"Come in, brother, and we'll 'rap' about your 'hassles'" (Rev Lovejoy)

Mr Rudd went on to clarify that he considered drugs "a bad trip, man" and that he had always considered that it was "not groovy" to "get high" because then he might "drop out" from the Australian National University and end up as a "beatnik" or "hippie" of some kind.

"Dope was 'never my scene' - Rudd"

The Australian (Wednesday 11 July 2007)

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,22054782-1702,00.html

LABOR MP Peter Garrett smoked it when he was in his 20s and former US president Bill Clinton said he "did not inhale", but for Labor leader Kevin Rudd marijuana has never been part of his scene.

Former Midnight Oil frontman Peter Garrett came under the spotlight this week after Silverchair singer Daniel Johns said he had smoked joints with the MP and U2 rocker Bono. Johns later retracted the comment, saying it was a joke and Mr Garrett released a statement admitting he smoked marijuana when he was in his 20s.

When asked today if he had ever smoked marijuana, Mr Rudd said it has never been part of his scene.

"Never, never, never, not a part of my scene,'' Mr Rudd said.

"I've always had a very tough line on this stuff, really, really hard line.

"I'm in John Howard's camp on this one, we have a unity ticket.''

UPDATE: "Yeah, it was that Johns I meant - sorry Danny boyah", Bono clarified.

What Prots miss out on by not having a Magisterium

Now, normally when anyone named Miller starts writing about Vatican pronouncements on Catholic Social Teaching, I reach for my revolver and pop a few rounds of Guilfussian Priest Chasers through my monitor screen, like Elvis with his TV set. This particular posting, however, is amusing and worth reading (and savouring) in full.

That's in no way to deny, of course, that Protestant synods are capable of generating equally bad or worse sludge - one imagines the Unitingarians producing some dreadfully earnest "Year of Listening Communique", or suchlike, which exhorts all Christians to use one less sheet of toilet paper a day, and to make sure they leave the dunny seat up. But at least the Prot versions don't end with anathemata being thundered against whomsoever should take away the least jot or tittle from the document. You can disregard these decrease without going to Hell or some intermediate version thereof.

Next: "We therefore, in the most authentic exercise of our teaching Magisterium, entrusted to the Apostle Peter by Our Lord Jesus Christ, do pronounce it objectively necessary, and the dereliction thereof to be gravely illicit, that you - shall Wear Sunscreen."

"The Ten Commandments of... What?"

By Robert T Miller

Tuesday, July 3, 2007, 6:26 AM

http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/?p=789

I present to you a document of some forty pages entitled "Guidelines for the Pastoral Care of the Road <http://www.zenit.org/article-19915?l=english" prepared by a Vatican office known as the Pontifical Council for Migrants and Itinerant People, which is under the supervision of Cardinal Renato Martino. "The outcome of a great endeavor entailing listening, reflection and insight," the document begins with a fascinatingly uninformative reflection on "The Phenomenon of Human Mobility":

"Moving from place to place, and transporting goods using different means, have characterised human behaviour since the beginning of history...

"The transportation of goods and people is increasing at a dizzy pace, sometimes taking place under difficult conditions and even putting life at risk...

"A modern phenomenon, full of consequences, which is part of this mobility, and the progress that derives from it, is traffic in general, and especially road traffic. Traffic has gradually increased...

"We only need to consider the many uneven roads travelled on by unsafe and overloaded means of transport, which constitute a grave danger for everyone, especially at night...

"Undoubtedly, road vehicles give us many advantages. They provide a rapid means of transport for people (getting to places of work and study, weekend outings with the family, going away on holiday, meetings with friends and relatives)... Means of transport are particularly useful when they enable sick and injured people to be rescued..."

So the Pontifical Council for Migrants and Itinerant People informs us in writing that people drive in cars in order to go to work, that there's a lot of traffic nowadays, that goods are transported from place to place over the roads, that driving is more dangerous at night than during the day, and that it's really good that sick and injured people can be transported over the roads to hospital. Try, if you can, to write down five or six sentences as fatuously banal as each of these, and you'll find it's not easy. [...]

"Article II. All legislative Powers herein Grant'd shall be Vest'd in ye House of Representatives; ye Senate being hereby dissolv'd"

"Article VI: Ye Jurisdiction, of these United States, shall not Extend unto ye Lands beyond where ye Light shall Touch."

'The voice of Darth Vader will be the voice of the Declaration of Independence. James Earl Jones, whose rich baritone gave life to the sinister villain of the Star Wars movies, will be in Philadelphia on Tuesday to help open an exhibit featuring the Magna Carta at the National Constitution Center. The Broadway and movie actor who also was behind King Mufasa in The Lion King - as well as countless Verizon commercials - will recite the Declaration of Independence at the "Magna Carta: Foundation of Freedom" exhibit one day before the Fourth of July holiday....'
 
-- "'Darth Vader' to read declaration speech" (Monday 2 July 2007),
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=271526

'Further discussions will be held this week over compensation for trainers who will be forced off [Sydney's] Randwick Racecourse when the Papal mass takes place next year. But trainer Anthony Cummings fears the effects will last 10 years and not just the 10 weeks the course will be closed for racing. Cummings is president of the Randwick Trainers Association which met with World Youth Day (WYD) organisers last week to try to explain their plight. "A lot of people depend on Randwick for a living and it's hard to estimate the cost because we don't know where it stops," Cummings said. "The horses will have to move off Randwick to be trained elsewhere. But the thing is that once they go, they don't all return. If we lose 20 per cent of the spring carnival horses, then it will be a pretty ordinary carnival. Betting turnover will drop and it could take five to ten years to recover....'

-- "Papal visit to affect Randwick for years" (Monday 2 July 2007) http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=276275

Blog Update

Updated the template today.

Anyone wishing to see the old template, check out the Internet Archive of us from October 2003
Weren't we just so avante-garde, back in the day?

No Jacket Required

The following news report from ninemsn leaves us, well, you know...

Cruise is a Satanist, says radical Christian leader

Tuesday Jun 26 06:00 AEST

By ninemsn staff

A controversial Christian group has slammed Tom Cruise and Scientology in a public bid to help people learn the truth about what they say is a Satanic cult.

“Yes, Tom Cruise worships Satan," said Mark Dice, the founder of apocalyptic US Christian organisation The Resistance.

"I don’t say this as an insult, or as an ad hominem attack. I seriously and literally mean he worships Satan, although most occultists, call him Lucifer the light bearer."

Dice, also an author and commentator, has made several controversial public claims in recent years — including that the World Trade Centre attacks were a CIA plot.

Now he says he is worried celebrities like Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes are enticing people to join the Scientology.

"In the Garden of Eden, Satan said if Man took the forbidden fruit that he would become just like god, actually becoming equal to God, and that is what occultists people believe."

"They believe they themselves, are gods," Mark Dice claims, before turning his comments directly to the Top Gun star.

"If you want a real religion, try going to a Christian Church, Tom, it's free."

Dice, who wrote the book The Resistance Manifesto under the Terminator-inspired alias John Connor, was in the news just a few weeks ago when he announced plans to hold a series of anti-Paris Hilton demonstrations outside Hilton hotels in the US.

On his MySpace website Dice is pictured smiling and holding a gun, with the caption: "Heard of the 2nd amendment?".

"This is not a Fleet! It's a gang!" - Wait, sorry, wrong screenplay.

... Today, I am at Riverfront Stages... just north of LA, for the filming of Inalienable, and independent sci-fi film that culminates in a hearing in federal district court. The script was written by Walter Koenig, who played Chekov on the original Star Trek. On his website, he lists the principal actors and describes the plot:
 

"Still guilt-ridden over the accident that took his family's lives, Eric Norris discovers that his body is host to a parasite from another world. Except, it is more than a parasite: it carries his DNA. Is this his new son or -- as the government believes -- a threat to mankind?"

I will be playing an assistant prosecutor sitting at counsel table with main prosecutor played by Marina Sirtis, who played Counselor Deanna Troi on Star Trek: [The] Next Generation. As I am live blogging this, the crew is setting up a shot for a scene between Walter Koenig and Richard Hatch of Battlestar Galactica....

Randy Barnett, 'On the Set of "Inalienable"' (15 June 2007), http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2007_06_10-2007_06_16.shtml#1181956813

Hatch, Koenig, Sirtis... But where's Michelle Forbes? If they go ahead and film this without a role for the Forbester, then "Inalienable" is unconstitutional. Or in violation of the Hatch Act.

Do Heroes Have to Die?

Just been reading an interesting comparison of Harry Potter and Tony Soparno over at The Bulletin's Newsweek page.

Will Potter die in the end of Harry POtter and the Deathly Hallows??

Will Tony Soprano?

Over at Fox News, there are reports of fans and stars alike expressing their opinions over the ambiguous ending of The Sopranos (spoiler alert).

Daniel Radcliffe, who plays Potter in the films, has a sneaking suspicion that the character that has made him famous will turn up his toes in the last Potter tome.

