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Speaking of Kids

I didn't want to miss Princess Corsair II's budding music career so not only was I present for it, I taped it!

ABC and Twinkle Twinkle Little Star

Corsair Princess II Sings!

Hope I don't owe anyone any royalties.
posted by corsair the rational pirate at 10:41

Are There Really Fathers Like This?

OK, maybe there is something wrong with this ole Pirate, but I actually like, most of the time to spend time with the rest of the Pirate Clan. I work near home, so thta helps in that I can leave some days after the younglings have arisen from their nightly slumber, come home for lunch (work allowing) and can be here relatively early in the evening to take part in that most American of activities, arguing about dinner.

According to this article by Cameron Stacher, I appear to be rather at odds with a large percentage of "fathers" in this country:

In my home, I rarely eat dinner with my two children and wife more than twice a week. Because I commute 55 miles to Manhattan, I seldom return before 7:30 or 8 at night, which is simply too late for our nine-year-old and six-year-old to eat. Instead, my wife feeds them microwaved chicken nuggets, hot dogs, plain pasta and other staples from the children's food pyramid. Sometimes she will wait for me; more often I pick up something at Grand Central and eat on the train.

And this from a guy who in the paragraph before was detailing the ills of society for those who don't eat with their families:

A recent study at the Harvard Medical School, for example, concluded that the odds of being overweight were 15% lower among those who ate dinner with their family on "most days" or "every day" compared with those who ate with their family "never" or on "some days." The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University found that teens from families that almost never eat dinner together are 72% more likely to use illegal drugs, cigarettes and alcohol than the average teen and that those who eat dinner with their parents less than three times a week are four times more likely to smoke cigarettes, three times more likely to smoke marijuana and twice as likely to drink as those who eat dinner with their parents at least six times a week.

And what do these doers and shakers of society do when they get a chance to eat with the fruit of their loins:

Even on days when we are all together, our dinner table resembles a diner, with each family member ordering his own meal. My son will eat pasta with pesto, but not with red sauce, while his sister loves the latter but hates the former. She will eat hamburgers and chicken, while my son will only eat hot dogs. Neither likes cereal with milk, but my daughter adores milk and cereal (just not together). My son can't stand either. We accommodate their pickiness because we can and because it's easier than the consequences if we don't.

Now, I will be the first one to admit to giving in the to the kids on occasion, but not because "not together). My son can't stand either. We accommodate their pickiness because we can and because it's easier than the consequences if we don't." Who's the parent here? One does not "give in" to children only to stop hearing their whining. One gives in when you are picking your battles and giving them a win in something little makes it easier to hold the line on the big stuff. Like what they eat and when and with who. They can wear mismatched socks or play in the sprinkler in their clothes but they eat what is put in front of them, which happens to be the same thing that everyone else eats.

The saddest part may be this section:

In my absence from dinner, I am not alone. My evening train is packed with men and women shoveling burritos, couscous or pizza into their mouths, while firing off messages on their BlackBerries. Among my friends, I know few who sit down to eat with their children on the weekends, let alone the weekday. Instead they arrive just in time to plant a kiss on the moist forehead of a drowsy babe, then retire downstairs to the computer.

What do these people do on the weekend that they are so busy they can't spend time with their kids. Don't they know that time moves ever onward and they will never get another chance to hear their kids sing a song for the first time? Do they not want to experience the joy of hearing "that was the best dinner ever" after a successful meal? What is wrong with these people? Why did they procreate?

And really, who are the children in this relationship:

There is also another reason for the decline in shared mealtimes, one rarely spoken about: Parents don't want to eat with their children. Arlie Russell Hochschild noted in "The Time Bind" (1997) that as home becomes more like work, and work becomes more like home, there are fewer reasons to rush back in time for dinner. Most men say that, if given a choice between time or money, they would choose the former; in fact, they choose the latter. After all, who wants to deal with a six-year-old having a temper tantrum because there is green stuff on her pasta? Much easier to stay at the office, order in, drink a beer and trudge home when the kids are asleep. Even in families where both parents are at home, they often wait until the kids are in bed to eat. As one mother told me: "It's just not fun to eat with them."

