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Archives for 2015

Happy Nude Year

December 31, 2015 by

From all of us to all of you, Happy Nude Year!
From all of us to all of you, Happy Nude Year!
Once again another year has come to a close. And, just like the rest, it featured joy and sadness, birth and death. For some people the end of the year holidays are a maudlin time where they dwell on opportunities missed, and loved ones lost. Others take the time to wipe the slate clean and plan for a better future. Whichever path you choose I would like to advise you to tread lightly. The past is gone and can not be changed. Gnashing your teeth over what might have been accomplishes nothing. The future, while within your control to some degree, is not a given to any of us. Just because you want to be a famous whatever doesn’t mean it’s going to happen. What is given is the here and now. Do the best you can with that and the rest will work itself out. You don’t need a self help book to tell you that, you know it inherently. I have a friend, a priest, who always says “God gives us many gifts. It’s up to us to use them wisely.” That is good to remember no matter the date on the calendar. Control what you can, do your best, and let life sort itself out. Trust me, you’ll be fine.

Still, this is the day when people are expected to do SOMETHING GOD DAMNIT! so I’m here to help. If kissing strange drunks isn’t your thing, here are a few alternatives you can try.

Oliver Wheaton, at Metro (UK), takes us around the world to look at some holiday traditions.

In Romania…
Romanians try to heal their ill farmyard animals by whispering into their ears.

If they are successful it spells good fortune for the coming year (also, they apparently discover a magical ability they have).

In Venice…
Venice is one of the most romantic cities in the world, which might be why they take the old ‘midnight NYE kiss’ to a whole new level.

‘Mass kissing’ events are held in the piazza of St Mark’s square, where hundreds of passionate Italians and tourists have a smooch under the fireworks.

In Ecuador…
This is a weird one – people in Ecuador take their empty suitcases for a walk around the neighbourhood on New Years Day.

In Michigan…
Folks in the northern states of the USA are a hardy bunch, which might be why this happens in Lake Michigan.

(P)eople punch through the ice and swim around in the sub-zero waters. Looks like fun.

In Spain…
People in Spain probably have to take it easy on the Champagne, as they need space in their bellies for grapes.

An old tradition in the country sees people eat a grape for each time the bell strikes at midnight – meaning they see off 12 grapes in almost as many seconds.

In South Africa…
For South African scavengers January 1st is also shopping day.

We’re not sure if this is a ‘tradition’ or just good sense, but New Year’s Day is also a sort of ‘throw out your old furniture day’ in South Africa.

People from Johannesburg especially get involved in the practice, however be careful as tradition dictates that you throw your old beds and sofas out of a window.

Try not to get them mixed up. God knows what you’d tell the cops if you got caught kissing your goat while walking your suitcase.

All we can ask of you is that you be safe and come back to read more weirdness in 2016.

Happy New Year!

BTW, if you end up doing something like this, please send pics.

Lil' Luna in Toy Beach Party A-Go-Go (NSFW) from FML Photography on Vimeo.

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG (FOX! Sports) every Friday around 9:10 AM.
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Christmas Films You Need to See

December 23, 2015 by

Santa’s little helpers are wonderful.
Back in 2012 I wrote a fun little blog about Holiday films everyone needed to see. Most people will point you to the classics like Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, a fun story which reminds children that they’re all useless and will be shunned until they provide a service to their overlords, Santa Claus is Coming to Town, which seems like a pedophile’s wet dream today but was actually very sweet when it was first released (and is still a personal fave of mine since I’m not a pervert – well, not that kind of pervert), Frosty the Snowman, a fun story that reminds kids how much fun it can be to hop a freight train with a stranger, and, of course, A Christmas Story, the first holiday special to ever feature bad lingerie and guns. Certainly there are others, from It’s a Wonderful Life to Die Hard, there are plenty of movies for the older viewers who need chronic depression and death with their holiday.

But the list I created had nothing to do with any of them. Any third rate blog could cough them up. No, my list is for those among you who are connoisseurs of cinema. Who are willing to experiment with your palate. For those who might prefer a moment off the beaten path.

You know who you are.

Merry Christmas!

**********************************

By now you’ve opened the gifts, had your Christmas breakfast and settled in for another year of holiday entertainment. At least until the NBA takes over your TV. This is truly a magical time. The toys haven’t been broken yet. Uncle Ned is still mostly sober. Aunt Edna, still aglow from the kisses from the kids, has yet to begin her annual screed about what a failure you are. Cousin Tony seems to have taken his meds today so that’s one less thing to worry about. As I said, it’s a magical time. But you and I know that if you have to watch A Christmas Story or Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer one more time it is quite possible that you will react badly. Not to worry, it is exactly moments like this that the World News Center was designed to address. Well, these and stripper based funerals. Below you will find an alphabetical list of 11 movies, because Top 10 lists are for amateurs, that will brighten up your day.