Only time will tell.

But do our heroes have to die in the end?

Neither Frodo nor Bilbo burnt out, although they did fade away.

And the Narnia children all bought the farm at the end of CS Lewis' The Last Battle.

Is this some kind of Christ analogy that resonates within Christianised Western culture? (although JC did "come good in a couple of days", as I have heard it said).

Perhaps something deeper: a highly individualised Gotterdammerung in true Wagnerian style, compressed to the size of the one.

Luke Skywalker doesn't cark it at the end of ROTJ - but Darth Vader does. If the "death of the hero" literary trope holds, this would be further proof that the "hero" of the Star Wars" sagas is in fact Skywalker Senior, not Junior.

Calvinists and Cylons. One lot are [fill in the blank], while the other...

"... an upcoming conference on Southern Baptists and Calvinism at
Ridgecrest Conference Center in NC in November 26 - 28. (That is, I
believe. T[hanks]giving weekend!). It's also 2 hours from my house,
so I will plan to be there. I expect to see several bloggers in the
SE there...maybe Steve "Cary Grant" Hays will grace us with his
physical presence. I'm beginning to think he's one of the Final Five
Cylons, a disembodied AI living on an ethereal plane, with a plan."

-- GeneMBridges at

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2007/06/southern-baptists-and-calvinism.html

"Australian's worst mass murderer should be allowed to die following several attempts to kill himself in his prison cell, euthanasia advocate Dr Philip Nitschke says. Martin Bryant is serving 35 life sentences for the 1996 killings of 35 people at Tasmania's historic Port Arthur penal settlement, in the world's worst mass murder by a lone gunman. Bryant has made at least five suicide attempts in Tasmania's Risdon Prison and has been treated at hospital twice this year after slashing himself with disposable razor blades. [...]

"Mr Nitschke has been in Hobart to address a University of Tasmania bio-ethics forum.

He was the guiding force behind right-to-die legislation introduced by the Northern Territory in 1996. It was overturned by federal legislation the following year. Mr Nitschke said the state had no interest in rehabilitating Bryant. "The sole goal of his (Bryant's) imprisonment is punishment and punishment without hope of release is tantamount to torture," Dr Nitschke said. "As a society we should admit we are sanctioning torture here and in those circumstances we should allow him to die or provide him with the means to obtain a peaceful death."

"He said that giving Bryant an opportunity to end his life would quickly determine if he wants to kill himself. "Some people claim his attempts at suicide are merely attention seeking gestures, which is possible, but providing him with the means of reliably ending his life would soon make this clear. As a society we go to great lengths to prevent him from being able to harm himself but in my opinion putting him in a safe stainless steel box with no hope of escape is nothing more than torture. As a society we should admit this is what we are doing."

-- NineMSN News, "Let murderer take his life: Nitschke" (Monday 11 June 2007) http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=93407

The number of people who support both the death penalty and voluntary euthanasia (legally-endorsed suicide) must be vanishingly small. While there are a few who oppose both -- mainly moderately traditionalist Catholics, now that recent Popes have discovered that capital punishment has always been contrary to the faith once and for all delivered unto the saints -- most of humankind falls into either or two mutually exclusive categories:

(a)     utilitarians, who support suicide because it makes people happy, but oppose capital punishment because it makes people unhappy; and

(b)     desert-based moralists, who support capital punishment because convicted murderers deserve to die for their crimes, but oppose suicide because terminally ill people haven't committed any crime for which they deserve to die (at which point they deserve to die, for having murdered themselves...?  Must... take... aspirin...)

The upshot of all this is that, of the two causes Dr Philip Nitschke has recently espoused, probably 98% of readers will agree that one is an intrinsically wicked abomination and the other is a straightforward matter of simple justice. Furious disagreement would arise at the next stage, of course, over which one is which.

This blog is unutterably opposed to all profane use of Beatles allusions

"The Daily Mail reports on an interesting judicial opinion from Montana. The judge asked Andrew McCormack, a Beatle-loving beer thief, what he thought his sentence should be. He wrote: 'Like the Beetles [sic] say, Let It Be'. But his cheeky quip did not impress Gregory Todd, a 56-year-old district court judge in Montana. In a sentencing memorandum Judge Todd first corrected McCormack's misspelling and then gave the defendant a lesson in The Beatles discography. The judge produced a sentencing memorandum that cited 42 Beatles songs."

- Jonathan Adler, "Beware Quoting the Beatles to a Judge" http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2007_06_03-2007_06_09.shtml#1181438665 , citing http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/worldnews.html?in_article_id=459804&in_page_id=1811 and http://img.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2007/06_01/courtdogL_1000x679.jpg .

Paris worth a Mass?

Was blind, but now she doth see... Isn't "world peace" and "saving the rhinos in Africa" supposed to be somewhere on this checklist?

Imprisoned hotel heiress Paris Hilton has said she believes God has given her a new chance and she plans to stop acting dumb and put her influence to good use.

Hilton called television journalist Barbara Walters from the medical wing of a Los Angeles jail, where she is being held for violating probation in a drink-driving case, and Walters recounted the conversation on her ABC television show, The View. "I'm not the same person I was," Hilton told Walters. "I used to act dumb. It was an act. I am 26 years old, and that act is no longer cute. It is not who I am, nor do I want to be that person for the young girls who looked up to me. I know now that I can make a difference, that I have the power to do that. I have been thinking that I want to do different things when I am out of here. I have become much more spiritual. God has given me this new chance." [...]

"I told my attorneys not to appeal the judge's decision," Hilton said, describing being in jail as "by far the hardest thing I have ever done".... When she is released, Hilton said, she might like to help in the fields of breast cancer or multiple sclerosis, diseases that her grandmothers suffered, or build a "Paris Hilton playhouse" for sick children.

Hilton, who said other inmates had been friendly, added that her skin was very dry because she was not allowed any moisturiser. "It doesn't matter," she said, "I'm not that superficial girl. I haven't looked in the mirror since I got here."

- "Hilton says God gave her a new chance" (Tuesday 12 June 2007) http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=272240

And as for the simple life...

Now that Paris Hilton is back in jail for the long haul, she will be forced to do the thing she fears most in prison -- use the toilet. During her first three-day stint behind bars, Hilton was reportedly so worried guards would photograph her on the toilet that she refused to eat or drink anything. The diet left the hotel heiress seriously ill, and prompted prison officials to send her home to serve the rest of the sentence in house arrest. But the prison break was overruled by an LA Court at the weekend, and now Hilton is once again facing the horror of using the stainless steel lavatory -- situated in plain view of prison guards. "She was absolutely terrified that one of the guards or staffers would get her with the cell-phone cam and it would wind up on the Internet," a source told the NY Daily News yesterday.

-- "Paris 'terrified of the prison toilet'" (Monday 11 June 2007) http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=272283

This is a job for Ewan McGregor, or else Jim, Kevin, Oz and Stiffler.

Re: Independent US Presidential Contender

Methinks this is but a front for failed and discredited
Chancellatorial candidate Finis Valorum.

http://www.zod2008.com/

Not quite the Hanoi Hilton

"The Paris Hilton prison diaries"

By John Kenney

Los Angeles Times (5 June 2007)

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-kenney5jun05,0,51

72018.story

Not from The Onion

...buried deep in a legitimate article on NineMSN about spam email and the prosecution of a persistent spammer, the journalist responsible just couldn't help but add their own experience with spam to the story, thus making the news, not just reporting it:

"Other types of spam were largely unaffected by the arrest. One Gmail account collected messages Thursday promising deals on Viagra and other medicines, while an AOL account drew an offer for two large, mouthwatering pizzas."

Here's hoping those spam pizzas were tasty!

Speeding driver, thy name is Prudence

"Newly elected Liberal Party [NSW State] frontbencher [and former federal Sex Discrimination Commissioner] Pru Goward has been caught speeding in a school zone. It was her second driving offence in three months after she was fined for running a stop sign in February...."

- Jano Gibson, "It was extremely careless: Goward," Sydney Morning Herald (18 May 2007)

Hmmm, let me guess Ms Goward's two most likely responses:

1. "Hmmm, that's odd... my daughter used to get clocked doing 50 K's over the limit all the time, yet no policeman ever ticketed her. Strange..."

or

2. "Speed limits around schools are inherently sexist. Because the picking up of children from school has traditionally been constructed in a gendered way, as 'women's work', these lower speed limits constitute indirect discrimination against females. Oh, yeah, sure, supposedly such laws 'protect children from being killed', but as a pro-choicer, I of course utterly reject the patriarchal view that saving the lives of young humans is important enough to justify interfering with a Woman's freedom to speed through life as carelessly as she damn well pleases. After all - the ability to drive a car is extremely important for Women to have control over their own lives. It is surely no coincidence that fundamentalist misogynist regimes, such as the Taliban and Saudi Ara-... What was that, Mr Howard? Oh. Sorry. -- like, uh, the Taliban and like Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, have forbidden women to drive cars. Since an absolute prohibition on all members of the female gender from driving cars at all is patently abhorrent, it follows that a law regulating how all persons drive is equally abhorrent if it can be shown to have a disparate impact on the female gender. I mean, it's just obvious. We Women Decide."