WTF? Who the hell are these people? Did they just pop out a few kids so that they Nanny had something to do during the day? "It's just not fun to eat with them"?!? Who the hell said it was going to be "fun", you dumb bitch? These are you children, not the theater critic from the New York Times dining with you at Nobu's. It is your job to socialize, educate and humanize these little monsters so that they become useful members of society. They are not here for your "fun". And she gets it wrong anyway, kids are fun, if properly brought up.

I, again, weep for this society where people would rather be at work, eat on the train, and hide from their children's eating habits because they are such selfish bastards. Better they had not had the damn parasites in the first place, that would give them more time to lead fabulous, entertaining, uplifting, ultimately futile, empty, tragix, lonely lives.
posted by corsair the rational pirate at 09:58

I May Not Know Art, But I Know Pretentious Bloviating

As the most un-Philistine of all currently operating blog pirates just let me say first off that no one enjoys a good piece of art better than I do. Why, many of my best friends are of the artist persuasion and I have yet to kill or maim any of them.

That being said, let us hold our fire until we see the whites of the eyes of so-called "art critics". While a piece of art may or may not deserve to be dropped off a tall building, most art critics most assuredly do!

Case in point. It isn't online (except with a subscription) but today's Wall Street Journal has a review by David Littlejohn of the Art of Richard Tuttle at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Mr. Littlejohn states:

So Why haven't you heard of him? [...]

Mr. Tuttle has been more hospitably received in Europe than in his homeland.

And what, pray tell does Mr. Tuttle consider art?

Try to imagine a "typical" Richard Tuttle, and you can't. What emerges instead is a sea of images, from a three-inch piece of clothesline rope nailed to a wall, through near-invisible wires hanging in space, to sizable abstract constructions made of painted wood, wire, cloth, twigs, light bulbs, broken glass, Styrofoam, and bubble wrap. These will be surrounded by the artists daily drawing exercises, tiny curves or shapes or squiggles or zigzags in pencil or ink or watercolor drawn into the middle of sketchbook or notebook pages, the ruled lines and torn perforations often left in.

Most people on seeing this load of crap lying about the room and dangling from the ceiling would ask "when does the cleaning crew get here?" Mr. Tuttle, on the other hand is barely able to stop the man juice from spooging into his drawers:

The best way to respond to his work, I think, is to try and cultivate something like his own selfless, open, anti-intellectual stance, and then see what happens. Doing this, I found myself most powerfully affected by half a dozen series of similar drawings, in part because of they very multiplicity: One feels taken over by them, lifted out of thought into wordless contemplation.

What a load of hogwash! No wonder people think "artists" are a bunch of preening maroons. If this is the only introduction that most folks have to "art" I am surprised it has as many museums as it does.

More spooge:

I love his smaller junk collages, which float midway between painting and sculpture, but find it harder to develop an internal response to most of the larger ones...

"An internal response"?!? What kind of chrome dome talk is that? Why can't he say "I don't know if I like it" instead?

And one more example why this Tuttle clown is not better known:

Some of these works Mr. Tuttle remakes of each installation-notably the exquisite "wire pieces" he first conceived in 1972. Among his most essential works, these will disappear when he retires or dies since only he can recreate them for each show. He tries to vacate his intelligence and let his undirected hand draw the pencil line-straight, curved, zigzag, looping-asked for by the wall. He then duplicates this line with a fine piece of flexible florist's wire, attaching one or both ends of the wire to the ends of the drawn line. The wire then drops off the wall of it's own weight, creating an unwilled drawing in space. The drooping, quivering [quivering?!? ed.] wire then creates a third line by its shadow-a second "memory" of the original drawn line.

