spEak You're bRanes

I found “Nice One Son” gamely combining ignorance with arrogance and so mistaking “stuff he doesn’t know” for “stuff nobody could possibly know”.

Think the question was something like “Can science save the planet?”.

No they can’t.

Science still cannot answer basic questions;

1. Why are we here?
2. Why do we grow old and die?
3. How can all of this have happened by chance?

Basic questions that need answers.
Nice One Son

I boggled at this for a while, and tried to work out how it had happened. I imagined myself in his shoes and everything became unclear. The shoes were shite and I didn’t know anything. Then I forgot what I was doing. Then I decided to tell the BBC what I’d done today – in case they wanted to use it on the news.

Thanks to Throbbe who found “anti-fraudster” nearly answering the question “How should schools teach religion?”.

I think that it should be, but that it should include a full expose ( with acute accent on the e) of the mystery religions/ occult religions practised by many of the most powerful people on the globe…e.g those who go to Bohemian Grove and spend so much time trying to persuade others towards their dark tawdry and thoroughly kitsch rituals and immorality towards others.
anti-fraudster

Mon Dieu! Vous parlez Francais? Avec un circu.. ced.. squiggle sous la “c”?

For too long now I’ve assumed that everyone on “Have Your Say” was either a halfwit or a quarterwit so coming across someone this clever really knocked me sideways. Finally, I realise that my blase (with a very cute accent on the “e”) attitude has caused me to miss some truly insightful comments (with a hairy, groaning umlaut on the “o”) .

But anti-fraudster didn’t stop there. He knows all the isms you’ve ever heard of and at least one of his own.

Hmmm …ruralwoman…darwinism? Not without some trenchant criticism on offer about social darwinism and its horrible links with eugenicism, one of the most evil and horrid beliefs out there. It might scare people so would have to be handled with care. Which is always part of the problem. While some religious beliefs e.g love God, love your neighbour, are beautiful and of highest goodness, others options: child sacrifice, puttee, suppression of women, and so on are to the vast majority abhorrent… and can cause nightmares. No use being prissily politicially correct, there is evil religion as well as good.
anti-fraudster

I’d go even further and suggest that eugenicismologists invented the halon women-suppression systems and silly puttee I’ve been having nightmares about.

As an aside, anti-fraudster has so far left around eight comments in that thread, including one where he has a dig at someone for getting the apostrophe wrong in one of their words. I thought that was pretty rich coming from somebody who can’t even get the words right.

Anyway. What’s the answer?

R.E. should get back to text. There are some really really important texts that should be part of everyone’s basic knowledge. For some the text will never come alive. This is the same for all texts.
For some inexplicable and very dumbed-down reason focussing on texts has gone out of fashion. Education without a decent amount of focussing on text breeds an unlearned and malleable generation whose idea of debate is to shout unconsidered and unvalidated slogans from different sides. My children have told me you can pass R.E exams with knowledge of one parable. Textual illiteracy unfortunately. Where are the well-read in the next generation? Who is to blame for this shocking ignorance? Many on this board have little to no knowledge of text, and just loads of prejudice. Once this question is posed in a “should we be aware of important texts?” frame the answer is stunningly obvious.
anti-fraudster

So. Is it all about really, really important texts? Are there very dumbed-down reasons for things not being textual enough any more? How can we validate our slogans? Should we listen to anti-fraudster?

I tried to emulate him and come up with a pithy answer – a different frame for the question that cuts through the bullshit and makes the answer stunningly obvious. Here is the frame I made. It’s the “You’d have to crush me to death under a pile of fossilized mastodon turds, weep remorsefully for an hour over my mangled remains, pull me out by my face, then crush me to death again under another pile of reassuringly expensive, prehistoric tods before I’d even consider paying attention to this pompous ass-hat’s content-free, pseudo-intellectual prattling for a single, interminably boring picosecond” frame.

Thanks to thetastysoup for finding these on the subject of swanky new bacteria with synthesised DNA.

You can’t control evolution.
It only takes one of these bacteria to mate with another and you have serious and posibly extinction problems.
Not a good idea.
Hairy Dog

It’s alright, they’ve genetically engineered these ones to be homosexual bacteria-boys. They can hump each other til they’re blue in the membrane and never create anything more terrifying than that episode of Doctor Who where Bernard Cribbins kept bursting into tears and trying to tell The Doctor how much he loved him.

I love this next comment for the sheer exuberance with which Chezobarth7 throws unrelated sentences together.

Before this study continues we need to be sure that the “bacteria” doesn’t mutate like all other organisms in this world do. We all know computers have flaws. This scientist is just in way over his head and he needs to slow down. This could do more harm than good. This could be a step toward ending global warming or it could be a step towards mind control. Watch out it is 1984 all over again.
Chebozarth7

It absolutely, definitely is 1984 all over again. That’s the one where Dr Frankenstein tries to reverse climate change by making a mind-control hat and Richard Attenborough builds an amusement park full of microbes, right?

