Dec

30

I Came, I Saw, I Farked

December 30, 2008 by Brandon | 4 Comments

After over a month of trying, I finally submitted a successful Fark.

Atheist soldier sues US military over Christian bias. God help hi… er, uh. Good luck

You can read the actual article here.



Dec

24

Of course, this is total BS.

The woman, Tonia Thomas, worked at a vacation rental company in Florida. The company’s policy was to answer the phones using the phrase, “Happy Holidays” because, you know, not everyone calling in may celebrate Christmas. Imagine that?

Well, Thomas decided she wasn’t going to do this, and instead continued to say Merry Christmas, completely refusing to say Happy Holidays because as a Christian, she says she “doesn’t recognize any other holidays.”

Tough noogies, lady. That’s called insubordination.

The company says that the woman is just disgruntled, and she wasn’t fired for saying Merry Christmas. Considering that apparently the company thought the police should be present while the woman cleaned out her desk, I would be inclined to assume that something more than saying “Merry Christmas” was going down.

But of course, she feels like she’s being discriminated against because of her religious beliefs!

Wrong. You’re not entitled to say whatever you want to on your employer’s phones at your job because you are a Christian, and them telling you that you can’t isn’t discrimination. Discrimination would be them firing you because they discovered you were Christian, but that’s not what happened here. What happened was, this lady failed to adhere to company policy that in no way infringed upon her religious beliefs. There are no requirements in Christanity saying you must wish everyone you talk to a Merry Christmas. It’s personal choice, not religious dogma.

I can’t wait for her legal suit to get tossed out and laughed at. Epic fail.



Dec

15

The Lewes Prison in East Sussex, near the southern tip of England, was recently asked to remove the cross from it’s chapel because it may be considered offensive.

Now wait before you go crazy and say, “Brandon… they removed a cross from a chapel? That’s just asinine,” let’s consider a very important factor…

The chapel is a new “multi-faith” chapel, designed for anyone, of any faith, to come and worship in. Suddenly it makes a little bit more sense that a Muslim inmate not walk into the chapel to be greeted by a cross on the wall; it doesn’t exactly throw open the arms of mult-faith… ed… ness.

So how exactly do you create a multi-faith chapel? Well, for starters I suppose you probably want to remove all religious iconography from the walls that might seemingly promote one religion over the other… like, say… a cross.

They already had the right idea by creating a portable alter that can be wheeled out for services specific to Christian theology then wheeled out of sight when the services are over. So why exactly did they need that cross? Why are the bobbies’ panties in a bunch over this? Aw, because they’re probably Christian and don’t want to have to take down their religious symbols so that they may not offend people of other faith that they, frankly, don’t care about. Sorry guys, but you can put wheels on your little cross and roll it out if you feel that it’s somehow integral to your worship.



Dec

14

Playing Gods

December 14, 2008 by Brandon | 5 Comments

I recently stumbled upon an interesting little game called Playing Gods. I just placed an order for it on Amazon and will hopefully get my copy within the week, as I picked a retailer who is actually pretty close to where I live. Keeping my fingers crossed.

Anyway. I’ll be sure to provide a review for the game… from what I’ve read of other reviews, the game is pretty fun, taking about 90 minutes to play. You play as one of five gods of the major religions (Islam, Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism, and Hinduism), represented by a small pawn in their likeness, or the likeness of one of their figureheads… sort of.

What I mean is that the pieces are insanely offensive (and that means hilarious). What’s even more amusing is that the company includes a sixth blank pawn, which has a flat surface for applying a sticker to, in order to create your own gods. They even supply a few stickers for suggestions, such as Tom Cruise and Oprah, even the Almighty Dollar.

So the game works, apparently, by each player taking a turn and rolling a die. You move around a circular board, centered with a map of the world divided into sections. Some spaces allow you to draw one of two types of cards, Wrath cards or Conversion cards. Other spots are “portals” to a specific region of the Earth where you can then unleash your godly powers with your collection of cards you’ve collected going around. There are little “sect” tokens which represent groups of your followers, or rivals’ followers. And you are tasked with converting your enemies’ sects… or killing them off.

Perhaps one of the more amusing cards in the game that you can collect is the Godkiller card, which can only be used if you have the card and also land on the designated space on the board. Simply point at an opponent and they lose the game.

I glanced over the rules and it is actually a little more complicated than it sounds; certain things about collecting duplicate Conversion cards and Resurrection of gods who’ve lost… All in all, it looks very entertaining. I can’t wait.



Dec

14

So You Think You Know Santa?

December 14, 2008 by Brandon | Leave a Comment

Guess again.

I was on Facebook and noticed an interesting link a friend had posted, titled “The Companions of Saint Nicholas.” It redirected me to a Wikipediea entry discussing European traditions, namely Germanic, of various travel companions of the jolly ol’ elf, as well as other iterations of Santa.

Living in Pennsylvania Dutch Country, I was surprised to read about the Pelznikel.  In some Northwestern German traditions, he is simply a fur-clad Santa who delivers presents, but the tradition has evolved here, turning him into a sort of scary, mythical creature with horns that punishes bad children and rewards good children with socks full of candy. This all taking place on December 6th, of course, which is the feast day of Saint Nicholas.

Another beast that follows Saint Nicholas around in German traditions is the Krampus, a word originally meaning “claw”. He is represented as an incubus with horns who carries heavy chains and switches, and goes about on December 5th rattling the chains and whipping bad children.

Obviously many of these traditions are carry-overs from their pre-Christian, pagan past.

Santa also has a slave, of sorts. Knecht Ruprecht is a servant of Saint Nicholas. He was traditionally depicted as a black African man, covered in soot from descending down into chimneys for Santa. Of course, this has become slightly offensive in modern times, and now they say his face is blackened by soot rather than having him be a black servant.

Another interesting story is that of Saint Nicholas’ ressurection of three murdered children. This is a French tradition where a man butchered three little children. Saint Nicholas found him and shamed him for his terrible deed. He brought the three children back to life and the man became a servant of Saint Nicholas, named Père Fouettard, or the whipfather. His job is to go around with Santa and whip bad little children.

Pretty crazy stuff, but this is the kind of stuff I love. People never really think about the roots of their traditions, which often have much, much darker sides to them.



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What is Fractal Wrongness?

The state of being wrong at every conceivable scale of resolution. That is, from a distance, a fractally wrong person's worldview is incorrect; and furthermore, if you zoom in on any small part of that person's worldview, that part is just as wrong as the whole worldview.

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