OVO

John Keilman: Muslims to pray for Cubs at Wrigley [LINK-ZUM]

As far as Ricardo Pena is concerned, rescuing the Cubs' teetering season will take a lot more than rally caps. So at 1:30 p.m. Saturday, he plans to assemble 100 Muslims outside Wrigley Field to pray for Allah to change the team's dim fortunes. [...] A lot of petitioners have been knocking on the boss' door lately, among them the Greek Orthodox priest who blessed the Cubs dugout on Wednesday and countless other fans who have offered up their silent prayers for victory. [...] "We don't know if our prayers work, but it can't hurt," said Lisa Bellows, associate rabbi at Congregation Beth Am in Buffalo Grove. "We've been praying extra hard for the Cubs to win at our house, and so far, [the prayers] have not been heard."

[Article continues at link. In case the Muslim, Christian and Jewish worlds have not been paying attention for the past few thousand years, this article points out two facts they might like to contemplate. First, people pray for things that are at odds with the things other people are praying for. Second, nothing fails like prayer. Having planted those two opportunities to doubt in the mind of the faithful, they might also like to ask themselves why God would care enough to swing a baseball game but not enough to cure a single disease. Or ask themselves why it is within human ability to both swing a baseball game and to cure a disease or two but God, that all-powerful invisible monster that lives in the sky, hasn't been able to get around to it yet. - Trevor Blake]

Labels: atheist, christianity, games, islam, judaism

Trevor Blake: We're Sorry, This Video is No Longer Available [LINK-ZUM]

A few days ago I posted a link to the most recent video from Pat Condell. Here's what that post looks like now if you try to follow the link...

Pat's video is available elsewhere. YouTube is a free service that is privately owned. Pat's video has not been censored, as I see censorship. But I will say that YouTube's decision to make Pat's video no longer available after a few days when something like this is allowed to stay up for months - even after complaints - shows a certain wrong-headed inconsistency. Video using critical thinking to address Islam is removed. Video of Islamic men celebrating around the corpses of US soldiers they have shot and burned is allowed to remain. Nothing breeds wrong-headed inconsistency like religion.

Labels: atheist, fight, islam, spoken, video

Sam Harris: average isn't good enough [LINK-ZUM]

Americans have an unhealthy desire to see average people promoted to positions of great authority. No one wants an average neurosurgeon or even an average carpenter, but when it comes time to vest a man or woman with more power and responsibility than any person has held in human history, Americans say they want a regular guy, someone just like themselves. President Bush kept his edge on the "Who would you like to have a beer with?" poll question in 2004, and won reelection.

This is one of the many points at which narcissism becomes indistinguishable from masochism. Let me put it plainly: If you want someone just like you to be president of the United States, or even vice president, you deserve whatever dysfunctional society you get. You deserve to be poor, to see the environment despoiled, to watch your children receive a fourth-rate education and to suffer as this country wages - and loses - both necessary and unnecessary wars.

[Article continues at link.]

Labels: education, fight, money

John Gray: A shattering moment in America's fall from power [LINK-ZUM]

The fate of empires is very often sealed by the interaction of war and debt. That was true of the British Empire, whose finances deteriorated from the First World War onwards, and of the Soviet Union. Defeat in Afghanistan and the economic burden of trying to respond to Reagan's technically flawed but politically extremely effective Star Wars programme were vital factors in triggering the Soviet collapse. Despite its insistent exceptionalism, America is no different. The Iraq War and the credit bubble have fatally undermined America's economic primacy. The US will continue to be the world's largest economy for a while longer, but it will be the new rising powers that, once the crisis is over, buy up what remains intact in the wreckage of America's financial system. [...] Having created the conditions that produced history's biggest bubble, America's political leaders appear unable to grasp the magnitude of the dangers the country now faces. Mired in their rancorous culture wars and squabbling among themselves, they seem oblivious to the fact that American global leadership is fast ebbing away. A new world is coming into being almost unnoticed, where America is only one of several great powers, facing an uncertain future it can no longer shape.

