Thorns In His Side

One of the blogs I visit frequently is Gordo's Appletree, the link to which appears to the right under my Brothers and Sisters in Disbelief blogroll. Like myself, Gordo is generally liberal in his political and social views, though his blog leans more towards political topics. One of the regular commenters at Appletree is a crusty conservative South Carolinian septaguenarian who goes by the moniker "Bedrocktruth." One of the things that Bedrock (I leave out the "truth" part on purpose!) constantly bewails is how liberals and atheists have destroyed the public expression of religious faith, particularly that of Christianity, in this country.

Anyway, I was looking through my copy of Secret and Sacred: The Diaries of James Henry Hammond, a Southern Slaveholder for information to respond to comments Bedrock made on one of Gordo's posts when I came across a little known incident in the history of the separation of church and state in the United States.

While almost everyone in America knows about Mark Sanford, the current governor of South Carolina and his propensity for "hiking the Appalachian Trail" in Buenos Aires (and didn't the bastard catch a lucky break with Michael Jackson's death diverting some of the media attention away from him?), Sanford is not the first controversial governor in that southern state that was first in secession.

James Henry Hammond was born in 1807 into a family of modest means in the best of times. But he evidently grew to become a handsome and dashing young man. He managed quite a coup for himself when he courted and married a plantation heiress in 1831. From there, Hammond became involved in politics and got elected to the House of Representatives. In Congress, he was an ardent defender of slavery, which he described as "the greatest of all the blessings which a kind Providence has bestowed upon our favored region." In the 1840's, he would be elected governor of South Carolina.

In his diary entry dated November 21, 1844, Hammond writes of the following incident:

I announced and set apart the 3rd day of October for Thanksgiving. In my Proclamation I invited the State to worship "God the Creator and His Son Jesus Christ the Redeemer of the World." The Jews of Charleston took great offence, announced themselves greatly displeased at being apparently excluded, and called on me for an explanation through the public papers and by private letter. I informally answered them through Col. Pinckney, Sec. of State, in Charleston that it was an oversight. But they wanted some public notice and apology. They refused to open their Synagogues and finally about the 5th inst. addressed me a long and impertinent Memorial and signed, I presume, by every Jew in Charleston, 110 names. I answered it pretty sharply, refused to make an apology, and defended my Proclamation. I hoped the matter would end there. But they called a meeting, had a report in reply to my letter, and published the whole in yesterday's Charleston papers. My letter badly printed, which I must have corrected up here. This will be a three days talk for the public. But it has drawn on me the everlasting and malignant hostility of the whole tribe of Jews, which is very unpleasant in many ways. Their Report declares that they wish to drop the matter, and so do I. Publicly it will end here, but privately they will be thorns in my side.

So, while people like Bedrock and other conservatives cling to a mythical American past where public expressions of Christianity were the norm until those awful atheists and ACLU people came along and wrecked everything in the 1960's, the episode described by Hammond in his diary shows that even as far back as 1844, in conservative South Carolina nonetheless, religious minorities protested against official government proclamations that favored Christianity to the exclusion of other religions.

The supreme irony in this though is that Hammond, like Mark Sanford, also had a propensity for "hiking the Appalachian Trail," which included making mistresses out of some of his African-American slave girls, as well as debauching several of his own nieces.

Now, though I am an atheist, I don't have any problem with people being Christians, nor do I object to public displays of religious faith. But I should think, and hope, that even many Christians would agree with me that politicians who wear Jesus Christ on their sleeves in public should be regarded with a great deal of skepticism.

Updated: Weekend Funnies - Funny Death Scenes

I haven't done a Friday funnies in a while. I meant to put this up last night, but didn't get around to it. So I guess I will call this one Weekend Funnies. The first scene is from Robocop, wherein one of the bad guys gets toxic waste all over him. The second is the great Samuel Jackson death scene from Deep Blue Sea. Enjoy.





Update! Here's another great scene, this one a classic from Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Rant of the Day - June 17, 2009

It's been a while since I really complained about something I personally encounter in the course of my day. But today I got a parking ticket that's got me really teed-off.

But first I need to put things in context.

This morning, I was looking to catch the 9:07 train to Hicksville. Now, normally, I park at the Sears parking lot, where the Town of Oyster Bay provides a shuttle bus that takes commuters to and from the lot to the Hicksville Train Station. The last bus leaves for the station at 9:00 a.m. However, I was working late in the office tonight and did not expect to be back in time for the last shuttle bus that takes commuters back to Sears at 9:00 p.m.

Since the parking lot at Sears is quite a long way to walk on foot at night, instead I planned to try and get a spot near the ticket office at the train station this morning. Quite often, it is possible to get a good spot if you time your arrival just as an east bound train arrives at Hicksville from Penn Station. What happens is that people who work overnight shifts in the city are able to get good parking spots at the Hicksville Station at night, so if you set yourself in the right spot at 9:00 a.m., you can snag a spot as one of the overnighters pulls out.

Unfortunately, this morning I got to the station just a bit too late, so I was unsuccessful at getting a parking spot by the train station. It was already too late to go to the Sears lot and catch the shuttle bus, so the only other option was to park in the lot by the Peppercorn's restaurant at East Marie Street. The problem is, many of the spots by Peppercorn's are metered spots, so even if you have a town parking sticker, you still can be ticketed. The unmetered parking spaces in this lot set aside for town residents are normally all filled by 8:00 a.m. However, in the past, I have found that even when I parked in the metered spots, I hardly ever got a ticket. And even then, the fine was $25, which was bearable.

Well, this morning, when I got to the lot, I had no choice but to park in a metered spot. The problem is, the maximum time you can park there for a quarter is 4 hours, and the meter does not allow you to put in 2 quarters for 8 hours. I put a quarter in anyway in the hope that I would be able to squeak by and avoid a ticket. But much to my chagrin, when I got to my car tonight, I looked and saw the ticket underneath the driver's side windshield wiper.