Babes in Toyland
All you need to know about this super-happy film, beyond the songs, toy soldiers and dancing puppets, is the super-happy story line. “On the eve of their wedding, evil miser Barnaby hires two henchmen to drown Tom and steal Mary’s sheep, cared for by Little Bo Peep, thus depriving Mary and the children she lives with of their livelihood, forcing her to marry Barnaby.” Kind of makes you misty, doesn’t it? Your kids will be in therapy for decades.

Christmas that Almost Wasn’t (The)
“It is the week before Christmas, and Santa Claus visits attorney Sam Whipple, asking for his help. It turns out that the evil businessman Phineas T. Prune holds the lease on the North Pole, and is about to kick Santa out for nonpayment of rent! As such, there will be no more Christmas!” It is never explained why Santa needed the cash and took a mortgage on the North Pole and Phineas T. Prune is so over the top evil, right down to his mustache, you’ll forget to worry about it. The film has every Christmas cliche, including the bad guy who falls in love with a toy, so it may be the only Christmas movie you’ll ever need to see.

Ernest Saves Christmas
Oh, this is a joyful mess. Santa goes to jail because this guy (a children’s show host) thinks his name is Santos, no racism there, and Ernest loses his job for giving a free ride to Santa and Santa seems to suffer from Alzheimer’s. Nothing like creeping dementia to make your holiday joyous. Plot points include this heart warming gem; “Ernest and Harmony (whose real name is later revealed by Santa to be Pamela Trenton) discover the magic power of Santa’s sack, and immediately Pamela starts to abuse it. She steals the sack, and attempts to run away yet again.” Santa’s magical sack is clearly different than mine.

Eight Crazy Nights
Yeah, it’s a Hanukkah movie, so what? A plate of latkes warm the tummy no matter your religion. And it’s Adam Sandler, that master of subtlety and gentle wit. Doesn’t this plot just scream ‘group hug’? “Davey Stone, an alcoholic with a criminal record, is sentenced to community service under the supervision of an elderly referee. Davey is then faced with trying to reform and abandon his bad habits.” The special part are the songs, all of which sound like they were written by an inmate with anger issues.

Fitzwilly
This movie has everything you could possibly want in a holiday movie. Dick Van Dyke had yet to join A.A. and he is clearly drunk in this film. Add in a soundtrack that was obviously mailed in after a month-long bender by John Williams, who would later redeem himself with that whole Star Wars thing, and you have oodles of family fun. But wait! There’s More! There’s a plot too; “Claude Fitzwilliam, leads the household staff to rob from various businesses by charging goods to various wealthy people and misdirecting the shipments, all to keep Miss Vicki’s standard of living.” Gosh, it’s like every role model you want for your kids in one film.

Fred Claus
“A garrulous hustler running from the emotional fallout of the ultimate sibling rivalry, poor Fred keeps trying to find happiness through one failed scheme after another, pushing away the people who care about him most.” This movie is so grandly contrived that you can pick out what will happen next in every single scene. It even has Santa’s boss. You might be forgiven for thinking that Santa doesn’t have a boss, but Kevin Spacey exists to prove you wrong. Not for anything else that I can see, but there you are.

Great Rupert (The)
Forget the plot on this one I’ll tell you all you need to know. This film has a magic squirrel, Jimmy Durante doing barroom versions of Christmas carols and lots of plucky poor people. Oh, and it has a dude who talks to the magic squirrel and plays a concertina too. Did I mention that the magic squirrel steals money from their landlord so the family can eat and pay rent to the landlord the squirrel just stole from? No? I probably should have. Lots of feel good stuff here.

Polar Express
“On Christmas Eve, a doubting boy boards a magical train that’s headed to the North Pole and Santa Claus’s home.” Oh, that only scratches the surface. This movie has Tom Hanks in full on schizophrenic mode. All of the adult male characters are played by Hanks. So we get him as a condescending prick who doubles as a train conductor and as a drunken hobo. The kids in the film are subjected to horror after horror, all needlessly, until they succumb and believe in Santa again. The films modernized version of rotoscoping gives it a nightmare feel. It is a must see film in my home.

Santa Claus (1959)
What can I say about this masterpiece? Shot in Mexico and dubbed into English it takes the myth of Santa to logical, if unusual, conclusions. Santa knows if you’ve been bad or good because he has a telescope in his space station (what do you mean you never heard of Santa’s space station?) and he peeps into bedrooms. This classic features Santa versus Satan for control of the holiday. Satan, the bad guy in the red suit, tries to turn kids against the holiday by giving them stark nightmares where they are attacked, and possibly eaten, by their dolls. The plot line doesn’t do this work of art justice, “With the aid of Merlin, Santa Claus must defeat the evil machinations of the devil Pitch to ruin Xmas.” The whole Merlin thing is never explained and, by the end, you just won’t care.