Pick one.

Temporal inversion paradox, or, the future is past

Me mate "the Hobbit" recently submitted a polite, nay almost fawning, request via the ABC website to inquire as to when they was gonna bring the new (third Russell T Davies) season of "Dr Who" to Australia, like. The reply he got was by someone at the ABC signing herself "Zoë Starr." "Zoë Starr"? Sheesh. That is, like, sooooooo obviously a pseudonym. If you really want to épater les anoraques, why not just go all the way and sign yourself "Leela Adama" or "Rose Tylium" or "Wilma 'Hotdog' Deering" and be done with it?

For what it's worth, here's my predictions for the Third Season of the Renewed Dr Who:

Episode 1:

Introduction to new Doctor and/or new companion as London department-store advertising gimmicks, possessed by alien invaders, come alive and attack.

Episode 2:

A Hitchhiker's Guide-style journey into the far future. Doctor will have a run-in with Lady Cassandra.

Episode 3:

Trip back to Victorian England. Meet an iconic, easily-recognized figure ("this actor portraying Charles Darwin", perhaps, or maybe Charles Bradlaugh) and discover that some ancient superstition is actually a trapped alien.

Episode 6:

An ancient enemy of the Doctor will return, from the old "bubble-wrap in a quarry" days, but this time sleeker, more streamlined, more badass and with far better CGI. An eccentric and megalomaniac millionaire risks unleashing these evil villains on an unsuspecting galaxy.

Episode 7:

Doctor's assistant will have a heart-rendingly brief reunion with her long-dead beloved parent. And deal with an alien invasion.

Episode 8:

Doctor and companion will travel back to London of half a century ago and poke fun at the unenlightened social attitudes of the time. And deal with an alien invasion.

Epsiode 10:

Some red meat thrown to the diehard fans, to acknowledge their 44 years of unstinting devotion to the series. Doctor and Companion will deal with an alien invasion.

And yes, the ABC has bought the episodes from the Beeb (it takes nearly a year to ship the precious video-tapes across the many lightyears that separate London, England from Ultimo, Sydney)... but not yet fixed a screening date. Do I look bovvered?

Portman doin' the Bartman (ee-ew)

Star Wars and The Simpsons. Linked, not just by their iconic pop-cult[ure] status and their unusually frequent recurrence of intra-familial choking, but now by the presence of Natalie Portman:

One would think Bart would have known the First Law of Movies:

"Any film where Natalie Portman's character announces that she's pregnant, will end badly."

Spongebob Squarepants is next...

'Gay' tubbies face government ban

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2007/05/29/1180205190981.html

Sydney Morning Herald (29 May 2007)

Poland's conservative government took its drive to curb what it sees as homosexual propaganda to the small screen on Monday, taking aim at Tinky Winky and the other Teletubbies.

Ewa Sowinska, government-appointed children rights watchdog, told a local magazine published on Monday that she was concerned the popular BBC children's show promoted homosexuality.

She said she would ask psychologists to advise if this was the case.

In comments reminiscent of criticism by the late US evangelist Jerry Falwell, she was quoted as saying: "I noticed (Tinky Winky) has a lady's purse, but I didn't realise he's a boy."

"At first I thought the purse would be a burden for this Teletubby ... Later I learned that this may have a homosexual undertone."

Poland's rightist government has upset human rights groups and drawn criticism within the European Union by apparent discrimination against homosexuals.

Polish Education Minister Roman Giertych has proposed laws sacking teachers who promote "homosexual lifestyle" and banning "homo-agitation" in schools.

But in a sign that the government wants to distance itself from Sowinska's comments, Parliamentary Speaker Ludwig Dorn said he had warned her against making public comments "that may turn her department into a laughing stock".

The 10-year-old Teletubbies, which features four rotund, brightly coloured characters loved by children around the world, became a target of religious conservatives after Falwell suggested Tinky Winky could be homosexual.

ABC reaction

The ABC will not be removing Teletubbies from their roster, regardless of the findings of a Polish Government probe into whether the show is homosexual propaganda.

"We've been showing it for ten years. It's basically a non-issue for us. Australian kids love the Teletubbies,'' Catherine Bocking, publicist for ABC Kids, said.

"The issue's come up before hasn't it, this whole handbag thing, we don't see anything in it.''

The decision has nothing to do with an alleged left-wing bias at the ABC.

"It's colour and movement for children, it's nothing political,'' Ms Bocking said.

Reuters and Erik Jensen

No blood for... blood

Once again, modern Medical Science vindicates the Popes' repeated warnings, ever since Sanguis Humanae in 1968, against violations of the ancient Scriptural injunction to "keep yourself from blood". "Enlightened" opinion mocked the Popes - that Monty Python satirized this stance with their song "Every Platelet is Sacred" proves ipso facto the Holy Father to be correct - yet we cannot ignore the inconvenient truth that modern blood transfusion technology is the poisoned fruit of such evil scientists as Josef Mengele, who conducted hideous experiments on concentration-camp prisoners. And as for the so-called "Protestant" churches... they stand, once again, condemned. For if they blithely approve, without any apparent qualms, a medical procedure that has a 25% failure rate, how can they possibly be speaking the Word of God?

"Medics' transfusion warning "

Grant McArthur

Herald Sun (28 May 2007)

http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,21803500-662,00.html


ONE in four blood transfusions may be unnecessary and risking patient lives, leading medics have been told.

Blood transfusions were a "religion" that had never been safety or efficacy tested, US cardiothoracic specialist Prof Bruce Spiess told the Australian and New Zealand College of Anaesthetists annual scientific meeting in Melbourne.

Research showed Jehovah's Witnesses who refused blood transfusions had better survival rates from heart operations than patients who had normal transfusions.

Sixty-five per cent of transfusions stem from surgery, of which anaesthetists are responsible for half.

Prof Spiess said alternatives including minimising blood loss and maximising oxygenation should be examined.

His views were supported by Dr Peter McCall of Austin Health, who said an audit of fresh frozen plasma transfusions at Victorian hospitals had shown a third were inappropriate.

Beckwith on the "religious genius" of Mormonism

"... Even if one thinks that [Joseph] Smith was profoundly mistaken
(as I do), one cannot help but marvel at the religious genius of this
project [Mormonism]: It has all the advantages of Reformation
Protestantism and nineteenth-century Restorationism ("Let's get back
to what Jesus and the apostles originally taught") with all the
advantages of Catholicism and Orthodoxy - an apostolic magisterium
within the confines of a visible church. Smith has both a priesthood
of all believers and a priesthood managed by a church hierarchy. He
offers a new gospel unconstrained by centuries of theological
precedent, yet it he could claim that it is as old as the apostles.
He could, without contradiction, reject tradition while claiming to
be the true guardian of an ancient message. It may be wrong, but it
was brilliant..."

- Francis J Beckwith, "When the Saint Goes Swearing In",
<http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/?p=754> (Thursday 24 May 2007)

"Voyager is not true"

Okay then... strike "plausible within its own universe" and change that to "close enough to our own universe that we can see it is even remotely applicable".

Too much of Star Trek, for me, was like the economist marooned on a desert island with many crates of tinned food who said, "It's easy. First, we just have to assume a can opener".

Example: Synthehol vs ambrosia. Yes, yes, in 500 years time some genius may well have invented an intoxicating liquor that can be burned off in seconds when adrenalin kicks in, so no drunkenness or hangover. But for actually drama, it's better to have Tigh hitting his Jack Daniels when the Cylons attack, so he has to make decisions while sozzled.

Much of the super-snazzy Star Trek technology was devised by Sheen Rotten Perry in the 1960s and 1970s to arbitrarily cut through problems with the limited special effects of the time. Eg: transporters to avoid showing a toy shuttle on a fishing line "landing" on a papier-mache planet each week; food slots (replicators?) in the walls to avoid having to build a set for a ships' galley; comlinks on collars to avoid speaking into clunky old phones the way Gaeta does.

The problem is, over time these "solutions" create more problems for the screenwriters. As David Gerrold noted, the transporter made it too easy for Kirk et al to escape from danger. There were only two ways to generate tension: [a] have the aliens nullify his transporter so he couldn't beam out til after the final ad break, or [b] create some dramatic situation where he would choose not to beam out til a problem was solved. Guess which path the writers chose more often -- the easy or the hard.

True, the transporter did create some new story ideas -- especially "fused personality" ("Tuvix") and the parallel universe of "Mirror, Mirror".

John B wrote:

I think 'true' in this context equates with 'plausible within the context of the relevant fictional Universe'.

Personally, I always thought 'Voyager' was plausible in it's context because of -

(a) the virtually unlimited energy generated by the matter/ anti-matter reactions carried out in Voyager's warp core.

