Archive for January, 2012

I was feeling lonely. The daily spectacle of the Republican presidential candidates prancing their “family values” about the stage had me wondering…is there any other country in the world that would give such idiots such prominence? And yes there is. Hungary. They just passed a new law that sounds so…American. The new law says the family, based upon marriage of a man and a woman whose mission is fulfilled by raising children, is an "autonomous community…established before the emergence of law and the State" and that the State must respect it as a matter of national survival. It says "Embryonic and foetal life shall be entitled to protection and respect from the moment of conception," and the state should encourage "homely circumstances" for child care. It obliges the media to respect marriage and parenting and assigns parents, rather than the State, primary responsibility for protecting the rights of the child. The law enumerates responsibilities for minors, including respect and care for elderly parents. Hungary also has a new constitution, with some good points mingled among the bad. The constitution calls for the protection of life from conception and bans torture, human trafficking, eugenics, and human cloning. It recognizes marriage as the “conjugal union of a man and a woman.” Something about their obsessions suggests the grasping hand of the Catholic Church in all this.

Why am I not an atheist … … and why I am. I am not an atheist because: I hate God I prayed to God and my prayers weren’t answered Militant/fundamentalist atheists converted me away from God I worship science and the works of man instead of God I’m rebelling against God like I rebelled against my parents & teachers in high school I think I’m better than God I had a bad experience with a priest or church or religious person I can’t decide which religion to subscribe to atheism is my religion I think religious people are idiots I worship Batman I worship Satan I’m immoral/amoral and would rather do what I want I want to destroy religion I distrust and criticise certain organised religions because: they are human inventions and many seem to be more preoccupied with obsessively controlling aspects of peoples’ private lives than improving them many Christian churches are primarily concerned with attracting money and then keeping it rather than using it charitably many holy books get descriptions of the world & nature completely wrong, which you would not expect had they been dictated by the omnipotent creator of the universe many holy books contain descriptions of human events that cannot be historically verified and in all likelihood never happened (eg. Exodus) many holy books contain numerous laws, acts & stories of a morality that modern, free societies find repugnant; these societies have passed many of their own laws contradicting them there are so many separate & often violently opposed sects of each religion that it is more likely that none of them are correct than just one of them being so many religious groups demand special treatment such as the right not to be offended by statements, artworks, songs or anything else that may criticise or disagree with their dogma religious groups frequently try to have laws passed which unfairly impose their narrow standards of behaviour, based on...
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Aside from Mary, that is. (via NatGeo) (Also on Sb)

Ah, the 19th century…when mad scientists were really mad, and not only that, they were popular at parties. In 1818, Dr Ure and Professor Jeffray obtained the freshly killed corpse of Matthew Clydesdale, only an hour from the hangman’s noose, and proceeded to experiment on it with a battery in the Glasgow University anatomy theater before a crowd of spectators. In my youth, I had to settle for recent roadkill, a 9 volt battery, and a dark basement, all by my lonesome — my jealousy is acute. Here is a small portion of the account of that day’s fun. The supra-orbital nerve was laid bare in the forehead, as it issues through the supraciliary foramen in the eyebrow: the one conducting rod being applied to it, and the other to the heel, most extraordinary grimaces were exhibited every time that electrical discharges were made, by running the wire in my hand along the edges of the last trough, from the 220th, to the 270th pair of plates: thus fifty shocks, each greater than the preceding one, were given in two seconds. Every muscle in his countenance was simultaneously thrown into fearful action: rage, horror, despair, anguish, and ghastly smile united their hideous expression in the murderer’s face; surpassing far the wildest representation of a Fuseli or a Kean. At this period several of the spectators were forced to leave the apartment from terror or sickness, and one gentleman fainted. The account of galvanic experiments on dead bodies is taken from The Young Man’s Book of Amusement, which on the cover promises to teach card tricks and how to make fireworks. You’d think an amusement in which the first step is to obtain a dead body would be listed a little more prominently, but I guess playing with cadavers was just commonplace in the year before Queen Vickie was born. (Also on FtB)

Here’s a call for submissions for an anthology of erotic stories featuring tentacles. The deadline is 30 June, so get writing — I want some hot summer time reading. I’d send in something myself, but I’m afraid it would be so weirdly specific and technical that no one else in the world would want to read it. Also, as a most excellent bonus, this is a charity anthology, and all proceeds go straight to Oceana, a cause I can definitely support.