Santa Claus Conquers The Martians
This incredible film used to be an annual staple on WGN until someone sobered up. There’s just not enough space to capture everything worth seeing but here’s a start; the Martians come to Earth to kidnap Santa so their kids, who are suffering from planetary depression, can learn to laugh and play like earth kids. The Martians have technology that could lay our planet to waste but they keep forgetting to use it. So, they are immediately discovered by the U.S. Department of Defense and are forced to land and hide. On an on it goes. Add in the fact that Santa smokes and his wife is a controlling bitch and you have holiday magic. The opening theme song is so bad as to sound as if it were imported from a Jap/Pop satire. The fact that this was Pia Zadora’s big screen debut is only a minor bonus. And, no, she couldn’t act then either.

Year Without Santa Claus
“Mrs. Claus tells us about the time Santa had a bad cold and decided to take a vacation from Christmas. Two of his elves, Jingle Bells and Jangle Bells decided to go out (with Vixen) to find children to convince Santa that the Christmas spirit is still important to everybody else. But they have to get past Heat Miser and Snow Miser, first, before they land in Southtown, USA, where it never snows for Christmas. But the Miser Brothers can’t agree to let it snow in Southtown. But Mrs. Santa knows their mom–Mother Nature.” The songs by the Miser brothers alone make this a must see but the Santa themed jail break in Southtown make this must see TV on an epic scale. Also it is the first clearly feminist Christmas film. Mrs. Claus and Mama Nature don’t take no guff, no sirree bub I tell you what. A friend of mine claims this movie was written by a bitter lesbian, but I don’t think so. It has a weird sweetness that permeates throughout. Maybe a bitter lesbian who got a second date then.

So there you have it, 11 films to fill your holiday with heretofore unimagined joy. You can thank me later.

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Happy Ho Hos Upon Ya!

December 18, 2015 by Bill McCormick

Santa is love.
Since, this year, Christmas Eve falls on a Friday that means, if I want to do our annual Christmas radio show I need to do it today. Which is fine. Christmas is a fun, and interesting, holiday. Steeped in traditions that have nothing to do with its alleged origins it has become a global holiday that brings out the strangest in people. I’ve done my fair share of articles on the day, covering everything from the joys of Christmas poop to how Colonel Sanders is the image used for Santa in Japan, and you can use the previous link if you want to read them all. Today I’m not going to talk about those. Instead I’d like to spend some time talking about the two guys who represent the day. From the religious side of things. Because, believe it or not, a long time ago, in a Galilee far away, this whole thing had to do with a dude who said some very nice things and another dude who did some. Let’s take a look at them in chronological order.

First, what is the name of the first dude? As Matt Slick of the Christian Apologetics and Research Ministry notes, that’s easier asked than answered.

A lot of people, including some Messianic Jews (Jews who believe Jesus is the Messiah), will call Jesus by a different name: Yeshua (Hebrew יֵשׁוּעַ). They say that Yeshua is the Jewish name that Jesus would have been called by those who knew Him. Some messianics and other groups say that Yeshua is Jesus’ real name and that the name “Jesus” is wrong. Others say that it is okay to use either one. But then again, there are those who say that the word, “Jesus,” is pagan in origin and should not be used at all. And if that weren’t enough, some say that “Jesus” is derived from “Zeus” and really means “hail Zeus.” With all these possibilities is there a real answer to what was the Messiah’s real name? Yes, there is. It is found in the New Testament.

YIKES!

Fortunately for us, the nice people at Got Questions (a faith based scholarship website), have the answer.

Some people claim that our Lord should not be referred to as “Jesus.” Instead, we should only use the name “Yeshua.” Some even go so far as to say that calling Him “Jesus” is blasphemous. Others go into great detail about how the name “Jesus” is unbiblical because the letter J is a modern invention and there was no letter J in Greek or Hebrew.

Yeshua is the Hebrew name, and its English spelling is “Joshua.” Iesous is the Greek transliteration of the Hebrew name, and its English spelling is “Jesus.” Thus, the names “Joshua” and “Jesus” are essentially the same; both are English pronunciations of the Hebrew and Greek names

Quick note here, no matter which name you use, there’s no requirement in the bible that you only use one language or another. As long as you’re referring to the prophet of the New Testament, you’re golden.

Okay, so now we’ve named him. Let’s take a quick peek at the events leading up to His birth. I wrote Another Birther Conspiracy back in 2012 and, since the facts happened over 2,000 years ago, not much has changed. The one thing that did has been corrected with a minor, parenthetical, edit.

Before we get to the story of the birth of Jesus we need to back track a bit. Specifically we need to go back to 63 BC. That was when Rome invaded, and conquered, Judea, the land of the Jews. The Jews, as you might imagine, did not like being invaded and conquered so there were several minor rebellions. Rome dealt with them in their usual subtle fashion, they killed anyone who opposed them.