(b) the very advanced matter/ energy technology that underlies replicators, transporters and the holo-deck which meant that as long as Voyager was even partly functioning the crew could build or rebuild just about anything and make their own equipment, food and water out of thin air. (In fact, the thing I didn't consider realistic given this technology was that they had to ration use of the replicator.)

(c) the very advanced medical technology that allowed regeneration of limbs and organs or substitution of very effective bionic replacements which meant that the crew were very difficult to kill or incapacitate.

(d) the fundamental change to human society and values between the 22nd and 24th Centuries that made the crew more mentally stable than a star-lost 20th Century space ship crew could be. NB: I recall that in an episode of original Star Trek (I can't recall it's name but it featured the villain Garth of Izar) it was claimed that all human mental illness was now curable with proper treatment and in an episode of TNG (which involved mind-controlling aliens) that the human brain had been completely mapped.

Watching "Omen III: The Final Conflict" on DVD the other night -- Our most sernior Spouse and I agreed that, while we could believe Damien Thorn [*] being son of Satan, only being killable using N (1 > 7) of the Seven Daggers of Megiddo, etc, what we couldn't accept was that DT's henchperson "Dean's" wife, having worked out her husband is a long-standing Satanist who has just orchestrated the murder of a hundred babies, would do nothing more than trash his office... then sit there amidst the mess, cradling the newborn, wait for hubby to come back from work, and then say "Keep away from him, you murderer!" while unarmed. In reality (or in a more plausible script), she would be much more likely either to flee somewhere, or else to make hubby a cuppa laced with arsenic. Science and (on screen) magic powers may change -- human motivations don't.

Besides, aren't Satanic priests supposed to get allocated multiple Wives? Don't tell me Mike Warnke lied to his readers...!

Speaking of babies surviving... I think the Mooreon is right about Voyager, although I do note that New BSG is a bit fuzzy about how many Vipers the Fleet has left in its air [sic] wing, even though we get an (updated) population count with each episode.

[*] As played by Sam Neill, who looks especially [like mutual friend "K"] when smirking at his Satanic Amway Convention of followers, or chatting up a British journalist whose tightly curled perm looks like it would cause her to bounce if some evil nanny pushed her head-first from a third-floor hospital window. "K" has consistently been likened to two actors in particular: Sam Neill and Gabriel Byrne. Not only are both - of the Irish religion, but both have also played the Devil in human form.

This hits right at the heart of the "suspending disbelief" required of good fiction.

Of course droids, Jedi and Ewoks aren't real, but we choose to accept the premise because the human relationships are compelling.

If that fails, no number of technical gadgets will get past the cynics radar

The "wow" factor will never trump the "heart" factor

Star Wars 1, 2 and 3 as cases in point.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_D._Moore

[...] Moore's re-imagining of Galactica is noted for taking a more serious tone than its predecessor, something that was foreshadowed in the January 2000 for Cinescape interview, where he discussed what he saw as the root problem with Voyager.

"The premise has a lot of possibilities. Before it aired, I was at a convention in Pasadena, and Sternbach and Okuda were on stage, and they were answering questions from the audience about the new ship. It was all very technical, and they were talking about the fact that in the premise this ship was going to have problems. It wasn't going to have unlimited sources of energy. It wasn't going to have all the doodads of the Enterprise. It was going to be rougher, fending for themselves more, having to trade to get supplies that they want. That didn't happen. It doesn't happen at all, and it's a lie to the audience. I think the audience intuitively knows when something is true and something is not true. Voyager is not true. If it were true, the ship would not look spic-and-span every week, after all these battles it goes through. How many times has the bridge been destroyed? How many shuttlecrafts have vanished, and another one just comes out of the oven? That kind of bullshitting the audience I think takes its toll. At some point the audience stops taking it seriously, because they know that this is not really the way this would happen. These people wouldn't act like this."

Generally, fans have seen Moore's treatment of the new "Battlestar Galactica" as addressing the criticisms of the Star Trek franchise which led to its cancellation. [...]

David Plotz asks the perennial question...

"Why Are Priests In the Bible So Corrupt?"
http://www.slate.com/id/2151932

That's one heck of a lot of bright orange flashing lights http://fathermckenzie.blogspot.com/2006/08/daleks-gliding-like-priests-someone.html that would have suddenly materialised beneath the tefillim on their foreheads over the centuries BCE.

On sniggering at Enid Blyton

Currently reading an old Enid Blyton book of stories to my kids. Finding it very hard to avoid giggling every time Ms Blyton writes things like... well, all boys go through a juvenile phase of snickering "hee, hee, hee" at older children's books that use words like "fairies" or "queer" - that's old hat by now: you grow out of that (eventually).

BUT when one has to read aloud phrases like "Because, of course, Elves do not enjoy Golden Rain" -- with a straight face -- while thinking of Seann Willliammm Sccccotttt in "American Pie II" -- it's just difficult, man, difficult, that's all.

 

"Can the Amish [-] Ride in Helicopters?"

Sounds like the Amish have pussed out on their purported "Helicopters - are intrinsically evil, o English" doctrine and decided that ends do justify means after all. Their consciences would be clearer if they re-defined helicopters as "buggies with very fast-spinning wheels", or distinguished the intentio involved.

How any moral agent, knowing of the death and devastation wrought by helicopters in the Vietnam War or Gulf War I, could bring himself to have anything to do with them, is a question I leave to historians rather than theologians.

This "Millersville University" has me curious.

"Can the Amish Ride in Helicopters? Medical evacuation among the Pennsylvania Dutch."
By Daniel Engber
Daniel Engber is a regular contributor to Slate.
Slate (posted Tuesday, October 3, 2006, at 6:23 PM ET), URL: < http://www.slate.com/id/2150907/>

A gun-toting milk-truck driver attacked a group of Amish girls in their Pennsylvania schoolhouse on Monday, killing five and critically wounding another five < http://local.lancasteronline.com/4/26365>. Some of the victims were evacuated by helicopter < http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nationworld/bal-te.amishschool03oct03,0,3471518.story?coll=bal-home-headlines > to nearby hospitals. Meanwhile, police arranged ground transport for the victims' families, who had refused to fly. Which modes of transportation are the Amish allowed to use?

It depends on the community. Some groups are more liberal than others - the Beachy Amish, for example, can drive cars. The most conservative Amish settlements - called the "Old Order Amish < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amish>" - have sought to limit air and automobile travel, as well as the use of electricity and telephones, since the beginning of the 20th century.

Each Amish community (or "district") develops its own, unwritten rules of conduct, called the Ordnung. Representatives from several dozen families meet twice a year to discuss possible changes to the rules, like whether it would be OK to use a machine to cool milk or whether Amish men can go to work at a local factory. If everyone agrees on a new rule, it becomes one of the customs of the community.

In general, the rules about technology are intended to keep the community close together. Most districts outlawed the ownership and operation of cars years ago because they might promote excessive pride and individualism. But none of the rules are absolute religious strictures. In the settlement of Lancaster County, where Monday's shooting took place, the Amish can ride in cars under certain circumstances, as long as they're not themselves behind the wheel. Taxi and van services exist around Amish communities, and some bus companies cater to Amish customers. (For a while, a bus called the "Sarasota Express" picked up Amish from the Midwest and took them down to Florida.)

The rules against telephones and electricity are similarly flexible. In Lancaster, phones are allowed < http://www.padutchcountry.com/our_world/the_amish_and_telephones.asp > as long as they're not in the home. A group of families might share a single community phone in a shack behind a barn or at the end of the lane. (The rules on cell phones <http://wired-vig.wired.com/wired/archive/7.01/amish_pr.html> are still being worked out.) Though the Old Order Amish refuse to hook up with the main power grid, some districts allow the use of 12-volt batteries to power small electric devices. Medical researchers < http://www.medicalalumni.org/bulletin/fall_2004/lead1.html> who study the Lancaster Amish bring in their patients via car service and outfit them with devices like blood glucose monitors.

The Old Order Amish are less flexible on air travel since it's not seen as vital to the well-being of the community. In general, you're not allowed to be a passenger in a plane or helicopter under any circumstances. That said, the community isn't likely to object to an airlift if it could save someone's life after an accident. Monday's shooting victims may have gotten even more leeway to ride in helicopters since they were all young children. The Amish are "Anabaptists < http://www.gameo.org/index.asp?content=http://www.gameo.org/encyclopedia/contents/a533me.html >," which means they believe in the baptism of adults rather than infants. Since children haven't yet been baptized, they're not fully bound by the rules of the Ordnung.

Explainer thanks Joel Hartman of the University of Missouri, Diane Zimmerman Umble of Millersville University, and Jameson Wetmore of Arizona State University.

Beware the Australian Timocrats!

Does this mean the next item on the Democrats' political agenda: forcing Islamic schools to feed children with bottles?

