OVO

ACME, you remember, was the company that made all those safes for Coyote to drop on the Roadrunner. If only it were that simple.

Everyone simply can’t go “back to 1911″ – there wouldn’t be enough energy there to support our wasteful habits. The last viable population density must’ve occurred, in fact, around 1911. After that – the crowd. The utopian reversionism I’m proposing, I guess, is only possible for a self-chosen elite.

Petroleum was a rare commodity in 1911 – like whale oil today. Stoves burned wood – a renewable resource. Plant an acorn, reap a cord of fixed sunlight. I’m not saying everyone should to it now. I’m saying that we – carefree luddites – will burned wood in our ornate victorian stoves, while everyone else poisons themselves with petrol & electricity.

The alchemists tell us that not all forms of heat are simply the same calories delivered by different tech. The heat of a brooding hen, heat of a manure pile, heat of a woodstove – & the heat of a nuclear reactor disaster – are qualitatively different, not just quantitatively.

Woodfire has been used since the cave people discovered fire. It comes from heaven (as lightning) – it warms the Zoroastrian temple in Persia, the Vedic sacrifice in India, the Celtic bonfire on May Day, the outdoor barbecue invented by buccaneers on Hispaniola. Woodfire is basic everyday magic. It transforms food alchemically. It alchemizes the domestic hearth. It engenders visions. It is the body of the djinn.

Frankly we no longer care very deeply about the end of the world. It’s too late for “everyone” to go on gulping down oil & shitting out pollution. The only solution to the energy crisis is voluntary poverty, as Ivan Illich used to say – so the secret is to learn to enjoy it.

Frenchfry oil, wind power, solar panels, nuclear power plants – none of them will allow the whole world to go on sucking up oil & other forms of dead energy like us Americans in 2011 – like it’s “going out of style” (which it is) – so let’s just do without it, & revert to 1911, comrades. Abandon the suckers to their doomsday scenarios (Rapture, Global Warming, Peak Oil, band, whimper), & stoke up your ACME woodstove with aromatic pine, & sit around it all winter with the complete works of Balzac, Scott, Dumas, Stevenson, Proust. Roast some apples. Simmer your poppy-head tea. Dream on.

Trevor Blake: The Return of John-A-Dreams (after Grant Morrison).  Digital image.  September 2011.

More Invisibles at OVO.

On the morning of Sunday, September 11th 2011, I will be drinking coffee with sugar and cream and eating a croissant. I will do this in commemoration of the victory of the Holy Roman Empire and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth over the Ottoman Empire near Vienna on September 11th, 1683.

Wikipedia: Battle of Vienna Culinary Legends

Several culinary legends are related to the Battle of Vienna. One legend is that the croissant was invented in Vienna, either in 1683 or during the earlier siege in 1529, to celebrate the defeat of the Ottoman attack of the city, with the shape referring to the crescents on the Ottoman flags. This version of the origin of the croissant is supported by the fact that croissants in French are referred to as Viennoiserie, and the French popular belief that Vienna-born Marie Antoinette introduced the pastry to France in 1770. [...] After the battle, the Viennese discovered many bags of coffee in the abandoned Ottoman encampment. Using this captured stock, Franciszek Jerzy Kulczycki opened the third coffeehouse in Europe and the first in Vienna, where, according to legend, Kulczycki himself added milk and honey to sweeten the bitter coffee, thereby inventing cappuccino.

I might have a side of bacon, too.

See also Trevor Blake: 9/11 Timeline.

Trevor Blake: Untitled. Portland, Oregon USA. April 2011.

Melissa is a friend who spoke with OVO about her eating disorder on 12 July 1991.

OVO: When did you first realize there was something wrong about the way you were eating?

Melissa: Last Fall. I was dating somebody and I started doing it a lot. I’ve noticed I tend to do it more when I’m in a relationship. I used to drink a beer every day because it would help me throw up. I came home from work and drank a beer really quick. I was in the bathroom doing my business behind the closed door and the person walked in on me. They suggested to me that l have a problem. I had thought so before but when somebody else confronted me with it I had to confront myself with it. That’s when I realized there was something really wrong with what was doing.

OVO: How long had you been doing it?

Melissa: It’s an on-again off-again thing with me, depending on how you define it. I define my eating disorder not by how long I’ve thrown up or how long ago I starved myself. I think I’ve always had an unhealthy relationship with food. It’s taken on different forms over the years. I can remember when l was young I was deprived of certain foods that my friends could eat because my mother was really into health foods. I would go over to my friends’ house or trade lunches at school, and horde junk food because I was fascinated by it and it was something that was forbidden to me. That’s the first example of it. Over the years it’s been bulimia, it’s been anorexia, there have been points where I’ve been a compulsive exerciser, but the most recurring and the problem I have now is bulimia.

OVO: What is that?

Melissa: It’s called binge-and-purge syndrome. When l start eating I don’t feel like I can stop, then I feel guilty, so to make me feel better about eating all that food I’ll make myself throw up. Or I’ll not eat for a couple days or I’ll exercise for a long time. Some people use laxative but I’ve never done that.

OVO: Was throwing up something you figured out on your own?

Melissa: Yes, it was really easy for me. I’ve always had a nervous stomach. I figured out I could do it and use it as a way of maintaining my weight.

OVO: What is the source of your concern about your eating? Why isn’t it a natural process?

Melissa: I hate to sound like “I have this horrible childhood” but I think that’s where a lot of it came from. We had a rule in our house my sister and l joke about now called the Clean Plate Club (my sister, by the way, is anorexic). We weren’t allowed to leave the kitchen table until we’d finished everything that we had been given to eat. From there I started associating food with reward and punishment instead of just what I needed, like sleeping. It became something else.

OVO: Do you think your mother has some kind of eating disorder?

Melissa: No. I think my mother getting into her health food kick was just something to occupy her because there were things going on in my family that were very stressful for her. It was a means of her being able to cope by being interested in something.

OVO: You go to a group where you talk about this with other women.

Melissa: Yes. Last spring I started group therapy and individual counseling for my eating disorder.

OVO: What are the other womens’ experiences like?

Melissa: Their experiences are very similar to mine. It‘s very interesting because a lot of the ways I react to other things, not just food, are very similar to the other women in the group as well. It’s like obsessive-compulsive behavior across the board, not just with eating. It’s a pattern that develops the way you deal with everything.

OVO: Do you or they see any kind of connection between your eating disorder and media portrayal of women?

Melissa: Yes, and that was what really invoked a lot of emotion in me because I’m very involved in feminism and the portrayal of women in our society. I think it has an enormous amount to do with that. I think that’s why it became such an obsessive thing for me as I got into my teenage years. I’m 21 now. I saw a commercial on TV the other day for a clinic for eating disorders where they called it “the national college womens’ plague.” It’s one of the biggest things that happens to women when they enter college. When l moved to Knoxville is when my eating disorder became the worst. I that has to do with being on my own and food being a focus, something that is a constant, that l could always depend on.

OVO: What is it that you’re the trying to achieve by going to group therapy and counseling?

Melissa: One thing I learned in group therapy is that we’re not there to find a cure. We’re there to give each other support and understand why we do it because that‘s more important. I’d like to think eventually I won’t have to do it. There are times now where I’ll go days or weeks or even months… there was a period not too long ago where I went a couple months without doing it and that felt good, like I had power over myself.

OVO: If it’s something that you’ve done for a long time and that a lot of women have done and do what’s bad about it?

Melissa: It’s dangerous to your health. I have medical problems now because of it. I have a stomach ulcer. You can damage your esophagus. I’ve been lucky enough not to. I’ve never had a cavity in my life and now I have seven because my stomach acid has corroded the enamel off my teeth in the back. It can cause heart problems The two effects it’s had in me have been my teeth, and I get heartburn a lot and I have upper intestinal problems now from stomach acid.