Keep in mind that Judea had many great warriors but Rome had an army. There is a massive difference there. And the result of their clash was obvious. In less than a year Judea was a Roman enclave.

Rome wanted two things from Judea; (1) a Mediterranean port for trade and; (2) taxes. The former it got by holding the land, the latter it got by imposing the same method that Romans used on any lands they conquered. A centurion would guesstimate the population of a town or village, round it up and say “You owe Rome this much money every month.” It was then up to whoever the Centurion assigned to collect that money.

In Judea that task fell mainly to the pharisees.

They don’t come off very well in the New Testament, and you can see why. Their job was nearly impossible. They had to keep the Romans happy by taking as much money as possible from their fellow Jews while at the same time keeping the Romans from killing their fellow Jews for sport.

It was a task that made no one happy.

Flash forward to 5 BC. Chinese astronomers recorded that a comet appeared in the spring of that year and hung in the sky for an extended period. It probably got caught in a gravity well for a bit. But whatever the reason, there would have been a glowing object in the sky and, thanks to an optical illusion, it would have appeared to be hanging there as if it just magically appeared.

That seems about right for the Star of Bethlehem.

Now a couple of annoying facts. First off, Rome never counted the people it conquered in any census. They really didn’t consider them people. You were either a Roman citizen or you were chattel. And, to Rome, Jews were chattel unless they, like the family of Saul who became Paul, earned citizenship. Second, I have already noted how the Romans collected taxes. They did it that way to keep everyone in place. The last thing they would do is set the people they worked so hard to conquer loose on roads where they could congregate and foment rebellion.

This would have been especially true of the Jews. Most Roman soldiers were illiterate. (Many) Jews were not. They could read and write from a young age. That’s because, unlike any other contemporary religions, Judaism was memorialized in a book, the Torah. If you wanted to be a good Jew you needed to be able to read the Torah.

So a group of people who could spread a plan for rebellion just by passing slips of paper scared the hell out of the Romans. Better to keep them in their little towns and lord over them with garrison troops.

Which is exactly what they did.

Many scholars have said illiteracy would have been rampant in rural areas populated by Jews, and there is a ton of data to back that up. However, in more metropolitan areas this would not have been true. Nevertheless, since Jesus was born in Nazareth, a/k/a Bu-Fu Nowhere, it’s assumed he was illiterate too. I don’t think so. All you need do is read the Sermon on the Mount to see a man who had a deep grasp of the current social order, was well versed in Mosaic Law, understood the division necessary between Church and State (later exemplified with “Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s.” [Matthew 22:21]), and had a wicked sense of humor. All signs of a very literate, and educated, man.

Sense of humor?

Oh yeah. Just ask any rabbi to read you Beatitudes in Aramaic, the language Jesus spoke. The rhythm of the speech will be immediately clear to you even if the words are not. It’s the same rhythm comedians still use for one liners to this day. It gets lost by many modern adherents that Jesus was a very funny dude.

All right, so now we’re clear who Jesus was, where he came from, and have a pretty good idea when he was born. Nowhere near December 25th is an acceptable answer if you don’t buy my theory about March in 5 B.C.

The whole late December dating ritual came about since no one had a clear idea when he was born and the Catholic Church needed to incorporate, i.e., override, many pagan holidays. The result was many pagan traditions such as the tree, the gift giving, the candles (e.g., Christmas lights), egg nog, wassailing (the most violent holiday tradition ever back in its day), all got rolled up in what was, a minor and simple celebration.

So how did all of that lead us to Santa Claus? You can thank Jolly Old St. Nick for that. Well, you can thank St. Nicholas, who really wasn’t all that jolly. The nice folks over at National Public Radio did a fun, if watered down, story about the man.

If you celebrate Christmas, you may have found some presents under the tree, and you may believe those mysterious presents came from a jolly old man in a red suit.

He has a lot of names, including Santa Claus, Kris Kringle, Sinterklaas, Noel Baba, Popo Gigio — and of course — St. Nicholas. But believe it or not, St. Nicholas was a real man. He was a bishop, living in the 3rd century, in what’s now modern-day Turkey.

Professor Adam English of Campbell University in North Carolina pieced together the life of St. Nicholas in his new book, The Saint Who Would Be Santa Claus: The True Life and Trials of Nicholas of Myra.

St. Nicholas oversaw a massive transition in the Christian faith, including participating in the Council of Nicaea — the first ecumenical council. Legend has it that he slapped a famous heretic with his sandal. English says the story isn’t true, but his bones show that he had a broken nose.

“So perhaps he did have a violent past, or perhaps he did get into a scuffle or two in his lifetime,” English tells NPR’s Celeste Headlee. But there was one true story that somehow captured the imagination of Christians for centuries.

