Barking Nonsequitur

The Decline of the Catholic Church in America.

2011-08-21T16:42:00.001-05:00

Perhaps no other organized crime syndicate on earth is more skillful at euphemism that the Catholic Church.

The Church has a problem: It (along with many other traditional syndicates), is failing to persuade people to hand over their hard earned cash. They have failed to keep up with the momentum of modern society and their tired, worn out message just isn't having any impact on the younger generation. Those who do still adhere are having to hang onto the few scraps of the storybook catechism that can still be spun into fools gold.

Witness ye, the gigantic mental back flips that the Church performs when trying to address the problem of having to close up shop and retreat into smaller cells while trying to compete in the today's changing landscape in the game of fleecing an ever shrinking population of churchgoers. Today, it is far more popular to jettison traditional brick and mortar religion and instead call ones-self "Spiritual". If anything, it's a lot cheaper.

All over the country, Catholic parishes have seen a decline in attendance and support from parishioners. The actual numbers are difficult to extract, since the church claims they are growing all the time. Growing in what respect may be the issue here.

The way the scam works is this:

Each Parish campus has an indoctrination hall (church building), living quarters for the perpetrators (rectory and/or convent) and a brainwashing center for children (parochial school). There is one campus established in every neighborhood in the city that operates TAX FREE so that everyone in the community is shouldering the property tax burden of these costly facilities whether they are being directly victimized by them or not.

The parish is in the business of exploiting families. It is important to encourage members to take on high amounts of responsibility and the burden of offspring so that the Church can exercise maximum influence on the family unit for profit.

Once they have lured a fertile, married couple onto the membership rolls, they are then psychologically assaulted into attending indoctrination sessions on a weekly basis and paying 10% of their income to do so. They are also pressured into having as many offspring as possible and sending them to the brain washing center.

The "school" is expensive (see my other post about parochial schools) but if the family is an "active and contributing" member of the parish, they get a discount on brain washing for the kids. Often, the victims are members by default since they were raised in this environment and are unaware of what life would be like without a giant tick sucking at their neck.

When there aren't enough marks available in the community to make a profit to run the parish, the operation has to be closed or share services with the one next door.

So many parishes have failed to profit in today's market, that the Vatican has ordered severe cut backs to their operations in the US since it is no longer a "growth" market. Last year,the local archdiocese sent a notice to all the parishes in the twin cities outlining the steps that will be taken to streamline the operation and stop the hemorrhaging of the holy coffers.

Last fall, they issued a 31 page report complete with euphemisms, redundancy and cryptic verbage, that attempted to outline the fate of all the parishes in the Tri-county area. However, I have pared it down to one page that lists the Twin Cities area parishes and removed the confusing descriptions and misleading commentary.

Minneapolis:

Churches having to share recources: (Vatican euphemism: Cluster)

All Saints share with St. Boniface.

Holy Name share with St. Leonard Port Maurice.

St. Boniface share with All Saints.

St. Leonard of Port Maurice share with Holy Name.

Churches being closed. (Vatican eupemism: Merge)

St. Austin (consolidated with St. Bridget)

Visitation (consolidated with Annunciation)

Holy Cross, St. Clement & St. Hedwig (consolidated with St. Anthony of Padua)

Surviving churches. (Vatican Euphemism: No Structural Change)

Ascension, Basilica of Saint Mary, Christ the King, Holy Rosary, Incarnation, Our Lady of Lourdes, Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Our Lady of Peace, Our Lady of Victory, St. Albert the Great, St. Anne/St. Joseph Hien,

St. Cyril and Methodius, St. Frances Cabrini, St. Helena, St. Joan of Arc, St. Lawrence, St. Olaf, St. Philip, St. Stephen,

St. Thomas the Apostle, Comunidad Sagrado Corazón de Jesús, - TBD, The Church of Gichitwaa Kateri – TBD.

Saint Paul:

Churches having to share resources.

Holy Childhood share with St. Adalbert, St. Columba, Holy Childhood and Maternity of the Blessed Virgin.

St. Casimir share with St. Patrick.

St. James share with St. Stanislaus.

St. Michael share with St. Mathew and Our Lady of Guadalupe.

St. Pascal Baylon, Saint Paul – share with Blessed Sacrament.

Churches being closed. (Vatican euphemism: Merge)

St. Andrew church and school (consolidating with Maternity of the Blessed Virgin.)

St. Francis de Sales church and school (consolidating with St. James -renamed St. Francis de Sales/St James).

St. John church and school (consolidating with St. Pascal Baylon).

St. Thomas the Apostle church and school (consolidating with Blessed Sacrament)

St. Vincent de Paul (consolidating with Cathedral of Saint Paul.)

Surviving churches.

Assumption, Holy Spirit, Nativity of Our Lord, Sacred Heart, Lumen Christi Catholic Community

St. Agnes, St. Andrew Kim, St. Bernard, St. Cecilia, St. Katharine Drexel Catholic Community, Ramsey - TBD

St. Louis King of France, St. Mark, St. Mary, Peter Claver, St. Thomas More.

In all, 21 church operations will be closed, but this condensed list shows 8 in Minneapolis and St. Paul marked for closure.

The Archdiocese claims this is not about money or buildings, but about "investing in the future". That's par for the course for the church - deny the obvious and replace it with something obtuse and meaningless. They are masters at distraction.

One would hope that these buildings, once no longer in use for the purposes of superstitious ritual, will be subject to Taxation as they all should be.

Jammin to the "call to prayer"

2010-03-11T00:01:00.001-06:00

Mobile Blocker is a suitcase device that jams cell phones.

"These extraordinary technological devices were originally created,

designed and perfected for the King of Jordon because he was upset

about the disruption and disturbances caused by mobile phones at

mosques during prayer. The MobileBlockers are now used silently

and safely in Mosques all over the world."

I wonder if there is room in there for caesium-137 ?

The Frisbee: Military Death Toy.

2010-02-14T12:00:00.000-06:00

The Frisbee is popular around the world as an apparent simple recreational toy for young people. However, few people are aware the the "Frisbee" was actually a highly sophisticated aerospace product developed by DARPA code named "FB2300A" with back funding in the 1960's as a high tech development on the "Boomerang" concept and were promising due to their remarkable planar stability circuitry. Millions of them were accidentally produced lacking the "return to user" algorithms which made them useless in the combat theater. Fred Morrison of "Whammo"bought up the government surplus units for pennies on the dollar, painted them bright colors and successfully marketed them to teenagers.

Today the surplus FB2300As are also used in the wheels of Segways.

Christians use smoking and porn to proselytize.

2010-02-11T23:06:00.003-06:00

Here is what I found in my grocery bag after a some brief shopping.

I have always been loathe to see ads for this cheesy plug for christian fundamentalism and I wasn't very thrilled to get this steaming little pile of crap after visiting an upscale suburban store. But I could scarcely
believe m eyes seeing the infamous R.J. Reynolds trademarked mascot portrayed on an ad for wholesome Fundi family entertainment.

This is the image (sans the cigarette hanging out of the butt hole) that was the basis for a highly controversial cigarette advertising campaign shamelessly targeted towards young adults throughout the 1990's. R. J. R. was sued, settled out of court and dropped Joe the Camel. There is plenty of propaganda out on the net typed up by shills for the cigarette manufacturer that play down the carefully crafted subliminal sexual features that were worked into the Joe camel image. It is very likely that the R.J.R. advertising folks spent a great deal of money and time adding just enough sensuality into the artwork so as to be culpably deniable.

Could it be that some clueless Fudie typed in "cool" and "camel" and got all excited thinking this would finally make being a Fundi cool enough to get young people to get down on their hands and knees and bark like doggies in a revival meeting?

One website loosely based on psychology sums it up well:

Portrayals by cigarette advertisements

Joe Camel (cartoon character aimed at young people.
Joe's face has features of a scrotum or other private parts
and provides subliminal sex appeal

Lets look at some details of the image - these suggestive features are not lost on any one, and are employed through a classic technique that hides the detailed messages by presenting one with a broader picture that draws the attention - not unlike the optical illusion artwork or even a credit card statement. The features in the artwork skillfully bring together the prime elements of sexual arousal for a human being.

In Joe's nose and upper lip are features that suggest a penis and scrotum as well as buttocks. Look closely and you can even see the "pubic hair" on the underside of Joe's ball sack. - er chin.

In Joe's mouth one can make out a possible belly button, an anus, clitoris and the whole feature suggests a vulva.

After being plastered everywhere in the 90's, the Joe Camel image rooted in our culture as identifiable with smoking and the subliminal imagery is a popular inside joke. This usage of a scandalous ad image tells us a lot about the people who promote their Tiger Beat brand of whats cool. The advertisers are like like 13 year olds who first decide to turn their ball caps backward. Joe is recklessly slapped onto a handbill - they don't even bother to change his name - in a desperate attempt to make something that was just cheesy, into cheese wiz. Anyone can see it for what it is - a naive ripoff unartfully screaming for attention -but what can one really expect from folks who never learned how to think for themselves.

Here is what a real camel looks like.

Atheists Guide to Theology, Part one.

2010-02-07T11:37:00.002-06:00

When the the early Christians assembled "The Bible" out of scraps of babble and apocryphal anecdotes, they felt the need to argue about it incessantly.

The human social framework is hierarchical in nature and when one Homo-Sapien rises to a position of influence, other potential alphas will summarily challenge him and if they are unsuccessful in their attempt at domination, they will split off to form their own hierarchical unit. However, they must create some reason to mask their true reason for doing so since plain ego is not an acceptable reason for committing hubris. Usually it will pivot upon some picayune aspect of the established credo and creating drama sufficient to evoke a schism so that the followers and their free labor and donations can transfer their zeal to align with that of the dissenter who then becomes know as the Heretic.

Such is the case with the hotly debated principle in the 5th century CE at a hootenanny grandly called "The First council of Ephesus" where the main subject of discussion centered around the mythological character of Jesus and whether he was a god, a human or both. This pointless argument generated a slew of fancy new words that people could write down as part of their dogma in establishing their respective turf in fairyland.

Under the heading of the subject "Christology" are such noble sounding doctrines such as Nestorianism and its challenger, Monophysiticism which breaks down further into Eutychianism and Apollinarianism.

Here we can see in the early christian hysteria and impressive beginning to an alphabet soup resulting in a profusion of conjuctive Syllabolism describing a confabulation of arbitrary and condictual Polyterminism.

Not to be outdone by the self-proclaimed divine leaders of early Christianity, the Rev. Barky conforms to the definitive doctrine of Nullachristology - or as Shakespeare averred;

Much ado about nothing.

Atheists and Charity

2010-01-27T17:26:00.000-06:00

Atheist groups should not act like church organizations. If you are a non-believer and feel the need to give to charity, need childcare, be chronically positive, follow an ego and be politically correct, join the Unitarians.

Charity has 2 inherent problems:

It's almost impossible to know what happens to your gift unless one has first hand knowledge.

In order to be sure you are helping someone, you need to know something about that person. Often the one who has their hand out is the person least ashamed of asking for help and that is usually the con artist. They know where and how to find donors. People in need are usually busy dealing with their problems to advertise them to the populace.

When you hand out money for charity, are you helping someone in the short term just to enabling their dependence on aid thereby hurting then in the long run? What if your $25 ends up in the hands of thieves or some pot bellied magistrate's pocket? This is a very common problem. I have never agreed with atheists engaging in charity as a group - there are plenty of ways to do that already.

Atheism is a philosophy and as long as the holy books say we are evil, the religious won't care how many bug-eyed toddlers we feed or how pleasant we behave.

Phreak out the Robocallers

2009-10-25T22:43:00.007-05:00

In 1957 a phenomenon was started by a whistling blind child later to be known as phreaking - a portmanteau of phone and freak. Basically, this has to do with hacking telecommunication systems.

The first time I ran into this was in college where a fellow student demonstrated how he was able to make free long distance phone calls by playing back selected tones into a pay phone receiver on operator assisted calls. Each tone signaled the insertion of a coin into the phone thus tricking the system into thinking he was paying for it.

Much of the traditional techniques used by phreaks have become obsolete and nowadays and phreaking has moved to the internet, practiced by descendants that call themselves "the 2600" - the frequency that the 7 year old Joe Engressia accidentally whistled into his receiver that resulted in ending a dialed phone recording.

Today there is still a way to use tones to hack the phone system that is useful to those who have had the misfortune to be the target of debt collection automated calling - or robocalls.

Simply record this tone as your message greeting and the computer dialing your number will flag it as no longer out of service. It really works.

Call to Scrap all Montana Traffic Fatality Markers

2009-09-27T15:37:00.012-05:00

As I blogged earlier, when traveling in Montana, you can see these little white metal crosses along the roadsides at the site where there has been a traffic fatality.

These so called roadside markers have been placed by the Montana American Legion since 1953 who explicitly state that they are NOT meant to be memorials, but that they are "safety" markers that call attention to a dangerous road condition.

Who are they trying to kid?

A white cross is universally recognized as a Christian symbol used as a memorial for the dead and it's no coincidence that they are treated as such by the public. The Legion knew this from the start but dishonestly represents them as a safety markers in order to dissipate reaction from political interests that may object. In a state that is 82% white christian, it doesn't take much to quash any dissent. Once you erect a "memorial" regardless of where it is, it can be very difficult to remove due to perceived sacrilege to the person it is attached to.

Roads used to be dangerous in places, but nearly all roadways now conform to strict safety standards that have been thoroughly researched. If there is any potential danger on a stretch of road, there are always big yellow signs that alert drivers of the problem. Is a little white cross really more effective than a big reflective sign that has a symbol and a warning like "Slippery when wet"? Road safety is effectively addressed by the Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) which was created in the United States by NHTSA (the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration) to provide an overall measure of highway safety, to help suggest solutions, and to help provide an objective basis to evaluate the effectiveness of motor vehicle safety standards and highway safety programs. These little crosses may sound like a "good idea" to some people but probably only from an emotional point of view. There is no data that suggests that they are effective in any way as a safety device. The reasoning put forth for placing them was completely arbitrary. Safety engineering is supported by statistics and not from perceived good intentions.

3. According to the NHTSA most highway accidents are not due to dangerous roads but to driver impairment. How is a little white cross supposed to keep people from drinking too much, texting while driving or getting better sleep?

4. Highways are for driving and doing so safely. Memorials to the dead belong in cemeteries - and if the victims families consider it so important to proclaim to the public where Uncle Joe drifted of the road perhaps they can petition the state so that they can be permitted to bury his body along the roadside where he died so that the safely message is even more meaningful.

As a safety device, these crosses are ill conceived and at the very least obsolete, but as an territorial marker they may be effective. The reality here is that the Montana American Legion has been exploiting the deaths of accident victims and their families in order to proselytize for the cause of Christian Dominionism whose aim has always been to preserve the state of Montana as a racial and religious enclave. The only thing these little "markers" accomplish is to signal to travelers: "All you colored folk, Atheists, Mexicans and Muslims can just keep on drivin". The only way you could make their message any clearer is if you set them all on fire - like the KKK likes to do.

These objects of propaganda should be made illegal, removed and scrapped.

The Catholic School Gambit

2009-09-25T00:37:00.009-05:00

I grew up in a family that was tethered to a Catholic parish. The 5 kids all went to parochial school, the whole family to church every Sunday, the boys were "servers" (the most dangerous job a boy can have) and my mother was always doing volunteer work at the church. If it weren't for her interest in art, she may never have had any other exposure to the world outside the parish community. At some point in my development, this began to bother me and by my sophomore year in high school, I decided to opt for a public education and to not go to church anymore. My parents wisely accepted this.

It so happens that there are two Catholic households across the street from my home that send their children to parochial school. As I have observed them for many years, I have noticed that their lives appear to be completely immersed in their Catholic world. I decided to investigate what these people have to commit to in order to maintain this protective bubble for their offspring which is essentially what my own parents were burdened with.

A google search shows the Worker Bee family mentioned in a local parish, so I went to the parish website the Church of St. Mark and the St. Marks School. Here is what I found.

Tuition at St. Marks School K-8:

Standard Rate: $4625/child.
Parish Rate: $3600/child.
Materials fee: $100/child
Technology Fee Gr 6-8: $200/child
Family registration fee: $200

These prices look fairly mainstream for a typical Catholic grade school. Of course we are in vited to experience the "St. Marks difference" which is kind of a crock because everything about any Catholic school is all about soul crushing sameness. The "difference" usually means that your little darlings won't have to share their school with poor minorities - especially the black children.

The "parish rate" applies to "each child who is a member of a registered, active parish family."

The requirements state that "after careful consideration, Saint Mark's Parish has determined that families qualify for the Parish Investment by meeting all of the following criteria:

Registered member at Saint Mark's Church
Attends Mass regularly
Volunteers time and talent in parish ministries or activities
Pledges/honors an annual stewardship commitment

Families who do not qualify for the Parish Investment pay the Standard Tuition Rate."

Meeting these criteria means that the family:

1. Tithes to the minimum 10% of their annual gross income.
2. Attends weekly brain washing sessions.
3. Proselytize.
4. Work for the Vatican syndicate for free.

Let's look at the syndicate burden for the worker bee family.

Say the drone makes $50K a year at the grist mill and his queen makes $15K part time at repetitive task industries. Together they take home $65K/year. They have three of Gods little larvae. They already pay taxes for perfectly good public schools but they won't have any of that.

Extortion money to the Vatican Syndicate (Tithing): $6500
Family registration education fee: $200
Tuition x 3 parish rate: $10,800
Material Fees x 3: $300
Technology fee x 2: $200

Total Catholic financial burden for this famblie: $18,000/year.

That's 1/3 of their gross income and probably 1/2 of their take home pay! Since the breeders are completely committed to raising their brood and working free for the Vatican syndicate, they have no time or opportunity to have experiences and meet people outside the organization. They may never realize that they are being exploited and their kids may not either. They will probably be doomed to follow the same path never discovering some of their hidden talents or uncovering the wealth of mysteries of life because the syndicate has already programmed them to be who they are and their parents saw to it that nothing interfered with this process.

Being a Catholic, like all religions, is like carrying a parasite. You don't really need it, but since it's always been there, you assume it belongs as a part of you. It drains away your energy but won't kill you. It limits and prevents you from making the most of yourself because someone else has told you who you should be. You are essentially a slave to this paradigm by virtue of a centuries old scam that has over time finely crafted effective methods of manipulating whole populations - and it's generational - you never stood a chance.

If one is fortunate enough to be endowed with the skeptical gene, they may break through the Vatican syndicate's imperial conditioning to begin a lifelong journey of deprogramming and discovering the valuable things they missed along the way. They may ultimately end up spending valuable time that would otherwise be spent dusting gaudy statuary, getting to know themselves better and living fuller, happier lives.

Survivors guide to buying Box Wine

2009-09-13T11:33:00.008-05:00

Recently I returned two boxes of Hardy's wine to the Liquor store because they went bad quickly or were bad when I opened them. Box wines usually seem to last for weeks after I break the seal, but this was the first time I have ever been met with bad wine - either from a bottle or a box.

At the store I asked about why this was happening. The sales person didn't seem to know, but he checked the remaining boxes on the shelf and they were all a year old. He removed them all. So I looked at all the other box wines in the store - most of them were around a year old and some had dust on them. Were they all bad then?

So I did some research on the internet and here is what I found.

First of all, it can be difficult to get real facts about wine - it is sold on the basis of snob appeal and there is a lot of disinformation out there put out by biased sources intent on preserving their markets. Wine is sold in a box or a bottle or a "Tetrapak".

The Bottle

The bottle can have a natural or plastic cork or a screw top. The screw top sounds like it is actually superior to a cork and a plastic cork may be better than a natural one. Although a natural cork is the least practical, it has immense snob appeal and many winerys won't change for fear of losing business or looking cheap. After all, Gallo has has a screw cap for
years. The biggest problem with corks is that the seal is vulnerable to being breached due to temperature and pressure changes during storage and shipping. Keeping oxygen out of the wine is critical since it starts breaking down rapidly once this happens. A properly sealed bottle maintains a hermetic seal that can prevent oxygen from reaching the wine almost indefinitely. Once opened, a bottle of wine will start to degrade and each time you pour a glass over succeeding days or a week will begin to taste more or less like vinegar.

