2003-05-03-12:46 p.m.
Saturday, May 3, 2002

Now Playing
See last Saturday. I, in fact, will be listening to the same thing every Saturday, rain or shine. Right now, it's Car Talk.







Friday's DVD
Spirited Away
A breathtakingly beautiful engaging Alice story from Miyazaki, the creator of Kiki's Delivery Service, and If they released a dvd without the Disneyfied extras, I'd love that. I imagine they have, only it probably doesn't have English, which would suck. I just wasn't amused by the gee-golly enthusiasm of the Disney-Directed, child-brief extras. Luckily, they included a nice, long Japanese television special about the making of the movie.




In The News

Men More Likely to Die During Thunderstorms than Women By LEE BOWMAN - Scripps Howard News Service Men are more than twice as likely to die during a thunderstorm as women, usually because they're trying to drive or are outdoors at a sporting event, according to a new study. "We found that deaths from thunderstorm-related weather conditions center around flash floods and lightning strikes, with the victims primarily male," said Thomas Songer, an assistant professor of epidemiology and neurological surgery at the University of Pittsburgh. Songer presented his research in Atlanta Monday at a meeting on injury prevention sponsored by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Researchers have long known that men are far more likely to be struck and killed by lightning. One National Weather Service review of lightning injuries between 1959 and 1994 found that men account for as many as 80 percent of lightning fatalities every year. Songer's study went beyond lightning. It looked at deaths from thunderstorm conditions that included high winds, flash floods, lightning and tornadoes between 1994 and 2000. He found that of 1,442 deaths, 70 percent were males, and two-thirds of the deaths occurred outside the home, mostly from flash floods and lightning strikes. "In deaths from flash floods, most of the victims were in a vehicle, usually engaged in an attempt to drive through water," Songer said. "The highest percentage of deaths from flash-flood conditions, 65 percent, involved driving or transport mishaps." According to the weather service, flooding is the top cause of death from thunderstorms, averaging almost 140 fatalities each year. Lightning is the second-leading cause of fatalities, with an average of 93 people killed each year. Deaths from lightning strikes were most likely to occur during sports or recreation activity (36 percent) or while working outdoors (21.8 percent). During tornadoes, 40 percent of deaths came when people were engaged in outdoor activity (40 percent) or while driving (23 percent). High winds from a thunderstorm were most likely to prove fatal when a person is driving, boating or fishing -more than 58 percent. "When a thunderstorm strikes, the best thing to do is to get into a building," Songer said. But beyond that, thunderstorm safety gets murky. For instance, the American Red Cross advises people to seek shelter in a building or car as a storm approaches; it also warns them not to shelter in a spot subject to flooding. "Questions arise about whether to seek low or high ground, to remain in a vehicle or get out," Songer said. Studies have shown that most tornado deaths (an average of 80 a year) occur among people who are in mobile homes or vehicles. However, being out in the open increases the danger from lightning. "Lightning seeks the highest point in an area, which puts sports and recreation enthusiasts at risk during activities that involve a wide-open playing field, golf course or lake. Then, getting into a car is advisable, if possible," Songer said. "On the other hand, when near a rising body of water, you should abandon a vehicle and seek higher ground to avoid flash floods."

Is it just me, or does this story bring to mind an image of a turkey, head raised, drowning in a rainstorm, because it just doesn't have the sense to put its head down?

Germany protects ants Now Deutschlanders must apply for permits from the state's forestry agency to have pesky ants moved to forests. I think the Germans like that ants organize themselves into armies.









The Good Old Days are now, and I've been insisting that since before we had the internet.

Did Knives and Forks Cut Murders? By ALEXANDER STILLE In 1939, at one of civilization's lowest points, a little-known Swiss sociologist, Norbert Elias, published a book called "Über den Prozess der Zivilisation" ("On the Civilizing Process") with a strange and unlikely thesis: that the gradual introduction of courtly manners — from eating with a knife and fork and using a handkerchief to not spitting or urinating in public — had played a major part in transforming a violent medieval society into a more peaceful modern one.

When someone laments the passing of "the good old days," slap them for me, will ya? Wouldn't it be nice to get back to a time when it was rusticly cozy, when a woman's constant job was to keep a fire going, a job that got her up at a freezing 4 or 5 in the morning, and kept her up until the last person had gone to bed? Or maybe the lovely, sepia-days when folks died of colds and flus? It sure was simpler when we just...didn't know how to read, or didn't have to fool with those annoying Public Utilities like running water or gas heat. Ah, the quaintness of the days when a woman's anatomy was such a mystery that doctors were convinced her reproductive organs traveled about her body.