Dear Sirs,
As a physician, scientist, molecular geneticist and molecular biologist, I am deeply concerned about the implications of this endeavor. The multiple potential benefits of this experiment can instantly vanish by a single unforeseen catastrophic event.
AMMDO, MD, PhD
AndreUSP6

Thanks to Sophia for these (from the Daily Mail I think).

The last two major plane crashes (this one and Tripoli) have both involved early morning landings, and the Polish president was also killed in a morning (although not early) landing
Could there be a common denominator?
Maybe something the authorities should take a look at.

RIP to all that died.
- Graham, Torrevieja Spain, 22/5/2010 11:28

You probably all heard about that plane crash in India and, like me, your first instinct was to start investigating it immediately. You most likely left yourself a message stuck to the fridge saying “Remember to think very hard about what causes plane crashes“. You didn’t do anything about it though did you? No. But Graham did. He was all over that shit while you lazy fuckers were sat there in your knickers, eating crumpets and swigging champagne. Not only that, but he also found the time to send a brief message of support to the dead.

Kind of puts your efforts in perspective doesn’t it? Think on.

why are there so many plane crashes these days?
and i do hope they find survivors, its a shame to not see your loved ones again.
- jack, scotland, 22/5/2010 12:28

What do you mean “why”? Did you even read Graham’s report??? They’re caused by MORNINGS you prick.

You’re right though, it is a shame.

Generously-remunerated public servant decries massive base salary, suggests safeguards, stops shy of doing anything rash like giving any of massive base salary away or something. Prick replies.

Thanks to Dan.

Actually it would be fairly easy to deal with the massive debt problem in this country. Introduce conscription for the armed forces (5 year term), only allowing single people in. Dissolve the fire service and hand those duties and euipment to the armed forces. Privatise the health service, education and waste disposal services. Dissolve social security, the state pension and force public sector workers to fund there own pensions. Repeal all laws that do not tackle criminality, or hamper businesses and individuals with beaurocracy. Also ban divorce for good measure.

People will be forced to adapt and have a choice with education, health and having the family and church as a support network, not the state.

How much have I just saved the country? £430 Bn a year which after three years we’ll have have paid off the debt and could reduce taxes to about a fifth of what they are now. So pay 6% flat tax and no NI contributions anyone?
gordon beresford

I’m jumping to conclusions here, but I’m willing to bet that Gordon Beresford is married and rich, with a healthy portfolio of low-risk investments, and lives in a flame-retardant house. I bet he also runs a small business producing generic Viagra, his wife is threatening to leave him, and he’s an ugly, selfish green smear of gleet on the sofa of humanity.

When he’s not hanging around in playgrounds, he punches hamsters to death for sexual thrills, but he’s so jaded that nothing, nothing will ever again elicit even the faintest twitch in his withered, bitter dribble of a penis.

Yesterday he went to the town hall to deliver a petition demanding the closure of his local Sure Start centre, stopping on the way to steal a scratchcard off an old lady. But it didn’t win, so he kicked her. Then he took some change out of a busker’s hat, and force-fed it to a pigeon.

Except it wasn’t a pigeon, it was a baby.

Are you sick of the election? Me too. I have a severe case of don’t give a fuck. Kind of like Terry here, although what I intend to do about my apathy – nothing – is considerably more useful than his suggestion.

Don’t vote. It only encourages ‘progressive’ dictators like Brown, Cameron and Clegg.

Become a democratist. Enforce the will of the democratic majority directly.
Terry Dean

Yeah. Enforce the/your/our will directly by embracing democracy, not voting and getting out there and making your feelings known in some other way – armed revolt, for instance. Plant a bomb or two. Or why not hijack a plane and fly it into a famous landmark?

And if you’re worried about any potential negative outcomes, you shouldn’t be. Terry will back you all the way – and right after he’s had his morning cup of tea and his wank, he’ll get right behind you by getting on the internet and making an edgy, revolutionary comment on the story that describes exactly how Special Branch shot you right between the fucking eyes. Then he’ll have another wank.

Will faith influence your vote? As usual, a couple of tedious cockwipes took this to mean ‘What’s your least favourite foreigner?’, grinning proudly to themselves at how cleverly they’d linked it to the real title.

john wrote:
my faith as been destroyed when it is hard to hear english in my city

warriorsottovoce wrote:
All He asks for is for us to believe in Him and all will be OK. Sorry Gordon, it’s not going to work this time. After 13 years of Labour it would be like asking a Scotsman to pass through the eye of a needle before he could get into Parliament

Which I’m not even going to dignify with a put-down. Mostly though, it was an unbearably smug battle between the unbearably smug god-botherers and the unbearably smug god-botherer-botherers.

Megan wrote:
As a Christian EVERYTHING I do is informed by my faith. My choice when I come to cast my vote is no different… but it isn’t based on trivia like whether or not my chosen candidate happens to hold any faith, let alone the same one. It’s based on the policies for which he or she stands and how well they accord with what I think Jesus would want.

Poster seen in a church doing duty as a polling station: “You have come to mark your X – remember the one who died on a + for your salvation, and consider what He would have us do.”