"Her name is Bin Ladin "
(9 August 2004)
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/040809/9binladen.peo.htm


Whether you spell it Bin Ladin or bin Laden, they are family, explains Carmen Bin Ladin, estranged wife of Osama's older half-brother Yeslam. In her memoir, Inside the Kingdom: My Life in Saudi Arabia, she reveals the literally veiled life she led within the family compound in Jidda, where she lived from 1976 to 1985. Of Swiss and Persian heritage, Carmen now lives in Geneva with her daughters.

Did you know Osama?

Because I am a woman, Osama, who is strictly devout, wouldn't see my face unveiled or sit with me. He came to personify how powerless I had become as a female in Saudi society. At a family gathering, once, I wondered why Osama's wife kept trying to feed their infant son water with a spoon. This baby was just too tiny to use a spoon, and he was howling with thirst. I asked, "Why not use a bottle?" Osama wouldn't allow it, I was told; it was his religious conviction that babies only be fed by breast or with a spoon. [...]

"The Smell of Hell: Does Satan reek of rotten eggs?"

My brother used to tell visiting Jehovah's Witnesses that he was an Indian Muslim (he is olive-skinned and used to have a bushy beard), buttressed by statements such as "George Bush, he is the devil, sir". Of course, that meant Bush the First. You know, the guy who had UN Security Council approval before he attacked Saddam, which meant everyone in the world supported Gulf War Round I and made it a stunning victory with almost zero blowback.

Anyway, the below may be of interest, particularly for the similarities it shows between "al-Shaitan" in Islam, "ha-Satan" in Judaism, "Lucifer" in Catholicism, "The Dark Man" in New England Puritanism, and "The Peterjensen" in Orange Catholic Gregorianism.

"The Smell of Hell: Does Satan reek of rotten eggs?"
By Daniel Engber
Slate (22 September 2006)
URL: < http://www.slate.com/id/2150170/>

Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez compared George Bush to the Antichrist < http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/21/world/21speeches.html> in a speech at the United Nations on Wednesday. "The devil came here yesterday, right here," he said. "It smells of sulfur still today, this table that I am now standing in front of." When did Satan start smelling like sulfur?

About a century or two before the birth of Christ. Satan almost certainly gets his rotten scent from his underworld lair, described in the Book of Revelation as a "lake of burning sulfur < http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=revelation%2020:10;&version=31 ;>." Hell as such doesn't appear in the Old Testament, but the book of Genesis does recount how God "rained down burning sulfur on Sodom and Gomorrah < http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=GEN%2019:23-29&version=31;9 ;>." The idea of a sulfurous Hell ruled by an archvillain called Satan seems to have arisen at some point in the period between when the two sacred texts were written - probably in the first or second centuries BC. The Apocryphal Books of Enoch < http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=384&letter=E >, for example, talk about a place of punishment with "rivers of fire" and "a smell of sulfur < http://www.exodus2006.com/11NOAH.htm>."

It didn't take long for the devil to take on the stench of his kingdom. By the 400s, the Councils of Toledo < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Councils_of_Toledo> would describe him as a horned beast with cloven hooves, a huge phallus, and a sulfurous smell.

Tradition placed hell as far as possible from God and heaven. The Bible uses the word "Gehenna," which means the "Valley of Hinnom < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gehenna>" and refers to a garbage dump on the outskirts of ancient Jerusalem. Hinnom stood in for the underworld because of its topography - as the lowest point in the area, it served as the spiritual counterpoint for the high ground of the temple mount. The same sort of reasoning imagined hell at the very center of the Earth, in a fiery and sulfurous pit.

This isn't an unreasonable description. Underground volcanic activity can release plumes of sulfurous gas, as rocks heat up in the absence of significant oxygen. Sulfur doesn't always smell bad - given enough oxygen, it generally takes the form of an inoffensive sulfate < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sulfate>. But when sulfur is given off from these hot underground sources, it comes in the stinky, rotten-eggs varieties of hydrogen sulfide < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_sulfide> or pure sulfur gas. (Think of a smelly, bubbling hot spring.) Gregory I < http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06780a.htm>, who became pope in 590 C.E., made the connection between volcanoes and hell more explicit. In his Dialogues, he describes a sinner "thrown into Vulcan's gulph < http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/gregory_04_dialogues_book4.htm >" on one of the volcanic islands north of Sicily.

The idea that Satan had a strong odor is consistent with ancient attitudes about smells. A connection between sweet, dry smells and the divine goes back to the Greek epics, and it shows up in precise terms in the Old Testament: The Lord tells Moses to prepare an anointing oil "blended as by the perfumer < http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Exodus%2030:22-33&version=47 ;>" consisting of liquid myrrh, cinnamon, cassia, and olive oil. Rotten-smelling gases like hydrogen sulfide would have been associated with moral corruption.

Got a question about today's news? Ask the Explainer < mailto:ask_the_explainer@yahoo.com>.

Explainer thanks Alan Bernstein of the University of Arizona, David Butterfield of the Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory, Susan Ashbrook Harvey of Brown University, and Gregory Mobley of Andover Newton Theological School.

Daniel Engber is a regular contributor to Slate.

Fw: "Here's something us high church folks don't get"

"Updating church?"
by Dr Conrad Gempf
(8 September 2006, 11:50 AM)

http://homepage.mac.com/conrad.gempf/blogwavestudio/LH20040721195317/LHA20060908114921/index.html

Here's something us high church folks don't get. Are you going to say that it was right for ministers to dress in polyester suits when those were the rage in the 50s?

I think for low church folks, worship and church are about people expressing their feelings for God. Were that the way it was supposed to be, then it would be right for services to reflect the people involved. The whole thing revolves around them: the people as addressing God, but still -- the people.

For high church folks, worship and church are about coming into God's presence and giving him his due in ways appropriate for him. It's not simply about bringing eternity and the universal church down to my level, but about seeing my life lifted up to join with eternity and the Church Through the Ages. In such a case you want something that reminds you of Otherness, something that is not necessarily in complete cahoots with contemporary culture.

Sometimes postmoderns seem to think that 'old-fashioned' church was a relic of 1950s culture. As if our churches need to be updated because ordinary people on the street stopped going around in robes and chanting responsively on buses sometime in the 1980s. Part of the point was that it was not our culture, that it was counter-cultural. Priests dressed in robes rather than dressing as themselves to deflect attention from themselves; from personalities. The priests are not up there because of who they are, but because of the role they were given to play in representing/summarising the congregation before God and representing God to the congregation (depending on which way they're facing at the front, as it happens).

The congregation expressing itself toward God is still part of a high church church life. Arguably it's more pronounced, if anything, since during hymns the congregation are the performers with only an accompanyist who is hidden off stage, rather than functioning largely as an audience and background vocal choir for a set of performers who are centre stage, backs turned away from the altar. In a low church setting, though, your 'time of worship' is the singing. In a high church setting, you interrupt the serious business of worship to take time out to express how you feel about it through singing.

The more that you believe that worship is simply about unplugged self-expression of love for God by people of a particular culture, the more it would be hypocritical for you to rail against cheesy American tele-evangelists. Those polyester suits and gleaming gold cross lapel badges are the stone-washed jeans and bling of their subculture, their unnaturally white toothpaste smiles are the equivalent of piercings. And for them television and tents are the equivalent of the podcast section of the iTunes Music Store and the festival/conference speaking circuit.

Fw: "individual Catholics (meaning Ken Miller) get to define what the Catholic Church stands for..."

Deeply - is Dr Heddle aggrieved. Deeply. Yet nor does he condemn his opponents:

[...] Moving on, they [proponents of Darwinism] will argue that it is the IDers who wish to impose their religion on society at large--while heaping accolades on their guru, Richard Dawkins, who believes that parents who raise their children in their religion are committing child abuse. Is the implication of what will happen to religious families, should Dawkins's bigotry ever go mainstream, not clear?

Similarly, they will argue like libertarians if a local government mandates the teaching of ID along with evolution, and turn around and argue like totalitarians if a local government simply permits it. No government intervention can be their mantra in Georgia, on Tuesday, while the government must take control of a school's curriculum will do nicely on Wednesday, in California.

Or it allows to them to argue (actually, in this case, lie is probably more accurate) that the Catholic Church is fine with evolution period, when in fact the Catholic Church is demonstrably fine only with a very narrow perspective: theistic evolution. If pressed too hard, their arguments will start sounding like: individual Catholics (meaning Ken Miller) get to define what the Catholic Church stands for, not the anachronistic pope, and not the obscure Magisterium.

And speaking of theistic evolution, they will at times argue that it is indistinguishable from "regular" evolution or, if politically expedient (or, more likely, if caught off-guard) will treat it as little more than religious charlatanry. So while, for effect, they make Ken Miller dance for the cameras, the view behind the curtain is all Sam Harris (HT Telic Thoughts): "It is time that scientists and other public intellectuals observed that the contest between faith and reason is zero-sum. There is no question but that nominally religious scientists like Francis Collins and Kenneth R Miller are doing lasting harm to our discourse by the accommodations they have made to religious irrationality." [...]