OVO: Why is this occurring in women more than men?

Melissa: I think there’s a stronger image for women to live up to. There is an image that men have to live up to but there’s more emphasis and pressure for women to look a certain way to be accepted our society. It’s contradictory because we offer women a double standard by showing her all these great things she’s supposed to eat and make in her lifestyle and then she’s still supposed to look that way, and it’s impossible.

OVO: Why is it offered if it’s obviously a double standard and impossible?

Melissa: I can’t answer that. I could say just another way for men to have control over women but I think that’s maybe not answering the question, maybe that’s just anger. I think its because women want to have a certain lifestyle that they’ve been given the opportunity to have now and yet they’re still supposed to look a certain way from the old world thinking, pre-feminist thought, and what men find appealing today in our society is thin women.

OVO: Is this a modem problem?

Melissa: The Romans and the Greeks had vomitoriums where they actually would purge on purpose, but I think that was a way of having a decadent lifestyle and there wasn’t any kind image put before them as a reason to do that. If you discount that that it is a modern problem.

OVO: A friend of mine said that anyone who has an eating disorder should have their television taken away.

Melissa: That’s a good point because that’s where the double standard comes from. Commercials. That’s where the image is the strongest, that’s where we see the women that we’re supposed to look like.

OVO: It‘s telling that if you look at an ideal for women (and I think having one is a bad idea in the first place) prior to television that ideal is very different. It‘s changed throughout history but I think there’s a strong connection between modem eating disorders and television. All the years of film before television didn’t inspire eating disorders but film is also a visual medium. The difference is commercials.

Melissa: The food industry has created a demand for the diet industry. It’s a vicious cycle. I notice when I watch MTV sometimes (I watch it when I’m getting ready to go to work to have some background none), that when I want to look a certain way the worst I know people who’ve told me that when they’re dieting that they watch MTV because it gives them inspiration to look like the women who probably have eating disorders themselves.

OVO: What would you want someone reading this who has an eating disorder to know?

Melissa: To know that they should want to get help because it’s not something you should want to do and that you can get help. And it’s dangerous. It doesn’t seem like it’s dangerous and it’s a really easy answer but I’m sure that I’ll be really regretting a lot of what I’m doing ten years from now. I’m sure I’ll have a lot worse problems. I don‘t have a problem discussing it with friends and that‘s where I get a lot of my support but maybe that’s because a lot of my friends have eating disorders. It’s a secret and we go into our rooms to talk about it. Everybody understands that what is said behind that door is not said anywhere else. That’s what defines an eating disorder, it’s something that happens behind closed doors.

OVO: Who defines the ideal image of a woman and the ideal image of a man?

Melissa: I think the media.

OVO: Who controls the media?

Melissa: Are we talking conspiracy theory here? I think a lot of media is self-perpetuating. I don’t know who controls the media, I think that’s a whole other issue, but I think that by media offering something to the public and by the public response to that, it recreates the demand for it, like the economic law of supply and demand. It’s something that perpetuates itself.

OVO: What can we do about it?

Melissa: It should start with the individual. I try not to be influenced by images of women to look a certain way. I don’t buy the magazines. That‘s a way to start. It’s a choice the individual tries to make. By doing this interview I hope I’m reaching out to someone else. I think it’s important for us to let other people know that it‘s wrong. Know that it’s wrong ourselves then try to let everybody else know why it’s wrong and maybe beyond that do something about it together.

OVO: Like what?

Melissa: Like a support network.

OVO: What about after a support network, or in addition to it?

Melissa: That‘s when you’re ready to step into things on a big scale. I’ve written letters to fashion magazines telling them that their magazine portray images that are unhealthy for women and I think maybe a group could do that. I noticed the other day that there’s a thing on MTV where you can submit a video and tell them what you don’t like about anything. People have the option to complain about something that is on MTV that they don’t like. I thought it would be a fun thing for me and some friends to do, to make one and submit it to MTV and see if there’s a response at all.

OVO: MTV has realized that it can present any criticism of itself without changing. A friend of mine did an Art Break for them. Their contract said you have to have the MTV logo in the Art Break, and even if your Art Break is one minute of you ripping the logo up or seeing it on a TV screen and shooting it or in any way criticizing it, you still have to show the MTV logo. That‘s showing how media perpetuates itself. The problem and the solution are coming from the same source and you can’t hold onto either one of them and pull them away from yourself.

Melissa: Like Coke commercials that don’t have anything to do with the product but show the image of the product.

OVO: That’s why it’s important to boycott that kind of media completely, without exception, and simultaneously to create an alternative that people would hopefully find interesting and stimulating and life-affirming. A lot of what we’ve been talking about is good commodities versus bad commodities but eventually we’re going to have to come up with something that isn’t a commodity at all and return to something like “art” and figure out some way to make art that isn’t a commodity. It’s going to be difficult. That effort started many decades ago and it still hasn’t been achieved.

Melissa: Another example of the double standard is that the commercial I saw for the eating disorder clinic came on MTV. It portrays women as this certain ideal, then offers a solution, then help for the solution later. Usually if you notice on TV diet commercials follow food commercials.

OVO: How does education figure into it?

Melissa: That’s what’s really scary. When you learn about health and nutrition in school, usually the little pamphlets and flyers you’re given are from the National Dairy Board, who say it’s good for you to drink milk. My mother was a teacher and she said it’s because its so hard for the schools to get funding from the State that they will accept funding from corporations. I don’t take it too seriously when McDonald’s gives me a nutrition guide.

OVO: What do you think is going to happen in the future regarding eating disorders?

Melissa: I hate to say it but I think it’s going to get a lot worse before it gets any getter. Maybe it will get so bad and so rampant that it will explode and will be like everything else in this world that’s wrong. It’ll just keep happening until something really horrible happens.

OVO: Or something really wonderful.

Melissa: And then we’ll stop and go gee, sorry. When Gloria Steinem came to the University of Tennessee she said more women have died as a result of bulemia than it’s ever been reported of people dying of AIDS. AIDS gets more recognition and I agree its a problem that needs recognition but… Even with me, I know how wrong it is for me to have an eating disorder and I still do it. Even as wrong as I know it is and even as much as I don’t want to be a victim of it, of the media and everything else, I can’t help it. When l go out and l see other people who look good or go shopping and l want to a certain kind of clothes but they won’t look good on me unless l look a certain way… It’s hard for me when people I care about have also have been fed this image that people should look like that as well, like my family. I recently took a family vacation and my aunt is really thin, and her whole family is thin, and it made me feel like I should be thin.

OVO: Have you talked with your mother about this?

Melissa: Yes. My mother was a lot more informed on the subject than l thought she would be. I was thankful for that. She was very supportive. It was a surprise for me to get that support. She agreed that a lot of what she went through on the health food kick maybe contributed.

OVO: How much TV do you watch?

Melissa: When I watch television and pay attention l am very critical. I sit there and watch it and get angry and critique everything. I’m glad I’m to this point now where if it’s on and it’s really bothering me and it’s disgusting I’ll turn it off immediately and I won’t just change the channel. I don’t like to watch a whole lot of television because I think it’s bad in ways besides just image. Sometimes I watch it before I go to work, sometimes I have it on to have in the background when I’m in the shower if nobody’s home. I like to have noise.

OVO: Do you watch TV while you eat?

Melissa: Yes, and it’s scary to notice how many other people do that.

OVO: Television destroys community and that’s another reason to boycott it if you’re trying to to establish a community of support for anything, for any sort of political project or personal improvement art or thought. You can’t just have the TV on all the time.

Melissa: That’s one reason I’m really glad I got a job. Some days I’d wake up and there was only so much in a day that I could do before I’d done it all and I’d find myself watching television. Especially since we have cable. We’re moving soon and I don’t want to get cable when we do. We have a VCR and that’s different. Selective viewing is different. There are a lot films that are worth seeing and are good movies I enjoy watching. That’s what is nice about cable, watching HBO. The other day one of my favorite movies came on and that was nice to watch.