As annoyed as I was, I resigned myself to paying another $25 or $35 fine. But when I got home a short while ago and looked at the ticket, my eyes nearly popped out of their sockets when I saw the amount of the fine. NINETY DOLLARS! Let me repeat that. NINETY FUCKING DOLLARS for a parking spot that costs 25 cents. I'm sorry, but that is an absolutely outrageous amount of money to fine people. I guess it is a sign as to how starved our local government is for revenue that they have raised the fine for overstaying in a metered spot to such an onerous amount.

Of course, I have no choice to suck it up and pay it. And it goes without saying that I will never park in a metered spot again. Which just goes to show that hiking the fine so high might end up costing them revenue. Paying $25 here and there was an acceptable risk to me, and it ended up being extra revenue for the town. By hiking the fine to such exorbitant levels, virtually no one will end up parking in the metered spots for the day, which could end up in ticket revenues plummeting. Way to go, guys!

The Head of the Household

This afternoon I got one of those telephone survey calls. As is often the case with these types of calls, the caller asked me if I was the head of the household. I started to say something along the lines of "Yeah, I guess so." But then I stopped and said, "Well, actually I like to think of myself as an equal partner."

When the call terminated, it occurred to me for the first time how such a term, "head of the household," seems so anachronistic to me. It hearkens back to an era where women tended to stay at home and raise the children while the men were the breadwinners of the family. When you have been exposed to feminist ideas and accept them, you find your consciousness being raised about such things as how every day language perpetuates patriarchal ways of thinking.

Do I tend to take a leadership role in certain aspects of the family business (as opposed to the Family business!)? Yes, I do. But my wife helps set the agenda in our home as well. And as a professional who brings home more take home pay than I do, I bristle at the notion implicit in the term "head of the household" that she has some subordinate position when it comes to affairs of house and family. Personally, I think I will go with the term that Filipinos applied to Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos, a "conjugal dictatorship"! :-)

Please Save My Marriage From The Gays, Ex-Senator Santorum

But before I get into that, first off, I apologize for the lack of posting lately. I just haven't had the time or the energy these last two months to be as productive as I would have liked. Okay, end of apology.

As I have stated in the past, one of my main sources of inspiration for posts on this blog are solicitations I get in the mail from right wing Christian organizations.

The latest piece of nonsense I have gotten comes from the National Organization for Marriage. The solicitation comes in the form of a hyperbole filled letter from Republican ex-Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania.

What follows are excerpts from Santorum's letter (in manly blue colored text, of course), followed by my responses in faggy lavender.

My friend, I've never come to you with a more urgent message: we must act NOW to protect marriage.

First off, asshole, I'm not your friend. Second, my marriage, the 10th anniversary of which I will be celebrating next week, is doing just fine. I do not require your "protection."

In Iowa and Vermont, an out-of-control court and an out-of-control legislature have forced same-sex marriage on unwilling voters and New Hampshire and other New England states are in the fights of their lives to protect marriage.

Gosh, there's a lot of lunacy packed into that one sentence. For openers, I can't help but notice that whenever a court or a legislature or agency goes against the wishes of religious conservatives, these institutions are described as being "out-of-control" or "out of touch." And New England states are in the "fights of their lives"? You can almost picture the streets of New England's capital cities littered with dead bodies and crumbling buildings like Berlin in the spring of 1945, as the last die-hard gay marriage opponents desperately fire their panzerfausts at the unstoppable lumbering T-43 tanks of the tyrannical gay marriage lobby, while Rick Santorum and Maggie Gallagher exhort their supporters to fight to the death over the loud speakers.

With one stroke of the pen, President Obama could sign into law a bill that allows judges in one state to impose gay marriage on 47 other states. (Bolded and underlined in the original.)

That's another thing I have noticed about these people. They always try to frame the issue of marriage equality to make it look like it is an imposition on the rest of us. Listen, the only way gay marriage can be imposed on you is if you are forced to marry another person of the same gender as you against your will. You know, the way the daughters of kings and nobles of old were married off against their will to cement alliances or in exchange for territory, all with the blessings of the church, of course.

Will you join me, Dr. James Dobson, and thousands of other people of faith who support the National Organization for Marriage? Together, we can stop those who would repeal the Defense of Marriage Act. (Bold in original)

No, I won't.

I was in the Senate chamber on that historic day back in 1996 when an overwhelming majority of Senators and Congressman came together to pass the Federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which is the ONLY federal law that protects marriage as the union of husband and wife.

Yes, you were in the Senate chamber on that day. And now you're not, because you lost your bid for re-election. There's democracy in action for ya!

DOMA makes sure that four judges based in Boston or San Francisco cannot impose gay marriage on the rest of us. It also makes sure that taxpayers like you and me cannot be forced by judges or gay marriage activists to subsidize same-sex unions as if they were just traditional marriages.

Here we go again with this "impose" bullshit. And guess what Ricky Boy, gays pay taxes too! By the way you describe it, you would almost think that every homosexual in America is living large on the public dole like Ronald Reagan's mythical Welfare Queen. Maybe gay Americans don't feel they should be forced to subsidize the multiple marriages of such bastions of conservative morality as the thrice married Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh.

As I sat in the Senate that day I can remember what an extraordinary moment it was: How proud you and I could be of the way Americans of every party and creed came together to to protect our common sense understanding of marriage. Even Bill Clinton signed DOMA into law-that's how broad and powerful the bipartisan consensus for marriage is.