English says that as a young man, Nicholas had inherited a sum of money. Nicholas hears about a man in town with three daughters on the verge of destitution. So he bags up some gold, and in the middle of the night, anonymously tosses the bag through the window.

Nicholas repeats the act two more times so that the family could use the money as dowries for the daughters, English says. Later legend adds that the window was locked, so Nicholas drops the bag down the chimney, where it lands in a stocking waiting by the fire to dry.

By the twelfth century, English says, nuns in France were making little gifts, leaving them on the doorsteps of children, and signing them “from St. Nicholas.”

None of this, however, was actually connected to Christmas or Christ’s birth. St. Nicholas Day is celebrated on December 6th.

English says that Santa Claus was initially introduced into the American context in the early 19th century. It was a combination of the day’s proximity to Christmas, and an effort by prominent New Yorkers to reclaim their European heritage.

“They were looking for roots, they were looking for traditions,” English says. “They turn to their Dutch heritage, and to be Dutch is to celebrate Sinterklass — celebrate St. Nicholas.”

Today’s image of Santa Claus is very different than that of the original St. Nicholas of Myra. English says he loves the stories of the jolly old man, with rosy cheeks, and a hearty laugh. But he wants to challenge Americans to consider the true story behind St. Nicholas.

“To not only give gifts to our family, those that we love and those that we know,” says English, “but to reach out beyond our family walls to those who we don’t know, who we don’t love, and to include them as well.”

I mentioned that the story was watered down. You see, Turkish sailors have a long tradition of sharing oral histories. And no one is allowed to tell a story unless they get it 100% right. And they have lots of stories about St. Nicholas. Basically, they all come down to this, the 5′ tall, rawboned, Bishop of Myra was perfectly capable of laying your ass right out if you crossed him or he caught you doing bad things. The recent autopsy of his remains seems to confirm that as a part of his charm.

Some people think that learning about this stuff somehow destroys the magic. I’m not one of them. I like to think that knowing the facts around each only adds to the richness of the tapestries their stories weave. When you know that Jesus played the Roman army like a violin to spread His message, you have to be impressed with the tremendous battle of wits He had to wage every day just to stay alive. When you know that St. Nicholas was capable of saving children from slavery, and able to knock the snot out of any miscreant, it just goes to show you how dedicated he was to his cause.

These people did not live in a bubble. They walked and talked and breathed and ate among their contemporaries. Their lives were influenced by their pasts while they held their collective vision on the future. Knowing that doesn’t lessen them. In many ways it makes them greater.

Now, how we ended up here from there says more about us than either of them.

Merry Effing Christmas (explicit) by Miss Guy feat. Matt Katz-Bohen from Miss Guy on Vimeo.

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

December 10, 2015 by

No teachers were actually used in the making of this image.
No teachers were actually used in the making of this image.
I’m a big fan of the Internet. I use it every day for checking up on sports talk, looking up facts, conversing with friends, and all sorts of fun stuff. Essentially, to me, the Internet is a great public library. Something that rivals the legendary Library of Alexandria. But, unlike a traditional library, the Internet allows anyone to share their thoughts, hopes, dreams, and aspirations. That can be a good thing. Or it can be a nightmare. I’ve written before about various and sundry hoaxes that permeate the online ether. Most seemed self evident to me, I’m pretty sure there are no 19 year old Russian girls hot for my bod, but, based on the responses I got, it seems a lot of people needed the memo and were helped. In fact a young lady who works in a retirement village printed it out and posted it in the lounge where they have communal wi-fi. She said it was a great help to the residents. That makes me feel a little better about myself. But there are still stories flopping out of my monitor on a regular basis that, even with the most rudimentary fact checking, are easy to disprove. Today I’m going to tackle a few of those.

First off, and this one at least comes with the benefit of being well meaning, Muslims did not write the King James Bible. Certainly there were Muslim scribes in the King James court, and some of them probably did the grunt work when it came time to memorialize the translations, but the actual authorship of the bible is well documented. Fifty-four scholars were tasked with coming up with a complete, and non-annotated, version of the Old and New Testaments that would be devoid of any political commentary (which was common at the time). Forty-seven of them accepted.