OVO: What movie was that?

Melissa: Pretty in Pink. My housemate bought a TV Guide so that I wouldn’t have to turn on the TV when I was bored and I wanted to see if anything was good on because than if nothing was good on I’d find myself watching anyway. Now I look for things I might want to watch and watch those things only.

OVO: What is it that makes you bored?

Melissa: When l didn’t have a job and everyone else in the house would be at work, I felt that for that period of the day should be… I would clean the house every day, I’d get up and clean, and I was getting tired of cleaning. You can only clean so much until everything is spotless. Then I would wait for everyone else to come home. I was turning into a housewife! I’d make dinner and clean the house and write letters, I did everything I needed to do and there wasn’t anything else I could do, I was looking for a job but you know how that is. Now I’ve got my job and that’s nice but a bad thing is that sometimes when l get off from work I’m so exhausted l can’t think, so l want something to think for me, so I watch a box that tells me how to think. That’s really dangerous. Lately I’ve stopped letting that control me and I’ve only been watching selective television again. I watch Star Trek on Saturdays and I like the show Alien Nation because it deals with racism. When I first moved to Knoxville I didn’t have a TV for the first few months but I still had the eating disorder. I think it’s beyond television. Television influences so many areas of our lives that you can influenced by television without watching it.

from OVO 11 CONTROL (September 1991)

[Postscript March 2011: Melissa is just fine now and has been for a long time.]

for Ira Cohen

I
off to the beiad what ho for the Fayyum & Egyptian solitude. This yearning for renunciation out-seduces other Lesser lusts & becomes our secret vice our coenobitic luxe. Our athletic asceticism is crypto-aestheticism

our grottos

coat our grotesque bodies in mother-of-pearl we grow a few herbs nudge nudge & every day wink wink a raven arrives with a loaf of “bread.” The desert so monochromous to jaded urbanites offers auras & auroras to the

anchroritic eye

Our nothingness is a giant suck-hole

that

re-appropriates the world & our friends the devils

Little Anthony & the Temptations we succumb to every one of them

especially

the succulent succubus of dolce far niente

which the worldly call prayer.

II
Juice for Jesus

You yourself are a kind of food of love & love a kind of spiritual cannibalism – & not so totally spiritual for those whose taste in love runs to precious bodily fluids. Jesus is the juice of your genitalia your tears your underarm sweat et cetera music at best the sauce High Church Victoriana pompous as beeswax & ammonia.

Appetite

would never feed on itself if it could lick the dirt from your shoes. Real food is based on you like distant emanations from the Platonic kitchen

caviare

champagne

& other disgusting sacraments of the Libertine Gnostics

They laughed at Yeats because he never missed the dinner bell at Colle no matter how

entranced

with swans. Fools

the food of love is actually food.

III
Everyone talks about negative capability but nobody ever does anything about it

Every day

we cram ourselves with juicy disasters

planning

later to dry out our heads with whiffs of some bodhisattva’s farts

or Art

or ideology or shopping

hoping

to forget what the wise old elves always stage-whispered to me on the most radical afternoons of unreconstructed Summer

Psst! hey kid

come & eat clouds like us eat emptiness & feel the scintillating buzz the enticing somethingness of a rich

long-ago nothing that can hover in mid-air like a

dragonfly

or Jesus the water-bug.

IV Twelve Steps to Hell

1.
Abraham & Eggs
vaudeville duo advocating
the meltdown of monotheism
in a maelstrom sweet as treacle
Breakfast of heretics shed for me
blackpudding mushrooms kippers
rashers of bacon & lashings of tea
because it’s not what enters the mouth
that pollutes as the Borborites say
or pale Carpucrateans with their sacrament
of precious bodily fluids
but what comes out of it
language as puke

2.
The Sevenheaded Cobra demands
immediate re-paganization of the Abrahamic Traditions
or hostages will be shot
out of circus cannons & bounce
like swans in widespread nets
with Theosophical warps
& polymorphous wefts
too complex for even the most advanced
generation of military computers
to map with any degree of inaccurate
inaccessible mountain somewhere
in the almost Martian landscape
of Waziristan.

3.
Why should the Right monopolize
mystic runes groovy grafitti
skull-&-crossbones or the color black
Ice shelves of Arctic unreason
are melting melting
leaving behind
only a pair of red shoes such as
vegetarian spirits like to sport
hobgoblins haunting Europe
with nastly recrudenscence
of funkadelic thaumaturgy &
illiterate syncretism
the snakes cult to end all snake cults
return of the never quite sufficiently
repressed
in the form of goat panic terror
& shameless idolatry.

(from OVO 16 ANTICHRIST January 2006)

No way, no way, nowhere in the Bible does it say that God demands human sacrifice. That’s utterly false. You’re just making stuff up because you’re mad at God for not existing. What a lie! Nobody can take you seriously when you publish nonsense like that. Have you ever even read the Bible? Prove it, show me where it says God demands human sacrifice – you can’t! Go on! Show me, show me where it says that!

• And He [God] said, Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of. – Genesis 22:2
• Thou shalt not delay to offer the first of thy ripe fruits, and of thy liquors: the firstborn of thy sons shalt thou give unto Me [God]. Likewise shalt thou do with thine oxen, and with thy sheep: seven days it shall be with his dam; on the eighth day thou shalt give it Me. – Exodus 22:29-30
• No devoted thing, that a man shall devote unto the LORD of all that he hath, both of man and beast… shall be sold or redeemed: every devoted thing is most holy unto the LORD. None devoted, which shall be devoted of men, shall be redeemed; but shall surely be put to death. – Leviticus 27:28-29
• And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, Take the sum of the prey that was taken, both of man and of beast, thou, and Eleazar the priest, and the chief fathers of the congregation: And divide the prey into two parts; between them that took the war upon them, who went out to battle, and between all the congregation: And levy a tribute unto the Lord of the men of war which went out to battle: one soul of five hundred, both of the persons, and of the beeves, and of the asses, and of the sheep: Take it of their half, and give it unto Eleazar the priest, for an heave offering of the LORD. – Numbers 31:25-29
• And thou shalt eat the fruit of thine own body, the flesh of thy sons and of thy daughters, which the LORD thy God hath given thee, in the siege, and in the straitness, wherewith thine enemies shall distress thee: So that the man that is tender among you, and very delicate, his eye shall be evil toward his brother, and toward the wife of his bosom, and toward the remnant of his children which he shall leave: So that he will not give to any of them of the flesh of his children whom he shall eat: because he hath nothing left him in the siege, and in the straitness, wherewith thine enemies shall distress thee in all thy gates. The tender and delicate woman among you, which would not adventure to set the sole of her foot upon the ground for delicateness and tenderness, her eye shall be evil toward the husband of her bosom, and toward her son, and toward her daughter, and toward her young one that cometh out from between her feet, and toward her children which she shall bear: for she shall eat them for want of all things secretly in the siege and straitness, wherewith thine enemy shall distress thee in thy gates. If thou wilt not observe to do all the words of this law that are written in this book, that thou mayest fear this glorious and fearful name, THE LORD THY GOD; then the LORD will make thy plagues wonderful, and the plagues of thy seed, even great plagues, and of long continuance, and sore sicknesses, and of long continuance. Moreover He will bring upon thee all the diseases of Egypt, which thou wast afraid of; and they shall cleave unto thee. Also every sickness, and every plague, which is not written in the book of this law, them will the LORD bring upon thee, until thou be destroyed. And ye shall be left few in number, whereas ye were as the stars of heaven for multitude; because thou wouldest not obey the voice of the LORD thy God. – Deuteronomy 28:53-62
• Then the Spirit of the LORD came upon Jephthah… And Jephthah vowed a vow unto the LORD, and said, If thou shalt without fail deliver the children of Ammon into mine hands, Then it shall be, that whatsoever cometh forth of the doors of my house to meet me, when I return in peace from the children of Ammon, shall surely be the LORD’s, and I will offer it up for a burnt offering. So Jephthah passed over unto the children of Ammon to fight against them; and the LORD delivered them into his hands… And Jephthah came to Mizpeh unto his house, and, behold, his daughter came out to meet him with timbrels and with dances: and she was his only child… And it came to pass, when he saw her, that he rent his clothes, and said, alas, my daughter! thou hast brought me very low, and thou art one of them that trouble me: for I have opened my mouth unto the LORD, and I cannot go back. And she said unto him, My father, if thou hast opened thy mouth unto the LORD, do to me according to that which hath proceeded out of thy mouth… And it came to pass at the end of two months, that she returned unto her father, who did with her according to his vow which he had vowed. – Judges 11:29-40
• Then there was a famine in the days of David three years, year after year; and David enquired of the LORD. And the LORD answered, It is for Saul, and for his bloody house, because he slew the Gibeonites… The king took the two sons of Rizpah the daughter of Aiah, whom she bare unto Saul, Armoni and Mephibosheth; and the five sons of Michal the daughter of Saul… And he delivered them into the hands of the Gibeonites, and they hanged them in the hill before the LORD… And after that God was intreated for the land. – 2 Samuel 21:1,8-9,14
• And he cried against the altar in the word of the LORD, and said, O altar, altar, thus saith the LORD; Behold, a child shall be born unto the house of David, Josiah by name; and upon thee shall he offer the priests of the high places that burn incense upon thee, and men’s bones shall be burnt upon thee. – 1 Kings 13:2
• And he slew all the priests of the high places that were there upon the altars, and burned men’s bones upon them. – 2 Kings 23:20
• Wherefore I [God] gave them also statutes that were not good, and judgments whereby they should not live; And I polluted them in their own gifts, in that they caused to pass through the fire all that openeth the womb, that I might make them desolate, to the end that they might know that I am the LORD. – Ezekiel 20:25-26