You came together? What, did you all have some kind of circle jerk in Congress that day? As for Bill Clinton, he was a president faced with Republican control of both houses of Congress. Of course he signed it into law. It would have been too politically costly for him not to have signed it. He's a politician and that is what politicians do. In 1996, I thought the idea of same-sex marriage was taking things too far, as much as I considered myself pro-gay rights at the time. But you know what, Ricky? People change their minds over time on some issues. Sometimes it takes decades. Other times it is just a matter of a few years. It's what Richard Dawkins in The God Delusion calls the changing moral zeitgeist. So, you can keep looking back on the passage of DOMA with fond nostalgia all you want, but it is not 1996 anymore.

Marriage is a sacred union of male and female.

Not entirely. A marriage is not inherently sacred. The sanctity of a marriage rests on the level of commitment between the participants in the marriage. If one or both spouses routinely engages in affairs outside of their marriage, or they just plain don't love each other anymore, then there is nothing sacred at all about their marriage.

Marriage should never be turned into a politicized plaything that powerful politicians misuse to placate their clamorous partisan bases.

I guess Ricky's irony meter was broken when he wrote that line.

Not while you and I have a breath left in our bodies, right? (Bolded in original)

Good grief! Here we go with the overwrought rhetoric again.

That's right, while we are tending our jobs, going to church, and raising our families, a handful of wealthy gay men are plotting to use their giant fortunes to reshape the entire American political landscape in their own image.

Yeah, because we all know gays don't have jobs, don't go to church, and don't help take care of family members. And wealthy gay men using their money to help promote gay rights? Gosh, the nerve of them. How dare they lend their financial support to causes that they believe in? After all, it's not like wealthy conservative white men never use their fortunes to support conservative causes!

You and I and millions of other Americans know that we don't want courts telling us our views of marriage are just old-fashioned bigotry.

Okay, as an ordinary American citizen, I will tell you then. It is old-fashioned bigotry.

We want and expect respect for marriage as an ideal because the ideal for children is a mother and a father united by bonds of matrimony.

Yes, when all else fails, THINK OF THE CHILDREN! Does this mean that Santorum opposes heterosexual marriage for couples that are well beyond child bearing age? After all, last year my 67 year old uncle got married to the 65 year old woman he met after his first wife died from cancer 9 years ago. Not all marriages are about children. But since Santorum wants to drag kids into the equation, is he seriously suggesting that children raised in a heterosexual marriage where one or both of the parents is addicted to drugs or alcohol, or is abusive or neglectful, is better than a child raised by same-sex parents who are loving and make a decent income? Mind you, I am not saying that every same-sex couple that wants to raise children will make the best parents. But we all read of plenty of examples in the news of heterosexual couples wherein one parent leaves children in the car of a mall parking lot while he or she goes shopping, or who takes the child with them while attempting to purchase heroin or crystal meth from a street dealer.

What matters is not whether the couple is heterosexual, gay, or alternatively, a single parent household. What matters is the level of love and commitment of the parents or parent, gay or straight.

Marriage is a gift from God, a sacred bond.

Uh, no it's not. It is a human institution that has been dressed up in the garb of religion.

Marriage is not at all like racism, it is not founded on hatred, and we will NOT accept in silence these BIG LIES endlessly repeated to our children and our grandchildren.

Wow, what stupidity! Who is saying that marriage is like racism or that it is founded on hatred? And opposing same-sex marriage is obviously not racism, so Ricky is getting overly emotional here. But the attempts by Santorum and religious conservatives to demonize the gay marriage movement is based on a foundation of bigotry. What gays who have been in monogamous relationships for many years are asking for is that they be accorded the same rights as two heterosexual senior citizens who can lawfully marry. Does it mean that every same-sex marriage will be a paragon of domestic bliss? Absolutely not. As we all know, nobody is perfect.

We are eached called to "faith, hope and love." It is the fuel for our battles with the forces of hate who seek (in the name of tolerance!) to silence God's own truth.

It is not "God's own truth" that you are advocating. What you are advocating is what you choose to believe is the truth of a god that was created by somebody in the Middle East thousands of years ago. The collections of books in the Bible are not some objective truth handed down from on high, but rather the subjective beliefs of the people who wrote them.

And don't forget: we need your prayers, too.

You know what, Ricky? I just might pray for you. Because, as an atheist, I know that my prayers for your success will not be answered nor will they improve your chances for success in any way.

Won't you take a stand for marriage and give today?

The only marriage I can take a stand for is my own, and I will try to give my best to my marriage every day.

God bless you, Rick Santorum.

Yeah, and fuck you too!

David Carradine, R.I.P.

A Step In the Right Direction for Kuwait

First off, apologies for the lack of posting here the past three weeks. I just couldn't seem to find the time to plant my ass in front of my computer and crank out some posts. I hope to get back in the saddle again soon.

Anyway, I meant to do a post about this several days ago when I first read about it, but thought I would give it a belated mention. In a positive turn in Kuwait, women (four of them, in fact) were elected to this Arab Gulf state's parliament for the first time in its history. Since I devote not a few posts on this blog decrying the unequal status of women in many Muslim states, including this post last year when I decried that not a single woman candidate for parliament in Kuwait was elected last year, it is only right that I highlight the good news as well.

The Fit Has Hit The Shan in Pakistan

Read all about it here at the BBC Online, or a host of other places.

From the International Red Cross Committee:

The ICRC said that although figures remain unverifiable at this stage, reports indicated that up to 500,000 Pakistanis have been recently displaced by conflict in Dir, Buner and Swat.

The ICRC and the Pakistan Red Crescent Society are currently marshaling their resources to be able to provide 120,000 internally displaced people (IDPs) affected by the fighting with food and essential relief items. The ICRC also hopes to be able to provide basic heath care for about 30,000 displaced people. Its recently inaugurated 60-bed surgical hospital in Peshawar is scaling up its capacity to be able to receive up to 100 weapon-wounded patients at a time. The organization has also been in daily contact with hospitals in Timmergarah, Mardan and Swat to find out about their needs and discuss possible ways of providing support.