The Box

The box is a plastic bladder housed in a cardboard box. The wine is aged before it is packaged. However, plastic is permeable to oxygen so once the wine is packaged, it slowly begins to decay letting minute amounts of oxygen through the plastic membrane over the preceding months it is stored. Therefore, it is important to purchase box wine as early as possible to ensure the freshest wine. Once you break the seal on the box, it is much less critical how quickly you drink it up because the plastic bladder shrinks with the wine content preventing any new air to be introduced into the product. If you bought a fresh box, it should stay that way for weeks after you open it unlike any bottle you pop open. Boxes are more economical to purchase because they weigh less and are cheaper to ship as well as allowing the consumer to purchase more bulk.

TIP: When it seems you have tapped your last glass from a box wine, remove the bag from the box and cut off a corner so you can pour out any remaining wine. Often there can be an extra glass full that is caught inside that won't come out of the spigot.

The Tetrapak

The Tetrapak is made out of paper and a waxy coating. You know this more commonly as a "juice box". The advantages over a glass bottle is that it is lighter, unbreakable and recyclable. This packaging is more common in Europe. Like the bottle, you must drink up. I haven't seen any of these at the store around here to date, but then in Minnesota, we are just waking up to the idea of buying our liquor in the grocery store.

Transportation and Storage

Once wine leaves the winery, it has to be transported and stored in a stable environment. Wine is alive and is very sensitive to changes and excesses in temperature, pressure and humidity. Heat can "cook" the wine, changes in temperature and pressure and humidity can break seals allowing oxygen through. Ultraviolet light can damage it as well.

If the wine from your local store has not been handled and stored properly, you are buying damaged goods. It may be a bit off and may be hard to tell or it can be noticeably bad. This is particularly true with the box wines since they may tend to be the cheaper varieties and may be transported by less experienced or conscientious haulers. Some box wines have a package date, but others have a "best before" date so you don't know really how old they are.

A Brief History of Some Crops

2009-09-07T09:44:00.009-05:00

Most people do not realize how much mankind has altered food crops since Neolithic Revolution and beyond when societies made their way from subsistence foraging and hunting to agriculture and pastoralism.

Corn

Selective breeding has altered corn, also known as Maize, from a spindly whip to a burgeoning cob. Corn has its origins in Mesoamerica about 6300 years ago or perhaps earlier. It did not reach Europe until the 16th century.

The Banana

A few years ago, Televangelist Ray Comfort offered up the modern banana as an example of how his god designed food for man's uses. Later he was somewhat humbled when biologists provided evidence of how man has selected the fruit to its present form.

Edible bananas originated in the Indo-Malaysian region reaching to northern Australia. They were known only by hearsay in the Mediterranean region in the 3rd Century B.C., and are believed to have been first carried to Europe in the 10th Century A.D. Early in the 16th Century, Portuguese mariners transported the plant from the West African coast to South America. The types found in cultivation in the Pacific have been traced to eastern Indonesia from where they spread to the Marquesas and by stages to Hawaii. To the left is a wild banana which is what our present day grocery store variety looked like thousands of years ago.

Wheat

Wheat seems to be the genesis of what we call the agricultural revolution and started out as a wild grass. It originated in the area known as the Fertile Crescent in Western Asia approximately 11,000 years ago. The cultivation of wheat began to spread beyond the Fertile Crescent and did not reach Europe unil about 5000 years ago. At right is an example of how the grains have been changed over the Millennia.

Apples

The center of diversity of the genus Malus is in eastern Turkey. The apple tree was perhaps the earliest tree to be cultivated,^[7] and its fruits have been improved through selection over thousands of years. Alexander the Great is credited with finding dwarfed apples in Asia Minor in 300 BCE; those he brought back to Macedonia might have been the progenitors of dwarfing root stocks. Winter apples, picked in late autumn and stored just above freezing, have been an important food in Asia and Europe for millennia, as well as in Argentina and in the United States since the arrival of Europeans.Apples were brought to North America with colonists in the 1600s, and the first apple orchard on the North American continent was said to be near Boston in 1625. In the 1900s, irrigation projects in Washington state began and allowed the development of the multi-billion dollar fruit industry, of which the apple is the leading species. Carbonized remains of apples have been found by archeologists in prehistoric lake dwellings in Switzerland, dating back to the Iron Age. There is also evidence to show that apples were eaten and preserved by slicing and sun drying during the Stone Age in Europe. The apple has a rich comtemporary history going back to greek and roman times, however I cannot seem to find much information about its origins and how it has changed. However, in future, scientist believe apples will look more like this:

Tomatoes

The tomato is native to South America. Genetic evidence shows that the progenitors of tomatoes were herbaceous green plants with small green fruit with a center of diversity in the highlands of Peru.^]Apparently there is no history that the tomato was cultivated or even eaten in Peru before the Spanish arrived. These early species diversified into the dozen or so species of tomato recognized today. One species, was transported to Mexico where it was grown and consumed by prehistoric humans. The exact date of domestication is not known. Evidence supports the theory that the first domesticated tomato was a little yellow fruit grown by the Aztecs of Central Mexico who called it xitomatl , meaning plump thing with a navel, and later called tomatl by other Mesoamerican peoples. Aztec writings mention tomatoes were prepared with peppers, corn and salt, likely to be the original salsa recipe.

Possibly, Spanish explorer Cortez may have been the first to transfer the small yellow tomato to Europe after he captured the Aztec city of Tenochtítlan, now Mexico City in 1521. Also Christopher Columbus, may have taken it to Europe, earlier in 1493. The earliest discussion of the tomato in European literature appeared in a herbal written in 1544 by Pietro Andrea Mattioli, an Italian physician and botanist, who named it pomo d’oro, golden apple.

Aztecs and other peoples in the region used the fruit in their cooking; it was being cultivated in southern Mexico and probably other areas by 500 BCE.it probably looked more like these small yellow cherry tomatoes.

As a new plant in the 1600's the tomato was believed to be poisonous in England and the colonies and was used for decoration, but this myth had largely passed by the 1700's. Yet some people still insist on believing this.

Cotton

Cotton comes from a living lamb attached by its navel to a short stem rooted in the earth. The stem, or stalk, on which the lamb is suspended above the ground is flexible enough to allow the animal to bend downward, and graze on the grasses within its reach. When all the grass within the length of its tether is eaten the stem withers and the lamb dies. This plant-lamb has bones, blood, and delicate flesh, and is a favorite food of wolves, though no other carnivorous animal will attack it. This wonderful plant which bares living lambs for its fruit, grows in the area of Tartary. Since no one knows who cultivated it or where it originated from, the only explanation must be that it was placed onto the earth by God to used by his children how they see fit. Except of course, one shall not lie with the plant lest he be smote.

Beans

2009-09-07T09:10:00.004-05:00

This is a bowl of runner beans we just extracted from their cases. They grow on vines and are actually kind of sweet. I learned that beans are originally from Peru, and some, like these and pintos, are toxic and can cause gastric upset so they must be soaked before cooking. We discovered that these turn green when they are cooked. They taste very good.

An Atheist visits Montana

2009-08-19T14:25:00.016-05:00

The Rev just came back from an unholy retreat undergone to escape banality and stuck-in-a-rutism. My travels led me, among other western destinations, to Montana. To the Rev, this is a state that spurs visions of armed get-off-a-my land mountain survivalists waiting for Armageddon against waves of black ghetto refugees armed with 38 specials marauding the country side looking to rape and steal television sets. Of course, Montana was also home to Ted Kaczynski the Unabomber up near Lincoln MT.

First of all, Montana is an eye-poppingly spectacular place. The western end has verdant mountain gorges, wildlife and terrain that makes for some great hiking and off-roading.

The thing to keep in mind about Montana is that it is overwhelmingly white and christian. That's 88% white non Latino and 82% christian with 18% nonreligious making any other faith less than 1%. Oddly that makes atheists possibly the second most common "affiliation" in the state! In fact throughout my travel through North Dakota and Montana I did not see one Black, Asian or Latino individual. Even the Wal-Marts are chock full of wholesome looking Caucasians!

I found myself after a long days drive making my way in to the Absaroka Mountains just north of Yellowstone and found a great national forest campground that was free and I was fortunate to enjoy it all to myself. However, the area was dotted with camp grounds, ranches and no less than 5 christian retreats. In fact driving along the gravel roads you could see one of the areas most natural fauna - christian teenagers in tie-die T-shirts branded with religious nomenclature walking listlessly along the roadsides.

Butte has "Our Lady of the Rockies" - an unbelievably tacky 90 foot tall Madonna statue perched upon a local mountain top overlooking the city that they promote as a "miracle" and an inspiration. Sections were apparently lifted into place with the help of a national guard helicopter. She looks homely and fat. It keeps the Jews out I suppose.

Somewhere western Montana I came upon a huge sign along the highway that said "Jesus is Lord in this Valley" - a somewhat creepy way to suggest that unless you are white and christian, keep on moving.

A chamber of commerce brochure for Big Timber has "You know you are in a small town when - you don't show up for church, they send you a get well card" - which makes me wonder what they do to you when you NEVER show up for church.

I think about the most bigoted thing I experienced was the result of The Montana American Legion White Cross Highway Fatality Marker Program. "The Montana Highway Commission... approved the program in 1953, with the blessing of governor of Montana, J. Hugo Aronson"... and the Montana American Legion to place white crosses at the site of every car accident victim on Montana highways.

This is billed as a "safety" program, but it seems more like a ruse to proselytize the christian faith by placing memorials along the roads thereby alienating non-christians and preserving the dominion of white christian supremacy and control in the state. This has been the legacy of the American Legion all along.

Larry Stroklund, the Montana American Legion White Cross Chairman, claims "In many cases a cluster of these white crosses has been the impetus to get a section or curve on a highway re-engineered and/or re-constructed. The white crosses are a very worthwhile program and save lives."

I wonder if he has any data on that claim? Surely, highway fatality data and "Drive Carefully" signs would be more effective than these so called "markers" that happen to look exactly like the christian symbol of faith. We have churches for practicing superstition, cemeteries for memorializing the dead and roads for traveling.

However, this tactic is one of the mainstays of the Christian Dominionist movement - in the attempt to establish their notion that the US is a christian country where those with their beliefs have more rights than others, they aim to place symbols of their faith in public places and claim freedom of speech or that they have another purpose or meaning.

Stroklund also states: "Due to a federal ruling, white crosses are not allowed along interstate highways." But they are - there are many of these crucifixes along interstate 94 making the Montana American Legion possibly guilty of violating federal law.

If you are ever traveling through Montana, I recommend that when you see one of these "markers", stop the car, go yank it out of the ground and chuck it into the tall grass or bushes. They actually come out pretty easily.

Overall, my time in Montana was a good one. The state was beautiful, clean and the folks were pretty friendly, and as long as no one noticed my "No Gods, No Masters" bumper sticker, they could plainly see that I am white and just assume that Jesus is my personal savior.

Idaho was similar to Montana.

Oregon, by the way, was really cool in almost all respects. So much so that I think I may focus my job search there from now on because they just moved my old job to Detroit and there is no way I am moving there.

The Demise of Cable, Satellite and Broadcast TV

2009-07-29T04:43:00.011-05:00

I have been paying for cable TV for like 8 years. A couple of years ago, we switched from Comcast to Dish Network mostly because Dish had a better way of surfing through the piles of stinking garbage flowing into my set top box. While Comcast was making surfing harder by shoving ads into the selection screen, dish was expanding it and allowing the viewer to create custom lists to surf with.

This helped immensely and we were happy - for a while. But then shows that we used to sit and watch with blank expressions as the drool fell out of our mouths became gradually irritating causing us to fidget in our womb chairs and swallow our saliva with gusto. The remote became something you could not place out of sight for a moment.

Then came the DVR. It was like heaven. Record the stuff you couldn't watch at 3:05 AM, skip through commercials. A Billy Mays ambush attack was practically a thing of the past. But after a while, we found that we could not even finish many of the meals of film that were served to us.

We had taken to downloading torrent movies and watching Youtube. Then one day I realized: I am now going through my customized channel list SEVERAL TIMES before settling on something banal enough to drool to and the red eye TCM and IFM films I used to record just weren't the gems in the rough they once were.

It was time to cut the umbilical.

I called Dish Network and canceled my service while investigating alternatives.
We spent the next 3 weeks watching the mostly tepid content that had accumulated on the DVR while ominous robot messages pleaded with us to RETURN OUR DVR IMMEDIATELY or we will do something to your credit card.

The DVR has just left the building.

So now its going to be Youtube, Netflix and what ever we find on the internet using our laptops to drive the 52" TV monitor. (it's not a "TV" anymore since it can't use the airwaves or cable anymore).

What is happening here?

Are we getting bored with life? Have we seen all the good movies and TV programs already? Perhaps, but I think more likely that cable TV had been deteriorating. News shows have turned to muck, the movies are forgettable and public programming is corporate soup for baby boomers souls. If the quality of program offerings have declined, so has the whole paradigm of media. The computer has spawned a population of folk that are used to hunting and gathering for content rather than choosing from the menu. Copyright laws and advertising don't work anymore and the amount of media in existence is staggering rendering any media unit insignificant and more difficult to sell. The computer has seized TV and is now eating its head off and I am using moistened towellettes instead of Viva to clean the drool from my keyboard.

Update1:

We watched our first streaming movie through my laptop with our free trial from Netfix - "Deliverance". There were a few jitters in the film and the picture quality ported to our 52" screen wasn't that great, but it was a good experience. No commercials, no surfing or editing.
We spent the rest of the time researching and discussing the film. Priceless.

Update2:

I just built a dedicated computer for entertainment. The Video is connected to a 52" big screen for movies and video while a smaller monitor serves as a standard computer interface. Audio is routed via optical link to an AV receiver for 5.1 sound. Now our remote is literally a wireless keyboard and a mouse.

add: Liketelevision, Hulu and ALLUC with new sites emerging all the time.

More Christian Patriot Propaganda

2009-07-07T10:03:00.010-05:00

Occasionally my sister e-mails me some absurd crap that gets sent to her in the form of the electronic chain letter. These e-mails are made up of old wives tales, photoshop hoaxes, urban legends and conspiracy phenomena. Some of the stuff she sends me is really interesting, but the ones she sends me that I dislike the most look like they had their start from a patriot movement subculture that emphasizes elements such as: The loss of blue collar jobs, racism, anti-immigrant, isolationism, conspiracy theory and christian nationalism. Note the very bad composition of these pages - multiple colors, fonts and false links. This is probably how the Bible got started. The icing on this cake is the extremely tacky crying eagle animated pic plastered on to the bottom of the page. These are a few samples of the never ending slew of truly stomach-turning old-fashioned American Huckersterism.

Hoax 1 - Alien Bar Codes!

Something good to know

Want to buy US made products? BUY USA by watching for "0" at the beginning of the number. We need every boost we can get!

This may be useful to know when grocery shopping, if it's a concern to you.

The whole world is afraid of China-made "black hearted goods".

Can you differentiate which one is made in Taiwan or China ?

If the first 3 digits of the barcode are 690, 691 or 692, the product is MADE IN CHINA.

471 is Made in Taiwan .

This is our right to know, but the government and related departments never educate the public, therefore we have to RESCUE ourselves.

Nowadays, Chinese businessmen know that consumers do not prefer products "MADE IN CHINA ", so they don't show from which country it is made.

However, you may now refer to the barcode, remember if the first 3 digits are:

690-692 … then it is MADE IN CHINA .
00 - 09 … USA & CANADA
30 - 37 … FRANCE
40 - 44 … GERMANY
47 ... Taiwan
49 … JAPAN
50 … UK
BUY USA by watching for "0" at the beginning of the number. We need every boost we can get!

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hoax 2 - Alien Customer Service Reps!

.......will try this method!!,

Try to remember this EVERY TIME you have to talk to a customer service representative and you cannot understand them.

I did not know that we could do this, but I sure am going to try it. Help bring jobs back to the U.S.A. Ask for an American!
************************************************************

How to save some American jobs and we can help!

Hi Everyone,

I want to share with you some great information that I found out purely by accident. I believe it can also save and create jobs in America while giving people better customer service.

So how many times have you called a companies service phone line and found that the rep. can barely speak English? Once with a major mortgage company it was so bad I demanded to speak with someone who spoke English. Right at that moment I broke the code, the secret password for customer service. Come to find out that every American company using overseas operators must transfer you to an American rep. by saying.......

"I want to speak to a representative in America ". (Don't take no for an answer on this)

This was confirmed by the American rep. that they must transfer you after that request. I've tried it on a half a dozen major companies including cable, bank, phone and mortgage companies. It works every time and I actually get my issues taken care of.

PLEASE FORWARD THIS SO THE EAGLE WILL REMAIN CRYING. THANK YOU!

If These haven't spoiled your breakfast, take a few TUMs and checkout this grotesque display of ignorance.

Spinning in His Grave

2009-06-29T19:37:00.003-05:00

Billy Mays was unquestionably the most obnoxious person to appear on television. He even beat out the screeching God warrior woman on Wife-Swap.

He was the king of the ultra cheesy annoying sideshow sales shtick.

I don't know how many times I was rocketed out of my chair in a frantic grab for the remote control while flailing wildly to find the MUTE button. He was like a howling torrent that conditioned me to shrink back in horror when ever I happened upon any of the products he assaulted me with from my own television.

I fully expected that this demon from a state fair hawking booth would somehow explode one day and they would find pieces of him all over a padded cell. Instead, it was his heart that apparently exploded.

I hope that they bury this man far away from the other headstones so that he doesn't wake the dead. The rest of us can now live in peace and we have much less to fear from watching our TV sets.

Of course, now there is the problem of the ShamWow guy.

The Big Picture on the Ethics of Abortion

2009-06-21T10:27:00.003-05:00

The abortion debate seems to be mired within a very narrow vista concerning human life and survival. From a religious standpoint it is akin to saying that more life is always better. But in reality, this is our undoing.

Most biologists agree that we are in a period of major species extinction. Half of all species on the planet may disappear in the next 100 years if things continue as they are. Whereas past extinctions have been the result of catastrophes, this one seems to be liked to the proliferation of humans on the planet.

Humans are profoundly disturbing ecosystems on a global scale that have developed independently for millions of years and interrupting their delicate cycles essentially halting key aspects of their ability to thrive. The more of us there are, the faster this happens.

Given this perspective on ethics, abortion is vital to the survival of humans as well as most every other species on the planet.

Millenium Ecosystem Assessment

Wisconsin: Home of the weird.

2009-06-09T20:02:00.012-05:00

I love Wisconsin.

I love it because it is the most surreal state in the country.

Wisconsin is home to an array of gruesome individuals and circumstances.

Jeffery Dahmer of Milwaukee, performed rape, murder, torture, dismemberment, necrophilia and cannibalism.

Ed Gein of Plainfield performed grave robbing, murder and human taxidermy.

Alan Bushey of Mauston was a cult leader that helped a follower hide a senior citizen's corpse on her toilet to collect social security.

Of course there are our friends the Neumanns from Weston who prayed their diabetic daughter to death.

Quirkiness runs amok in Wisconsin. Roadsideamerica.com has a wealth of very odd attractions that one can experience while driving around the state. The Dells are so popular that it seems the whole state wants to be in on the game by creating anything that will draw in some gawker and their pocket change.

Your own bedroom monolith.

Many have heard of "House on the Rock" near Spring Green - a surreal interpretation of Frank LLoyd Wright's legacy which is strange to be sure, but there is also "Rock in the House" in Fountain City where for $1 you can see an ordinary house that has a huge rock that crashed into the bedroom years ago.

In Sparta, 200 townspeople donated their time to create an attraction. But what's Sparta got that could possibly interest a minivan full of breeders and their sticky faced offspring? An astronaut and a bike trail - that's what. So the "Deke Slayton Memorial Space and Bicycle Museum was born !
You gotta give these folks a green star for their effort. The free boring old county museum is on the main level but 3 bucks gets you in to this paradise of rural desperation for tourist dollars.
Just be sure and tell them on your way out that it was freaking amazing and you will have made another angel in heaven smile.

Make your own Romanian Porn movies in an Historic Motel.

The Usonian Inn is a Frank LLoyd Wright inspired Usonian motel in Spring Green. Hey, architecture isn't everyone's cup of tea, but thank God you can rent this room and have plenty of slightly disturbing non-genital to genital sex on this genuine leather Budapest mini couch just like an eastern block smut pro!
Frank LLoyd would be gasping for breath at the sight of this homage to moderne tastelessness gracing the front of the guestroom #2.

There is much, much more to see in Wisconsin -so plan your next road vacation and head out into the weird frontier. You might even make it back - or not.

PS : Be sure to bring along your own food. The only thing Wisconsin makes that is good to put in your mouth is beer.

UPDATE: Oscar Meyer Wienermobile crashes into home in Racine!