[Article continues at link. I've lived through a couple 'end of the world' events - anyone remember Y2K? - and I'm having a hard time buying any more. But it certainly does seem that the Bush administration has caused a bankruptcy of the economy and status of the United States. - Trevor Blake]

Labels: money

Pat Condell: Welcome to Saudi Britain [LINK-ZUM]

If you live in Britain please sign this petition against the creeping poison of sharia law before October 4th when it closes.

Labels: atheist, islam, theocracy

John Zewizz: Temple Ov Psychic Youth [LINK-ZUM]

In Early 1981 I waz introduced or should I say stumbled across a secret underground cult known az TOPY (Temple Ov Psychic Youth). Through transmissions with the leader at the time, Genesis P. Orridge, we became friendz and in 1982 I met him in Boston where I assisted in organizing a "Psychic TV" performance. (a musical off shoot of TOPY). [...]

Most ov the information I gained in TOPY came to an end. It az a good source for ideas on magick. My interest in magick went into different direction than where Gen waz going. He's very sharp character. Make no mistake. But TOPY grew inconsistent az time went on... last, I mutated my own style ov grammar. I know ov one word we share (the spelling ov and that's "ov")... Neither one ov us accuse either one ov stealing it from the other, and the E[backwards E] are not a negative logo ov the PTV symbol! SC started before PTV was formed! I took the 'Double E' from a form ov Hindu sanscript. The E[backwards E] in SLEEP iz a symbol for "Forever & Eternity"... The last time I met up with Gen waz at a PTV show in Boston 2008. Funny thing... when I joined TOPY my ID card waz 'good' for getting into "all & any" PTV events... yea... 25 dollars to get in...

[Article continues at link. It is criminal that more people do not know about John Zewizz and Sleep Chamber. Exonerate yourself today and learn more at the John Zewizz Appreciation Society. - Trevor Blake]

Labels: magick, music

South Park: Gerbil Science [LINK-ZUM]

Watch the full episode here.

Labels: television, video

Trevor Blake: Skitterbot 28 September 2008 [LINK-ZUM]

Electric razor, nut, beam, glue, coat hangers, wire. Rechargable, loud, can find walls and irregularities in the floor, could be fitted with a pen. Also known as a vibrobot.

Labels: art, robots, trevorblake, video

Trevor Blake: Aisha [LINK-ZUM]

Wikipedia: Aisha bint Abu Bakr (d. 678) was the second wife of Muhammad. She is quoted as source for many hadith, sacred traditions about the prophet Muhammad's life, with Muhammad's personal life being the topic of most narrations. She has narrated 2210 Hadiths out of which 316 hadiths are mentioned in both Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim. Aisha was six or seven years old when betrothed to Muhammad. She stayed in her parents' home until the age of nine, when the marriage was consummated.

Bukhari (6:298): The Prophet and I [Aisha] used to take a bath from a single pot while we were Junub. During the menses, he used to order me to put on an Izar (dress worn below the waist) and used to fondle me.

Ayatollah Khomeini: "A man can marry a girl younger than nine years of age, even if the girl is still a baby being breastfed. A man, however is prohibited from having intercourse with a girl younger than nine, other sexual act such as forplay, rubbing, kissing and sodomy is allowed. A man having intercourse with a girl younger than nine years of age has not comitted a crime, but only an infraction, if the girl is not permanently damaged. If the girl, however, is permanently damaged, the man must provide for her all her life."

