Another Rat-Zinger From The Pope
Posted by Marsh in Homophobia, Religion on February 8th, 2010
Pope Benedict. Cardinal Ratzinger. Il Papa. God’s representative on Earth. Call him what you like, one thing remains clear: He’s an idiot. That much is indisputable. The only real question is what kind of an idiot is he? Is he an insane, people-hating idiot (see Mother Theresa)? Or is he perhaps a power-mad moron (I hear he’s amending the Ten Commandments to add an eleventh one – “Thou shalt stand on one leg when Ratzy says so”)? Or is he just a common-or-garden out-of-touch, ancienct, backward-thinking lunatic? The debate rages on. Here’s some fuel for the fire:
Pop Benedict attacks government over Equality Bill
The Pope has urged Catholic bishops in England and Wales to fight the UK’s Equality Bill with “missionary zeal”. – Source: BBC Online
Yep, the Holy One believes that a bill aimed at protecting people from discrimination based on sexuality and gender is an evil law that must be fought with the kind of zeal missionaries have. I’m not 100% sure what missionary zeal is – I think it’s where the zealot is on top and the infidel is underneath, thus allowing the zealot to look the infidel in the eyes while he fucks them (metaphorically speaking). I do think it worth pointing out that had a leading figure in the Muslim faith uttered the phrase ‘fight with missionary zeal’ we’d be talking terrorism – but because the only people the Pope is condemning to death are countless Africans (more of that later) we see him as something of a weird but harmless old man. Go figure.
What’s more, the Pope has said the legislation “violates natural law” – a pretty clear reference to the fact that it would allow homosexuals more freedom from discrimination from, say, religious organisations. The very use of the phrase ‘violates natural law’ is immensely telling, if you ask me – it’s so homophobic I’m surprised Jan Moir hasn’t had it tattooed across her forehead. Read the rest of this entry »
What Is It? #3
What is it? (click to enlarge)
It’s that time of the week again – time for Prof. Dowling to get irate and berate my poor-quality English and inefficient bloggery (honestely, we’d give him his own login, but there’s only so many times we can have the word ‘fuckbadgers‘ on our site per day, by law). Indeed, it’s time for our regular ‘What Is It?’ competition. Same rules as ever – take a look at the image featured here, and leave us your best guess as to what it is. Closest answer gets a name-check next week.
Last week we showed you this photo and asked you what it was. The correct answer was – a burner from a DVD RW drive. We didn’t get an entirely correct answer, but Mossman suggested it was “some kind of sensor (thermal, stress/strain, acoustic), phone keyboard or piezo-electric speaker”, which is probably the closest answer we got. I fully prepare for the Prof to take me to task on this one, too!
The Helping Hand Of God In The Unibond League
Posted by Marsh in Media, Merseyside, Religion on February 6th, 2010
I’m about to do something a lot of you will likely frown on. I’m aware of this, and I do apologise. I don’t know what I was thinking. Perhaps all of those sugar pills last weekend scrambled my brain. Perhaps aliens visited me at night and implanted this wild, crazy and completely inappropriate idea into my mind (hey, at least they stayed up THAT end this time). Perhaps I’m just spoiling for a rumble. In any case, there’s no getting away from it, this is happening:
I’m going to talk about football.
I know, I know, IknowIknowIknow. You guys, our lovely readers, are scientists, science fans, and generally science types. As am I. But when I’m not talking Cold Reading with psychics, organising mass non-suicide or generally being a good-for-nothing skeptic, there are few things I love more than settling down to a good match. The poetry of movement, the grit of teamwork, the drama, the excitement, the cliches.
Oh, and the batshit lunacy.
I’ve spoken elsewhere about the superstition rife in football (it was my handy hook to hang the story of Arsenal striker Robin Van Persie’s horse placenta treatment on, you may recall. If you can’t recall, please head over and have a read. Horse placentas. Lol. Etc.), but this time I’m bringing things back home. We are, after all, the Merseyside Skeptics Society, and no amount of International campaign-running (yes, I’m going to milk 10:23 for all of the kudos I can get, what of it?) will change that. Which is why when I was sent this article by a listener to our podcast, I just had to take a look at it. Read the rest of this entry »
I Believe in… Miracles
Posted by Allan in Crop Circles, Media, Pseudoscience, Skepticism, UFOs on February 5th, 2010
Well folks, I think everyone is pretty much recovered from the events following the big swallow and with all of us swallowers retaining the use of body, mind and ‘energies’, then it must be time to turn some attention further out, deeper into the big, bad, wild and woolly world of woo. Woohoo!