It looks like the Pakistani government has finally realized you can't make deals with the Taliban fundamentalists. They have to be eradicated before they metastasize like a cancer throughout the country. Unfortunately, a lot of innocent Pakistani civilians are being displaced as a result of the crackdown by the Pakistani army in the Swat Valley region.

Now, there is no shortage of worthy causes in the world that need your help. But I would urge you to make a donation, if you are financially able, to the International Red Cross so that they can help the people of Pakistan who are being turned into refugees in their own country. You can make an online donation here. There is a drop-down screen where you can select Pakistan as your donation choice. I just made a donation a moment ago, as I wouldn't ask anyone to do so unless I had done so myself. Thank you for your consideration.

They Got Him!

No, not Osama bin Laden.

Several weeks ago, I wrote this post titled Speaking of Banks to vent my frustration over how easy it is for any lowlife knucklehead to rob banks.

Well, I just learned that the suspect who inspired the post, one David Graf of Seaford, was caught along with his accomplice, Lauren Becker of Commack. I had suspected as much, as I wrote in my post, "Judging by his targets, he either drives himself around or he has an accomplice, as his targets are scattered throughout the county."

Newsday has his mug shot here. As the text below the photo indicates, "they robbed banks to fuel a drug addiction." I mentioned that in my previous post as well, "It would not surprise me if the suspect in the Plainview robbery was a heroin or other drug addict looking for cash to feed his habit. If that is the case, he is going to keep on committing robberies until he eventually slips up and gets caught." Of course, anybody could have guessed that.

Graf and Becker are just two more sad examples of the tragedy of drug addiction. They not only hurt those around them, but they waste their own lives as well, all in pursuit of that next high.

The Spread of Christianity Part 3 - The Sacred Oak of Geismar

In what has become something of an annual ritual, conservative media outlets like Fox News claim that there is a War on Christmas in this country. One of the pieces of evidence offered is that some people use the greeting "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas". Call me insensitive if you will, but you have to be pretty darned thinned skinned to consider such an innocuous greeting as some form of oppression. After all, if the forces of secularism and atheism in this country were really waging a War on Christmas in this country, you would expect to be seeing large scale vandalism of manger displays, the smashing of stained glass windows of churches and so forth. Of course, we thankfully don't see these things and I would be the first to condemn such actions if they were happening.

But if you look at the history of Christianity during the late Roman period into the early Middle Ages, you will see that Christians quite literally waged a violent war against paganism. Of course, some Christians will retort that Christians were persecuted by pagan Roman emperors before the time of Constantine. And that of course is quite true. But these persecutions were deliberate acts of government policy, rather than instances of pagan priests themselves disrupting Christian church services.

One of the earliest examples of a confrontational and aggressive Christianity was Martin, a bishop of Tours in the late 4th century. Richard Fletcher, in The Barbarian Conversion, quotes Martin's biographer Sulpicius:

In a village named Levroux, however, when [Martin] wished to demolish in the same way a temple which had been made very rich by its superstitious cult, he met with resistance from a crowd of pagans and was driven off with some injuries to himself. He withdrew, therefore, to a place in the neighbourhood where for three days in sackcloth and ashes, continuously fasting and praying, he besought Our Lord that the temple which human hands had failed to demolish might be destroyed by divine power.

Then suddenly two angels stood before him, looking like heavenly warriors, with spears and shields. They said that the Lord had sent them to rout the rustic host and give Martin protection, so that no one should hinder the destruction of the temple. He was to go back, therefore, and carry out faithfully the work he had undertaken. So he returned to the village and, while crowds of pagans watched in silence, the heathen sanctuary was razed to its foundations and all its altars and images reduced to powder.

The sight convinced the rustics that it was by divine decree that they had been stupefied and overcome with dread, so as to offer no resistance to the bishop; and nearly all of them made profession of faith in the Lord Jesus, proclaiming with shouts before all that Martin's God should be worshipped and the idols ignored, which could neither save themselves nor anyone else.

Adds Sulpicius, "He immediately built a church or monastery at every place where he destroyed a pagan shrine."

Fletcher notes, "Archaeological discoveries have furnished confirmation of the destruction of sites of pagan worship at this period which, in the words of Paulinus of Nola, was 'happening throughout Gaul'. At a temple of Mercury at Avallon in Burgundy pagan statues were smashed and piled up in a heap of rubble: the coin series at the site ends in the reign of Valentinian I (364-375), which suggests that the work of the destruction occurred shortly afterwards."

Does this remind anyone of the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas by the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2001?

We see such behavior manifested again in the early 8th century by one Boniface of Wessex. In about the year 723, the bishop received a commission from Pope Gregory to lead a mission to the region of Germany known as Thuringia.

Fletcher again, "Pagans 'not yet cleansed' were first encountered at Geismar, where there was a sacred oak tree. It is possible there may have been there 'a pagan shrine of more than local significance'. In a brave act of public Christian assertion Boniface felled the oak. 'At the sight of this extraordinary spectacle the heathens who had been cursing ceased to revile and began, on the contrary, to believe and bless the Lord.'"

Such is the fame of Boniface, that today, the town of Crediton in Wales, boasts of it being his birthplace on its tourism web site. The web site notes, without irony, that "He boldly tackled superstition, including the felling of Thor's sacred Oak at Geismar by his own hand in front of hostile tribesmen, and laid the foundation of a flourishing new church." (Emphasis added) An engraving depicting the event appears at the top of this post.