And the fifties! What about those fabulous fifties, when women were told by Our Government to leave their good livings for the betterment of the community, only to create that kooky, kitschy thing called the Nuclear Family, girls bonded with their mothers and wondered what a female/male relationship was, and boys grew up seeing their fathers once a week or so. Those Atomic, Space-Age, optimistic times when schoolchildren lept under their desks, covering their face with their hands in feeble hopes to keep that face from melting off. Ah, yes, the Good Old Days. When witches were burned, communists were fried, and sugar was rationed.

It makes me warm all over to think about it.

Site of the Day
Photo Essays by Herman Krieger

Herman Krieger describes himself as a non-practicing Jew who has not been to synagogue since he was 12. Would that all religious education "took" as well as his! The most obvious and, in many ways, most delightful interaction that he will quicken in you is that between caption and photo. And most of the captions will, in turn, be drawn either directly or indirectly from Jewish and Christian scriptures. Herman thus nicely illustrates the ancient insight, voiced by Ignatius Loyola but universally true, "give me a child until he is six and he will be a Catholic forever." Religious truths, often embodied in text but always pointing beyond the text to experience itself, rarely go away for good. At worst, they hibernate. In the gentle humor that is the conversation between caption and photo, this book might well awaken hibernating truths in you as well. Another beguiling level of meaning, therefore: not, "Will this re-awakening happen?" but rather, "Did Herman intend it?"

2003-05-02-1:01 p.m.
Now Playing
Absinthe Radio

-----This just goes to show what major misunderstanding there is about my favorite music, Vintage Jazz, the music of post World War I to the beginning of World War II.

-----When I saw the title of this station, Absinthe Radio, I was excited, because I thought it was a station of music from 1880-1920. After all, absinthe drinking was The Fast Prevailing Vice Among Our Gilded Youth during that time period.

-----Luckily, there is a music station of that sort which I will review tomorrow, perhaps. This particular station is actually excellent. The non vintage-jazz pieces it plays are good, too. After all, since the vintage jazz is not related in any way to absinthe, he might as well play World War II music. And what great music it is, too.

This station plays music by Billie Holliday and Cab Calloway, and depression hits like We're in the Money, Dinah, and Happy Days are Here Again. There's something incredibly soothing about a romantic dance ballad played mono with all the pops and cracks of a victrola record. Of course, there's nothing like hearing those pieces the way they were intended to be heard, either. That's why my vintage jazz collection is on glorious cd. These sides are crowd pleasers, too. I used to play this kind of music every day at work at my concession stand. I had kid helpers, and I swear, from age five to age fourteen, I would catch the kids dancing and tapping their fingers. For the kids, this music has lost the stigma it had for my generation: that this is the music that sits on our grandparents' pianos, and this is the music our grandparents shoved at our parents, saying, "Now Guy Lombardo, that's real music; not that Elvis/Beatles/newfangled Steve Lawrence and Edie Gourmet stuff you kids are listening to." If you think that Steve and Edie comment is made up, ask my brother. And, yes, the word newfangled came before Steve Lawrence. Ahhhhhhhh.....memorieeeeeeesss.

Thursday's DVD
Left Behind

I watched this awful, terrible, boring film just to say I saw it. I have no other excuse. I laughed a lot, but not enough to make this film un-excrutiating. Don't rent it. It's only good for super-endtimes Christians who don't let their kids watch anything but this and Veggietales-and they do exist. I enjoyed many of the reviews, though:

"For all its intimations of fire and brimstone, the film isn't remotely frightening, and the high-school-level acting doesn't help." -- Stephen Holden, NEW YORK TIMES

"Whatever the central message, the movie's still a blundering cringefest, thanks to unintentionally laughable dialogue, hackneyed writing and uninspired direction." -- Desson Howe, WASHINGTON POST

"There are various absurd developments that will have most everyone chuckling, rolling their eyes or simply getting up and leaving after too many such occurrences." -- SCREEN IT!

