you ever wanted to know how white folks saw us black Africans… here you go.

The girl, known as Olivia Mahon, lives in Australia and wants to teach English in Africa one day. Shortly after the photos were shared on Tumblr, she posted an explanation for the photos (where she also refers to Africa as a country).

“In fact as you can tell from the photos I dressed up as cleopatra, whilst MAJORITY of my guests came as animals, that can be found in africa or wore traditional african clothes or even dressed up as famous people who come from africa. If anything this was to celebrate the amazing country and people. “

You can read her full clarification on BlackinAsia’s Tumblr page.

The birthday girl planned the party using a Pinterest pinboard, where she pinned photos with captions like, “Though now in Africa you also have people who live in modern day houses like us. The woman tend to dress more traditionally and the children play outside and go to school.” She also highlights “beautiful” African woman, safari-themed cupcakes and inspiration for her Cleopatra outfit.

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen this. In recent history, there was the “African Queen” editorial in Numero Magazine, with a white model in blackface; University of California-Irvine produced a video featuring a member in blackface, and two students from Beta Theta Pi fraternity at the University of Florida attended a party donning blackface last year.

Two students from Northwestern University made headlines in 2010 for attending parties in blackface. A similar situation happened at Lehigh University. The “Compton Cookout” hosted by members of the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity at University of California-San Diego is another incident that sparked outrage.

And this latest party making headlines is yet another example of what not to do when hosting a party.

Just in case you were asleep that year they busted out the world map, Africa is a continent, not a country. I would have thought that a college student might know that little fact, but it appears I was wrong.

Also, just FYI, they have cars and indoor plumbing in Africa too.

Closer to home we have the fun story of Trayon Christian, a black man who bought a belt.

A college student from Queens got more than he bargained for when he splurged on a $350 designer belt at Barneys — when a clerk had him cuffed apparently thinking the black teen couldn’t afford the pricey purchase, even though he had paid for it, a new lawsuit alleges.

“His only crime was being a young black man,” his attorney, Michael Palillo, told The Post.

Trayon Christian, 19, a NYC College of Technology freshman from Corona, went to the Madison Avenue fashion mecca in April to buy the Salvatore Ferragamo belt after saving up his paychecks from a part-time job at the college.

But as soon as he exited the luxury department store, undercover officers grabbed Christian and asked “how a young black man such as himself could afford to purchase such an expensive belt,” according to the suit, filed Tuesday in Manhattan Supreme Court.

A Barneys clerk, who had asked Christian for identification when he bought the belt, called police claiming the purchase was a fraud, the suit says.

Plainclothes detectives hauled Christian off Fifth Avenue and into the local precinct.

There, Christian produced his identification, his debit card from Chase and the receipt with his name on it, the suit states.

“In spite of producing such documentation, Christian was told that his identification was false and that he could not afford to make such an expensive purchase.”

A belt similar to this one was purchased by Trayon Christian at Barneys.

Cops eventually called Chase, which verified that the card belonged to Christian, and they let him go.

Police sources said Christian has no arrest record.

Christian told The Post he returned the belt out of disgust over his treatment by the world-famous clothing store.

“I didn’t want to have anything to do with it,” he said, adding that he was first inspired to buy the accessory by Harlem rapper Juelz Santana who wears the Italian designer’s duds.
Christian said he’ll never shop at Barneys again.

He is suing both Barneys and the NYPD for unspecified damages.

Barneys did not immediately comment.

A spokeswoman for the city’s Law Department said she would review the claims once she received the suit.

So now we can add “Shopping While Black” to the list of actionable offenses. While this is appalling as is, I almost cried when I heard someone I know say “Well, how were they supposed to know that black kid had a job?”

Did I mention we have a long way yo go? Yes, I believe I did.

In the meantime we have this gem. It seems that young lady was fired from Hooters for not being black enough.

When will the foolishness and hoopla around black people’s hair stop? Over the past year we’ve had to hear about a little girl being kicked out of school for wearing locs, an Ohio school banning a list of natural hairstyles and let’s not forget meteorologistRhonda Lee who was fired for defending her right to rock her natural hair on TV.