The “I Believe in…” series that is currently playing out on BBC Three at the audience-friendly time of ‘midnight-ish’ is, by far, the most incredulous, poorly thought-out, nonsense-laden idiot-fest seen on British TV since, well… *cough* erm… Jeremy Kyle is on every day… and The Wright Stuff… and then there’s almost all of Channel 5’s output… Satellite channels… (has anyone ever watched anything of Conspiracy TV? *giggles*)
OK, so there’s stiff competition out there in the time-rich and thought-poor facets of British media, and anything that comes with short sentences, a couple of nice locations and a pretty face or two is likely to get up there on the box at some point, no matter how inane the subject material, or how utterly bonkers the take on said substrate may be. This is where Danny Dyer, Jodie Kidd and “I Believe in…” come in.
Danny Dyer’s effort, “I Believe in UFO’s”, deserves its own lengthy analysis, but I’ll just relay one little element that really made me chuckle… Loveable, credulous, silly old Danny has just been out in a crop field with a ‘Crop Circle Expert’, who is in fact just some random dude with a VW campervan and an IQ problem, calmly explaining how crop circles must be produced by aliens, because the ‘knees’ of the stalks on the crops can only be bent over in this way by high temperatures of some sort, and thus ‘steam’ in the joint and… WHOOM… down go the grasses into this week’s pattern picked out of ‘Flying Saucer Crop Patterns Lightyearly’ (WHSmith will get it in if you ask nicely, have two green heads and 6 limbs (but don’t tell Danny!)) by our Alien UberSturmFuhrer on duty to watch over us puny Earthlings and molest cattle on that particular night. Our hero, swollen with ‘knowledge’, goes into the local pub to meet some thoroughly delightful chaps at the pool table – very casual. These delightful chaps then go on to tell him that it’s all a load of bollocks. It’s them! They go into the crop circles at night, mob-handed, and proceed to inflict criminal damage on a lot of innocent arable crops and the brains of gullible, half-witted townies… without actually admitting it of course – the local constabulary might be watching. Cue Danny’s almost weepy lament pouring out of his drizzle-stricken grid. For everything else there may well be credit cards, but these moments which warm the heart… Priceless. Read the rest of this entry »
10:23 – A View From The Centre
Posted by Andy in 10:23, Activism, Homeopathy, Skepticism on February 4th, 2010
I can make this blog post as it’s still the weekend at the time of writing. Yesterday I tweeted how we all deserved to feel smug for at least 24 hrs. And I meant it. But tomorrow is Monday. Back to real life in many ways because the last 3 months, and the last couple of weeks in particular have been one of the most rewarding periods of my life. Not because I did something amazing. But because lots of people worked together to do something amazing. I know this is a feeling shared by many people this weekend.
The reason this protest was so successful was because of the backstory, the unheard voice of the British skeptical community, the private outrage expressed through blogs and web sites and individual efforts feeling completely unheard by the general population.
The idea belongs to the community. Inspired by the likes of Randi and his famous serial overdosing, egged on by the success of the Belgian skeptics and their overdose a couple of years ago. The Belgians were about 25 in number. And they achieved big headlines.
MSS decided some while back that it would be more than a talking shop. Like so many scousers before us we wanted action and we wanted it now. We also knew that the traditional skeptical battles were already continually being fought out in the blog trenches. Any slight bit of mainstream media coverage for one of the traditional skeptical targets such as psychics or bad medicine or even the dowsing rods being sold to the Iraqis for £40k each showed that the skeptical community had plenty of fight and ability in it. We all felt that focussing this energy was what would bring the best results. Homeopathy was a good target for our effort and we resolved to make this the focus for MSS in the medium term and started thinking about what we might do. Read the rest of this entry »
Homeopathic Mass ‘Overdose’ – The 10:23 Campaign
Posted by Marsh in 10:23, Activism, Homeopathy, Skepticism on February 3rd, 2010
The 10:23 Campaign
Cross-posted from the JREF Swift blog.
Generally speaking, when homeopathy hits the headlines here in the UK skeptics have cause to wince – whether it’s B-list celebrities advocating homeopathic malaria prevention, newspaper lifestyle columns promoting the benefits of the long-discredited pseudomedical practice or simply major pharmacies out to make an easy profit, there are very seldom many good days for succussion-skeptics.
Saturday, 30th January 2010, however, was different. At precisely 10:23am that morning, over 400 protesters took to the streets of cities around the UK as part of the 10:23 campaign – aiming to demonstrate the ineffectiveness of homeopathic pills. Gathering in a dozen town centres the length and breadth of the land, activists bravely took their lives into their hands by ‘overdosing’ on entire bottles homeopathic remedies.
Unsurprisingly, no skeptics were harmed in the making of this protest – for, as we know, there’s nothing in homeopathy. Zip. Zilch. Nil. What’s more, the event didn’t go unnoticed – with prominent press coverage from the BBC, The Guardian, The Telegraph and even the Huffington Post, amongst many, many other sources. Radio stations had phone-ins on the the story. It made the TV news. All in all, this wasn’t a day for skeptics to wince. Read the rest of this entry »