Translation Committees

  • First Westminster Company, translating from Genesis to 2 Kings:
Lancelot Andrewes, John Overall, Hadrian à Saravia, Richard Clarke, John Layfield, Robert Tighe, Francis Burleigh, Geoffrey King, Richard Thomson,William Bedwell;
  • First Cambridge Company, translated from 1 Chronicles to the Song of Solomon:
Edward Lively, John Richardson, Lawrence Chaderton, Francis Dillingham, Roger Andrewes, Thomas Harrison, Robert Spaulding, Andrew Bing;
  • First Oxford Company, translated from Isaiah to Malachi:
John Harding, John Rainolds (or Reynolds), Thomas Holland, Richard Kilby, Miles Smith, Richard Brett, Daniel Fairclough, William Thorne;
  • Second Oxford Company, translated the Gospels, Acts of the Apostles, and the Book of Revelation:
Thomas Ravis, George Abbot, Richard Eedes, Giles Tomson, Sir Henry Savile, John Peryn, Ralph Ravens, John Harmar, John Aglionby, Leonard Hutten;
  • Second Westminster Company, translated the Epistles:
William Barlow, John Spenser, Roger Fenton, Ralph Hutchinson, William Dakins, Michael Rabbet, Thomas Sanderson (a/k/a Archdeacon of Rochester);
  • Second Cambridge Company, translated the Apocrypha:
John Duport, William Branthwaite, Jeremiah Radcliffe, Samuel Ward, Andrew Downes, John Bois, Robert Ward, Thomas Bilson, Richard Bancroft.

That list was written in 1609 and, as noted, was well documented by numerous sources. The Holy Qu’Ran, the text for all Muslims, was used as source material since it held accurate translations from the Old and New Testaments. But it did not color the King James version. The authors also referred to every other biblical text, including the unabashedly Papist Geneva Bible, to make sure they didn’t miss anything. Even so, they did not author a bible that demanded an end to the monarchy either.

Next on our list is a new version of an old saw; NASA is hiding aliens from us. This time around it comes with the additional weight of having an Excel spreadsheet as proof. Since many people view Excel as magyk, you can see the problem. So let’s sort it out. A nice man named Gary McKinnon hacked into NASA’s database from February 2001 to March of 2002. He was looking for proof that there were aliens hidden in Area 51 or anything at all do to with alien contact. He didn’t find anything. What he did find, however, was a spreadsheet that listed the names and ranks of people who are helming an armada that is hovering above earth protecting us from …. well, something. The problem is the spreadsheet lists names that don’t exist, anywhere, and accounts for a trillion or so dollars worth of gear.

Anyone who’s paid any attention to how the current Congress treats NASA knows there are no trillions to spend.

Anyway, NASA tried to have Gary arrested and extradited to the U.S. He’s an English citizen. I’ll let Karl Thomas fill you in on how all that went.

Following his arrest in 2002, Mr McKinnon was subject to a lengthy and divisive legal quarrel concerning his extradition to the US, where prosecutors wanted him to stand trial for the data breach.

If convicted, he would have likely faced up to 60 years behind bars. However, in 2012, Theresa May, the UK’s home secretary, said that he would not be sent to the US, justifying this decision on human rights grounds.

She said at the time: : “Mr McKinnon is accused of serious crimes. But there is also no doubt that he is seriously ill. He has Asperger’s syndrome, and suffers from depressive illness.

The legal question before me is now whether the extent of that illness is sufficient to preclude extradition.

After careful consideration of all of the relevant material, I have concluded that Mr McKinnon’s extradition would give rise to such a high risk of him ending his life that a decision to extradite would be incompatible with Mr McKinnon’s human rights.”

People I know who’ve seen the spreadsheet in question all say that it’s identical to the ones used by the Department of Defense for its war games scenarios. In other words “What would we do if we were attacked by aliens, using existing technology.” That’s nowhere near the same as actually building it.

This next one is so easy to debunk I’m not going to waste much time on it. Did President Carter quarantine and/or deport all Iranians in 1979? No. Did he check student visas and deport anyone who was here illegally? Yes. We were in a state of war with Iran at the time and that is standard operating procedure. It had also been the law for well over a century then and still is now. Even so, opponents of the Ayatollah were given safe haven here as political refugees.

Not the same as what Trump proposed by any stretch of the imagination.

By the way, I’d like to add this little bon mot to the above.

When experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. – George Santayana

As a country we have treated, in some order, Chinese, Irish, Italian, Jewish, Polish, Mexican, Japanese, and Indian immigrants with varying degrees of disdain. We also didn’t do very well with the natives we found here. I think it’s high time we grew up and started acting like adults. Hiding under your bed and screaming “BOOGIE MAN” every time someone different than you arrives accomplishes nothing. Pointing guns at shadows doesn’t make you safer, it just makes you weak.

I don’t have the time or energy to deal with the crap that came out after the Paris attacks. Fortunately NBC has a well paid staff who did. Click here to kill nine common memes in one sitting.

Additionally, you can stop showing how smart you are by posting that old quote from Trump saying he would run as a Republican because Republicans are stupid. He never said it.

Trust me, the stuff he does say is bad enough, you don’t need to make shit up.

By the way, did Antonin Scalia really say “Blacks need slower schools?” Kind of. It was part of a very nuanced argument about the benefits of Affirmative Action which is currently in front of the Supreme Court.

Here’s the an edited version of the quote.

Scalia, who has previously opposed of affirmative action, claimed that helping minorities who don’t excel at high school get into top colleges “does not benefit African-Americans” because “they’re being pushed into schools that are too advanced for them.”