Leilanni Neumann Fails To Plead Insanity - Guilty of Homicide.

2009-05-24T17:52:00.012-05:00

Leilanni Neumann's trial didn't go the way she expected. She was found guilty yesterday of reckless homicide in the death of her daughter Kara. The verdict of course was no surprise to anyone except her devout family, apparently. After the verdict was read, she is seen praying with her step father who didn't seem to be able to keep his mouth shut in lieu of the gravity of the situation. Her husband Dale is to be tried in July and brash comments by her stepfather Brian Gordon of San Diego, Calif. seemed to galvanize the well understood impression that these folks are obsessed and dangerous. He stood with Neumann's mother, Evalani, and defended the family's reliance on prayer.

When asked about people who see Neumann's behavior as irrational, Gordon said, "It's called the power of God, and if they had a relationship with God they would understand that."

I see, everyone else's faith just doesn't cut the mustard or they must be Atheists.

Later he was reported to have said: "The bottom line is the Constitution reigns supreme and we have the right to worship our God as we see fit," Gordon said. Dale Neumann's attorney, Jay Kronenwetter, appeared visibly upset by the comments.

It may not matter, however, Dale Neumann seems unaware about about not appearing to be irrational. He is seen escorting his wife out of the courtroom still clutching his bible as if it were a leaking life preserver.

Sadly, the Neumanns live in their own fantasy world where the end times are nigh and excessive praying keeps the worry about the ordinary troubles of living at bay that most others seem to deal with effectively one way or another. However, in this respect, shooting heroin might have been a better addiction choice for them.

Psychologically speaking, they are pathologically obsessed with a ritualistic behavioral tick that they rely on for all their stresses. They might have had a more healthy type of OCD - like checking the oven, or cleaning the bathroom. But no, they just had to have a disease that caused them to kill their children. From a legal standpoint, they are guilty of reckless homicide but from psychological perspective, they are profoundly mentally ill.

The Neumanns should not be imprisoned (and it is likely they will not be) but they are desperately in need of therapy and should be prevented from having any contact with children. Perhaps cult deprogramming and or medication for delusional thoughts may be the model to follow in these types of cases, but doubtful there is any standard treatment to cure a patient of religion. Until the science of psychology and the legal system recognize religious zealotry as a mental illness, folks like the Neumanns will continue to go untreated and may go on to harm themselves and others and either get no punishment or get be found guilty with no substantial sentence.

Can't get enough of that ol' time religion

2009-05-18T21:06:00.009-05:00

Remember the Neumans? That's the Wisconsin couple I blogged about a couple of years ago when they prayed for their diabetic daughter to recover from diabetic shock - and then prayed again for her to rise from the dead after they let her suffer and die. They were seemingly under remote mind control by David Eells of "Unleavened Bread Ministries" an online ministry web church. that shuns medical doctors.

The Neumans are about to go to trial now and I noticed in this recent photo that Mr. Neuman is holding what looks to be a Bible - a talisman of what essentially got them into trouble in the first place. I doubt that this is helping their case.

They might be wise to switch to a Merk Manual or perhaps a biology text book.

Sunday Morning Reveries

2009-05-10T10:50:00.008-05:00

Ah, Sunday morning.

The breeders across the street are all at their places of mind control being re-indoctrinated and we get to sit on the porch with our coffee, breakfast burritos and laptops enjoying the stillness until they all return, freshly reprogrammed to continue their nesting activities as we watch with disgust and horror from across the street.

We are comforted by the thought that while the bulls and cows are busy licking the excrement from their broods behinds, we will be in the hot tub, sipping wine, eating Sushi and having the free will to do as we wish with our bodies.

While Kristine is ingratiating herself with Youtube installments of Charlie's Angels and contrasting the state of feminism from the '70's to today and realizing how far backed the Reagan era has pushed society, I am researching vintage Television programming memes.

In 1977, a special 3 part episode of "Happy Days" was aired that depicted the biker character "Fonzie" jumping over a confined shark while water skiing as a publicity stunt. This television event spurned the catch phrase "jumping the shark" in 1985 which is used to denote when a TV series has started to decline in popularity and quality. Often it marks a profound change in the direction of the program like adding a new child character, the main characters have a baby, preplacing the main character with another actor or consumating a love interest that kept the show alive. In the show M*A*S*H, it was when Corporal Klinger stopped cross dressing for example.

And so it came to pass that when The Brady Bunch TV show "jumped the shark" in 1974 with the introduction of the "Cousin Oliver" character, a new show emerged in 1977 to revive the near obsolete nuclear family in new hip, booty shakin' disco wrapper. All was not well in the planning stage as Eve Plumb who played Jan Brady, refused to do the show. She was substituted by Geri Reischl (often referred to as Fake Jan).

The Brady Bunch Hour was voted the 4th worst TV shows by TV guide. It was a lot like watching your High School pop group perform Disco hits with the help of Las Vegas producers.

This whole scandal has lived on. Geri Reischl has a website and fan base that is based almost entirely on her brief career as Fake Jan on this ill-conceived and short-lived TV show. There is a band called Fake Jan, a Simpsons episode parody of the event and it is a point of debate amongst Brady Bunch cultists.

Interestingly, while Ms. Reischl claims to be the spitting image of Eve Plumb, she actually looked more like my niece Jennifer - who doesn't look like Jan Brady.

CFI World Congress - Bethesda MD 2009

2009-04-14T14:05:00.010-05:00

This year, Kristine and I decided to attend the
Center for Inquiry World Congress in Bethesda MD.
The event was held at the Hyatt Bethesda Hotel,
April 9 - 12. Skeptics and freethinkers from all over the world were there to hear debate and addresses from some of the best minds today.

The Hyatt resembles the hotel from the Mel Brooks classic film High Anxiety. We stayed in a rather cramped room on the 5th floor. Bethesda is diverse, but disparate. All the white people are being waited on exclusively by black , Latino and Asian and largely immigrant service workers. Easter weekend was an unfortunate time however, the famblies were out in force and the capitol mall was overrun with people. I got very weary of hearing beeping maintenance vehicles, the dentist drill drone of childrens voices and incessant intercom announcements on the subway and airlines. It was good to get back home to some peace and quiet.

Being in a Sciency mood, we
decided to pay a visit to the National Academy of Sciences on the mall - the only building that wasn't inundated with famblies and whining sprogs. The aged security guard was quite clueless about the two public exhibits on display in the galleries, but we got in as visitors and were able to make our way to a "members board room" - a dark and creepy "inner sanctum" with pagan symbology painted above the wooden paneling. We made our escape before a guard came by to repel any heathen that may have infiltrated this sacred sphere of knowledge and power.

After some sight seeing we attended some lectures and hobnobbed. There was a great sense of relief throughout the conference having survived through 8 years of a fascist war on science. There was a sense of purpose at the prospect of having to make up for lost time for the environment, education, policy and anything that science has been left out of during the Bush regime.

Pictured here are some of the celebrities I was able to persuade to have their picture taken with the beautiful Kristine. Fortunately, there were some photo hungry Chinese Nationals about to do some shooting so I got into the picture as well. We see Kristine with Lawrence Krauss, Physicist. He served on Barack Obama's 2008 Presidential campaign science policy committee.

Next is the lovely Krisitine and yours truly posing with the Amazing James Randi, stage magician and scientific skeptic best known as a challenger of paranormal claims and pseudoscience. At 80+ he still has lots of stamina and a quick mind. A real ham and truly amazing.

Finally, diaphanous Kristine is shown with Paul Kurtz, best known for his prominent role in the United States skeptical community. Called the the father of secular humanism.

All things come to an end. And we made our way back home entirely with the assistance of public transportation both in DC and the Twin Cities. We arrived back in the cities with a renewed sense of the world around us. That there is something more than going to work everyday and paying bills and that all over the world, there are people concerned with the same things we ponder every day.

Gun Nut Parent Not Held Responsible For Killing Child.

2009-03-23T21:00:00.022-05:00

What happened?

On Saturday, October 25 2008 near Pelham, MA the Westfield Sportsman's Club held an Antique and Modern Firearms Show at the Eastern States Exposition.

8 year old Christopher Bizilj, of Ashford, Conn. accidentally shot himself in the head while firing a Micro Uzi at the gun show. This small automatic machine gun is used by body guards and is considered one of the most dangerous of weapons to fire for the user due to its short barrel and difficulty to handle. Other children were firing the same weapon earlier.

The show as organized by COPS Firearms & Training, which is owned by now former Pelham Police Chief Edward Fleury - an avid gun collector and show promoter. Fluery has pleaded not guilty after being charged with unintentional manslaughter in the accidental death of the 8-year-old. Two other men are charged for supplying the gun for the child to use.

Who was responsible for the child?
The father of the child, Dr. Charles Bizilj was standing directly behind the child apparently fumbling for his camera instead of making sure this child was safely handling the gun.

Amazingly, he has not been charged with causing the death of his child despite the fact that he brought Christopher to the gun show and allowed him to handle the gun. Dr. Bizilj is director of emergency medicine at Johnson Memorial Hospital, in Stafford Springs, Conn. Maybe if he was a customer service rep, maybe he would be in more trouble.

Police said Christopher was with a certified instructor, and they called the incident a "self-inflicted accidental shooting." Yet another source claims that the instructor was 15 years old and not certified. Several officers were reportedly at the show at the time of the incident apparently not enforcing the state s gun law .

Pelham officials have distanced themselves from the event saying that Fluery was not working for the city at he time.

The law.

Massachusetts law specifically prohibits furnishing a machine gun to any person under 18.
Massachusetts General Laws, Chapter 140, subsection 130 and provides that “whoever sells or furnishes any alien or any person under eighteen years of age a… machine gun or ammunition… shall be punished by a fine of not less than $1,000 nor more than $10,000, or by imprisonment in a state prison for not more than ten years or by imprisonment in a house of correction for not more than two and one-half years, or by both such fine and imprisonment.” (Emphasis added.)

Every one back away real slowly.

So, the police department and the child's father break a state law by placing this 8 year old in a very dangerous situation and the gun show promoter and his buddies take all the heat.

They claim that it was a freak accident and it was the kids fault.

Once again, there are platitudes arising from other parents claiming that the parent has suffered enough from the loss of his child when he is clearly responsible for his death and another angel of child abuse get it's wings.

Disturbing facts about guns and kids.

Here are some gun related statistics.

A gun in the home is 43 times more likely to shoot relatives than an intruder.

Every day, about 75 American children are shot. Most recover — 15 do not.
The majority of fatal accidents involving a firearm occur in the home.
Gunshot wounds are the single most common cause of death for women in the home, accounting for nearly half of all homicides and 42 percent of suicides.
An adolescent is twice as likely to commit suicide if a gun is kept in the home.
More teenage boys in America die from gunfire than from car accidents.
Gunshot wounds are now the leading cause of death for teenage boys in America (white, African-American, urban, and suburban).

I'm not exactly anti-gun, in fact I wouldn't mind doing some shooting myself. But let's be honest - guns are very dangerous. Owning one for protection doesn't make you safer unless you are highly likely to have to defend your life. Children and guns are a very bad combination and parents that encourage this are putting their kids in danger, but since they don't need to take responsibility that makes it OK.

Until the liability for parents placing guns into the hands of their children is taken seriously, this situation will not change.

La Leche League - Misogyny and Paternalism on Parade

2009-03-15T15:52:00.012-05:00

Today, a mother that says she is not breast feeding her baby is likely to get a cold shoulder from the other mothers at the local playground. It seems to be the hallmark of being a progressive and responsible parent that is doing all she can to give her child the best start in life. Smoking around a child may not be so much of a mortal sin as it is to give your baby the cursed milk bottle.

The pregnant seem to be hammered with nursing do and don'ts in the hope that they may get the right start on the road to achieving that coveted "Baby Einstien". Most seem to be generated by Dr. Willam Sears. But rarely, do these streams of propaganda focus on the true plight of a mother who chooses this method of nursing.

Breast feeding is not a trivial undertaking. It requires a half an hour of feeding, nine times a day, for six months. Then there is breast pumping that enters into the equation. This makes if very difficult for a woman to work or take care of a lot of other tasks that would otherwise be productive and time saving and maintain her relationship - for what? The fact is that there is very little evidence that breast feeding is better for the baby than other well applied methods. Medical research does not support the popular media regarding the benefits of breast feeding.

Feminism gone wrong

Child rearing inflicts a heavy burden on parents. Before the 70's the formula for the nuclear family was set. Dad had the job, Mom cared for the kids. Of course you had to have kids - it was normal and right and family planning was often a toss of the loaded dice. Birth control, household appliances, safe and legal abortion and even the nursing bottle have given women the gift of empowerment. A chance to escape an overbearing paternalism that has long made being female second to males in almost every facet of society. Feminists lauded the virtues of equality, independence and control of their own bodies.

But some of these same voices have taken an odd turn by proclaiming that breast feeding preserves their womanhood by maintaining that most "sacred bond" between mother and child.
This expression of returning to womanhood came initially from the Catholic based La Leche League influenced by the Christian family movement that ironically conned women into being "liberated" from a clinical and paternalistic medical establishment. And so, a full-bore breast feeding propaganda campaign was on and expanded into the women's health movement and a campaign against infant formula, lobbying and subsequent legislation and litigation.

This was really twisted because technology and medical science was what empowered women in the first place, now they were the enemy because they were trying to tell women what to do with their bodies?

The Catholic Church and other religious entities have consistently worked against womens rights and it is they that are paternalistic. Traditional rituals and practices increasingly have less effect in retaining the faithful so the church has been breaking into more populist avenues to spread their influence and in this case it was women's lib. The true aim of La Leche is the same as it has always been for the Church - to keep women at home and families emburdened and confused so they can extract resources from their obedient and compliant flock of sheeple.

Dissent and Sedition

2009-03-13T10:16:00.008-05:00

Now that republicans are behind the 8 ball, we hear many screaming about how liberals (or "Libtards" as they like to call people) are hypocrites because they are rejecting dissent focused on the Obama camp. But when some people are accusing Obama of causing our current financial crisis or failing to turn it around immediately when he has only been in office a couple of months, is that really dissent? No, that is sedition.

Dissent isn't about just speaking out against authority, it has to have a point and has to arise out of a genuine need in society. When opposing sides at a sporting event cat call each other and cry foul, this is nothing more than gamesmanship. That is what we see from the followers of Rush Limbaugh. The political landscape is nothing more than a playing field to them where the winner takes all, except that there are few if any rules and if you cannot win, then it's OK to burn down the stadium. Rush's Ditto-heads are no longer the emerging Fascist rabble of the past 8 years, but the anarchist 5th column of the next.

Child Neglect: Parental Code of Silence and Collusion

2009-03-09T19:02:00.008-05:00

Here is a new thing I have discovered: When it comes to child abuse, parents will shield each other from taking responsibility for their actions.

I was confronted with this disturbing phenomenon after reading a Washington Post article about Fatal Distraction - Kids, Cars and Hypothermia. Mar 8 , 2009. (retitled from "Is it a crime?")

The article chronicled the plight of several parents who had unintentionally killed their own children by forgetting them inside a hot automobile while too busy doing other things. The discussion was centered on whether it was a crime and if the parents should be charged. I was shocked to see how many parents were indignant about holding these people liable for their irresponsible behavior in the eyes of the law and that they would cite the parent's loss and regret as an acceptable reason to exercise a "hands off" approach to dealing with such a tragedy. Some mentioned that they themselves had forgotten their kids in their car and that they were afraid a tragedy such as this could happen to them.Yet, those who perform an act of negligence resulting in a child's death, often get off with no charges and are even left to possibly repeat the act.

Contrast this with people who are merely accused of sexually abusing a child. Often they are speedily whisked off to prison to be tortured and assassinated by inmates. If they are lucky they are branded as sex offenders for the rest of their lives and exposed in public. As menacing as people seem to consider sexual abuse is, it can not be compared to homicide - at least the child is alive has a good chance of living a quality life.

Similarly, as with familial sexual abuse, if the abuser is a parent or a relative, no one says a thing.

Freedom of Religious Bullying

2009-03-08T16:59:00.004-05:00

Last week, the court unanimously ruled that the 1st Amendment's free-speech protections didn't require Pleasant Grove City, Utah, to display tablets bearing the "Seven Aphorisms" of the Summum faith, among them "Nothing rests; everything moves; everything vibrates." Adherents believe that the aphorisms were provided by God to Moses on Mt. Sinai, just as the Ten Commandments were.

I have been reading loads of commentary from bible advocates gloating about how vindicated they are with this ruling. Fact is that this issue is still very muddy. How about some perspective though?

How many 10Com monuments does this country need to "recognize the important role of it's history.."? With thousands of 10Com plaques and monuments all over the country Summum doesn't get even one Aphorism?

Lets cut the crap here. These monuments are advertisements for Christianity. The people who make and defend them would rather have us live in a Christian Totalitarian Theocracy.

With an overwhelming influence in the country, Christianity has dominated and muscled its way onto our money, billboards, in our classrooms, inaugurations and public buildings and parks, yet claim victim status when anyone else wants a crumb of recognition in the public forum. They even have the government handing them tax dollars so they can proselytise to the poor. That's not freedom to practice, that's just bullying.

Christianity enjoys far more privilege with our government than it deserves and at the expense of all others. Jesus would have been ashamed at the state of his church- that is if he ever existed in the first place.

ELCA Jordan New life Hub Among Projects Funded by House.

2009-03-01T15:27:00.006-06:00

Among the projects, worth in aggregate more than $24 Million, is $190k for the Jordan New Life Hub in north Minneapolis.

Ellison's office noted that the Senate has yet to act on the appropriations bill.

The Jordan New Life Hub is located within the Jordan New Life Church and has already received funding from the government in the past. It is a faith based social program and seems to have little to no separation from the church itself. Public tax money is funding this program that appears to be engaging in proselytizing activity.

The Church ‘s Mission and Purpose.

"Our Mission:

As God's People, a Body of multi-cultural members, we're on a mission to serve Christ in the community and grow as a Spirit-filled congregation that accepts ALL people.

Our Purpose:

Jordan New Life Community Church lives to transform and empower individuals to do God's mission in North Minneapolis."

The Jordan New Life Hub description and purpose.

“The project is widely supported by collaborative partners including the Minneapolis Area Synod of the ELCA's "Making a World of Difference" initiative, Thrivent Financial for Lutherans, the Jordan Area Community Council, the Minneapolis Foundation, and Jordan New Life Community Church's mission partner congregations.”

“Purpose: The Jordan New Life Hub, a ministry outreach of Jordan New Life Community Church, collaborates with other organizations to transform and empower residents of North Minneapolis through training and mentoring in the skills needed to improve individual and family well being-- economically, physically and spiritually”

Bush administration policies on faith bases initiatives are still in effect. President Obama’s office has expressed a desire for greater scrutiny of these projects but until he gets around to putting the brakes on it it’s up to the people to make their voice heard about maintaining the separation of church and state. “Ministry Outreach” is proselytizing and that is establishment of religion and is unconstitutional.

This breaches the separation of church and state by allowing tax money to be spent on religious promotional activity. The Senate has yet to approve or offer a version of this funding bill. Until the Republican National Committee runs out of steam in preventing Al Franken from taking his seat in the Senate, it appears Amy Klobuchar is the only thing that stands in the way of your Tax money going to fund the Evangelical Lutheran Church.

I urge you to write or call Amy and request that funding for the Jordan New Life Hub in north Minneapolis be stricken from the Senate bill. In fact, it may be a good idea to suggest that this money be awarded to a secular organization that needs it like the Boys and Girls Clubs in North Minneapolis – they have seen their steadily budget cut as a result of government faith based awards.

The Darker side of Lactavism

2009-02-28T16:33:00.011-06:00

KETTERING, Ohio - Police in Ohio say a woman has been charged with child endangering after another motorist reported she was both breast-feeding a youngster and talking on a phone while driving.

Police in the Dayton suburb of Kettering say the caller told them he saw the woman Thursday.

Officer Michael Burke says authorities used a license plate number to track down the 39-year-old woman.

He said the woman told officers she wouldn't let her child go hungry. Burke said the legal concern is that she had a child in her lap while driving, not that she was breast-feeding in public.

He said the child was under 2 years old.

Police say the woman faces up to 180 days in jail and a $1,800 fine if convicted of the misdemeanor.