As for Boniface, he eventually met a fate that was not all that different from the Geismar Oak. In 754, he was a member of a party on the Frisian coast, which Fletcher describes as "well beyond the protecting reach of Frankish power. There they were awaiting the arrival of the recently baptized for confirmation. Instead they were surprised...by a gang of seaborne predators attracted by the prospect of loot. In the struggle that ensued we are told that the elderly missionary tried to ward off the blows of his assailants by using a book as a shield: to no avail; Boniface and his companions were slaughtered."

While Boniface was described thereafter as achieving martyrdom, it appears that rather than being killed for his faith, he was simply killed for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. At any rate, the murder of Boniface did not halt the westward march of Christianity, which will be the subject of Part 4: The Saxon Capitulary.

Drops of Water in A Water Jar Part 1 - Composting

The title of this post was inspired from a verse from the Buddhist text The Dhammapada, which reads in full, "Hold not a deed of little worth, thinking 'this is little to me.' The falling of drops of water will in time fill a water-jar. Even so the wise man becomes full of good although he gather it little by little."

Likewise, when many individuals each do a small amount of good they can together accomplish a great deal of good. In the first of what I hope will be a regular series of posts on this blog, I want to discuss the benefits of composting and how it applies to this philosophy.

This past summer, I decided to start composting my lawn and leaf waste. When I thought about it, I realized it was extremely wasteful to spend money on several boxes of plastic lawn and leaf bags to bag grass clippings and leaves, haul them to the curb for trash collection and have them take up space in landfills. So, with a quick trip to a nearby Home Depot, I obtained the basic supplies needed for under $20 and went about setting aside a corner in my backyard for the compost bin. Above is a picture of the bin I shot today.

What are the practical benefits of composting? Well, for starters, I am looking forward to starting a vegetable garden this spring, so I hope to be able to generate enough useable compost to mix with top soil. By composting my grass and leaf cuttings, I am also saving some money that would be spent on lawn and leaf bags. But the benefits extend beyond that.

As I wrote in the paragraph above, composting yard waste means less of it takes up space in our landfills. If more people with available yard space for a compost bin did the same, it would have a multiplier effect. From the Environmental Protection Agency's web site on composting, "Yard trimmings and food residuals together constitute 23 percent of the U.S. waste stream."

Mass composting of yard waste could also help reduce fossil fuel use. When homeowners leave upwards of a dozen bags of raked leaves by the curb during the height of the autumn season, garbage collection trucks have to stop and idle while the workers pick up the bags and toss them into the back of the truck. While we are probably talking maybe a matter of a few seconds of idle time, when you multiply that amount by the hundreds of homes on each truck's collection route, the amount of fuel wasted really starts to add up.

In addition to composting grass clippings and leaves, table scraps also make a valuable component of a compost pile. I started adding things like banana peels, apple cores and other fruit and vegetable scraps several months ago. Instead of tossing in the items individually, I purchased a small pail with a lid that pops open when you step on the foot pedal and a supply of bags made from biodegradable cornstarch. Above is a picture of one of the bags filled with banana peels and such.

Another thing I did late last autumn after doing some research about composting was to toss in some worms that I came across when I was raking and vacuuming. Recently, when I have been churning around the pile after receiving rainfall, I was surprised to see that at least several of the worms in the pile were still alive after so many months had passed.

As I am still quite the novice when it comes to composting, it remains to be seen how successful it will turn out with my planned vegetable garden. Regardless of that, I can at least take some satisfaction in knowing that I am doing a little bit of good by adding less waste to our landfills and helping to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. If you believe that these are worthwhile goals and you are able to compost your yard waste and table scraps, then I hope you will help fill up that water-jar.

You Go, Afghan Ladies!

Poor Afghan Women Brainwashed by Western anti-Islamic propaganda

I'm on my lunchbreak now and checked the New York Times online a moment ago to catch up on current events, and wanted to immediately share this article with you. (Registration required). It is thrilling to read about these brave Afghan ladies demonstrating against the "marital rape" law, though it is equally disheartening to see the vitriolic fury their protest march generated among the fanatically conservative minions of Kabul.

The young women stepped off the bus and moved toward the protest march just beginning on the other side of the street when they were spotted by a mob of men.

“Get out of here, you whores!” the men shouted. “Get out!”

“We want our rights!” one of the women shouted, turning to face them. “We want equality!”

But the march carried on anyway. About 300 Afghan women, facing an angry throng three times larger than their own, walked the streets of the capital on Wednesday to demand that Parliament repeal a new law that introduces a range of Taliban-like restrictions on women, and permits, among other things, marital rape.

With the Afghan police keeping the mob at bay, the women walked two miles to Parliament, where they delivered a petition calling for the law’s repeal.

The women who protested Wednesday began their demonstration with what appeared to be a deliberately provocative act. They gathered in front of the School of the Last Prophet, a madrassa run by Ayatollah Asif Mohsini, the country’s most powerful Shiite cleric. He and the scholars around him played an important role in the drafting of the new law.

“We are here to campaign for our rights,” one woman said into a loudspeaker. Then the women held their banners aloft and began to chant.

The reaction was immediate. Hundreds of students from the madrassa, most but not all of them men, poured into the streets to confront the demonstrators.

“Death to the enemies of Islam!” the counterdemonstrators cried, encircling the women. “We want Islamic law!”

The women stared ahead and kept walking.

The end of the article features one of the clerics of the madrassa, a Mohammed Hussein Jafaari.

The article quotes him as saying, “We Afghans don’t want a bunch of NATO commanders and foreign ministers telling us what to do.”

Oh yeah? Well, you know what Mr. Jafaari? A lot of Afghan women don't want a bunch of perverted Islamic male scholars telling them what to do!