(from OVO 16 ANTICHRIST January 2006)

Imagine a world in which art is forbidden! Art galleries would close. Books would vanish. Pop stars would shed their glamour overnight. Advertising would cease, television would die. We could refocus our vision not on a succession of false images but on the world as it is. A stillness would fill the air. Art has provided us with fantasy worlds, escapes from reality. For whatever else it is, art is not reality. Soap operas, novels, movies; concerts, the theatre, poetry. None of these are real as a starving child is real, as a town without water is real. Art is the glamorous escape, the transformation that shields us from the world we live in. Injustice, endemic disease, famine, war. Those are real. Art has replaced religion as the opiate of the people just as the artist has replaced the priest as the voice of the spirit. Once we reached inside ourselves to find God / truth /really / etc. Now we find only art. We are regulated by our addictions and art hm become an addiction. We struggle through life in a drugged dream, searching for escape, for brighter fantasies, longer voyages of the imagination, louder music. Another’s life is always more interesting than our own. It is only those who have given up art who can experience the true nature of creation. Now, a self-perpetuating elite sell art as a commodity for the wealthy who have everything while making the artists themselves rich beyond their wildest dreams. Art is money. It is ironic that the myth of the artist celebrates suffering while it is those who have never heard of art, the poor and wretched of our earth, who truly suffer. To call one person an artist is to deny another the equal right of vision. Paint all the paintings black and celebrate the dead art: there is no booze in hell. We tum away from mountains of food that rot in storage while acres the globe humans grow too weak to eat because it is time for our favorite TV program. We live up to our knees in blood, wasting not only hours but days – whole lifetimes – in the bind belief that art is good, art is pure, art is its own justification – and a nightmare scourges our planet. Until we end famine there will be no peace. Artists are murderers! Artists are murderers just as surely as is the soldier who sights down the barrel of a gun to shoot an unarmed civilian. Without art, life would be unendurable! We would have to transform this world. Overnight, one person’s dream can become a nation’s future – but we do not seize power because we are enchanted by art. Forbid art and revolution would follow: the withholding of creative action is the only weapon left. Seeing and creating are the same activity. Those who create art are also creating the starving. In a world in which art is forbidden the deserts would flower. Give up art. Save the starving.

(from OVO 14 Suffering March 1992)

Sky News: Banned Man Utd Shirts ‘Promote The Devil’

Manchester United shirts have been banned in Malaysia after the red devil crest was labelled “dangerous and un-Islamic”. Thousands of fans have reacted angrily to the decision by Muslim clerics – with some accusing them of supporting Premier League arch-rivals Liverpool. Despite the Old Trafford side having an estimated 81 million followers in Asia, one senior cleric said: “You are only promoting the devil.” “This is very dangerous. As a Muslim we should not worship the symbols of other religions or the devils,” another added. “It will erode our belief in Islam. There is no reason why we as Muslims should wear such jerseys, either for sports or fashion reasons.”

muslimdebate.com: Indonesian Muslim Groups Consider Fatwa on World’s Most Expensive Coffee

Indonesia’s largest Muslim organization is considering whether or not to slap a fatwa on the nation’s famed kopi luwak. Two of Indonesia’s main Muslim organizations are to meet to decide whether or not to issue a fatwa against “kopi luwak,” a famed and highly prized coffee bean that has passed through the digestive tract of a civet cat before it is retrieved and roasted. Ma’aruf Amin, chairman of the Indonesian Council of Ulama (MUI), said it would meet with Nahdlatul Ulama, Indonesia’s largest Muslim organization, on Tuesday night to discuss issuing a ban against the flourishing industry. “A fatwa will hopefully put an end to the growing concerns about kopi luwak,” Ma’aruf said. Kopi Luwak is eaten by a civet cat and expelled in its feces before being roasted. Highly prized for its flavor, kopi luwak is known as the world’s most expensive coffee, commanding more than $600 per kilogram from online shops.

Robert Spencer: Muslim Husband Rapes Wife, Judge Sees No Sexual Assault Because Islam Forbids Wives to Refuse Sex

Muhammad said: “If a husband calls his wife to his bed [i.e. to have sexual relation] and she refuses and causes him to sleep in anger, the angels will curse her till morning” (Bukhari 4.54.460). He also said: “By him in Whose Hand lies my life, a woman can not carry out the right of her Lord, till she carries out the right of her husband. And if he asks her to surrender herself [to him for sexual intercourse] she should not refuse him even if she is on a camel’s saddle” (Ibn Majah 1854).

And now a New Jersey judge sees no evidence that a Muslim committed sexual assault of his wife — not because he didn’t do it, but because he was acting on his Islamic beliefs: “This court does not feel that, under the circumstances, that this defendant had a criminal desire to or intent to sexually assault or to sexually contact the plaintiff when he did. The court believes that he was operating under his belief that it is, as the husband, his desire to have sex when and whether he wanted to, was something that was consistent with his practices and it was something that was not prohibited.” Luckily, the appellate court overturned this decision, and a Sharia ruling by an American court has not been allowed to stand. This time.

Bernie: The Arab Contribution to Civilization? Nothing Lately

When Arabs are asked to recount great periods of Arab scholarship and learning they can only point to a brief and quickly extinguished burst of light; in the book Le Soleil d’Allah brille sur l’Occident : Notre héritage arabe we read (translated):

Might I invite you to have something with me in this café? Take off your jacket and sit down here on this sofa, unless you would rather sit on the divan with the crimson mattress, of course. Would you like a cup of coffee – with one sugar lump or two? Or perhaps a nice cool carafe of lemonade, or even something alcoholic?  But of course! Let me buy you lunch! I think artichokes would be a lovely starter, don’t you? And how about capon with rice and spinach to follow? For dessert, what would you say to a piece of apricot tart, or an orange sorbet? And at the end of the meal we’ll have a cup of mocha.  There is no reason, of course, for any of these things to appear in any way strange or exotic to you – they have been part of our daily life for such a long time. But did you know that they were all borrowed from a foreign culture, namely Arab culture? This café and the demitasses of coffee they serve, the sugar without which any menu would be almost unimaginable, the lemonade and the carafe, the jacket and the mattress, we owe them all to the Arabs. And it doesn’t stop there: in most European countries, these things are known by their Arabic names! And the same goes for candy, bergamot, oranges, sherbet and many other good things besides.