All over the country the Lactavists are pushing legislation to give special rights to new mothers. This has led to some women breast feeding and exposing themselves in many places that are inappropriate and without consideration for others. I hear breast feeding a child is a time consuming and daunting practice leaving little time to for a moomy to comb her totally unsexy, easy maintenance hairstyle or apply some lip balm, but things like this need to be considered BEFORE a woman decides to conceive, decides against getting an abortion or praying too hard for immaculate conception. But raising a child requires responsibility to the child and to others - as well as some sacrifice. and too many parents think that they can have the same lifestyle as when they were child free. Except NOW that they think they should have MORE rights than those that are not burdened with offspring. Breeders often become extremely defensive when they are criticized about their inconsiderate or outrageous behavior on behalf of their kids and will resort to nasty language and intimidation in order to get their way.

It's obvious to anyone that the Ohio woman was engaging in very dangerous behavior, yet all they can charge her with is not having the kid in a child car seat. There is no law against using the cell phone or nursing while driving or even a combination of the two. In fact, the officer makes it a point to say that they were not legally concerned about her nursing in public because he is probably afraid that he will be accused of harassing a nursing mother and fears the Nursing Nazis !

However, it is still possible to legally feed a person via the breast while the woman is driving.

In Ohio, a child under 7 must be strapped in a child restraint while the car is moving. This makes it difficult to legally suckle while driving. This could only be accomplished if a woman has extraordinarily long boobs and/or nipples so that they can somehow be brought to the lips of the child. Alternately, a breast pump could be used some kind of hose or straw, but the child would have to be capable of using the straw properly and may be impractical for this age range.

As of Oct. 7, 2009, there will still be no way you can charge a woman at the wheel that is breast feeding anyone over 7 years old as long as they are wearing a seat belt. This is entirely possible and probably happens everyday somewhere in Ohio. Moomies who refuse to wean their sproglings and adult fettishists need not fear the law when they go for a ride as long as they go for some bitty in a responsible manner.

Pillar of Fire, Basket of Fish

2009-02-24T14:35:00.002-06:00

A popular edict goes like this: The bigger they are, the harder they fall.

There is change happening. Some of it gradually, but this weekend I investigated two phenomena that chronicle the fall of 2 once hugely successful entities now in decline or a shadow of their former selves.

In 1864 Malin's of Bow in England began selling Fish and Chips wrapped in paper - arguable the first fast food of its kind. In 1969, Malin's was purchased and became Arthur Treacher's - named after a British character actor famous for playing "Jeeves in Shirley Temple movies. They grew to over 900 stores across the US. Then came the Cod War. The UK had a series of skirmishes with Iceland in the late '70s after couple of decades of batting over fishing rights. This sent cod prices swimming upward. As Arthur Treacher's switched to pollock, a less palatable catch, their sales sank and they shrank to a much smaller number of restaurants and ended up being owned by a holding company that paired them up with Pudgies Famous Chicken - chicken so famous that I have never heard of it.

The Roman Catholic Church was started in 1054 when the leaders of the Christian Church argued about who was in charge and what the rules were. Over the years they kept trying to make up but just couldn't do it. Over time they grew, however, and while there are no reliable figures on how many Catholics there are in the world, the Church says there are over 1 billion - a figure McDonalds surpassed in the 1980s. But since the Magisterium (a Latin term for "arrogant dictators that wear dresses") is in the business of pulling absurd statements out of their asses, I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and call it 120 Million.

But now, especially in the US, Catholicism is on a rapid decline. Ever since birth control allowed people to make choices about whether to burden themselves with ravenous growths that resemble themselves, religions that have one relied on the Genesis Principle - out populating your competition - have had a hard time guilting people into supplication. Even genuflecting has virtually gone out the stained glass window.

Catholic Schools which have long been tasked with brain washing docile children in order to generate new waves of sheeple are facing declining enrollment, a shortage of clergy and they can't afford to maintain the properties that they own FREE from taxation.

I have it on good authority that the Hosts served at Holy Communion aren't as tasty as they once were.

CCTV: Rev Barky is Watching

2009-02-21T21:43:00.018-06:00

Why CCTV / Surveillance?

Conventional alarm systems are very limited in securing the home. Usually, unintentional triggers result in a "cry wolf" state that render real alarm incidents ineffective. Even if the police are notified, they are unlikely to catch an intruder in the act. Video, however, does not lie. A properly set up system can act as a surrogate sentinel that captures an image of any threat that may befall your property.

I have always wanted to put in a surveillance system in my home. My house hasn't been robbed, but one day someone might try to. I'd say I live in a medium crime area but I have had a number of incidents that I wish I had had some video to catch the person. In the last 10 years my car has had things stolen from it a few times and once it was broken into back by the garage. Last year we had a flasher in the alley and one time someone stole my cell phone out of my garage while I was home. I am convinced a surveillance system will reveal some petty thief one of these days if not some burglar - hopefully, the presence of cameras will deter anyone who wants to steal something from my property. Aside from this, it is nice to be able to monitor my property from a remote location.

Choosing equipment.

I spent quite some time researching stuff that is on the market and shopping. Choosing the right gear has a lot to do with where you can purchase it as well. So finding some reputable dealers is important early on. I try not to buy anything from Manhattan Island. There appears to be a large number of crooked businesses owned by Hasidim selling electronics from there. I'm not sure why this is, but they always offer low ball prices on the shopping engines and are unscrupulous. I stay away from them.

There is a lot of affordable equipment coming out of China right now since the Chinese have been setting up an extensive of surveillance industry in their country. For them, it's 1984 but that means that loads of cheap security gear is flowing from their factories to other parts of the world. Frankly, I don't trust their electronics. The Chinese have very poor manufacturing quality control so anything you buy that is made in China has a high likelihood of being defective. I am sick of returning merchandise so NO Chinese crap for me. The Japanese still make the best quality consumer electronics.

After some planning and shopping around here is what I came up with. I bought all my gear from online retailers , Craigslist, Ebay and a local supplier called ACME electronics. I spent less than $1000 and now have a very powerful surveillance system.

The Gear

1 Sony SNT-V704 4 channel video network station. This unit is very powerful. It records video and audio from 4 cameras at once and can control movable cameras as well. It connects to the internet so I can control and monitor my cameras from anywhere in the world. It has lots of alarm inputs and outputs and everything is completely configurable through a built-in web server. It detects any change in the field of view from all cameras. The web interface is not the most user friendly however.

4 Igekami ICD-508 Day/Night color cameras. Choosing a camera is very difficult since there are so many to choose from. I figured high resolution color cameras with an auto iris would be the most useful. It's important that you get good images of what you are viewing - otherwise it's pointless to have a surveillance system. I found these cameras used but they are great quality and have digital signal processing to improve performance in low light. I didn't go the infrared lighting route. A well lit property with security lighting is a deterrent and makes for good imaging.

4 Pelco enclosures - these are heated aluminum enclosures that protect the outdoor cameras from the weather and extreme temperatures. The internal convection heater keeps the window free of frost. These are kind of big and ugly but they scream HEY, THERE'S A CAMERA IN HERE! I built my own mounts with electrical and pipe fittings. I cut these down from 14 to 10 inches so they would look better.

1 Honeywell 16 channel 24VAC, 200W power center. I will never power 16 cameras, but this has enough power to run a couple of heated enclosures.
The cameras and heaters all run off of 24VAC. Newer systems seem to be going to 12VDC. I use RG58 Siamese cable for my hookup. This is coaxial cable with power cable alongside. This is allows me to bring all connections to the same place for easy management.

The Panel.

With this type of system you need to mount everything to a panel and a space for it all. The security panel is just a hunk of plywood that you strap your equipment, wiring and power supplies to. A more costly install would have a rack system, but spare plywood and some tie-wraps are cheap and do the job.

A base of operations.

I converted a closet underneath the basement stairs into a home base of operations. This is where have my home server and my security panel. Since this is where all of the data will be stored it needs to be secure. If thieves get into your home, you want this door to be either unattractive, locked or both. Security data can also be sent by FTP to an external location.

Here are some video captures from the system. These are taken at dusk. When light is low, the cameras go black and white. However, during the day these will be in full color and details will be significantly better. Security lighting snaps on when movement is detected.

My surveillance systems took some time and effort to put together. There is a great deal of equipment to choose from and every install is different. Without an expert to install a professional system, it can require extensive experimentation and adjustment to be effective.

Harley Bikers are like Phlegm!

2009-02-15T12:25:00.006-06:00

What could be worse than be compared to Phlegm?
Perhaps being compared to excrement but the folks at Mucinex have a commercial on the air depicting a pack of Harley Bikers as blobs of Phlegm riding into town only to be stopped by a huge box of the product and being ejected from the town by a cyclone of excreta.

while Harleys and their worshipers are pariahs, ads like this show a reflection of a disdain by the general public for the noise, intimidation and nihilistic behavior that this fading subculture has saddled our society with for the last few decades.

So how tough does Michael Jackson look with his biker jacket in his "Thriller" video now?

The next time you get sick and have to clear your throat, you might say "I hocked up a biker".

Little Debbie Has Been Poisoned!

2009-01-18T18:53:00.016-06:00

The Great Peanut butter scare of 2009 has shaken the crap food industry to its foundations. One of the players in this debacle is McKee Foods Corporation - maker of "Little Debbie" brand of synthetic baked goods that children all over the country unfortunately cram into their little mouths every day.

Here is yet another example of POPCORN - Privately Owned Pious Company Organized by Religious Nuts.

This Tennessee, based redneck Adventist POPCORN with headquarters located at the base of the Appalachian mountains exhibits a narrow minded conservative protestant viewpoint that arrogantly thinks it is superior to other companies simply because it is "family" based. Like many privately held companies run exclusively by overbearing relatives, they operate more as a cult - deluding themselves that they are doing a favor for their employees when they are really treating them like personal possessions.

Here is an excerpt from their web site.

A Family-Owned Business

he McKee family started McKee Foods Corporation in 1934 when they bought a small, three-employee bakery in downtown Chattanooga. Their children became involved in the business at an early age, and eventually their two sons, Ellsworth and Jack, took leadership positions in the company. The sons, in turn, encouraged their children to begin work at the company while still in high school. Those who were interested in building a career at McKee Foods went on to broaden their experience in a variety of departments and roles, earned the appropriate degrees, and are now in leadership positions at the company.

From their parents, the third generation learned the satisfaction of a job well done, the responsibility they have to the employees and their families to maintain stability for the long-term, and a commitment to continue to keep the business family-owned.

Family-owned businesses are more likely to succeed than any other kind of company. Here are some of the reasons:

Stability of leadership

When there’s little chance the company is going to be bought out by a conglomerate, employees can feel more secure in their jobs.

Growth is very limited because without public funding we cannot take advantage of market opportunities like our competitors. Eventually, they will eat our shorts.

Consistency in ethics and values

If the founders were ethical people, ethics and values are passed to other generations as part of the family’s legacy. Publicly-traded businesses tend to value the bottom line. The family-owned business is more likely to value people.

Well, its the McKee version of ethics anyway. There are no diverse perspectives of shareholders to tell us how to do things except how God wants us to drive the company forward.

Consistent culture

With little movement at the top of the organization, the culture tends to remain stable.

There is little to no opportunity at our company for non-relatives. This will be the most boring and dull place you have ever worked (this is a good thing?)

They’re not strangers, they’re real people

In a family-owned business, the owners are seen as real people. It’s easier for employees to feel loyal to someone they know.

And conversely we know where you live, if you go to church, if you have kids or are married etc. Privacy is for evil doers.

Family members can multiply the CEO’s presence

The CEO is a busy person with a limited amount of time, but family members can represent the CEO in a way no non-family member can.

Our sons, daughters, nephews and cousins are constantly watching and judging your actions and statements and you will be judged according to our view of life - not your own.

Family members are more likely to pull together in tough times

The course of a business rarely runs smoothly. In tough times, family members are more likely to hang in there and make sacrifices; non-family leadership is more likely to look for employment elsewhere.

Hey, we McKees have a little empire going and where else would we work anyway? Who would hire Scoopy Joe or Aunt Lily the stone eater. We wouldn't know what to do working for folks that were not of our kinfolk

Family members may be better agents for change

Since they know each other well, family members can be intuitive about other family members so they can make speedier decisions. They’re not as likely to speak cautiously around the CEO, and they’re not worried about their own image or their opinions having a negative effect on their career path.

That's what is so great about a family dynasty - we keep everything to ourselves and don't have to rely on outsiders to make decisions since our little incestuous cult get our direction from the Lord. We do what ever daddy says.

Families have a higher sense of mission

Family-owned businesses tend to have higher ideals than do publicly-owned corporations. Owning a business is a tremendous responsibility, and the best family businesses feel responsible to their employees and to the community.

Jesus is coming again, and through our influence we have molded Collegedale into the kind of town worthy of good apocalyptic christians. Heathens are not welcome.

Seen enough?

Collegedale TN has 2 things: Southern Adventist University and McKee foods and it's 86% white.

They also sponsor NASCAR. (hey Bubbas, Honda is whipping your asses!)

Companies like this usually have some statement buried a few levels down that point toward being rooted in religious zealotry and McKee foods is no exception. Like Ergotron, ChickFilet, Willams Sound and American Harvest et al, McKees is cut from the same cloth. It took some digging, but I did find what I suspected based on the creepiness of the website.

The "About us" tab revealed some sidebars that were unnerving:

Guiding Values President's message Family of Companies

But, under a tab call "Company Statements" there is this little gem:

Family Statement

The McKee family acknowledges the providence of God in our continued success. We plan to remain privately owned, to continue our growth, and to give job security to those who work with us.

How would you like to work for these nightmares? Makes you wondr if they owned a horse named "Trigger".
This ascetic pair are probably dead but the company is run by what looks to be some kind of paste eating grand nephew.

Here are my comments to the company.

"You folks sound like a company out of the twilight zone. Very, very creepy.

Worst places I have ever worked were "family" owned ones because despite the fact that you think that you righteously care so much for your employees, it is on your terms only since you probably care little for anyone's values unless it is precisely your own. How may illegal immigrants do you employ and blackmail to convert to your religious views in lieu of a subsistence livelihood making the most disgusting baked goods on the planet?

If you actually cared at all about kids you would dedicate yourselves to selling something that was actually good for them instead of the cancer shingles you produce by the thousands every day like a poor-mans Hostess Cakes.

New slogan for Little Debbie products:

Little Debbie: The Vinyl siding of snack foods."

KcKees also makes Sunbelt, Heartland and Fieldstone Bakery brands which I will be avoiding from now on.

Wolf Hungry But Not So Well Hung.

2008-12-30T17:10:00.007-06:00

I'm in my 40's.

That means that I am a child of new new wave movement.

Yes, I liked Duran Duran.

One of their more popular songs was "Hungry like the Wolf". This was not such a great song, but it did break new ground because it actually had sound clips of a woman moaning with pleasure near the end of the tune.

Trouble is, now that all the late baby boomers are possibly consuming CDs and MP3's of all the music they remember fondly, it has to be sanitized because many of these former "wild childs" have kids now and GOD FORBID your teenager get a earful of a woman having an orgasm. Certainly, it wouldn't past Walmart muster. And that is who is responsible for neutering our music - Thank Walmart, because they sell most of the CDs now and if they object to your content you don't get onto the shelf regardless of your generation, culture or art.

I'm sure the Band didn't care for this but what can they do. They don't control their music.

And after attenuating the orgasm track down to practically nothing, they still have the gall to put a parental advisory on the label.

How lame.

Another reason why I will never step into a Walmart as long as I live.

Update:

I did a bit of digging and discovered that Walmart, the largest retailer of CD's, states that they will not sell any CDs with parental guidance stickers. Fact is, they offer it on their music downloads site. While Walmart apparently DOES censor music, but it begs the question - why didn't Duran Duran just leave the songs in tact when they have a sticker anyhow? I heard the cut off of Pandora. Is it Pandora doing the cutting? Mystery continues.

More at: Walmart censorship

Stovy Irony

2008-12-19T08:44:00.005-06:00

It is time for me to attack the kitchen. I have been planning this campaign for years. Like a Neocon, I have been drawing up careful plans and collecting materials and artifacts for the fateful day when I unleash shock and awe upon a food preparation facility that in 93 years has seen only one poor attempt at an upgrade in the 70's. Preliminary incursions began shortly after I moved in. I tore out the breakfast nook, knocked down the wall to the adjoining closet, ripped out the rusty sink. From a palace in Minneapolis, I confiscated a treasure trove of maple cabinetry. The invasion was well underway as I began to patch up holes and install electrical systems.

So now that the heyday of destruction and temporary support is waning and a cold field lies before us, it is quite fitting that the showpiece of the new kitchen will be an depression era stove that I purchased equitably from some good folks in southern Wisconsin.

My Detroit Jewel will be a warm reminder of days gone by heading into a chilly and uncertain future.

Go Mules, Go!

2008-12-06T08:05:00.005-06:00

Go Mules

Go Mules! Fight to win for the team we love the best
Go Mules! Don't give in, put our name above the rest.
Fight! Fight! Fight!
Go Mules! We're for you and we let the whole world know
That at U-C-M, it's go, Mules go!

This is the fight song of the University of Central Missouri formerly known as Warrensburg Teachers College. In the early years, the institution manufactured mainly Gym Teachers.

This the school Dale Carnegie (aka. Carnagey) attended while milking cows on his poor family farmstead. Dale was a good talker and had a talent for sales and, initially he was very successful selling soap, bacon and lard for Armour & Company. An aspiring lecturer, he went into acting. Failing that, and nearly broke he began to teach public speaking at the YMCA he where he was staying. He stumbled upon techniques that were effective in making people feel more confident and went on to write many books including one of the best selling self improvement titles: "How to win friends and influence people".

Dale pioneered the art of modern corporate artifice - as in you can change a persons behavior by changing your reaction to them. This provides the basis for saying whatever you need to say in order to manipulate others for your personal gain instead of being, say, genuine and cultivating personal integrity. From this perspective is derived phrases like "Believe you will succeed and you will" and "The glass is always half full", "We are behind you 110%".

Carnegie is responsible for the plague of motivational speakers that turn forlorn premadonnas into Pollyanna automatons. This is why you can't get a straight answer from an executive and why you end up buying products from sales people who have conveniently neglected to assume a moderate philosophy when it comes to shaping expectations.

Remerging threats

2008-11-28T09:59:00.006-06:00

There are two environmental concerns that have taken a back seat in the last couple of decades:

Overpopulation and Noise pollution.

Actually, this really just one problem because the former is the cause of the latter as it is with just about most other other modern era problems that plague our future. Any human problem is often caused by more humans.

Noise pollution used to be something people were concerned about. It can cause heart disease, sleep loss, stress, and tinnitus. The worst effect of noise comes as a chronic stress generator which can rob people of vitality and health, and lifespan without being obvious to them.

Some noise is unavoidable and is a byproduct of the things that are vital to our community like the noise from transportation. Yet many of the planes, buses and cars that operate around us today are much quieter than they used to be - particularly buses and Hybrid automobiles.

However, some things have not improved or have even gotten LOUDER.

Backup Alarms.

In the past decade just about anything that moves has been required to have back-up beepers. All trucks, mechanical lifts and even electric scooters are constantly spewing out loud and extremely annoying beeps. Supposedly someone has decided that the cost benefit of backing over a small child outweighs the effects of noise pollution here - although I'll bet that the fact that all these beepers collectively are a nuisance was never a consideration.

Harley Davidson Motorcycles

After WWII, thousands of traumatized and disaffected soldiers were dumped back onto the US soil. Many of these men were in need of psychological treatment, job training and assistance finding their way back into society while thousands of surplus military Harley Davidson Motorcycles were affordable to purchase. Many of these men fell through the cracks and formed gangs around the surplus bikes and developed a lifestyle of nihilism and rebelliousness that has since grown into a national crisis. These motorcycle gangs and the lifestyle they espouse are deeply rooted across the country.

Vast hordes of bikers can now be seen and heard in every corner of the country acting out on their profound lack of self actualization - existing in a subculture predicated on hedonism and a disdain of anything that might suggest authority - which could include any civic entity. The culture takes the notion of "individualism" to an extreme and has invented a set of rationalizations to explain away why they don't need to be held responsible to the community at large. In fact, they go out of their way to adopt elements of intimidation through their clothing and behavior so that no one objects to their egocentric way living. Some may engage in high profile charitable behavior so they can continue to keep their neighbors up at night - that's a good way of deflecting criticism when you know you are doing something wrong.

