The price of a fair legal system

So, the Nigerian fellow who tried to destroy an American plane with an explosive device in his undies, has declared himself "NOT GUILTY".

Sheesh.

There he is, igniting an explosive device stitched INTO HIS OWN FREAKIN' KNICKERS, and he's trying to say he didn't do it. Whichever way this plays out he is going to be enjoying the pleasures of permanent accommodation by the United States for the rest of his miserable life. A long wait for his quota of willing heavenly virgins, although one suspects he has forfeited those, since he screwed up the mission. Allah ain't rewarding no doofus.

But, could there be a WIN here for our pathetic little UndieBomber? Of course there is. By pleading "Not Guilty" he now commits the US legal system to a long and hideously expensive trial. The end result will be the same - but Uncle Sam will be that much poorer, and a bunch of legal firms that much richer.

Super ditto for the oxygen thieves shortly to go on trial in New York for their part in 9/11. Here's one of them:


I can't remember its name, and don't care enough about it to look it up. Let's just call it 'Fluffy.'

It has been estimated that the trial of Fluffy and Friends will cost around $200,000,000 per year. Yes, it's likely to take more than one.

Again, sheesh.

Fluffy and Co are as guilty as all Hell. But in the name of giving them a fair trial, a bunch of lawyers are going to become obscenely rich(er) for an outcome that is guaranteed, no matter which way the trial goes.

Fluffy will be in jail for the rest of his dreary existence. He can enjoy that time with the warm and fuzzy knowledge that it cost the US shitloads of money getting him there.

Yes, it is good we have courts that uphold the individual's right to be treated fairly.

Sometimes.

I know I'm wrong to say this, but part of me would have little difficulty accepting Fluffy and the likes of the UndieBomber being flayed, hung, drawn and quartered by enraged mobs.

Some of our fellow humans just manage to bring out one's Inner Barbarian, I guess...

Plastic Jesus Disks

"You would not believe how many people are writing to me, insisting that these horrible little crackers (they look like flattened bits of styrofoam) are literally pieces of their god..." PZ Myers, Pharyngula

PZ is talking about Roman Catholic Communion Wafers. Catholics, for those of you not in the know, believe that the consecrated bread and wine of the Mass turn into the literal flesh and blood of Jesus Christ when the priest utters the appropriate magic spell over them.

Yum.

Now, my own Christian upbringing was in the Anglican Church. Most Anglican churches use the same flattened disks of bread that the Catholics use, but don't go quite as far in what they believe happens during the consecration. The wafers and the wine are sort of special and have to be treated with unmost reverence, but are not actually considered to be body parts. Fortunately.

As a child I avoided the church. My family was nominally Anglican but didn't go to church. Dad wasn't a believer and didn't make any fuss about it. He admired Anglican traditions in a cultural way though. Mum was and still is a sort of a believer in a vague sort of way. Yes, she believes. No, she doesn't have any interest in going to church.

My church avoidance centred around the simple fact that I had not been baptised and mum figured I eventually should be. My older brother was baptised as a baby but somehow I missed out, and was in no hurry to catch up. The idea that I would have to stand before a bunch of people and recite lines in a scary ritual and have water poured over me filled me with kiddie terror!

I was however, baptised when I was 19.

Attending Teacher's College (Wagga Wagga 1972) I fell in with a bunch of Anglicans who also resided in my on-campus dorm. Kevin and John and a couple of others talked me around to it. They were progressive in their beliefs and didn't think lack of official Confirmation in the faith should stand in the way of heathens taking part in the Lord's Supper.

So it was that one Sunday they carted me off to St John's Wagga, a quite beautiful country church overlooking the Murrumbidgee River. The priest was Archdeacon Arnold Osborne a truly lovely, gentle man who joined the church in response to the horrors he had experienced as an airman in Europe during World War II.

Cutting now to the Holy Communion. My First. Ever.

Kevin and John had instructed me on how to hold my hands to receive the Host. I was ready. This was it. I knelt and held out my hands in the Proper Way. Archdeacon Arnold came along and pressed a perfect, circular, pure white disk of plastic into my palm. "The Body of Christ" he intoned, and moved on.

I stared at the disk of plastic. It stared back patiently. The cup of wine was approaching. What do I do with this? Is it symbolic? Yes! It must be symbolic of bread! They like symbolism here.

I stealthily tucked the plastic disk into my pants pocket. No one noticed and with relief I was in time to take the wine. That was real! Aaah. Port - not bad. Mission accomplished, I returned to my pew and forgot about the plastic disk.

That afternoon I was talking about the experience with Kevin and John and raised with them the issue of the plastic disk. "So what was I supposed to do with it?"

"You were supposed to swallow it - (pause) - you DIDN'T? What did you do with it?"

Kevin and John exchanged a a slightly worried glance.

I went to get the pants I had been wearing. Kevin grabbed them and started searching the pocket.