-- David Heddle at http://helives.blogspot.com/2006/08/dissonance-as-way-of-life.html

Well, at least they've correctly identified the authority (auctoritas) of the Millersterium, even if they mixed up individuate members thereof, much as some cannot tell their Pius IX from their Pius X, or as they say of liberal Catholics in the USA - "mistaking John Paul Stevens for John Paul II".

"Miller on a New Constitution"

Unlike previous drafts with the same title, this one's not calling for the imposition of Shari'a Canon Law, with the local Ordinary having full power (potestas) to take stern measures against all instances of genocide, murder, theft, adultery, non-annulled divorces, artificial forms of contraception, Sabbath-breaking, non-alphabetically-arranged CD collections, fathers who procreate before paying off their house mortgage, excessively-bright sunlight, and fools who fail in their ignorance to acknowledge that Velvet Underground was the greatest frakkin' band the Seventies ever produced.

Although I do note that this particular Lesser Miller does want the new "Supreme Law of the United States" to outlaw abortion, so he's one-tenth of the way there.

http://lsolum.typepad.com/legaltheory/2006/08/miller_on_a_new.html

August 31, 2006

Miller on a New Constitution

Jeremy M. Miller (Chapman University - School of Law) has posted It's Time For A New U.S. Constitution < http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=926550> (Southern University Law Review, Vol. 17, pp. 208, 1987) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:

In late 1985, two United States Supreme Court Justices took the unprecedented step of publicly stating that the intent of the Framers of the Constitution was of decreasing importance in interpreting that document. Justice Brennan limned, it is [a]rrogance clothed as humility to pretend . . . we can gauge accurately, the intent of the Framers. Perhaps the celebration surrounding the bicentennial of the Constitution should be tempered with a re-evaluation.

Since the adoption of the Constitution in 1787, there has been no Constitutional Convention other than the one which created the document, though there have been several amendments. A convention shall be called by Congress if it is requested via application of the legislatures of two-thirds of the states, pursuant to Article V of the present Constitution. Although approximately thirty states, four short of two-thirds, have presently petitioned Congress for a Convention on a balanced budget amendment, it is truly time for stronger medicine than the continuing piecemeal amendment process.

The states should begin petitioning Congress for an unrestricted Convention designed to bring the Constitution in line with the desires of the people on a host of issues to be discussed in this article.

Posted by Lawrence Solum on August 31, 2006 at 06:02 AM

"Southern Africa's Catholic bishops have warned priests to stop moonlighting as witch doctors, fortune tellers and traditional healers"

"African bishops warn priests against witchcraft"
Wednesday, August 16, 2006
Posted: 10:03 a.m. EDT (14:03 GMT)
http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/africa/08/16/africa.catholic.witchcraft.reut/index.html

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa (Reuters) -- Southern Africa's Catholic bishops have warned priests to stop moonlighting as witch doctors, fortune tellers and traditional healers, and to rely on Christ for miracles.

The Southern African Catholic Bishops' Conference, which represents bishops in South Africa, Swaziland and Botswana, said on its Web sites some priests were adopting the traditional African practice of calling on ancestors for healing.

The bishops ordered priests to "desist from practices involving spirits," and to steer clear from witchcraft, fortune-telling and selling spiritual powers or magic medicines.

"The belief that ancestors are endowed with supernatural powers borders on idolatry. It is God, and God alone, who is all-powerful while the ancestors are created by him," said the pastoral letter to priests issued earlier this month.

Many in Southern Africa turn to sangomas -- or traditional healers -- to cure illness, ward off evil spirits and even improve their sex lives. Sangomas, who play a key role in rural communities but are also revered by many in towns and cities, call on ancestral spirits to heal and give advice.

Some Christian sects, like the South Africa-based Zion Christian Church, fuse traditional African beliefs about the power of the ancestors with orthodox Christianity.

The Southern African bishops said Catholic priests should instead heal in the name of Jesus Christ, and should tend to the soul, not just the body.

The downside of having psychic power to know What Women Want...

Gibson also allegedly yelled at LA police that "The Freemasons started the French Revolution and founded Planned Parenthood", "On the seventh hour of the seventh day of the seventh month, the Sons of Gwalia shall quench the thirst of their scimitars in the quivering flesh of the Medical Board of Queensland", "Our rights under the Magna flamin' Carta is bein' taken away, urr, daily, cove, by thur socialist Howard bloody junta", and "We therefore most authentically pronounce, define and decree that you -- yes, you, the brown-haired lieutenant eating the donuts -- shall wed, forthwith, Our most beloved sister in law."

However his tirade ended when the police threatened to handcuff him to his car, set the petrol alight, and leave him with a hacksaw.

Mr Gibson received a suspended sentence, conditional upon him expiating his manifold wrongs by working in a regional town and attending a minimum of four (4) screenings of "Science". [*]

[*]     The one about the crop circles.

PS: "Alan Nierob, his spokesman"... that's a palindrome, right? "Borein Nala" back to front? But what does it MEAN?

The Sunday Times (UK) (30 July 2006)
"Mel Gibson rants against Jews in drink-drive arrest"
John Harlow
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-2292336,00.html

MEL GIBSON, the Oscar-winning Hollywood actor, apologised last night for his "despicable" anti-Semitic rant when he was arrested on a drink-driving charge in Los Angeles. Gibson, 50, is alleged to have tried to escape when he was pulled over on the Pacific Coast highway near his Malibu home in the early hours of Friday morning and then launched into a barrage of anti-Semitic curses against the arresting sheriffs.

Police have confirmed the actor and director, who rose to fame by playing characters such as Mad Max and a mentally unstable policeman in the Lethal Weapon series, was found to have a blood- alcohol level of 0.12%, above the 0.08% Californian limit. He was charged with drink-driving and released on $5,000 (£2,600) bail.

In a statement issued by Alan Nierob, his spokesman, Gibson did not detail what happened but said: "I acted like a person completely out of control when I was arrested and said things that I do not believe to be true and which are despicable. I am deeply ashamed of everything I said."

The star added: "I have battled with the disease of alcoholism for all my adult life and profoundly regret my horrific relapse."

Nierob refused to comment on reports that after Gibson was stopped for driving at 87mph in a 45mph zone on the notoriously dangerous road he sat at the wheel of his Lexus LS 430 and repeatedly said: "My life is f*****."

According to police records, Gibson, a strict Catholic, then launched into an anti-Semitic tirade, referring to "f****** Jews" and stating that "the Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world". He also repeatedly insulted the police officers, addressing one female sergeant as "sugar tits".

If true, the anti-Semitic remarks are likely to cause a storm in Hollywood where many of the industry leaders are Jewish.

This is not the first time the actor has confronted allegations of anti-semitism. Gibson faced similar accusations when making his most successful movie, The Passion Of the Christ, whose dialogue is in Aramaic. The subtitle to one line, spoken by a Jewish priest, about Christ's blood being "on us and our children" was removed to placate his critics.

There is also a family history. Gibson's father Hutton has been branded a Holocaust denier for claiming the extermination of 6m Jews is largely a myth and that many of the supposed victims had moved to Brooklyn.

The actor has admitted "atrocities" were committed during the second world war but has stopped short of criticising his 87-year-old father, who is also a devout Catholic.

Gibson also has a history of trouble with alcohol. He admitted he nearly missed the audition for his breakthrough film, Mad Max, because he got into a drunken bar fight the night before.

"When I turned up on set without the scars two weeks later they did not recognise me," he recalled.

In 1991 he joined a Malibu chapter of Alcoholics Anonymous, where he accepted the help of female mentors to give up his beer habit, but has admitted it has been a "battle every day which only my wife can help me win".

Zeus' prophecy to Aeneas

"Then Romulus... shall build the walls of Mars and establish a race of people, whom he shall call 'Romans', after his own name. Upon them I set no limits, whether in time or in space, but make them the gift of empire without end. Indeed, even Juno - whose bitterness now fills earth, sea and sky, with fear and torment - will mend her ways, and favor them as I do; these lords of the world, the toga-clad Romans."

- Zeus, quoted in Virgil's The Aeneid (Book 1, Line 277)

Lott going on re: Europe

"Since Europeans are no longer expected to go to church, self-selection encourages a more fervent kind of believer. In France, some estimates put attendance at Latin masses performed by the schismatic group the Society of Pious [sic] X ahead of attendance at vernacular masses."

- Jeremy Lott, "Be Afraid, Be Somewhat Afraid," The American Spectator (17 May 2007), http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=11448.

"Star Wars, As Re-Imagined by Ronald D Moore"

Star Wars, As Re-Imagined by Ronald D Moore

UPDATE: Already been done? I'd forgotten this 1999 gem. It even has a scene in a movie theatre, just without Xinna saying "Ut trilly uz a murukul frim Gawd."

Had someone told me in 1979 that by 2007, not only Cylons but also Imperial troopers would have Nizzillind ekksents, I would have howled "Noooooooooo!" to the sky, head cradled in hands, or else retorted "Th'umpurriyil Sinnit wull nutt sutt stull for thuss, eh filler."