And if an electrician happened to be walking by he would tape that bad boy up lest it electrocute someone. What pretentious tripe. What a load of crap. Either it is a pretty picture, sculpture, bowl, or cloth or it ain't. Droopy shit hanging off the wall would get you a visit from the local building inspector in most places.

The only thing worse than a pretentious artist is a fawning, pretentious art critic.

Update: More pretentious blabberings. I snapped this from SFMOMA's website:



Uh? Looks like a pile of dirty laundry. And admitting that something "perhaps" symbolizes something? Doesn't that mean you don't really know what it means and that you are just guessing? Do the people who write this crap really believe it?
posted by corsair the rational pirate at 14:34

Not "Real" Muslims

There you go again, denying the obvious. Christians do it every time some "Father" diddles one of the choir boys or someone shoots up the congregation or kills a variety of people over many years, "he's not really a Christian". Despite the fact that the bad people always portray themselves as Christians or Muslims or bookworms or shoe fetishists. Whenever someone doesn't do the things we think they should be doing, we don't believe them (even though they may have gottne our approval for years acting in the way we thought they should act).

Recent proof:

Few had answers. Most said such concerns were best left to the police and to prayers. But one explanation was very hard to accept.

"It's impossible that Muslims would kill people. Even if people say they are doing it in the name of Islam," said Magni Hosni, 26, a waiter at Hadota coffee shop in the Old Market, where one of Friday's bombings occurred.

It is not that Islamonazis haven't been blowing themselves and others for the greater glory of Allah and Mohammed up for years. In this case, it couldn't have been a "good Muslim".

Just shut up and look around you. Islam is a dangerous cult that "good" Muslims have no problem in using to justify their deranged beliefs.
posted by corsair the rational pirate at 08:39

Proof Positive!

Google has tried to hide it, but they can't keep the truth down.

First they put up a pic of the moon with pointers to where the "moon" landings supposedly happened:



You can then zoom in a little to see some "details:"



But, as you note, this is not the most zoomed. Once you move the little slider to the biggest zoom possible, you find out the truth!



The moon is made of cheese!
posted by corsair the rational pirate at 21:28

Now That is Cool

Eggs. Toast. All in one convenient package. I know I want one:


posted by corsair the rational pirate at 15:08

Musta Been a Bunch of Atheists

Lightning strikes family reunion

But what is really great is this quote:

The bolt hit a tree near a home Saturday evening, causing as many as 30 people to feel a jolt, said Andy Coon, who attended the party at his grandmother's farm about 70 miles north of Pittsburgh.

"Everyone was in shock for what it seemed like a long time, but it was within seconds that we were running around helping people," Coon said. "A lot of us were on our knees, praying."

Everyone was in shock, indeed. But now we know they weren't atheists because atheists wouldn't have the stupidity to say such idiotic things as this:

"They say lightning is rare, but this is very rare for lightning to come down on so many people and not kill anybody," said Larry Bell, whose mother owned the farm. "God was showing his strength."

OK, a couple of things. First, who said lightening was rare? I see that shit almost every day in the summer where I live and yet no group of 30 Satanists ever get hit by lightening.

And second, "God was showing his strength"? Why, by not killing y'all? Or by overshooting you with the lightening bolt? I think he means that God saved them all from being electrocuted by Zeus's war bolt but wasn't quite strong enough to deflect the whole thing. That is why the 12-year old now is in the hospital with cranial swelling.

Just shut up. You apparently (there is that word again) had a few too many volts through the frontal lobe.
posted by corsair the rational pirate at 12:17

Damn, This Lady Nails It

Last week some asshat from CAIR wrote in the SF Chronicle that Islam wasn't a religion of terrorists (implicitly saying that it was since he had to actually come out and deny what everyone is thinking). Since this was the SF Chron, I assumed he would get rousing support from the Hate America First™ crowd and blame everything on the US and it's support for Israel.

Turns out I was wrong for once:

Editor -- It is no surprise that William Youmans, a media relations manager at the Council of American-Islamic Relations, is trying to put a spin on the horrific attacks in London. He doesn't believe that holding Islam and Muslims accountable for the acts of an extreme fringe is fair.