Alas, our symbolic Lord had crumbled away to a couple of tiny fragments. Kevin and John laughed nervously, shrugged and then carefully explained to me about how communion wafers are made. I think they were a lot more careful with later newbies...

Kevin graduated as a school teacher, and later became an Anglican priest, working in the NSW Prison System.

Archdeacon Arnold went on to baptise me in the Murrumbidgee River (another story), and was never told about my little error. I do think he would have coped. Arnold retired, and in the "It's a small world" department, 15 years later, here in Canberra, I had the pleasure of being wildly seduced by his daughter-in-law every night for three weeks, to the deliberate and painful point of "Erectus Interruptus" in a production of the naughty ancient Greek comedy 'Lysistrata.' Oh, I really loved the Theatre. :-)

I don't take plastic Jesus disks any more. The practising Anglican bits of my life were mostly good times. The ritual and the people were good. But the Message behind the ritual? I guess I really am my father's son, after all...

Fiction

(crossposted from Ficly - short stories in 1024 characters)

Worth Waiting For

Mary, the last Christian lay dying.

No priest stood beside her to administer the Last Rites. No Charismatic Fundamentalist was there to condemn her to Hell. Sick of waiting for the Rapture, the last of them had committed ritual mass suicide four years ago. The Zion-Mecca World War over the last decade had cleaned out the belfrys of both of those houses of religious adherence. The Hindis and Buddists were still out there however, just getting loonier and loonier. Ah well.

Mary died.

Awestruck, she walked down the blue tunnel of light to meet her maker – the One True and Only God.

The One True and Only God sat on His throne at the end of the tunnel, observing Mary’s approach.

And so it was that Bumba, the Congo God of Vomiting arose and looked down on His newest angel.

“Welcome to the afterlife!” Bumba intoned, and projected a massive torrent of steaming emesis at Mary.

“You were expecting Thor?”, He asked rhetorically, before repeating His Godly speciality, and not for the last time…

Beaudy Mate! Aussie Saint at Last! Trot out the Gold Plated Chunder Buckets!

It was finally announced today that Our Very Own Blessed Dead Aussie Nun Mary MacKillop is to be officially gonged a saint after a hundred years of struggle by a bunch of Catholic Australians who apparently had nothing better to do with their time.

This was finally achieved after a second miracle was attributed to Mary's rotting remains. The miracle - that they could successfully pin a miracle on a long dead ex-penguin and get a sainthood out of it - has been voted conservatively #6 in the list of dumbest reasons for canonizing corpses.

Catholics across the continent are expected to go ape-shit crazy today while a breathless, reverent media runs big bannered stories and pretends to be hugely chuffed.

HUZZAH!

Gee thanks Steve. Thanks Kevin.

...

For nothing.

Applauded by the right wing Australian Christian Lobby, Communications Minister Stephen Conroy has given the green light to bringing in legislation to censor the Internet. Already dubbed the "Great Firewall of Australia" it will hopefully have a terminally rocky run through the parliament.

And anyone who actually understands the absurdity of the proposal is laughing. Here is a typical non-Australian view:


I voted for Labor at the last federal election, not a Theocracy. But Golly! Gosh! Jeepers! Shazam! ...that seems to be what we are ending up with here.

Our nanny Prime Minister Kevin-07 is a conservative Anglican, and co-nanny Conroy is a conservative Catholic. And the good people of the Australian Christian Lobby could not be much smugger about it.

"FOR GOD'S SMEGGING FUCKING SAKE - THINK OF THE CHILDREN! THEY MIGHT SEE NUDIE THINGS! AIYYYYEEE!"

...more or less sums up their brilliant arguments for filtering. Filters that will slow the net. Filters that will ban sites that shouldn't be banned including, for instance, Wikipedia Articles that might discuss banned or politically inconvenient subjects. When anyone plays the "think of the children!" card, you can be guaranteed the underlying arguments are crap.

While no sensible person would want to expose their children to the dark side of the net, this sort of filtering just doesn't work. Bad guys with minimal technical skills will still do bad things and the rest of us have to wear the collateral damage from living behind the inevitably self-bloating firewall. Just watch that blacklist grow.

Just like in the great democracy of China.

Sorry Kevin-07. I won't be voting for Kevin-10.

Always Amusing

I love the smell of blazing dickheads in the morning...

The tragedy of NASA

And so the long awaited Augustine Commission report has been released, offering its vision for NASA's future.

And what did it recommend?

Eight piss-weak alternatives to keep NASA on a shoestring - two maintaining the current funding and six with a paltry $3 billion p.a. top-up.

To achieve what?

Bugger all really. Skip the moon. Forget landing on Mars in the next thirty years. Go visit an asteroid! Do a Mars flyby! Or go check out Phobos or Deimos and do some 'exciting science' there.

By when?

Oh, going back to the moon should be a goer by 2030...

Jazus H. Fucking Rice Crispies!