One of the prime ways that these bikers intimidate the public is through noise. Harley bikes are not sold loud, the owners illegally alter their bikes with after market exhaust pipes. The loud pipes provide no benefit to anyone except to falsely feed the ego of the self indulgent rider. Many policemen actually own these bikes so they won't ticket them as they should. An automobile missing a muffler can get a fine, but the Harley gets away scott free. They rationalize that the pipes are for safety, yet other brand bikers see no need to do this.

However, all this may be changing. In the last decade, there has been a 4 fold increase in the incidence of negative media coverage, opposition to motorcycle events and some communities have enacted motorcycle bans.

Harley Davidson and other associations have been increasingly discouraging loud exhaust. This is not something that goes against their legacy. In the early days of the sport, loud bikes were a problem and Harley Davidson had a model line called "The Silent Grey Fellow". They realize now that if they do not do something to stem hog noise, the public will. Jim McCaslin, President and COO of Harley Davidson has written an article on this subject "Something We Never Want To Lose"

Barky Strikes Kingdom Hall!

2008-11-17T09:17:00.004-06:00

On Thursday, I opened my front door to find a little present from our friends - the Jehova's Witnesses. No, it wasn't flaming dog crap but the printed version of it anyway - one of their ubiquitous colorful pamphlets inviting me to find out more about how I can subject myself to their brand of mind control.

I have a sign on my door that says "No Solicitors" and I have berated a number of baptists who have darkened my doorstep and for the most part they stay away. So, this time I felt it was time to strike back. I found my nearest Kingdom Hall and slipped "Is America a Christian Nation" nontract pamphlet into cracks on the front doors. There were people attending at the time so I know they must have discovered it.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation sells a series of "Nontracts". These miniature pamphlets offer explanations on a range of topics that seek to dispel common delusions that are perpetrated by religion. Dan Barker is a former preacher so he knows their game pretty well. They offer the following titles for purchase:

Dear Christian
Dear Believer
Ten Common Myths About Atheists
What They Said About Religion
Confused? Bible Contradictions
Is America A Christian Nation?
What Does The Bible Say About Abortion?
Cookie Cutter Christs
Why Women Need Freedom From Religion
An X-Rated Book: Sex & Obscenity in the Bible
What is a Freethinker?
Why Jesus?
Whats Wrong With The Ten Commandments
Nontract Sample pack

All these are available from their Nontract site

My favorite is one from American Atheists I got back when the O'Hairs ran it. It includes two titles:

"What Atheism Teaches" and "We Are Atheists Because"

These tend be bit dogmatic but what a great thing to slip between cracks of the front door at your nearest church that doesn't know the meaning of the word privacy. It will usually be Jahova's Witnesses, Mormons or sometimes even baptists.

There are also a number of parody "Chick Tracts" that serve as a rebuttal to those awful miniature cartoon books produced by Jack Chick.

I think I'll continue to do this to any church that leaves their crap at my door, but I may stick with the Atheist theme. It may not change their minds, but at least they will think they have competition.

The Dutch are with the Banned!

2008-10-29T09:07:00.006-05:00

The Netherlands has been famous as a country that allows everything - a bastion of liberal and libertarian thinking - supposedly being able to manage vice and the moral decrepitude of society - but no more.

With the enormous influx of Muslims into the country, in a decade or so, the majority of Dutch cities will have non-dutch roots and that is freaking out the native population. The Dutch, and much of Europe have embraced a more Nationalistic and Conservative bent. Of course, the US has been a leader in this respect for the last 8 years ands many countries seem to follow our lead.

After the assassination of Conservative and openly gay (?!) Pim Fortuyn in 2002 by a militant animal-rights activist and also of film maker Theo Van Gogh in 2004 by Muslim radicals, the Netherlands has been voting in a conservative parliament.

Here is a list of the things that the Dutch government has Banned very recently:

Segways - they don't have breaks.

Magic Mushrooms ( but Marijuana is OK?)

Bestiality (?!)

Smoking in Enclosed Public Spaces (except for special rooms without service - Cannabis is not included as long as it is not mixed with tobacco!)

Electronic Voting

Seal Imports

Iranian Students from Nuclear Academia

Cloning of Human Embryos for Research

Private Stem cell Therapy

Burquas, Balaclavas and Crash Helmets ( you can't wear them in schools, gov't work places and public transportation)

Kosher Slaughter (2002)

Naked Short Selling (of stocks - not as sexy as you thought)

Psalm 2: The Graffiti Chronicles.

2008-10-27T15:02:00.013-05:00

This past week saw incidents in the Twin Cities and St. Louis Mo. where vandals sought out legislators and spray painted accusatory graffiti on their properties. The Jury is out whether these incidents are related because both attacks had similar slogans and included a reference to "Psalm 2". Oh, how awful - but probably a lot of people are cheering beneath their breath after the incredibly unpopular and bone headed passage of the Bailout Bill.

This immediately suggests some righteous unemployed person spouting some vigilante moxie. Many major human disasters in history are tied to religious zealotry, so when a person goes as far as to quote scripture, assassination, terrorist bombings and mass suicide are often not far behind.

So, what is this person trying to point out? I decided to read Psalm 2 and see if I can decipher any meaning out of a passage from the Bible - one of the most absurd yet popular texts in existence. The reason it is so popular is that it is so difficult to figure out and it gives an interested person the opportunity to go off onto their own world attempting to derive a great meaning out of something that has been cobbled together by sheltered ascetics, hacked to pieces by translators, mutilated by scribes and patched together by generation gaps. Keep in mind that at the time this was written, literacy was a trade secret of professional scribes, and many historic monarchies maintained cadres of this profession. Psalm 2 was allegedly written by someone named David (or Nathan), around 1000 B.C. but, like everything in the bible, this it is merely hearsay.

I will attempt to translate it into plain English and try to attach some fragment of meaning to it from an Atheists perspective. I have removed the line numbers and put it into paragraph format so that the piece can be read as one idea instead of a disjointed collection of sentences which makes it more confusing - this is one technique the compilers of the Bible used to prevent the reader from discovering how little meaning there is as a whole. Breaking ideas into smaller pieces allows the reader to be fed confusion into bite size pieces so that they can wear out their jaws one mouthful at a time instead of spitting out a big wad and giving up early.

Psalm 2 (KJV)

Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the LORD, and against his anointed, saying, Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us. He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the LORD shall have them in derision. Then shall he speak unto them in his wrath, and vex them in his sore displeasure. Yet have I set my king upon my holy hill of Zion. I will declare the decree: the LORD hath said unto me, Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee. Ask of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession. Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron; thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel. Be wise now therefore, O ye kings: be instructed, ye judges of the earth. Serve the LORD with fear, and rejoice with trembling. Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and ye perish from the way, when his wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all they that put their trust in him.

Psalm (Rev. Barky's Version - RBV)

Why are the common people angry and gossip? It's because there is a powerful elite that exercises great influence over the masses that doesn't do what God says. If the masses somehow prevent their collusion take way their influence, then God can ridicule them and tell them how angry he is and call them names. I have my own idea of who should be the leader of the believers. I will tell everyone that God told me that, starting today, I am a God too. Make me your leader and I will institute socialism. The common people should beat up all the rich and powerful. So, the rich and powerful are warned that they should be very respectful of God. Treat me with a lot of respect and I won't hurt you. Trust me.

I guess this could mean:

" Folks in power should be careful not to piss off God and/or the people or God will be mean to you and/or the people will ruin you. You should take me seriously because God told me this."

Now, If you take out all the god talk and ignore that the writer is pretending to be some supernatural authority figure so that the reader doesn't think hes full of crap, its just some guy that seems to be saying:

"The folks in power should listen to the people or else they will ruin you"

In reality, Psalm 2 this is simply an old piece of paper that has survived for a few thousand years written by someone who was pissed off and liked to tell people what to think and do - just like today. If it made much sense at all 3 thousand years ago, it has been since fallen victim to tremendous distortion due to multiple translation, truncation, embellishment, lies and error. At best it gives religious folks fodder to waste a lot of their time trying to read between the lines and argue and make up their own history when there is nothing there at all.

What's even more absurd is the reams of analysis that many bible "experts" have published attempting to explain why it was written like this and what the real meaning of the piece is - again based upon reams of here-say and speculation.

The Bible and all of its analysis is a lot like a bullshit sandwich thrown into the middle of a pool of quicksand. It makes a whole lot more sense if you take a couple of microdots of LSD a half hour before opening the cover.

And now it is just a stupid piece of graffiti.

Religulous - A Review

2008-10-20T00:13:00.007-05:00

Yes, there I am seated front and center with my hands over my ears, seated between two smoking hot girl chimps. It was a long hot photo shoot indeed. I even brought my own Mitre.

Religulous

Bill Maher visits several places in the US and the Middle East to question various religious fundamentalists about their beliefs - and pokes fun at all of them with his rapier like sarcasm iced over with cleaver musical and visual devices. Comparisons to the anti-evolution documentary Expelled: No intelligence Allowed are, in my mind, unavoidable. The producers of Expelled seemed to have been attempting to recreate Michael Moore's style - it being the most profitable of all documentary approaches, but it turned out to be, in essence, an awkward and heavy handed product as well as dishonest and utterly absurd. Religulous may have been made as a response to Expelled, and it seems to be making the same attempt at a Moore style doc, but in terms of entertainment, it fares little better than Expelled did in its execution. From a technical standpoint, Religulous suffers from similar defects that plagued Expelled. The conversations were heavily edited and lacked continuity and there was more focus on Bill making wry comments and quips rather than getting more information from his subjects. Clearly, Maher and his writers are far more cleaver and humorous than Ben Stein and his fundamentalist associates could ever be and it's far easier to laugh at religion than it is to laugh with it.

Bill talks to fundamentalist Christians (including Mormons), Jews and Muslims and he adds in some stuff from Scientology as well. I might have wondered why Religulous didn't contain conversations with other equally absurd religions such as Hindu, Portions of Buddhism or Santeria, but as the film begins to make the point of how nonsensical it is to put stock into preposterous stories and mythical characters he begins to turn toward the seed of thought with which the doc sprang from. It is the Judeo-Christian and Muslim religions with their intolerance and vision of the end times that is the main source of concern in modern times.

Maher ends the film on a very dark note indeed: Religion is harmful to the progress of human existence and it has to disappear before we can ever think of saving our planet and that anyone who is Antitheist needs to speak up against religion and reveal its folly. While that's not much of a revelation to me, I do not think I have ever heard anyone in the popular media make the case for abolishing religion altogether. This is a very strong statement coming from someone who refers to himself as an Agnostic who are historically wishy-washy when it comes to activism. He also calls upon weak followers of faith to re-examine the religion they adhere to and do something about it.

Given this premise, are the promoters of "Positive Atheism" with their "can't we all just get along" stance missing the boat?

After 3 weeks in the theaters, "Religulous" has made quite a bit more money than Expelled did in its entire run and it has done so in half of the number of theaters. No one has been thrown out of a screening, charged for seeing a preview subjected to potrolling security guards.

Rev. Barky has been Pre-Re-Excommunicated!

2008-10-12T10:55:00.012-05:00

A letter to Rev. Ivan Stang of the Church of the Subgenius.

Stang,

I am a LOOONG time fan and member of the church - however, today as I
was listening to  HoS "Religion and Rubber gloves" I heard you say
something that EFFecTIVELY Pre-Re-Excommunicated me!

I am an Atheist.

Have been for 25 years ever since I realized Religion is CRAP - unless of
course, its funny.

Today, however I go by the moniker "Rev. Barking Nonsequitur" and my blog is 
www.aredant.blogspot.com. I write and record religious parody. I am workinng to
complete a CD of sorts in the coming future.

You said that "you cannot be a Subgenius if you are an Atheist because Atheism is
just another Relgion"

I hear this all of the time and it is Bunk.

I was very surprised to hear this from Stang, because this is EXAcTLY the
argument that is made by Dominionists and the dangerous zealots that are making
our lives HELL every single minute of every single day so that no one can have a
voice to counter their eternal crap!

The definition of Atheism is literally "without belief" - so it cannot be a religion.
What you are referring to is actually "Anti-theism". One who
"knows" there is no God or Gods or Bobs may CALL themselves Atheists but really
are not. Perhaps you object to Organized Atheism - as I have mixed feelings
about as well having been a former official of Minnesota Atheists. But really
this is pointless.because there is no point is making allowances for things that
are VERY UNLIKELY - they pretty much on to the REJECT pile. Bob may be an
exception, however. I'm sure you have though long and hard about this BUT.....

Why am I complaining to you in such a viscid and turbid manner?

Because I value my Atheist connections AS WELL as my Bobishness and YOU have
effectively PRE-EXCOMMUNICATED me and at the very moment that I was
contemplating spending another $30 to reaffirm my sacred FACEFULLNESS to the
Church! Is this Karma or what?

As you are careful not to trash specific religions, you may be cognizant of not
causing harm to an important movement that in essence shares much of the same values
of your organization. Atheism desparately needs more humor!

I am going to offer one sprig of olive branch to appease your overbearing
impishness.

Please accept this musical offering  - you may delete it or better yet, work it
in to your show. Take and eat of this as a token of my mirth as I place my
tongue ceremoniously into my cheek.

Rev  Barky.

On my second scotch.


BUT!

Stang also stated in an interview the "anyone with $30 can become a subgenius"

So, is Rev. Stang saying that while an Atheist cannot become a subgenius,
an Atheist with $30 CAN become a Subgenius?

At any rate, Logic should be able to offer an answer to the equation:

Atheism means literally "without or the absence of religion" .

Logically this can be expressed as "not A"

If Atheism IS a religion, then "Not A = A"

So, NOT believing in a god is the SAME as believing in a god.

When one considers this outcome with respect to Science Fiction of the 1960's,
this is the kind of reasoning that frees slave societies from the
tyranny of electromechanical despotism only to be creamed by an asteroid storm
in the next episode.

Why Atheism is not a religion - a practical explanation.

When someone is religious, they think something is real when in fact there is
no evidence that it exists. They are simply aping the behavior of others in their
surroundings - how else do you get hundreds of people to kneel at the same time
or bury their heads on their carpets? This is not due to any independent thinking.

An Atheist may state "There is no God". They do not mean this literally and
it is absurd to hold them to a philosophical ideal - it is an issue of semantics.
Mentally healthy individuals do not and cannot live their lives taking into
consideration all possibilities to every given situation. We employ logical
probability filters that allow us to decide upon the most important aspects of
a problem. Without this skill, we would not be able to make decisions in a timely
manner. Other possibilities are essentially invalid to the problem at hand - this
does NOT mean that they become impossibilities, rather, they are given lower status.
They become virtually nonexistent since they are not included within the set
of items employed with which to complete the decision making process.

This is what God is - a possibility sufficiently remote as to be virtually
nonexistent and so is logically safe to be considered as such.

Is it crazier to believe in something that isn't there or to discount it because
it is unlikely? After all, when I look out the window and see that the elm tree
that city cut down last fall is not there anymore, I do not spend any more wondering
if it is invisible, or if someone has pasted a cleverly designed image on my window
or that someday the city workers will brink it back.

When some one says Atheism is a religion, they are purposely deprecating a group
by trying to make then seem unreasonable and doing so by unfairly assigning a
literal interpretation to what they say when they would not do this to their
own kind.

The State of Bicycling in Saint Paul

2008-07-05T14:44:00.002-05:00

Saint Paul has always been the sleepy little sister of Minneapolis. When it comes to the subject of bicycling, Saint Paul is waking up but very groggy. Minneapolis had made huge strides in catering to alternative and recreational transportation most notably with the construction of the Midtown Greenway.

The Midtown Greenway was a pragmatic use of a little used rail way system that cut right underneath and across the south side of Minneapolis offering an astounding opportunity for residents to bike almost unrestricted across a busy and difficult city landscape. The Midtown Greenway coalition has two full time staff members and an annual budget of over $300,000 and scores of volunteers and donors - all this for a bike path! Part of the Midtown Greenway plan is for extending the path across the Mississippi river into Saint Paul either by using the existing Short Line railroad bridge or building a new one alongside.

Some time ago there was a concept for the "Saint Paul Greenway" to begin where the Midtown Greenway left off. It was a 3 phase plan to develop a bicycle path along side the railway through Saint Paul. There was even a cute cartoonish map available showing the route and the development phases. In 2001 there appears to have been funding approved for this development, however, I can no longer find any reference for the Saint Paul Greenway on the net - what happened?

Strike one was probably the River crossing. The railroad objected to using the bridge for bicycle traffic citing liability issues and when Hennepin county tried to move forward with a Bike/Ped bridge alongside it, a preservation group called "Friends of the Mississippi" or FMR objected to it. I can see the Canadian Pacific RR being skittish about liability, but for a nature group to stand in the way of a positive livability issue for the sake of preservation in this case is absurd. They site a handful of unsubstantiated objections such as a disruption to wildlife and encroachment on the Meeker Dam Site that somehow achieved historical status a few years ago. In reality, there is an abundance of wildlife in the area and the Meeker Dam is nothing more than an old lock that wasn't needed anymore and was demolished. I cannot see why this site should be resurrected in the first place. Not everything needs to be preserved.

FMR's solution to the situation is that bicyclists should just go around and use the Lake street or Franklin Ave bridges and sanctimoniously declared that this is not an inconvenience to bicyclists. As far as I am concerned, the idea of having to take this detour would make me think twice about heading over to Minneapolis - that's almost 2 miles out of the way and would add 4 miles to a round trip!

The last document I have seen addressing this matter is from the "Draft Revised Saint Paul Bicycle Transportation Plan" from the Saint Paul Bicycle Advisory Board. June 11, 2007

8) To make Saint Paul a more appealing destination for cyclists, coordinate with surrounding communities and jurisdictions to enhance inter-community bicycle transportation and connectivity. Support Hennepin County and City of Minneapolis efforts to build a new bicycle/pedestrian bridge across the river to extend the Midtown Greenway eastward and connect with Saint Paul’s planned extension of the Greenway.

9) Increase the number of places where cyclists can cross the Mississippi River, railroads and railyards, interstate highways and other major obstacles that currently limit the practicality of bicycling.

The board only recommends and does not set policy for bike transportation in the City of Saint Paul.

It seems that a bike path across the river is on hold until:

A. The RR bridge becomes completely disused due to the 3 freight customers it serves on the Minneapolis side (and by that time the 120 year old bridge may need to be replaced in any case).

B: Gas prices climb so high that public outcry for bicycle mobility trumps the few influential politicos that want to keep their pastoral view of the river. (there a currently only 13 bridges across the Mississippi within the Twin Cities highway belt)

So, where did the funding for the Saint Paul Greenway go? What is the Status of the project? I hope to find the answer to these questions soon.

Update:

I appears that further development on the Saint Paul Greenway hinges mostly on negoioations with CP Rail. As I understand it, the biggest concern is with liability and the extent with which the city is willing to indemify the the RR. Also a possible high speed rail line is a newer consideration that impacts the rail corridor.

Cell Phone Un-features.

2008-06-30T12:16:00.000-05:00

I have a cell phone account with a major US carrier - Sprint PCS. Frankly, they are way better to deal with than Verizon (see past rants) but the way the "free" market works in this country is that big corporations offer you what they want you to buy and you are free to chose which one they offer to you. They pretty much squeeze out any smaller innovators until there is not much profit to be had in the market.

Such is the case with my Sprint Samsung SPH-A920 cell phone. It's a cell phone, camera and a pretty nice MP3 player - that is, if you have anything to play on it. There are only two ways to get MP3s onto this phone - load them onto the removable 64Mb MicroSD card (not very convenient) or purchase and down from their music store (not acceptable).

Save your contacts? You can pay them to do that for you.

Yes, there is a data cable so you can plug it into your computer
but it is only for using the phone as a modem so you can pay Sprint for a crappy internet connection.

Sprint has included some amazing features in this phone, but only allows you to use them as long as it makes them extra income from your use of it. Even if you paid the full price of the phone - like $350, you cannot make full use of it's features.

Now that this phone is over 2 years old, third party developers have finally got around to developing a somewhat affordable cell phone data management accessory package that allows full data access over the cable. It cost me $35 to use what should have been included in the package in the first place.

Still, I am looking forward to being able to listen to my entire music library off my cell phone anywhere I go.

Unleavened Bread Ministries: Guide To Praying Yourself into Prison and Financial Ruin

2008-05-01T11:45:00.000-05:00

The mother of Kara Neumann, of who died on March 23 in the family home near Wausau WI as a result of untreated diabetes, was in part the victim of an online scam organization called Unleavened Bread Ministries (UBM) headed by David Eells.