David Barrett, Nine-year-old Midlands girl rescued from forced marriage: British children as young as nine are being forced into marriage by their families, The Sunday Telegraph can reveal. The disclosure comes as official figures show that nearly 60 children aged 15 or under have been rescued by the Government's Forced Marriage Unit in the past four years. [...] A charity which runs a national helpline on forced marriage and "honour"-based crimes, Karma Nirvana, revealed that in one incident a nine-year-old girl from a Pakistani family in the east Midlands was taken into council care after her parents told her she was to wed. [Note: is there any question about the superstition of choice among Pakistani families? Are any of my readers going to suggest they are Buddhists, or Quakers, or Asatru Folk Assembly? - Trevor Blake]

Wikipedia: The Jewel of Medina is a historical novel by Sherry Jones. It was scheduled for publication by Random House in 2008, but subsequently canceled; it was subsequently announced that it would be published by Beaufort Books in the United States and by Gibson Square in the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth. The novel tells a fictionalized version of the life of Aisha, one of the wives of the Islamic Prophet, Muhammad, and the person who reportedly accompanied him as he received most of his revelations. The novel tells Aisha's story from the age of six, when she was betrothed to Muhammad, to his death.

Jamie Doward and Mark Townsend, Firebomb attack on book publisher: The London home of the publisher of a controversial new novel that gives a fictionalised account of the Prophet Muhammad's relationship with his child bride, Aisha, was firebombed yesterday [27 September 2008], hours after police had warned the man that he could be a target for fanatics. A petrol bomb is believed to have been thrown through the door of Martin Rynja's 2.5m UKP town house in Islington's Lonsdale Square, which also doubles as the headquarters of his publishing company, Gibson Square. Three men have been arrested on terrorism charges. The Observer has learned that police told Rynja late on Friday night to leave his property. His company recently made headlines when it announced it was to publish The Jewel of Medina.

[Articles continue at link. I wonder what will be happening next. Will there be peaceful protests by Muslims to make a stand against bombing the homes of book publishers? Or will there be rioting and murders by Muslims to make a stand against publishing books? I wonder, but I don't wonder for very long. A visit to The Religion of Peace might make your time of wondering brief as well. Then, like me, you'll wonder what it is that you should do. The choice is being made between accommodating infant rapists, bombers and censors on the one hand and saying LAN ASTASLEM on the other. I keep myself informed about Islam and speak out against it. What do you do? - Trevor Blake]

Labels: islam

Trevor Blake: Skitterbot 27 September 2008 [LINK-ZUM]

Toothbrush, paperclip, motor, tape, solder, battery. Also known as a bristlebot or a vibrobot.

Labels: robots, trevorblake, video

Trevor Blake: Second Appearance at churchofsatan.com [LINK-ZUM]

In no way am I the main feature in this article, but I am mentioned at the official web site of the Church of Satan for a second time.

Labels: portland, satanism, trevorblake

Science Daily: Learning From Mistakes Only Works After Age 12, Study Suggests [LINK-ZUM]

Eight-year-old children have a radically different learning strategy from twelve-year-olds and adults. Eight-year-olds learn primarily from positive feedback ('Well done!'), whereas negative feedback ('Got it wrong this time') scarcely causes any alarm bells to ring. Twelve-year-olds are better able to process negative feedback, and use it to learn from their mistakes. Adults do the same, but more efficiently. [...] In children of eight and nine, these areas of the brain react strongly to positive feedback and scarcely respond at all to negative feedback. But in children of 12 and 13, and also in adults, the opposite is the case. Their 'control centres' in the brain are more strongly activated by negative feedback and much less by positive feedback. [...]

Is that difference between eight- and twelve-year-olds the result of experience, or does it have to do with the way the brain develops? As yet, nobody has the answer. 'This kind of brain research has only been possible for the last ten years or so,' says Crone, 'and there are a lot more questions which have to be answered. But it is probably a combination of the brain maturing and experience.' There is also an area of the brain that responds strongly to positive feedback: the basal ganglia, just outside the cerebral cortex. The activity of this area of the brain does not change. It remains active in all age groups: in adults, but also in children, both eight-year-olds and twelve-year-olds.

[Article continues at link. This information touches on so much of interest to me. I work in public schools and so I am around children of these ages. My job in public schools is that of a sign language interpreter. What might it mean if Deaf children get little linguistic feedback as they develop because their parents don't sign with them and neither do most of their peers? I also have a strong interest in evidence for and against the claim that behavior and consciousness have biological roots. I have many questions and few answers, so I think I'm learning. - Trevor Blake]

Labels: deaf, education, science

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