Now this is magical thinking I can respect!

Indigenous Australians pay their respects to the former member for Bennelong. (Via Oz Atheist)


Howard vs. Aboriginal Australians

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Subversive Muse's "Short Critique of Science" series

Just quickly--Rae at Subversive Muse has written a series of posts "from a critical left-wing perspective" on atheism, science and religion. I've expressed my objections to Rae's arguments--I think they basically misrepresent science (it is taken as axiomatic in this series of posts that science is "an ideology," whereas I think this needs to be argued for/demonstrated) and critique a strawman definition of atheism--and I know Bruce (who is more well-versed on this topic than I am) is preparing a response at his blog. Brian at Primordial Blog has written a thoughtful response as well.


Just to make it worth your while (and Rae, I'm not lumping you in with these guys!), here are some Youtube dispatches from the war on science:

"The Evangelical War on Science"


"The Republican War on Science"

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My cricket drought

(No "Thunder Down Under" for me this year . . .)

It was always going to be difficult to follow the cricket from a country in which it is only a very minor sport (most people you ask have never heard of it), but upon attempting to access the ABC Grandstand live stream today I was informed that the stream is unavailable to listeners outside Australia.

So I will unfortunately be unable to enjoy Jim Maxwell and gang call what should be yet another easy Australian victory, as the Aussies prepare to penetrate the Sri Lankan tail (that just sounds wrong) in their second innings. (Sri Lanka are currently 5 wickets down and 122 runs behind Australia's first innings total of 4/551.)

In any case, it is good to hear that Michael Hussey (133) is coming back into form.

Seeing as you've taken enough interest in this post to click the "Read more" link, here are some more cricket-related YouTubes:

CNNNN: Australian Cricket Sledging Academy


The Underarm Incident
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Saturday morning music videos

Marty Robbins: "El Paso"


Marty Robbins - El Paso - Music Video via Noolmusic.com

---

Get Video Code For Marty Robbins - El Paso - Music Video

Jimmy Dean: "Big Bad John"


Dana Lyons: "Cows With Guns"


Ween: "Waving My Dick In the Wind"


Glenn Campbell: "Wichita Lineman"


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Return of the Scapegoat

The long-awaited latest episode of "Search for a Scapegoat" is here:



Episodes 1-3 over the fold . . .









Stay tuned for more here.

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Smelling salts! Stat!

OH NOES!! The Chaser boys have offended some people again with a song that appears to take the piss out of dead celebrities, including Steve Irwin, Princess Di, Kerry Packer and Stan Zemanek (but is really just commenting on the hypocrisy of eulogizing those whom we found cause to dislike when they were still breathing).



Cue the hyperventilating . . .

"CHASERS WAR ON GOOD TASTE" wails Ninemsn. "To disrespect people have passed [sic] is cruel!" moans Deb of Adelaide, in the Ninemsn forum on the topic. On the ABC's own message board (and according to News.com, "Irate viewers rang the ABC switchboard to complain about the song after it aired and talkback radio hosts were inundated with comments about its content"), habbo1 whines: "A long time fan of Chaser, great dissapointment in the cringe factor that was last night 'dead celebrity bashing.' Juvenile, pathetic humour that we are to expect from Commercial TV's attempt to be 'controversial.'" I'm certain there's more to come. (UPDATE: And I was right.)

What a bunch of tightarse, whinging fuckpigs (as Billy Connolly would say).

This reminds me of when Sean Hannity was sooking about what a big meanie Christopher Hitchens was for the latter's criticisms of the late Jerry Falwell:



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The Wonderful World of Magical Thinking XXVI

The week in fundie . . .

1. An article in the Washington Post surveys McCarthyism across the Islamic world. In one example, three Saudi Arabian democracy activists were thrown into prison on charges of using such "unIslamic terminology" as 'democracy' and 'human rights'.
2. Republican presidential hopeful John McCain declares America a Christian Nation. Quote

   "But I think the number one issue people should make [in the] selection of the President of the United States is, 'Will this person carry on in the Judeo Christian principled tradition that has made this nation the greatest experiment in the history of mankind?'"

