Mother superior

The story of the Chinese "Tiger Mother" has really grown legs. I last posted about it here. Since then she's received a storm of criticism and even death threats. Here's one of many critiques.

Then there's the Chinese Mother-in-Law.

Here's a more general article about "extreme parenting".

I tend to agree that too many parents these days treat their kids more like "friends" than children, which can lead to problems like an excessive sense of entitlement. But going to the opposite extreme is no better.

I'm concerned about educational systems that don't teach students how to solve real-world problems. They didn't do it in the Seventies and they sure as hell don't now.

I'm so glad I never had kids.

Dr. Oscar Predicts

I predict that none of the following will have any impact at all on astrology as it is practiced here in the West.

You may have heard recently that the Babylonian zodiac has been "corrected", throwing astrologers into a tailspin. So what? I don't care whose feelings I hurt, astrology is BUNK. It's as real as the miracles in the Bible. Here's yet another statistical analysis, brilliantly visually displayed, that demonstrates once again the sheer vacuousness of the "art":

I can understand perfectly why people want to believe. But it isn't true. Get on with your life.

Alien Sex Fiends

You may recall my brief mention of alien abduciton aficionados in my recent post on repressed memory. I'm thrilled by UFOlogy researcher Robert Sheaffer's report that the world of abduction gurus David Jacobs and Budd Hopkins has collapsed:

"So what happened recently that has left Abductology for dead? In a deadly one-two punch, a woman who was one of Jacobs' subjects is publicly accusing him of unprofessional conduct, and has recordings to back herself up. This was followed by Hopkins' ex-wife spilling the beans about his extreme loosey-goosey "investigative" methods, and showing him absurdly credulous in accepting subjects' obvious fabrications, in fact sometimes actually complicit in helping cover them up!"

Concerning the the first accuser, "Emma Woods" (not her real name):

She accuses Jacobs of telling her, during hypnosis sessions, that she suffers from Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD). She also accuses him of "planting" false memories in her of evil aliens abducting her, raping her, and even trying to kill her. She says she felt sick every time she saw the ocean because she "remembered" an alien hybrid holding her head under water.

All standard "recovered memory" bullshit. As for Hopkin's ex-wife Carol Rainey, it gets better:

Upon reading "Emma's" account, she jumped into the fray: "the trusting and vulnerable patient delivered up to Jacobs his hoped-for narrative of predatory hybrids among us— exactly what he ordered for the book he was writing. However, it’s anything but a typical abductee’s experience: violent sexual encounters with a human/alien hybrid; a request by the good Doctor (Ph.D. in history, non-medical) to send him her panties, unwashed, so they could be tested for alien sperm; and a proposal that she wear a chastity belt with nails across the vaginal opening, which he’d locate for her from (in Jacobs [sic] words) “a sex shop that specialized in bondage/dominance, a place that I frequented quite often.” "

I'll have to sit and savor this for a while. Couldn't have happened to nicer pair of crackpots.

The Alien Abduction Lamp is selling well. You still have time to be one of the 1000 lucky owners of this collectors' item.

Alien Sex Fiend had a lot of good records back in the Eighties. Takes me back...

Here's some tunes on YooToob.