Every single Islamic terrorist insists that his work is done in the name of his religion and is a response to perceived "insults" to Islam. If the terrorists say so, why are we trying to make believe that Islam has nothing to do with it?

Not only do all Islamist terrorists wrap their attacks in the banner of "true" Islam, but they say they would do it again. Anything in defense of Islam is permitted.

If mainstream and secular Muslims disapprove of such acts, they need to throw these fellows out of their mosques, shut down their brainwashing schools and quit sending them money. Then we can believe that these monsters do not represent Islam.

Until then, the jury is out.


LAINA FARHAT-HOLZMAN
Aptos (Santa Cruz County)

Laina nails it on the head. When every terrorists goes out with a abang and "Allah Akbar" on his lips while leaving quotes from the "holy" koran lying around his apartment, who am I to say that he wasn't an Islamic Terrorist who, apparently blew himself up after reading too much of that silly book.

Thank you Laina for making the obvious... obvious.

And just who is Laina? Well click the link above to see her bio and here is a few quotes from a recent column:

In the United States, religion is without compulsion (enforcement by the state), yet religion—even the most stupid versions—is seemingly alive and well in our culture. The Bible’s Book of Revelations has done more than enough damage to people who take such psychotic ramblings literally. How many times must “the end of days” come and go before we know it is hokum? Yet there seem to always be takers of this mindless stuff.

You go girl! She said "psychotic ramblings", hee hee hee.

Disgust with religious fanaticism, at least among the literate of Europe, gave rise to the “enlightenment,” a period in which enlightened kings permitted enlightened philosophers to openly discuss the growing chasm between reason and religion. This enlightenment traveled to the American colonies, and a group of men bound only by their private and highly personal religions established a state without religious compulsion. Not one of America’s Founding Fathers was an adherent of traditional religion. They attended church, but apparently only for the community solidarity, not the theology. Thomas Jefferson even went so far as to take apart his family bible and throw out all the “superstitious bits,” reassembling in the book only what seemed reasonable to him. (I don’t believe that the Book of Revelations remained in his slim volume.)

Damn, she's good.

Anyway, check her out.
posted by corsair the rational pirate at 12:01

Well, Duh!

Are newspaper writers stupider than regular folks or just more succinct?

Slaying Stuns Berkeley
Meleia Willis-Starbuck, a Dartmouth student home for the summer, was gunned down Sunday, apparently senselessly. Chronicle

Really? "Senselessly"?

I checked the antonyms of this word:

carefully, cautiously, considerately, sensibly

It is pretty clear that she was in fact killed "apparently senselessly". But, really, what else could you have written in that sentence. So why write it at all?

Don't be so stupid.
posted by corsair the rational pirate at 11:55

Bwahahahahaha!

Team America. Shit!



Puppet Fu. The funniest thing I think I ever saw.



Hey, look! It's an Arab! That's been through the blender!



"The next time you pull a stunt like that I'll drill two holes through your dick so that when you pee it shoots out in all different directions!"



Exploding Micheal Moore!



Ahhhh! Upside down Kim Jong IL!
posted by corsair the rational pirate at 20:59

Pray For Me

Not that it will do any good. And, according to this, it doesn't do anyone else any good either:

Praying for sick strangers does not improve their prospects of recovering, according to a large, carefully designed study that casts doubt on the widely held belief that being prayed for can help a person heal.

The study of more than 700 heart patients, one of the most ambitious attempts to test the medicinal power of prayer, showed that those who had people praying for them from a distance, and without their knowledge, were no less likely to suffer a major complication, end up back in the hospital or die.

Well, duh! Praying for someone you don't know to have god not inflict misery and pain on them (when he has already determined if and when it will happen) seems to me to be the height of folly.

Of course, the prayer-folks don't like these outcomes, so they move the goalposts:

While skeptics of prayer welcomed the results, other researchers questioned the findings, and proponents of prayer maintained that God's influence lies beyond the reach of scientific validation.