   unquote. (Beliefnet)
3. Producers of intelligent design documentary Expelled lied (for Jesus) to various interviewees, including PZ Myers and Richard Dawkins, in order to secure their involvement. (via Pharyngula)
4. Catholic archbishop: condoms from Europe are deliberately infected with HIV in order to wipe out Africans. (via Pharyngula)
5. The MySpace page of Major Freddy Wellborn, who lied (for Jesus) his way into a meeting of atheists and freethinkers among US military serving in Iraq and then shut it down. (via Dispatches from the Culture Wars)
6. UPDATE: Chicago dentist orders employees to recite Scientology formulas in order to get their paychecks, and learn about Scientology in order to keep their jobs. (via Dispatches from the Culture Wars)
   

Ben Stein's Expelled
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Well, I'm back

As Sam Gamgee famously puts it in the closing lines of Lord of the Rings, "Well, I'm back." How's Japan, I hear you ask? Japan is a wonderful country: friendly, sophisticated, and so much more "alive" than Australia (or at least the Ben Cousins-obsessed corner of Australia from which you humble servant hails). Who would have thought it in a country full of heathens? But Japan is also hot: insufferably hot. I really should have done my homework on that one: I was expecting to arrive in a mild European-style clime and wound up landing in a steam bath. The heat wave, which has continued pretty-much unabated since the beginning of August, has claimed more than 50 lives, apparently. But not me--my apartment has an air conditioner.

I've been away for quite a few weeks now, and evidently I have a lot of catching up to do regarding the topics of magical thinking and church-state separation, which as you know I like to write about from time to time. I have running internet in my home now, so I should be back in the swing of things soon enough, if not as frequently as when I was back in Australia. After all, I'm living in Japan, and I have touristy-stuff to do.

So this morning I would simply like to plug a magnificent post by Balneus--a critique of a Quadrant article by Cardinal George Pell in which he mounts an apologia for theocracy by way of a hagiography of Emperor Constantine.

If you peeked over the fold, I wanted to post more episodes of the "Search for a Scapegoat" series, but no more seem to have been made. A pity.

So here's Daniel Dennett on ants, terrorism and memes:
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AV is being raptured . . . .

. . . so this blog is going into semi-hiatus for a while. ("Semi"--in the sense that it will be still be updated, only much less frequently.)

I'm moving to Japan and my access to the interwebs will be limited--at least until I set myself up with (much, much faster) broadband in my new location.

See you soon!

AV





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Anti-Howard propaganda on YouTube

The "Search for a Scapegoat" series is brilliant:

Episode 1


Episodes 2 and 3 over the fold . . .


Episode 2


Episode 3


Stay tuned for further episodes.

Also:

John Howard Asleep on Climate Change (ALP ad)


The Complete Walks of John Howard (The Chaser)


John Howard on Climate Change and Global Warming (Clarke and Dawe)


Read more!

Real Life Arcade Games

"Pong," "Pole Position" and "Space Invaders" are the work of Swiss artist Guillaume Reymond.

PONG



POLE POSITION



SPACE INVADERS



PACMAN, PONG, SPACE INVADERS AND TETRIS WITH CANDLES



LEGO SUPER MARIO BROS.



MORE RETRO GAMES IN STOP-MOTION


Can't wait for Bubble Bobble!

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Degayifying the Moskva

Orthodox Christian Russians were working tirelessly last Sunday to cleanse the Moskva River's sparkling waters of TEH GAY, after a dirty gay cruise vessel full of dirty gays trailed megalitres of santorum in its wake the previous evening.

Participants hired a ship and decorated it with church banners, icons, Russian imperial flags and their motto, "We are Russian, God is with us."

"Our great Orthodox capital is in spiritual vacuum and experiences ideological aggression from the West. So our aim was to demonstrate that the Russian people's spiritual and moral ideals are alive and will be so forever," Yury Ageschev, coordinator of the Union of Orthodox Brotherhoods, told Interfax.

He said one of the action's aims was "to purge the Moskva River after a large group of gays, who hired a similar ship to have a party going the same route last night."

On a more serious note, this follows a plan by Christians to conduct anti-homosexual pogroms in a Moscow park popular as a meeting place for gays and lesbians.

YouTube: Christians and homophobia
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Short story: the Marquis de Sade's "Dialogue Between a Priest and a Dying Man"

This is actually a dialogue rather than a story. A priest is giving the last rites to a dying man who repents that he has not taken full advantage of the fact that he was "created by Nature with the keenest appetites and the strongest of passions and was put on this earth with the sole purpose of placating both by surrendering to them." The dying man then proceeds to state his case for atheism.