SCENE 1:

Interior. The cafe of a university student union, walls covered with various posters. A few dozen students of varying ages are sitting around, talking, eating from meal trays, drinking coffee.

ALLAN VADER walks in. He is a tall Asian man in his 40s who is wearing a black T-shirt with a barely-legible slogan, stove-pipe jeans, motorcycle boots, and a long black leather trenchcoat. He has a shaved head and an eyepatch over one eye, and is smoking a cigarette.

VADER looks around the cafeteria. Camera jerks about dizzyingly.

Eventually camera settles on BELINDA "LUKE" SMITH-WALKER, a young woman aged 20-25, of African appearance, wearing a dark navy pantsuit and jacket. She is sitting alone at a table with her briefcase (and no meal tray) in front of her.

VADER pauses, throws down his cigarette, stamps it out, then walks over to LUKE and stands towering over her. LUKE looks up angrily. Camera jerks about before eventually settling - sort of - on LUKE's face.

LUKE:
You tracked me... to Coruscant? [She pronounces it "Koruskant"]

VADER:
Luke! Join me and rule the galaxy together! It is as foretold in the ancient Scrolls of the Prophet Cassius!

LUKE:
Frak you, Vader. You killed my frakkin' father, you bastard!

VADER:
DON'T -- frakkin' -- well -- frakk with me, Luke. I'm reaching out to you here, do you understand?

Camera cuts back to LUKE. Now JERRY "OBI-WAN" KENOBI is standing behind Luke, but is visible to LUKE only. OBI-WAN is a well-preserved Latino man in his 50s wearing a tuxedo, white gloves, and a red rose in his buttonhole. His hair is neatly brillcreemed in a duck's tail. OBI-WAN bends behind LUKE's head and whispers in her ear:

OBI-WAN:
Oh, come on now, Luke, surely he can do better than that, can't he? Don't let him fool you again. Show him what you're made of.

LUKE:
You're damn right! Frak him!

Camera returns to VADER's point of view, ie we see LUKE but not OBI-WAN.

VADER:
Who the frak you talking to?

LUKE:
None of your frakkin' business, you frakkin frakker! Frak you!

VADER reaches under his trenchcoat and brandishes a samurai sword.

VADER:
It is obvious that this cannot be settled by our knowledge of the Scrolls, but only by our skill with the sabre.

LUKE:
I'm ready for you!

LUKE jumps up and produces a fencing epee from her briefcase. Other students, squealing in alarm, scramble out of their way. VADER snaps his fingers and a dozen IMPERIAL STORMTROOPERS (wearing white T-shirts, white cargo-pants and white go-go boots, with white plastic bike-helmets on their heads) march into the cafeteria, pointing Uzis at LUKE...

* * * * *

SCENE 2: The same cafeteria, two hours later.

GREG GREEDO points a Glock at SOLO.

GREEDO:
Captain Solo?

SOLO:
That is my call-sign, yes.

GREEDO:
Please state your full legal name for the record before I pop three rusty caps in yo'ass.

SOLO:
Han Albert Wentworth Massingham.

GREEDO:
Thank you.

(Begins pulling trigger but then CHEWTOBACCO thrashes him across the neck with a clock of 2 by 4 wood).

SOLO:
Just in time there, Chewie.

CHEWTOBACCO:
Honorable Wookiee take great pleasure in rescue most esteemed Captain.

TO BE CONTINUED [BUT NOT NEXT WEEK BECAUSE CHANNEL TEN IN ITS INFINITE WISDOM HAS FILLED THIS COVETED TIME-SLOT WITH ITS SMASH HIT NEW SPECIAL 'CELEBRITIES FEEDING MILK TO BABY GOATS"]

Further scripting suggestions are invited. Any that amount to no more than thinly-disguised parodies of the Reformation, however, shall be disallowed.

PS: Ouch!

"Bollywood actress Shilpa Shetty has clinched a public vote to win "Celebrity Big Brother" after her treatment on the British television show sparked an international row amid fears of racist bullying... US singer Jermaine Jackson, older brother of Michael Jackson, came second followed by actor Dirk Benedict, who starred in the 1980s television series The A-Team..."

-- "Indian star wins UK Big Brother show," NineMSN News (Monday 29 January 2007)

That's KnifeThePope's main claim to televisatory fame?

Suspected Cylons (1)

Battlestar Galactica lore teaches that there are 12 Cylon models - but perhaps more may be revealed...

In accordance with prophesy, I therefore offer Roger Federer as a candidate and thus he is now officially "suspect".

Reasons:
1. Never tires
2. Always wins
3. Modest

Sauron's wrath will be terrible, his retribution swift

Standard Hollywood-style fare in the original report, a stoush between Peter Jackson and New Line Cinema's Bob Shaye over The Hobbit

But a few simple tweaks gives us this LOTR themed article, making Jackson a charcater in an even larger drama, with the fate of Middle Earth as its goal...

MINAS MORGAL, Mordor (Orodruin Reporter) -- An escalation in the war of words between Barad-dûr co-chairman Sauron and "Lord of the Rings" filmmaker Peter Jackson appears to be nixing any possible reconciliation between the two -- or any chance that Jackson will direct the trilogy's prequel, "The Hobbit."

In an interview with the Orthanc Channel news service Orthanc Wire, Sauron said Jackson will never make another movie for the studio and said the filmmaker just wants more money.

"I don't care about Peter Jackson anymore," Sauron said. "He wants to have another 100 million or 50 million gold pieces, whatever he's suing us for. He doesn't want to sit down and talk about it. He thinks that we owe him something after we've paid him over a quarter of a billion pieces of gold. ... Cheers, Peter."

In response, Jackson issued a statement Tuesday that did not attack Sauron but aimed at clarifying his issue with Barad-dûr. Jackson said the lawsuit stems from the studio's refusal to account for financial anomalies that surfaced from a partial audit of "The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring" and that is has denied his repeated requests to audit "The Two Towers" and "The Return of the King."

"Fundamentally, our legal action is about holding Barad-dûr to its contractual obligations and promises," Jackson said. "It is regrettable that Sauron has chosen to make it personal. I have always had the highest respect and affection for Sauron and other senior management at Barad-dûr and continue to do so."

It is as Lileks the Prophet hath prophesied

'... House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi gave an interview in which she set forth the broad new agenda, just in case martial law is not declared: "The gavel of the speaker of the House is in the hands of special interests, and now it will be in the hands of America's children." Make them wash off the jam first...'

- James Lileks, "After Regime Change, the Party of the National Mom," Newhouse News Service (25 October 2006)

'Nancy Pelosi concluded her speech marking the start of her tenure as the first female speaker of the House of Representatives with an altar call. She invited all of the children brought by members to come to the well of the House and touch her new gavel. The children swarmed to the front in their sweater vests and velvet dresses. It was a fitting gesture to mark not only a change in congressional power but in the over 200- year tradition of white male leadership. Acknowledging her own children, Pelosi thanked them for giving her the support to "go from the kitchen to the Congress." At one point Madame Speaker had five grandchildren hanging from her, one an infant, whom it must be said she wielded on her arm with total ease. (Male politicians look so strange when they kiss the obligatory baby; Pelosi looked like she might do tricks with it.)

'The children clotted the well and tight space between the desks. Only a few of the dozens of kids were going to get to touch that gavel. The proceedings had to move on, which Pelosi gamely made happen even though her grandchildren were trapped by the other congressional spawn who never got their turn. One grandson took it upon himself to try to restore order in the House by banging on her microphone a few times...'

- John Dickerson, "Pelosi's Big Day: Suffer the congressional children," Slate (Thursday 4 January 2007)

Together - we can upgrade the universe

Not to bite the hand that feeds this blog, but I am bemused by part of the blurb for BLOGGER's spiel about upgrading all blogs hereon now that Blogger has been assimilated into Google or somesuch:

"... I am overjoyed to announce that today we have o’ficially [sic] graduated the new version of Blogger from “in beta” to “.” Why is this significant? Allow me to explain via analogy:

Old Blogger = Battlestar Galactica with Lorne Greene

New Blogger = Battlestar Galactica with Edward James Olmos..."

So, uh... Old Blogger had laser beams, state-of-the-art (well, for 1978) computer technology, wriston communicatorons, invisibility cloaks, and even time-travel capability... whereas New Blogger has common-or-garden bullets, telephone handsets with cords, coffee mugs, ashtrays, and greaseboard battle maps?

Not completely convinced that the technological trajectory of BSG 1978-2007 - whatever its improvements in numerous other spheres - is one that Blogger wants to emulate.

Just saying, is all.

Choice is choice, bro'

"Australian MPs want a full union, or at least a single currency, with New Zealand. A committee of the Federal Parliament in Canberra says the strong ties between Australia and New Zealand suggest a merger could be desirable and realistic."