Shaaa. So if this study had intimated that prayer appears to work you wouldn't expect to see folks crowing about "science finding god" and "proof of the devine" and other such claptrap.

The study guy doesn't want to be burned at the stake so he has to say things like:

"I really don't want people to think we're dissing prayer," Krucoff said. "This study gives us a sense of where there might be therapeutic benefit that might be worth pursuing in future trials."

Of course you are "dissing" prayer. You are saying that it doesn't work. God already made up his mind and he is not going to be swayed by the illogical entreaties of a few misguided maroons.

The real disturbing fact of this story? They are using my tax dollars to research this shit:

Marilyn Schlitz of the Institute of Noetic Sciences in Petaluma, Calif., said the study showed the need for additional research. She is conducting a federally funded study testing the power of prayer to help wounds heal.

"The fact that the vast majority of people in this country make use of prayer or some type of compassionate intention really demands that we look at these phenomena with rigorous scientific perspective," she said.

And who, pray tell, is the Institute of Noetic Sciences?

• Explores the frontiers of consciousness


• Builds bridges between science and spirit


• Researches subtle energies and the powers of healing


• Inquires into the science of love, forgiveness, and gratitude


• Studies the effects of conscious and compassionate intention


• Seeks to understand the basis of prevailing worldviews


• Practices freedom of thought and freedom of spirit

Oh, so in otherwords a bunch of wooly headed, namby pambies sitting around sucking down my tax dollars and creating "studies" that do no such thing. Great.

Meanwhile I still don't have my flying car. If the government really sees the need to waste my money on something, why don't they contact the Institute of Flying Cars and work on that.
posted by corsair the rational pirate at 07:20

On This Quote That Everyone is Quoting

There was an article in the WaPo this morning with the following paragraph:

It included a Koran verse often cited by Muslims in condemning terrorism: "Whoever kills an innocent soul, it is as if he killed the whole of mankind."

That is nice and all, but the real quote goes something like this:

005.032
SHAKIR: For this reason did We prescribe to the children of Israel that whoever slays a soul, unless it be for manslaughter or for mischief in the land, it is as though he slew all men;

People seem to leave out the "unless it be for manslaughter or for mischief in the land" part all the time. Now, I am no lawyer or Quanic scholar, but it would seem to be to me that osmeone should make a list of things that come under the heading of "mischief in the land" so that those clueless ones of us would know when we are transgressing.

As it is, I am assuming that all those Islamobombers have seen that phrase, thought up some petty slight they can file under "mischief" and have gone on their blowy way to decapitate themselves (turns out that this is a direct result of holding a bomb to a chest when it goes off) and off a couple of us infidels.

Interestingly, when I went online to try and find out where that quote comes from, I put it in google and ran a search. One of the results was this:

May God's peace, mercy, and blessings be with all the victims of this tragedy, their families, and their loved ones.

"Whoever kills an innocent soul [...], it is as though he has killed all of humanity. And whoever saves an innocent soul, it is as though he has saved all of humanity" ( Qur'an 5:32).

This guy even tries to hide it! I'm sure that Mohammed Atta and his scurvy, pox ridden crew read that clause in the 5:32 and had no problem sleeping at night.

So much for "peaceful Islam".
posted by corsair the rational pirate at 13:43

Nicely Done Infantile Obsession!

A real well defined KLG™ belly button today:



And who, pray tell is Meena Lee?

Why, this cutie, of course:


posted by corsair the rational pirate at 21:53

So What?

I have nothing against diversity in work and life. Why, some of my best friends are diverse. There's that one fella and that other lady. Diversity is popping out all over the place around me.

That being said, I really don't think the world revolves around diversity to the extant that some people seem to believe. Take this article, for example:

The number of women making up the U.S. IT workforce fell 18% in eight years. Last year, women accounted for 32% of the IT workforce, down from a high of 41% in 1996, according to new research from the Information Technology Association of America, an industry trade group. During the same time, the percentage of women in the overall workforce was virtually unchanged, at roughly 46%.