I really wish there was something substantial we could do to help these ladies achieve the gender equality that they deserve. For all of their bravery, sadly they appear to be vastly outnumbered. Off the top of my head, one thing we could do, even if it does not solve the problem, is to offer asylum to any Afghan woman who wants to flee the country to escape the law. One counterargument to that idea though is that if we make it easier for the more independent minded women to leave Afghanistan, that will just make it harder for the remainder who stay behind. But I fear that the number of women who will push back is not enough as it is, and therefore it would not make much of a difference if they stayed, except to get themselves killed. Besides, if we can get enough women to leave, maybe it will create a shortage of wives and these tribalistic misogynystic assholes won't be able to have children to pass on the madness to another generation.

The Real Housewives of Afghanistan

An Afghan Man Will Never Need Her Permission to Cum Inside Her

A number of atheist bloggers have already expressed their outrage about Afghanistan's "marital rape" law, along with even greater numbers of human rights and feminist activists and supporters.

Of course, supporters of the law claim that it is a whole lot of fuss being raised about nothing. Below are some excerpts from this article on Al Jazeera English online.

A top Afghan cleric [Mohammad Asif Mohseni] who backs a law that critics say would allow marital rape has dismissed the outcry the legislation has generated in the West.

The law states that "it is essential for the woman to submit to the man's sexual desire" and says a husband can demand sex with his wife every four days, unless she is ill or would be harmed by intercourse.

Surrounded by supporters, Mohseni unfurled reams of paper with hundreds of women's signatures and thumbprints backing the law.

He also said much of the uproar had come from people misinterpreting the law and that a woman could refuse sex with her husband for many reasons beyond illness, including fasting for Ramadan, preparing for a pilgrimage, menstruating, or recovering from giving birth.

Wow, it looks like we really were overreacting! Hundreds of Afghani women support this legislation. And women can refuse sex if they are preparing for a pilgrimage, or for the entire month of Ramadan.

But seriously.

Yeah, sure you can claim that hundreds of Afghan women support a law that legislates that a woman must submit to her husband's sexual desires every four days. But no one, man or woman, has the right to dictate to another woman when and if she must have sex with her husband. Call me a radical, but I support the idea of full equality of the sexes and that women have the right to bodily autonomy, including whether to terminate a pregnancy and if, when and under what conditions a man's penis gets to penetrate her vagina. And how many of those women's fingerprints in support of the new law were supplied under coercion?

Maybe it's just me, but the idea of having sex with a woman against her will strikes me as barely a step above masturbation. If she is just going to lie there while she waits for Abdul to get it over with, Abdul might as well just stick his dick in a sex doll. From what I have read, they're getting more lifelike all the time, as demonstrated by the picture at the top of this post.

Or how about this? If you want to have sex with your wife, Mister Afghan stud, how about bringing home your wife a box of chocolates or some nice flowers? How about helping out with the household chores once in a while? Buy her some perfume and tell her how beautiful she looks. It might increase your chances of her actually wanting to do the nasty with you. On the other hand, If you need a piece of legislation passed by parliament to get laid, then you're a really pathetic guy.

There's always a chance that Afghan President Hamid Karzai will force further revisions to the law, but no matter what changes he might wring out of the religious conservatives, it is likely that the principle that a wife must submit sexually to her husband will still be enshrined into the law. Yes, it is completely unacceptable, but there does not seem to be a hell of a lot we can do about it.

John Safran Gets Crucified in the Philippines

Uh oh! I decided to do some follow up reading on John Safran's crucifixion stunt in the Philippines this past Friday, and it looks like he has pissed off a lot of the locals.

From The Australian News comes the latest developments.

DEVOUT Christian followers of Good Friday's crucifixion rituals in the rural Philippines village of Kapitangan were devastated to learn that John Safran's nailing to the cross alongside local penitents was a TV comedy show stunt.

Student Jhoan Caparas, 18, who saw Safran's crucifixion, said his actions had been disrespectful and immoral.

"Why does he want to come here and laugh at us? We don't laugh at his culture and his beliefs. So he should respect ours."

I'm sorry, but what the fuck is there to respect about having yourself nailed to a cross? What a bunch of backwards-ass supersitious weirdos!

Buboy Dionisio, nailed to the cross along with Safran, who was sporting a Monty Python-style wig, said he could not understand why the comedian and his producers had falsely claimed to be making a serious TV show.

The comedian and his crew - believed to be filming for an ABC TV series to be screened this year, John Safran's Race Relations - were threatened with deportation and forced to sign an affidavit pledging not to use footage mocking crucifixion rituals.

Kapitangan Village councillor Cleotilde Gaspar was shocked Safran was making a comedy show because he had "really been crucified with the nails going all the way through his hand".

"But if he is making fun of us and what we do that is very serious for us because for us it is not funny," she said.

Cleotilde Gaspar is right about one thing. What these religious fanatics are doing is not funny. It's sad and pathetic. Even if I were still a Catholic, I would still find what they do abhorrent. After all, isn't the whole point of the Crucifixion that Jesus is supposed to have suffered and died for us, rather than inspiring ersatz imitators?

Breaking News: Jesus Is Still Dead

To all my readers, I want to wish you a Happy Atheist Easter.

For your reading pleasure, here is an article about John Safran joining those wacky Filipinos in getting himself crucified on Good Friday.

King Bhumibol of Thailand Is A Dick

Whatever you do, don't make fun of his silly hat.

To be honest, I don't really have a personal problem with him. I am just expressing my opposition to Thailand's "lese majeste" laws, which makes it a crime to insult the royal family of Thailand.

Now, how serious is this?

From the BBC:

A Thai citizen has been sentenced to 10 years in jail for violating strict laws against insulting the monarchy.

A court in Bangkok said Suwicha Thakho, 34, digitally altered images of King Bhumibol Adulyadej and his family and posted them on the internet.

Thailand's royal family is sheltered from public debate by some of the world's most stringent lese-majeste laws, as the police and army try to suppress what they fear is a rising tide of anti-monarchy sentiment.

