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Monday, July 25, 2005
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It's been two years since Randi made clear his thoughts and stand on religion. It's an article worth rereading each year.
An excerpt:
[I]t was the incredible stories I was told, that really made me rear back in disbelief. For examples, they told me, some 2,000 years ago a mid-East virgin was impregnated by a ghost of some sort, and as a result produced a son who could walk on water, raise the dead, turn water into wine, and multiply loaves of bread and fishes. All that was in addition to tossing out demons. He expected and accepted a brutal, sadistic, death — and then he rose from the dead.
There was much, much, more. Adam and Eve, they said, were the original humans, plunked down in a garden to start our species going. But I didn't understand, and still don't, that they had only two children, both sons — and one of them killed the other — yet somehow they produced enough people to populate the Earth, without incest, which was a big no-no! Then some prophet or other made the Earth stop turning, an army blew horns until a wall fell down, a guy named Moses made the Red Sea divide in two, and made frogs fall out of the sky….
I needn't go on. And that's only a small start on one religion! The Wizard of Oz is more believable. And more fun.
The title of his article says it all. Call me a copycat but I cannot but echo Randi. I too am a vociferous bright, and I cannot fathom how it is that much of the world is under the spell of supernaturalism and other weird beliefs.
(Via Hokum-Balderdash Assay.)
10:50:14 PM 
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I don't know how much of of Paul Krassner's latest NY Press article is true, but I can attest that it's 100% funny.
In 1971, I announced in an ad the features that would be included in the 13th-anniversary issue of The Realist. Among them, "The Rise of Sirhan Sirhan in the Scientology Hierarchy." The Church of Scientology proceeded to sue me for libel; they wanted $750,000 for those nine words, the title of an article that I had not yet written.
What's relevant here is the paranoid mindset of Scientology, as revealed in this excerpt from their complaint:
"...Defendants have conspired between themselves and with other established religions, medical and political organizations and persons presently unknown to plaintiff. By subtle covert and pernicious techniques involving unscrupulous manipulation of all public communication media, defendants and their co-conspirators have conspired to deny plaintiff its right to exercise religious beliefs on an equal basis with the established religious organizations of this country."
(I'm inclined to believe every word of it, especially the part about attempt to force The Realist to publish an article by Chick Corea, but Krassner is a satirist.)
(Via Majikthise.)
10:47:42 PM
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Now this is a ridiculous story. Some Danish students have published
what they call an "open source" beer recipe. This is nonsense on
several counts. First, though I am not an attorney, it's my definite
understanding that recipes can not be copyrighted. Second, this story
states that any big company can use the recipe, but following the Open
Source license, the then have to give their changes back to the public.
Yeah, right. It's impossible to imagine that any brewery with any
experience at all is going to look at this recipe, be astounded, and go
on to make a great beer, the recipe for which he gives away! Give me a
break. Finally, beer recipes are a dime a dozen. A simple Google
search will find lots of good, if undistinguished beer recipes all over
the place. And there are lots of books with good recipes in them.
You've got to wonder about the shoddy reporting that's going on all
over the web about this so-called "story." My pals at Sys-con even
repeat verbatim the claim that "South American Guarana beans are a
natural source of energy and health." Yeah, as I said before, right.
5:22:06 PM
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Well, it's certainly an exaggeration for sure, but on the day before my
13th birthday, the pop world did change: Bob Dylan went electric.
Master Thief posts a nice excerpt from David Hajdu's book about Bob and
the Village here.
Of course, up in my home town as I was becoming a teenager, I was
oblivious to this; my head in other places at the time. All I remember
of that day was getting a card "to our teenager" from my mom, and a
model -- Gemini? X-15 from my pal John. It's hard, though, to remember
my mom without nearly breaking into tears.
On another note, yesterday I posted about the Don't Look Back outtakes.
I watched both DVDs last night, and they are awesome. Rough, and
incomplete and a bit mysterious, they give a great picture of Bob at
the time, giving some terrific performances (a surprise to me, after
what I've read about how he felt about that tour), and some nice little
bits backstage. It's a bit unfortunate that the second DVD showed the
infamous cab ride with John Lennon; that's from a year, and an eon,
later, and a very different world.
Later: Well, 40 years ago was my 12th
birthday, not my 13th. Funny, try as I might, I can't remember anything
about that 12th birthday.
12:30:39 PM
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© Copyright 2005 Steve Michel.
Last update: 8/1/2005; 9:49:43 AM.
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