In addition, most racial minorities remain significantly underrepresented in the IT workforce, according to the report, Untapped Talent: Diversity, Competition, And America's High-Tech Future.

Now, less females in my immediate vicinity is something that personally causes me grief but I really don't see the pain it is causing the economy or competitiveness. And that facts that my Latino and black brothers and sisters aren't availing themselves of the endless frustrations of working in the IT world similarly really isn't an issue.

But what of our competitiveness with the rest of the world, you ask? Without Jose and Clevon our ability to sell to minority communities in the US and those places where all those foreigners live will be impaired! These guys seem to think so:

The lack of diversity isn't good for the United States as it competes globally, ITAA president Harris Miller says in a statement. "America is competing in the global economy with one hand tied behind her back," he says. "With competitors like China, India, and Western Europe on our heels, we can ill afford to miss out on anyone with the right aptitude, skills, and motivation to succeed in technical fields."

OK, let's take a look at the list: China, India, and Western Europe. When I am competing against China, I don't expect to see a lot of Hispanics or African-Chinese in their workforce. I am willing to bet that their workforce is almost entirely Chinese (expect for a few white and Japanese factory managers). And in India? I could probably make the same argument substituting Indian for Chinese. Western Europe, with the exception of a few Pakistanis and Turks is going to be mostly white. So why does the US have to go out of its way to promote diversity when no one else does?

But old Mister Miller tells me that these societies are catching up with us despite their not being diverse. That argument seems to say that we should be having less diversity rather than more if we want to stay out front!

And what about the women:

The ITAA study attributes the falloff of women in the IT labor force to the fact that one out of every three women held administrative positions, jobs that have experienced cuts in recent years.

So the drop in the number of useless admin level jobs is supposed to be a bad thing? Were companies supposed to keep worthless admin positions just to keep Annie Admin off the unemployment line? I hope not. If these ladies want to be employed in IT, do IT work like the rest of us rabble!

Again, I have nothing against anyone working in IT or any other sector of the economy. But I know of no institutional barrier keeping all these "under represented" folks out of my office. If they want a stupid IT position, go to college, sit help desk, learn something usefull, put yourself forward, take some classes, set up a home LAN and be a geek like the rest of us!
posted by corsair the rational pirate at 13:01

Aw, Man, That is All Kinds of Messed Up!

Drag racers are good at going one direction really, really fast. Imagine the horror at the track when this happened:

Howard got off to a good start, but what happened next will have drag-racing people shaking their heads in disbelief for years to come. About halfway down the quarter-mile course, the nose of her dragster got airborne, lifted straight up into what is called a "blowover wheelstand," and while continuing to roar down the track standing on its tail, turned 180 degrees and came down with tremendous force, now facing the starting line. It is likely Howard was knocked unconscious.

Although the dragster was pointed toward the start line and the wheels were spinning in that direction, the tremendous momentum continued to send it backward, toward the finish line, which it passed, astonishingly, at 115 mph with a time of 6.633 seconds. This rearward travel finally ended about 1500 feet past the finish line, with Howard unconscious and the dragster's throttle still at full tilt. Then the rear wheels sent the dragster headed back toward the start line, careening off the spectator and tower lanes as it gained speed, and crossing the line where it had started the race just seconds earlier, at perhaps 250 mph.

But that is not the worst of it. Had this woman roared off into a lake or a bunch of barrels would be bad enough, but more was to happen:

Adding an element of tragic, numbing shock, Howard's husband, Paul, was watching all of this, helplessly, from the stands, while their son, Brian, 36, was in the back of their chase vehicle about 125 feet behind the start line. The dragster next plunged into the chase vehicle, killing mother and son instantly. The force of this bizarre collision sent the dragster and chase vehicle 225 feet through a rear burnout wall and into an open field and stream, according to a report posted on the Internet.