UBM operates its con via the sick circuit and their message is a combination of doomsday prophesy and faith healing. Dale and Leillani Neumann allowed themselves to be deceived by UBM into avoiding medical professionals which led them to be neglectful in providing care for her dying 11 year old daughter. It has also brought them financial ruin as they are to appear in court next week for being indigent. They have been charged with second degree reckless homicide in the death of Kara.

Just when it was apparent that the Neumanns were to be charged, UBM but up a new web page with commentary written by Mr. Eells and some guy named "Pastor Bob". (I must say, the Rev. Barky deplores the frivolous use of clerical titles for any reason. For shame!)

Here is the opening blather:

"Help the Neumanns and help yourself. Please visit HelptheNeumanns.com to help the Neumanns during their time of persecution by the world."

"Family May Be Charged with the Crime of Praying!"

Pastor Bob claims the family "lost their daughter" and that her illness "appeared to be a cold or flu", but the coroners report stated that she had been diabetic and showing key symptoms for as much as 30 days.

He also claims that the grandmother who finally contacted the Marathon County WI Sheriff's office from California when Kara was in a coma and nearly at death "greatly exaggerated the situation".

He also criticizes the police for unlawfully searching the family's home when there was "no probable cause". This after the Neumanns displayed irrational behavior by continuing to pray for the deceased child to be risen up and calling UBM for guidance.

Pastor Bob questions why many religious artifacts were confiscated from the home as if no wrong could be done in the name of religion.

"Why were these items taken when none of these items could be used as evidence of Child Neglect?"

He suggests this is a conspiracy to prevent the Neumanns from being protected by the Christian Science healing laws. He denigrates others who identify as Christians for criticizing them or not agreeing with his position.

Pastor Bob projects more pseudo-biblical clap-trap, including:

"Jesus never sent anyone to a doctor or a hospital. Jesus offered healing by one means only! Healing was by faith."

"When we don’t have faith we need the doctor and it’s obvious that most want-to-be Christians need the doctors because they have no faith in God; their faith is in man. God created good and evil. Witchcraft can heal also. Should Christians also seek witches?"

He ends with a popular standby that is increasingly being used by the Fundies nowadays - feigning persecution:

"What this really is, is an attempt by the government to make yet another attack on our religious belief in an effort to destroy our faith."

Eells pumps up the voltage on the rant-a-thon.

David Eells has posted a number of bizarre press releases on his web site defending his so called "teachings", occasionally editing them on the fly in order to avoid being seen as having a connection to the death whenever a news story or commentary unearthed another fact in the case or observation. He is described as humble, kind, logical and never asks for donations - yet he does nothing but blabber out bible verses and they do take donations. UBM gets its funding by selling books, media and membership tithing - they even sell books about tithing! I am sure no one really needs to buy a book on how to throw money into the street. The money that they make from sales and tithing is never mentioned, rather, any questioning as to their source of income is answered with "God provides".

Eells has a special disdain for doctors. He complains that those who pray for the sick are being persecuted while the doctors get away with murder. He claims that Christians have a constitutional right to use prayer only in treating disease and cites the establishment of religion clause in the bill of rights (Amendment 1), search and seizure (Amendment IV) as well as state statutes regarding faith healing and the practice of Christian Science - although UBM says that they are nondenominational. These faith healing laws were put in place all over the country to insulate the Christian Science church from liability should their unfortunate victims die or become injured as a result of criminal neglect. But even THEY utilize bogus nurses to oversee the practice ostensibly to step in when there may be real trouble. At any time, adherents of Christian Science may "suspend" their faith to go see a doctor.

Eels is simply trying to make a buck by muscling in on the same shtick that Christian Science established long ago - except he is trying to do it all on the internet and on the cheap. And now he claims to be practicing Christian Science and that he has the same protection even though he pays them nothing and never had to lift a finger to lobby on order gain immunity for the "prayer healing" scam. I would imagine the big wigs at the Christian Science headquarters are getting very uncomfortable with Eells.

Fortunately, faith healing laws often do not hold up in the courts because in reality they are immoral and not supported by the general populace and they are increasingly being shot down as an effective defense for child neglect and homicide.

Eells can expect more trouble in the future because as he rails against the practical world of laws and men he finds himself in a very dangerous game - just like an early scene in the Hitchcock film "Saboteur", what he thinks is a fire extinguisher actually contains gasoline that is sprayed onto a roaring bonfire of self righteousness.

What the HELL is Manna anyway?

2008-03-29T18:41:00.000-05:00

Manna or (Mana, to the Indonesians). We eat it. We bath in it. We use it to lubricate our sump-pump motor bearings.

But what IS Manna? We just don't know.

The Bibble (or Bible to some) apparently suggests that it is the name of a food which was eaten by the Israelites during their travels in the desert until they reached Canaan,

But what IS Canaan? We just don't know.

Some hallucinations about what manna is include:

Exodus: It was white , like a small seed and was on the ground in the morning, tasted like you wanted it to and it did not keep.

In Egyptian "Mennu" for "food" (Menu?)

In Arabic "Man Hu'" meaning "What is this? - we just don't know". or "This is plant lice" - possibly the chrystalised honeydew of plant insects. Hmmm - honeydew huh? Of insects? This would refer to the sugary poop that comes out of an aphids ass - or "terminal opening" if you prefer. Not to be confused with "Honey" which is pretty much honey bee spit from chewed up flower parts. Anyway you look at it,all this stuff went through an insect's digestive system.

It could be part of Lichen - a fungus.

It could be magic mushrooms.

Or locusts - insects again, but not just the poop itself. The Bibble says NOT to eat them, but then it says that insects have 4 legs instead of 6.

According to the Jews, the Israelites didn't have to shit when they ate manna - and they ate Manna for 40 years! Imagine not having to shit for 40 years!

One rabbi said it was used as perfume. Seems like the old testament folks used just about everything for perfume at some point - no wonder, since bathing was a rarity. Imagine knowing your wife 40 times without taking a bath!

The term "Mana" was also cited in the oral traditions of the Easter Island natives who define it as a power that is used to command the Moai - the massive figures that were erected all over the island.

But the Bibble seems to describe Manna just as a "food" that the character Yahweh rained down onto the ground for his people to gather and eat - why not just give them real food on demand - or sustain them magically so they don't get hungry and have to gather and process this stuff in the first place? Or transport them instantly to Canaan or maybe Salt Lake City and get it all over with? It would make the Bibble a little thinner for one.

Modern technology has made Manna common place and it is widely available on the bottom shelf of the pasta section at your local supermarket. We still don't know what it is, but it has so many household uses. Buy some today.

This message was brought to you by Manischewitz.

Scraping the Mold off Unleavened Bread Ministries

2008-03-27T20:48:00.000-05:00

On Sunday 11 year old Kara Neumann of Wausau, Wisconsin died of Diabetic Ketoacidosis, a condition that left too little insulin in her body. Her parents were too busy praying for her recovery to take her to a doctor. Fortunately, friends and relatives discovered that she was in a coma and called 911, but it was too late. The parents seem to accept her death as Gods will and with His help they will carry on. There is no shame, no doubting themselves that perhaps they made a terrible if not criminal error in judgment. The police are considering bringing them up on charges. Until then, they have three more children that are alive for the moment.

Where did they get the idea that they could pray their daughter to health? From David Eells of Unleavened Bread Ministries.com - that's who. As far I can tell, his site preaches about the end of the world and healing yourself through praying. It was he that apparently advised them that they should pray Kara out of her coma rather than take her to the emergency room. Mr. Eells must be kind of worried about the whole thing because he released an inane statement that would confuse the hell out of anyone trying to figure out just what role he had in the whole matter. But that's what he seems to do best - confuse the money right out of your wallet.

I wanted to write a nasty letter to Mr. Eells but he's too busy to give out an e-mail address - I had to write to his assistant Robin who really doesn't seem very concerned about what happened to Kara or why - she was only interested in helping good Christians and getting me to experience the website with a blithe cheerfulness - which she enthusiastically informed me "contains some starting revelations"! In fact, I told her that the only revelation the website revealed to me was that it is really absurd, cheesy and boring - but she just kept pushing it anyway. She referred to me by my first name - she wanted to know about me - she kept thinking I was a Unitarian - anything to open up a crack in order to gain my confidence. Whenever I mentioned Kara Neumann she just referred me to David Eells bizarre statement and invited me to go through the website again.

Robin admits that she has only seen "Dave" Eells once. She said they all volunteer to answer e-mails, send out literature and answer phones. No one gets any pay or benefits, not even David. God provides enough for them to live in their little world. They are busy preparing good Christians for the end times.

When I confronted her with more rational observations I invoked her super cheerful "God Armor". This is where she stuck her head in the sand and started to recite bible verses ad nauseam, all in italics, as if bible verses would magically convince me to look at the website. It didn't matter how many times I told her how much I thought the bible and the website sucked. I guess that's not so surprising from an organization where the mention of the word "Manna" gets their followers excited enough to dive for their credit cards. She's apparently not used to skepticism. She ended all her cheerful but pointless responses with big nosed smiley faces - just like David Eells did in his manifesto to the press about the death of Kara Neumann. :o)

Chatting with Robin gave me an uneasy feeling. I felt I came to understand somewhat the disturbing lack of concern these folks have for what's happening in their daily lives because they are focused on the afterlife. There is a certain sociopathic thought pattern that seems to arise with Unleavened Bread Ministries folks - that you don't need to be responsible because God will take care of everything.

Except for Kara Neumann.

Update: David Eells has been editing his "statement" to the media and has deleted the emoticons :0) from the text since several people have criticized him for the use of them.

Rev. Barky screens Expelled with Richard Dawkins

2008-03-23T19:56:00.000-05:00

On Thursday Kristine Harley and I went to a free screening of the movie "Expelled: No intelligence allowed" at the Mall of America. Kristine obtained an invite by signing up at a web site and brought me along as a guest. She was alerted about the film by PZ Myers and when she told me what she was going to do, I guessed that Richard Dawkins would be there as well - after all there WAS an Atheist convention in town that weekend.

I canceled my religious parody skit at the convention and made plans to go to the movie. I was glad I did.

We arrived at the theater and stood in line. Richard Dawkins and his crew arrived a few minutes later and were a few spaces in back of us and we waved to him. Half way into the cue, I saw PZ Myers walk back to greet Dawkins. He must have been ahead of us but a few minutes later I saw him being escorted outside the line by an officer. The officer told him that they got a call from the producer that he was to leave the theater. Presently PZ came up to us in the line and told us that he was being kicked out. As we were discussing the matter, the officer pulled him aside once more and told him that unless he had a ticket for another film in the theater he would have to leave immediately. PZ looked a bit dejected but he said he would be leaving and so he did. We were afraid that we would be asked to leave because we talked to him but they didn't do anything and we were let inside. We saw Dawkins and crew enter a little later and they sat in the center section - hmm why let Dawkins in and not PZ?

The Producer warned everyone about illegal filming and how there are enemies in the theater and the FBI was notified and the fines and felonies and they had a cop patrol up and down the aisle throughout the film. Fun.

The film was trying to be a Michael Moore documentary about people being persecuted because they chose to mention the word "ID" but with Ben Stein - who is really not very pleasant to look at. He looks like an emotionless basset hound and his eyes seem to be exuding a viscous fluid much of the time. Of course he comes off very smug all through the film which is interspersed with interviews of supposed victims of the elitist Nazi science academia establishment. Of course when they are interviewing the "evil" people like PZ and Dawkins, there were lots of footage of Nazi and Communist rallies, death camp scenes and retarded people making fools of themselves underscored with malevolent or dopey music to set the mood.

Michael Moore never made a film anywhere this bad. It really made me wonder if scientists were Nazis or Commies or both.

After the film there was a Q and A and Dawkins stood up and asked "Why was PZ Myers expelled from your movie?" I think they were surprised to see him and didn't even realize that there was an major Atheist Conference in town. They didn't recognize Dawkins in the line and accidentally let him in even though he is very prominent in the film.

The audience was almost all fundies and Dawkins did a great job defending himself and he was angry for a good reason. He asked a number of probing questions but the producer lied about everything including about the way they got the interviews. The "working" title of the film was "Crossroads", but the real title was "Expelled". They knew they would not get any interviews out of Dawkins and PZ if they didn't have a dummy title. PZ explained that they also had a dummy website to make it look benign.

The audience jeered and laughed at him but there were a number of us Atheists in the audience and we put up a good fight. They really hate dissent and that is why they prevented PZ from seeing it. They even tried accuse PZ of causing trouble. We know he wasn't.

The media has hit a firestorm over this and we were thrilled to be a part of it. We will continue to fight against the ID and the Discovery Institute and the Dominionists to beat back the onus of Theocracy masquerading as freedom.

I'm with the Banned!

2008-03-11T20:06:00.000-05:00

Rev. Barky clashes with the gods of mediocrity.

I just resigned from being a budding Atheist Radio Host and a 2 term Associate Chairperson of Minnesota Atheists. Why would I give up so much all at once? Am I crazy?

No.

Because it was pain in the ass! Being a volunteer radio host gets you initial praise and then endless criticism by listeners who find it all too easy to open their mouths and voice their dissatisfaction behind your back even though they have no imagination of their own. It's OK if you get PAID for it, but why put up with these vampires for free? I got better things to do like drinking - and killing babies.

Yes, I kill babies - I do it to drink their blood. Aren't you shocked? - Good.

The other reason I quit the board is because the organization is turning into an Atheist church. You get there by espousing a dogma - in this case its the scripture of Atheist-lite. Imagine having to act like Mr. Rogers all the time hoping the wrong thing doesn't come out of your mouth for fear of upsetting born again Christians! Of course all this dogma comes with having one person controlling the discourse in the organization. That person is August Berkshire. He has the hardest job of all. He has to convince everyone it is for the common good. This is accomplished by working harder at every aspect of the organization than everyone else put together. That way no one gets a leg up and he gets to say he's right because he has done it longer and harder than you.

I guess the last straw was when he refused to play one of my songs on the air - "My bad, I'm an Atheist" - calling it every name in the book from "too nitchy" and "whiny" and "harmful to the movement". Oh, and he doesn't like my name - Rev. Barky. Sounds like the stuff of Soviets right?

No one gets to tell me what to say or how to think without paying me a lot of money first.

That's just my rule.

Nothing feels better than dumping an unwanted commitment.

Verizon Wireless Refuses Makeup Sex

2008-02-13T19:41:00.000-06:00

Several years ago I had quarrel with Verizon Wireless over poor cell phone service. I was unable to rectify my problem with them and instead of trying to work things out with me they acted with bitterness and demanded alimony. So, I sent my phone back to them and stopped paying them with several months left on my contract. And then they sent the lapsed account to a collection agency and reported a charge off to the credit bureaus. This is the only black mark on my credit record but I have never had a problem applying for loans or getting prime credit or renting anything because frankly everyone understands that Verizon Wireless is a whore and even your loan officer or rental agent probably divorced them too.

At the time I decided to break off with them I owed about $250 on the contract but over the years it has become engorged to over $525 under the collection hyenas that bought the "debt". I get a very lame collection letter in the mail twice a year offering me a discount on the payment and of course I just chortle at them and toss them in the recycling bin.
It was on that day that I began running around with Sprint. Sprint has been a pretty faithful and satisfying service for me and I have never regretted the relationship.

Fast forward 6 years and my Sprint contract is again up for renewal. Sprint has once again tempted me into agreeing to continue doing them.

Before making a final commitment, I decided to give my old fling Verizon Wireless a call to see if we can work something out and bury the hatchet. Maybe they have turned a leaf and were willing to kiss and make up. Anything is possible right?

I called the sales dept and got someone reasonably articulate. I did not give them my name and played the mysterious stranger. I explained the whole torrid affair to them and asked if there was anything they might do to get me back - like giving me a decent deal on service and allowing me to continue with the remainder of the contract - and removing the charge back on my credit report. I informed the sales person that I was a happy Sprint customer and that after another year the charge back will disappear anyway so unless they were cooperative I had little incentive to pay their claim. Unfortunately, she said I would have to pay off the balance and get a new account. She offered to send me to the finance department and admitted that it probably wouldn't do any good and she was sorry for the trouble that we had in the past. Maybe I could have wooed them a bit more on this one but why waste a whole day trying?

So much for the make up sex.

I told her that I will keep doing Sprint because they are a sexy company and I had no intention of even giving Verizon Wireless a second glance again.

So, Verizon Wireless does not get their money or not reclaim a good customer and I get to keep explaining to all my friends what a cunt they are.

Letter to Debbie Schlussel. REPENT!

2008-02-10T13:23:00.000-06:00

This comes a bit late, but I just now saw video of this on a freethought Blog.

Ms. Debbie Schlussel appeared in a nasty segment on CNNs Paula Zahn show last year about discrimination against Atheists. She joined a panel with Karen Hunter and Steve Smith (both are black) railing against Atheists when there was no one to counter the ugly and spiteful commentary. Basically it was pile on the hate time (and get paid doing it).

Did CNN think it was OK to hire 3 bigoted minorities to trash another minority group (Atheists) instead of getting an actual Atheist to speak for themselves? The hypocrisy here is simply overwhelming. I decided to pick on Ms. Schussel for an apology but I don't expect much regret from her icy blood pumping device.

Ms. Schlussel,

I just saw a clip of your performance on the CNN program last year about Atheists. I can not tell you how troubling it is to see someone engage in such awful bigotry directed towards those of my kind.. It is cheap and cowardly to badmouth a people whether they be Blacks, Native Americans. Muslims, GLBTs, Atheist or Jewish in a public forum and even profit from it when there is no one present to represent their case. I am sure you all would have had a very different tone if I or some notable Atheist were on the panel to answer to your ugly comments. I would welcome the opportunity to counter your hate speech in a public forum with a dose of reality about the treatment of non-believers in this country. I have always respected the many Jews that know the value of respecting other peoples rights -at least in this country - because they have the knowledge of what centuries of bigotry and discrimination can do to a people and that it can be devastating to humanity.

Perhaps the generation of Jews that experienced the horrible genocide of the Nazis were rightly fearful that post generations would forget - that even Atheists and intellectuals were rounded up and put to death because of people such as yourself who helped to instill derision in the populace against a harmless minority of the people and turn their backs as they suffered and perished. You clearly seem to have forgotten.

You have hurt a LOT of people's feelings saying the things you did and you owe an apology to all Atheists and nonbelievers in this country for your extremely hurtful rhetoric and promoting hate and abuse just as you would expect others to regret criticizing you for being overweight, or Jewish or Female.

{Rev. Barky}

The First "Athiests Talk" Radio Show

2008-01-13T14:33:00.000-06:00

The first "Atheists Talk" Radio show was aired on AM950 KTNF in the Twin Cities on January 13, 2008.

Listen

"Atheist Talk"

Podcasts of all future shows will be available at www.minnesotaatheists.org.

John West vs The Evil Scientists

2007-12-01T17:35:00.000-06:00

I attended the sideshow performed by John West of the Discovery Institute at Nicholson hall on the campus of the University of Minnesota last Friday evening.

West is promoting his new book while attempting to discredit the scientific establishment by blaming it for the horrors of the Eugenics movement earlier in the last century and essentially arguing that pseudo-scientists should enjoy equal standing and clerics should provide oversight. At no time did he use god talk, but the speech was sponsored by a campus Evangelical Christian group. There were even 2 police officers outside the door because "someone said there might be protesters!" Mr. West was bombastic and his tone was accusatory, laced with blame and he at times interrupted those who might have the opportunity to express their dissent.

The event, however, seemed to be more of a ruse to attract potentially new student converts to Evangelicism. The moderator several times announced that he would buy lunch for any U of M student so that they can "have a talk" - ostensibly to proselytize to some hungry but unwitting undergrad. Of course, I've seen this tactic before - all the god talk starts AFTER he buys you a sub sandwich and you then feel obligated to stay for ensuing assault on your self confidence so that he can persuade you to succumb to his will. I would imagine that the meal begins AND ends with a prayer followed with a long bear hug re pleat with whimpering and the shedding of tears.

At any rate, what transpired at Nicholson was NOT a scientific debate but a sham. What use it is to engage in discourse with these charlatans as though they were just confused folk with too many graduate degrees trying to advance mankind and science - what they are trying to advance is Theocracy and oppression but in a very nice sounding way. Professors love to debate their area of expertise, so its easy to get them going, but these are not the people to argue any field of science with. When challenged, West kept changing the focus - misdirecting the conversation so that no conclusion or fallacy is effectively analyzed. If he accomplished anything, West was very successful at wasting the time of scientists who had better things to do - like watching reruns of fantasy island. Indeed, this was his real purpose - to engage legitimate academics in debate, waste their time and cloud the issue so that doubt can set in in the publics mind.