So here we learn of great literature and poetry the story of ‘a thousand and one nights’: a thousand years ago.

The contributions to mathematics and physics? A thousand years ago. And even here, we often see Muslims pointing to Arabic numerals as some sort of proof that Arab Muslims made some significant advances in mathematics. Arabic numeral is a misnomer, in actual fact they should be called Hindu numerals.

We learn that Ibn Muqla, Vizir at Baghdad and the “prince of calligraphers”, codified the proportions of letters to be respected in handwriting and calligraphy, a thousand years ago.

We learn of the architectural advances such as The Great Mosque of Cordova where we discover its gabled roofs are Syrian. Byzantium provided the mosaics. The vaults are of Tunisian inspiration and the arches Iranian, while the alternation of stone and brick is a Roman invention. Again, a thousand years ago.

Arab contributions to medical science were legion, encouraged by the construction of hospitals in Baghdad, Cairo, Damascus, Samarkand and elsewhere, over a thousand years ago.

Advances and discoveries in astronomy, chemistry, and philosophy from Bagdad to Cordova, all over a thousand years ago.

These are all wondrous and marvelous, but, under Islam, Arabs have not advanced for the past one thousand years. See my previous articles on the paucity of Nobel Prize winners in a world filled with 1.5 billion Muslims ( of which over 300 million are Arabs).

All articles continue at links. Part of a series that never ends… [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14] and etc.  Why might a numerous and varied people such as the Arabic world be held back for one thousand years?  Why, instead of building up their own or anyone else, would a group instead issue death warrants for wearing the wrong kind of shirt or drinking the wrong kind of coffee?  How is it possible to prioritize the trivial and trivialize the highest priorities?  Where does slavery still exist in the year 2010, and why?  What sort of mental poison makes rape part of the multicultural rainbow?  Islam.  It’s holding us all back.  Don’t ban it, and neither should Muslim crimes and atrocities be forgiven.  Don’t force it on others, just keep what is worthy or at least harmless and drop the rest.

“I think that what is common to art, myth, science and even pseudo-science is that they all belong to something like a creative phase which allows us to see things in a new light, and seeks to explain the everyday world by reference to hidden worlds [...] These hypothetical worlds are, as in art, products of our imagination, our intuition. But in science they are controlled by criticism; scientific criticism, rational criticism, is guided by the regulative idea of truth. We can never justify our scientific theories, for we can never know whether they will not turn out to be false. But we can subject them to critical examination: rational criticism replaces justification. Criticism curbs the imagination, but does not put it in chains.” – Sir Karl Popper, In Search of a Better World

UniSci: Bacterium Can Alter Evolution Of Another Species

Scientists have found the most convincing evidence yet that a parasite can contribute to splitting a species in two, thanks to a phenomenon in which a wasp’s damaged sperm can be “rescued” or fixed only by mating with particular females.

Chemical & Engineering News: Chemotaxis

The droplet, composed of 2-hexyldecanoic acid in either dichloromethane or mineral oil, travels several centimeters through a maze with a pH gradient. The pH is high at the maze entrance and low at its exit. Once in the maze, the droplet travels toward the lower pH, and in doing so, Grzybowski notes, it always finds the shortest path through the maze.

BBC News: Sushi May ‘Transfer Genes’ to Gut

By eating sushi wrapped in the seaweed, people probably ingested these bacteria along with the genes coding for that digestive enzyme.

BBC News: Neanderthal Genes ‘Survive in Us’

The genomes of 1% to 4% of people in Eurasia come from Neanderthals.

The Guardian: Gene-Swap Plan to Thwart Diseases

Researchers from Newcastle University say their breakthrough will help women whose children are at risk of a range of mitochondrial diseases. These disorders can be mild or very severe, and can cause muscle weakness, blindness, heart and liver failure, diabetes and learning disabilities. They affect one child in every 6,500.

Mark Changizi: Turning Vision Into A Programmable Computer

Might it be possible to harness our visual computational powers for other tasks, perhaps for tasks cognition finds difficult?

BBC News: Singing ‘Rewires’ Damaged Brain

By singing, patients use a different area of the brain from the area involved in speech. If a person’s “speech centre” is damaged by a stroke, they can learn to use their “singing centre” instead.

Science Daily: Hand Gestures Linked To Better Speaking

New research at the University of Alberta suggests that gesturing while you talk may improve your access to language.

Maths.org: Maths and Hallucinations

So common are geometric hallucinations, that in the last century scientists began asking themselves if they couldn’t tell us something fundamental about how our brains are wired up. And it seems that they can.

Science Now: Researchers Turn Mosquitoes Into Flying Vaccinators

A group of Japanese researchers has developed a mosquito that spreads vaccine instead of disease. Even the researchers admit, however, that regulatory and ethical problems will prevent the critters from ever taking wing—at least for the delivery of human vaccines.

Washington Post: Somali Islamist Rebels Ban English, Science Lessons

Somalia’s hardline Islamists have banned English and science studies in schools in the southern Afmadow town after the education centers there ignored the rebels’ call for fighters, residents and teachers say.

First of a series that could end at any moment.

Food, animals and opinions about food and animals in the news, compiled by a team of experts for your convenience…

Baylen Linnekin: Jamie Oliver’s Ministry of Food Control

Oliver launched the Feed Me Better campaign, which he designed with the admirable goal of getting British school kids to eat healthier food. But while he could have argued in favor of parents or kids packing the cheap, easy, and tried-and-true alternative to school food—brown bag lunches—Oliver opted instead to urge more government control and increased spending on big-ticket items.. [...] Negative reaction to the British government’s nationwide implementation of Oliver’s school-lunch recommendations was swift and widespread. Parents, some of whom labeled Oliver’s food “low-fat rubbish,” pulled 400,000 kids from the school-lunch rolls, choosing to brown bag it rather than have their kids eat Oliver’s “healthier” options. Parents opposed to Oliver’s scheme handed food to their kids through the gates of schoolyards. Some vendors and parents set up shop outside schools and sold food to students. Enterprising students, in turn, sold food to peers in schools, which led to suspensions for pupil transgressions as absurd as “crisp dealing.” [...] The current issue of his magazine Jamie (Feb./Mar. 2010) recommends several school lunch recipes the magazine bills as “wholesome meals to take to school.” The magazine’s suggested meal for Thursday is a tuna Waldorf pita with hot vanilla milk, an oaty biscuit, and a banana. According to the nutrition information provided in Jamie, this youngster’s lunch contains an astonishing 1,183 calories, 55 grams of fat (20 of them saturated), and 65 grams of sugar. That’s 73 calories, 12 grams of fat (11.5 saturated), and 3 grams of sugar more than the same student would get from eating both a McDonald’s hamburger Happy Meal (hamburger, fries, Sprite) and a Chicken McNuggets Happy Meal (McNuggets, fries, Sprite).

Kate Connoly: How going green may make you mean

When Al Gore was caught running up huge energy bills at home at the same time as lecturing on the need to save electricity, it turns out that he was only reverting to “green” type. According to a study, when people feel they have been morally virtuous by saving the planet through their purchases of organic baby food, for example, it leads to the “licensing [of] selfish and morally questionable behaviour”, otherwise known as “moral balancing” or “compensatory ethics”. [...] The pair found that those in their study who bought green products appeared less willing to share with others a set amount of money than those who bought conventional products. When the green consumers were given the chance to boost their money by cheating on a computer game and then given the opportunity to lie about it – in other words, steal – they did, while the conventional consumers did not. Later, in an honour system in which participants were asked to take money from an envelope to pay themselves their spoils, the greens were six times more likely to steal than the conventionals.

