A-ha! It’s not just the United States that’s stocked with religious creepazoids and hypocrites!

• A candidate for the conservative Family First party has dropped out of his race. He was caught flaunting his junk on the internet, and admits to viewing porn…neither of which are particularly wicked, but when your party is against internet porn, well, there’s a little problem with consistency. There’s also a problem with making pathetic excuses, like these:

  I might have been drunk off my face or my political enemies might have drugged me.

  But that’s not my penis.

  Look, maybe somebody photoshopped it, and put another one on the photo.

  First rule of lying is to get the story straight, and keep it simple. Mr Quah’s ineptitude at lying clearly disqualifies him for political office.

• And then there’s this Muslim kook, who is a problem of a whold different order: not just foolish, but hateful as well. Sheik Taj Din al-Hilali blames victims for their pain.

  In a Ramadan sermon that has outraged Muslim women leaders, Sydney-based Sheik Taj Din al-Hilali also alluded to the infamous Sydney gang rapes, suggesting the attackers were not entirely to blame.
  While not specifically referring to the rapes, brutal attacks on four women for which a group of young Lebanese men received long jail sentences, Sheik Hilali said there were women who “sway suggestively” and wore make-up and immodest dress … “and then you get a judge without mercy (rahma) and gives you 65 years”.

  It’s all girls’ fault for being so irresistibly pretty. This analogy explains it all:

  In the religious address on adultery to about 500 worshippers in Sydney last month, Sheik Hilali said: “If you take out uncovered meat and place it outside on the street, or in the garden or in the park, or in the backyard without a cover, and the cats come and eat it … whose fault is it, the cats or the uncovered meat?

  “The uncovered meat is the problem.”

  Hmm. Who should be more offended? Women for being compared to cat food, or men for being compared to cats with poor impulse control?

People keep telling me I ought to read Freakonomics, but something about it keeps tripping my bogosity detector, and I’ve never gotten around to it. Now I’ve got another reason to avoid it: the Freakonomics blog is hosting a particular silly Q&A with someone who has absolutely no credibility on anything: Scott Adams. It reinforces my bias that the authors don’t exercise much judgment.

Scott Adams is about the last person of whom I’d be interested in asking any questions: he wouldn’t answer anything except to say how much smarter he is than any so-called expert, and any hint of actual content in a reply would be quickly denied as nothing but a joke.