“Most of the black scientists in this country do not come from the most advanced schools,” Scalia said, referencing information from a friend-of-the-court or amicus curiae brief filed in connection with the case. “They come from lesser schools where they do not feel that they’re being pushed ahead in classes that are too fast for them.”

Scalia contended that minorities would benefit from attending “less advanced” or “slower track” schools, “where they do well,” which elicited murmurings in the courtroom.

Agree or disagree, he was clearly trying to offer real world solutions to a nagging problem. He was not saying black kids are stupid.

I could go on and on but I think this is a good start. A couple of pieces of advice, for anything to do with politics, hit up FactCheck.org. It doesn’t matter which political party says something, if it’s false they’ll call it out. Another good resource is Snopes.com. That’s a family run site that benefits from being able to admit what they don’t know. If the facts don’t tilt one way or the other they’ll mark the rumor “Unsure.”

Just FYI, the little girl asking for Christmas cards because her whole family was killed in a fire? That one’s true. You can get her address via the link.

Lies :: Astroglider :: Music Video from Astroglider on Vimeo.

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A Matter of Perspective

December 9, 2015 by

You can't hide on a round planet. Everything can come right back to you.
You can’t hide on a round planet. Everything can come right back to you.

The story I’m about to tell is only tangentially related to the rest of the blog, but it’s worth sharing given the atmosphere of hate that’s permeated the American media as of late. Almost every Friday I do a radio show on WBIG called The Big Wake Up Call. You can use the first link to stream live and the second to listen to recordings in case you miss it. Anyway, I got a call today from a nice man. He’d emailed me and asked if we could talk. He got my number simply because I sent it to him. He was hesitant to talk at first, I have that effect on people, but finally told me why he contacted me. About a year and a half ago a friend of mine got a job working on Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. During one episode I mentioned that, during a rare a break in production schedules, she and her wife were finally able to take their honeymoon. That’s it. That’s all I said. But to this man it was an earth shattering revelation. You see, he and his boyfriend at the time had just come out to their parents and they were not well received. They were told how society would shun them forever. And yet, on this silly little radio show I do, here were a couple of, annoyingly straight, dudes calmly talking about superheros and lesbians and being much more interested in the superheros. It hit them they were normal too. That their relationship was no big deal. Sure there were, and are, very important things people cared about, like whether or not Ben Affleck was going to be a good Batman, or whether Gal Gadot was going to honor the heritage of Wonder Woman. Yes to both, by the way. But on that list of very super really fucking important things, whether or not two people loved each other didn’t make the rankings. Inspired by this, I guess not everything needs to be a Facebook meme to inspire someone, they said “fuck it” and got married. They hope their families will see them for what they are; a happy, committed, couple. But, if not, it’s no longer their concern. They’ve staked a claim to their own lives and are going to do the best they can.

I’m leaving their names out since they still have family issues and it’s not my job to cause them grief. Even so, it’s nice to know that sometimes, once in a while, doing what I do doesn’t suck.

So let’s move on. This week, because only pretending to be a fascist wasn’t good enough any more, Donald Trump proposed the, gloriously unconstitutional, idea of exiling all Muslims who are currently abroad for any reason and then doing something – camps, ID badges, anything – to the rest until he and his cowardly minions felt safe.

Ignoring, for a moment, how this idea is even less possible than his Mexican wall, what would be the ramifications? Closest to home it would mean my buddies Akmed, Rahan & Dayan wouldn’t be having morning coffee with me any more. Since Trump is an idiot I also imagine my Coptic and Hindu friends would be rounded up and trucked off to God knows where. But even more broadly than that, what if his fever dream came true? A world without Muslims.

It would be a shitty planet, I can tell you that.

The nice people over at Islam Web were kind enough to share a brief overview of some of the contributions Muslims have provided our little planet.

Let us do a brief review of the contribution of Islam to civilization as we know it.

Trigonometry, Sine, Tangent, Co-Tangent

The Arabs developed these functions in trigonometry and Ibn Moosaa’s work Hisaab-Al Jab-Wal Muqaabala (The Calculation of Integration and Equation) presented 800 examples in the 8th century CE. His work was translated from Arabic into Latin and until the 16th century CE, it wasEurope’s main textbook on the subject.

Algebra and Geometry

Muhammad bin Moosaa Al-Khawaarizmi is considered to be one of the founders of Algebra. The word ‘Algorithm’ or ‘Algorizm’ is a corruption of his name or the name of the town Khwaarizm (Kheva), in what is now Uzbekistan, where he was born. He adopted the use of ‘cipher’ (zero), that was devised in India some centuries earlier, a numeral of fundamental importance, leading up to the so-called arithmetic of positions and the decimal system. The very word ‘zero’ is a derivative of the Arabic ‘sifr’ or ‘cipher’. His pioneering work on the system of numerals is well known as “Algorithm,” or “Algorizm.” In addition to introducing the Arabic numerals, he developed several arithmetical procedures, including operations on fractions.

