Tuesday, August 21, 2012

Our Wacky World—8/21/2012

"It's the latest prescription for extreme ultra-Orthodox Jewish men who shun contact with the opposite sex: Glasses that blur their vision, so they don't have to see women they consider to be immodestly dressed."
Yahoo

This is a hoot. A history professor has pieced together a history of Europe using nothing but text from papers his students have submitted. Here is a paragraph (sics suppressed temporarily):
"The Reformnation happened when German nobles resented the idea that tithes were going to Papal France or the Pope thus enriching Catholic coiffures. Traditions had become oppressive so they too were crushed in the wake of man’s quest for ressurection above thenot-just-social beast he had become. An angry Martin Luther nailed 95 theocrats to a church door. Theologically, Luthar was into reorientation mutation. Calvinism was the most convenient religion since the days of the ancients. Anabaptist services tended to be migratory. The Popes, of course, were usually Catholic. Monks went right on seeing themselves as worms. The last Jesuit priest died in the 19th century."
Wilson Quarterly

Speaking of bad writing...
"To admit the possible truth that someone writing for him had actually plagiarized would expose the fact that this “World Class Pundit and Author”, was merely a “front man” representing his privileged class. If this is true of Zakaria, who else of these “serious journalistic stars” is also doing the same thing and more importantly how are they shaping the political debate?"
Turley's Blog

"Two parents who admittedly duct taped their children inside an SUV in a Walmart parking lot said they did so because they were 'demon possessed.' 
"During Tuesday’s preliminary hearing, the court learned the couple had sold most of their belongings and left their suburban Chicago home because, 'a darkness was coming over the house,' and the house was possessed by demons."
Fox2Now (Apparently they're disciples of this crank.)

Stumpin' for Jesus
“The Quantum Jumping Program is absolutely fantastic. I’ve always wanted to write so I Quantum Jumped into a parallel world and met my doppelganger who is a published author that has written many books. It was a truly awesome experience. My second experience concerned public speaking. I jumped through the doorway and found my doppelganger who is a world recognized public speaker. I learned so much that I know if I should be asked to speak, I can do so with all the flair and skill that I learned during my Quantum Jump. As I cross off items off the top of my list of ‘to do’ list, I’m adding more to the bottom. The Quantum Jumping Program has been the best investment I have made in the last 40 odd years of searching."
"Please note that these results are not typical."
Quantum Jumping

"Finally, factor in what is certainly one of the most important reasons why a rape victim rarely gets pregnant, and that's psychic trauma. Every woman is aware that stress and emotional factors can alter her menstrual cycle. To get and stay pregnant a woman's body must produce a very sophisticated mix of hormones. Hormone production is controlled by a part of the brain that is easily influenced by emotions. There's no greater emotional trauma that can be experienced by a woman than an assault rape. This can radically upset her possibility of ovulation, fertilization, and implantation."
Physicians For Life

"The report published on the Catholic website 'Family Under the Protection of the Holy Virgin' calls the show 'a large-scale experiment on Ukrainian children' to 'create criminals and perverts.' This is only slightly worse than the Teletubbies which send children into a trance and create 'an imbecile who will sit near the screen with an open mouth and swallow any information.' As a teacher for almost 30 years I can attest to seeing the same phenomenon without the use of SpongeBob."
Turley's Blog

"...the Justice Department found that Lauderdale County Youth Court, the Meridian Police Department, and the Mississippi Division of Youth Services created a "school to prison pipeline" in which dress code violations, flatulence, profanity, and disrespect could send a child to jail."
Opposing Views

"As with just about every other Scientology controversy, Narconon's problems are not new. Throughout its history, it's faced protests, as well as debunking by experts. 
"But this time, its problems seem of another magnitude. There are not only four deaths at the flagship Oklahoma facility under investigation -- three just since October -- but Narconon is also mired in litigation in Michigan and Georgia, it was chased out of Quebec, and has also apparently given up on the UK."
Village Voice

"[ebay] said it was banning all sales of supernatural goods and services, exiling its witchy and wizardly clientele to the wilds of Craigslist and other Web-based Diagon Alleys."
LA Times (snarkier report here)

"We have never in all our collective years had such an unbelievably terrible customer service experience - not ever. We estimate that we spent around 18 hours collectively on the phones, on hold, trying to track down [ten year old] Phoebe, her bags and our peace of mind. It's hard to imagine how you run a business this way, how you get away with things so close to child endangerment, and how you sleep at night training your service employees how to not be of service."
Network World

"Once a pretend multimillionaire, Michael Prozer will spend the next eight-plus years in a federal prison cell for fraud. ...After more than a year of proclaiming his innocence, Prozer admitted to swindling a now-defunct Georgia bank, Park Avenue Bank, out of a $3 million loan that he never repaid. 'I've done a lot of good things,' he said. 'This case makes it look like I'm a horrible person.'"
Tampa Bay Online

"Perez continued to ask forgiveness, and added, 'I didn't mean to hurt' the child, the boy's brother told police. 'I am just one who serves in the church, and I have sinned; don't stop believing in the church,' Perez reportedly told the victim's brother."
Oregon Live

"Back in my country, my president, he’s trying to pass a gun ban, so he’s staging all of these murders, like the ‘Fast And Furious’ thing down at the border; Aurora, Colorado, all the people that were killed there; and now the beautiful people at the Sikh temple. I was talking to JD, our promoter here tonight, great guy, I was saying, you know, I don’t know where I’m going to live if it keeps going the way it’s going because it looks like it’s turning into Nazi America. And he said move down here to Singapore."
Dispatches From The Culture Wars

Perfect. Dave Mustaine is moving to Singapore. Meanwhile, Hank Williams, Jr. is simply incoherent:
"You know, we've got a President that does a call to the Koran or Mecca or whatever. That's what I meant. That's exactly what I meant. I won't be changing my name to whatever. That's exactly what I meant."
Rolling Stone


Coming soon to a theater near...er, direct video, the much-anticipated remake of Red Dawn:
"You see, the actual North Korea is a country of 24 million people with a GDP roughly equal to North Dakota’s. It’s an impoverished, even starving, prison state that lacks modern weaponry and any ability to deploy forces globally. If preview clips posted this weekend are any indication, the movie magically gifts North Korea with a huge fleet of long-range transport planes … because it has to. Of course, how these planes get past the U.S. military’s 3,000 jet fighters is anyone’s guess."
Wired