Bobbie Johnson: I’m not the messiah, says food activist – but his many worshippers do not believe him

The trouble started when Raj Patel appeared on American TV to plug his latest book, an analysis of the financial crisis called The Value of Nothing. The London-born author, 37, thought his slot on comedy talkshow The Colbert Report went well enough: the host made a few jokes, Patel talked a little about his work and then, job done, he went back to his home in San Francisco. Shortly afterwards, however, things took a strange turn. Over the course of a couple of days, cryptic messages started filling his inbox. “I started getting emails saying ‘have you heard of Benjamin Creme?’ and ‘are you the world teacher?’” he said. “Then all of a sudden it wasn’t just random internet folk, but also friends saying, ‘Have you seen this?’” What he had written off as gobbledygook suddenly turned into something altogether more bizarre: he was being lauded by members of an obscure religious group who had decided that Patel – a food activist who grew up in a corner shop in Golders Green in north-west London – was, in fact, the messiah. Their reasoning? Patel’s background and work coincidentally matched a series of prophecies made by an 87-year-old Scottish mystic called Benjamin Creme, the leader of a little-known religious group known as Share International. Because he matched the profile, hundreds of people around the world believed that Patel was the living embodiment of a figure they called Maitreya, the Christ or “the world teacher”.

Katherine Faulkner: KFC diner told ‘you can’t have bacon in your burger here – we’re now halal’

A diner was left fuming after a KFC restaurant took his favourite meal off the menu because it breached their new halal regulations. Alan Phillips was told he would have to travel five miles to another branch if he wanted the Big Daddy, a chicken burger, topped with bacon, cheese and salad. The branch, in Burton-on-Trent, Staffordshire, is one of 86 KFC restaurants which is running trials of a scheme where they sell nothing other than halal meat.

Jessica Vander Velde and Shelley Rossetter: Polk woman who died alone while fasting was following God’s call, husband says

Evelyn Boyd was on a mission to pray — for her husband, her church, her city, the nation and the president. So on Feb. 7, she locked herself in a bedroom to pray and fast. She brought water and prayer requests and told her husband not to bother her. “This is what I have to do,” she told him. For more than three weeks, Boyd, 55, didn’t emerge. Her family could have come to her aid if she needed help, but her husband wanted to respect her wish to be alone. He figured she’d be okay, just like the last four times she fasted. But on the 26th day, family members forced the door open. They found her dead.

Tom Harper: Muslim police chef defeated in ‘bacon roll’ tribunal faces £75,000 legal bill

A Muslim chef who lost a claim of religious discrimination against Scotland Yard after complaining he was forced to cook sausages and bacon faces a legal bill of more than £75,000. Hasanali Khoja accused the Metropolitan Police of failing to consider his Islamic beliefs when he was asked to handle pork products as a catering manager at a police station. The £23,000-a-year chef claimed suggestions by his bosses that he should wear gloves and use tongs left him ‘stressed and humiliated’. Muslims are banned from eating pork under Islamic law. But Mr Khoja, 62, lost his claim in May after a police employee told an employment tribunal how she saw Mr Khoja eat bacon rolls and sausages.

Silver Bullet Gun Oil

SILVER BULLET GUN OIL, is a HIGHLY EFFECTIVE Counter-Islamic terrorist force multiplier. SILVER BULLET GUN OIL was designed specifically to put Demoralizing FEAR and TERROR into SUPPOSEDLY “Fearless” Islamo-Fascist terrorists. It was created with the “TRUE BELIEVER” in mind. According to the Koran, Allah states, “Any of my followers contaminated by swine at the time of his death will be denied entry to my paradise forever, I HATE THE STENCH OF SWINE.” HOW does SILVER BULLET GUN OIL work? SILVER BULLET GUN OIL CONTAINS 13% USDA LIQUEFIED PIG FAT. The PIG FAT is mixed with our blended, hi-grade WEAPONS OIL designed for use in ALL FIREARMS. The oil is applied to the inside of the barrel of any firearm or weapons system. When fired, BULLETS are coated with SILVER BULLET GUN OIL containing the PIG FAT. The PIG FAT is transferred to anything the BULLETS STRIKE. The coating of OIL CONTAINING PIG FAT effectively DENIES entry to Allah’s Paradise to any Islamo-Fascist terrorist KIA with a bullet coming from a firearm using SILVER BULLET GUN OIL in the barrel. SILVER BULLET GUN OIL uses the belief system of Allah’s Islamo-Fascist terrorists to put fear of death into them, a fear they haven’t had until NOW. SILVER BULLET GUN OIL can be used in or on ALL weapons and weapons systems. Put a drop on the remains of ”suicide bombers” for the same effect-No Paradise!

Demian Bulwa: Pies-in-face attack roils anarchist-vegan world

An ex-vegan who was hit with chili pepper-laced pies at an anarchist event in San Francisco said Tuesday that her assailants were cowards who should direct their herbivorous rage at the powerful – not at a fellow radical for writing a book denouncing animal-free diets. Lierre Keith, a 45-year-old Arcata resident, was attacked at 2:15 p.m. Saturday at the 15th annual Bay Area Anarchist Book Fair while discussing her 2009 book, “The Vegetarian Myth.” A 20-year vegan, Keith now argues that the diet is unhealthy and that agriculture is destroying the world. As Keith stood at a lectern at the Hall of Flowers in Golden Gate Park, three people in masks and black hooded sweatshirts ran from backstage, shouted, “Go vegan!” and threw pies in her face. While they fled, some in the audience cheered or handed out leaflets. [...] “The whole thing was designed for social humiliation,” said Keith, speaking Tuesday from her sister’s home in Kansas. “We’re supposed to be against sadism and cruelty and domination, and these people were willing to do this to me.” Keith said her values are similar in most ways to those of her attackers. She believes in militant action, even property destruction, if it can lead to change. In her book, she said, she railed against factory farming and promoted the restoration of prairies and forests.

Dana Chivvis: PETA’s Euthanasia Rates Have Critics Fuming

When Dawn Brancheau, a SeaWorld trainer, was killed last month by one of the park’s orcas, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals was quick to condemn SeaWorld for keeping its animals constrained in small tanks. Indeed, PETA is often on hand whenever there is an incident involving animals and humans. The group is well-known for its edgy, graphic advertisements, its support for radical animal rights groups, and its throngs of celebrity supporters, from Charlize Theron to Tim Gunn. But PETA has a lesser-known claim to fame that has critics fuming: The organization euthanizes over 90 percent of the dogs and cats relinquished to its headquarters in Norfolk, Va. In 2009, PETA euthanized 2,301 dogs and cats — 97 percent of those brought in — and adopted only eight, according to Virginia state figures. And the rate of these killings has been increasing. From 2004 to 2008, euthanasia at PETA increased by 10 percent. [...] PETA reported an annual revenue of more than $34 million in 2009.

Allez Cuisine!