"The loosely scripted story is further burdened with clunky dialogue and performances, shoddy continuity, and, well, Kirk Cameron." -- Marjorie Baumgarten, AUSTIN CHRONICLE

In the News
TNN Becomes Manly Man-type Macho Man's Network for Men: Made by Men for Men in a Manly Sort of Way

Actually, this isn't so much a news item, but a column in Seattle's The Stranger weekly. It's funny as hell, too:

I LOVE TELEVISION by Wm.™ Steven Humphrey Rawrrrr! Me Am MAN!! You know if there's one thing I can't get enough of, it's MAN-STUFF. That's right, I dig anything that has to do with manly, he-male things. And for those who may be less than manly (as in "fe-maley"), here is an abridged list of man-ful testosteronish things that real MEN love: football, banging chicks, drinking brew, scratching, he-male ass-slapping, titties, laughing astonishingly loud, spitting, war, eating four-day-old pizza, staining our underpants, saying dumb things at inappropriate times, porno mags, killing animals, jet skis, circle jerks, muscle cars, fistfights, sailors, kicking Nazis in the nuts, and squeezing our crotch while yelling, "Who wants a piece of this?!?" And we also like TV. But! Doesn't it tie your girthy penis in a knot when there aren't any networks solely devoted to hairy, perspiring He-Jocks like us? Well, now we're in luck, because the failing TNN cable network is switching over to all-man programming, and renaming itself "Spike"--which is just so manly and brutish it makes me want to squirt in my pleated cargo shorts... in a macho way, of course.

Professor Dini had to back down on the way he makes his own recommendations for medical school. The student must explain how evolution works, not believe in it. It sounds fair on the surface, but violates the man's own convictions and wisdom. These are his recommendations; it's not a matter of passing or failing grades. And this is not a public elementary school. The college student who made the initial challenge may have missed a few days in his elementary school, or he was one of those kids who's mommy got him out of all of his bad grades.

News media are making SARS worse than it is

By Bill Steigerwald TRIBUNE-REVIEW Thursday, May 1, 2003 Are you sufficiently terrified? Is your Michael Jackson autograph model surgical mask on securely? If you have not yet been driven by the hysteria over SARS to cancel all contact with humans who live outside your native ZIP code, it's certainly not the media's fault.

Crazy Man's Tower

SUBURBAN HAUNT A spooky abandoned subdivision may be reincarnated By Josh Shaffer Star-Telegram Staff Writer Down a cracked concrete road choked with weeds stands Crazy Man's Tower, a rusting shell with charred wooden beams and "Satan's Playground" scrawled on the side. Word has it that a developer went mad out there, killed his wife and hanged her inside the spire, then buried his murdered children at her feet. ...Crazy Man's Tower is a relic of an upscale development that Bradley pursued in the late 1980s until the funding collapsed in the savings and loan crisis. ..."I went to that Web site one time, around Halloween, and I just started laughing," Moore said. "I wanted to call them and say, 'You know, it was built in the 1980s by a real-estate developer. There's nothing supernatural.' "

The only webpage I could find was on a sort of ghostbusting page:
SGHA: Investigation of Crazyman's Tower Sounds a bit like CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, doesn't it?

There is quite a bit of interesting phenomena going on here. The first is a ghost of a small girl that Odin has befriended over the years. She stays away from the "others" that haunt the tower itself. When we arrived, Odin did a quick check to see if it was okay to enter the area and asked us to walk onto to the property only through a "doorway" between two trees. Not far from here is an interesting phenomena. If you stand on a large stone, you feel as if your energy is being drained. About a yard away is another place where, if you stand on it, you can sense that you are receiving energy. The EMF detector didn't pick up nothing really significant as far as readings for ghosts in these areas, but they were quite interesting in themselves. The next oddity is the tower itself. I walked around the tower in a clockwise motion and got readings of up to 10m.g. (the good range for ghosts), but when I walked counter clockwise I got nothing. Hmmmmm... The readings were consistent and occurred at the same places (breaks in the tower wall) on the clockwise trip so they should register the same the other way around. But not so!

Hmmmmmm.....