In the 1960s NASA got the moon and back in less than ten years from a standing start, and now a bunch of learned bean counters say it can't be done again in under twenty!

NASA has achieved some of the greatest events in all of human history. Getting off the Earth CAN be achieved. And getting off the third rock from the sun is both inevitable and a total human necessity.

The U.S. has the financial muscle to do this. The money exists.

The elephant in the room is - of course - the U.S. military. The U.S. Department of Defense gets more money each year than NASA has been granted in its full history of 50 years - over $500 billion. Every year.

To do what?

Stuff all! Piss off middle eastern countries and rattle the sacred sabers. A colossal fucking waste of money and resources with few tangible gains.

Just 5% of the Defence budget moved to NASA would put a permanent human presence on both the moon and Mars in just a few years, doing real science and expanding human boundaries in amazing ways. Our first steps to the stars.

Or, the preferred option of gun luvin' American paranoids, keep the status quo and keep on spending trillions of dollars, beating the crap out of carefully nurtured enemies.

Carl Sagan was right. A great civilization itching to snuff itself out of existence when on the verge breaking free.

Sigh.

Suit Blight

There are times when I would like to scrape together all the world-media-owning suits (Rupert Murdoch and similar pond scum), all the copyright lawyers, all the net ignorant politicians and all the other olde worlde corporate executives and related douchebags together in front of a very large stone wall and blast the living crap out of the lot of them with a few hundred thousand bazookas.

Oh how we'd cheer.

Bugger!

The Internet is GLOBAL. Get over it!

There is no excuse for this sort of endless copyright bullshit being drooled out by stuffwits still working to a 19th Century business model.

The above example is not very important in the scheme of things, but note that it is for a smegging 21 second promo! A mighty media empire will crumble and fall if a non-US citizen should be allowed to glimpse it! No money to be made here!

AaaaAAARGH!!!!

Sigh.

Morons.

Damn. I've run out of exclamation points.



Warm up the bazookas...

Shameless hussy mushroom cleans up her act

WARNING! ADULT CONTENT BELOW! WARNING!

It is sad sign of the end times that even Mother Nature can have her hand diverted by the evil designs of the Prince of Darkness, Satan.

And so it came to pass that I was recently disgusted to find this filthy image on a personal blog:



But the InterWeb is a place where families and children and the faithful of God do dwell! I really think the owner of this blog needs to make the WHOLE WORLD (all 50 states of it, from sea to shining sea) AN APOLOGY! To inflict this FILTH without warning is surely a public mischief of the highest order! Unsuspecting children who fall victim are surely going to witness the steady enduring flames of HELL!

I redisplay this disgraceful image here as a public service and offer a way of atonement for the perpetrator.

Switch your image, before too many more young minds are destroyed, with THIS VERSION:




There. The cleansing love of Godly pixelation hath rendered the foul pure.

Sin averted. :-)

Another Family Friendly service by Petros!

There is no such thing as...

1. The Easter Bunny. Thank God. (see left)
2. God, as we know Him. Thank Bunny.
3. Santa Claus. Ha. I figured that out when I was ten! No flies on me...
4. The Loch Ness Monster. Can't say the same for the Loch Ness Monster Tourist Industry.
5. Big Foot.
6. Yowies.
7. Yeti.
8. The Min Min lights.
9. Credible aliens from outer space. Oh, they are probably out there... They just aren't here.
10. A meaningful historical record in the bible. Old or New Testament.
11. Chi. (Hah?)
12. Chakras. (What? Are you kidding me?)
13. Energy from crystals (A.K.A. lumps of pretty rock).
14. Heaven.
15. Hell. (Do follow this link, and especially, play the audio recording of the real Hell about half way down the rather lengthy page. It's just great!)
16. Purgatory.
17. Limbo. How low can the Vatican go...
18. Intelligent thought in the Vatican.
19. Golden plates from which might be transcribed the Book of Mormon.
20. Catholic Saint makin' miracles.
21. Any other miracles.
22. Ghosts.
23. Spooks.
24. Apparitions.
25. Poltergeists. Just as well, since who ya gunna call?
26. Ectoplasm. Although it would be fun to play with.
27. Spirit photography.
28. Sin. (Oh, 'evil' sure exists, but 'sin' is just some shit thought up by evil holy men and attributed to a god for the calculated purpose of crowd control. It's worked for thousands of years...)
29. Miraculous appearances of Jesus Christ or the Virgin Mandy Mary on pieces of toast, rocks, hotplate grease, tree bark, clouds or steaming dog turds.
30. A 6000 year old creation of absolutely everything, starring your friends and mine, Adam and Eve as the original human screwups. Therefore, no 'original' sin, therefore, no need for a Jesus death dive into a vat of boiling suet, or whatever it was he did, to (sort of) let the faithful off the hook. Thanks for calling, JC.

There is such a thing as childhood innocence.

I hope the innocence of the cute little girl at the top of this piece survived that Easter Bunny...