Two years ago (24 November 2007) I wrote about Mamie Manneh. Manneh was accused of illegally importing monkey meat “for religious ceremonies.”  Her lawyer wanted the charges dismissed “because they impinge on the importer’s right to freedom of religion,” that “bushmeat has spiritual significance and Ms. Manneh’s actions were protected under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.” “From her baptism in Liberia to Christmas years later in her adopted New York City, Mamie Manneh never lost the longing to celebrate religious rituals by eating monkey meat.”  Here is what I had to say about that…

Mamie Manneh is an attempted murderer who illegally imported the remains of endangered species into the USA for the purpose of eating them. Handling and consuming this animal can lead to some of the most nightmarish diseases known to humanity. Only spongiform encephalopathy and religion can soften the mind enough to cause a person to hold Mamie’s ‘culture’ or ‘sincere beliefs’ worthy of consideration in this regard. It’s easy to look around and see that no one around you is eating monkey and that almost anyone you ask would be horrified at the idea. It’s easy to not lie to customs. It’s easy to not run over people in cars. It’s easy to not have nine kids that you can’t take care of because you’re in prison for trying to kill a woman. I wish it was easy for judges to laugh and scowl and toss her superstitions out of the courtroom. But that would mean tossing out superstitions that are in better favor with the majority, such as Christianity and Judaism and Islam. How much better it would be if the Constitution of the United States were in effect, and there was no establishment of religion in America.

Time marches on.  In the past two years Manneh has had two more children, bringing the total to eleven.  And for her crime?  A crime Jane Goodall wrote could have “grave consequences on public health?”  A crime which could cause outbreaks of Ebola, measles, tuberculosis and retroviruses similar to HIV among even those who do not eat monkey meat as part of their superstition?  Probation.

Once again, religion is the get-out-of-jail free card.  You can chew off part of a baby’s penis, causing the baby to get herpes which leads to the baby’s death, then another, then another, and get… a warning.  You can neglect your child until they die of curable diseases… but if you are able to demonstrate you mumbled magic spells to an invisible monster that lives in the sky while you watched your child die and did nothing, you can get a reduced sentence.

Spitting contempt is all these morally retarded creeps deserve, and it’s all I have for them.  How much worse, though, that they are given leniency in court.

This week Stansfield was given a 27-month prison sentence for his misdeed – buying perfectly ordinary food (pork pies, salmon, chickens …) from high street supermarkets, re-packaging it in reassuringly expensive wrapping, calling it organic, and selling it on at inflated prices to other retailers and via mail order. His wife and Russell Hudson, the operations manager, got community service for their part in it. Considering the scale of his offence – an annual turnover of £2.5m, a nauseating trading name (Swaddles Organic), a massive client base that, intoxicatingly, included Fortnum & Mason – 27 months is not a lengthy sentence, but it feels harsh. Sure, the crime wasn’t victimless. It had victims. But they were all asking for it. It’s a huge swindle, the organic market. The first and simplest reason is this emperor’s new clothes aspect that Stansfield made his money from: organic food is meant to taste so much better, and yet nobody can actually taste the difference. [...]

What’s the lesson to the buyer, though? Well, mainly, stop buying it. There is no consistent, demonstrable superiority to organic food. We already knew this, of course, because the Food Standards Agency has always stood against the organic industry making any health claims. This position it reasserted in July, having commissioned research that showed, again, “no important differences in the nutrition content, or any additional health benefits, of organic food”. David Pickering, the lead investigations officer from Trading Standards, said equably that buyers maybe weren’t looking for health benefits, they were looking for standards of sustainability and respect for the land. And this brings us to the other big swindle of the organic industry, the way it has appropriated concerns that reasonable people might well have – the humane treatment of farm animals, the avoidance of unnecessary foodmiles, seasonal eating – and grouped them all under its own umbrella, so that it is now impossible to be a person who cares about cruelty to a pig, and yet isn’t opposed to antibiotics. And it is impossible to be a person who is happy to eat seasonally, who actually isn’t spoilt and doesn’t want asparagus at Christmas, and yet isn’t against the use of pesticides. It is impossible to be a person who cares about food, but doesn’t need every cut of meat to be the best ever, who doesn’t need an Olympian chicken, who would happily eat a tough old campaigner. Even though almost all of us are this person.

Article continues.  I’ve come to believe that people will believe anything.  PETA will protest the killing of a fly by someone else while putting to death 95% of the animals in its own care.  Vegans, those most peaceful of all eaters, have to kill to get their point across once in a while.  It turns out trees have rights too, and the power of the State is necessary to preserve the dignity of plants and the rights of apes.  I’m all for consenting and informed adults eating or not eating what they please.  You can eat meat (the only source of the necessary nutrient B12 – just ask the Vegan Society) [thanks to Klint Finley for pointing out my error: animal products such as milk and eggs contain B12] and protect your brain in old age, or you can not eat meat and have your brain shrink.  Not feeding your child what your child needs is murder and deserves to be punished as such.  But for goodness sakes, if you’re going to indulge in food superstition then have a sense of humor about it, enjoy what you eat and try not to fall for every health hoax that comes your way.

Terrorist hid explosives in his bottom: Suicide bomber Abdullah Hassan Tali al-Asiri attempted to kill a Saudi prince by detonating explosives hidden in his bottom.

Scandinavia Fights Female Genital Mutilation: When she was 11, a Swedish-born girl was taken on vacation to her mother’s native Somalia. The mother wanted to “make her daughter clean” and paid a man to cut off her daughter’s clitoris and labia while two women held her down. Afterward, the girl was stitched to her urethra. No anesthesia was used.

Threats for breaking Morocco fast: A Moroccan man campaigning to change the law banning eating in public during the Muslim Ramadan fast says he has received 100 death threats this week. Radi Omar denied that his group was anti-Islam. “We are in favour of individual freedom,” he told the BBC. Six of his colleagues are in custody after planning to eat in public last Sunday and he demanded their release.

Florida Investigation Finds No Credible Threat to Teen Christian Convert: She has said she is afraid of becoming the victim of an “honor killing” if she stays with her father and mother. Her parents have said they have no intention of harming their daughter.

‘The result of an absurd religious war’: A Moroccan man allegedly killed his 18-year-old Muslim daughter in northeastern Italy after she moved in with an older Catholic Italian man.

How Islamist gangs use internet to track, torture and kill Iraq’s gays: Sitting on the floor, wearing traditional Islamic clothes and holding an old notebook, Abu Hamizi, 22, spends at least six hours a day searching internet chatrooms linked to gay websites. He is not looking for new friends, but for victims.

Child-bride, 12, dies in Yemen after struggling to give birth for three days: A 12-year-old Yemeni child bride died after struggling to give birth for three days, a local human rights organisation said.

All articles continue at links.  These are the stories that one person found, in a short period of time, in English-language news sources. Is it possible there are many more such stories to be found?  Many more, many more every day?  How about a corresponding number – or 1/10,000th of a corresponding number – of similar stories about atheists beating and mutilating and killing people as part of their atheism?

The Internet Archive suggests that The Raving Atheist started some time in 2002.  By September 2002 the site described itself as “an atheistic examination of the culture of belief: how religious devotion trivializes American law and politics.”  The site and its author have had a curious history.

The Raving Atheist (TRA) was influential on me in three ways when I found it in 2004.  First, TRA’s essays clarified for me the importance of distinguishing between religious belief and theocracy.  TRA wrote (quote): “any person asserting a special individual right or attempting to dictate social policy based about a belief in god must first 1) define the god, 2) prove that the god exists and 3) demonstrate how the right or policy follows from the belief in god.” Religious belief can be foolish, harmful and sad (or clever, helpful and joyous) but it is largely a matter of personal choice.  The trouble for all of us starts when religion is enfranchised into law.  The Raving Atheist helped me understand theocracy is where my criticism should primarily be addressed, with criticism of religion in general coming behind.  I often fail, but I’ve tried to criticize theocracy more harshly than religion or any particular religion.

Second, TRA reminded me that no set of beliefs is a package deal.  Just because a person is an atheist does not mean they are necessarily also a capitalist or a communist, although some capitalists and some communists would like to claim otherwise.  In this case, the reminder came in the form of TRA being strongly in favor of atheism and strongly against abortion.  That’s a combination I’d never seen before, TRA himself said it was rare and which remains a minority view.  TRA was banned from anti-abortion Christian sites for being an atheist, and looked at askance for being anti-abortion by atheists.  This rare combination of beliefs was helpful to me, whether or not I shared them.  Just as the Dalai Lama is not a vegetarian, The Raving Atheist and you and I pick and choose and invent our beliefs from a variety of inspirations.  Sometimes they seem to go together, sometimes we find others that share our beliefs and they appear to form a self-consistent ideology.  But it is just as likely we’re dressing up our preferences in fine justifications.