The Lords of Bakersfield

'Lords' Story Hit Close to Home for 'Californian' Paper Exposed Secrets of Former Execs By Mark Fitzgerald Three months after The Bakersfield Californian published his mammoth expose, "The Lords of Bakersfield," Robert Price still hasn't been able to get back to his old column in the "Metro" section. He's getting too many new investigative tips to check out, almost all of them unrelated to the lurid tale of double lives, murder, pedophilia, and corruption he detailed in his report. "Suddenly, the phones are ringing, and people are offering story suggestions, tips, and concerns -- and I get from a lot of people that they would never have considered coming to the Californian with these things before if it hadn't been for this project," Price says. "It made people look at us in a different light." The huge project, published Jan. 19, gave residents a different perspective on almost everything about their city of 277,393. Price and Lois Henry, the Californian's assistant managing editor/days, presented evidence that the Lords were no urban legend: There really was a ring of closeted gay men with powerful positions in Bakersfield who enjoyed virtual immunity from the law while engaging in sex with teenage boys and young male prostitutes. But the story also noted the ring had no immunity from violence: "Occasionally, however, the preyed-upon lashed out, leading to a string of murders involving young gay men and their prominent, older male suitors."

The article also mentions a nefarious organization called "the White Orchid Society, a secret organization of gay pedophiles said to have existed in Bakersfield in the 1950s." It all makes for a fascinating story, the stuff that legends are made of. Is it a legend?

The sad tragedy of Ryan Scott Endicott: the stupidest jerk in Idaho.

The driver was 22-year old Ryan Scott Endecott who ended up hurt on the side of the road. His vehicle caught fire. A helicopter rushed him to the hospital. He told police his Camaro's accelerator got stuck. We first interviewed Endecott when he was a 16-year old student at Kuna High. He happened to find what he thought was a bomb in front of an Albertsons Grocery store. "I am glad it didn't blow up. If it would have blown up that would have really sucked," Endecott told our news crew at the time. Police later determined that was a hoax. And while we aren't sure who was responsible for that hoax, Idaho 2 News has learned that Ada County Sheriff and Idaho State Police investigators agree there are some suspicious things about this case, according to Sheriff Vaughn Killeen. "When something like this happens, we, just as a matter of course, don't take it at face-value. We want to make sure we have done our job and that is to determine if the car did have a problem as the driver said."

It's Not Pana Wave Laboratory, Folks

Bad timing paints modern artist as bizarre cultist KOFU -- An open-air display of modern art has drawn the unexpected attraction of local police because of its uncanny resemblance to the works of the controversial all-white cult, the Panawave Laboratory. Kazuya Nakaue, who runs the gallery in Fujiyoshida, Yamanashi Prefecture, that organized the exhibit featuring white cloths covering trees, had to explain to police officers on Thursday that it has nothing to do with the cult. "The exhibition of works by a Kobe-based artist was planned in January this year and has absolutely nothing to do with that group," Nakaue said. "Unfortunately the timing of the exhibition coincided with the furor (over the Panawave cult occupying a road in Gifu Prefecture and covering objects alongside with white cloths)."

More on Pana Wave Laboratory: This time with Names.

New Age Group in Japan Breaking Camp By GARY SCHAEFER, Associated Press Writer TOKYO - Members of a New Age cult who blocked traffic on a mountain road in western Japan for almost a week began departing Thursday, after police warned they were breaking traffic laws and could be arrested. The group, Panawave, has become a focus of media attention in Japan since about 30 of its followers camped out along the remote two-lane road in western Gifu prefecture last Friday, obstructing traffic and draping trees with white cloth. The group's followers say they are seeking sanctuary from electromagnetic waves generated by left-wing guerrillas in Japan who want to destroy their leadership. They claim the cloth neutralizes the effects of the waves. Earlier this week, authorities in two nearby towns served eviction notices to the group of about 30 people. Representatives of the camp said they could not leave until the end of this week because they were carrying a sick woman who is widely believed to be their guru. A Panawave spokesman said the caravan was protecting Yuko Chino, 69, a self-proclaimed prophet who preaches a blend of Christianity, Buddhism and New Age doctrines.

I was able to find these websites that mentioned Yuko Chino:

The Book of El-Lantie

...we had no intention of introducing Yuko Chino as one of ten great disciples of the Buddha so we let it go by without taking further action. This was in February of last year 1977. Then in both March and April the GLA refused Yuko Chino's applications for membership. When her mother went to her local branch to tell them of Yuko Chino's enlightenment the branch head and other members tried to force her mother to deny the validity of the fact of her enlightenment. We were not able to let them get by with this. Contact with the depravity and ignorance of the members of the GLA demonstrated in this incident led us to abandon the GLA from that time onward. The GLA was from the start no more than a decoy group. The celestial world had set it up in the hope that it would receive new members with enlightment one after another and grow bigger and that through the cooperation of Yuko Chino and Michael Keiko(since she was named inheritor by Shinji Takahashi and is in control of the GLA at present) the members of the GLA would come to know who is a true union with what spirit which we had intendrd for them to be informed by Michael Keiko and of the validity of Yuko Chino as the inheritor. We however realized that this was not possible because Michael Keiko was already so idolized praized as such a 'great person' and even worshipped as a Messiah due to her psychic powers and her fine face and figure. The physic powers that she possessed were not those that gave her the ability to cure illnesses or exorise possessions by spirits but was merely the ability to pass on the words of the celestial world through spirits of the fourth dimension. Other than this she had no powers at all. And after she became possessed by Satan she did nothing but transmit the words and undulations of Satan to the members of GLA. At that time all the members became possessed except for those with true hearts and those who were pure. These persons were made seriously ill upon contact with Satan's undulations and they suffered for a very long time. Some of these persons became aware of what was happening to them and left the GLA. There is a clear and correct reason for becoming ill when one becomes possessed. It is not simply a matter of spiritual superstition but rather because of the fact that a spirit whose physical body has died of a certain disease still uncured.

This is pretty confusing. Is Yuko Chino the true inheritor, or is she possessed by Satan? And who is the GLA? Feel free to read the entire page.

Another page: The Dawning of Hope by The Heaven King Michael (supposedly the archangel)

This book was written to clarify the master plan of the celestial realm to mankind, and to make heaven's voice heard for the purpose of correcting, one by one , the past mistakes made in the terrestial world. The other purpose of this book is to undo the work of the countless evil spirits to prevent the growth of their power. These evil spirits take control over individuals who are optimists and live only for the moment, but who are unaware of the existence of evil spirits and their wicked plot. Evil spirits take possession of these unconscious souls and turn them into agents for spreading their wicked influence in the world. Even those who are aware of the existence of evil spirits are made to follow their sheme by deceit and artifice, so these people who should know better go on to lead others astray in directed by heaven's voice. Therefore, even good natured people, who should really be led by spirits who are the children of God, are instead diverted as the evil spirits please.

Cults that believe in human possession by demons are the worst. It looks as if Yuko Chino's book can be purchased on Amazon.

2003-05-01-10:22 a.m.
Now Playing
Devlar's Surf Session II "SURF, SPY, SPACE, LOUNGE, EXOTICA, HOT RODS, GARAGE, GO-GO, 60's FIRST WAVE TO PRESENT"






Wednesday's DVD
A.I.: Artificial Intelligence was a kind of a problem. Subjectively, I put my automatic intensity defense up, because we have a cute child here being persecuted.

This is Pinocchio, put into the future. We have a Gepetto scientist, a cricket-conscience, the Fox, who becomes Gigolo Joe (very Disney in adult world), Monstro the whale, a helicopter under water, the Land of Pleasure where instead of turning into a donkey, you get smashed into bits for the enjoyment of the Unwashed Masses, and, of course, the Blue Fairy, very much a weeping Mary statue.

Is it ethical to imprint a mother-figure into a robot that feels? Clearly not, in this movie. From the feeling of mother love, even towards a mother that rejects (reminds me of the cruel chimpanzee experiments with shocking, wire-mothers that taught us so much) comes the ability to desire and imagine. That's a big theory. In the beginning of the picture, a question was asked: if we give robots the ability to love, what responsibility comes to the person receiving that love? I'd say, the same as a mother: a mother that knew her child would remain a child for the rest of it's immortal life, long after he or she is dead. Would a robot given this imprint be able to desire its own happiness, and be able to overcome its grief for its dead mother?

The other robots in this film, particularly the prostitute robots, believe it or not, seemed much better off without this imprint. Unfortunately, public sentiment at the time of the film made them targets for slaughter, and even a non-imprinted robot doesn't want that.

I glad to have seen a film that raised this kind of thought in me, but as I dodged the John Williams, swelling music that intended to make me cry, I thought, "if only Kubrick had been able to make this film instead of Spielberg!" There were some great moments and it could have reached brilliance. It just became a hanky flick at the end. It treated it's main character as badly, then, as the story did. A tragedy.