Dayum! Talk about your bad situations. Hate to sound snippy, but if someone invokes a kind and loving god in all this mess, the same should happen to them. There is nothing good about this story.
posted by corsair the rational pirate at 08:46

Must be the French

Pissed off from losing the 2012 Olympics.

Bomb Blasts in London

C'mon, you were thinking it too.


posted by corsair the rational pirate at 07:16

Chitty Chitty What?

The undermining of the Corsair Kids' modern sensibilities continues. Today they sat down and watched one of Corsair's childhood favorites: Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Stop that sniggering or I will have you tar and feathered!

What doesn't it have? Catchy tunes! Too cute kids! Crazy old coots! Benny Hill! Probably the creepiest villain to hit the big screen (take that Freddy and Darth and Frankenstein)! The Queen in her underwear!

Some pics:



A catchy dance dune with Dick Van Dyke and a bamboo pole.



A bunch of dusty old, near dead coots try to make a flying car.



The scaryiest man in movies, bar none. That whole creepy "free candy" thing visited my nightmares for years.

Check him out...



OK, there is just something too sexy about that green vest-like dress thing she has got going on. You can imagine what else visited me in my dreams when creepy dude wasn't trying to get me to eat "free candy".



Plus we have the queen prancing around in her unmentionables whilst the king tries to strangle, decapitate, spear, and drop her to her death. And this is a kid's movie?



Benny Hill versus the Candy Man! Coming to a theater near you.



Another view of Miss Green Dress Hottie. Rarrrr!

So there you have this week's attempt to instill a little class into my modern culturally addled kids.

Next week, to original Willy Wonka!
posted by corsair the rational pirate at 15:36

Needed: More Science Education

I was listening to the radio this morning when some lunkhead reporter (redundant, I know) said that tomorrow's comet impact probe will show scientists information about the beginning of life since the comet had been around since the beginning of the universe.

D'oh!
posted by corsair the rational pirate at 15:28

Fireworks!

In anticipation of the Fourth of July, I give you some of my firworks pictures!











Woohoo! Have a fun and safe Fourth, everyone!
posted by corsair the rational pirate at 15:24

Yeah, Right

Corsair the Reluctant Church Goer infiltrated the local god house again this weekend and learned all sorts of "facts" about the bible. We learned that it included 66 books (except for the Catholic version which has 77). We learned that "more than" 40 people wrote it (but not who they were). We learned that it was divenly inspired (not that god dropped it out of the sky fully formed). And we learned that though it is not a history textbook, it recalls more of history than "scholars" give it credit (see the Hittites).

We also learned that none of that nonsense can be proven and that it all has to be taken on "faith". The only way to "prove" its authenticity is to look at it and see the inherent "truth" of it and feel it in your heart as you read all about god's "love"

The preacherman all but admitted that it was all a load of hooey, but that he was willing to stake the lives of himself and his family on it being the "truth". Just because the book itself claims that the book is true is no reason to wake up early on Sunday morning and listen to preacherman talk for an hour. But those around me didn't seem to think that way.

He also admitted that the first guy who wrote the book in English was burned at the stake (thanks for that, Good Christians) and that despite everyone in the country owning up to three editions (including the King James which he denigrated several times), not many people read the damn thing anymore. Not surprising, I thought since most people don't read anything at all anymore and so why should they make an exception for this stuffy old book.

It was really rather entertaining listening to all the obfuscation, denial, and justification around a book based on the ravings of lunatics in some instances (see Revalations) and fancifull storytellings of preliterate shephards (see Genesis) in others cases.

As you can probably see, his arguments didn't sway me. Sorry, jtb.
posted by corsair the rational pirate at 14:09

Not that I Need Any Reassuring

Someone is trying to classify pirates. As Corsair is the pirate-iest pirate in the blogosphere, I don't really need anyone telling me what kind of pirate I am:

What kind of pirate am I? You decide!
You can also view a breakdown of results or put one of these on your own page!
Brought to you by Rum and Monkey

posted by corsair the rational pirate at 12:10