One political activist was jailed for six years in November for an anti-monarchy speech she made just a stone's throw from the old royal palace last July.

But this insanity doesn't just apply to Thai citizens. Foreigners in Thailand are also at risk of falling afoul of these laws, no matter how inadvertent the offense might be.

Harry Nicolaides, an Australian writer jailed in Thailand for defaming its monarch, has returned home after being pardoned by the king and set free.

The charges arose from a passage in a largely unknown novel he wrote in 2005, of which only seven of 50 copies printed were ever sold.

Mr Nicolaides was met by his family in Melbourne. He would next see his mother in hospital, his father told reporters.

He told reporters he had been crying for eight hours, having only learnt moments before his flight that his mother had suffered a stroke while he was imprisoned.

"A few hours before that I was informed I had a royal pardon... A few hours before that I was climbing out of a sewerage tank that I fell into in the prison," AP quotes him as saying.

So, in the spirit of irreverence, I invite all readers here, Thai and non-Thai, to insult the royal family...just because it should be your right and because you can.

The Lubavitcher Bus

Well, it was more like a camper really.

Last week a friend and I were walking east from 6th Avenue down 48th Street in Manhattan to eat lunch at a Chinese restaurant. There was this loud and annoying music playing from this long, white camper with a large picture on the side of the late Lubavitcher rebbe Schneerson. Inside were a number of Lubavitchers, an Orthodox Jewish sect, many of them young men bouncing and swaying to the music like some Jewish hip-hop posse.

I said to my friend, "I would rather listen to rap music then this." I shouted at the people in the bus to "turn that crap down," but did so halfheartedly, knowing it was a futile gesture. We crossed the street and went into the Chinese restaurant, and forgot about the Lubavitcher bus.

After lunch, my friend and I walked back towards 6th Avenue and turned left as I intended to walk with her until we got to the corner of 47th Street. And lo and behold, there was the camper, parked on 6th Avenue across the street from my office. Up ahead, I could see two of the Lubavitcher boys accosting men who walked past them on the sidewalk, asking "Are you Jewish?"

Apparently, what these Lubavitchers were engaging in is something called kiruv, which the Wikipedia link describes as "the collective work or movement of Orthodox Judaism that reaches out to non-Orthodox Jews to believe in God, engage in Torah study, and practice the Mitzvot in the hope that they will live according to Orthodox Jewish law. The process and act/s of any Jew becoming more observant of Judaism is called teshuva ("return" in Hebrew) making the "returnee" a baal teshuva ("master of return")."

As my friend and I closed the distance with them, I anticipated that I would be approached by one of the Lubavitcher boys and was ready for them. "Are you Jewish?" one of them asked as I walked near him.

I turned to face him and said "No, I'm an atheist, and you should be too." With that, I turned away and kept on walking with my female friend (apparently, the Lubavitcher males don't address women). She expressed some surprise at what I had said, but I replied to her that once they insert themselves into the public square like that, I am under no obligation to respect the substance of their beliefs. If they have the right to accost me in the street and ask me if I am Jewish, then I have every right to tell that person he shoud be an atheist.

One of these days, if I have the time and the requisite amount of chutzpah, I might identify myself as Jewish to these clowns just to see what they do next. If so, you will be sure to read about it here!

The Rise of Christianity Part 2: It's All About The Women

As I wrote in Part 1 of this series, "in order for the Church to survive and prosper, it needed the Germanic kings who occupied the former Roman territories to convert to Christianity and be baptized in the Church."

Of course, in order to get these Germanic kings to open themselves up to the prospect of conversion to Christianity, the faith had to be presented to them with a pretty face. In other words, the first stage in getting a Germanic king to embrace Christianity was for him to be presented with a Christian bride.

Returning to the Frankish king Clovis, the starting point for his conversion, and the subsequent conversion of the Franks, began with Clotild, his Catholic Burgundian wife. The historian Edward James, in his book The Franks, summarizes the narrative of Gregory of Tours, whose Ten Books of Histories is one of the major source writings for the period.

"Clovis's Burgundian wife Clotild wanted him to agree to baptize their first son, Ingomer. Gregory devises a little sermon for her to preach to her husband, which made the same points that early medieval preachers tended to make to pagans: your gods are bits of stone or wood; they were men, not gods; they set examples of immorality...The child was baptized, and promptly died. Undaunted, Clotild had her second son baptized, and when he too fell ill she prayed and the child recovered: a sign from Heaven."

It was some time afterwards that Clovis allegedly decided to be himself baptized following a battle against the Alemmani, in which he supposedly had called on Jesus Christ for aid and promised to be baptized if he was victorious. The likely story is that Clovis had already considered conversion to Christianity before the battle, but that he needed a suitable pretext before making his intentions public, in the same way that Abraham Lincoln was waiting for the right moment, the repulse of Robert E. Lee at Antietam, to issue his Emancipation Proclamation. After all, when you are a manly Germanic king, you can't expect your people to cast off their old gods just because it will make your wife happy. But Clovis's agreement to be baptized undoubtedly made conversation at the Merovingian family dinner table a lot less contentious.

Following the conversion of the Franks (at least superficially, but more on that in a future post), the Frankish kingdom itself became a new source of royal Christian brides to be dispatched to new pagan kings as part of a strategy to bring them into the community of Christian kingdoms. Thus, a Christian Frankish lady named Bertha was married to Ethelbert of Kent in the latter half of the sixth century. Writes Richard Fletcher in The Barbarian Conversions, "[w]e do know that Bertha's kinsfolk had been able to insist that Ethelbert permit his wife to practise her religion. She came to Kent accompanied by a bishop named Liudhard."