In "Today's" News
Black Market for Sex Toys in Alabama still going strong

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) -- Sex toys are still illegal in Alabama, at least as far as the Alabama legislature is concerned. Legislators voted against a bill Tuesday that would have removed a ban on sexual devices, such as vibrators, from the state's obscenity law. The ban on sexual devices was added at the last minute when the obscenity law passed the legislature in 1998. A federal judge in Birmingham has twice ruled that the ban is unconstitutional. The first ruling was overturned by the 11th circuit court of appeals and the second ruling has been appealed. The sponsor of the bill, Representative John Rogers (D--Birmingham) said because of the court ruling, the obscenity law is unenforceable as long as it contains the ban on sex toys. "All this does is make our obscenity law unconstitutional," Rogers said. With little serious discussion, the House voted 37-28 to leave the sex toys ban in state law, leaving Rogers standing at the microphone shaking his head. "What you just did is make our obscenity law illegal. You voted for obscenity," Rogers shouted at lawmakers.

My irony meter just went up ten points. Just what, exactly, does Alabama's government have against sex toys? One can imagine a lot of reasons. Christian reasons. Sex toys lead to pleasure without consequences, except, of course, what comes from not using them properly. If that's their problem, why is it okay to have guns there?

I suspect, though, that the problem is that sex toys remind Alabama lawmakers of gays and feminists. We can't have that now, can we? Perhaps removing an unconstitutional law against sex toys would make the lawmakers' own possible closeted sexual antics less sexy. Who knows how many of them visit doms or parks in the night? After all, it's these kinds of laws that create furtive, night-cloaked, wake-up-in-a-cold, guilt-sweat behavior. Who would want to give that up?

SODOMY TOUR 2003, by David Schmader

Four Days. Four States. Four Infamous Crimes Against Nature. On March 26, the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments regarding Texas'--and, by extension, three other states'--same-sex sodomy law, which criminaliz es sexual activity between members of the same sex. The court will issue a ruling by the end of June. In advance of the Supreme Court's decision, The Stranger sent David Schmader to tour the four states whose homo-only sodomy laws could soon be declared unconstitutional--and to commit some good old-fashioned illegal sodomy for perhaps the last time.

Soon, in Texas, it might be legal to be gay. Somebody tell Anne Richards!

2003-04-30-5:15 p.m.
Sorry I'm late today-I was down for maintenance.

Now Playing
Rockabilly Radio plays great old b-sides, but it mostly plays a lot of neo-billy, like Anne Minnery, Mr. Bigfoot and the Donuts, Kelly Ann Monahan and the Hillbilly Hellcats.










Tuesday's DVD
Best in Show was so funny, I got tired of laughing. Even the commentary was funny. Is this really faithful to the world of showing dogs? I'm no stranger to fringy passions and such. It makes me wish that Christopher Guest and Eugene Levy would make a fake-umentary about the world of Barbershop Quartet singing (don't ask). The film has a really great website at Best in Show Online.






In "Today's" News

Parents don't want surgery for their daughter. The girl, who is twelve, has two choices: surgery, or death. The parents feel that homeopathy in Québec is the best way to go. I guess if you think distilled water can dissolve a brain tumour, be my guest.

Hallucinating God: The Cognitive Neuropsychiatry of Religious Belief and Experience is a paper by Ryan McKay of Macquarie University's Centre for Cognitive Science.

McKay says delusional beliefs may arise from so-called religious experiences when two factors are in play: first, a brain deficit that gives rise to an aberrant perception of some kind and second, a belief pathology that interprets (or imagines) this perception in ways inconsistent with what is scientifically plausible or otherwise generally regarded as acceptable. The second factor represents a breakdown - or dysfunction - in the way the human belief evaluation system normally operates. Put simply, we tend to evaluate whether a belief is credible in light of everything else we know. By contrast, when someone experiences an unusual sensory perception and also suspends well-known and widely accepted logical, physical or biological principles in their explanation of the perception, a belief pathology is involved, says McKay. Significantly, one can occur without the other. Persinger, for instance, claims to have had a mystical experience of "encountering a God-like presence" - the result of stimulating his temporal lobes electromagnetically - without developing a religious belief in God. He thus represents what McKay calls a "mystical atheist" - someone who experiences paranormal sensations but is able to override the evidence of their senses when forming beliefs about them and accepting instead a rational explanation. Clearly, many adherents of religious doctrines develop and maintain their beliefs in the absence of direct religious experiences. An obvious reason is quite simply the effects of socialisation.

So far, the best direction I have seen this kind of thinking go is in Susan Blackmoore's book, Dying to Live: Near-Death Experiences. This is actually what happens.