This is a part of The Wedge Strategy that was devised and implemented by the Discovery Institute in 1999; to use books, publicity and confrontation in order to replace scientific inquiry with Theism. The Intelligent Design myth is the main focus for achieving this goal.

The scientific community needs to do is stop ingratiating these pretenders and call them out - like a lawyer might. God talk isn't very effective in convincing people nowadays and it is difficult to gain credibility with the public that way unless perhaps you are speaking to a low income audience from the south. So, apologists have to resort to pretending to borrowing the language and style of real science.

You can read the Below is a four part video of the speech at Nicholson hall and is an example of how the Discovery Institute is attempting to spread disinformation and propaganda in this country.

Jesus Loves Private Companies

2007-11-25T19:43:00.000-06:00

In my technical career I have worked for quite a number of companies and in many different industries. Some good, some bad, but the worst ones I have worked for all had an agenda - more often the people at the top all attained their positions through networking in the same religious organization. One big advantage of being a private company is that the bastard that started it can far easier use it to proselytize and pretend he is God.

My first experience was a small privately held company that have hearing assist devices, Williams Sound. The founder started the company by making wireless headsets to sell to churches for the hard of hearing so they could understand church sermons. Most everyone there seemed to have gotten their jobs through church relationships and each month they had a birthday celebration for the employees that month and it always started with a group led prayer. It didn't matter if you were Hindu, Buddhist or non-religious, there was that robot Xtian church lady we have all come to know directing everyone to nod their heads and mutter an incantation like a bunch of jackasses. When one of the marketing guys got a job at their competitor Sure Audio, he was ushered out the door with God's wrath striking his heels. I met some of the rudest people in my life at Willams Sound.

Some time after, I found myself working at American Harvest. They made a variety of unusual small appliances such as food dehydrators, jet stream ovens and multi-loaf bread making machines. The folks running this company were a couple of Mormon brothers. All the folks in management were Mormons - and of course there was a prayer before all the upper level meetings. The company went bankrupt because their product focus was geared toward selling to Mormons - specifically to people with large families despite the fact that couples in the US were having fewer and fewer children. Also, polygamy was at an all time low. Integrity was not their best playing card because on every product they produced they affixed a large gaudy sticker that said "MADE IN THE USA". Meanwhile back on the production floor there were lots of illegal Mexican day laborers busy assembling food dehydrators and ill-conceived convection ovens. In the later days, they ran out of novel ideas to sell to pious rural women that had a penchant to using their vaginas like clown cars in a shrine circus. So, they began a crash course of climbing on to the wagons of other empty-headed industrialists desperately trying to market their own weight loss plans and exercise machinery on the tail end of the fad.

Recently I was granted an interview at a local private company called Ergotron. They had become quite successful producing stands for flat panel computer displays and they were growing quickly. My interview went well and I had direct experience with their products as well as their applications. I expected some good response from them and although I put forth a great degree of enthusiasm for working with them, I sensed something strange and felt uneasy about the culture. I went home with a brochure and benefit information and began to dig a little deeper into the company online.

It turns out the Founder, Harry Sweere and his wife Jan were extremely religious. He died in 2005, and his published eulogy was included in the brochure. It gushed on about how wonderful and holy he was. His wife, Jan is currently vice president. Turns out that for Mr. Sweere, Ergotron was a way to "bring the light of Jesus Christ to others". What's more, he and his wife were involved in a cult called the "People of Praise". This is a largely Catholic charismatic cult they like to refer to as a "Covenant Community". Like all cults, it isolates it members from the rest of society by expecting the members to abide by strict moral guidelines, holds frequent compulsory meetings, has overseers to make sure the codes are being observed and builds its own schools to indoctrinate the children. This includes an organization called "Christians in Commerce" - a program designed to keep members thinking about dogma all the time they are at work so their minds don't stray to other practical concerns.

It is likely that all of the management staff belong to this cult, or have been recruited from the congregation of Saint Kevin's Catholic Church in South Minneapolis. They mentioned that they planned to go public in a year or so because the original investors want their investment windfall. I suppose the Lord will provide but I wonder how the godless Wall Street sharks will take to these righteous execs.

The company diversity statement says that they employ a variety of cultures but says nothing about equal opportunity - conspicuously absent is any mention of tolerance for GLBTs, other religions or nonbelievers. This is possibly why I never heard back from them - my identity is easily linked with atheism when it is googled.

This is why whenever I am being interviewed a cold chill runs down my spine anytime the HR goon refers to the employees as "part of the family".

An Atheists Guide to Jury Duty

2007-11-24T11:31:00.000-06:00

In this document the term The Holy Bible has been renamed as The book of Xtian Mythology.

In the early 90’s I was summoned to serve as a jurist for Ramsey County MN. I was chosen to sit on a trial of a Hmong man accused of solicitation as result of a prostitution sting by the city of Saint Paul. Next came the process of Voir Dire, where attorneys from both sides of the table ask questions of prospective jurors at the beginning of a trial to determine a juror’s competency. To begin this process, the jurors are asked to take an oath. At the advice from a fellow Atheist, I remained standing after the oath and requested a secular oath. The judge was a bit ruffled at first but motioned toward the clerk to commence with an affirmation. This was ironic since, it being Ash Wednesday, the clerk had a smudge on his forehead having partaken in the bizarre Catholic ritual that very day. I was questioned briefly by the attorneys on the case. I had long hair. I had stood out from the crowd. I thought prostitution should be legalized. I was dismissed and I went forth to resume my god-free life.

In October 2007 I was again summoned to render service as a juror in Ramsey County, MN. On the first day I was one of 32 people that were selected out of a room full of ordinary folk in the basement of the Ramsey County courthouse to be considered to sit on the trial of a local gang member faced with 2 counts of second degree murder.

This was an important case. The county had spent over two years to prepare a case against this man and they were very careful about not leaving an opportunity for a mistrial.

Before the jury selection process began, the 32 jurist candidates were asked to complete a twelve-page questionnaire. This document was to act as an aid to the attorneys to determine a candidate’s bias and availability to serve. The candidates were then brought into the courtroom. Present at this event was the presiding District Court Judge John B. Van de North, Jr., his newly assigned clerk Anna, several sheriff deputies, the defense and prosecuting attorneys, the defendant and other attendees. The candidates were all asked to stand and swear an oath. As before, I remained standing and requested an affirmation. Judge Van de North immediately acknowledged my requested and even thanked me for doing so. The clerk read out the affirmation to me and I acknowledged.

The next thing that happened on this case was the jury selection process. This took a whole week to complete. Each of the 32 candidates were interviewed individually by Voir Dire. To begin, the juror is again asked to take an oath. During this process, I made it clear through my statements and on the questionnaire that I was an Atheist and I was an official of an Atheist organization. I thought I was sure to be dismissed, however, the Judge remarked “You are minority are you not?” and I had to admit to him that he was correct about that. I informed them that a person’s integrity was a very important thing to me.

This being a case brought against a racial minority, being an outsider to the status quo was of value to this court since the jury needed to be diverse as possible - and so to my surprise I was eventually chosen as a member of the jury.

After the jury was established, the formal trial began. The first time we went into court to hear testimony, the jury was asked to once again take an oath. This time the clerk gave the oath and left off the phrase “so help me God”. What was interesting about this was that every one present in the court accepted this and not one person objected to the omission of the lack of a god to swear to and I was not forced to request an affirmation. However, each person that subsequently gave testimony was given a god oath and not one of the witnesses objected to it – despite the fact that some of them were convicted felons and/or gang members.

After over two weeks of jury selection and testimony, the Ramsey County court found Tyvarus Lindsey, 25 guilty of two counts of second degree murder in the 2005 killing of Leon Brooks in Saint Paul. His partner, Vincent Smith pleaded guilty last week to the same and was sentenced to 26 years in prison. Mr. Lindsey will be sentenced on Dec 11.

About Oaths:

An oath is either a promise or a statement of fact calling upon something or someone that the oath maker considers sacred, usually a god, as a witness to the binding nature of the promise or the truth of the statement of fact. To swear is to take an oath.

An alternative to taking an Oath (at least in Ramsey county) is to acknowledge an affirmation.

This is a solemn declaration allowed to those who conscientiously object to taking an oath. An affirmation has exactly the same legal effect as an oath, but is usually taken to avoid the religious implications of an oath. In some jurisdictions, it may only be given if such a reason is provided and in few others refusal to take an oath may result in contempt or an ineligibility to hold political office.

Since 1695 the right to give an affirmation has existed in the United Kingdom having its origins in the refusal of Quakers to swear any oath, which would otherwise have barred them from many public positions. Quakers believe one must speak the truth at all times, yet the act of swearing to it would imply this is not the case. Atheists naturally avoid taking oaths however, some Xtians refuse to swear oaths based on an impression that the character of Jesus had some prohibition to such in the story of the Sermon on the Mount contained in the book of Xtian mythology.

What the Book of Xtian Mythology says about oaths:

According to my Gideon Holy Bible which I have piously renamed “The Book Of Xtian Mythology”, the book of Deuteronomy 6:13 states: “You shall fear the Lord you God and serve him, and take oaths in his name,” and 10:20 reiterates: “You shall fear the Lord thy God ; you shall serve him, and to him you shall hold fast , and take oaths in his name.” Like, I didn’t get it the first time. By any reasonable editorial standard, the book is a complete disaster. In these stories, this is apparently what the character Moses told his people since he had direct line to a god. The notion that the character of Jesus taught that taking an oath was prohibitive is, frankly, a blur and I do not have the time analyze the semantics regarding this – I have laundry to do and a cold martini at hand.

What the Ramsey County, MN Juror’s Handbook says about oaths:

JURORS' FIRST OATH

You do swear that you will truthfully answer all questions about your qualifications to serve as a juror, so help you God?

JURORS' SECOND OATH

You do swear that you will be attentive during this trial and follow the instructions of the Judge so that you may reach a fair and just verdict; that you will not discuss this case with anyone until submitted to you for deliberation and will keep your verdict secret until it is delivered to the Court, so help you God?

JURORS' FIRST AFFIRMATION

You do affirm, under penalty of perjury, that you will truthfully answer all questions about your qualifications as a juror?

JURORS' SECOND AFFIRMATION

You do affirm, under penalty of perjury, that you will be attentive during this trial and follow the instructions of the Judge so that you may reach a fair and just verdict; that you will not discuss this case with anyone until submitted to you for deliberation and will keep your verdict secret until it is delivered to the Court?

For more general information on jury duty, you may wish to study the Ramsey Courts Juror Handbook

As an Atheist, If you are called to jury in your county and are asked to swear to a god, kindly request the court to offer you an affirmation in its stead. In most cases in the eyes of the law your word is as good as a believer’s.

Open Letter to Alberto Scratchobelli

2007-09-05T17:53:00.000-05:00

So, Where IS my other shoe?

You have had free reign to poop all over the house and steal my pens and chew up the soft rubber grips and chase the cats and I have looked everywhere and I have no idea where my right black Rockport went you could not have eaten it and how could a shoe that is almost bigger than you are disappear without a trace no sorry I am not going to spend $700 to remove that awful thing on your back leg because it will just grow back and I am alittle tired of disinfecting the corners of my home and the new cat is skittish but stealing affection from you
you are a bandit and you look like a rat and i dont know why you are so cute anyway don't look at me like that.

CNN's Canticle of Fear

2007-08-28T17:43:00.000-05:00

CNN Introduced a 3 -part Documentary series on the religious extremists - The Jews, Muslims and Xtians.

I watched about an hour watching hysterical Jews in Israel being extraordinarily selfish over settlements in the West bank and Gaza. Old news to be sure , but what really made me turn this piece of crap off was the fact that this was NOT a documentary. It was fear piece complete with images of violence, conflict, foreboding music and rhetoric that would make you lock yourself in the basement for a week. To be sure, religious extremists are to be reckoned with, but we live in an era where fear seems like the only thing that sells - your kids will be sexually traumatized, you will die lonely in a rest home in laying in your own pee, and militant Jehovah's Witnesses will drive you from your home in a hail of gun fire.

There is no news, only fear. Please open up your pocket books for safety.

Rev Barky's Breakfast Burrito 1

2007-08-28T08:03:00.000-05:00

This blog has not yet had a recipe - so here it is. I love breakfast burritos and I have a few favorites I have devised and a method for preparing them that is pretty easy.

Tools:

Stove top griddle pan.
Kitchen scissors.
Small sauce pan.

Ingredients:

1 Azteca large flour tortilla
1 carton Better N' Eggs
a small handful of sliced portabello mushrooms.
a small handful of grated Sargento bistro cheese with Asiago.
two Jimmy Dean ready to heat sausage patties
a bundle of spring onions

I like using egg substitute because it low in cholesterol and are easy to use. It dos NOT taste as good as a fresh crack'n egg. But you have to get to work so shut up about it.
I prefer Better n' Eggs because they taste better than Egg Beaters and the cheese and chive flavor is also good here.

Place a tortilla on a griddle pan on LOW, then put the cheese in a line across the center and let soften slowly. Do not let the tortilla become too hot other wise it will get crispy and will not fold easily.

Crumble the mushrooms n a sauce pan with some butter and saute' a little. dump them over the cheese and tortilla. Keep checking the tortilla heat.

Pour a one or two egg helping of liquid eggs into the sauce pan. I use a little butter for lube.
Season with salt and pepper let cook over medium to low until firm and flip so they reach doneness as you like them. Once done, dump this on the tortilla.

Stick the sausage in the microwave for a minute. Cut then into small pieces with a scissors on the plate and dump them on the tortilla.

Finally, use the scissor to cut spring onions over the top of the pile as you like.

At any time when the cheese is soft enough and the tortilla is not yet stating to crisp, slide it into the counter on wax paper and fold when you have everything piled on. Turn the ends in fisrt and roll firmly. watch them do this at a burrito joint for research. Wrap the thing in the wax paper and stick it in your briefcase.

See, I let this one get a little too crisp so it doesn't look as good as it would have. Well, what is a day without mistakes?

Don't forget you freshly ground coffee and your office pass key.

Have a nice day. Endure.

Warning! Defective Smiley Masks from China.

2007-08-21T12:13:00.001-05:00

Alert!

There has been a major recall of novelty smiley masks made in the Republic of China.

The masks make you look as if you were very happy, but what if you were really, really happy? Like you just met the love of your life and knew that your future would be filled with amazing amounts of affection, passion and terrific back massages? Then the mask would be understating your joy.

I was playing around with one on these things and accidentally got into the super glue. Now, I have this smiley thing stuck to my face permanently!

How is anyone going to see that I have an even bigger one hidden behind it?

All You Wanted to Know About Pain.......

2007-08-16T17:41:00.000-05:00

But where afraid to feel it!

Here are some examples of how to classify pain.

The Schmidt Sting Pain Index is a scale rating the relative pain caused by different Hymenopteran stings.

1.0 Sweat bee: Light, ephemeral, almost fruity. A tiny spark has singed a single hair on your arm.
1.2 Fire ant: Sharp, sudden, mildly alarming. Like walking across a shag carpet & reaching for the light switch.
1.8 Bullhorn acacia ant: A rare, piercing, elevated sort of pain. Someone has fired a staple into your cheek.
2.0 Bald-faced hornet: Rich, hearty, slightly crunchy. Similar to getting your hand mashed in a revolving door.
2.0 Yellowjacket: Hot and smoky, almost irreverent. Imagine WC Fields extinguishing a cigar on your tongue.
2.x Honey bee and European hornet: Like a matchhead that flips off and burns on your skin.
3.0 Red harvester ant: Bold and unrelenting. Somebody is using a drill to excavate your ingrown toenail.
3.0 Paper wasp: Caustic & burning. Distinctly bitter aftertaste. Like spilling a beaker of Hydrochloric acid on a paper cut.
4.0 Pepsis wasp: Blinding, fierce, shockingly electric. A running hair drier has been dropped into your bubble bath (if you get stung by one you might as well lie down and scream).
4.0+ Bullet ant: Pure, intense, brilliant pain. Like walking over flaming charcoal with a 3-inch nail in your heel

So much from pain from bees - how about food?

The Scoville scale is a measure of the "hotness", or more correctly, piquancy, of a chili pepper.

Scoville rating	Type of pepper
15,000,000–16,000,000	Pure capsaicin^[4]
9,100,000	Nordihydrocapsaicin
2,000,000–5,300,000	Standard US Grade pepper spray ^[5]
855,000–1,041,427	Naga Jolokia ^[6]^[7]^[8]^[9]
350,000–577,000	Red Savina Habanero
100,000–350,000	Habanero Chile ^[10], Scotch Bonnet ^[10]
100,000–200,000	Rocoto, Jamaican Hot Pepper ^[5]
50,000–100,000	Thai Pepper, Malagueta Pepper, Chiltepin Pepper
30,000–50,000	Cayenne Pepper, Ají pepper ^[10], Tabasco pepper
10,000–23,000	Serrano Pepper
7,000–8,000	Tabasco Sauce (Habanero)^[11]
5,000–10,000	Wax Pepper
2,500–8,000	Jalapeño Pepper
2,500–5,000	Tabasco Sauce (Tabasco pepper) ^[11]
1,500–2,500	Rocotillo Pepper
1,000–1,500	Poblano Pepper, Texas Pete sauce
600–800	Tabasco Sauce (Green Pepper) ^[11]
500–1000	Anaheim pepper
100–500	Pimento ^[5], Pepperoncini
0	No heat, Bell pepper

More measurements of pain:

Visual analog scale (VAS)^[1]
McGill Pain Questionnaire (MPQ)^[2]
DDS^[3]
Faces Pain Scale (FPS)^[4]^[5]
Pediatric Pain Questionnaire (PPQ)
Faces Pain Scale - Revised (FPS-R) (Hicks, C., scale is from 1-10)
Faces, Legs, Activity, Cry, Consolability (FLACC)
Premature Infant Pain Profile (PIPP)
Numerical 11 point box (BS-11)^[6]
10 and 21 point scales^[7]
Schmidt Sting Pain Index
Starr sting pain scale
Verbal Rating Scale (VRS)
Simple Descriptive Pain Scale (SDS)
Wong-Baker Pain Faces Rating Scale (PFS)^[8]
Numerical Pain Scale (NPS)
Numeric Rating Scale (NRS-11)^[9]
Eland Scale
Modified Eland Scale
Cube Test
Faces Scale
Modified Faces Scale
Brief Pain Inventory (BPI)
Mankowski Pain Scale (SKIP), from 0 to 10
Dolorimeter Pain Index (DPI)
The Walid-Robinson Index (WRI)

Night of the Ichneumon

2007-08-15T22:22:00.001-05:00

It was not a dark and stormy night but it was night none the less when I noticed this spectacular arthropod clinging to the screen of my back door. I have seen pictures of this creature before so i thought I knew what it was and after paging through my Audubon bug book I confirmed that what I had captured was indeed a Giant Ichneumon Wasp.

The Ichneumon is a parasitic wasp. The female spends her time crawling over deadwood and leaves, beating the surface with her highly motile antennae seeking out caterpillars.
Once she finds one, she amazingly curls her elongated abdomen and drills her long ovipositor through the wood and injects her eggs into the victim. The rest is a macabre act of nature.

After inspecting this newly found insect, I decided to let her go and I dumped her out onto the ledge on my back porch where she crawled carefully across the wood toward the corner of the house.

I watched in wonder, but I was too late to notice that a large web spider had already targeted her and was poised to attack.

It took an instant as the spider jumped toward the wasp and quickly dragged her into it's non-geometric web It proceeded to wrap several rounds of binding silk around her quivering body.

Once the Ichneumon was immobilized, the spider bit and injected it poison into her.

How lucky I am to have witnessed a couple of earth's most grotesque creatures playing out nature's cruel game .

Bridge 9430 Theory

2007-08-03T15:52:00.000-05:00

With thousands of bridges that have been built in the country and with the long history of design, construction and inspection of these structures it is extraordinary that this critical structure has been allowed to deteriorate to point of complete failure causing such a dramatic impact in a major metropolitan area. it is reasonable to ask hard questions about why this happened.

It is quite likely that political factors have interfered with the process of maintaining the infrastructure in the state of Minnesota.

Although all the facts have not been compiled, based on some of the things i have researched and the reports that have been made so far, I have come up with a possible scenario that might explain why this disaster happened.

I was fortunate to make my online inquiries early before the flood of online material concerning this event had buried a lot of the existing information available on the bridge and its history.