Now comes news out of Baltimore that a black woman has allegedly been fired from her job because of her blonde highlights.

Farryn Johnson told Maryland’s CBS News affiliate that she was let go from her job as a waitress at Hooters due to ‘”improper image” after the 25-year-old refused to remove blonde highlights from her dark brown hair.

“They specifically said, ‘Black women don’t have blonde in their hair, so you need to take it out,'” Johnson told CBS.

“I didn’t see that it would be a big issue just because there were a lot of other employees working at the restaurant of other races with color in their hair. For instance, there were Asian girls with red hair and Caucasian girls with black hair and blond streaks so I didn’t think it would be an issue for the little piece of blond highlight in my hair.”

Johnson has reportedly filed a racial discrimination complaint with the Maryland Commission on Civil Rights.

“The law is clear that employers can’t have two separate unequal sets of rules—one for African-Americans employees and one for everybody else, and yet that’s exactly what Hooters did here in firing Miss Johnson, an African-American employee solely because she’s African-American. They targeted her because of her hair solely because of her race,” Johnson’s attorney, Jessica Weber, told CBS.

Hooters has declined to comment, citing pending litigation.

I work in the burbs. As such there are Hooters everywhere. I went to one recently, just for the wings you understand, and our waitress was a pale young lady with neon pink hair. I am pretty sure, as a fan of genetics, that was not her natural color. Simply put I doubt that the curtains match the carpet, if you catch my drift.

Speaking of the suburbs, a recent study took a look at how black youths assimilate into predominantly white culture. The results aren’t all that surprising, but they are kind of sad.

Many studies have focused on young African-American boys and their experience in school. From gender biases in teacher grading that start as early as elementary school to blaring disparities in disciplinary practices, black male youth seem to be at a perpetual disadvantage in academic environments.

However, two studies that examined programs aiming to increase diversity by bussing minority students to primarily white schools revealed an area where black boys reportedly engaged with relative ease. According to an article published last year by Megan H. Holland, a professor at the University of Buffalo, minority boys reportedly have an easier time fitting in with their white peers at suburban schools because of stereotypes about their athleticism or “coolness” that give them greater access to activities that increase positive interactions with white students, like sports and social clubs.

On the contrary, another study conducted by Simone Ispa-Landa at Northwestern University found that black girls were comparatively seen as “ghetto” or “loud” when they exhibited behavior that was usually socially rewarding for their black male counterparts.

Ispa-Landa’s study showed that “as a group, the boys were welcomed in suburban social cliques, even as they were constrained to enacting race and gender in narrow ways.” However, these urban signifiers resulted in the opposite result for black girls, who were seen as “aggressive” and undesirable, with neither the white nor the black boys showing any interest in dating minority girls. In short, playing out racial stereotypes worked in black boys’ favor, while doing the same was detrimental for black females.

Excluding Oprah, Mrs. Cosby, Mrs. Obama & Whoopi, can you name a positive black female image in popular media? They are few and far between. The fact that I had to put Whoopi on that list shows you how thin the pickings are.

Well, I did say we had a long way to go. But, at least, we’ve begun the journey.

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We are humans. As such we have senses and social histories that color our world view. No matter how hard anyone tries to be impartial it’s just not truly possible. Unless you’re a fictional TV character or a robot. And even then I’m not so sure since both are created by fallible folks like you and me. Yesterday I wrote a brief update on an article I’d done a while back about Atlantis and then I went into the research on Yetis, which took an odd turn towards reality. Several people wrote to me that the scientists in both cases were wrong since their research did not support the known facts. Actually, in both cases that is patently untrue. It’s just that the research does not support the many myths surrounding each. Which brings us back to perceptions. Some of the best scientists I know admit their biases and make sure to note them so when their work is peer reviewed they can be accounted for. Well, they do that to the best of their abilities. Still, science muddles on and gets enough right to keep me interested.