For God's sake, it's not manna! Don't eat it! The Kentucky Meat Shower Mystery

Another trepanation gone bad...wait... I guess they're all bad. Sorry, I can't think correctly when I think of someone drilling a hole in their skull to achieve enlightenment. Can't you guys just drop acid or something? If you want to try and make sense of why some folks think this might be a great idea, check out their website; but don't expect much more rationalizations than "Trepanning is one of the earliest surgical operations known, and there is ample evidence to show that it was practiced by primitive man in prehistoric times." I'm convinced. Pa, get the drill.


Yogic Hopping
TM'ers compete to see who can hop in the lotus position the best. They still claim they are flying. Just look at the video. They also have claimed their meditations have brought about World Peace.



Could it be true? LaRouche is back in the news! (and out of prison.) He's running again. What is his platform? Quoth LaRouche:

"Also, as I shall indicate, the measures which must be taken, to ensure a durably successful economic recovery, will take the world into new categories of activity, including new approaches to managing the biosphere. These two, respectively quantitative and qualitative considerations, point toward problems of a type which might have been safely overlooked during earlier periods of successful economic growth."

Uh, thanks, Lyndon. That helped a great deal.



If you want to teach Christian Design Theory in school, why can't you teach it in Theology class? After all, you claim that your God created the world, but, were you there?

Yay! A cult I've never heard of! Insolitology time!

GIFU -- Some 40 members of a bizarre cult have taken over a 200-meter stretch of road in Gifu Prefecture, covering up crash barriers and roadside trees with huge white cloths, it was learned Tuesday. Officials of Hachiman and Yamato, the two central Japan towns that manage the Omami road, have urged members of the Fukui-based cult, the "Panawave Laboratory," to move out but they have refused to comply. One of us fell ill while we were heading to Yamanashi Prefecture (so we can't move)," one of the cultists, who are dressed in all white and wear surgical masks, said as their reason for occupying the road since last Friday. Hundreds of newsmen have gathered at the scene but the cultists, who claim to be studying environmental damage triggered by electromagnetic waves, would not let them through. Occasionally some television news crewmembers were violently pushed away by cult members who argue that their TV cameras were emitting microwaves. Local residents are understandably concerned.

Cult raises spectre of subway gas attack

Eight years after Aum Shinrikyo killed 27 commuters with sarin gas, another New Age doomsday cult is in the news By Kwan Weng Kin TOKYO - Japan is baffled by the appearance of a potentially menacing New Age cult just as the country is trying to close a chapter on the Aum Shinrikyo doomsday sect which sprayed subway commuters with deadly sarin gas eight years ago.

I am currently scanning for websites of this group, and there are dozens, but they all are in, I think, Chinese. These are the English words and phrases I have culled from the Google list so far:

1. Biocide
2. Ecocide
3. Pollution
4. Gravitation
5. FreeEnergy
6. Science
7. Sunshelter! Sunshelter!
8. DreamGarden
9. raelian
10. Torsion field
11. Magnetbiology
12. NatureLand
13. Anonymous Coward

If I find out more, I'll let you know.

Another reason to send your kid to private schools.

WASHINGTON, April 25 (UPI) -- Conservative and liberal special interest groups have hijacked the process of designing textbooks and standardized tests in the United States, in the process effectively lowering the quality of much of the education materials produced for American schoolchildren, according to education policy experts. In a speech at the New America Foundation on Thursday, Diane Ravitch, a senior fellow in education policy at the liberal-centrist Brookings Institution and a research professor of education at New York University, said the problem can be traced to the state and federal government committees charged with handling special interest concerns about what is said in public school textbooks and standardized tests. "I stumbled across what I think is a major crisis in education," said Ravitch. "It involves censorship, and special interests, and big business, and state policies that allow censorship and the political actions of pressure groups that end up dumbing down texts.

2003-04-29-11:39 a.m.
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Welcome to Weirdsville

WELCOME TO WEIRDSVILLE is a rotating audio archive of the greatest comedy and comedy music throughout the ages- from Tinpan Alley novelty songs and well loved radio comedians, to the classic comedy cuts of the past 50 years and the brand new breed of cutting edge comedy. Sprinkled among your favorite humor tracks you'll find a fair share of rare, obscure, and unusual items to surprize and delight you. LOOKING FOR A GOOD TIME? Tune in now!

Monday's DVD
Monsieur Batignole
It was kinda hard to find pages on this one.