Good idea. I’ll start praying for guidance on the common market and effective fiscal policy. It’ll give me the edge over those ghastly, self-righteous atheists, who can just change their entire philosophy at the drop of a hat.

Peter wrote:
I learned a new word yesterday – Laicism: ‘the nonclerical, or secular, control of political and social institutions in a society’. As a Laicist I will be looking for leaders who actively deny the role of religion in government and will be ignoring any desperate enough to involve the mystical, spiritual and utterly intangible in their political pitch.

Someone desperately needs to teach Peter the word ‘onanism’ the day before a job interview.

Normally, after reading a dozen sanctimonious, cocksure atheists whining about how definitely right they are and how stupid everyone else is, I’m usually all but ready to side with the Christians, who generally seem dimly aware that they believe some astonishingly implausible stuff. But you can’t ever generalise about these things:

John McCormick wrote:
Hello, #21,
You make your point forcibly but foolishly.
You seem to be saying that belief in a faith requires no empirical evidence.
In return, I would argue that maintaining an atheist or agnostic position is illustrative of mental blindness on a (literally) cosmic scale.
To disbelieve in God, you have to believe some really improbable “facts”:

1) That the universe came into existence without help. Whether you go for 10 dimensions, or whatever scientific mumbo-jumbo holds your attention for now, ultimately you have to believe that something can pop into existence where once there was nothing. Sorry, but I don’t believe in magic – obviously you do.
2) That matter can become animate without help. Please refer to a wonderful chapter in Bill Bryson’s Short History of Everything in which he describes the mechanism that would be required to achieve this for 1 protein molecule. The odds against this 1 molecule are so high that there simply has not been enough time (even 20 billion years) for this to happen by accident.

There have been some really wonderful theories promulgated by scientists through the ages to explain the universe (And the daft ones believed by the church were non-biblical, too) – such as the universe being eternal and the earth being in the middle. And lets not forget the search for luminiferous ether while we’re at it. Reminds me of the search for dark matter (When all you need to do is un-apply the laws of thermodynamics for a little; while the universe is being created).

As far as I can see, atheists are not faithless – they believe in some really amazing impossibilities!

Yeah, like magic. Magic! Can you imagine? And it’s a slippery slope too. Start off believing in magic, next thing you know, you’re believing in some gigantic old man who has all the magic in the universe and sends it to smite the bummers.

Wabsnasm has kindly brought to our attention one ian cheese. I’ve been scrubbing myself raw ever since dipping into his bubbling pool of psychorrhea, but the stink will taint my nostrils until I die.

Do aliens really exist?

In order to answer this question correctly we need to know : a) the definition of existence: b) the definition of what we understand by the term ‘reality; c)are we also a form of aliens? &, if we are, to whom/what?
ian cheese

In order to answer your question correctly, cheese, I need to know: a) whether the philosophy A-level has got you laid yet; b) how many great western thinkers actually did also spend six desperate, fruitless years as car park attendants; c) do you want nuggets or fish fingers for tea? Your mum told me to ask you.

Now, I already know the answers to be: a) no; b) none; c) DON’T COME IN, MUM! DON’T COME IN! Therefore, I can tell you that: a) woah, you’ve blown all our minds, man; b) no, really, we’re proper impressed and that, mate, well done; c) she knows perfectly well what you’re up to in there.

Should politicians focus on family policies?

There should be a test for couples whether they can bring up children in a civlilsed & responsible manner i.e. to the Manor born.
ian cheese

And here’s another idea: passing the test could also win them the right to be shipped off to a Middle England utopia situated on an abandoned North Sea oil rig where they won’t bore the rest of us with their dull, heterocentric ‘family values’ i.e. Butterflies.

Prime Ministerial debate: Your reaction

Point really is: we all have to die, when we do, which should be the last image we have to put up with from these three contestants given a choice &, hopefully, none.
ian cheese

Shit, I didn’t realise we were voting for the last thing we’re ever going to see. I wonder if God blowing bubbles in pasties, sitting astride a donkey with human skin is standing in my constituency…

Should the rules for Scrabble be changed?

357. At 5:33pm on 07 Apr 2010, Raymond Hopkins wrote:
Swear word with a Z? As it happens, I know five of them, although one should really only be counted as a gross insult. Ah, the benefits of a broad education!

Cuntzip?

So the other shoe has dropped and The Times is to be the first of the News International papers to charge for its online content. It’ll be interesting to see what happens when the base of say-havers is limited to those who value their opinion enough to pay for it. The quality might go way up, but depressingly it could equally well go way, way down.

On the bright side, Barnardo Millionaire has discovered some promising evidence that it might just be the former:

As soon as the Times agree to the exciting proposition of paying me for my comments, I will start paying them for an online subscription.

Either the “exciting proposition” of paying works for all online content – their copyright newspaper material and my copyright commentary material – or we will have a tremendously unfair situation where businesses are allowed to exploit copyright but individuals are not.
hubert huzzah

But don’t you see, Hubert? The whole reason News International has to charge for access is to make enough money to pay for your valuable insight! Whereas a free site like us will just infringe your copyright, and call you a chozzler to boot.