Well two stories popped up today to truly drive home my point. First we’ll join Tia Ghose on a trip 2,600 years back in time to see sexism first hand.

Last month, archaeologists announced a stunning find: a completely sealed tomb cut into the rock in Tuscany, Italy.

The untouched tomb held what looked like the body of an Etruscan prince holding a spear, along with the ashes of his wife. Several news outlets reported on the discovery of the 2,600-year-old warrior prince.

But the grave held one more surprise.

A bone analysis has revealed the warrior prince was actually a princess, as Judith Weingarten, an alumna of the British School at Athens noted on her blog, Zenobia: Empress of the East.

Etruscan tomb

Historians know relatively little about the Etruscan culture that flourished in what is now Italy until its absorption into the Roman civilization around 400 B.C. Unlike their better-known counterparts, the ancient Greeks and the Romans, the Etruscans left no historical documents, so their graves provide a unique insight into their culture.

The new tomb, unsealed by archaeologists in Tuscany, was found in the Etruscan necropolis of Tarquinia, a UNESCO World Heritage site where more than 6,000 graves have been cut into the rock.

“The underground chamber dates back to the beginning of the sixth century B.C. Inside, there are two funerary beds carved into the rock,” Alessandro Mandolesi, the University of Turin archaeologist who excavated the site, wrote in an email.

When the team removed the sealed slab blocking the tomb, they saw two large platforms. On one platform lay a skeleton bearing a lance. On another lay a partially incinerated skeleton. The team also found several pieces of jewelry and a bronze-plated box, which may have belonged to a woman, according to the researchers.

“On the inner wall, still hanging from a nail, was an aryballos [a type of flask] oil-painted in the Greek-Corinthian style,” Mandolesi said.

Initially, the lance suggested the skeleton on the biggest platform was a male warrior, possibly an Etruscan prince. The jewelry likely belonged to the second body, the warrior prince’s wife.

But bone analysis revealed the prince holding the lance was actually a 35- to 40-year-old woman, whereas the second skeleton belonged to a man.

Given that, what do archaeologists make of the spear?

“The spear, most likely, was placed as a symbol of union between the two deceased,” Mandolesi told Viterbo News 24 on Sept. 26.

Weingarten doesn’t believe the symbol of unity explanation. Instead, she thinks the spear shows the woman’s high status.

Their explanation is “highly unlikely,” Weingarten told LiveScience. “She was buried with it next to her, not him.”

Gendered assumptions

The mix-up highlights just how easily both modern and old biases can color the interpretation of ancient graves.

In this instance, the lifestyles of the ancient Greeks and Romans may have skewed the view of the tomb. Whereas Greek women were cloistered away, Etruscan women, according to Greek historian Theopompus, were more carefree, working out, lounging nude, drinking freely, consorting with many men and raising children who did not know their fathers’ identities.

Instead of using objects found in a grave to interpret the sites, archaeologists should first rely on bone analysis or other sophisticated techniques before rushing to conclusions, Weingarten said.

“Until very recently, and sadly still in some countries, sex determination is based on grave goods. And that, in turn, is based almost entirely on our preconceptions. A clear illustration is jewelry: We associate jewelry with women, but that is nonsense in much of the ancient world,” Weingarten said. “Guys liked bling, too.”

She is 100% right. Ancient Egyptian males, several African tribes, ancient Chinese and many others had males who wore as much, if not more, jewelry than their female counterparts. Furthermore, history is jam packed with examples of female warriors and leaders. To use modern sexual mores is not a good idea.

Actually, it never was and never will be.

But, as you can clearly see, even the best minds can succumb to social prejudices.

Another form of perception is wishful thinking. Cadell Last asks an interesting question; if the theory is that an advanced civilization would actually use a star as a fuel source, not just solar panels but actually tap into it, and that such fuel sources would show erratic orbits, can you imagine being the guy who looked at the data and asked “Hey, guys, is that what I think it is?”

Cadell talks to that guy.