Il est cinq heures, Paris occupé s'éveille. La gueule de bois et la peur au ventre, comme chaque matin depuis deux ans. Sauf quelques privilégiés, dont Edmond Batignole, à l'abri du besoin sous son chapelet de saucisses. Non pas que le bougre se gausse des infortunes d'autrui comme le Roger Hanin d'"Au bon beurre", mais sa smala, de bobonne cerbère au futur gendre, la raie sur le côté outrageusement collabo, lui savonne la pente avec ardeur. Alors Edmond tartine du foie gras pour la Kommandantur et investit l'appartement d'une famille juive, dont il a accéléré incidemment la dénonciation. Caprice du destin, Simon, l'un des gamins de ladite famille, a "loupé" le train et revient pointer du doigt le pleutre.

So this butcher, in Nazi-occupied Paris, accidentally is the cause of a Jewish family's arrest. A day later or so, the youngest boy comes back home only to find the Batignoles occupying it. What does Edmund do? It's pretty fun to find out in this almost screwball Holocaust comedy.

Sites of the Day
Camp Quest

A summer camp in Ohio teaches secular humanist kids about getting by in a religious world 1 August 1998 By Ira Rifkin Religion News Service OREGONIA, Ohio - At Camp Quest -- where the motto is "It's Beyond Belief" and the camp song proclaim's "Reason's Our Way" -- the discussion preceding the toasting of marshmallows for s'mores one hot and humid July evening focused on proving the nonexistence of unicorns. Camp director Edwin Kagin, playing the foil, stubbornly insisted on their existence and challenged the more than 50 campers and counselors arrayed before him on wooden bleachers to prove him wrong through rational argument. Finally, 11-year-old camper Christine Warner blurted out, "You shouldn't be talking us into believing in unicorns because we know they're not real, and if you want to believe in them, keep it to yourself!" The St. Louis girl's comment prompted laughter and applause from the other campers, as a self-satisfied smile spread across Kagin's face. His none-too-subtle point had been made: There's little to be gained in arguing with cocksure religious believers; just tell them to bug off. Welcome to Camp Quest, lone counterweight to the thousands of religious summer camps run by Christians, Jews, Muslims and others.

Lucky kids. I hear that the glitterati of the scientific and skeptical world has appeared at this camp, such as Massimo Pigliucci.

From the Institute of Official Cheer Eddie Albert is making 1984 seem like a frolic through Oceania.

By the way, The Gallery of Regrettable Foods has an update: Meat Meat Meat! Part II

Phoons

The still pose is called a "Phoon". People from around the world send in Phoon pictures from their home towns and their travels. You can, too!

The fun of Phoons is in the categories. I was constantly surprised by the places and people who sent in phoons. I found one for religious in Look Who's Phooning:



In Today's News

Rick Santorium: another Republican senator who opposes the constitution of the United States of America. Hence, that makes him anti-American.

If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual (gay) sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything. All of those things are antithetical to a healthy, stable, traditional family. And that's sort of where we are in today's world, unfortunately. It all comes from, I would argue, this right to privacy that doesn't exist, in my opinion, in the United States Constitution."

In this column, Andrew Sullivan (sorry for the registration and/or obligatory ad) says

In fact, Texas law allows anyone to have sex with their dog in private, if they are so inclined. (In the same year that Texas passed its current anti-sodomy law for gays, it repealed the law against bestiality.) You can even have same-gender gay sex with your dog and the law in Texas will protect you. It's only if you're gay and want to have consensual sex with another adult in private that the law draws the line. Now, recall what Santorum specifically said. His concern was that allowing gay people to have sexual privacy would lead to "the right to anything." Anything. Yep. That means for Santorum, the right to practice bestiality in the privacy of your own home isn't part of the slippery slope toward Gomorrah but a gay couple's private relationship is. And the awful thing is that I don't think I'm misreading him. I think he thinks that a gay man's sex life is the moral equivalent of -- no, worse than -- an animal's. And this is the young face of the Republican Party in the Senate.

I have read other takes on this article, some saying Sullivan has become a drama queen about this. That this kind of writing is gay soapboxing. No, I know where this comes from. It's from his Libertarian, love of privacy, love of what the constitution was supposed to be place.

Huge dinosaur find in B.C.

VANCOUVER - Paleontologists say they've found dinosaur bones in British Columbia that date back almost 100 million years. The bones could be the oldest ever found in Western Canada, they say.