Another great mathematician was Omar Khayyaam, who offered to the world geometric and algebraic solutions of the second degree. Naseeruddeen wrote the treatise on quadrilateral trigonometry, as well as plain and spherical geometry.

Physics and Chemistry

Kamaaluddeen examined the refraction of sunlight in raindrops and offered an explanation of the genesis of primary and secondary rainbows. The story of the invention of the pendulum and the presentation of a water clock to Emperor Charlemagne by Haaroon Ar-Rasheed is well known.

The great historian Gibbons wrote in his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Volume 5) that the science of chemistry owes its origin and improvements to the Muslims.

Science of Mechanics

The development of the science of mechanics in Islam is an act of genius. Moosaa bin Shaakir described one hundred pieces of mechanical equipment in his book of artifices. Other outstanding Muslim treatises included Al Kitaab Fi Ma`rifat Al-Hiya Al-Handasiyyah (The Book of the Knowledge of Ingenious Geometrical Contrivances) by Abul Fiaz bin Al Raz and Al Kitaab Meezanal-Hikmah (The Book of Balance and Wisdom) by Al-Khazini. He also did work on accurate weighing, and determination of the specific gravity of substances.

Camera Obscura

In the field of optics, Camera Obscura was invented by Ibn Haytham in 1038 CE.

Theory of Relativity

Qaadhi Abu Bakr had developed the theory of relativity in the 8th century CE in terms of time and space by means of mathematical equations and astrophysics. Imagine, Einstein was not even born in the Western world, who propounded the same theory of relativity much later in the 20thcentury CE.

Geography

As far as geography was concerned, Muslim scientists established that the world was round in the 9th century CE, and the first map of the globe was made during the Caliphate of Ma’moon.

Paper Making

This was one of the earliest skills attained by the Muslims. As early as the 8th century CE, high quality paper was being manufactured in Samarqand.Egypt was known to have its first paper mill in the year 900 CE. The earliest Arabic manuscript written on paper that has been discovered is theGhareeb Al Hadeeth by Abu ‘Ubayed, dated 837 CE. It can be seen inHolland preserved in the library at the University of Leyden.

Advances in Industry

Under Islamic rule, Spain was an industrial center. It was one of the wealthiest and most thickly populated of the European countries. Muslims were leading in weaving wool, producing silk, pottery, jewelry, leather and perfume industry. In the Middle Ages, world trade was commanded by Muslims and Baghdad, Bukhaara and Samarqand remained centers for world fairs until the 16th century CE. The Bayt Al-Hikmah at Cairocontained two million books, the library at Tripoli contained some three million, but this library was burned down by the Christians during the first Crusade.

 Miracles of the Quran

Let us consider the hundreds of scientific facts mentioned in the Holy Quran. For example, the fact that the earth was previously a part of the sun and after its separation, it became a habitable place for humankind, as mentioned in chapter 21, verse 30. That matter is made up of sub-atomic particles (chapter 10, verse 61). That the embryo in the mother’s womb in enclosed by three epithelial coverings (chapter 39, verse 6). That each human being has a unique fingerprint (chapter 75, verse 4) etc. There are thousands of other scientific facts in the Holy Quran.

Keep in mind the Holy Quran was written in 650 AD so some of its science is a hair off. However, Islam allows for science to correct itself. An Imam might have thought the world flat but, when proven that such a belief is fundamentally wrong, that Imam changed his beliefs.

As in Buddhism facts are facts and are not open to opinions. And all those accomplishments came about because of that fact.

Go ahead and read that list again and think about when Islam began to spread. When Europeans were trying to figure out how to grow stable crops, before the English language was invented, while ignorance of proper hygiene allowed a horrible plague to spread, Muslims were laying the bedrock for all the world’s scientific and mathematical knowledge.

Did they get some of that knowledge from the Greeks? Yes. The Romans and Chinese too. But they missed the whole “hexes and omens” culture so they didn’t fear any of it. They studied it, corrected it, added to it, and shared their results with everyone else.

Are there bad people in the world? Of course. There are bad people everywhere. I’ve already broken down what Daesh’s, a/k/a ISIS’, a/k/a ISIL’s, actual military threat is. It’s nowhere near what you think. All they can really do is cause fear.

Something the cowards seem very willing to let them do.

Look at it this way, we didn’t throw out all the accomplishments of Christianity, and lock all its adherents in camps, when the KKK claimed they were God’s chosen. Don’t let yourself be conned into thinking the violent assholes of the world are any worse, or any different, than the ones we grew here at home.

You’re better than that.

Playing For Change | "War/No More Trouble" – Song Around The World from Concord Music Group on Vimeo.

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