Philosophy and the physical sciences have a long and interesting past spanning the entirety of human history. Philosophers have played the role of logically deducing the existence of certain physical phenomena that were untestable. Physical scientists have then either empirically confirmed or refuted the philosophical speculation proposed when the necessary technology and/or method were developed.

Sometimes the philosophical speculations failed to describe the nature of reality, like the Ancient Greek proposition that the heavens were composed of a fifth element: aether. However, on several occasions, the philosophical speculations turned out to be quite exact. For example, in the 4th century B.C.E. philosopher Democritus deduced that the universe was composed of indivisible units of matter known as “atoms.” This belief wassubstantiated over 2,000 years later by the theoretical physicist Albert Einstein (you may have heard of him).

A similarly impressive academic partnership manifested when the Renaissance philosopher Giordano Bruno read the On the Revolutions of Heavenly Spheres by astronomer Nicholas Copernicus. Bruno found Copernicus’s heliocentric model of the solar system ground breaking (which it was), and logically deduced that all stars in the night sky were fundamentally similar to our own Sun, and that they had worlds gravitationally bound to them. He famously stated that:

This space we declare to be infinite, since neither reason, convenience, possibility, sense-perception nor nature assign to it a limit. In it are an infinity of worlds of the same kind as our own.

Of course, we now know that Bruno was more or less right. Most stars seem to exist as systems with at least one exoplanet.

In the modern world some believe that this ancient relationship between philosophy and the physical sciences is dead, or dying, or functionally redundant. But I most certainly disagree. Last week I had a chance to meet with philosopher (and systems theorist)Clément Vidal (@clemvidal). Vidal has pointed out that there are certain binary star systems that astrophysicists have had difficulty explaining with conventional astrophysical models. These binaries are semi-detatched stars that exhibit an energy flow that is irregular, but not out of control. Vidal argues that instead of an astrophysical model, we need an astrobiological model to describe these strange systems.

In essence Vidal is claiming that these systems are not typical binary stars, but rather civilizations that have advanced well passed a Type 1 civilization on the Kardashev scale and are now actively feeding on their parent star. He calls these hypothetical civilizations starivores. And if he is right… then there are approximately 2,000 known starivores in our galaxy alone.

Surely this idea is worthy of scientific attention and empirical testing. Democritus’s speculation was tested after the introduction of the special theory of relativity. Bruno’s speculation was tested as our telescope technology improved. Is there any theoretical model or technology we could use today that could validate or refute Vidal’s speculation?

Perhaps, the necessary test is related to understanding the nature of the binary systems “metabolism.” Metabolism is one of the fundamental and necessary conditions for complex living systems because it allows them to draw and sustain order from the surrounding non-living chaos. So if these binary systems are actually intelligent civilizations feeding on their parent star then we should expect a degree of energy flow control that cannot be described by the laws of physics alone.

This idea may come as a shock. Over the past 50 years scientists have been disappointed by data indicating that we are alone in the Milky Way. Physicists like Max Tegmark have even gone so far as to suggest that we are  the first intelligent civilization to arise in the entire universe. And he might be right… but he might be very wrong as well.

Major breakthroughs in the sciences can come from ideas that at first seem bizarre… even impossible. But the universe has also proved to be stranger than we ever imagined. In my opinion Clément Vidal has called our attention to an interesting phenomenon that our current theories cannot describe fully. I strongly suggest reading his Ph.D. thesis discussing the possibility of starivores (Chapter 9 — PDF here). And if you are a researcher interested in putting his speculation to the test, the Evo Devo Universe community has just announced the creation of the High Energy Astrobiology Prize. The community is interested in receiving a research study that can either positively or negatively test the starivore hypothesis.

I’m interested to see what we discover!

I sincerely doubt we are alone in the universe. Heck, I doubt if we’re alone in our galaxy. There are just too many opportunities for life to develop.

Or, to be more blunt, do you really want to live in a universe where I’m the most evolved being you know?

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG (FOX! Sports) every Friday around 9:10 AM.
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