1960s : The MNDOT builds a relatively inexpensive bridge across the Mississippi river in order to complete I-35W within an aggressive time schedule.

Late 1990s: Bridge 9340 is showing signs of significant wear and is being patched and reinforced frequently. The structure is rapidly succumbing to overbearing traffic load and age and needs to be replaced.

2000: With highway funding in short supply and roads needing increasing and expensive maintenance the MN DOT is desperately looking for ways to save money on maintenance. The state awards grants to U of M researchers to conduct a hi-tech research program designed to convince legislators that many aging bridges may be replaced at a later time than determined by standard metrics. It is thought that a report presented by respected civil engineering academics using state-of-the-art computer technology and some equations would be a convincing way to defer spending of many millions of dollars in funds on repair and replacement of existing structures. The 9340 bridge was a good candidate because of its financial liability and it close proximity to the research facility.

2002: After a year or so of tests on the 9340 bridge, U of M researchers publish a report that suggests that the bridge does not need to be replaced for at least 15 years and should be inspected more often. It also states that the bridge is unlikely to collapse despite flaws in the structure and discounts any evidence assembled my traditional inspection criteria. The report is practically calls the established procedures for determining bridge replacement obsolete and advocates applying the process to many other bridges throughout the state potentially saving hundreds of millions of dollars in funding that would otherwise go toward the timely replacement of potentially dangerous bridges in Minnesota. Replacement of the 9340 bridge is put on the back burner as the now invalidated inspections continue. Suggested repairs are delayed. The researchers stick feathers in their hats.

2007: Bridge 9340 experiences total structural failure and creates a major disaster for the Twin Cities metropolitan area.

Questions remain:

Who came up with the idea to perform research on this structure?
Who approved it?
Who made the decision to accept researchers advice over the established procedures of the DOT inspections department?

Poetry Corner

2007-08-03T13:02:00.000-05:00

It's time to dwell on some creepy lyrics performed my present
obsession - Klaus Nomi.

The lyrics are from from Purcell's "King Arthur" and are about as dark you can get - but it's really quite delicious.

Think about these words next time you are doing something mundane.

Cold Song.
Artist: Klaus Nomi.

What Power art thou,
Who from below,
Hast made me rise,
Unwillingly and slow,
From beds of everlasting snow!

See'st thou not how stiff,
And wondrous old,
Far unfit to bear the bitter cold.

I can scarcely move,
Or draw my breath,
I can scarcely move,
Or draw my breath.

Let me, let me,
Let me, let me,
Freeze again...
Let me, let me,
Freeze again to death!

See the this performed Live!

Find out more about Henry Purcell's "King Arthur" - a semi opera.

Faces of 1980's Androgenous Pop Culture.

2007-07-31T18:48:00.001-05:00

These three men represent a highly stylized face of androgeny in the early '80s. David Bowie, Klause Nomi and Gary Numan.

I just saw the documentary "Nomi song" about the life of Klaus Nomi. I had never heard of him but I immediately thought about Gary and David because of the similarity in look and style.

It appears there is a sort of chain reaction going on here. Klaus Nomi appears to have created a persona all his own crafted from elements of German 1920's Avant-garde cabaret, opera and synth-pop which he developed in the east village culture of NYC. Once he became somewhat of a cult figure there, he met David Bowie who used his style by hiring him to sing backup and design costumes for his performances on Saturday Night Live. It must have scared bowie to be involved with a person such as Nomi who had such a strong persona that it threatened to eclipse Bowie's. Bowie quickly changed his image and didn't work with Nomi anymore, but the performances gave Nomi his big break and he began to be a superstar in Europe before he died of AIDS in 1983.

I am not sure if Gary Numan knew much about Nomi, but some said he was a derivative of Bowie.

Klaus Nomi was a true genius and an amazing performer. It is a shame he is not with us today.

You can experience Klaus Nomi here: Lighting Strikes Again

The New Anti-sex League

2007-07-11T12:37:00.000-05:00

In George Orwell's book "1984", the youth are indoctrinated into a movement that serves to prevent anyone from having sex - at least sex for enjoyment purposes. They wear the red sash that identifies them as a member of the Junior Anti-sex League. They reports any sexual activity to Big Brother and the offenders are then ushered off to some undisclosed location where they are perhaps tortured back into submission.

Today, we are seeing an explosion of Bush administration funding to evangelical brainwashing organizations that invade our schools and preach sexual abstinence to a captive young audience.

No sex - not until you are married and, of course, you are going to want to have as many children as you can so that you are always running a treadmill and you never have amoment to think about the nature of oppression and you can never take any time off to attend a protest rally unless it happens to be an anti-abortion shindig or pro-creationism rant-a-thon.

The truth:

Sex is good for people and it is improves your neurological health. It is probably the best way to reduce stress in your life and helps to maintain close and beneficial relationships with others. It could be argued that it is our primary purpose for existence and all creatures will screw each other no matter how hard authority tries to interfere.

It would be far better to place a high importance on educating children and the public on how to engage in sex responsibly and how to maximize its benefits rather than to ignore or deny it.

Cars for Kids: Lessons learned.

2007-07-10T12:01:00.000-05:00

Here is a list of items that outline why the culture of Southern Redneck Motorhead Jesus Do-Gooders can be a danger to everyone.

Cars for Kids ended up killing 6 young people and critically many more and did not have:

Insurance.
A Parade permit
Registration with the state of Tennessee for receiving donations as a charitable organization.
Proper IRS tax filings or status.

In addition they:

Blamed the victims for getting hurt.
Denied any responsibility
Called it a "freak accident"
Figured a god would fix all their problems and insulate them from personal responsibility.

What a shame.

The Googled Atheist

2007-07-04T09:55:00.000-05:00

The privacy issue today is more complicated than ever before.

Employers have and always will be discriminatory if they can get away with it. With the rise the Internet and the proliferation of personal web pages like Myspace and Blogspot as well as forums and comment spaces, a person's personal trail on the web can accumulate and be nearly impossible to erase. Many people never dreamed that personal information that they have posted over the years would become an information source for unintended parties.

Today, it has become increasingly common for employers to "Google" candidates to mine for personal information. This is not just a problem with being Atheist, it can be so for just about anything an employer may not care for whether if be references to casual drinking, pot smoking, homosexuality or liking Vietnamese food.

This does not seem fair since years ago laws were introduced to prevent just this sort of behavior by making it illegal to ask certain questions of candidates. However, the consensus seems to be "tough, you decided to make it public so you are at fault".

This is unreasonably harsh since there is really no way to change your mind about it and years ago it wasn't really an issue.

This is not a problem if you are "Smith" or "Johnson" but if you have an unusual name like myself there is little escape.

Anonymity is golden in the Job market.

There are a few effective practices that can help a person preserve some privacy in the net. Always use aliases when posting anything remotely controversial on the web. Use your real name only if it is attached to dull and neutral content or that which affords you status.

My name is already out there and I am proud to be known publicly as an Atheist but I would like to hide this and all personal information about myself from potential employers.

So, here is an idea I think I will try. One cannot erase their history on the web, nor is it very practical to officially change your name. In some cases however, you can play a little trick on the employer that can prevent them from googling you and prying in to your personal life as a way to weed your name out of a list of candidates. This can me done by simply altering your name slightly on your resume so that the spelling does not illicit results when typed into a browser. It can be as simple a transposing a couple of letters so that the name looks very close to your real one. Take care to choose and test the variant of your name that will not cause the browser to suggest that you spell it correctly.

Your resume will be used throughout the screening and interviewing process. The employer will attempt to google you during this phase of the process and will not attain any useful results. Once you are offered the job you can then fill out the application using the correct spelling of your name and any background checks or official information can be processed normally. Probably, no one will notice the small discrepancy - It's just a typo - and once you have the job and are working, by then they will now realize that you are a real person too and can contribute to the bottom line even though you may enjoy wife swapping or Championship Dachshund Polishing.

Excuses and Platitudes

2007-06-21T08:22:00.000-05:00

Its simply amazing to hear all the things folks will say to avoid responsibility.
Of course, politicians are pros at this. The reason we have laws is so that people are prevented from repeating doing things that hurt the community. This not only applies to
action, but inaction as well. We all have a responsibility to help those in danger, turn in those committing crimes and taking reasonable precautions in order to prevent tragedies from occurring.

So, in Selmer TN we have a pretty hard boiled case of an event taking place that most everyone would agree that should not have happened and that proper safety was not observed. Yet, here is what many folk who had a stake in the event are saying to insulate themselves from any culpability.

Selmer police chief Neal Burks:
"It's been so good up to this year and we just had this accident,"

AMS racing Team:
"The driver, Troy Critchley is an experienced professional driver that had performed more than 1,000 exhibition burnouts without incident prior to Saturday,"

"The team understands that the Selmer police chief, Neal Burks, was present and in charge of crowd placement and blocking off the street.

"The drivers understood that the roadway had been inspected and approved for the burn out exhibition.

"After a straight start, the car skidded off the road. Mr. Critchley did everything humanly possible to keep the car on the road," the statement says. "Unfortunately, there was nothing he could do."

"For us at this point to turn our backs on those kids, I don't feel it would be the right thing to do," said Gene Church with the Cars for Kids event in Harrisburg.

Larry price - founded the event with a promise to GOD:
"He probably had a malfunction in the system of the car, He (was) trying to stop. These things are so sophisticated. It's a freak accident. It could happen anywhere. Just like an airplane crashing. A rodeo — a bull could jump up in the crowd and hurt somebody, kill somebody. It's just something that happened. The guy didn't come here to do that."

It appears that the city actually does have an ordinance requiring a permit for a parade on city streets but Mayor Robinson say it is "old" - meaning they don't use it anymore. This may mean the event was illegal and the city and the police could be guilty of assisting an illegal event and are in part responsible for the deaths ad injuries. I think the lawyers are going to have a golden parachute on their hotrods come a' court date.

I think it would be a stellar idea if the organizers of the charity would rename it "Cars for the victims of cars for kids". Isn't their responsibility to them now?

Officials Back away from Responsibilty in Selmer

2007-06-19T08:34:00.000-05:00

Update - Critchley volunteered to a blood sample taken at the hospital after he was slightly injured in the crash. According to Jackson Sun as of today, the result of the test have NOT been released. It appears the police did not take any action in this matter - wouldn't an arrest be warranted as a routine procedure when the deaths people are involved?

Organizers, officials and drag racing professionals continue to back away and are attempting to downplay the incident and frame it as an unavoidable ACCIDENT, but the public knows better.

I think I'll host a Xtian martyrdom event to raise money for the unborn victims of condom users. We can toss the bodies in a ditch somewhere and say a little prayer for them afterward.

Still more questions:

Turns out the driver of the drag racer had lost his license in 2000 due to a DUI and reckless driving! Normally, in civilized areas of the country, when you end up killing a bunch of folks in your vehicle the police take you into custody and give you a breathalyzer test. Standard procedure in a minimally competent law enforcement organization.

Was the driver, Troy Warren Critchley, given a sobriety test immediately after the incident? Did Police Chief Neal Burks ensure that was taken care of like he should have done?

I did see video of the crash Critchley was traveling at a very high rate of speed, out of control amongst throngs of vulnerable spectators - what a horrific sight!

I am sure more imcompetence, carelessness and just plain appalling backwardness will emerge in the days to come.

Stay tuned.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

More on the Cars for Kids saga:

High speed dragging on a public street with no concrete barriers, no regulations or permits or oversight, no safety policy - just the city cops saying "you folks jus' stan' back now".

Six people were killed in the crash Saturday in Selmer, Tenn.:
• Sean Michael Driskill, 22, of Adamsville, Tenn.
• Raven Griswell, 15, of Finger, Tenn.
• Nicole Griswell, 19, of Selmer.
• Brook Lauren Pope, 20, of Selmer.
• Scarlett Rena Replogle, 15, of Selmer.
• Kimberly Ann "Kim" Barfield, 17, of Adamsville.

And as I predicted:

Selmer Mayor David Robinson said he saw no reason to discontinue the Cars for Kids show in the future, because it benefits a good cause. Don't count on it Mayor.

The mayor and Police Chief Neal Burks said they didn't know anything the city could have done to prevent the accident. Wow - really? I'm very happy you are not MY mayor. Maybe ya oughtta keep yer trap shut!

The city attorney isn't sure if there will be any charges in the matter.

There's a whole mess o' prayin' goin' on as if some invisible person will come down and fix everything.

Another great excuse is: "There warnt no trouble before in all of 18 yeers."
As if that makes everything safe to begin with.

Some are trying to find fault with the victims or calling it a "freak accident"!

Since there were no laws or permits required, there may not have been any laws broken. There is a huge case for criminal negligence here, but sadly it may turn out the entire community is to blame.

Dangerous Redneck Charity Events

2007-06-17T10:26:00.000-05:00

Every year for the past 16 years, folks in Tennessee line up alongside a drag strip with their, double strollers and clothing with flames on them, to whoop it up to watch their fellow bubbas haul ass with racin' machines - all to raise money for sick children in the "Cars for Kids" charity event.

Whoowhee! There's nothin like downin' a cold one and hearin' the scream of nitro and squeelin' of the rubber! To hell with the G's the end of an adverb! LYNYRD SKYNYRD!

Check it out. Cars for Kids 2006 video.

(You can just skim through the video to get a feel for what I am talking about.)

Yet there is something about southern redneck culture that values having fun over common sense. It's like it just isn't worth while unless they truly have the feeling of impending death or at least convinced that they are seriously flirting with disaster.

Such is the case with "Cars for Kids". As you can see from the video, the event consists of insanely powered jalopies cobbled together in pole barns careening down a short stretch of road while masses of sheeple crowd in and crane their necks at the spectacle with very little to protect them as flaming hunks of metal filled with highly explosive fuel pass just a few yards in front of them at high velocity.

Now, I have been known to don my corn-boy disguise and attend rural Demo Derbys because I like to see cars intentionally crash into each other. These events are actually pretty safe (at least in the north) and there are barriers and bleachers and safety people to make sure no one - including the drivers - gets hurt.

What official is responsible for basic community safety in this case? Does it take anything but a complete moron to realize that something is bound to go terribly wrong here at some point?

Russian roulette always ends with someone getting fatally shot in the head as it did yesterday when the following happened:

A drag-race car lost control during a parade and spun into a crowd of bystanders on Saturday, killing four adults and injuring as many as 15 people, authorities said. The incident, which took place Selmer, Tennessee, about 80 miles east of Memphis, occurred at the Cars for Kids charity event. Witnesses said that the vehicle started burning off its tires, and fishtail, before slamming into a light pole and spinning around into the audience. The identities of the victims and the driver, or the driver's condition, were not immediately known after the accident. Investigators are trying to determine what caused the accident.(RTT NEWS)

I wonder how long it will take investigators to figure out how on earth this freak accident could have happened. Look for statements like these from the mayor's office:

"That ol' devil shore is wun mean sun-of-a-bitch. Let's go fin' im and finally lynch 'im good once an' fur all - Yeeeaaaaw!"

"Golly Cletus, look like yet anuther 'xample of a Act of God."

"Well, if the driver was just drinkin' Jack, cain't fault him none".

A few years ago, at an Aquatennnial parade in Minneapolis, a police car did this same thing and killed an elderly woman and injured a few others. That was a fluke. The cop car was not peeling out and was driven by a veteran officer. However it was not fully explained why this happened and settlements were probably made quietly in those back rooms at city hall.

The Tennessee Nascar fans have nothing on the Saudis however - a practice called "Drifting" is basically street dragging while intentionally causing your car to go into a controlled and prolonged skid - in other words, out of control.

Arab Drifting

Chuck Norris: Right Wingnut

2007-06-13T07:16:00.000-05:00

I saw this in the latest American Atheist newsletter about Chuck Norris and didn't realize how bigoted some b-movie stars can be.

Mr. Norris wrote a "humorous" commentary published by worldnetdaily.com.

Worldnetdaily.com, however is a conservative Xtian publication with the usual patriotic/Xtain nation hook. As these types of rags speak with a voice of righteousness and divisiveness so they can sell Viagra and Investment scams to older conservatives, don't expect to see my letter on their site anytime soon. Had I known this from the start, I may not have bothered to send anything to the editor.

Read the unfunny piece here.

Here is my letter to the editor in response.

I purposely used lower case norris because worldnet.com did not capitalize Atheist.
-------------------------
To the editor,

Regarding to the June 11 commentary by chuck norris entitled "If I am elected president". One of Mr. norris's items for being president was that he would:

"Tattoo an American flag with the words, "In God we trust," on the forehead of every atheist."

This isn't exactly considered humor unless you happen to be a very narrow minded individual who thinks that any one who does not share your philosophy deserves fewer civil rights and to be publicly humiliated.
History reveals that this type of practice has occurred officially only in dictatorships and feudal aristocracies.

However, in the U.S. there have been many instances in the more isolated parts of the country where lynching has occurred and where the local judiciary has turned a blind eye to the basic laws that govern this great country, but even today those who have engaged in this repugnant practice and who still survive are being tried, convicted
and living out the rest of their lives in federal prison for murder.

So, it is doubtful that Mr. norris is speaking about being the president of a democracy such as the one we, as citizens of the United States have enjoyed for over two centuries and the freedom that we have spilled our blood to preserve.

Judging from the look of his campaign promises he would fare far better as dictator of a small backward nation that embraces bigotry, despotism, torture and bad martial arts films.

Perhaps I will write a letter to Kim Jong-il informing him that he has a successor.

[Rev. Barky]
Atheist

Better Illegal Imigration Through Religion

2007-06-11T20:01:00.001-05:00

There are many types of VISAs that one can obtain in order to gain legal entrance into the U.S. The list of the types of these transit documents are like a rich alphabet soup followed by the word "VISA".

Among the easiest VISA to obtain is the "R" or "Religious Worker VISA"and as many of us know, whenever we see the "R" word, it is often accompanied by the "F" word in a back room or behind a curtain.

The R1 visa is issued to foreign members of religious denominations having status in the U.S., for entering the U.S. to practice as a minister or religious worker as a profession, occupation or vocation and must have worked for the organization for at least two years. This includes a broad range of individuals excluding lower level staff.

They do not need to have a residence and must promise to return to their country after 5 years but can return to the U.S. after one year. They can bring their wives and kids on an R2 Visa and come and go as they please.

Here is what is required in order to get in:

Fill out 2 forms.
Show a copy of your present and past passports.
Show 2 pictures (showing your full face - you may wear a headdress if your imaginary handler commands you to do so)
Proof of tax exempt status and papers of identity for the Institution of Superstition that is allowing you to spread disinformation and lies in this country.
A letter from a Grand Poobah of your syndicate verifying all this stuff.

Recently, the U. S. General Accounting Office (GAO) has realized that there is a high level of fraud taking place involving the use of the R-VISA. Of course, they mean over and above the ordinary fraud that clergy and their ilk practice on a regular basis. In fact, the U. S. office of Federal Detection and National Security (FDNS) has found that as many as 1/3 of the cases filed under the R-VISA category are fraudulent and I'll bet you have never heard of the FDNS, have you?

The amount of fraud taking place could be far higher.

The applicants simply lie when filling out the forms and provide falsified documents. Imagine all these clergy lying to our highly competent and patriotic public officials and pretending to be something they are not. It seems you just can't trust a Minister, Priest or Imam nowadays!

Because of the perceived ease in obtaining an R-1 visa, and the relative ease of moving from the non-immigrant status to permanent residence, the incidence of fraud has continued to rise.

In order to fix this problem, U.S. Customs and Immigration (USCIS) has proposed increasing the paperwork required and implementing oversight procedures involved in order to obtain the R-VISA instead of having applicants conveniently forging everything directly at a U.S. consulate.

The Bush administration can make all the rules they want but they have an abysmal record on enforcement - especially with regard to illegal immigration because the corporate overlords who hold their marionette strings desire a large pool of desperate and hungry workers so they can pay as little as possible in order to dismember poultry and yank cauliflower for wages few American citizens will work for. Rest assured, that they will not be satisfied until this country resemples North Korea and all the elite executives can pretend to be like Kim Jong-il.

All the additional rules were proposed in order to bring "integrity" back into the program.
However, the Bush administration seems to have never grasped the meaning of the word. How many times have you heard good ol' George Dubbya SAY he's "gonna getter-dun" and then absolutely nothing happens - or worse, something horrible gets signed into law that we will all be paying for for generations - just because he needs to be "the Decider".

Someone really ought to find out which ineffectual Fundie appointee heads up the USCIS because whoever they are, they really are doin' a "heck of a job!"