Despite the fact that the dying man seems not to have heard of the is-ought fallacy, he makes some good arguments that resonate well with current debates. His opponent is probably an unfair strawman, but I have heard a Christian apologist in a recent debate with Christopher Hitchens advance at least one of the priest's counter-arguments--the notion that the world has been created "broken" as an answer to the problem of evil.

The dialogue is far too long to reproduce here, so I'll just provide a link to the PDF:

"Dialogue Between a Priest and a Dying Man"

Of course, more than just atheists have been influenced by de Sade's ideas:


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The Wonderful World of Magical Thinking XXI

The week in fundie:

1. The Religious Right post-Falwell. (Americans United for the Separation of Church and State)
2. A library in South Carolina has been forced to cancel its summer programs after receiving threats and accusations that it was "promoting witchcraft." (Via Pharyngula)
   
3. Lesbians kicked off a bus for for kissing. (Via Morons.org)
4. Queensland National MP Barnaby Joyce: "If Christian people do not put their view forward that Australia is a Christian state, then within a short period of time, [. . .] another religion might fill the vacuum." (Via Unbelief.org)
5. An Italian village has opened a criminal investigation into the film version of The Da Vinci Code, in response to complaints by local clergy. (Dispatches from the Culture Wars)
   
6. The Exclusive Brethren cult, which bans sex ed and ICT in its own schools, is planning to sponsor one of the UK's publicly-funded "faith schools." (Bartholomew's Notes on Religion)
7. Study: social dysfunction higher in America's Jesus states. (Dispatches from the Culture Wars)
   

Bill Maher on Jesus Camp Read more!

Chems

Some Chemical Brothers videos for your viewing and listening pleasure.

Elektrobank (1997)



Loops of Fury (1996)


Setting Sun (1996)


Hey Boy Hey Girl (1999)


Out of Control (1999)


Star Guitar (2002)


Get Yourself High (2003)


Galvanize (2005)


Do It Again (2007)

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The Wonderful World of Magical Thinking XX

The week in fundie:

1. The Hawke-Clarke hijack. Alex Hawke, former leader of the Young Liberals (and, thanks to him, now dominated by its bovver-boy wing) and acolyte of ultraconservative NSW Liberal State MP David Clarke, has never made secret his long-term goal of shifting the Liberal Party to the Christian right; as far as he's concerned, party members who don't share his extremist ideology "can choose the Greens, Labor or the Democrats." Now Hawke, who opposes abortion and wants the age of consent raised for homosexuals--he considers it "a child protection issue to stop gay men preying on the young"--could well have achieved a major milestone on his agenda by securing preselection in Mitchell, one of the safest seats in the country, amid accusations by moderate Liberals of branch-stacking. (For more on what may one day come to be known as the Hawke-Clarke hijack of the Liberal Party, see this Monthly article and this Four Corners transcript.) (SMH)
   
2. Speaking of faith-based haters, Iran's government has condemned the awarding of a knighthood to author Salman Rushdie, a citizen of the UK which is not AFAIK an Islamic theocracy. According to a spokesman for the Iranian Foreign Ministry, since Rushdie is an "apostate" and "one of the most hated figures in Islamic society," the knighthood constitutes an attack on Islam. What a maroon! (ABC News Online)
   
3. In Jerusalem, an Orthodox Jewish court has placed a curse on participants in Jerusalem's gay pride parade. (Dispatches from the Culture Wars)
4. In Australia, the fundies branch stack; in the US, they state-stack. (Via Dispatches from the Culture Wars)
5. The Pentagon has admitted it once tried to build a "Gay Bomb." You know, a bomb that would infect the enemy with TEH GAY and make them want to stop fighting and start having teh gay anal sex. Yes, I'm serious. (Dispatches from the Culture Wars)
6. Seventh Day Adventist splitters World's Last Chance believe they have identified the "First Beast of Revelation" (and I could almost believe it after the Mitchell preselection ;)):
   
   
   

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It's f&@#'n brilliant!

Found a stack of Shaun Micallef's work from his Full Frontal and Micallef Pogram days. You know, back when Australian TV producers knew how to do decent sketch comedy. Enjoy!

Billy Connolly's Australian World Tour



David McGahan: Marco Polo


Roger Explosion


Fafenefenoiby


David McGahan: Cats


David McGahan: Teeth


Parliament Question Time


David McGahan: JFK Conspiracy


David McGahan: Trees



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