"Bertha would have known of her great-grandmother's part in the conversion of her husband Clovis. She may well have received a hortatory letter reminding her of it...when she went off as a bride to Kent. Her assistance in the conversion of Ethelbert was acknowledged by Pope Gregory in a letter he sent to her in 601."

The story repeats itself with Edwin of Northumbria, who married Ethelburga, a Christian princess from Kent, the aforementioned kingdom of the Christian convert Ethelbert. "Diplomatic presents of rich apparel, gold embroidered, cunningly hinted at the splendid trappings of Christian civilization. Queen Ethelburga was firmly reminded of her duty as wife and queen to bring about Edwin's conversion." Well, it certainly adds a whole new meaning to the phrase 'missionary position'! Edwin finally succumbed and was baptized on Easter Sunday in the year 627.

It seems clear that the marriage of a Christian princess to a pagan king played an important role in getting the king to convert to Christianity. The princess would be accompanied by her own retinue, including her own priest to minister to her and her attendants, thus providing a foothold for the Christian faith in the king's court. As to how much the king's resistance to conversion was broken down by his Christian queen's pleading and cajoling is difficult to say. There were other factors at work of course. By marrying a princess from a Christian kingdom, a pagan king became increasingly drawn into a network of political and trading relations with Christian kingdoms such as the Franks. Ultimately, a pagan king would proclaim his conversion to Christianity and be baptized because he found it to be advantageous to do so. Since there was no aggressively proselytizing alternative faith, and the Catholic Church carried with it the prestige of being a Roman institution, adopting Christianity was a way of formal joining the club of "civilized" nations. And an important first step in the process of conversion was marrying a Christian princess from one of those Christian kingdoms.

Coming soon: The Rise of Christianity Part 3: The Sacred Oak of Geismar

Speaking of Banks...

Why the f%#k is it so easy to rob them?

I was reading this week's issue of the Plainview-Old Bethpage Herald. At the bottom of page three was an article about how Nassau County Robbery Squad detectives are still looking for a bank robbery suspect who robbed a Chase Bank on Old Country Road this past March 23.

The suspect, a white male between the ages of 27 to 32, approximately 5'8" in height, passed a note to the teller demanding money. After being handed the cash, he fled the scene.

The article then lists the following bank robberies he is suspected of carrying out based on photographs taken of him by the bank security cameras:

March 21 @ 12:30 p.m., Washington Mutual Bank at 3345 Hempstead Turnpike in Levittown.

March 21@ 1:55 p.m., Citibank at 670 Merrick Avenue in East Meadow.

March 23 @ 5:04 p.m., at the aforementioned Chase Bank at 1100 Old Country Road in Plainview.

March 26 @ 5:45 p.m., CapitalOne Bank at 1145 Willis Avenue in Albertson.

March 29 @ 1:30 p.m., TD Bank at 4126 Merrick Road in Massapequa.

March 30 @ 7:10 p.m., TD Bank at 416 Central Avenue in Cedarhurst.

As you can see, the suspect was especially ambitious on his first outing on the 21st, robbing two banks close to each other geographically in a narrow time frame. Judging by his targets, he either drives himself around or he has an accomplice, as his targets are scattered throughout the county. I would guess that he figures if he does not confine his robberies to a specific area, it will lessen his chances of being caught.

But back to the question I asked at the beginnning of this post, I have personally never worked in a bank, so I do not know what their procedures are in these situations. If anyone reading this has or currently does work in a bank, I would appreciate your comments. It looks to me though that the policy is for tellers to automatically comply with a request for money under the assumption that the robber is armed. But it strikes me as being way too pathetically easy for any loser or lowlife to walk in and demand money knowing that he or she will make an easy score. I do recall reading a few months ago where one bank robbery was foiled when a teller, in response to a demand for money, laughed at the would-be robber and said "Are you kidding me?" Apparently, that was all it took for the robber to lose his/her nerve and flee.

Now, I don't claim to be an expert on issues of security, but it seems to me that there are plenty of low-tech, commonsense methods that banks can adopt to reduce the number of robberies. How about requiring every person who enters a bank to show a valid identification? Every dance club that serves alcohol requires patrons to show i.d. at the door before entering the premises. Why the fuck can't banks do that? Or, if that is too much trouble, how about requiring everyone who enters the bank to remove their hats or hoods or anything else that obstructs views of their faces and to stand in a spot that enables the security camera to get a clear photograph? The article on the suspect in the Plainview robbery shows two separate photos of him wearing a baseball cap that partially obscures his face.

I understand that there are legitimate concerns about bank robberies turning into violent stand-offs. But it appears the overwhelming majority are like those perpetrated by the aforementioned suspect, a lone, in all likelihood unarmed individual, whose demands for cash made to a teller are meekly complied with. It would not surprise me if the suspect in the Plainview robbery was a heroin or other drug addict looking for cash to feed his habit. If that is the case, he is going to keep on committing robberies until he eventually slips up and gets caught. I just can't help thinking that people like him wouldn't be as successful as they are if banks would be take some proactive security measures.

Please, Don't Do Me Any Favors

At the bottom of the page of the statement for my Money Market Savings Account, the following language appears:

You earned a higher interest rate on your XXXXX Money Market Savings account during this statement period because you had a qualifying XXXXX Better Banking Checking account.

And what was this "higher" interest rate I earned? Drum roll please.........

0.01%!

Last month I earned a whopping eight cents in interest! Whoooey! I wonder what my rate would have been if I did not have the savings account linked to a checking account, 0.00001%? Or maybe it would be a negative number. Of course, this savings account does not constitute the main core of my savings. It's meant to be an easily accessible fund to tap for unbudgeted emergency expenses such as having to get the car repaired or to have an appliance fixed or replaced. But an interest rate of 0.01%? I guess I can understand if that is the best my bank can do under the present circumstances, but it shouldn't act like it's doing me a favor by offering me such a piddling rate.