Third, for better and for worse The Raving Atheist influenced my writing style.  He didn’t just use reasoned criticism to address his concern.  He also heaped scorn and mockery on those he opposed.  TRA took news stories about theocracy and changed the wording so their absurdity and cruelty was emphasized.  I do these things as well.  If you like my work in this style, thank TRA.  If you don’t, blame me.

The better influences that TRA has given me remain, I hope, as I’ve changed in being an atheist and a writer.  TRA has also changed. There were few posts to the blog between 2006 and 2009.  Among them was a June 2006 post stating TRA “will never write another bad word about Jesus or Christianity on The Raving Atheist.” TRA also wrote:

“Neither Christ nor Christianity shall ever again be maligned on this site, I have vowed. In contemporary America continuing this blog under such constraints might appear to rival the composition of a thousand-page novel without the letter ‘e.’ Or perhaps without the alphabet, given that Christianity equates Christ with God, and that the denial of His existence could be fairly construed as an insult. The seeming impossibility of the challenge might suggest an abandonment of disbelief. Consequently charges of atheist heresy, of conversion to theism, have now been lodged against me. With such conversions I am well familiar. Often I have questioned whether a committed, well-read atheist has ever come to faith. No one is better able to recognize the symptoms of a religious transformation than I. But my own diagnosis I will not disclose. [...] I can only assure you that I will not be acting indifferently or agnostically. What has led me to this point, whatever this point is, is a firm conviction that I must go beyond words and set an example. I will not say whether what lies behind that conviction is God or not. You will have to content yourselves with the understanding that the truth of His existence, whether founded in fact, logic, or a combination of both could not possibly vary with what my words might command you to believe. But I will not tell you what I believe. And I will not tell you why I will not, and you will never trick it out of me.”

Reading that I wondered if I could write in favor of atheism without criticizing religion. I haven’t done so online, but I do have a book manuscript that attempts to do just that. Perhaps someday it will get that last bit of editing and see print.

On December 22, 2008, TRA wrote: “Three years ago, I promoted and appeared in the atheist documentary The God Who Wasn’t There, dedicated to the proposition that Jesus never existed. TODAY I DEDICATE THIS SITE AND MY LIFE TO THE WORSHIP AND SERVICE OF OUR LORD AND SAVIOR, JESUS CHRIST.”  Is this evidence that some beliefs are package deals, that it’s impossible to stay atheist if you’re against abortion?  Some say yes.  But I’m going to stick with no.  Just because you’re a vegetarian or a nature-worshiper or an occultist doesn’t mean you’re also a fascist.  Just because you’re an homosexual it doesn’t mean you’re gay.  You are what you are by choice and by chance, and political correctness of every stripe be damned. I am still puzzled when friends have a mix of heresies that don’t match my own.  But it doesn’t threaten me like it used to.

As of September 2009 a Google search for “Raving Atheist” returns his blog as the first match, with the byline “Atheistic examination of American law and politics.”  The site‘s own byline is “Dedicated to Jesus Christ, Now and Forever.”  The back content is mostly there, and what isn’t there is usually at the Internet Archive. TRA’s site isn’t as funny or inspirational to me as it used to be.  But the number of anti-abortion atheists was small, and the number of atheists-turned-Christian is also small.  TRA’s site is worth reading at minimum for its rarity.

eat food at night

Late Night – pdx PLATE

The Guardian quotes the Wall Street Journal quoting the founder of the Whole Foods chain of grocery stores:

“Basically, we used to think it was enough just to sell healthy food, but we know it is not enough. We sell all kinds of candy. We sell a bunch of junk.” [John Mackey] said the store would now attempt to educate in the ways of healthy eating: “There will be someone in a kiosk to answer questions, they’ll have cookbooks and health books, there will be some cooking classes. It will be about how to select food, because people don’t know.”

Mr. Mackey is claiming that people would eat healthy if they knew how to, or knew the benefits of doing so.  He is bringing in books and teachers to combat akrasia, or acting against one’s own best interests (in this case by eating a bunch of junk).  But will he succeed?  We know more about nutrition than we used to, but it is likely that there is much to learn.  Even acting on the best knowledge available at present might be going against our best interests in light of future discoveries. We may eat as healthily as possible and still fall sick, or be killed in an accident that eating well could not have prevented.  This is not an argument against attempting to act in one’s best interests but it is a warning that we may not always succeed.

There are a number of explanations for akrasia. Each has its limitations.  In stating “No one goes willingly toward the bad,” Socrates claimed that akrasia simply does not exist.  If you can think of a single instance in your life when you’ve willingly gone toward the bad, you’ve demonstrated that Socrates was mistaken.  The ethical school called enlightened self-interest claims we always act in our own self-interest even when we appear to or intend to do otherwise.  But if we always and only act in our self-interests, we have to ask what other sort of interests there might be – thus enlightened self-interest doesn’t really explain anything.  Akrasia is explained as being weak willed when we judge it harshly and deferment to a greater good when we judge it favorably. Stated in this way, our interests are more like our preferences.  If there is a conflict of interests we may engage in akrasia, such as when it is equally in a person’s best interests to stay in the city they love and to move to another city for a good-paying job.  Where we cannot determine which conflicting self-interest is lesser, there is no way to identify akrasia.  An explanation for akrasia found especially among the politically left is that people act against their self-interests through lack of knowledge only, and that being exposed to knowledge will spontaneously and always result in self-interest choices.  Mr. Mackey of Whole Foods is banking on exposure to information as the key to lessening akrasia.  But every day experience shows that people will believe what they want in spite of the information they are exposed to.  Knowledge is not hidden in objects and experiences like a gift in a box, waiting for us to unwrap it.  And exposure to information does not equal acceptance or agreement or action.  Perhaps by having books and teachers on-hand Mr. Mackey hopes to be ‘forgiven’ for selling a bunch of junk.  Me, I like books and teachers and junk.

I claim the political left tends to use the lack of knowledge explanation for akrasia for two reasons.  First, at present the left is where intellectuals are valued, and this is an intellectual sort of explanation.  Intellectuals consider options and make nuanced choices.  Intellectuals also forget considering options and making nuanced choices is not always in one’s self interest – for future reference, go ahead and fight an attacker to the death, don’t debate them.  Second, the political left is deeply invested in the claim that there is an equality and sameness found in all people.  The political left thinks that being an intellectual will come to people and be their preference if they are exposed to the idea of being an intellectual, and that having become an intellectual they will consider options and make nuanced choices.  Part of why I’ve found less to agree with in the political left is my claim that there are a great deal of people (some of them quite smart) who are not intellectuals and who don’t value or prefer intellectual perspectives; there are a great many people who are not capable of being intellectuals even if they might value or prefer to be; and there are a great many people who use violence to get what they want and not the intellect.  Bluntly stated, I claim that akrasia exists in part because some people at some times are stupid and evil.  Fortunately for most people, my claims are next to ineffectual in the world.  I make no public policy, I control no one and influence very few, and eventually I won’t be around at all.  If I’m wrong, just be patient and I’ll go away.

Why do you think akrasia exists?  What do others think?  What is to be done?

Perfect Pandas » Blog Archive » Panda Bread

Announced at Comic-Con 2009, Hurley appears to be the proud owner of a new chicken franchise!

Mr. Cluck’s – Hurley’s New Chicken Shack!

acceptable concept

A Good Appetite: Oatmeal Stout and Heath Bar Ice Cream