Mayhap... mayhap. There might be serious constitutional problems, though:

"Australian lawmakers acknowledged the hurdle posed by national pride, not to mention the problems any union would cause for rugby World Cup organisers who stood to lose a powerhouse participant in New Zealand’s All Blacks."

'Cause, like, Wales can never field a separate football team against England in the World Cup again, now they're both part of the United Kingdom.

One other aspect of the report kind of falls into the "Shouldn't that go without saying?" category:

"However [the Australian parliamentary committee's] chairman Peter Slipper says it is not an attempt to annex New Zealand or to mount a compulsory takeover. He says any change would have to be voluntary..."

Well, uh, yeah. I can't see Howard drumming up Australians as cannon fodder for a trans-Tasman war of imperial conquest... especially not against regiments of Maori soldiers chanting the haka. No blood for sheep!

Exclusive Brethren

Interesting SBS documentary last night on the Exclusive Brethren sect and their involvement (very furtively) in Tasmanian and New Zealand elections, especially opposing the Greens.

Now, I myself (rejecting the dogma that "humanity is the disease, voting Green is the cure") usually put the Brown Shirts last on my ballot paper, but even so I think the XBs' methods -- basically, anonymous shit-sheeting -- are contrary not only to basic decency but also to their own big black-leather-bound King James Bible (Words of Christ in Red).

When Jesus said, "Let your yes be yes, and your no be no, and any more than that comes from the evil one", not only was [H]e limiting the voting membership of the Conclave to a maximum of 120 cardinals, with those aged 75 or older being ineligible to vote (but not ineligible to be elected), and requiring a two-thirds majority of votes until at least the tenth ballot, but [H]e was also warning against using deception. One can argue over whether this is subject to the normal Biblical exception of necessity to avoid a greater evil (Rachab and the spies, the midwives and Pharaoh, Samuel and Saul, etc), but the Brethren can hardly claim their lives are in danger if they put their names to their leaflets.

Two points in particular intrigue me:

(a) XBs don't vote themselves, but they want to influence how other people vote?

(b) XBs apparently refuse to own (inter alia) computers or fax machines, rejecting these as intrin. ... ah, as inherently evil. Yet apparently they are happy to *rent* fax machines, and hire website designers to run their websites?

What on earth gives here?

Pro Bono privato

You say... you want... diamonds and rings of gold? Well effin' eff orff, tahxmahn, thay're all stashed in the Netherlands, t'be shure.

See Timothy Noah's "Bono, Tax Avoider: The hypocrisy of U2", Slate Magazine (Tuesday 31 October 2006).

And note that in Latin, "U2" is "tu quoque".

UPDATE: Ni Marx, ni Jesus (apologies to Jean-Francois Revel).

Bummer of a week...

... not only for Rove, but also for Rove.

UPDATE: K. Beazley is particularly distraught.

How to rescue your progressive credibility

"However, after Mr Cobb clarified that by 'get rid of' he had meant 'abort', not 'put in an institution', he was applauded for his sensitivity in the face of this intensely difficult, profoundly personal, and fundamentally non-other-regarding decision."

"No other person would have any right whatsoever to judge a parent who took such a tragically necessary step for the benefit of their disabled child," said a press release from Australian Democrats Senator Lynn Allison yesterday.

Pick one

One of these headlines - and only one - is from The Onion. Have fun guessing which...

[A] "Now it's legal to tape from TV: AFTER years of flouting the law, Australians now legally will be able to tape television programs and copy music..."

[B] "I used to look at veiled women as quiet, oppressed creatures -- until I was captured by the Taliban..."

[C] "Professor Admits He Was Wrong To Discipline His Child With Ants..."

[D] "... since homeschooling never has been legalized in Germany since Hitler banned it, a mother was arrested and detained on such charges..."

[E] "Apple Claiming The Term 'Pod'..."

The Truth Laid Bear

Just discovered today that the Father McKenzie blog is ranked at # 25312 and rates as a a Multicellular Microorganism!

Second category from bottom.

Woo hoo!

Maintaining the rage

SOME of Australia’s top entertainers have angered the Federal Government by refusing to perform for Australian troops in Iraq for political reasons. The Whitlams’ Tim Freedman is among a group of artists who have knocked back requests to play for Diggers because they don’t support the war. "I was asked, and decided not to go," Freedman told The Sunday Telegraph. "I went to East Timor and enjoyed the experience. I understand how hard the soldiers do it. In this instance, I don’t agree with the war..."

-- Peter Holmes, "Aussie singers snub Iraq Diggers," NEWS_com_au (24 September 2006)

Yeah, well, when you're a pop singer who names his band in honour of Blessed Gough, but who also performs at concerts for a nation of "mulattos" whom the Great One deemed unworthy of self-government, then ideological consistency is clearly a Very Important Thing for you, isn't it...

Never ask a Lady her age

'Victoria Hill won’t specify her age. Not meaning to be rude, of course. It’s just that, after [her] starring in four (yet to be released) films in the past year – most notably as Lady Macbeth in Geoffrey Wright’s "Melbournised" new [version of The Scottish Tragedy] – Hill’s agent counseled her that a date of birth can become a use-by date. She’s not ready to be put on the shelf just yet..."

– Weekend Australian (9-10 September 2006), Magazine p 13.

Oooooo... a challenge! A mystery! A gauntlet thrown down to the intrepid investigator! Lemme see, I bet if I click on the IMDB, or even walk to the library on Monday and check Senator Robert Hill’s entry in Who’s Who... But first, let’s finish reading the Saturday papers:

'... After 16 years slogging it out in theatre collectives and television commercials, the 35-year-old Hill now has four film roles in the can...'

– Sydney Morning Herald (9-10 September 2006), Spectrum p 8.

Oops. New agent?

But wait... both Internet Movie Database and Wikipedia say "18 February 1978". What the Sam/ Hill...?!

Perish the thought that the Sydney Morning Herald itself could get such basic facts wrong. Or that the all-seeing, all-knowing IMDB would "keep the word of promise to our ear,/ and break it to our hope."

If "politics is show business for ugly people", Ms Hill is doing her bit to continue Australia’s proud tradition of joining the two realms by family ties.

For yea, just as former Prime Minister (1971-72) Billy McMahon did begat Julian McMahon, and even as former Labor Senator Michael Beahan did begat Kate Beahan, and former Prime Minister (1993-94) Bronwyn Bishop did begat Angela Bishop (who, apart from interviewing visiting A-listers, also plays Rose's mum in Doctor Who), and Andrew Peacock did swap spiritual energies at one time with Shirley MacLaine... Jeff Kennett’s son Angus made a famous breakout into modeling... And Eric Bana’s dad-in-law is Chief Justice Gleeson of the High Court of Australia (no, not that Gleeson).

There's also a Canadian division.

Next: Geoff Wright "Melbournises" Much Ado About Nothing ("Veniadikt, the married man...?")

MacDuff? Isn't that when you go on a raid to steal computers?

Union of the snake

Vale Steve Irwin, a man who fit 88 years of living into only 44 years of life.

The first time I saw Crocodile Hunter on TV, I assumed it was a Glyn Nicholas spoof. How wrong I was. Glyn's real spoof, Russell Coight's All Aussie Outback Adventures, is as sedate as an English butler compared to the real Steve Irwin.

On the principle of nil nisi bonum de mortuis, now is an appropriate day to correct the misapprehension put about by The Onion in December 2002, with its faux-headline "Crocodile Hunter The Same Way In Bed". Let this "bug-eyed, khaki-clad yokel" speak for himself as to that point:

Andrew Denton: You said that getting married was the scariest day of your life. Why was that?

Steve Irwin: Scariest day of my life, mate. ‘Cause, um...

Andrew Denton: Did you have a khaki tuxedo?

Steve Irwin: I had… I don’t know, some penguin suit and it was black.

Andrew Denton: Yeah?

Steve Irwin: It wasn’t khaki, so I’m already out of my element. And a tie! I was panicking. Absolutely panicking...

Andrew Denton: So what got you over the moment of panic?

Steve Irwin: Um... (Laughs) I don’t know. I made it. I just made it. I just beared with it and got there. But I was panicked, mate. I was so panicked. My wife’s going to kill me when I tell you this, but I’ll tell you ‘cause it’s this kind of show. He just sucks it out of you, doesn’t he? And I’ve seen that about your show! So I’m so scared, so anxious, so incredibly out of my element, you know, we get back to the hotel… uh, the motel - you know, nice honeymoon suite and that - and I... I couldn’t consummate the marriage, mate! I was freaked!

Andrew Denton: Really?

Steve Irwin: Yeah. I sat there and ate a steak instead...

- Interview with Andrew Denton on "Enough Rope", ABC-TV (6 October 2003)

Goodbye, Steve.

UPDATE 1: An eyewitness report to the contrary. How in blazes did I manage to glean three (3) news items on this topic over the 2002-05 quinquennium?!

Duckspeak

Our tolerant multicultural society is so tolerant and multicultural we’ll tolerate your intolerant uniculturalism. Your antipathy to diversity is just another form of diversity for us to celebrate.